Casseroles w/ Acids
Hello fellow blood-type dieting (BTDing) Os!
I see we’ve got at least one neurotic newcomer vegetarian with a habit of
barfing!
And another who’s low on minerals and is fasting and is about to float away into
the ethereal land of Make Believe!
Good to see that our resident independent entrepreneur, blood-type A, is doling
out the extreme basics of macronutrient ratios to our less informed paleOiths…
For over a year now I’ve had fantasies of making my own quick goat cheese from
the goat milk available from my local HFS… but all that stuff is pasteurized.
This dude has raw goat milk, that’s awesome. I’ve read many rumors and accounts
of raw dairy being superior and more tolerable than the pasteurized (dead)
stuff… sounds like an approach to the ideal dairy for an O. I was thinking
about getting some goat butter at another HFS farther away, just for food
exploration purposes, but it’s way too expensive and my $5.00/lb grass-fed stuff
is too terrific to cheat on. What is the goat milk cultured with?
Hey, PositivelyO, nice to hear from a fellow mortar & pestle user. Sure brings
the idea of food as medicine into mind, eh?
On to the subject line.
Casseroles.
I’ve purchased my first real casserole. I have some corningware type square dish
made of opaque glass of some sort and a glass cover that almost fits well. It’s
fairly small and I pieced it together from a 2nd hand store (used, dirt cheap).
Although it worked it wasn’t large enough for my purposes. I may be a single man
with less than 40 hours a work week but I still don’t like fretting over baked
dishes in the oven too much.
During this weekend an arts & crafts fair has settled down in my quaint little
Loring Park here in urban Minneapolis, Minnesota. Although I’m now poorer than
usual I was determined to acquire a safe cooking piece… everyone here remember
when Cinnamon Belle brought up the teflon/non-stick issue and provided those
links? Well, though I have a non-stick, 10 quart covered stockpot I have cut
back on using it. It is safest with lower temperatures, of course this makes
water-based cooking safe, but at higher temps things may get iffy with oil/fat
frying. Although non-stick should be safe with an acidic cooking medium (such as
your secretor friendly tomato-based sauce) I have read conflicting things… and
I personally feel more tired and sometimes “wiped out” the day after eating a
dish made in the non-stick stockpot.
I don’t own any birds but I have become wary of cooking with the new-fangled
cookware.
From this new resolve to find thoroughly SAFE cookware I scanned through my
little Loring Park for all the pottery tents. Having found them I casually
conversed with a number of the vendors, many of them were the artists themselves
and it was refreshing to speak to the artists who create the art/tools I
perused. Another beautiful, practically idyllic weekend in the Heart of
America’s Midwest. I don’t know how it could have been more perfect, ‘cept maybe
to have found a wonderful & compatible type-O women of the Biltong persuasion!
The weather was incredible, on Saturday the sky had all sorts of things going
on, high altitude, low altitude, friendly & serene, dark & ominous! A light and
playful wind kicked up occasionally and the temps never exceeded the average
person’s comfort range. I spoke to all of my respectable potters, asking them
their angle on cooking, food preparation safety concerns such as the cooking
surfaces of various sorts and their own pottery’s glaze. I wanted to spread the
news about anodized aluminum, the least reactive of the aluminum cookware &
about stainless steel; both become reactive when exposed to acids and are not
suitable for cooking acid-based dishes or dishes with any significant acids in
them. I figured if they didn’t know about the metal dangers in cooking they
would find my comments HB and I hoped I could give a few of them a legitamate
and convincing selling angle on their fine products.
So this is what is has come to, excitement over exploring an art & craft fair
for the first acceptable cookware for all ingredients in my possession. Now I
get my panties in a bunch over grains (starches) and meats served in the same
meal. Now I can hardly touch a pre-made food item because of the ubiquitous,
dreaded “avoids”. After everything… I needed cookware I could trust. But the
art fair from independent craftspeople is an expensive one. I didn’t buy any
large stuff. I got one dedicated cookware, stoneware pottery. Small, about 9 cup
capacity (2.25 quart). $37.28 after tax. It is beautiful, much nicer than
anything else I’ve got. With a well-fitting stoneware lid to match. My beautiful
little casserole dish. I can’t use it on top of my “range” (I have an electric
stove/oven) and I neither have nor believe in a microwave. It is purely an
ovenware piece of cooking art.
I had two 14oz (slightly less than a pint) cans of tuscan tomato sauce ready for
my new friend. I emptied 21oz. of tomatoes & sauce into the casserole dish,
mixed in about one & a half teaspoons of my homemade pepper paste (guajillo
and/or New Mexicos with smokey chipotle) for some capsicum variety, depth of
flavor and smokiness helps with New World chili stews… four fresh, chopped
banana peppers with seeds removed… half of a medium purple onion… about a
teaspoon of dried oregano, some dried thyme (both dried herbs well smashed into
powder in my mortar & pestle); just under a tablespoon and a half of coriander
seed powder, around the same for cumin powder and french atlantic sea salt. I
had added about three cloves of pressed garlic and over a tablespoon of grated
yellow ginger. Did I mention the two pounds of high-quality grass-fed beef?
Slup! It took up lots of room in my little apartment’s little oven, had to set
the rack to fit it in. Heating up with 330-350 bake temp (Farenheit) took my
little 9 cup casserole (filled almost to the brim) over a half hour to reach
occasional bubbles. After it started to actually cook I turned the oven down to
a comfortable 200 degrees and let the heat spread through. Fifty minutes after
turning down to 200 I pulled it out and inserted my thermometer… crept up to
175 (F). The meat was still pinkish. I did not brown the meat, customary when
creating delicious stews & chilies to develop the flavor of the meat. This was a
celebration of the gentleness of the safe, vitrified stoneware pottery. I then
added a large handful of chopped fresh basil, mint & some cilantro (coriander
herb). Let that gently cook through outside the oven during the last half hour’s
descent into lower serving temperatures. About 90 minutes total cooking time.
Prep time undocumented.
Tasted good, no acrid taste, no metallic bitterness, nothing but smooth herbs
and spices and vegetables complementing gently cooked grass-fed goodness. A
gentle success. I added the ghee and lard at the end, in my bowl.
Yummily yours,
Axel O+ secretor