Nettles, the stinging sisters as Susun Weed calls them, these magical stinging weeds turn into luscious nourishment once the heat touches them.
Nettles make me so giddy, they are such a treat and they don’t last long. When they arrive in early spring I stalk them and try to get them at their most prime, before they go to seed and get too rough and woody to enjoy. They are one of the first fresh local greens to come on the scene.
They like to grow in marshy wet places, alongside fields and swamps, near creeks and moist woodlands. When harvesting nettles, wear gloves and long pants, bring scissors to snip off the tender top shoots and if you’re lucky you can go around for a second harvest.
Many people see stinging nettles as an invasive weed, but they are actually a delicious food. All wild foods are far more nutrient dense than the domesticated plants we eat most often. Stinging nettles when lightly steamed to remove their sting, are reminiscent of spinach. They make a delicious earthy tasting tea and when infused for 4 hours or more offer an amazing source of key minerals that many of us are lacking.
We eat a lot of nettles this time of year, basically you can enjoy them in any dish you would use spinach for. So far we’ve really been digging stinging nettle omelettes, hummus, palak paneer, teas and other delightful nettle experiments.
This pesto is ah-ma-zing, it’s really a classic pesto just nettles instead of basil, which gives it a more demure taste but equally satisfying. We ate it with zoodles (zucchini noodles) and roast chicken which was divine, the next days leftovers were spread on crusty sourdough bread from the french bakery in town.
Henry David Thoreau once said ” All good things are wild and free.” I would have to agree, and nettles definitely fall into that category. Food is meant to be free and the Earth provides plentifully, we just have to know where to look.
It’s spring, the bees are out, the sun is shining and it’s time for a celebration!
What better way to celebrate the suns return than with bright yellow nutrient dense raw chocolate, heck yes.
These little gems are a cinch to make and packed with the ample benefits of bee pollen, a truly amazing superfood. Some nutritionists say we could live on bee pollen alone as it’s such a perfect food. Bees are amazing insects, their specialized hairs attract pollen easily with a sort of static electricity. To make one pound of honey bees must visit around 2 million flowers!
In the spring I usually get seasonal allergies which bee pollen, local honey, and wildcrafted nettles effectively eliminate. Bee pollen is one of the easiest foods to digest and assimilate. Not too mention its got a subtle chewiness that adds a lovely texture to these superfood sunshine chocolates. Raw cacao is loaded with amazing benefits as well as talk about more in detail in this post. It’s certainly no secret how much we relish in our raw chocolate around here!
Melt the cacao butter in a boil over a double boiler until liquid, add cacao powder and 1 Tbs of honey or maple syrup and stir until smooth.
Pour this chocolate mixture into your choice of moulds, I used a mini muffin tin. Pop in the freezer to set while you make the sunshine layer.
Warm up your coconut butter and coconut oil on the double boiler until smooth and creamy, mix in turmeric, bee pollen and sea salt.
Remove chocolate from freezer and top each with a dollop of sunshine mixture until evenly distributed. Pop back in the freezer for a few minutes to set. When the chocolates are set you should be able to easily pop them out of the mould.
Do you worry about potentially undercooking it and having to put the whole lot back in the oven?
Or maybe overcooking it and ruining all that effort?
But a whole roast chicken is also alluring, the whole house smells intoxicating and it’s easier to find free range whole chickens for a good price.
Around here I usually make a whole roast chicken once a week, and then boil the carcass for homemade stock to add to soups and sauces. Often I save the fat to cook with, you could also make gravy if you wanted to go all out.
Chicken fat or schmaltz is really really yummy, it makes everything you cook it in taste amazing. Especially when infused with the red hot spices the chicken was cooked in. The schmaltz from this particular recipe was bright orange from the paprika. To separate the schmaltz from the juices, pour off the liquid and allow to cool in the fridge. When cool the chicken fat will form a layer on top of the now gelatinous chicken juices and you can just scrape that off. The jelly is nutrient dense and you can make gravy with it or add it to stocks.
Making gravy from the pan juices is really simple too and an added bonus to top your chicken with. For paleo gravy I like to thicken with tapioca starch or arrowroot flour, for the drippings from one chicken I typically mix 2 Tbs flour with 2 Tbs cold water. Simmer the chicken drippings/juices on low and stir in the flour until desired thickness is achieved.
Homemade chicken broth is super nourishing and makes everything more delicious. If I cook rice I usually do it in chicken stock and even just drinking it by itself is so satisfying. But our families favourite standby is leftover roast chicken soup, loaded with flavour, packed with veggies and a bit of satisfying rice to top it all off.
So today, in a bid to convince you to make roast chickens part of your kitchen repertoire, I’m going to share with you the recipe for this delicious chicken AND the recipe for the best ever leftover roast chicken soup.
