But there are some staples in Chinese food I cannot eat on this diet. Soy sauce for one. Soy is a bean, beans are legumes, and not allowed on the Caveman Diet, due to the fact that beans are toxic in their raw state, and therefore cannot be eaten until they are cooked. Even then, trace amounts of toxins exist, and a slow build up of ingesting them can cause problems later in life. Same with peanuts. Peanuts are not a nut, they are a legume, so peanut oil, another favorite when cooking Asian food, is out. And of course, salt, the number one ingredient in Chinese food, is a no-no.
So food from Asia is usually reserved for a cheat night. But I wanted to at least TRY to cook something that tasted fairly Asian. Most of my dishes are trial and error, so I'm not afraid to fail (in show business, it's almost all failure, so this principal is ingrained in me by now). I thought to build a dish around the ingredients I know I CAN use. Garlic, check. GINGER! Double check. Nothing says Chinese food to me like ginger. Then I thought, PLUM SAUCE! Can I actually make organic Plum Sauce from scratch? Why not? It's not like I have anything better to do (if you've been reading you realize I have a LOT of free time on my hands these days).
The local farmer's' market had some beautiful delicious ripe organic plums in season, that were gloriously red and purple on the inside. I skinned a large plum and threw it into the blender. I threw a couple of cloves of garlic in, and grated about the same amount of fresh organic ginger root I found at Whole Foods. I never grated anything in my life until this diet. Terms like grate, puree, blanch, these were very intimidating to me, and usually only used when impersonating Daffy Duck in the Robin Hood cartoon spoof. But I figured out how to grate after only ten futile minutes of using the wrong side of the grater I bought at the 99 cent store. Who says I'm an idiot? Then I added a healthy spoonful of honey, and a healthy spoonful of my Caveman Ketchup (see past blogs for recipe). Sprinkled in some items from the spice rack, onion powder, black pepper, dry mustard, and nutmeg. I threw in about a teaspoon of lemon juice and a healthy shake of crushed red pepper 'cause I like everything spicy. Blended it all together and gave it a taste. Suddenly heavenly choruses started singing. A glow appeared around the blender, and I think I saw God for a second, but it could've been the gardner passing by the window. It was unbelievable!!! You do not need many ingredients to make delicious food if they are fresh. The tastes exploded!
I made baby back ribs with the plum sauce, which many of you followed me making on Facebook, before I started this blog. I devoured the ribs, and ate the rest of the sauce from the pan with a spoon. It was so damn good, I couldn't stop thinking of it. So I made it again last Friday on chicken this time. Again, this sauce was the best thing I ever ate (I know I say that all the time, but this one justified my exaggeration)!
Well, I have some sauce leftover from the last batch. I also have some boneless pork chops defrosted for tonight, so rather than freeze the leftover sauce for another day, let's finish that bad boy! I was going to bake them and finish them on the grill for a nice char, but I'm out of propane and too much of a lazy bastard to fill it at the gas station (it's such a pain in the ass, isn't it?). So under the broiler they go. I have no knowledge of how long to broil pork chops for, so I just looked it up on the internet, Googling "Broiled Boneless Porkchops." After watching the weird German Porn that showed up, I finally found simple broiling instructions. "Broil until brown on one side, turn over, and repeat." Duh.
Let's see how they came out!
Mmm, Caveman like Spinach Salad, and Pork Chops in Plum Sauce! Ugga-Bugga!!!!
Search Amazon.com for BBQ Plum Sauce
Search Amazon.com for Caveman Diet
What time is dinner?....I'll bring the organic dessert.
ReplyDeleteFor dessert I had some dates, also something I never tried before starting this diet. They are incredibly sweet and delicious, and the only dried fruit allowed on the Caveman Diet. When you dry fruit, the sugar content skyrockets, and it gets into the levels of most hard candy. The caveman would never eat dried fruit, because chances are they would eat all the fruit of the season before any of it had a chance to dry (like a grape on the vine for instance would be eaten long before it had a chance to become a raisin). But dates are edible once they are dry, due to the fact they grow high in a palm tree, ripened by the sun, so they are allowed, although they should be eaten moderately (like all fruit) because of their high sugar content. It's still less sugar than honey, which is also allowed in small quantities.
ReplyDeleteThat salad looks great although the pork chop looks like a homesteader's scalp from a john ford western.
ReplyDeleteJohn Wayne actually took it off an Injun in "The Searchers."
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