Keto Empanadas

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Worth the time and these are delicious. I think a Keto version is such a win, as it’s meat wrapped in a cheese dough. I mean, how can that not be good?!

If you have leftover savoury ground beef these would be the perfect leftover plan. Also, I would suggest making the ground beef filling ahead and let it cool off completely as it’s easier to work with in the dough. Hot filling in a cheese dough is not fun to work with – I found that out as this was one of those spur of the moment “I need empanadas – after 3 years of none – in my life” now! Also let your dough chill in the fridge at least 30 minutes. It’s possible to make these in one go but you’ll see how hard it was to work with fresh warm dough and filling in my pics below.

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Quick Microwave Keto Bread and other Snippets

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Yesterday I tried four different versions of quick microwave bread. I used little flat ramekins for each bread and then cut them like a pie slice to show the texture. They are easy to pop out, slice through the middle and toast, if that’s what you’re looking for. The secret I found to a perfect mix was 90% almond flour and 10% coconut flour. The coconut flour binds it nicely! I discovered this in the last of the 4 mixes I tried. The pure coconut flour was the one I liked the least – it was still good – just too heavy for my taste.

My favourite were the last two I made. One was a mix where I added a 1/4 cup of strong white cheddar cheese, the other was spiced and sweet. Another secret is to melt a tsp of butter into the dish you are going to use. I’m sure a large deep microwave safe saucer would work too! The melted butter prevents the batter sticking and gives a nice moisture to the bread base.

The last fave one I microwaved is the almond/coconut mix with a tsp of xylitol honey added and topped with allspice and cinnamon. It was delicious!

So here is the basic recipe with variations and method:

Ingredients

  1. 3 tablespoons almond flour
  2. 1 tsp (heaped) coconut flour
  3. 1/2 tsp baking powder
  4. 1/2 tsp grapeseed oil
  5. 1 egg (if *very* small eggs use 2)
  6. Tiny pinch of salt

Variations:

  • Leave plain for toasting!
  • Stir in 1/4 cup strong cheddar cheese
  • Dried herbs and garlic powder
  • 1 tsp keto honey and allspice and cinnamon sprinkled on top to taste
  • Top with 1 tbls fried onions and sundried tomatoes for mini savoury pie, maybe pitted sliced olives too?
  • 1 tbls powdered xylitol with mixed berries chopped up and maybe a ¹/⁴ tsp vanilla or almond essence
  1. Melt 1 tsp butter in baking receptacle
  2. Add dry ingredients to mixing bowl or jug
  3. Add egg and oil
  4. Mix well with large fork
  5. Add variation if using
  6. Pour into lil’ melted buttered dish
  7. Microwave for 1 minute and 35 seconds
  8. Let cool before slicing
  9. Or eat warm if you can’t wait!

I made all the breads in about 20 minutes. I had just baked a loaf of “real” bread for my partner that took 4 ¹/² hours!

I hope you try this it’s a really quick, light and tasty treat.

☝️ This is the mix with keto honey, then topped batter with spices

☝️My favorite, and this is the flour mix I settled on as the best!

Update: Toasts great!

Oh!

Quick tip!

Add a chunk of blue cheese to your cauliflower mash for a delicious change. Omgosh, it is fabulous! Or any mash for that matter.

Cat in a basket. Cats have a good life if they choose to move in with us from the streets. All our cat adoptions have been strays. Vinny helping me work from home.

New mask gifted to me!

I mean, how cute is this fabric … thanks my love!

Porch light added by my sweetie, it’s a gecko and purchased a loooong time ago at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in South Africa. We have two, and they are much treasured. If you ever have the opportunity to go to this festival – do it!

My sister has been braaing up a storm in South Africa! Excellent Roodeberg red wine from the Southwestern Cape in the Paarl area and where my Dad was born, is of course her accomplice. Check out her culinary skillz, our family like to cook! LOL. She is staying with my Mum in South Africa during these unprecedented and challenging times where they have just emerged from a very strict quarantine lockdown, and can now take walks and leave their homes.

Looks like they are doing just fine!!!

Oxtail, herbed chicken, stuffed pork loin, ribs … wow Spoti!

Mum made lemon marmalade from her lovely lemon tree and sent me this pic!