Cooking whole roast chickens doesn’t have to be scary and intimidating. It’s really simple once you have the technique down. There are a million and one variations and ways to flavour your chicken but today I wanted to share with you one of my favourites, red hot roast chicken. This fiery rendition has a bit of smoky sweet and spicy, its also a brilliant golden-red hue, which makes a roast chicken look all the more delectable.
Now here’s are the keys to the perfectly moist, delicious roast chicken every time…
This is the easy chefs way of cooking a whole chicken, there are further steps one could take to get to the next level like brining and trussing but for simplicities sake here’s my take.
– Let your chicken come to room temp. before popping it in the oven.
– Thoroughly dry the skin before adding seasonings, this helps the chicken to get a crispy skin.
– Lay the chicken on a bed of large chunks of sliced onion, this raises it just slightly so the air can circulate underneath and the skin doesn’t stick to the bottom.
– I find cooking the breast side down produces a more moist breast, normally the legs take longer to cook than the breasts and they end up being dry but this way they stay tender.
– Don’t be shy with the spices, we’re only able to season the exterior so make up for that by liberal amounts of good salt, pepper and whatever others herbs and spices you want to add. For a classic roast chicken, stuff the cavity with fresh thyme, a punctured lemon and plenty of garlic and onion.
-The internal temperature of a cooked chicken is 180F at the breast and 190F at the thigh. However, if you are like me and you don’t own a meat thermometer- the chicken is cooked when the juices run clear. Normally I puncture the crevasse at the thigh to check. An average roasting chicken (5-6lbs) will typically take 1 hr 2o minutes at 400F.
– Let it rest. It’s tempting to serve it up as soon as the chicken is out of the oven, but waiting allows the juices to seal and makes for more tender fall off the bone meat. Allow the chicken to rest for 10-15 minutes before digging in.
Red Hot Roast Chicken Spice Blend
1/2 Tbs sea salt
1 Tbs smoked paprika
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tsp coriander seeds, ground
1 tsp cumin seeds, ground
1 tsp red chile flakes
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp ancho chile powder (or you can use regular)
Combine all the spices and sprinkle liberally over the whole chicken on all sides. Add fresh garlic, onion to the roasting pan and stuff a punctured lemon into the crevasse of the bird.
Hemp hearts and raw chocolate, is there any better combination on the planet? Not likely. Especially when you combine the nutritional profiles of these two superfoods, shazam! Super energy filled nutrient dense healthy fat fuel.
Where there’s chocolate, there are smiles, there is love and joy and sharing (sometimes) so why not make the healthiest chocolate possible?
Hemp hearts are a nutritional powerhouse, they’re the meat inside the seed and have basically no phytates which is the main enzyme inhibitor inherent in nuts and seeds. They have a balanced ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 and are high in protein. These easy to digest little seeds pack a mega nutritional punch. I love sprinkling them all over salads and making hemp butter with them but their addition to chocolate is reminiscent of those crunchy bars that snap crackle and pop when you eat them.
I know in certain states hemp is akin to cocaine and completely illegal. Funny enough as my super medical cannabis advocate man would say ” we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for hemp” which to a certain extent is true. The boats that European explorers sailed to America with the oakum (caulking) made from hemp. A lot of things used to be made from hemp, including the worlds longest standing bridge in France. New technologies are utilizing the strength of hemp to make sustainable eco-friendly building materials that could change the way we build from petroleum based to hemp based.
If you can’t get hemp hearts, you could certainly substitute them for bee pollen, chopped nuts or seeds or sesame seeds. If you can get hemp hearts, eat up, they are one of the most nutritious foods out there.
Raw chocolate has many advantages to conventional heat processed chocolate. As with all raw foods, the enzymes and vitamins are left intact. Raw cacao is high in antioxidants and its main alkaloid theobromine has been used medicinally to treat heart problems as a vasodilator. Why are antioxidants so incredibly important? Because they fight against cell scavenging evil free radicals on a mission to give us cancer and cause inflammation. In a world riddled with nasty pollutants, we’re exposed to free radicals constantly, in various forms. The more high antioxidant foods we consume, the more protection we’ll have against those evil bastards. Raw cacao is one of the richest food sources of antioxidants on the planet. Not too mention raw chocolate is basically the sexiest food ever. Cacao has phenylethylamine (PEA) the same hormone that is released in the brain when we fall in loooooove. Highest concentrations of PEA are present in raw chocolate, along with tryptophan the precursor to serotonin in the brain. Last but not lease, raw cacao is particularly rich in magnesium, a mineral that most of us are lacking (over 80% of people are deficient). Magnesium helps relax the muscles and nervous system, unlike its constrictive calcium counterpart. The two need to be in balance to be effective, yet most of us are consuming far too much elemental calcium and far too little magnesium.
So have I convinced you yet to try this addictively delicious raw black and white hemp chocolate? Here’s the recipe, and don’t worry it makes enough to share! Oh and you can be haphazard like me and make a bark style chocolate or you can use proper moulds but both yield the same amazing taste.
