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Tomato & Chilli Relish Paleo diet recipe sauce dip

Recipe: Tomato & Chilli Relish

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What better way to finish off a paleo burger, than with a generous serving of home-made relish? This relish is tomato and chilli – but unlike most relish recipes, I've used medjool dates instead of sugar to add some sweetness.

If you like your relish hot, add some more chillies to your mixture.

Recipe: Tomato & Chilli Relish
Recipe type: Sauces & Condiments
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Ingredients
  • 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 white onion, diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, finely diced
  • ½ eggplant (aubergine)
  • 3 medjool dates, diced
  • 80ml red wine vinegar
  • 4 chillies, chopped (try a mixture of red and green)
  • ½ tsp fennel seeds
  • ½ tsp coriander seeds
  • 250g cherry tomatoes
  • celtic sea salt & ground black pepper, to taste
Instructions
  1. Heat the olive oil in a pan over a low heat
  2. Add the onion and garlic, and fry until they start to turn soft & translucent
  3. Add in the eggplant and dates, and cook for 4-5 minutes, stirring often
  4. Pour in the red wine vinegar and reduce the temperature to a simmer. Simmer until the liquid has reduced to approximately half its original volume
  5. Add in the chillies, fennel, coriander and tomatoes, the reduce the heat to a low setting and stir regularly
  6. After about half an hour, season, then remove from the heat. Allow to cool before serving.

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Tomato & Chilli Relish Paleo diet recipe sauce dip

Recipe paleo chocolate cookies biscuits dehydrator-min

Recipe: Paleo Chocolate Cookies

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Let's get one thing clear – these are a treat – not a daily indulgence (whenever I post sweet recipes I get comments about how cavemen wouldn't eat dessert, yet they're also the most popular recipes I post!).

Recipe Strawberry Date Almond Cashew Cookies Paleo Network-min

As the weather's been a bit cooler, it's been the perfect time to get my dehydrator out. This recipe was a case of making do with what I had and seeing what I could come up with, but very pleased with the results.

If you don't have a dehydrator, you can use your oven I believe, but do some research first. If you're keen to try a dehydrator (and I highly recommend them), you can go really cheap like this one, or go all out on an Excalibur like this.

Recipe: Paleo Cookies
 
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Recipe type: Dessert
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These cookies are a sweet treat straight from the dehydrator. Just six ingredients is all it takes to make these delicious treats!
Ingredients
  • 20 small medjool dates
  • 1 cup almonds
  • 1 cup cashews
  • 10 strawberries
  • 2 tablespoons cacao powder
  • Few drops vanilla essence
Instructions
  1. Pit the dates and leave them to soak for a few minutes in a cup of water
  2. I was too mean to buy expensive almond meal, so I put the almonds and cashews in a paper bag on a heavy chopping board, and bashed with a rolling pin until they were almond completely ground down. If you have almond meal - you're done!
  3. Put the date mixture into a blender and pulse until the mixture is consistent, then add in the ground nuts and strawberries. Add in the vanilla and cacao and blend until it's thoroughly mixed and smooth.
  4. Spoon onto a dehydrator sheet and flatten with the back of the spoon to make the cookie shapes.
  5. Recipe Strawberry Date Almond Cashew Cookies Paleo Network Making
  6. I dehydrated at 145 degrees for about 20 hours, but keep checking as you may prefer a different texture.

 

Paleo bliss bombs fat 4 ingredients recipe-min

Recipe: 4 Ingredient Paleo Bliss Bombs

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I had a friend coming round yesterday and wanted to make a paleo treat – only problem was I didn't have many ingredients. I've made these paleo treats before, but have always used lots of different ingredients. These came out great – sometimes it's best to keep things simple!

Paleo bliss bombs fat 4 ingredients recipe-min

Recipe: 4 Ingredient Paleo Bliss Bombs
 
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Ingredients
  • Medjool dates (I used about 7)
  • Fresh strawberries (I used 5 as that was all I had!)
  • Almond meal (about 40g)
  • Shredded coconut (a handful)
Instructions
  1. Remove the stones from the dates and de-hull the strawberries.
  2. Put the dates and strawberries into a food processor or blender and whizz them until the form a paste. Add the almond meal and mix again.
  3. Remove the mixture and use your hands to roll into equal size balls.
  4. I rolled some in the shredded coconut and left some coconut-less.

If I'd had the ingredients, I would have put a raspberry or nut in the centre and perhaps mixed some cacao powder in with the mixture.

Do you have a recipe for something similar to these bliss bombs? What do you use in yours?

paleo-diet-bliss-bombs-recipe-min

http://paleo.com.au/recipe-raw-sweet-potato-carob-brownies/

Recipe: Raw Sweet Potato and Carob Brownies

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I’ve fallen a little bit in love with carob recently. It’s a richer, less sweet alternative to chocolate, and it makes wonderfully intense brownies and ‘hot chocolates.’ I’ve adapted my go to raw chocolate brownie recipe to include carob instead of cocoa, but the secret ingredient in these is the sweet potato. Not only does it bind the brownies together effortlessly, it brings the sugar content right down as it is a direct alternative to honey or extra dates. Whip up a batch of these in 10 minutes and munch on them throughout the rest of the week!

