Main Course

Vegetable Lasagna (Gluten and Dairy Free)

May 13, 2017 by Suzie

Lasagna is one of my all time favorite meals. Growing up in a family of seven, lasagna was a pretty regular meal. But my most fond memories of lasagna are those from our ski house in Stowe Vt. After a long day of skiing in the cold, there was nothing more satisfying than a plate of cheesy meat lasagna.

These days I make mine with gluten free, grain free noodles and dairy free nut cheese. I’ve made it with and without meat, but have decided the veggie version is the best. And my family agrees!

There is no doubt this lasagna is a crowd pleaser. I’ve served it at many dinner parties and people don’t even know there’s no real cheese in it or that it’s gluten free. The noodles are the BEST! Cappello’s noodles are made with almond flour and eggs. They are amazingly fresh and tender just like homemade pasta.

Use whatever veggies you like, add some carrots, eggplant, or mushrooms. And definitely don’t be intimidated by the cashew ricotta, it’s SUPER easy to make and amazingly delicious!

Paleo Vegetable Lasagna

1 package Cappello’s lasagna noodles or other gluten free noodles
4 cups tomato sauce
1 large zucchini, diced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 onion, diced
1 teaspoon herbs de provence
4 handfuls of fresh spinach or 1 12oz package frozen spinach
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
Fresh basil for garnish

Place oil in a large skillet on the stove over medium high heat. Add onion and cook until translucent. Remove with a slotted spoon. Add zucchini, red pepper and herbs de provence. Sauté until soft, 2-4 minutes. Either steam or saute the spinach until wilted. In a bowl, stir together the spinach with the cashew ricotta.

Cashew ricotta
Soak 1 1/2 cups of raw organic cashews in 4 cups of water( enough to cover nuts by an inch or more) for 4 hours or overnight. Drain and rinse. Place cashews in the bowl of a food processor. Add 1/2 cup water, juice of one lemon and 1 clove of garlic. Process until smooth, adding more water as needed. Can make ahead and store in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Assemble the lasagna in layers in a large baking dish. I use a 9×13 pyrex dish. Spoon about 1/3 of the tomato sauce on the bottom of the pan. Next add a layer of pasta and spread about 1/2 the ricotta cheese and spinach mixture on top. Place another layer of pasta onto of cheese. Spread vegetables over top the noodles and top with 1/3 of the tomato sauce. Then add another layer of pasta and top that with the remaining ricotta cheese. Top with one more layer of pasta and spread remaining tomato sauce over top. Bake in oven for 30-40 minutes.

Serves 8-10

Veggie Smothered Pasta

December 15, 2016 by Suzie

veggiepasta2 I love this recipe!

This is one of my favorite go to meals and my husband’s too. I make it once a week with an assortment of veggies. It’s perfect for when the fridge is starting to look empty and all that’s there is a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Mixing veggies together makes it so much more fun and colorful. Pick whatever veggies you like best and get creative, just as if you were painting a picture.

The pasta we use is Tolerant red lentil pasta because it tastes and looks like the real deal, unlike some gluten free pastas that are too sticky or lack flavor. As an added bonus, it is made purely from lentils and is very high in protein. Another amazing gluten free and paleo (grain free) pasta is Cappello’s fettuccine made with almond flour and eggs.

Fair warning, both options are much more expensive than traditional pasta, but remember you are paying for pure, organic, nutrient dense ingredients. As a result, there’s no belly bloat, sluggishness or cravings for more after eating these noodles. Besides we only use a little bit of pasta and smother it with lots of veggies 🙂

With this recipe, no tomato sauce is needed. In fact it’s preferred not to use it with this recipe. Instead, we toss our pasta with Body Bio magic oil before smothering it with the sautéed veggies (only use this oil raw do not cook with it). It’s so good, it needs a spoon to lap it all up!

veggiepasta

Veggie Smothered Pasta

1 cup chopped zucchini
1 cup chopped broccoli florets
1/2 cup chopped leeks or onion
2 cups raw spinach
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
2 tablespoons pine nuts
2 tablespoons coconut or olive oil

Place oil in a large sauté or stir fry pan. Stir in onion and cook until tender and translucent. Remove from pan with a slotted spoon. Add broccoli and zucchini. Cook over medium high heat until tender and beginning to brown. Remove and set aside. Add more oil as needed and stir in mushrooms and garlic. Once mushrooms are beginning to brown, add the spinach and cook until wilted. Stir all vegetables together before placing over pasta. Sprinkle with pine nuts.

