Orange Chicken and Sweet Poato Mash

I thought I'd make a variant on the lemon chicken from a while back.
A quick congratulations to my friends who have just finished their finals here at Oxford! Can't believe we've all been here for 4 years!
This recipe is going up in a blog carnival over at Food Renegade, so go check it out over there for more recipes and food-based discussions.

For 3:
3 Chicken Breasts
4 Clementines (I know, not oranges)
1 Bunch Spring Onions
1 Chilli
2 Medium Sweet Potatoes
Ground Ginger
Butter
1 Frying Pan
1 Saucepan
Paper Towels
Slotted Spoon

1. Slice the chicken into small strips.
2. Skin the clementines.
3. Boil some water in the saucepan along with some clementine skin. Remove the skin from the water.
4. Poach the chicken strips in the water briefly (30-60 s). Remove the chicken from the water with the slotted spoon and dry on the paper towels.
5. Chop the spring onions and chilli. Sweat these in the butter in one of the frying pans along with some ginger.
6. Skin and chop the sweet potatoes into small chunks and add to the boiling water.
7. Increase the heat on the frying pan and stir fry the chicken into the mix.
8. Once the chicken is browned, juice the clementines (or squeeze the juice out with your hands if you lack a juicer, like me) and add the juice to the pan. Simmer this slowly.

9. Once the potatoes are boiled, drain them then mash them with some butter.

10. Serve

Volumise: Boil some cauliflower with the sweet potatoes to make cauliflower-sweet potato mash. Serve with some stir-fried broccoli and cabbage.
Add carbs: Add some honey to the orange sauce and/or to the sweet potatoes while mashing.
Add fat: Mix some coconut oil or more butter into the mash.
Add protein: Add bacon bits to sweet potato mash.

Pork and Sweet Potato Stew

It's less than a week til my final exams start here in Oxford, so obviously, it's time for comfort food. What better way than a nice thick stew?
I came up with this recipe a while back, an experiment with a beef stew would not thicken in time, so I saved the beefy tomato-y sauce in the freezer, then I used this as the basis for the original of this dish.
As failing to make beef stew to make sauce for another dish seems a little wasteful, I just used stock cubes and tomato puree this time.
For 3:
6 Pork Loin Steaks
1 Large Sweet Potato
250 g mushrooms
2 Beef Stock Cubes (Knorr)
Tomato Puree
Chilli Powder
Cumin
Cinnamon
Rosemary
Thyme
20g butter
300 ml Water
1 Saucepan

1. Melt the butter in the saucepan.
2. Chop the pork into roughly 1 cm wide strips across the loin steak. Fry the pork strips in the butter until lightly browned.
3. Peel and chop the sweet potato into large chunks. Mix them into the pan, coating them in any fat remaining in the pan.

4. Add 300 ml boiling water, tomato puree, stock cubes, chilli powder, cumin and cinnamon to the pan. Mix and heat until the tomato, spices and stock are dissolved into the water.

5. Cover the pan with a lid, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
6. Remove the pan lid. Crush/mash the sweet potato pieces (I used a spoon) into the water, so it is a thick paste.
7. Chop medium mushrooms into quarters, any others to roughly the same size pieces. Add the mushrooms, rosemary and thyme to the pan and mix in.

8. Continue to simmer for 10-15, mixing frequently to prevent anything sticking to your pan bottom.

Volumise: Add some onions to the mix at roughly the same time as the mushroom.
Add carbs: Use more sweet potatoes.
Add fat: Add some coconut oil or more butter. Use fattier pork.
Add protein: Use more pork. Add more mushrooms.

I hope the extra pictures come in handy and give you a better impression of how I cook and what to do, I'm hoping to incorporate more pictures into the blog from now on. Also, here are some bonus pictures of it served up and the table where I prepare everything.

Finally, some link love for Modern Paleo Blog, who published me in their blog carnival this week. Lots more recipes and interesting discussion there.
Any questions, leave a comment.

Salmon in tangy sauce

It's been a little while since an update. Made a batch of this today; tastes great.
The recipe is more for the sauce than anything else.
For 3:
6 Salmon Fillets
Mustard Seeds or Ground Mustard
Fish Stock Cube (Knorr)
Vinegar
Olive Oil
Tomato Puree
Cumin
Ground Ginger
Paprika
Pestle and Mortar or Small mixing bowl
Roasting Dish
Kitchen Foil

Served with sweet potato mash and stir-fried brocolli.

