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I really, really needed all of that.
We also had Jolly and The G Man over for dinner last night, which I also needed. There’s nothing like a good dose of grandson to cheer a weary Meema up, I must say. We’d decided to grill burgers and serve them some sweet potato salad, on the premise that it would be a simple dinner. Except I’d had an idea rolling around in my head for, well, years really, and decided it was a good time to make the idea a reality.
If you ask me, Beloved, Oldest Son, Darling Daughter and The Young One what our Top 10 Favorite Films are, I can guarantee you that Pulp Fiction would be on each of our lists. It’s the film that vaulted John Travolta back into big-time fame, made Quentin Tarantino an A-list director and made me absolutely fall in love with Samuel L. Jackson. Roger Ebert once said the film was all about redemption, and I agree with that. Jules is my favorite character in the entire movie, and I love the fact that while he’s a Bad Ass Motherfucker, his redemption is also the most profound.
And I’ve wanted a Big Kahuna Burger ever since.
Despite the long list of ingredients, it was a simple dinner – these burgers come together really quickly, especially if you fry the bacon and plantains, and make the spicy sauce ahead of time. I didn’t put cheese on mine, but the rest of the family did so if you want to, a nice pepper cheese would probably be good. There’s also no lettuce on them, but that’s mostly because I had no large leaf lettuce in the house, so knock yourself out with some iceberg or butter lettuce if you like. You can also serve them on a bun, if you must, but even without it, this is still a tasty burger.
Note: This is not low calorie, low carb, or low fat. It is in no way, shape, form or fashion “diet” food, but it was made with grass-fed beef, the Better Than Miracle Whip was, of course, made with pastured eggs and all of the fruits and vegetables were as organic and sustainably raised as I could manage.
And sometimes, that’s good enough.
Big Kahuna Burger
| Big Kahuna Burgers |
|
- 2 pounds ground beef
- 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
- 1/3 cup fresh pineapple juice
- 1/3 cup wheat-free tamari or soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
- 6 thick slices pineapple
- 6 thick slices bacon
- 1/2 medium red onion, sliced
- 6 thick slices tomato
- 1 medium plantain
- 1 tablespoon ghee or butter
- 1/2 cup Better Than Miracle Whip
- 1/4 cup Asian chili sauce (Sriracha)
- 2 tablespoons cilantro, finely chopped
- In a large mixing bowl, thoroughly combine the ground beef, ginger, pineapple juice, tamari, red pepper flakes and black pepper. Pat into 6 patties; cover with plastic wrap and set aside.
- Cut the bacon slices in half and fry until crisp. Drain on a paper towel; keep warm and set aside.
- Melt the ghee or butter in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Slice the plantain on the bias into 12 pieces and fry until golden brown on each side. Remove from the heat, but keep warm, and set aside.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the Better Than Miracle Whip with the Sriracha and cilantro. Cover and set aside.
- Grill the burgers on a gas or charcoal grill using indirect heat, until medium – about 7 minutes per side. Grill the pineapple slices alongside the burgers over direct heat until golden with nice grill marks, about 3 to 4 minutes per side.
- Serve the burgers with the pineapple, plantain, bacon, onion, tomato and spicy sauce.
- Nutrition (per serving): 670 calories, 46.6g total fat, 136.6mg cholesterol, 1670.1mg sodium, 967.3mg potassium, 27.6g carbohydrates, 2.7g fiber, 16.7g sugar, 38.4g protein
Darling Daughter is teaching herself to play the ukulele. If you knew Darling Daughter, you’d know how entirely appropriate that is, which is why I bought her the instrument when she expressed an interest in it. The only question left to ask is how long it will take her to learn to play Black Dog.
You laugh.
Anyhoo, the first “outdoor” farmer’s market of the season was last Saturday and while Jeanie, The Fabulous Goat Cheese Lady was not there (her son got married last weekend), a friend was kind enough to come to the market in her place. There is always a lovely variety of cheeses there to sample and that was really my only plan – until I saw the new flavor.
Wasabi Sesame Chevre.
I let out a squeal that could shatter glass and immediately bought two 4-ounce rolls of it. It has the perfect balance of wasabi heat and just a touch of sesame flavor, all in Mackenzie Farms award winning cheese. After our purchase, Beloved asked, “What are you going to do with it?”
“Make a cheesecake, of course!” I replied. ‘Cause who wouldn’t want a savory wasabi cheesecake topped with maguro sashimi? Well, besides The Young One, who would rather eat barbecue chicken.
