Kangaroo Rissoles

The Australian beef rissole was one of my favourites as a child. But they are generally made using flour and/or bread crumbs, which is not so good if you are trying to avoid grass seeds and the associated anti-nutrients. My take on the humble rissole skips the bread crumbs, and uses kangaroo mince just to make them extra Aussie!

YUM!

Kangaroo meat is high in Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA), which may have anti-carcinogenic and anti-diabetes properties, in addition to reducing obesity and atherosclerosis. Wikipedia is a good place to start if you want to do more research on CLA. However, before you go reaching for that CLA supplement, read this post on Mark's Daily Apple about CLA supplementation. I think I'll stick to eating game and grass fed and finished farmed meat thank you very much.

Anyway, research aside, eat Kangaroo. It is definitely grass fed and finished and tastes awesome. The mince can be a little pungent before it is cooked, but then again I think the same about pork (completely different smell though). If you really can't stand the thought of eating skippy then try substituting with lamb mince; also high in CLA.

Ingredients

• 1kg of kangaroo mince
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tomato, finely chopped (capsicum also works well)
• 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh basil
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 small (approximately 200g) sweet potato, boiled and mashed
• 1 tsp mixed herbs
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Ghee, coconut oil or any other stable saturated fats that won't break down with heat

Method

1. Preheat the oven to LOW (150 degrees Celsius or under).
2. Place all the ingredients (excluding the ghee) into a large mixing bowl.



Mixing



Mixed

3. Now, this is messy! Get your hands into the bowl and mix all the ingredients together.
4. Heat a frying pan to medium-high, and melt some ghee or coconut oil in the pan.
5. Make round rissoles out of the mince mixture and place in the pan. Don't overcrowd the rissoles, as too many rissoles in the pan will make them difficult to flip.



Make the rissoles smaller than the palm of your hand

6. I cook the rissoles for 20-30 seconds on each side, and then flip, for a total of about 5 minutes (depending on how large you make the rissoles). If you don't continuously flip the rissoles they end up very dry. I picked up this tip while watching Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection.
7. Once the rissoles are cooked, place them on a tray and pop them in the oven. This is only to keep them warm while you do the next batch. Ideally you would cook them all at the same time in a large pan or on the BBQ, however this may not be possible.
8. Scrape the pan clean, melt some more ghee in the pan and cook the next batch.
9. Serve with a huge plate of vegetables!

Just a few words of advice. You don't have gluten in your rissoles to glue them together (remember making paper mache glue out of flour and water as a child?), so make sure you chop everything up as fine as possible. Also, don't go adding extra wet ingredients like grated carrot or zucchini. This will only make your rissoles fall apart while you are cooking them.

Kangaroo meat rissoles tend to be relatively dry (even when you flip them every 20 to 30 seconds) as the meat is quite lean. My wife likes her rissoles dry so I deal with it; untold trials! However, if you have a few more degrees of freedom (or you wear the pants) add a little bit of fatty lamb or pork mince.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Coconut Mousse

I was checking out Mark's Daily Apple a few weeks ago and saw a post he did titled "Decadent Coconut Milk Whipped Cream with Berries and Dark Chocolate Coconut Mousse". I was exhausted after reading the title, but since it sounded awesome I pushed on. It turned out to be all I could hope for in a dessert. What better way to start my recipe collection than with a confection.

It tastes much better than it looks, I'm no food photographer!

Ingredients:

• One 400ml tin of coconut cream.
• 50g of dark cooking chocolate (the darker it is, the less refined sugar it contains).

Method:

1. Place the tin of coconut cream in the fridge for a few hours. If you forget to put it in the fridge, you can place it in the freezer to speed up the process. But don't let it freeze!
2. Open the tin of coconut cream.

3. Scoop the thick coconut cream off the top of the tin, leaving the coconut water behind, and place it in a mixing bowl. Note - the level of separation acheived from this process seems to depend on the brand of coconut cream you use. I've used Pandaroo coconut cream; which tends to separate nicely. I've also used the organic Woolworths brand coconut cream (much more expensive), which didn't seem to separate. It could be to do with the thickener used or the ratio of coconut cream to water. Please experiment yourself and post in the comments. If it doesn't separate, not all is lost (see Step 5).

