Germany
Originally for Germany, I wanted to do jager schnitzel and spatzel. I ended up doing pretzels and brats. The pretzels had turned out so bad though that I felt they needed a redemption. I also didn't see a good way to make spatzel based on my earlier failures. I decided to split the difference... still do my schnitzel but re-do the pretzels.
This time I went with a recipe from a Paleo bread book called Every Last Crumb. I wanted use this recipe last time but it required some ingredients I didn't have. No really - there are about 5 different flours in here including both potato flour and potato starch. I had originally thought they were the same thing but the front material says that potato flour absolutely can't be substituted for anything... and that's the one I didn't have. I had to go to 3 stores to find it too.
Anyways, the picture above kind of demonstrates all of the dry ingredients that were in here. You can kind of see the different colors and textures to get an idea of just how many components there were here.
I mixed them all together and then put them in the my secret weapon... yes, my food processor! I got one that had an additional plastic blade for kneading. I figured I would never use it but I use it all the time for paleo breads and even mixing things like ground meats. It's so helpful and I really recommend it.
Next, I got my little bundles of dough ready for shaping.
After that the magic happened. I would try to describe the process but it required difficult shaping, two different oven sessions, and some seasoning. This was the result though. Aren't they beautiful? They tasted like awesome and were way closer to pretzel flavors than the last attempt.
I just noticed that I didn't have any pictures of the steps for the schnitzel. For this, I got a bunch of thin pork chops. I luckily found some that were super thin on their own so I didn't have to do much to them. I just used the tenderizer on them a little bit to thin them further.
From there, I dipped them in eggs and then my special "breading" which consisted of tapioca flour, almond flour, salt, and seasonings. I fried them all in avocado oil
For the "jager" sauce, I loosely followed this recipe. Jagerschnitzel is just schnitzel with a mushroom cream sauce on it but the name is really awesome and mushrooms are delicious so I was all in. The sauce was basically beef broth, sour cream, mushrooms, and xantham gum. I didn't love the sauce - I think the cream broke and I wished I'd used coconut cream instead. Otherwise, the dish was awesome!
Japan
Since I'd already done sushi, I wanted my second attempt at Japan to focus on different dishes. I'd heard a lot about Japanese bbq and seen beautiful pictures of thin meat grilling on stones or wire racks and I wanted to try it as well as some other side dishes that I'm sure you've seen around.
Step one was to find some amazing high quality meat. I only added a light amount of salt to this because I wanted the meat to shine. The key to this is a meat that has good marbilization of fats without being fatty. I trimmed any huge chunks of fat to achieve this.
How beautiful is that? I loved the idea of just self grilling meats over a tiny flame. The problem is that my setup was useless at it. I tried a couple more things while Dan stood in the corner hoping I didn't set the apartment on fire.
And finally I just ended up with this. It was a really good idea at first but eventually the fat dripping onto the burner started cooking and our apartment was just filling with smoke.
The meat was really delicious but the cooking process was not practical for an apartment. I really want to go out and try some in a restaurant now though!
My next dish was Yakitori, aka chicken skewers. For these, I skewered some chicken thighs and then brushed them with a mix of tamari sauce, fish sauce, and avocado oil and let them marinade in the fridge for a little while.
When I was ready to cook them, I placed them in the grill pan and rotated and necessary.
Lastly, I wanted to try tempura. Originally, I was going to do shrimp. However, my meal was already very meat heavy so I decided to do veggie tempura again. I got some green beans and mushrooms. I dredged them all in egg and then a tapioca/almond flour/ salt mixture.
After that I fried them all in avocado oil.
In the end, it all turned out delicious. I also made a little beef broth/ soy sauce dipping sauce which was delicious. The meat was AMAZING. It just shows that when you have high quality beef, you don't have to do much to make it shine. The chicken and veggies were great too.
All in all, these dishes were fantastic, but they also marked an important end to the challenge for me - the end of forced Paleo dishes. By that, I mean dishes that are not Paleo by nature but made so with alternative flours and oils. Even Paleo, tempura or fried pork or pretzels aren't that healthy. I was happy that for my final posts, I was going to go with better more natural foods and less Paleo crazy scientist foods.
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