KC Strip Oscar

As part of our mostly-Primal lifestyle (hey, nobody's perfect!), I’m subscribed to “It’s Paleo” which, among other things sends me a daily Paleo-inspired recipe. One of these was a recipe for Ribeye a la Oscar, which, instead of Hollandaise, called for Sriracha-enhanced sour cream. Primal/Paleo is supposed to be completely without dairy, and granted Hollandaise has butter which is also dairy, but there’s a lot less of it.

Anyway, I decided that one thing this recipe did have right is a bigger piece of meat than the little (albeit tasty) filet Mignon which is called for in the original Filet Oscar recipe. I opted for KC strips. So here’s my first attempt at KC Strip Oscar.

And yes, given the size of the steaks, we had leftovers.




KC Strip Oscar
Makes 2 servings

2 KC strip steaks, room temperature marinated in a little olive oil & garlic
1 bunch asparagus
1/2 pound lump crab meat
Hollandaise sauce (see separate recipe below)

Trim the asparagus by bending in half until it breaks and discard the lower half.

Boil asparagus in salted water, 2 minutes for al dente, longer if you like it softer, which we do.

Make the Hollandaise and set aside someplace warm. (I just turn off the heat, add a little cold water to the lower pan to reduce the heat further, and cover.)

Grill the steaks to desired doneness. For us, this takes almost no time at all, we like our meat that rare.

Turn your broiler on high. (I use a toaster oven.)

Place each steak on its serving plate, top with four asparagus spears followed by the lump crab meat.

Pour half of the Hollandaise on top of each steak.

Place in the top shelf of the broiler. Do not close the oven, and watch them closely. Remove as soon as the Hollandaise begins to just bubble. Needless to say, the plates will be hot.


Hollandaise
Makes 2 servings

2 egg yolks
1 T lemon juice
Dash of salt
Dash of hot sauce (I like Cholula)
4 T butter

Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat – do not let it boil.

Whisk the egg yolks, lemon juice and salt in the top pan of a double boiler while bringing water to a boil in the lower pan.

Lower the heat to low and let the boiling subside somewhat. Place the upper pan over the boiling water and whisk the mixture rapidly and continually, being careful not to actually cook the eggs. As you can see from the picture, I started off with just a bit too much heat so the sauce got a bit granular. Still tasted good though. Julia Child has a recipe for Hollandaise made in a blender. I may give that a try next time.

Once the yolks begin to thicken, SLOWLY add the melted butter. This should take a couple of minutes: too fast and the sauce won't thicken. Once all the butter is added, add the dash of hot sauce and remove from heat.

--Joseph

Portobello Pizza

Since going Paleo and eliminating grains from our diet, one of the things I missed most was pizza. OK, dairy isn't strictly Paleo, but it's borderline acceptable, and everything else on it is good.

Ingredients:

As many large Portobello mushrooms as you would like pizzas with stems & gills removed. I usually figure on two per person. Choose large, deep mushrooms that will hold more stuff.

Sauce – I use Bertolli Organic Olive Oil, Basil, & Garlic. There’s always a lot left over from a new jar, but there are lots of uses for this stuff.

Your favorite pizza toppings – shredded mozzarella, chopped pepperoni, olives, onions, peppers, whatever. If you want to use sausage (which I did in the picture) you should pre-cook it or you will have possibly undercooked pork and definitely way too much grease dripping off your pizza. I don’t measure the ingredients, just kinda eyeball the mushrooms I have and make enough topping mix to fill them. If you make a bit too much, it goes well on a salad and should keep in the fridge for a few days.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

To make:

Mix together the toppings in a mixing bowl. Add a little olive oil to give them a bit of cohesion.

Line the mushroom caps with sauce and pile on the ingredients as high as they’ll go and still hold together. As the cheese melts they will shrink down.

Bake on a rack at 350 for about fifteen minutes – the cheese should be melted and slightly browned, and the mushrooms should be tender. We have a toaster oven with a pan that goes beneath the rack to catch any drippings and it works very well, but a rack inside a baking pan will do if you’re using a standard oven. If you don’t have a rack these can be done in a baking pan, but you might want to bake the mushrooms by themselves for a few minutes to dry them out before stuffing them.

Here's the result, less one bite which I took before remembering that I really should take a picture if I'm going to post this!