4. Place the left over coconut water in the fridge and use later. I normally just drink it, but am determined to find it a much better use. Post in the comments if you have a good idea.
5. Whisk the coconut cream by hand if it has separated. If it has not separated, pull out the electric beater and show it who's boss.
6. Melt the dark chocolate. I normally break it into small pieces, pop it in a bowl and microwave it. If you are going to microwave it, do it in 10 second intervals, stirring and breaking up the chocolate as you go. DO NOT overheat the chocolate! It will become crumbly, which might be OK for a gluten free chocolate cake, but not so good for a chocolate mousse. My advice is to stop heating the chocolate before it is all melted. That is, the chocolate is mostly melted with small lumps in it. From this point on continual stirring for a minute or two will generally take care of the last few lumps. It's a fine line between not enough heat and too little heat; you've been warned. If you have never done this before, you are bound to stuff it up at least once. Not to worry, just try and try again until you get it right.



Just keep stirring from this point; more heat is a bad idea.

7. Add the melted chocolate to the whipped coconut cream, stirring vigorously.
8. I normally serve it with some seasonal fruit (strawberries and blueberries right now) and a few nuts.

That's it; simple!

Now a little note on "paleo desserts". I think this guy hits the nail on the head; paleo desserts are dumb (potty mouth alert). Why? They just don't taste like the real thing, so there's no point. I'd rather go eat the real deal. BUT, I'm not going to buy an orange mocha frappuccino and banana muffin every single day, because I don't want to be soft around the middle and suffer from inflammed joints.

So, why have I posted this recipe? Because it is delicious! However this is a dessert; make sure you treat it as such. It isn't something you eat every night after dinner that allows you to feel smug about your food choices. You're not "better" than someone who makes a similar thing out of dairy cream (dairy cream wouldn't be as nice). This DESSERT is just an option that fits with your lifestyle.

My Background

I'm an electronic engineering professional with an interest in exercise and nutrition. So I guess I'm a computer nerd and exercise geek!

When I was in high school I was what is fondly refered to as a "pie boy". Which is funny, because I didn't even eat that many pies, it was more like chips, chocolate and ice cream for after school snacks. By the end of high school I had lost most of my extra weight, simply by abstaining from these junk foods (puberty didn't hurt either). Was I healthy? Far from it!

Pie Boy Leon

When I moved away from home to go to university I started exercising (between binge drinking sessions). However, I thought exercise consisted of upper body hypertrophy (3 sets of 10 reps) and jogging "long" distances really slowly for legs and cardio. My nutrition consited of bread, pasta, potato and all manner of deep fried "foods", pumped into my body on a daily basis. How times have changed!

In 2008 I moved to Canberra and met my lovely wife Liz, a personal trainer. She introduced me to the world of CrossFit training and The Zone diet. Oh, what an eye opener that turned out to be. Since then I've moved from CrossFit to powerlifting. This is mainly due to an unstable shoulder which often subluxates (not quite a dislocation) with overhead exercises like chin-ups and overhead pressing. Even jumping jacks are uncomfortable! I've also changed my nutrition from The Zone, to the metabolic diet, to the paleolithic diet. So many diets and exercise regimes to choose from and I'm not frightened to experiment.

CrossFit Leon, Wedding Day 2010

What prompted the creation of this blog?

• Firstly, I have met many people that tend to eat the same thing over and over again, simply because they don't know how to cook food that fits in with their lifestyle (I will refrain from using the word diet; a post on the reasons behind this to follow). If only they had a central place to go and find recipes, or at least point them in the right direction.
• Secondly, my wife and I were blessed with a baby girl almost two weeks ago. Over these past two weeks my diet has been horrendous; I'm eating milk chocolates as I type this. I want to use this blog as motivation to clean up my diet. Selfish, I know.
• Finally, there is a raw powerlifting competion in December and I want to lose a few kilograms of fat prior to competion. Currently I weigh around 72kg, which puts me in the 74kg weight class. However, I want to see if I can lift in the 66kg weight class; which means I need to drop about 3kg (the rest I can lose in water prior to weigh in). While this seems like a miniscule amount, I've spent the past year trying to gain weight to increase my strength. So, can I lose a few kilograms and maintain the strength I've gained over the past year? Let's find out!

Well, that's it for now. I hope you enjoy reading this blog, and maybe, just maybe, it will help you discover something new along your lifestyle journey.