Stay safe out there! ❤

Fruit Bake

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I’m very relieved and pleased. I’ve discovered my food sensitivity to coconut is only coconut oil or coconut butter. After nibbling tiny bits of shaved coconut and increasing it slowly over a few months I am fine. But coconut oil for cooking completely closes up my nose with rhinitis so badly I almost can’t breathe or lie down, let alone sleep and it lasts about 2 days. Turns out the processing of the coconut is what affects me. I did some internet research and this is apparently a thing. What they do to the coconut during this process to give me such a reaction, I have no idea. It started when we used coconut oil to cook with, and took me months to figure out. I had thought it was an allergy I developed to all things coconut. I love everything about coconut, and will happily do without coconut oil, but oh! to be able to bake with coconut flour will be a joy! My next adventure is to try coconut milk or cream, we’ll see. To celebrate I baked this fruit coffee cake with 2 table spoons of delicious coconut flour … small steps… as I’m still super nervous of the terrible symptoms of a reaction, and I was fine!

There are also a few odds and ends I posted after the recipe.

Coffee Cake Fruit Bake

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup butter, melted
  • 1 cup of your fave keto sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 1/2 cup buttermilk/kefir/sour cream
  • 2 tsp vanilla essence
  • Zest of an orange
  • 1 3/4 cups almond flour
  • 2 heaped Tblsp coconut flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • Any fresh or sugar free canned berries, or fruit of your choice

Method:

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Keto Almond Biscotti

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The last few Biscotti remain in a tin, so it’s a good time to post this recipe as they are “endorsed” by how long they have lasted, which has not been quite 10 days! I often bake two different items in one go, as I did when I baked these Biscotti. When I’m in the middle of baking I feel … oh well, all standard baking ingredients are on the counter and a mess is already made, might as well bake two goodies. I’ll post the fruit bake I made next.

I was born in South Africa and a standard in most homes is something called “rusks” dunked in a cup of tea or coffee, or just crunched as a snack, sort of similar to Biscotti. I do like Biscotti but they really don’t come close to the comfort of a hearty rusk, but we did enjoy these very much.

(My Mum bakes a large batch of rusks at least every few weeks, a handy standby for pop in friends. They are a sweet baked cake-like loaf, torn apart or sliced into pieces and then dried overnight in a slow oven. In SA they range from plain buttermilk rusks, to raisin and bran, or even lightly spiced and sometimes even aniseed, which I’m not a fan of.

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The Fruits, Fowls and Farscapes of Kauai HI, Part II

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I sincerely hope all is well with you and those dear to you. Today is Day 44 of “sheltering in place” and time seems to have taken on a different strange rhythm. This is my second and last post of our trip to Hawaii, now a lovely memory and tbh, wondering if we dreamt it!

Next time I will be back to posting recipes!

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The Fruits, Fowls and Farscapes of Kauai HI, Part I

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I hope and trust this finds you well, healthy and at peace; safe and sound. If you are one of the heroes working in the medical field, necessary services or caring for those in need, may you keep safe and well.

This is the first of a pictorial and anecdotal Hawaii trip for which I am deeply grateful for. At this time I’m taking a few weeks off posting recipes, but they will be back. I do hope you don’t mind.

On March 2nd we left for a week in Hawaii on the beautiful island of Kauai. Had it been one week later, we would definitely have cancelled our trip, when we left everything was still calm.

As we flew via Seattle, we caught a glimpse of Mt St Helen’s and Mt Rainier in the far clouded distance.

We arrived at Lihue, which is on the south side of the island of Kauai. Kauai is believed to be the second oldest of the islands of Hawaii to be formed along the fault line. It is known as The Garden Isle, 1430.5 km². The trade winds from the east temper the tropical climate so the humidity and temperatures are never too extreme.

On our arrival a friendly car rental guy proceeded to give us a 3 page list of his personal hand typed favourite restaurants around the entire island. What a friendly welcome it was, and our entire trip continued with this welcoming kindness. We left Lihue to head for Princeville on the northern part of the island, known to be a little less crowded and where we stayed.

During our first stop to get a few groceries we met the nicest man. He saw me looking at the unusual organic fruit on display. When I looked up our eyes met, such kind, wise, twinkly eyes! He urged me to buy this delicious and swoon worthy pineapple, amongst other fruits to be covered in the next post. He proudly explained there is only one farm, and it’s a local delicacy. I felt I could have spoken with this wonderful elder for days. His parting words were “He is the Way, The *Fruit and the Light!” ❤ I will never forget this delightful person.