A Simple Oyster Stew

I was inspired to make this by Jimmy Buffett's "Boomerang Love" (the story, not the song), wherein "Angel... stirred the oysters into steaming hot milk. She added some fresh chives and a few shakes of Tabasco sauce to cook up a simple, delicious oyster stew."

Of course, I couldn’t do anything quite that simple, so I added chopped onions & celery sautéed in butter…

Ingredients:

1 ½ pints whole milk

2 8 oz cans whole boiled oysters – do not discard juice

½ c chopped onions

¼ c chopped celery

1 T butter

dash of cayenne (I loathe Tabasco but use it if you wish)

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Sauté the onions & celery in butter until tender.

Heat milk in saucepan until hot but not boiling.

Add oysters, juice, onions, celery, cayenne, salt and pepper. Cover and turn off heat.

Allow to sit for about five minutes for oysters to warm.

The most spectacular oyster stew I ever had was at one of the airport hotels in Charleston, SC (I forget which one) which served it with several fried oysters floating on the top. But that’s definitely getting away from simple…

Almost Paleo Chicken Satay

I finally ran out of Trader Joe’s Satay Sauce so I broke down and made my own. I used cashews instead of peanuts to make it more Paleo/Primal and in retrospect I rather wish I’d left out the sugar to make it completely so.  But I originally intended it as a grilling sauce rather than a dipping sauce, not realizing that the sauce for satay is SUPPOSED to be a dipping sauce though of course you can brush some on na. So in the future I’ll mix it up sans sugar – neither of us thinks it really needs it.

Sauce Ingredients:

1 cup salted cashew halves & pieces

1/3 cup water

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 T organic cane sugar

1 T Tamari (soy sauce will work)

½ T lime juice

2 t sesame oil

1 t Sriracha

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. None of the ingredients require refrigeration so I don't believe this does either.

This time I used breasts rather than thighs. Slice however many chicken breasts you’re going to cook (I used three) into one inch strips and marinate in soy sauce and a dash of garlic powder and another of turmeric for a couple of hours.

Skewer chicken strips, brush with sauce and grill until just done. It looks burnt but that's just the sauce on top - the meat was tender and juicy!

Kate stirred up some mixed veggies - summer squash, zucchini, cabbage, red bell pepper, broccoli stems, carrots, onions and garlic - with some soy sauce and Chinese Five Spice seasoning to go with it.

Shrimp Stuffed Sole

I recently discovered Bob McDiarmid's blog, Bob's Cooking. He has what appears to be a wonderful recipe for Yellow Mango Curry Stuffed Dover Sole which I started to try. However, I'm not that big on mango (we have none in the house) and really wasn't up to trying to make the sauce. So, using Bob's recipe as a starting point/inspiration, I Googled a few other stuffed sole recipes and modified them to make my own. Here's the result. Note: in going for stricter Paleo/Primal food I use tapioca starch instead of corn starch or flour for a thickener. I probably should have used coconut oil instead of butter but a man's got to know his limitations.

Ingredients:

Stuffing
• ½ pound cooked shrimp
• 1 T parsley
• 1 T herbs de Provence
• 3 shallots

Wine Sauce
• 1 T lemon juice
• 2 T thinly sliced green onions
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• ¼ c dry white wine

Sole
• 4 (6 ounce) fillets sole
• salt to taste
• ground black pepper to taste
• paprika to taste

Butter Sauce
• 2 T butter
• 1 T tapioca starch
• ¼ c dry white wine

Directions:

1. To make the stuffing, set aside twelve shrimp to use as garnish. Mince remaining shrimp and the shallots very fine. (I use a food processor.) Add herbs and parsley and mix well.

2. In a small bowl, combine lemon juice, green onion, garlic, and ¼ c wine. Set aside.

 3. Lay filets flat, and divide shrimp mixture evenly among them and pat down. Roll up the fillets around the shrimp mixture, and place in a baking dish. (Secure with toothpicks if necessary.) Season to taste with salt, pepper, and paprika. Place three shrimp atop each filet and pour wine sauce over the fish.

4. Bake at 350 F for 25 minutes.

5. When fillets are done, prepare the butter sauce. In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in tapioca starch. Transfer fish to serving platter. Pour pan juices into butter/tapioca starch mixture, add the remaining wine, cook and stir until thickened. Pour over sole, and serve.
















