Potato salad with home-made mayonnaise

Cooked and cooled potatoes are an excellent source of resistant starch, a prebiotic that helps feed the probiotics (good bacteria) in our gut. Potato salad is one easy and yummy way to incorporate cooked and cooled potatoes into your diet. It readily lends itself for school or work lunches, eaten straight from the fridge as leftovers or prepared ahead of time for every day dinners, dinner parties or picnic lunches.

Ingredients:

• 1 potato, cut into 1cm cubes (approx 150g)

• ½ carrot, cut lengthways then into rounds

• ¼ cup peas (you can buy frozen organic peas in most organic shops)

• 1-2 rashes of pastured bacon or rounds of diced pastured ham (optional)

• tallow (or natural fat of choice) for frying bacon

• 1-2 tablespoons home made mayonnaise (see recipe below)

• unrefined salt

• cracked pepper

Directions:

Steam potato, carrots and peas until soft. Add to a bowl.

Meanwhile, dice bacon and stir fry in a small saucepan in tallow (or fat of choice) until cooked. Add to the bowl. If using ham instead of bacon add it to the bowl.

Mix ingredients in bowl to combine.

Refrigerate for 24 hours to allow resistant starch properties of the cooked and cooled potatoes to form. When ready to consume, stir through mayonnaise and season with any additional salt and pepper.

Serves 1-2 depending if consuming as a side or a main.

Note: I tend not to peel the skin on potatoes unless they are particularly grubby / full of soil. This typically depends on the variety of the potato. Sometimes a little scrub with a brush and water is enough to remove excess dirt.

Mayonnaise

Ingredients:

• 3 egg yolks

• 1 tsp Dijon style mustard

• 1.5 tbsps lemon juice

• 1 tbsp whey (optional)

• 1/8 tsp unrefined salt

• cracked pepper

• ¾ cup olive oil

Directions:

Blend together all ingredients, other than the olive oil, with a hand held blender. With the blender still running, very slowly pour in the olive oil a little at a time. The result should be a thick creamy paste.

Makes 1 cup. Keep refrigerated.

Note: Without the whey, mayonnaise will keep for about 2 weeks. The addition of whey will help your mayonnaise last longer, adds enzymes and increases nutrient content. With the whey, mayonnaise keeps for several weeks in the fridge and will become firmer with time.

WHY “ACTIVATED”?

I’m often asked what are “activated” nuts and why do we need to “activate” nuts? 

SHORT ANSWER: Activation has become an industry term that means proper preparation through soaking and long slow dehydrating to reduce phytates and other anti nutrients naturally found in all nuts and seeds that lead to digestive havoc. Activation makes nuts more digestible and nutritious  (not to mention more delicious!) 

LONG ANSWER: 

🌰 The phytates and other anti nutrients found in raw nuts and seeds do three pesky things:

1. They trap nutrients inside the nuts. Nuts and seeds are one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet but if the nutrients are not bio available then you’re not availing yourself of all that goodness! Activating nuts liberates or activates the nutrients in the nuts, making activated nuts the third most nutrient-dense food on the planet (according to the Mat Lalonde scale of nutrient density).
2. They destroy enzymes needed for digestion. That’s why gas and bloating are often the result of eating raw - unactivated - nuts as your body is having a really hard time digesting those raw nuts without digestive enzymes. 
3. They irritate the lining of the gut making it leaky. A leaky gut is something we want to avoid at all expense as it means large foreign particles can now directly enter the blood stream instead of being kept in the gastro intestinal tract. This can potentially invoke a powerful immune response where the body tries to attack those foreign particles but mistakenly starts attacking its own tissues (hence the term “auto”-immunity). Auto-immunity is not a life sentence and can be put into  ‘remission’ by following a strict protocol of healing and sealing the tight junctions of the gut (for more information contact me for a private health coaching session where I can give you the auto immune protocol meal plan that I put together for all my AIP clients and I can refer you to my trusted intergrative practitioners for robust testing). 

🌰All traditional societies, the world  over, soaked in rain water and sun dried their nuts to improve the bio availability and digestibility of them. They knew to do this from trial and error over Millenia. We honour the wisdom of our ancestors by following these ancestral practices in the preparation of our nuts and seeds. 

🌰Activated nuts are not only more digestible and nutritious than raw nuts, they are much more delicious! Once you’ve tried activated nuts, there’s no going back!

