I'm embarking on a Paleo journey and I'm posting all of my thoughts and ideas to this blog. I'll have recipes, links, articles, and just general thoughts about the whole paleo lifestyle.
As I said in my last recipe, I'm really trying to cut back on the dairy. I feel I've been a little to lax, starting to venture more towards Atkins territory than a paleo or primal way of eating. So this recipe is an attempt to get back to basics.
Let's start with the Mediterranean salad. You'll get better flavor if you let it marinate for a while, so I made mine a couple hours beforehand.
You'll need 20 grape tomatoes, 1 handful of chopped parsley 1/4 of a red onion, 2 cloves of grated garlic, 4 oz of sliced black olives, 1 cucumber, 1 tbs of lemon juice, 2 tbs of olive oil, salt, and black pepper. Basically, you just chop everything up and mix it in a bowl. Add the salt and pepper to your taste. It took about 5 minutes to make.
A quick tip - When working with the chopped parsley, put it in the bottom of your mixing bowl and place the lamb on top. Chopped parsley has a way of getting everywhere, making a huge mess. It looks like an Italian Rip Taylor came through your kitchen. (Wait for the 20 second mark)
Mix up all the ingredients really well. If you leave big clumps of garlic, it might burn and get really bitter. If it's spread out evenly, the fat from the lamb will help infuse the meat with the garlic flavor. I like a good crust on my lamb, so I decided to make little lamb "balls" so I could get the most surface area possible, ensuring as much crust as possible.
Grill them until you're happy with how they look and plate everything up! You should be able to get about 3 or 4 servings with this recipe, depending on your appetite.
I've been excited about making this all week. Stick with me with the pictures, I didn't get everything photographed because I usually start off with a general idea about how to make a dish then make stuff up as I go.
Starting at the pepper grinder going clockwise: Pepper, 2 lbs of button mushrooms(4.00), olive oil (0.25), green olives (0.85), capers (0.10), anchovy paste (optional) (0.05), black olives (1.39), parsley (0.10), 5 garlic cloves (0.10), 85/15 grassfed beef (5.99), 1/4 lb of feta cheese (1.08), *not pictured 1/8 of a yellow onion (0.30), and red pepper flakes (0.02). That's a total of 14.23 for 4 servings @ $3.56 each.
Before starting, go ahead and get your oven preheated to 375. Start by removing the stems from the mushrooms. They should come out easily. Be careful to not break the mushroom caps as you'll want them to catch all the tasty beef juices later.
Put a little olive oil in your hand and dip each mushroom cap in your hand. This step may not be necessary, but it's something I decided to do. Like I said, I make this stuff up as I go. Next, lay out all your mushrooms on a cooking sheet with some parchment paper or foil underneath.
After that, I mixed my beef with 4 grated garlic cloves, 1/8 (1 slice) of an onion, a few shakes of red pepper flakes, and black pepper. Make sure you slice the onion up as fine as you can. If the chunks are too large, it will make the beef watery and it will fall apart. We want it to stay in one big clump on top of the mushrooms.
Portion out the meat and cover each mushroom. 1 lb of beef portioned into balls a little smaller than golf balls worked pretty well for me. When they're all covered, you can put them in the oven at 375 for about half an hour. Remember, your oven is different from mine, so check after 25 minutes and see if they look finished and adjust your time from there.
Now, for the tapenade. Tapenade is a kind of like an olive and caper relish. It's super easy to make. It's a chop 'n' mix topping. Mix 4 oz of drained black olives (I got mine prechopped), 4 oz of drained and chopped green olives (I used the black olive can to measure 4 oz), a small bunch of parsley, 20 capers, and a clove of grated garlic. You may want to add a little olive oil to help keep everything moist. I used about a tablespoon. If you want, you can add a couple drops of anchovy paste or an anchovy fillet. I know a lot of people hate anchovies, so I kept it optional. Also, if you have basil, you can add basil to tapenade as well. It depends on what herbs you like.
When the mushrooms are finished, they should be releasing some delicious beef juices onto the feta, softening the cheese up. Plate the mushrooms up with some tapenade and eat up!