A couple of notes – while this is a very simple dish to assemble, it’s very rich so I’d serve it as an appetizer or perhaps as part of a buffet. It’s taken me and Beloved several days to go through half the cake, and it’s really not very big (but it is oh, so delicious). My cheesecake also came out a vivid yellow, because of the pastured eggs – the yolks of those babies are a deep, deep orange this time of year. If you use conventional eggs, I’m sure the results will be a little lighter.
Of course, I know not everyone has access to wasabi sesame goat cheese, so I approximated what seemed to be good amounts of wasabi powder and sesame oil for the recipe – if you make it, please let me know if either should be adjusted. The crust is just the nuts and coconut; I was going to add some melted ghee to it, but macadamia nuts are so high in fat that it seemed unnecessary. The crust is still a bit crumbly, so take care when serving if you’re going for presentation. I’d also added about half a teaspoon of salt to the crust, but between the saltiness of the cheese and the saltiness of the tamari I served with it, it just seemed a tad too much, so I left it out of the recipe. Feel free to add it back if you like.
Maguro is simply the Japanese name for a type of tuna sashimi – usually Ahi, which is a species of bluefin tuna.
Wasabi Cheesecake with Maguro
| Wasabi Cheesecake With Maguro |
|
- 8 ounces chevre or other soft goat cheese, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons wasabi powder, or to taste
- 1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup macadamia nuts, roasted
- 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
- 8 ounces raw sashimi-grade tuna
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Process the macadamia nuts in a food processor until very finely ground, almost a nut butter; scrape into a medium-size mixing bowl. Add the unsweetened coconut to the food processor and pulse several times, until it is very fine. Add the ground coconut to the bowl with the ground mac nuts and mix with your hands until very well combined. Press the mixture into the bottom and halfway up the sides of an 8″ pie plate. Set aside.
- In a large bowl of a stand mixer, beat the goat cheese, wasabi powder and sesame oil on high speed until smooth. Reduce the speed to medium and beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and continue mixing on medium until the mixture is smooth and lump-free.
- Pour the cheese mixture into the macadamia crust and smooth with a spatula. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the cheesecake to cool completely, then refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
- With a sharp knife, slice the tuna as thinly as possible. Cut the cheesecake into 12 wedges and carefully plate. Top each wedge with 2 or 3 slices of the raw tuna; serve with fish roe, gluten-free tamari or soy sauce and additional wasabi, if desired.
- Nutrition (per serving): 237 calories, 20.7g total fat, 46.9mg cholesterol, 92.8mg sodium, 157.9mg potassium, 4g carbohydrates, 2.5g fiber, 1.4g sugar, 10.5g protein
Like, for 8 hours straight.
I know; call me crazy but it’s what I wanted, so it’s what I did. I won’t tell you about everything I made – yet – but it included rhubarb, raisins, mustard greens, bacon, eggs, goat cheese, wasabi, macadamia nuts and coconut, just to name a few ingredients.
It also included almond flour, tapioca flour, fresh raspberries and an exquisite bar of high-quality, 70% dark chocolate. (Thank you, Alex, for the inspiration!)
Until the last few years, I’d always preferred milk chocolate; it’s a long-held prejudice from my childhood, probably because my mother disliked dark chocolate (she didn’t like frosted Pop Tarts, either, so even before, when I’d consider eating a Pop Tart, it was a nekkid one). My days of eating milk chocolate are behind me now, but I’ve learned to enjoy a good-quality dark chocolate. However, I personally find anything over 70% too be too bitter, so that’s what I used here.
I believe Beloved and I have a new favorite muffin; these were so unbelievably good that we couldn’t stay away from them – since it was Mother’s Day, I didn’t pay too much attention to calories or carbs and, frankly, cooked like a fiend and ate like a pig all day long. And I had a grand time doing it.
We especially enjoyed the muffins, which were just slightly sweet from the coconut sugar, delightfully tangy from the raspberries and decadently rich from the chocolate. So, so, so good.
I’ve had a problem lately with the baked goods I make solely with almond flour becoming soggy after a few hours, so I played around a little with cutting back on it and adding a small amount of tapioca flour, which is far more absorbent, and it worked quite well. The muffins were still a little “rustic” from the almond flour, but not as much, and they had more of the “springy” texture you’d expect from a conventional muffin. I have a feeling I’ll be working on changing the ingredients of the occasional baked good in the future.
