Pulled pork

A simple pressure cooker pulled pork that turned out amazing!

Ingredients

Pork

• Boston butt (fläskkarré) 3lbs
• Salt
• Sugar
• Fennel seeds
• Cumin seeds

BBQ sauce

• 1 medium onion, minced
• 1 cup (250 ml) ketchup
• 1/2 cup (125 ml) beer
• 1/4 cup (60 ml) honey
• 2 tablespoons (30 ml) apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons (30 ml) Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon (25 g) brown sugar
• A good dash of soy or coconut aminos

Method

1. Cut the pork in one inch cubes. Add lots of salt and sugar and let it brine for a few hours.
2. Wash off the excess salt and sugar. The pork should now have a beautiful deep red color. Add lots of oil to the cooker and pour in the fennel and cumin seeds. Let them sit until fragrant.
3. Fry off some of the meat to get it nicely maillarded. Don't crowd the pan, you need to get it nice and brown. If you don't feel like frying all of the meat, don't - as long as some of itis browned and blackened you're good.
4. Pour in half of the BBQ sauce and deglaze the pan. The pour in the rest.
5. Dump in the meat, put the lid on and let the pressure build.
6. Let it sit at high pressure for around 40 minutes. Then take it off the heat and let it cool.
7. When the pressure equalizes, take out the meat and shred it. Reduce the sauce down to half.
8. Add sauce to the shredded meat until it tastes amazing. Maybe half of the sauce. Don't overdo it!

EAT IT!!!!!

Milk-free, Egg-free, Soy-free vanilla cake with vanilla frosting

Since we have Milk, Egg and Soy allergies in the family, we've been making a lot of vegan recipes. These taste delicious and work really well. The lack of egg seems to make a difference to the texture, with vegan waffles and pancakes in particular being more brittle than their egg-y counterparts. I've never baked a vegan cake before, and I must confess, based on my experience with eating vegan cakes at cafes, I was expecting either something slightly dry or too wet, viz, I was expecting the result to also have a different texture than regular cake. This cake was NOT at all what I was expecting. I am absolutely amazed by how ridiculously delicious it was. I got the recipe from here and made some modifications.

Cake Ingredients

• 1 + 3/4 cups Flour
• 1 cup Sugar
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 cup Oatley ikaffe
• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1/3 cup Vegetable oil
• 1 Tbsp Vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)

Frosting

• 450g Powdered Sugar (I used Florsocker)
• 3 Tbsp Vegan Butter (room temp)
• 4 Tbsp Oatley ikaffe
• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract

Steps

1. Turn on the oven at 180 C.
2. For the cake, sift the flour into a bowl and then add the rest of the dry ingredients-- Sugar, baking soda and salt into the flour
3. Add in all the liquid ingredients at the same time and used the whisk on my standing mixer to blend them all together
4. Grease two round foil pans with coconut oil and then split the batter between them.
5. I baked the cakes for 30 minutes. I tested them to make sure they were cooked through but both times I've made this cake, 30 minutes has been plenty.
6. For the frosting, I just threw all the ingredients into a bowl and then used the whisk on my standing mixer to blend them together. First use the lowest speed and then and then crank it up. 
7. Make sure the butter is completely blended.
8. Once the cake layers have cooled, frost them 
9. Serve with berries! We've tried this with strawberries and it is delicious!

Greek style feta kebabs with Mediterranean salad, tzatziki sauce and oven roasted root vegetables

This is a dinner that needs a lot of chopping but yields lots of food and lots of leftovers. The Greek style meatballs/kebabs recipe is adapted from here, called Grekiska fetafärsbiffar, but we changed the recipe. The original LCHF version turns out very dense and the kebabs get harder and harder in the fridge. The roots recipe is inspired from all over, it's called Rotsaker i ugn and is a swedish classic. The "Mediterranean salad" is also inspired from the LCHF recipe above.

Ingredients:

Meatballs:

• 1kg blandfärs (50-50 pork and beef mince mix)
• 1 finely chopped onion
• 3/4 cup breadcrumbs soaked in enough milk so it has the consistency of porrige
• 4 tsp ginger-garlic paste
• 250g feta cheese
• 3 tsp sumac
• 3-4 tsp thyme
• 3-4 tsp oregano
• 3 tsp salt
• 3 tsp pepper
• 2 tsp smoked paprika
• Peel of one lemon, juice of one lemon (optional, essential if you're skipping the sumac)

Mediterranean salad:

• 1 cucumber, large dice
• 1 box cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/2-1 red onion finely sliced (not too much onion or it overwhelms the salad)
• Olives, seedless (we used a half bottle, we like olives!)

Tzatziki sauce:

• 1 cup thick yogurt/ greek yogurt
• 1 garlic clove minced
• 2 tsp honey
• pinch of salt

Roots:

• All the root vegetables are cut into approximately the same size, like homefries or thick-cut fries
• 5-6 small potatoes
• 2-3 parsnips
• 2-3 beets
• 1/4 celeriac root
• 2-3 carrots
• 1 Rutabaga
• 10 garlic cloves, peeled
• Fat of choice (cooking oil/ olive oil/ coconut oil)
• Honey
• Dried thyme
• Salt
• Pepper

Recipe:

For the roots: 

1. Set the oven at 200C and chop all the vegetables
2. Chop the rutabaga, beets and celeriac root first and toss them in a bowl with honey, thyme, salt and pepper. These go in the oven 10-15 minutes before the rest of the vegetables.
3. Spread them on an oven tray and put them in the middle of the oven.
4. After 10-15 minutes add the rest of the vegetables adding more honey/ fat/ thyme/ salt/ pepper as needed.
5. Bake for 30-40 minutes (or until done).

For the Kebabs:

1. Soak the breadcrumbs in milk
2. In a large bowl, combine the meat, breadcrumbs, chopped onion, thyme, sumac, oregano, salt pepper, smoked paprika, ginger-garlic paste and crumble in the feta. 
3. Mix well.
4. Shape into flat patties about 3-4" diameter
5. Cook on a greased medium-hot pan. Cook on one side for 2-3 minutes, then flip and cook on the other side for another minute and then cover and cook for 4 minutes to cook through. 

For the Mediterranean Salad

1. Chop and mix all the ingredients together

For the Tzatziki sauce:

1. In a bowl, mix together all the ingredients and let sit for at least 20-30 minutes before eating