Serves 2

Turkey Tettrazini (Dairy and Gluten Free)

November 29, 2016 by Suzie

Some people love leftovers, some hate them.

I was always one of those kids that turned my nose up at the sight of leftovers. My aversion to them even crept into adulthood. It was mostly a texture and smell issue for me, and I believe this sensory response accompanied some of the toxic issues I was having in my gut.

Fortunately, with gut healing and the commitment to a clean healthy lifestyle, I can now embrace the ease of leftovers and enjoy finishing a meal the following day without gagging or forcing it down. Of course there is also the added benefit of not wasting and the sustainable repurposing of the food which is a rewarding accomplishment in and of itself.

This recipe is the perfect example.

Growing up, my mom used to make turkey tetrazzini with the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. With a family of seven to feed, this was a perfect recipe for a post holiday dinner. She’d mix the turkey with a béchamel white sauce, cheese and noodles then bake it in the oven. The sauce definitely did a good job of dressing up the leftover dry turkey, but I still didn’t totally dig it.

This Thanksgiving, we had a ton of leftover turkey and green beans. While staring at the leftovers, I remembered mom’s turkey tetrazzini. Along with the memory of the food, my mind wandered to all my fond memories of our time together as a family in Vermont where we spent the holidays. So when I thought of the turkey tetrazzini, I felt all warm and fuzzy.

Inspired by my walk down memory lane, I decided to reinvent her recipe using dairy free and gluten free ingredients. I searched for a paleo recipe and found one that I adopted. I used red lentil pasta and the leftover green beans, some sautéed onion and a coconut milk cream sauce, no cheese. The result was actually quite tasty. Cappello’s linguine would be awesome for this recipe, but I didn’t have any on hand or zucchini noodles would also work well.

The sauce was slightly runny and settled on the bottom of the pan while the casserole cooked. So next time, I plan to mix all the ingredients before putting in the baking pan and perhaps may add a few more tablespoons of flour to help thicken the sauce (the recipe below has been adjusted for that).

The day after it was even better – the leftover leftovers, ha!

Even if you don’t make this until next thanksgiving its worth the wait 🙂

Paleo Turkey Tettrazini

2 pounds of leftover turkey meat
4 cups of cooked grain free pasta
1 pound steamed green beans
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced in to thin moons
1 tablespoon olive or coconut oil

For the Sauce:
2 cans full fat coconut milk
Juice of one lemon, about 3 tablespoons juice
1/2 cup dry white wine
3 organic eggs
1 1/4 cups coconut butter
1 clove garlic, peeled
4 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/3 cup arrowroot powder (I’ve adjusted this amount from my initial recipe)

Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the box. Once done, drain and set aside. In a large sauté pan, cook the onion with the oil until tender and translucent.

While the onion is cooking, make the sauce. Place all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease a large baking pan. In a large bowl mix the noodles, vegetables and sauce. Pour into the baking pan and bake for 30 minutes or until heated through and the sauce is bubbly. May need to stir a few times during cooking to keep sauce from settling to the bottom and drying out the top.

Best Meatloaf Ever!

October 24, 2016 by Suzie

It was 5:30 pm on Tuesday.

I’d come home from Pilates at 4:00 so I’d be ready and waiting when Kelly walked in the door from school at 4:30. Leftover roasted chicken with a baked potato and some sautéed zucchini was what I prepared for her dinner.

Still dressed in my workout clothes with my hair stuffed in the baseball cap I’d placed on my head early that morning, all I really wanted to do was shower and finish up a few work emails.

But those things would have to wait.

For starters, we had no toilet paper, and the list of things I needed from Target was long. Knowing this, I’d promised Kelly we’d go there together after she finished dinner.

Before we left, I threw a meatloaf in the oven using the ground beef I’d taken out of the freezer the night before. It was a flurry of ingredients that I mixed together using my bare hands.