In a double boiler melt coconut butter and transfer to a bowl. Seperately melt cacao butter.
Mix coconut butter, honey,salt + 4 Tbs of cacao butter and cacao powder in a large bowl until thoroughly combined.
In your preferred tray or chocolate mould sprinkle half the hemp seeds and pour the chocolate mixture over them, transfer to the freezer to set for about 20 mins.
Remove from freezer and top with the rest of the cacao butter and hemp seeds, put back in the freezer to set again and enjoy!
This recipe is equivalent to about 4 chocolate bars
Cleaning out the fridge to make space for fresh stuff is a dreaded task in my books. I avoid it at all costs, but then again, if there’s fried rice at the end of the rainbow its not so bad.
This post is a loose recipe as what you have in your fridge is likely different from what I have in mine.
But I wanted to outline some essential basics when it comes to making the perfect friend rice every time.
1. Heat
The common assumption with fried rice is that you want to use really high heat. This isn’t the case. If we do this, everything turns into a sticky sad mess. Cleaning burnt rice from our pans is something to avoid at all costs. Instead, starting with a generous amount of oil or fat and going slow and steady will win the race.
2. Flavour
Rice is a sponge so we want to make sure there’s plenty of tasty yummies for it to soak up before adding it to the mix. The basic flavour base that I like to use is a hearty amount of flavourful fat, some chopped bacon and sausage or coconut oil, an onion finely chopped, 3-4 garlic cloves finely chopped, an inch piece of ginger, finely chopped,carrots,celery and some sort of hot pepper. For this version I had a chipotle, very non traditional but still utterly delicious. You could try adding other things too, green onions, cumin seeds, masala, lemongrass…To deglaze the pan I like to use rice wine vinegar, infused vinegar or tamari but water works in a pinch. Just a few Tbs and then we can add the rice.
3. Rice to Vegetable ratio
Make a big pot of jasmine rice. For the best rice, cook it in chicken or vegetable stock with plenty of sea salt, this small step makes for big flavour. The amount of rice will be at your discretion, don’t put too much or it’ll be bland. Next is the addition of leafy fast cooking vegetables like swiss chard and kale, added last minute they cook a bit but still maintain their vibrance.
4. Egg
There are two types of people- those who mix the egg into the rice and those who like a fried egg on top of their rice. I happen to be of the latter category, but J is a mixer. For mixing the egg with the rice I crack however many (usually one per person) into a bowl and whip it with a bit of oil. On medium-low heat pour the egg over the rice, tilt the pan around and cover for a few minutes. This just give the egg a chance to get nice and golden crispy on the bottom of the pan without sticking. After a few minutes, mix it all around, sometimes I like to add some raw cheddar (I know, I’m such a traditionalist) cover again and let it get even more crispy.
5. Extras
The fun part of fried rice are the extra goodies, we love to eat it with some fermented homemade sauerkraut or kimchi. Toasting some seeds or nuts for a topping is a great textural addition. Sesame seeds, a drizzle of hoisin, sunshine sauce , miso, toasted seaweed, fresh mango…endless possibilities.
There you have it, the perfect clean out the fridge fried rice, different every single time but always delicious. Take your time, I know it’s supposed to be a fast meal but slowing down just a bit makes it extra good and filled with crispy crackly bits of egg, rice, flavour and good veggies!
Vegetables rock. They never get boring, truly there must be millions of variations to get your veg in. While I’m starting to feel the itch for fresh spring veg, I’m also still ever so enamoured with hardy winter varieties. These roasted root veggies have all the flavour of stuffing without the bread. Perfect with roast chicken or turkey, you could even mix them up and throw them in the roasting pan with your bird.
There’s a little sage bush right outside my house, its starting to spring back to life and I’m enjoying the bounty of fresh sage. Crispy friend sage is sinfully delicious, but it also adds a certain aromatic lingering presence to all things hearty and roasted.
I hope you all had a great weekend, mine was jam packed with birthday cake and love as my little baby Mav turned 1. Such a big day, hard to believe it was just one year ago he came into our lives and made life so much more joyous. Being a mom has been such a trip. Did you fall into the parent role naturally? Or does it take time for everyone? It took awhile before I even thought of myself as a mother, there’s so much to learn and I’m sure it’s endless. Now I’m starting embrace this fairly new role, I am now the one who makes birthday cakes (delicious paleo ones) and kisses sore knees. About that cake, I really wanted to share it with you. Admittedly I am a terrible party planner but I ace the catering side of things. Perhaps I’ll make the cake again just so that we can photograph it and share the recipe, it was sooooooo perfect!
All cake aside, we’re talking root veg. This Roasted Balsamic Sage Root Vegetable Stuffing is about to become your new best friend.
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.