As you can see I only had three sole filets: that just meant they were a little more stuffed than they would have been otherwise. Some of the excess stuffing that fell out got sprinkled over the top and it came out just fine.

Moroccan Smoked Chicken

Joseph's turn to write!  (And yes, we're still on that Moroccan kick.  I made Moroccan Spiced Vegetables to go with this...)

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Today is the Excelsior Springs BBQ and Fly-In - a marvelous annual event where BBQers from all over converge on the town to compete for the Grand Championship. Here's the web page - http://bbqontherivercontest.com/

I really love this event, but Kate's knees can no longer do the kind of walking necessary to enjoy it. So I decided to break out my little smoker and have our own event. Given that the whole town is filled with traditional BBQ, I decided to opt for something different. Inspired by a recipe for Moroccan Grilled Salmon that I received this morning via e-mail from Paleo Recipe A Day, I adapted it to chicken. I used their spice recipe exactly:

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger or 1 1/2 teaspoons dried
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (I use sea salt)
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Mix together into a paste and spread on the chicken. On a grill this makes a crust but in the smoker it just kind of oozes around and flavors everything. I cut the back and the dorsal bone out of the chicken so it would lay flat - the same as you would do if you were going to grill it using a brick. But I just put it in the smoker and let it go. It took rather longer than I expected - almost four hours - but it was well worth the wait. We already ate half of it before Kate thought to take a picture, but here's the other half still in the smoker:



Tomorrow will be the Fly-In portion of the event, held at the Excelsior Springs Airport. We'll be having our monthly sketch crawl out there and I may try to catch a ride on one of the planes. We'll see...

A Fabulous Sweet Potato...salad-ish something or other!

So what do you do when you suddenly find yourself with three of the biggest sweet potatoes you've ever seen in your life?!?

My cousin Keith is a wonderful gardener, and he gave us some of the last of last year's crop--the vines are busily out there making MORE, even as I type!  (And as you noticed from our last post, I've got my OWN garden again this year...with sweet potatoes, along with other goodies...)

Well, coincidentally, one of my favorite blogs, Mark's Daily Apple featured Purple Primal Potato Salad just the other day, and it's Independence Day today but I'm avoiding regular potatoes, so it got me thinking...why not try one out as a salad--ish? (And no, I didn't end up following Mark's recipe at all...I just went wild!)

Keith's aren't purple, but they ARE organically grown and huge--they're crowding my kitchen!

I'm feeling Middle Eastern these days, loving that tangy-spicy-savory flavor, so I made it up as I went along--measurements are strictly approximate, depending on the size of your sweet potato(s) and your appetite.  It tastes like something you might order at the Blue Nile or the Marrakesh Cafe, in Kansas City.

Feeling adventurous?

You'll need:

Sweet potatoes
1/2 onion (I used sweet yellow onion)
Mayonnaise
Sea Salt
Coarse black pepper
Garlic salt
Turkish seasoning or your own Moroccan mix
Cinnamon (yes, cinnamon)
Sesame seed oil (toasted)
Imagination

Boil 1 huge or 3 smaller sweet potatoes till fork tender

Cool, peel and cube (or cube first and THEN cool till fork tender!)

Chop onion as fine as you like and add to sweet potato

Stir in 2 dollops of mayo (you know what a dollop is, right?  Bigger than a tablespoon, not so big as a half cup...)

A few shakes of sesame seed oil...this is mostly for the delicous nutty flavor

Add a good teaspoon of  Turkish Seasoning (I like Penzey's, but I also make my own Moroccan mix)--you can add more or less as you like

A nice shot of cinnamon...maybe 1/2 t. to start?

A good shake of garlic salt, more or less

Salt and pepper to taste

Now, mix all that up.  Add more Turkish Seasoning, cinnamon, garlic salt, whatever you like.

Refrigerate and then--dig in!

This gives you an idea how HUGE that thing was!  That's a big French chef's knife there, and a slice of normal-sized onion!

I was tempted to throw in a few raisins, but J. thought that might be a bit much.  I'm thinking some of his home made relish would be good, though...

I wasn't sure he'd like it, but he keeps going back for more tastes!