Recipe: Raw Sweet Potato and Carob Brownies
 
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Recipe type: Desserts
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Ingredients
  • • 1 medium sweet potato, peeled and diced
  • • ½ cup walnuts
  • • ½ cup pecans
  • • ½ cup unsweetened, shredded coconut
  • • 2 tbsp melted coconut oil
  • • ½ cup dates, soaked for 30 minutes and drained
  • • ½ cup carob (or ¼ cup carob, and a ¼ cup + 2tbsp cocoa for less intense brownies)
  • • Pinch sea salt
  • • Dash of vanilla extract
  • • Dark chocolate chips / cacao nibs / goji berries (optional)
Instructions
  1. Line a square cake tin with a little parchment paper and set aside.
  2. Steam the diced sweet potato for around 10 minutes until soft. Set aside to cool.
  3. In your food processor, blitz the walnuts, pecans and coconut until crumbly. Add the coconut oil, dates and sweet potato, and process again until a sticky dough is formed.
  4. Add the carob, sea salt and vanilla before whizzing together again. For a bit of extra texture, stir in (but don’t process) some dark chocolate chips, cacao nibs or goji berries. Spread the brownie mix evenly throughout the cake tin, before leaving to set in the freezer for around an hour. Store in the fridge for up to 5 days.

paleo primal recipe Raw Sweet Potato and Carob Brownies sweet treat-min

Paleo comfort foods recipe book cook book review

Paleo Comfort Foods

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I've had Julie and Charles Mayfield’s “Paleo Comfort Foods” cookbook for some time.  Despite reading it from cover to cover, I had not actually got round to cooking from it, until earlier this week.

I was limited for time, but wanted to make a Paleo friendly appetizer/ hors d'œuvre to take along to a Primal dinner I was going.  The bacon wrapped dates recipe looked perfect.  I usually try to steer away from dried fruit as it is so high in sugar, but in serving something like this before dinner each person only has two or three, so the sugar impact is minimised.

These are so many different variants of this meat wrapped dish – angels on horseback (oysters wrapped in bacon), devils on horseback (prunes of figs wrapped in bacon) and even the British favourite pigs in blankets – cocktail sausages wrapped in bacon.  The version in Paleo Comfort Foods is very simple, using just dates, bacon and almonds inside.

Paleo-Bacon-Wrapped-Dates paleo comfort foods-min

I quite simply pitted the dates, replacing the stone with a couple of raw almonds.  I then cut some organic bacon to size and wrapped it around the date, holding it in place with a cocktail stick (actually, several cocktail sticks!).  I put these in the oven to crisp the bacon, turning a couple of times.

I find Australian bacon seems to contain a lot less fat than American bacon (I'm always surprised American’s get enough bacon grease left over to be able to use it for other things).  This makes it harder to mould the bacon around the date, but using more cocktail sticks did the job!

I also made the Carrot & Fennel salad (again!) from the Everyday Paleo Cookbook, which is fast becoming a favourite!  Why have a boring salad, when you can have something a bit different?

I love to take time cooking, but sometimes it’s nice to have Paleo dishes that can be made quickly and simply.

My Paleo Comfort Foods book is full of paper markers on all of the recipes I intend to try – hopefully I'll get a chance to try some of the sauces – Mayonnaise, Ketchup, Gravy and Barbecue sauce this weekend – handy recipes to have up my sleeve as they can go with so many meals.  I'm also interested in the Paleo bread recipe – I wonder whether this would be a good alternative to offer to those friends who find bread to hard to give up?

Have you tried any of the recipes from Paleo Comfort Foods yet?  Which is your favourite cookbook?

Paleo comfort foods recipe book cook book review

Paleo cherry ripe recipe bar chocolate treat homemade-min

Paleo Cherry Ripes

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Cherry Ripes are the oldest chocolate bar in Australia – and hugely popular.

My problem with Cherry Ripes is the ingredients: –

Sugar, Coconut, Glace cherries (cherries, sugar, flavour, colour (129)), Wheat Glucose syrup, Cocoa mass, Sweetened condensed milk (milk concentrate, sugar, lactose), Vegetable fat, Milk solids, Cocoa butter, Cocoa powder, Invert sugar, Gelatine, Emulsifiers (soy lecithin, 476), Flavours, Colours (102, 123), Mineral salt (500). May contain traces of Nuts. Dark Chocolate contains Cocoa Solids 43%.

So whilst they do contain cherries, they aren't fresh cherries, and they come along with sugar, artificial flavours and colours, wheat, “vegetable” fat and soy lecithin; no thanks!

I saw cherries for the first time in the supermarket this morning (summer is well and truly on it's way!), so thought it was about time I made a paleo approved version of Cherry Ripes.

Paleo Cherry Ripes
Recipe type: Desserts
Cuisine: Australian
Prep time: 
Total time: 
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Why buy Cherry Ripes when you can make your own, healthy, paleo version?!
Ingredients
  • 150g raw almonds
  • 70g raw pecans
  • 12 medjool dates
  • 175g fresh cherries (weighed with stones)
  • 2 tablespoons of coconut oil
  • a pinch of salt
  • 30g shredded coconut
  • paleo cherry ripe ingredients-min
Instructions
  1. I put the nuts in my blender with the salt and blended until most of the big pieces had ground down.
  2. I set the nuts aside and then removed the stones from the cherries and dates.
  3. I then blended the cherries, dates and oil before adding this paste to the ground nuts, along with the shredded coconut.
  4. I then mixed everything together thoroughly into a ball and rolled it out between two pieces of grease proof paper.
  5. I put the rolled out mixture in the fridge for half an hour, before cutting it into cherry ripe length strips.
  6. paleo cherry ripes-min

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Whilst dates are natural “sugar bombs”, my paleo cherry ripes have no added sweeteners.  As an occasional treat these are a much better alternative – and I happen to think far tastier!

I'd love to hear what you think!

Paleo cherry ripe recipe bar chocolate treat homemade-min