🌰 I have been activating nuts since 2006 to crispy perfection to provide the most moorish organic activated nuts with the largest range in Australia. We have strict requirements for soaking times and what must be added to the filtered water that the nuts are soaking in to enhance phytate reduction. We also have strict requirements as to the dehydrating temperature so that it does not exceed 55 degrees Celsius because above that temperature heat-sensitive enzymes are destroyed. Hence why activating nuts can takes days and days in the dehydrator ovens to yield super crispy nuts. If making activated nuts at home, you don’t technically need to dehydrate them so long as you soak, strain and rinse them in filtered water (though you’ll be eating soggy nuts so please refrigerate them to avoid them going mouldy knowing that their fridge shelf life will be greatly reduced compared to dehydrated nuts which have a long shelf life of 6-12 months). 

🌰 Dehydrating is NOT the same as roasting, as roasting heats the nuts to well over 55 degrees thus destroying the heat sensitive enzymes. Roasted nuts are also not soaked so I avoid them. 

🌰 You can extend the shelf life and crispness of activated nuts and seeds by storing them in the fridge. 

🌰 Our range of activated nuts includes almonds, brazils, cashews, hazels, macadamias, pepitas, pecans, walnuts, savoury buckwheat, cinnamon dusted buckwheat, mixed nuts, snack mix and muesli (all gluten free). 

🌰 Each variety of nuts and seeds contains a slightly different balance of macro and micro nutrients to the next variety so that’s why ideally we should be mixing it up and eating a variety of different activated nuts (short of an allergy/food intolerance), just like vegetables. For example, walnuts are high in brain loving omega 3, brazils are high in selenium, macadamias and hazels are relatively low in the pro-inflammatory omega 6 etc etc.  I’m often asked “which activated nut variety is the best?” That’s like asking me “which vegetable is the best?” One of the greatest things you can do for your health is eat a VARIETY of foods. Mix things up! 

🌰 Eat a handful of nuts a day, throw on yogurt, salads, cooked veggies, or grind up into a nut butter or grind up to use as a gluten free flour substitute for baked cakes. Grind up our savoury buckwheat for a gluten-free flour substitute for crumbing meat to make schnitzels, and grind up our cinnamon buckwheat as a gluten free flour substitute for baked cakes and buckwheat pancakes. 

🌰 Our activated nuts are available at Broth Bar & Larder, or via our online store.

Grecian herbed fish in broth

This is one of my and my kids’ favourite ways of eating wild fish and nourishing bone broth in the one meal. The Grecian flavours throw me back to my childhood and my trips to Greece. The entire meal is made on the stove top and once everything is chopped up and you have access to home made bone broth, it doesn’t take much time to make. So perfect for both everyday dinners and as well as an impressive dinner party meal. Be sure to buy fresh wild as opposed to farmed fish which you can read about here.

Kali Orexi (that’s Green for Good Appetite)

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Ingredients:

3 tablespoons (60g) butter
1 onion (approx 200g), diced
3 knobs of garlic (approx 15g), diced
1 carrot (approx 150g), diced
1 potato (approx 100g), diced
1 zucchini (approx 150g), diced
2 stalks of celery (approx 200g), thinly sliced into half moons (I use  a mandolin)
650-750g fillets of white wild fish (e.g. Barramundi, Hake, Snapper, Perch, Ling) 
2 cups 500ml salted chicken bone broth/ stock (purchase from our online store or from Broth Bar & Larder or learn to make your own via my online bone broth workshop) 
2 tablespoon tomato puree
1 teaspoon unrefined salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried basil leaf
1 teaspoon dried oregano
A few good turns of cracked pepper
1 bunch fresh parsley, roughly chopped, for garnishing

Directions:

Melt butter in large heavy based pot (eg cast iron) or frying pan on medium to  low heat. Add onions and garlic and stir fry for a few minutes until onions and garlic start to soften. Add potatoes and carrots and stir fry until they start to soften. Add celery and zucchini and cook, covered, until veggies are tender, stirring occasionally. Once tender, stir through dried herbs and salt and pepper. 

Meanwhile heat broth and tomato puree in a saucepan and blend together with whisk or stick blender. Add raw fish on top of the vegetables and pour  the heated broth over the fish and vegetables. Cook, covered, until fish is cooked through.  

Ladle into four bowls and garnish with a handful of fresh parsley and a wedge of lemon.

Serves 4