Friday, March 25, 2016

Our Reverse Sear Experiment

My sweet husband knows how much I love to experiment and "play" with food.  He discovered some YouTube videos that talked about a process called Reverse Sear. With this process you use low heat to cook your meat and then finish it off with a sear instead of the other way around.  Of course I got excited about it as soon as he shared it with me.  Off we went to our local meat market to buy a steak.  I found a boneless ribeye with about a one inch thickness.  We brought it home and I prepared a small sheet pan with foil and a wire rack.  I then rubbed the steak with a little avocado oil and sprinkled it with Butt Rub.

This also gave me a chance to try out my new iGrill thermometer (it worked great, by the way).

I set the oven to 250℉, inserted the probe into the center of the steak, and set the end temperature on the Thermometer to 130℉ (we like our steak medium rare).  Once the target temperature was reached I removed the pan from the oven and let the meat rest for 10 minutes.  At this point, the steak looked a bit anemic but our final step was to sear.


I put a small amount of coconut oil into a large cast iron skillet and heated it until it was piping hot.  I added the steak and seared each side until it released from the pan.  Since it had already rested, I served it immediately.


It turned out both beautiful and delicious!  Notice that the center is evenly cooked with a uniform color from top to bottom.  The original method usually produces layers from brown to red and back again. Also, there was no loss of juices like you would typically see.

In addition to our fantastic steak, a friend had given me some asparagus from her garden.  Actually I need to call her my BFF because I LOVE asparagus (Thanks, Don Ann)!  I sautéed them in the same iron skillet before cooking the steaks.   Add a sweet potato and you have a colorful plate.



Now, stop everything!!! Run to the store and get a nice piece of grass-fed meat to try this on.  You won't be sorry!

Happy Eating!

Chef Nana

Thursday, March 10, 2016

My Sweet Tooth

I've had a very unPaleo wish for sweets lately so it was a great opportunity to try some recipes from a new book I recently purchased, Clean Eating with a Dirty Mind, by Vanessa Barajas.


Brownies are the preferred guilty pleasure at our house and I am constantly searching for the perfect brownie.  This book has one of the best brownie recipes ever!  I knew it was a winner when my adult son came for a visit and attacked the brownies with gusto and declared that they reminded him of the ones I used to make when he was a kid.  The kicker was that he never even guessed that they were Paleo, but "Shhh", don't tell him.  Anyway, Vanessa named them Better than Box Brownies and they are found on page 110 of her book.  The recipe isn't on her website, but that alone is worth the price of the book.



Since we were still on a chocolate binge, my next project involved trying her Flourless Double Chocolate Chip Cookies from page 298.  My first effort was an epic fail that resulted in very heavy cookies.  We actually threw them away.  I still felt like they had potential so I sent an e-mail to Vanessa and asked her for suggestions.  She was unbelievably responsive and offered some suggestions that I took to heart on my second attempt.  This time they turned out very chocolatey, dense and delicious.  I was so impressed with how user-friendly she was.  The problem was with the chef and choice of chocolate and not the recipe.  This one is also not on her website but I would definitely encourage you to buy her book.  She has a number of recipes on the web and has a nice index of recipes.  After I work my way through her book, I'll have to try them.  I'm sure they'll be equally tasty.

I was still on a mission to get a different Paleo chocolate cookie experience so I decided to work on creating what I was looking for.  This, of course, required much recipe testing and trial and error so sadly (lol) we had to taste a lot of cookies.  I'm going to share what I finally came up with and hope you enjoy it too.


Happy Eating!!!

Friday, March 4, 2016

Oh What a Beautiful Morning!!!


Once again I've been "off the grid" for a while.  I've completed 30+ days of my Whole 30 and will continue to eat mostly W30 compliant. I plan to occasionally allow some non-compliant, but Paleo, foods for the sake of staying with this long term.  We typically take one or two extended trips to Europe each year and one of my biggest challenges is enjoying all the food experience without going totally away from the things that I know make me feel my best.  While I've been incommunicado,  I've been saving material for this and future posts.

Paleo/W30 Facebook groups often include questions regarding what to eat for breakfast.  I happen to love eggs (particularly the beautiful farm eggs I've been buying from a local man), but many people don't share my feelings about eggs.


I love the varying colors of the farm eggs and the beautiful orange yolks.

This post is intended to give you some ideas about what a Paleo/W30 breakfast can be.  Looking back through my pictures, it is hard to find one of my breakfasts without eggs but I frequently just eat whatever leftovers I have.  As long as it includes enough protein I don't add eggs.  Here are a few I've eaten recently.

Egg roll in a bowl
Sautéd Spinach and Cherry Tomatoes with Curry Sauce (from
another dish) and two steamed eggs




Leftover Beef Stew



Sauerkraut, Tomatoes, Roast Beef
Eating Paleo breakfasts is simply a matter of changing your preconceived ideas about what breakfast food is.  Use your imagination.  The sky is the limit.  Anything goes.