Nopalitos Salad

From Nepalitos Salad

Ok, guys, it's been a couple weeks, but I'm back with a new quick and easy recipe to try. It's another chop 'n' mix type of side dish. I made fajitas again tonight, but wanted something exciting to put on top.

Nopales is the name of a cactus and when you chop them up into tiny pieces, you call them by their cuter name, nopalitos. It has a slimy texture that some might find off-putting, but a quick rinse in a strainer takes care of that. Check the Mexican food aisle at your grocer and I bet you'll find nopalitos in a jar or can.

Here are the ingredients:

From Nepalitos Salad

1 jar of RINSED nopalitos (2.99), 2-3 avocados (1.50), 3 tomatoes , 1 small red onion (0.25), 2 cloves of garlic(0.04), 1 jalapeño (0.05), a cup of cilantro (0.50), and the juice of 1-2 limes (0.16). That's $5.49 for enough salad to put on a few pounds of steak fajitas. Play with the proportions to your taste.

There isn't really much to tell you other than to rinse the nopalitos before you chop all of the ingredients and mix them together. It's like a chunky guacamole with pickled cactus.

From Nepalitos Salad

Chicken Tikka Masala

From Chicken Tikka Masala

Enjoy this recipe, because I'm going to try and cut down the dairy for a while. I feel like I've gotten a little out of control with the dairy lately and need to get it in check. This will be the last cowjuice hurrah for a while. This recipe makes some compromises adding up to about 10 grams of sugar being spread across 5 servings. That's 2 grams of sugar per serving, so be warned if you are sticking to a strickly paleo diet. There is also a lot of dairy in this recipe, but man, I just really wanted some Indian food, so I went with it.

Here is what you'll need: Yogurt, cumin, paprika, a clove of garlic, cilantro, 1 cup of cream, 1 can of tomato sauce, a jalapeno, cinnamon, cayenne, black pepper, ginger, and chicken thighs. I lost my receipt from the groceries, so no price breakdown today. Sorry everybody.

You'll need to marinate the chicken for a day to make it taste correctly, so make sure you plan this meal in advance. Combine the ingredients listed below the picture into a container and make sure as much of the chicken is covered in the marinade as possible.

From Chicken Tikka Masala

1 cup of yogurt, 1 tbs of lemon juice, 2 tsp of cumin, 1 tsp of cinnamon, 2 tsp cayenne, 2 tsp black pepper, and 1 tbs of ginger. Keep that covered for a day before moving on to the next step.

Place your marinated chicken on a broiler pan covered with foil. Trust me, use the foil. The marinade will carmelize and be a huge pain to clean if you don't. Put the chicken in the broiler for about 20 minutes, flipping them at the 10 minute mark.

From Chicken Tikka Masala

While that cooks, melt 1 tbs of in a large pan and sautee 1 clove of grated garlic and a chopped jalapeno (I kept the seeds in for heat) for a minute. When the garlic looks clear, add the tomato sauce, 1 cup of cream, 2 tsp of paprika, and 2 tsp of cumin and mix it together until it is one uniform consistency.

From Chicken Tikka Masala

By the time that's done your chicken should be about done. If not, turn the heat off of the sauce so it doesn't burn. Whenever your chicken is finished, cut it into bite size pieces and toss it in the sauce.

From Chicken Tikka Masala

From Chicken Tikka Masala

Let that simmer for a few minutes and then plate it up! This recipe is about 75% truly paleo, but man is it good. It's better than an all out cheat, so if you're into Indian food, give it a shot. Also, this dish is great with my cilantro chutney.

From Chicken Tikka Masala

Thai Soup: Tom Yung Goong

My fiance and I were fortunate enough to get to travel all around the world teaching English for a year. One of the countries we went to was Thailand and while there, I fell in love with a soup called "tom yung goong."

From Tom Yung Goon

It's a hearty coconut based curry soup. Don't leave yet! I don't usually care for coconut. I don't like pina coladas and I hate Mounds, but I love this soup. After a few weeks on a paleo plan, I realized that this soup was completely paleo from beginning to end, so I taught myself how to make it. This is a more involved recipe and takes a little time, making it a perfect weekend project.

Here is what I used:

From Tom Yung Goon

Let's start at 6:00: Cocounut milk (1.09), 1 chicken bouillon cube (0.10), 1 lb of chicken breast (2.99), 10 sprigs of cilantro (0.10), 3 limes, 1 yellow onion (0.60), 1/8 cup of tumeric (0.05), 2 tbs fish sauce (0.10), 1 tbs sesame oil (0.05), lemon grass (0.99), 1/2 a package of button mushrooms(1.15), cauliflower (1.39), and 2 jalapenos (0.17). not pictured: 1 tbs of coconut oil (0.15)

That's a total of 8.93 and I got 4 servings from this batch, so that's a total of about 2.23 per bowl.

This recipe seems really complicated, but it's really just a matter of getting everything in the picture above mixed in a pot and letting it boil for about an hour, so don't be intimidated!

The first thing you'll need to do is chop up the onions. Start simmering those with 1 tbs of coconut oil in a large pot.

