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Dairy-free, Export, Gluten-free, Grain-free, No sugar, Nut-Free, Paleo

Greek Spiced Flank Steak Bites

It’s time to finalize the Christmas menu! Add some extra festive flare to your party with these colorful bites. Allergen friendly hor d’oeuvres can be hard to come by. My pre-paleo staples were hummus, cheese & crackers and flatbread pizzas, which are far outside my current diet. These little steak bites are a great crowd pleaser and free of most common allergens.

Flank steak is easy to marinade and one of the more inexpensive cuts of beef. Be careful not to overcook it. The meat will become too chewy to enjoy. For extra spice flavor, let the steak marinate overnight.

Makes 2 dozen steak bites.

Steak Marinade

1 lb flank steak
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp garlic – minced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon paprika

Vegetables
2 red bell peppers – sliced
2 green bell peppers – sliced
1 yellow onion – sliced
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 tsp salt

►Whisk together all marinade ingredients. Place steak in a baking dish and coat thoroughly on all sides. Cover and marinate for two hours in the fridge.

►Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Coat baking pan with coconut oil. Toss onion and peppers with salt and spread out into pan. Cook for 15 minutes.

►Remove steak from marinade and discard. Heat a large cast iron frying pan on high heat. Melt 1 tbsp coconut oil. Place steak in pan. Let sear 2-3 minutes, until browned. Then using tongs, flip steak and sear on other side for 2-3 minutes.
►Turn off the heat and move your pan to another cool burner. Let the steak sit in the pan for 5-10 minutes so it can continue to cook a bit.
(120°F for very rare, 125°F for rare, or 130°F for medium rare. Flank steak is best rare to medium rare.)
►Remove steak to a cutting board and allow to rest for 10 minutes before cutting. Leave the juices in the pan.
►Slice the steak very thin, against the grain so you cut through the tough long muscle fibers. This prevents the meat from being chewy.

►Go back to the pan and scrap up all the browned bits. Throw in 2 tbsp of water and heat over high heat. Stir together until juices thicken a bit, about 3 minutes. Use this as sauce for the steak.

To assemble the bites.
►Take1 slice of each pepper and onion, then spiral the steak around them. Repeat this until all steak strips are used. You can use toothpicks to secure them. Serve plain or drizzled with the steak sauce.

Dairy-free, Export, Gluten-free, Grain-free, No sugar, Nut-Free, Paleo, Raw

Chopped Greek Salad

My grandmother is Greek and Polish. Her Greek side always dominated in the family though. So you’d think I would have grown up eating delicious Mediterranean food, but sadly she wasn’t gifted with the domestic goddess gene. She could make three good dishes, moussaka, baklava and Greek salad. At major family gatherings we only entrusted her with the salad. She added a colorful variety of chopped vegetables and a yummy lemon olive oil dressing. I always looked forward to it.

In Greece, a salad is served with every meal. The trendy Mediterranean diet rises above the rest of the fads. It actually recommends eating real, whole foods and healthy fats at every meal. All of your foods are working for you.

Colorful foods used throughout Mediterranean cooking combats the aging process. More color equals more antioxidants. We’re exposed to free radical damage every moment of our lives, the air we breath and even sunlight generates free radicals. These wreak havoc on our bodies, damaging the fragile fats in each cell leading to less resiliency. Free radicals speed up the aging process. That’s where antioxidants swoop in to save the day. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals, stopping harm in it’s tracks.

Antioxidants are best received from food. Plants contain hundreds of compounds which work in unknown ways. The science needed to discover them doesn’t exist yet, so it’s impossible to bottle them in supplement form. We simply don’t have the formula to recreate all that a plant feeds us. Antioxidants are made up of hundreds of elements and supplements only contain one to ten of these isolated components. Just one fruit of vegetable can contain more than 150 compounds. A famous study, the CARET study, showed that antioxidant supplements actually cause more harm in the body, offering little benefit. Dr. Michael R. Eades puts it perfectly, “It’s almost always better to pop the plant than to pop the pill.”

The recipe is as simple as it gets. With an abundance of antioxidants and healthy fat, you could eat a variation of it every day for a nutrition boost. Throw some fish on top and you have a complete meal.

Makes 6 servings.

2 cups zucchini – chopped
1 cup carrots – chopped
2 cups tomatoes – seeded and chopped
1 1/2 cups avocado – chopped
1 cup cucumber – seeded and chopped
1/2 cup Kalamata olives
1/4 cup feta – crumbled (optional)

Dressing
juice of 1 lemon – about 1/4 cup
1 tsp coarse sea salt
2 cloves garlic – minced
3 tbsp olive oil

►In a large bowl, whisk together lemon, garlic, sea salt and then drizzle in olive oil.
►Toss zucchini, carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, avocado and olives together with the dressing in the bowl. Add in feta just before serving.

Resources:

Risk factors for lung cancer and for intervention effects in CARET, the Beta-Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8901853

Protein Power Life Plan, Drs. Michael R. and Mary Dan Eades, http://www.proteinpower.com/books.htm

Dairy-free, Export, Gluten-free, Grain-free, Nut-Free, Paleo

Balsamic Bacon Fig Jam

I attended a grand, Southern wedding this fall with a buffet selection to make a bacon lover weak in the knees. There were four rooms of buffet tables and every single dish involved bacon. Candied bacon, peppered bacon, bacon wrapped potatoes, bacon mac & cheese, bacon shrimp and grits, and even the vegetable dishes were cooked in bacon grease. I think I even heard some guests squeal. All that food posed a predicament though. So much deliciousness and not enough stomach space.

My husband and I must have eaten a pound of bacon each that night. I don’t recommend this. We felt less than optimal the next day and we didn’t have one sip of alcohol. How do you say no to bacon though?! It’s nearly impossible.

I believe in real bacon. None of that sorry imitation turkey stuff. Thick, juicy pork fat. Bacon from happy hogs is preferable too, pastured pigs raised humanely in a natural environment.

The bacon feast inspired me to take the fatty meat to a new level. Balsamic Bacon Fig Jam was born.

Makes 2, 12 ounce jars.

4 pieces thick bacon
4 cups of onions – chopped
1 tsp salt
7 fresh figs – chopped
1 tbsp maple syrup
½ tsp black pepper
dash of cayenne pepper
½ tsp fresh rosemary or 1 large sprig
¼ cup water
1 ½ tbsp balsamic vinegar

►Heat a dutch oven over medium high heat and cook bacon until crispy, about 10 minutes. Move bacon to a cooling rack and let the grease drip off into a bowl. Pour ¾ of the bacon grease from pan and leave the rest. Reserve the extra grease for other cooking.
►Sauté the onions in bacon grease over medium heat. Sprinkle in the salt, cooking until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in figs, maple syrup, black pepper, cayenne and rosemary.
►Once bacon has cooled, chop into small pieces. Add to the pot with water and stir together. Cook for 10-15 minutes until a thick, jam consistency forms.
►Remove from heat and stir in the balsamic vinegar.
►Keep refrigerated in a glass mason jar. Serve as an appetizer with fresh chopped veggies or as an accompaniment to pork, chicken or eggs.

*Recipe loosely based on Chef John’s Bacon Jam.