Pan Seared Ahi Tuna with a Cilantro Ginger Slaw

This is a delicious and healthy lunch or dinner dish that is super simple to prepare. You will love it!!!

Prep Time: 10 min

Cook Time: 6 min

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

• 2 Ahi tuna steaks (I like to do about a 4-5 oz steak).
• 2 cups Green cabbage, shredded
• 2 cups Purple cabbage, shredded
• 2 TBS Pickled ginger
• 3 TBS Cilantro, chopped rough
• 1 TBS Black sesame seeds
• Salt and pepper
• Coconut oil

Dressing for slaw

• 1 tsp Sesame oil
• 1 tsp Agave nectar
• 1 TBS Yuzu juice
• 2 TBS Rice wine vinegar
• 1 tsp Wasabi paste

Instructions:

1. Wash Ahi and pat dry, season with salt and pepper. Place in fridge while you prep slaw.
2. Mix cabbage, cilantro, sesame seeds, and ginger in a medium mixing bowl. Place in fridge.
3. Mix up slaw dressing and reserve, dress right before serving.
4. In medium to large skillet heat 1 tsp of coconut oil on medium high.
5. Sear tuna for about 3 min on each side, at the end of the second side sear the edges quickly- serve rare.  You can always cook longer but do not over cook! You want it to be pink in the middle. 🙂
6. Place tuna on top of dressed slaw salad! Serve with anything else you like, I did sweet potato gnocchi!

Pizza Pizza! Chicken, Broccoli Greens, and Shallot Pizza

I have decided that I will post a new pizza recipe every week! Since I love pizza and love experimenting with different options this will be a great way to do it 🙂 Pizza just may be one of my favorite things, just maybe… I’m also in LOVE with broccoli greens…

Prep: 1 hr

Cook Time: 20-25 min

Serves: 2-3

Ingredients:

Toppings

• 1 Chicken breast, sliced into somewhat of  medallions, cooked in your fav herbs.
• 8 oz Fresh Mozzarella, sliced into medallions.
• 1-2 Shallots, sliced
• 1 Bunch of broccoli greens, take stems off and wash leaves and pat dry.
• Olive oil, about 3 TBS
• Salt, pepper, fine herbs (whatever you like).
• 1/4 C. Parmigiano reggiano, the GOOD stuff!

Crust/Dough

• 1 (1/4 ounce) Package active dry yeast
• 1 C. Warm water
• 1 TBS. Sea salt
• 2 tsp Olive oil
• 2 1/2-3 1/2 cups Bread flour
• 1/4 C. Cornmeal

Instructions:

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water in warmed bowl.
2. Add sea salt, olive oil, and 2 1/2 cup flour.
3. Attach bowl and dough hook, turn to speed 2 and mix 1 minute.
4. Continuing on speed 2, add remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until dough clings to dough hook and cleans sides of bowl. Knead on speed 2 for 5 minutes. If making 2 pies split dough into 2 balls.
5. Place in greased bowl, turning to grease top.
6. Cover, let rise in warmest place in house away from draft until doubled in bulk (about 1 hour).
7. Punch dough down each ball.
8. Roll out dough as you like and place on your cooking surface. (stone, tin, pan, etc.)
   To Top: lay down oil, herbs, sprinkle with salt and pepper, lay down brocolli greens, mozzarella, shallots, chicken, and sprinkle with parm.
   Bake for 20-25 min until bubbly and golden!
   
   Cheers!

