Cluttered Kitchen Keto

Yeah, yeah, I know. Technically alcohol isn’t keto. And technically we’re also grown-ass humans who enjoy having a drink from time to time. My family is Brazilian by origin, and I LOVE Brazilian food. I’ve had to give up feijoada since going keto, but I sure as hell am not giving up my delicious Brazilian hooch.

Cachaça is essentially the national alcohol of Brazil, and the caipirinha is the most popular drink made from it. It involves limes muddled with sugar at the bottom of a rocks glass, then ice is added, the cachaça is poured over, and the whole thing is stirred to distribute the lime juice. If you can’t find cachaça at your local liquor store, you can substitute white or gold rum (NOT spiced or flavored), but it won’t be as good. Both are derived from sugar cane, but cachaça tastes different and I’m not sure why.

To make two drinks, start out with one lime. Cut it into 8 chunks, and put 4 on the bottom of each rocks glass. Add a teaspoon of granular Swerve to each glass. Swerve is a naturally-derived sugar alcohol that can be used as a 1-to-1 substitute for sugar in any recipe, and it’s the best low-carb sugar substitute I’ve found so far. After you add the Swerve, use a cocktail muddler to mash it all together until the limes release their juices and the Swerve is dissolved. I only got a cocktail muddler recently. Before that, I’d use the handle of a clean (obviously, but I’m sure someone will read this and try it with something they just used to pound out chicken if I don’t say clean) meat tenderizer mallet handle.

Top the lime juice with ice and pour a large shot (2.5 ounces) of cachaça over the top. Stir, serve, and dream of Carnaval!

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There’s a restaurant where I live called Marcella’s that makes these, and even though making them can be a huge pain in the butt, I kind of had to try, because they’re so delicious. Even my kids ate a few, which is saying something seeing as both of them are intensely suspicious of anything green. If you miss potato chips, this is probably the closest thing you’re going to get to them.

I don’t have a deep fryer, but even if I did, I wouldn’t trust making them in one. These chips are very sensitive–30 seconds off either way and you’re either eating something burned or soggy. You’ll need some specialty equipment–unless your knife skills are top-notch it’ll take either a mandoline slicer or a food processor capable of slicing things paper thin, plus a candy/oil thermometer, and a wok skimmer for retrieving your chips from the oil.

This takes probably 4 cups of avocado oil, give or take. I use avocado oil because of its high smoke point and neutral flavor. Costco sells it in giant jugs. In a 2-3 quart heavy saucepan, heat the oil to 375 degrees. Keep an eye on it with the thermometer, because if your oil is too hot or too cold, it affects the finished product. While the oil is heating, slice your zucchini. 2 medium zucchini will get you enough for 3 good-sized servings.

In batches, put the zucchini into the oil one slice at a time. Try to make sure that the slices aren’t overlapping too much, but make sure that the entire surface of the oil is covered. They’ll cook down.

Keep a close eye on the chips, turning them occasionally as they cook down with a heat-resistant utensil. The wok skimmer is fine for this. Eventually they will start to turn golden brown. In this next picture, they’re about 30 seconds to a minute away from being finished. You’ll notice how the bubbling dies down when they’re close.

When they’re finished, remove them from the oil with the wok skimmer and place them on a plate lined with paper towels to drain. Sprinkle them with salt and parmesan cheese. Repeat the process with the remaining zucchini, then serve.

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At the risk of sounding like one of THOSE food blogs, this recipe reminds me of being a kid back in the 80s. For the first 11 years of my life, I grew up in a small town that only really had chain restaurants. Our fancy restaurant was a Red Lobster, no joke. So basically the only pizza place I ever went to was Pizza Hut. And every time I went, I’d get the same thing–a Personal Pan Pizza Supreme. We never got delivery, so we were always in the restaurant with the tall red plastic glasses of water with crushed ice, the tabletop arcade with Ms. Pac-Man, and the pizza would always come out piping hot. I loved the combination of flavors from the veggies, meats, and that thick greasy crust. I can’t have the crust anymore, but I can have the rest of it. And yeah, I get the deep desire to play vintage Atari games while I’m eating it, but they make emulators for those now, too.

Start off with 2 pounds of ground beef. I use 80/20 or 85/15, but if your family isn’t keto, you can use the leaner ground beef for them. Add an egg, 1/4 cup of grated parmesan, a teaspoon of Italian seasoning, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of fennel seeds if you’d like it to taste more like sweet Italian sausage, 1/2 teaspoon each of garlic powder and onion powder, and black pepper to taste. Mix it together with your hands until the texture is uniform. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and make the beef mixture into six equal patties. You can see that I made mine without the fennel seeds and sprinkled them onto two of the patties, because my kids are sometimes ridiculously picky.

For the toppings to be a true Personal Pan Meatza, you’ll need sliced mushrooms, chopped onion and green pepper, pepperoni, and black olives. Obviously, your mileage may vary on what you prefer to have on your pizza, and that’s the joy of this recipe. Don’t like mushrooms? Don’t use them. Want to add anchovies? Sure, why not? Need more fat? Use actual Italian pork sausage as the base. Need less? Try ground chicken. Are you picky like my kids? Just cheese, pepperoni, and sauce. The possibilities are as endless as the menu of options at your favorite pizza place. Just make sure that if you use veggies, they’re pre-cooked and still warm, as this won’t be in the oven all that long. Saute them up while the patties are baking.

Put the untopped patties into an oven that’s been preheated to 450 degrees, and cook the patties until they’re cooked through, about 10 minutes or so. Remove from the oven. There will be a lot of accumulated grease and juices in the bottom of the pan. Either carefully drain it or do like I do and soak it up with a wad of paper towels. Top each patty with a tablespoon of pizza sauce–I like the Rao’s brand for pizza and pasta sauces, but if you can’t get that, just find the one with the fewest net carbs. Add a bit of cheese, then toppings, then more cheese. I prefer to do the pepperoni first, then the veggies, then more cheese, then the olives. I use a full 2 cups of shredded mozzarella on this. Turn on your broiler and broil the patties, watching carefully to make sure that nothing burns. When the cheese gets happy brown bubbles on it, remove it from the oven and serve.

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