Don't you just hate all that bland "healthy" food?

Beef shin in chilli and ginger with stir fried veg.

When I first found out about the Paleo way of eating, I was a little perturbed as well. I thought that it would be all raw veg and charred meat...I like charred meat, don't get me wrong, there are just some times when what you really want is something that just explodes with flavours and textures, that makes you happy, as well as full.

  Today's picture is an amazing dish of fantastic beef shin, cooked for 3 hours in apple juice, chillis, garlic, honey and ginger. The slow cooking means it practically evaporates in your mouth, leaving behind the flavour of the spices. It's just the thing to come home to when you've been out in the cold, and the cut of beef, while cheap, is extraordinarily tasty.

  The vegetables I usually stir fry are carrot and courgette noodles (If you don't have a julienne peeler, I strongly advise you to get one, they are amazing for providing you with the paleo alternative to flour or rice noodles in your stir fries). Here's one!


Beef Shin with Chilli and Ginger

Ingredients

• 2 Lbs of Beef shin.
• 2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and very thinly sliced into rounds.
• 4 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly.
• 2 medium chillies, de-seeded and sliced thin.
• 500ml of apple juice.
• 3 tablespoons of honey.
• Salt and pepper.
• 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar.
• 5 tablespoons of fish sauce.
• Coconut oil for frying. (Use duck fat or similar if you haven't any)

Method

Cube and season the beef well, and fry in small batches until well browned, with lots of lovely caramelised bits all over. Then remove from the pan and turn the heat right down.

In the same pot, gently fry the ginger, garlic and chilli for a minute or so, then de-glase the pan by pouring in half the apple juice. Give it a really good scrub with a wooden spoon to get all those lovely beefy bits off the bottom.
Add the rest of the juice, the honey, the fish sauce, the vinegar and a good twist of salt and pepper, then throw the beef back in and make sure it's only just covered (add a little water if necessary).
Put a lid on and stick it in the oven at 120C for 3 hours. Don't stir it or you'll have shredded beef, just leave it cooking gently until the magic is complete.

For the veg, it's all your choice, I find carrot, courgette, shredded cabbage, mushrooms, broccoli, onion, kale and spinach work well. I leave the kale and spinach until everything else is just about cooked as they only take seconds to turn a beautiful, verdant green. Any more cooking just spoils them.

As you can see, it's a big old recipe, but most of the cooking is done while you're out living your life, so it's not that hard...And it tastes far better than the amount of effort you put in actually deserves.