Bison and Venison Meatballs with a Roasted Beet Salad Dressed with a Yuzu Poppy Agave Dressing

One of my new years resolutions was to be more aware of where ALL of my food comes from. Over the past few years I have really begun to notice little things here and there that are just not quite right with the food that’s out there on grocery shelves. I have always been a label reader and have made conscious decisions about what I purchase but even then I find myself surprised in the results of companies that are clearly being deceitful. For instance the other day I decided I would boil some eggs to have as a snack for last week with lunch… When boiling them, my “brown” (supposedly cage free) eggs starting peeling off this brown paint like film- it was then apparent that these eggs have been bleached and then dyed brown to look more natural… REALLY?!? Is that what the consumer is paying about $1.50-$2.00 extra for? WOW…

There are so many mis-labled food items out there whether it be “Organic” (theres are so many variations of ‘Organic’), “All Vegetarian Diet” (Lot’s of GMO corn counts), “Free-Range” (free to roam in there 5×5 pen with other chickens), “Fat Free” (may as well replace that term with 50+ ingredients, 40 of which you cannot even give a definition for), and my all time favorite “All Natural” this is the biggest crock of shit term ever coined whether it’s on human food or animal food! I recently bought some “All Natural” dog  jerky treats that I come to find out were made in China and are killing dogs due to the way the process the chicken… I could go on and on. The best thing you can do is educate yourself and make educated purchases when it comes to you and your families food.

So I have decided the best way to be aware of what I eat is by shopping local as much as possible and staying away from processed food items when at all possible. In Austin we are lucky to have so many great Farmer’s Markets at our dispense selling everything under the sun. I used to do workshare for Johnson’s Backyard Farm last year where I’d work for 5 hours and then get a large share of veggies. I really liked being a part of where the food I eat comes from! So now that I’ve moved to Lago Vista I just went ahead and became a member of the farm so I can pick up my produce on weekends! It’s really good to eat seasonally and locally – it tastes better, you know where your food was grown, and you support your community.

Click here to join the Johnson’s Backyard Farm

I’m going to share a recipe with you that uses nothing but fresh organic food and humanely processed meats. I hope you enjoy!

Prep: 20

Cook Time: 1 hr 30 min

Serves: 4

Meatball Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb venison sausage, ground (Thanks Liz and Kyle, I love you and your love for good food).
• 1/2 lb bison, ground
• 2 C. whole wheat bread crumbs ( I made my own bread, served the rest with dinner and took the neighbors a loaf).
• 1 shallot, minced
• 1 TBS. fresh parsley
• 5 large spinach leaves, chiffonade
• 1 green onion, chopped (the whole the green and scallion).
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 1 farm fresh egg
• 1 TBS butter

As a side note….Fennel would go great in these meatballs as well, I always do sausage and fennel so I wanted to do something different this time.

Instructions:

1. Pre-Heat Oven to 350 F.
2. Mix everything from above together minus the butter. Form into 10-12 balls.
3. Heat large skillet with butter on medium high, cook for 2 min on each side, browning the balls on most sides. 5-8 min
4. Transfer to oven for 10-15 min or until cooked through.

Roasted Beet Salad with Poppy Yuzu Agave Dressing Ingredients:

• 3 Large beets with leaves on top, cleaned and peeled and chopped into medium bite sized pieces.
• Beet leaves, washed and vein trimmed out. (Don’t throw these out, these are so good, they taste like a denser, sweeter spinach!)
• 1 Large shallot, sliced.
• 4 Garlic cloves, leave whole

Dressing

• 2 TBS Yuzu juice (this is one of my newest cooking “MUST HAVES”).
• 1 TBS clementine juice
• 1 TBS lemon juice
• 1 TBS agave nectar
• 1 TBS shallot, minced
• 2 TBS apple cider vinegar
• 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 1/8 tsp. pepper
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp poppy seeds
• 2 TBS. Olive oil
• Mix all of the above and chill while beets cook.

Instructions:

1. Preheat Oven to 375 F.
2. Place beets, shallots, and garlic into a glass baking dish. Drizzle lightly with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Just until coated evenly. Bake for 40-50 min or until soft and starting to turn golden.
3. Cool for 30 min or so.
4. Place beets on greens and toss with dressing.

Serve with warm bread and butter.

Coming soon: My BEST pizza to date:  Brussel Spout, Bacon, and Shallot Pizza with homemade dough!

