Paleo and Clean Eating Challenge... Mexican Mince in Cabbage Leaves

I love a challenge in the kitchen, but sometimes find it hard to think of new things that I would like to have a go at cooking. I’ve just gone live with my Facebook page and a friend suggested to me that I allow people to send through a request on something, either a certain food or meal, or cuisine, they would like to me see me come up with a recipe for. GREAT IDEA I said, you can be first!!!

 

A healthy lifestyle is very important to her so she asked if I would be able to make a meal that was both Paleo, and considered clean eating. What a task!! Have you ever seen the do not eat list for Paleo? You can check it out here. We eat a considerable amount of it, in particular beans and legumes, a staple food in a lot of my vegan meals!! We don’t eat a huge amount of sugar so that was easy, but I do love nothing more than freshly baked bread out of the over, so that was definitely out too! I wanted to make something that was filling, but that adhered to the allowable food on Paleo (which actually is A LOT, avoid beans and legumes, wheat and grains, sugar and starchy vegetables like potato and I think your headed in the right direction) and also make a dish that was clean, which as far as I understand, means whole foods like meat and vegetables and keeping the food as close to its original form as possible. I hope I achieved both please let me know if you have any tips for me or you think I haven’t got it quite right! Surprisingly a lot of the food we cook at home is actually Paleao and a lot of it is also Clean (I probably tend to use my homemade shortcrust pastry just a wee bit too often haha)

I made a main and a dessert, just to show that delicious tasty treats don’t have to be packed full of sugar and can fit under the “Clean” and “Paleo” headings! The main was stuffed full of vegies and also tasted delish!!

 

Please enjoy

Mexican Mince in Cabbage Leaves

(perhaps it needs a new name… doesn’t sound exceptionally appetising hahaha)

Ingredients

1kg Mince (I used beef, but any mince will be nice!)
2 grated carrots
1 large onion chopped
2 cloves of garlic squished, or very finely chopped
Big bag full of baby spinach
50g of pinenuts
1-2 chillis chopped and de-seeded (de-seeding is optional depending on your desire for heat)
½ cup chopped coriander
1 large red capsicum chopped
1 tin tomatoes
2 tablespoons each of cumin and smoked paprika
1-2 teaspoon of sea salt
1 whole baby cabbage

 

Method

Pop a bit of oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat. Once heated put in your garlic and onion until soft then put in mince and brown.

While mince is browning chop up the capsicum and grate the carrot. Add to the mince along with the chilli, baby spinach, pinenuts, coriander and tin tomatoes.

Add your spices, and salt.

Reduce heat to low, give everything a good stir and let simmer, stiring, and tasting occasionaly for around 30 minutes or most of the liquid has evaporated. Add more spices and salt as needed.

While the mince is cooking pop your whole baby cabbage in a steamer over a pot of water on medium-high heat. Remove from heat once the cabbage starts to feel “soft”.

Remove cabbage from steamer and very very gently peel back the leaves. You will need to cut them at the base to remove from the cabbage.

Put some cooked mince mixture into a leaf then roll like you would a burrito! Fold the top and the bottom over then one side over, then the other side, pulling gently but tightly. Once you have done all your cabbage rolls, sit them back in the steamer over medium heat for 5 minutes. This will help the cabbage to seal.

I tried both red and green cabbage… while the green cabbage went a bit transparent it stuck together much better than the red. Both tasted nice!

If you would like to challenge me to cook something, whether it be a type of food or a particular item of food, leave a comment below or email me at yearofcooking@outlook.com.au 

 

Happy Cooking (from scratch!)
Erica xx