1. Heat oven to ~200C.
2. Grind mustard seeds and stock cube into consistant mixture, or mix in mixing bowl with fork.
3. Mix in 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp vinegar to form a mixture with the consistancy of puree.
4. Mix in 1 tbsp tomato puree, cumin, ground ginger and paprika.
5. With each fillet, sit the fillet on enough kitchen foil to wrap it, pour the sauce over the fillet, coating all of one surface, then wrap the fillet in kitchen foil.
6. Cook the salmon for 25-30 minutes.
Optional, Untested - 7. Remove the salmon from the oven and take off the kitchen foil. Scrape off most of the sauce, place the salmon skin-side up under a grill or skin-side down on a pan to crisp the skin.

Volumise: Add more brocolli. Mash some cauliflower into the sweet potato mash.
Add carbs: More sweet potato. Add a little honey, sucrose (table sugar) or glucose to the sweet potato mash.
Add fat: Mix some peanut butter into the mash. Add more olive oil and less vinegar to the sauce. Pestle and mortar only - mix coconut oil and/or almond flour into the sauce to thicken it and add some fat. Add oil to the brocolli until it has absorbed all it can.
Add protein: Wrap salmon fillets in bacon before adding sauce.

Roast beef with roast sweet potato, roast carrots and gravy

I've made this before, but made a small change to cooking the veg, and it made a huge difference.
For two (plus sandwiches) I used:
900g of rolled beef brisket
1 large sweet potato
3 large carrots
2 beef OXO cubes
Tin (aluminium) foil
1 large frying pan
1 large saucepan
1 roasting dish
1 jug
A kettle
A colander

1. Put your frying pan on a high heat with oil, fill and turn on the kettle, turn your oven to 150 degrees C. Put the beef on the frying pan, frying all the sides until brown all over; meanwhile, pour boiling water into jug and mix one OXO cube into the boiling water.
2. Once browned, put the beef into the roasting dish, salt and pepper it, pour the OXO stock over it, and cover the roasting dish with a "tent" of foil. Place in the pre-heated oven.
3. After an hour, turn the meat over. Still tented, return to the oven.
4. Repeat 3.
5. After the beef has been in the oven for about two and a quarter hours, peel your carrots and sweet potato (or not) and chop into large chunks (this is not optional).
6. Boil the sweet potato and carrots in salted water for 4 minutes (i.e. parboil them). Drain them with the colander (or as I did, with the lid of the pan, and a scalding). Return them to the saucepan, put the lid on, and shake them about so they get a bit battered.
7. After the beef has been in the oven for about two and a half hours (or once you're done peeling, slicing and parboiling), put the veg in with it, pour oil and salt over the veg.
8. Clean that saucepan.
9. After a total of three hours, take the roasting dish out of the oven, take out the beef and the veg, and pour the juices into the (clean) saucepan. Return the beef and veg to the roasting dish and into the oven at 170 degrees C.
10. Heat the juices over a medium heat. Put a small amount of boiling water into the jug, mix in an OXO cube, and add that to the saucepan. Put a small amount of cold water into the jug, and mix in some (corn)flour with a fork (or a whisk, if you wanna be posh).
11. After a total of three and a half to four hours in the oven for the beef, take the lot out. Slice up the beef, scrape the blackened, but not burnt, veg off the bottom of the pan and pour the gravy over it.
12. Put off washing that roasting dish until tomorrow - honestly, nothing will move that except an overnight soak (or maybe that stuff that black chef advertises on TV).

Volumise: Add some parsnips, turnips or other root veg (not potatoes) to the veg present. Replace sweet potatoes with these to reduce carbs.
Add carbs: Add some more sweet potatoes or some potatoes.
Add fat: Use almond flour in the gravy. Replace some of the water-based stock with olive oil. Pour more oil over the roasting meat and veg at every possible point. Buy a "self-basting" joint, that is one with a block of fat on top.
Add protein: While you're putting the veg into the pan, wrap the beef in bacon (pig for more fat, turkey for less).
Add a hospitalisation: Don't use oven gloves.