The pineapples are sold with the tops removed to prevent propagation and to protect the farm. It’s name is: The Honey Cream Pineapple. Let me introduce you!

It’s tiny and round (yes, that is a teaspoon!), squat and the size of

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Battered Fried Eggplant and more snippets…

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This dish was half way prepped and my partner asked … are you blogging this recipe? I paused. He was right the last time about posting something, so I scrambled to take a few photos at the start of making this dish and he took a few too. My Mum regularly made deep fried battered eggplant/brinjal/aubergines as a veg side dish for dinner growing up and she still does!

My parents ran a successful produce market agency. They sourced vegetables and fruits directly from farmers and sold to grocers, food vendors, restaurants and the public. There were other agencies like this at the municipal market place, probably around a half dozen or less. We were fortunate that fresh vegetables and fruit were in abundance in our home. Farm to table fresh! Looking back, despite the many bags of peas and beans my sister and I had to shell or string in peak freezing season, we were truly lucky and blessed with these bounties. (Sometimes this would extend to sheep and game too, but that is a blog post for another time!) Dad sourced produce requested by restaurants from Greek to Indian, Italian and Chinese. He had an uncanny eye for exotic delicacies. So eggplants were a standard in our home long before they were commonly found on grocery shelves. Some of my friends found eating at our home either peculiar…or delicious. I was very young, but I remember Dad inviting friends to our home to show him how to make Paella and other international dishes, or going to his friends in Malabar for delicious curry, unlike anything I’ll savour again. I’m talking late 1960’s and through the 70’s here friends! Continue reading →

Roasted Butternut Soup, Squash with figs…and other snippets

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Spring is almost here. Almost! We have had a glorious week of sunshine and by tonight the rain is back, but I never begrudge the blessing of rain. We’re lucky to live in a place where water is not a challenge and I never take this for granted. My heart hurts when I hear of the escalating devastation of droughts around the world.

On a lighter note we were gifted the lovely company of two very dear friends recently. The beautiful spring daffodils and tussie-mussie they each gave us are here to share with you. Outside, the birds are busy; leaf buds are sprouting and blossoms are on the plum trees.

Two quick recipes to post and then I bid you adieu until next time!

The first recipe is one for when you have inventive ingredients to hand, or just to post for fun. Try your own version!

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Fig and Toasted Pecan Bread

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We went to friends for a board game night and I baked two quick loaves of bread to take. These loaves are gluten free, low carb (you can leave the figs out for an even lower carb count) and fantastic with just butter or any cheese.

This is a variation of my other nutty keto loaf. I plan to bake other variations, like an olive parmesan or spiced ginger and apple loaf.

The beauty of this loaf is it’s so quick, no separate beating of egg whites, folding in and working quickly like other keto breads. I let the one loaf rest in the dough stage while I mixed up the second. Baked beautifully!

Best flavour in this loaf is the toasted pecan flour, it came out like pecan butter and the taste was sublime!

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NY White Sauce

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I had never heard of this sauce before, and just recently saw a recipe for it. There were a few ingredients I did not like in the recipe so I switched out a few, added some and omitted the sugar and vinegar. Super quick and easy to make.

It was great served over the roasted veg I made for lunch yesterday. Pretty sure you could put it onto just about anything savoury.

Here it is served with roast shoulder of seasoned beef, eggplant with green chili and Adobo spice, yams with Ancho spice and delicata squash with freshly grated turmeric. My fingers are still saffron yellow, but absolutely worth it. I found the fresh turmeric at the Mexican Mercado market I love to go to, but tbh, I don’t go often enough!

Here are the treasures I found at the Mexican market last Sunday. The ginger is fantastic and I have plans for that chorizo sausage! The green salsa is delicious but very hot and the little fingers of turmeric are absolutely perfect.

I just mixed the NY white sauce up in the yogurt tub I had.

See recipe below!

Quick tip for zesting citrus.

I find leaving zesting for after I’ve juiced a lime or any citrus, the juicer makes a perfect holding device for the skin. I’m always grating myself when just holding the citrus in my hand. This is my go to default way to zest without scrapes.

Be sure to have a pint sized jar for storage. If you would like this runnier for pouring or drizzling, add more cream or buttermilk at the end.

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