As I patted the mixture into an oblong shape in the pan and programmed the oven for it to cook while I was gone, I realized I wasn’t even sure if I’d put everything I normally do in the meatloaf.

Oh well, it will still be delicious…and at least it will be done when I get home! I reassured myself knowing I looked forward to dinner with my husband.

When Kelly and I got home from Target an hour later, I finally showered and then put the finishing touches on dinner.

The meatloaf was done cooking and had shrunken to a little less than two thirds it’s original size. The pan was full of juice, or rather fat, rendered from cooking the beef. Before placing the pan in the oven, I’d covered it with tin foil, something I don’t normally do, hoping that it would prevent the meat from drying out if it over cooked while we were gone. That in effect steamed the meatloaf releasing all those juices and fat and had me worried that maybe despite my attempt to avoid it, the meatloaf was going to be dry.

When I took a bite of the meatloaf, the results were beyond my wildest dinner dreams. I was shocked by how unbelievably delicious it tasted. I’m talking food orgasm good. It may be the best meatloaf I’d ever tasted. Scott, my husband, agreed wholeheartedly.

I felt grateful and proud.

In the end, taking the 10-15 minutes of prep time to pull the meatloaf together was well worth every second and our meatloaf dinner was much more satisfying than a bowl of cereal, scrambled eggs or a simple salad would have been. Not to mention we got to enjoy it for several nights. Comfort food for the soul, the very best!

The Very Best Meatloaf

3 pounds of organic grass fed beef
2 eggs
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon coconut or olive oil
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon Herbs de Provence
2 tablespoons Fish sauce
1/4 teaspoon red chill pepper
1/3 cup almond flour
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350. Saute onion with oil in a small pan over medium high heat until tender and translucent. Remove from heat and stir in herbs de provence, chili pepper, fish sauce and tomato paste. Set aside. In a large bowl combine the meat with the eggs and almond flour. Stir in the onion mixture. Grease the bottom of a 9×11 or similar size baking pan, I use pyrex pans. Pour meat loaf mixture in to the pan and form in to a large loaf, smoothing the top as you go. Bake uncovered for 45 minutes or until no longer pink inside.

Sunday Dinner: Braised Beef Brisket

May 20, 2015 by Suzie

This recipe is melt in your mouth delicious. It’s a perfect Sunday dinner that cooks by itself in the oven all afternoon while you weed, watch a soccer game, play golf or read a book. On a rainy day, it’s a fabulous alternative to grilling a steak. Not to mention, it makes scrumptious leftovers.

Funny, I’d never had brisket until a few months ago. Brisket never seemed too appealing to me. It sounded like a chewy dry piece of some kind of meat that may be not even edible. And besides how would you possible go about cooking a brisket? Boy, was I wrong!

My inspiration to give it a try came from one of my favorite farm to table restaurants, John Jeffries in Lancaster, PA. While out to dinner there a few months ago, I asked the waiter for a recommendation on what to order. His glowing description of how the brisket cooks all day in its juices convinced me to get it. Wow, was I amazed by its tender, delicious, plate licked clean goodness. We are talking food orgasm good!

When I went to my local organic butcher, Dundore and Heister, to inquire about brisket, they didn’t have any available at the time. Then a month or so later I got my hands on some from another local farm, Country Lane. Since then, I’ve bought it from both sources and always keep one in the freezer. By the way, locally pasture raised, grass fed meat is the way to go, I will write more about that on another day 🙂

What’s your favorite Sunday dinner?

Braised Beef Brisket

3 pound piece of beef brisket
1 leek
1 bulb fennel
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 sprigs fresh thyme
4-5 fresh sage leaves
1 tablespoon coconut or palm oil
2 cups red wine or beef broth
sea salt
fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 250. Cut off bottom end of leek and slice the white part of the leek into thin slices. Rinse well under cold water to remove any grit. Cut off bottom of fennel bulb. Then cut in half and remove the center core using a sharp knife. Slice fennel into thin slices. Add fennel, leek, carrots and herbs to a large roasting pan with a lid.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Place brisket in the pan and brown on each side, about 3 minutes per side. Place beef on top of the veggies and season with salt and pepper. Pour wine or broth over the beef and veggies. Put the brisket in the oven and bake for 3-4 hours.

Serves 6