Bring on The Duck! Cooking Slow with El Pato

The slow cooker or crock-pot is an absolute essential for those with busy schedules. To walk through the front door at the end of the day and be enveloped by a fragrant hot meal is a reality that is amazingly simple to create. One can also opt to start the slow cooker before bed and awake to a full day’s meals; your choice.

While most anything can be thrown into a slow cooker, we have one fa¬vorite ingredient that is sure to make the meal a winner: El Pato.

El Pato is a spicy Mexican tomato sauce. There are two varieties: Mexican hot style, and jala¬peno. The Mexican hot style comes in a yel¬low can and is our personal favorite. One only needs some protein of choice, a can opener, and a can of El Pato to prepare a veritable feast.
It’s easy:

Add meat to the slow cooker, then add some El Pato. Set the slow cooker either on low (will take a minimum of 4 hours and a maxi¬mum of 7-8) or high (approx 2-3 hours) and then go about your business. Your tasty meal will be cooking along while you perform feats of multi-tasking greatness.

El Pato Scramble

Guess what? El Pato is great with eggs! Sim¬ply mix half a can of El Pato with your favorite scramble recipe. You’ll love it.


Sweet Potato Pudding

Time: Baking - 35 minutes; 10 minutes - mi¬crowave

Ingredients:
. 1 medium sweet potato
. • cup coconut milk
. Cardamom to taste (approx 1/8 tsp.)

Bake a medium sized sweet potato until a fork is easily inserted (approximately 30 minutes.) You can also microwave it for approximately 5 minutes if you are pinched for time. Peel the skin. Shake can of coconut milk to thoroughly mix contents. In mixing bowl combine sweet potato and • cup coconut milk. Blend with a hand mixer until creamy. Add cardamom to taste. This recipe can be served warm or chilled.

Zone blocks: • cup coconut milk contains 16 blocks fat. 100g of sweet potato = 2 blocks carb. Weigh sweet potato to determine total carb blocks. Recipe as prepared above yields approximately 2 cups pudding. Measure total pudding volume and divide by carb and fat blocks to determine a serving appropriate for your block needs.

Note: 1 Tbs of coconut milk = 2 blocks fat. This conversion may be of assistance for those wishing to more precisely tailor fat blocks.


Chicken Apple Hash

Have you ever noticed how certain foods go together? Beer and pizza, peanut butter and chocolate? Sorry, we are not recommending chocolate or pizza at the present moment, but we do have a good paleo friendly combo: chicken and apples. Perhaps not the Abbot and Costello of the food world, but chicken and apples do make quite a flavor combi¬nation. We also have a few favorite spices that bring out the natural flavor of both fruit and fowl. For this month’s feature breakfast we would like to share a chicken apple hash with a few seasoning twists.

Time: 15 min

Ingredients:
. Free range boneless skinless chicken breast (turkey works as well especially if one can find the ground variety)
. Fresh Fuji apples - Look for these at your farmers market as they are at the height of the season.
. Jamaican All Spice
. Garam Massala
. Cinnamon
. Extra Virgin Olive Oil

We have used all of the spices listed above either singularly or in combination to cre¬ate several varieties of chicken apple hash. These spices tend to be forgiving if overused so be creative and experiment with what you find to be the ultimate hash.

Mince or finely chop chicken breast. Some butcher shops and better super markets will grind the chicken breast for you. This is preferable as it will result in better consis¬tency.

Grate 2 Fuji apples, include the pits if you are feeling particularly Paleo and would like a small dose of anti cancer fun.

Place a nonstick skillet over medium heat and add a generous amount of olive oil. Add 1-2 tsp. of any of the above spices to the oil and allow to infuse for ~2min. If you are us¬ing more than one spice keep the amount to 1 tsp. each unless you enjoy intensely fla¬vored food. We particularly like a hash with a lot of cinnamon. We will use as much as 1 Tbs. in this recipe. Give it a try and see if you like it!

Add chicken to the infused oil and stir fre¬quently to brown the chicken on all sides. When the chicken is almost completely brown add the apples and cover pan for 3-5 min stirring occasionally. If the hash be¬comes a bit watery because of moisture from the apples increase heat to medium-high for a few minutes and finish cooking uncovered until the apples have cooked down.

Serve with cinnamon infused espresso

Zone Blocks: This recipe is particularly friendly to the Zone. Our 1 block propor¬tions are: 1oz chicken breast for protein, 1/2 an apple for the carbs, 1/3 tsp olive oil sup¬plies the fat. To construct a meal of a par¬ticular block measure simply multiply the above measure appropriately. Remember to add extra fat blocks if you are using chicken or turkey breast as they are very low fat. If one is following the Athletes Zone as much as 2 Tbs. of olive oil will be necessary to round out a 4 block meal with 5x fat.