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!

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 when you grill. 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...

Simple pleasures...

 

Not only did I enjoy PAINTING the interesting little thing that looked like it was right out of The Jetsons, but the eggs taste great, too...

He'd told me about this thing for years...I was delighted he finally found an affordable one on eBay.  But I'll let Joseph share about this in his own words!

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Ya gotta wonder...

…about the elegantly beautiful inventions from the past that are no more. Why did they become extinct? What stupid business decision caused them to be “improved” out of existence?

Behold the Sunbeam E2 Egg Cooker.




Prick the narrow end of up to a half-dozen eggs with the needle inside the lid (to keep them from exploding), measure the amount of water you need for the desired hardness (using either the graded levels inside the lid or, if you want to be really precise, the plastic measuring dohicky on the top), pour the water in, add the eggs, put the lid on, and turn it on. When the water inside the unit is steamed away, your eggs are done to perfection. A heat sensitive metal contact trips the electric switch to the off position with a loud click. Kate nearly jumped out of her skin the first time this happened!

My mom had one of these, probably from when it first came out in 1954. It was in her kitchen cupboard up until around the time she passed away. Whether she gave it to someone, or it got moved to some other place in the house, garage or storage shed, or someone simply walked off with it, remains unknown. But courtesy of eBay I now have a replacement.

I love soft-boiled eggs but I have never had the patience to sit beside the stove with a timer to get them done properly, probably because I grew up with this marvelous device. I’m happy to have one in our kitchen once again.

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Gotta love those simple pleasures, too...