From Tom Yung Goon

From Tom Yung Goon

While those sweat, deseed one jalapeno and half of the other. Leave the seeds in half of a jalapeno for some heat. If you don't like spicy food, get rid of all the seeds. Chop those and add them to the pot. Next, chop and add the mushrooms. Finally, throw a tbs of sesame oil on all of that and stir it up. As these release their water, they'll create a little stock for our soup.

From Tom Yung Goon

Next, roughly chop up the cauliflower and add that to the pot. Mix up your pot to make sure there is a little oil on most of the veggies so they don't burn. Make sure the heat is on low.

From Tom Yung Goon

Mix 1 cup of hot water with the chicken bouillon and add that to the pot.

From Tom Yung Goon

(You probably didn't need a picture of that....oh well)

As that comes to a boil, fry up your chicken breast and set it aside to rest.

From Tom Yung Goon

Next, we need to get some flavor from the lemon grass. If you can find fresh lemon grass, just cut it, bruise it (crush it), and add it to the pot. It isn't edible, so make sure you pull it out before serving. If, like me, you have a hard time finding fresh lemon grass, you'll need to buy it dried. I like to boil it in water for a couple minutes to release the flavor. I use an emptied tea bag so I don't have to look for 100 pieces of dried lemon grass in the soup. I used the same pan as the chicken, hence the chicken bits in the water.

From Tom Yung Goon

From Tom Yung Goon

From Tom Yung Goon

Once the water turns yellow, dump all of it into your pot.

Now, stir in a can of cocounut milk and 2 tbs of fish sauce (yes I know it stinks, but it adds necessary flavor). Next, add 1/8 of a cup of tumeric in small amounts, stirring it in as you go so it doesn't clump up. Tumeric will stain anything it touches, so be careful. If you aren't careful, you'll look like you washed your hands with French's mustard.

From Tom Yung Goon

Finally, zest the 3 limes into the soup and mix in the cilantro.

From Tom Yung Goon

It will be about an hour before it's ready. It needs to boil on low heat until the cauliflower is tender. While this batch was boiling, I found a tomato that was about to go bad, so I added that to the mix. I like to make soups towards the end of the week to help use up ingredients that may go bad.

It's been an hour. Here is what your finished product will look like.

From Tom Yung Goon

**When serving, stir in the juice of half of a lime and some fresh cilantro. This last step is the most important as it makes the soup taste fresh and cuts through all of that coconut fat.

This recipe is also made with seafood, so feel free to experiment and get back to me with the results!

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Pepper Crusted Tuna w/Spicy Mayo and Asian Asparagus

I worked as a bartender in a sushi restaurant after college for a couple years to help make ends meet. While working there, I fell in love with the 911 roll or Mexican roll. It was basically a spicy tuna roll with cilantro and extra sriracha (the rooster sauce). My fiancé brought a lot of those flavors to the meal she made tonight and she did it in a 95% paleo friendly way. The only compromises made were to use a tablespoon of soy sauce to get a much needed asian flavor into the asparagus and a tablespoon of sriracha for the spicy mayo. Stricter cavemen be warned; the tablespoon of sriracha has one gram of sugar. It's a super quick recipe that takes about 15 minutes to get put together. That being said, here is what we made tonight:

From Pepper Crusted Tuna with Spicy Mayo and Asian Asparagus

Here is what you need:

From Pepper Crusted Tuna with Spicy Mayo and Asian Asparagus

Starting at 6 o'clock and going clockwise: tuna, asparagus, pepper, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sriracha, mayo, and cilantro

Start off by mixing 1 tbs of sriracha with 3 tbs of mayo. You can make homemade paleo mayo. Here is a link showing you how. If not, a couple tbs of mayo aren't going to break the overall diet.

From Pepper Crusted Tuna with Spicy Mayo and Asian Asparagus

Next, take your tuna steaks and cover them in coarsely ground black pepper. Throw them on a grill and wait until you get about a half of an inch of white color on each side before pulling them off. I like my tuna rare. Obviously, if you don't feel the same way, cook your tuna more.

From Pepper Crusted Tuna with Spicy Mayo and Asian Asparagus

From Pepper Crusted Tuna with Spicy Mayo and Asian Asparagus

That's it for the protein. Now throw your asparagus on the grill. If you can find skinny enough asparagus, you won't need to boil them before grilling. If you get some really thick asparagus, you may need to boil it for a few minutes beforehand. Drizzle some olive oil over the asparagus and add a couple cloves of garlic and about a two inch cube of ginger. My fiancé chose to grate them with the omnipotent microplane. When the asparagus looks about finished, drizzle about a tablespoon of that evil but tasty soy sauce over the asparagus and finish with fresh ground pepper.

From Pepper Crusted Tuna with Spicy Mayo and Asian Asparagus

From Pepper Crusted Tuna with Spicy Mayo and Asian Asparagus

OK, slice up your tuna into thin slices, toss some spicy mayo on top and cut up some cilantro over the fish. I like to use scissors to cut up the cilantro. It's a lot less messy. Throw the asparagus on the plate and you're good to go. This fed two of us and we kept the cost to about $10. Good luck getting 2 spicy tuna rolls for that price let alone an entire healthy paleo meal!

From Pepper Crusted Tuna with Spicy Mayo and Asian Asparagus