Seoul, South Korea WOW!

hello – 안녕하세요 (annyeonghaseyo)

Well sorry for the slight delay in posting, we’ve been very busy! We’ve had a fantastic time eating, sightseeing, and even with our LUCK! I’ll briefly touch on all of these and then I’m off to visit a palace!

The Food:

Well we started eating differently on the plane. On our way to Seoul from Tokyo we got an interesting “club sandwich”. It was 2 white breads with a wheat bread in the middle, on the top layer was and egg like substance, then a roast beef like slice (just 2), and then american

cheese….Now for the good stuff:

We went to a place called Din Fung for dim sum and had plenty of soup dumpling, regular dumplings, kimchi (it’s served with every meal), sauteed baby bok, and tea. It was all very good and 100 times better than anything in America! They also hand made all of the dumplings and noodles in a kitchen you could see in while eating so that was really cool!Then we had Indian at Asia Luna, all very good at SPICY! (this is where I discovered that the Men’s and Women’s restrooms in public are in the same room…).

Next thing on the list was Bibimbap and Bulgogi:

The word literally means “mixed meal.” Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste). A raw or fried egg and sliced meat (usually beef) are common additions. The ingredients are stirred together thoroughly just before eating.^[2] It can be served either cold or hot. Bulgogi (Korean pronunciation: [bulɡoɡi]) is a Korean dish that usually consists of marinated barbecued beef, although chicken or pork may also be used.

This was typical Korean fare an very tasty!!! I really liked this a lot and was anxious for my first real Korean dish! The one thing I really love so far about Korean fare is everything comes with sides and different sauces.

We had some random snacks and drinks here and there like:

Ho-tteok is a variety of filled Korean pancake, and is a popular street food of South Korea. It is usually eaten during the winter season. It was very sweet.

Kimbab, which is like sushi rolls but with veggies and a minimal amount of meat and some other things I have no idea what they were…(sorry no picture, I forgot).

Soju (Hangul 소주; Hanja 燒酒) is a distilled beverage native to Korea. Its taste is comparable to vodka, though often slightly sweeter due to the sugars added in the manufacturing process, and more commonly consumed neat. This was super cheap and pretty potent, we had a small bottle a local bar with our Cass beer and it was “interesting” kind of rice like wine with vodka in it. Haven’t had another bottle since but not ruling it out…

Kings Dessert: This is good entertainment and these guys really ham it up for the Americans! See vide0

We also had Korean BBQ: which was awesome! We had pork and beef, both equally good! You cook it up yourself and then dip it in the according sauces, all served with several sides of course! EVERYONE here was smoking and drinking Soju, we were the last people that made it in then they started turning people away because they were “full”. Apparently in Korea there’s no “waiting” for a table even though they seem to “wait” for EVERYTHING else… especially subways! While I’m on the subway topic, if you like your “personal space” you absolutely DON”T have it in Korea, think sardines and then throwing another 20 in the same can! You’re lucky if you get in and even luckier if you can get off at times. Every once in a while we would get a seat but not often. Out of 25 million Korean’s- it feels like probably 99% take public transportation to get around.

The Sights:

So far we have seen a lot:

The Bongenus Temple, Namdaemun Market, The Express Bus Terminal (loads and loads of shopping), Nseoul Tower, The National Museum, Insadong artsy area, The Coex, and more. I will go into more detail later on these…Now for the LUCKY ODDS part!

I looked this stat up and from what I found 5.6 million people use this subway on average a day, wow! It’s almost nauseating how many people are running around all the time! Well yesterday we were heading home on the Subway and we happened to run in to an old friend from San Marcos that we knew when we were in college, she used to date my old roommate… We had joked several times: “I wonder if we will run into Kay?” WELL… we did! It was absolutely amazing! We were in total shock! Seoul’s subway is the 3rd largest in the world! We’re meeting up with her next Thursday!

We leave for Thailand tomorrow! Stay tuned!