Baked in a conventional-sized muffin tin, these are not huge but they don’t need to be; they’re quite satisfying if you’re not on a Mother’s Day cooking/eating binge. 
Seriously, though, this morning I had half a muffin with a hard-boiled egg and am quite full.
Note: The muffins in the photo didn’t rise as much as I’d have liked – probably because I forgot the baking soda like a big goof. Actually, I’m surprised they rose as much as they did; I wonder if it had anything to do with the tapioca flour. If anyone makes them as written, let me know if they rise satisfactorily for you.
Raspberry Dark Chocolate Muffins
| Raspberry Dark Chocolate Muffins |
|
- 1 1/4 cups almond flour
- 1/2 cup tapioca flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 cup coconut sugar
- 1/4 cup ghee or butter, melted
- 3 large eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 8 ounces raspberries
- 3 1/2 ounces high-quality dark chocolate, roughly chopped
- Preheat oven to 350 F. Generously grease a 1 dozen muffin tin.
- In a large bowl, combine the almond flour, tapioca flour, baking soda and coconut sugar. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, melted ghee and vanilla. Stir the wet ingredients into the almond flour mixture, beating lightly by hand with a wooden spoon, until thoroughly combined. Gently fold in the raspberries and chocolate.
- Divide the batter equally between the 12 greased muffin cups. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Allow the muffins to cool for 5 minutes before removing from the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature.
- Nutrition (per serving): 201 calories, 13.7g total fat, 56.9mg cholesterol, 72.7mg sodium, 179.8mg potassium, 14.9g carbohydrates, 3.6g fiber, 5.6g sugar, 2.5g protein.
It’s Friday and I’ve got a great big load of…nothing. Sorry, I’m just all blogged out this week.
However, this week’s Spin Cycle is all about “Mom” in honor of Mother’s Day this Sunday. It’s been awhile since I posted this, so for those of you who might not know, my mother was on The David Letterman Show in the late 80s. She died of a heart attack 15 years ago at the age of 51; I wish I’d known then what I know now about healthy diet.
If you want to know the story behind this video clip, click here. And have a great weekend, y’all.
Anyhoo, today’s recipe. If you’ve been reading here any time at all, you know I love a good barbecue sauce. My go-to recipe has been the Maple Barbecue Sauce since the first time I made it – it’s just so darn good. But I had meatloaf on the brain and some wonderful, fresh blackberries in the fridge (on sale for $1 a pint – you can’t beat that with a stick) so I decided to make a sauce that’s a little different. Different it is – differently delicious.
The original version of this recipe not only called for brown sugar, but suggested you puree all the ingredients before cooking the sauce; I’m not sure why, but the fact there is no butter suggests the author wanted to keep away from any fat in the recipe. Well, you know me – there are few recipes that can’t be helped with at least a little bit of healthy fat, so I decided to saute the onion and garlic in a little ghee; I thought that besides adding a little flavor from the ghee, it would also help soften the harshness of the onion and garlic to precook it.
Of course, I wasn’t going to use the brown sugar, either, so I substituted some coconut sugar instead – a mild-flavored honey would probably also work well. You need to assess the tartness/sweetness of your berries, too; if the berries are very sweet, you can reduce the amount of sweetener you use.
I didn’t strain the sauce I made, but The Young One, who loved the flavor of it, complained about the seeds so I suggest straining it through a fine-mesh sieve in the recipe.
If nothing else, it certainly is a pretty color, don’t you think?
Blackberry Barbecue Sauce
| Blackberry Barbecue Sauce |
|
- 1 tablespoon ghee or butter
- 1 small onion, peeled and diced
- 1 clove garlic, pressed
- 1 cup fresh blackberries (thawed, if using frozen)
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/3 cup coconut sugar
- 2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- salt and pepper, to taste
- Melt the ghee or butter in a medium skillet or saute pan over medium heat; cook the onion until soft and golden, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another minute more.
- Add the blackberries, water, sugar, ginger and pepper flakes to the pan and continue cooking, stirring frequently and mashing the blackberries with the spoon, for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the berries have broken down and the mixture is simmering well. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed.
- Transfer the mixture to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. If desired, strain the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve to remove the seeds. Sealed tightly in a clean jar, the sauce should last 2 weeks refrigerated.
- Nutrition (per serving): 30 calories, 1g total fat, 2.5mg cholesterol, <1mg sodium, 29.4mg potassium, 4.9g carbohydrates, <1g fiber, 3.9g sugar, <1g protein