Fettucine Alfredo with Bacon and Asparagus

The other night I made fettucine alfredo with asparagus and bacon for Shane and me. I was pretty impressed with the outcome and would absoutely recommend this simple dish to anyone who's in the mood for a little comfort and a lot of great flavor. 

The recipe was easy enough, which is great for me, seeing as I'm not the most confident cook ;)

Ingredients:

2 cups heavy cream

4 tablespoons butter

Fettucine

Bacon (as much as you want! we did 8 slices)

Asparagus (trimmed and cut into 1" pieces)

2 cloves of garlic, minced

A dash of ground nutmeg

Italian parsley

Parmesan

Seasonings (I used pepper, salt, and crushed red peppers)

Boil water for pasta, meanwhile boiling water in a separate pot to blanche asparagus. While the water is boiling, start cooking the bacon. Once the bacon is cooked, remove from skillet and place on a plate, covering with a paper towel to soak up grease. When the bacon is cool, start to crumble it into small pieces. Check on boiling water, begin cooking pasta and place asparagus into water.

Helpful hint for cooking asparagus: remove one asparagus from the rubberbanded bundle and see where it snaps if you bend it. Place it back in the bundle and cut all asparagus to the same length as the snapped asparagus. Keep the asparagus in the rubberbands and gently, evenly lower the bundle into boiling water to ensure you do not disrupt the temperature of the water. Once the water starts looking green (about 5 minutes, usually), carefully remove the aspargus with tongs and put it in a cold ice chip bath in your sink (I actually just douse it with really cold water, and it does the trick). Place on a plate to cool.

Begin cooking sauce while pasta is still cooking. Start by melting butter int a dutch oven over medium heat and saute garlic for about 30 seconds. Now stir in the heavy cream. Add salt, pepper, and nutmeg, bringing the sauce to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered for about 5 minutes.  Stir parmesan cheese into the sauce until it is melted and sauce is thick. Turn off heat.

Drain pasta and add to sauce. Add bacon, asparagus, and parsley.

We added a little parmesan after, as well as crushed red peppers to give it a little kick. The result was really delicious!

It's not a paleo meal in the least, but it is really delicious for one of those cheat days, Katie!! Every day's a cheat day for me. I lasted about one day on the paleo diet... Proud of Katie for her commitment though!

-Diana

Lamb Meatballs with a Fig and Rosemary Compote

Katie here. The other day I attempted cooking with lamb for the first time! It didn't go perfectly, but it was still quite yummy. I feel that I need to play with the balance of spice in the meatballs and I burnt the compote on the first try--still need to perfect my skills on that one. With that said, for a first attempt I was quite happy.

Spiced Lamb Meatballs:

1 lb ground lamb

1 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon onion powder

salt and pepper

Fig and Rosemary Compote:

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

4 fried figs

1 sprig fresh rosemary

First step, preheating to oven to 375*F.

Then in a mixing bowl I combined the lamb and spices with my hands.

And formed meatballs about 1 1/2 inch in diameter.

Then they baked for 25 minutes.

While the meat balls were cooking I tried to make the fig and rosemary compote. 

I have never made a compote before, so of course I burnt it on my first try! It became more of a molasses. A burnt molasses! But I was not going to feel defeated and washed the pan out and started again. I simply added the water, balsamic, figs and rosemary in a sauce pan and simmered it until the texture became think.

I still feel that I have a lot of room to grow here, but everyday is a new adventure. Have you tried any new recipes that did not quite hit the mark?

Lettuce Wrap Tacos and Cliantro Cauliflower Rice

I recently decided that I'm going to try and join Katie on the Paleo diet and she has been making the most delicious Paleo friendly meals for us! Monday we both had the morning off and we decided to get productive. We did laundry, went to the courthouse and dealt with outstanding tickets, and when we got home I immediately cleaned the whole house while Katie got busy in the kitchen. James Vincent McMorrow serenaded us in the background and the smell of spicy chipotle chicken filled the whole apartment. Katie made us lettuce wrapped chicken tacos and a bowl of super delicious cilantro cauliflower "rice"--WOW. So tasty! I'll let Katie tell you all about the ingredients and the process for creating this incredibly fresh, and simple, meal.

Ingredients for Lettuce Wrap Chicken Tacos:

Chicken thighs

Chipotle powder

Onion powder

Garlic powder

Grape tomatoes

Green onions

Salt

Pepper
Head of butter lettuce
Avocados
Coconut oil

Ingredients for Cilantro Cauliflower Rice:

Head of cauliflower

Salt

Pepper

Cilantro

*Special addition: bacon fat

Process:

Okay, Katie here to chime in. While Diana ran around our "New Place" cleaning, I got busy in the kitchen. I am in love with our new kitchen because it is big enough to get a lot of cooking done, but also small enough where it forces you to stay on top of your side prep and cleaning. Because of this the first thing I did was clean and put away all the dishes in the sink before I started any prep.

Once I was done there, I started with the seasoning for the chicken thighs. It was simple: in a medium mixing bowl I added 2 tsp chipotle powder, 1/2 tsp onion powder, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, and salt and pepper to taste.  Then I started prepping the chicken thighs by cutting them into  1/4 inch strips and then tossed them in the seasoning I had just made.

In a skillet over medium heat, I melted 2 tbl spoons of coconut oil, and then placed the chicken thighs in the skillet. I cooked them for about 5-10 min and turned them occasionally until they were fully cooked. In the meantime, while checking on the chicken often, I chopped up some green onion and halved some grape tomatoes. Lastly for this dish I rinsed off a handful of whole butter lettuce leaves and cut up some avocado.

Next, I worked on the Cauliflower "Rice". For this dish I removed the outer leaves and stem from the cauliflower, chopped it into large chunks and shredded the cauliflower using a box grater. Then in a large skillet, over medium heat I melted bacon lard (about 2 tbl spoons) and then added the shredded cauliflower. I seasoned it to taste with salt and pepper and cooked it for about 5 minutes or until the cauliflower began to become translucent. To finish it off I tossed the cauliflower with freshly chopped cilantro in a mixing bowl.


The best part was building our own tacos! I loved heaping them full with the cauliflower "rice"!
I hope you have fun trying to make your own paleo tacos, let us know what your favorite taco toppings are, or do you have your own favorite substitution like our cauli-"rice"? Do you have a routine with your roommate where you pair up and take on the household tasks?