The Cook & The Coach Blog

Paleo Cream of Asparagus Soup

5/18/2016

This dish was totally inspired by leftovers. To be honest a lot of the meals we make are throw together at the last minute. We try our best to just keep healthy ingredients in our fridge, freezer and pantry. Then I (Dan) find inspiration either from Pinterest, Google, a random cooking show or something I've made before to dictate what we eat. I'm not the most creative person when it comes to other things, but food, that's my jam - pun intended!

Seriously this soup was so easy to make and you could easily scale it up if you wanted to make it for a larger group. Like most soups the key to flavor is using a flavorful broth/stock and letting it simmer for a long time. I recently made up a batch of chicken stock in our pressure cooker. Homemade stock makes a huge difference in my opinion both in flavor and quality of ingredients. I probably need to write up a post about our stock recipe. Very simply we just add water, old chicken bones, carrot, celery, onion, garlic, bay leaf, thyme, apple cider vinegar, peppercorns and a little salt into our pressure cooker. We pressure cook it for about 3 hours and it turns out great!

We hope you enjoy this soup! We always love to hear if you try out our recipes, so if you give it a try, drop us a comment on the post or shoot us a message.

Ingredients

1 cup of asparagus, we used leftover grilled asparagus. You could use raw
1 can of coconut milk
2-3 cups of broth depending on how thick you like your soup, we used chicken but if you wanted it to be a vegan dish you could use veggie broth
1 tbsp onion powder, or you could use 1 small onion diced - we were out
2 tsp garlic garlic powder, you could use 2-3 cloves of garlic, I was on a powder kick since I didn't have onion
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp of olive oil

Directions

If you are using whole onion and garlic, saute that first in a saucepan with a little olive oil for a few minutes to soften.
If you are powdered onion and garlic, add everything to a saucepan and simmer for 30 minutes.
Add all the ingredients to a blender, be careful if you have a blender that isn't vented that you remove the top circle piece and cover with a towel. The steam needs to come out somewhere otherwise you have a huge mess and potential burns.
Return the blended soup to the saucepan and simmer as long as you would like. We simmered for about 22 minutes. I know that because I did my 22 Minute Hard Corps workout.
At this point season if needed. We needed a little more salt and I added some more broth because it had reduced a little too much.
Drizzle with a little olive oil and enjoy!

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Grilled Romaine and Steak Salad

5/4/2015

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If you are a man's man and the only way you would ever eat salad is if it was grilled and has red meat, this is the salad for you. No man would or should ever be ashamed of eating a salad like this.

The idea for this salad totally belongs to a former coworker of mine, Eric Simpson. He is the executive chef and at the golf club I used to work at and was always coming up with super tasty food. Recently I was back out there with some family and someone ordered his version of this salad and it just looked tasty. I actually never tasted it but just got a look at it so I'm not sure if the flavors are similar but the main ingredients are close, I think.

This salad would totally be an awesome everyday dinner salad throughout the summer. The smokey char from the romaine pairs perfectly with freshness of the avocado and tomato. The blue cheese rounds it and will help it earn it's spot in your weekly meal rotation. Hope you enjoy this salad.

Ingredients

20 oz of sirloin steak, cut into 1" cubes
2 heads of romaine lettuce, cut in half
2 avocados, cut into small pieces
3 medium tomatoes, seeds removed and cut into small pieces
1/4 cup of diced shallot
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp chili powder
2 tbsp olive, divided
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

If you are using wood skewers to cook the beef, you will want to soak those in water a couple hours before you plan on cooking.
Same time you soak your skewers, 2-3 hours before cooking, add your cubed beef, 1 tbsp of olive oil, paprika, chili powder, salt and pepper. Toss thoroughly to evenly coat all the pieces. Cover and refrigerate until ready to cook.
In another bowl, add your chopped avocado, tomato, shallot, apple cider vinegar, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Toss lightly so as to not turn your avocado into a mash.
Drizzle the remaining olive oil on the cut side of the romaine heads.
If you are cooking your beef on skewers, time to do that. Make sure to not put too many pieces on each skewer, you want a little space in between pieces so that they cook all around.
Your ready to grill. The beef will take roughly 6-10 minutes depending on how hot your grill is and how often you open it. The romaine will take around 5 minutes to get some nice char marks on it. Depending on the size of your grill, if you need to do it in batches, do the steak first, then romaine.
Assembly is super easy, just flip your romaine so that the flat side is up, top with the avocado/tomato mixture, add steak, then top with some crumbled blue cheese to your liking. You have a restaurant quality salad done at home in less than 30 minutes.

Download the Recipe Card for Grilled Romaine and Steak Salad

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Grilled Artichokes with a Creamy Balsamic Sauce

5/28/2014

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Artichokes were something new for me. I've used the canned hearts quite a bit but have never worked with the whole artichoke before, so decided to tackle these this week. I have to say they were a little bit of work but they did turn out pretty darn good. I decided to grill them which turned out great. This way would work great for an appetizer in a group setting. The leaves each have a little bit of "meat" on them, so it makes for a an easy finger food. Just dip it in the sauce and suck the sauce off and scrape away the meat with your teeth.

So through a little research I learned how to clean these massive thistles. Yeah they actually belong to the thistle family, crazy right? So the first step was to clean up the stalk. If you look at the picture above you can see the difference between an unprepared artichoke (left one) and and cleaned one (right one). After you have cleaned up the stems the next step is to chop them in half like in the picture below. Once you have them sliced lengthwise you will need to clean out the pulp from the inside of the artichoke. I just used a pairing knife to to this, you could also probably use a spoon.

One thing to note when you are working with artichokes is that if you leave them sitting out they will oxidize and turn black. Similar to an apple turning brown or avocado turning black. So to counter this have a bowl of acidulated water nearby to soak them. I just added about a 1/4 cup of lemon juice to a big bowl of water.

Once you have cleaned the artichokes and rinsed them of any sand or dirt, you will need to boil them for roughly 15-20 minutes to soften the flesh. After you boil them go ahead and transfer to your hot grill and grill for 5-10 minutes until you get a nice char on them. No need to flip them since all the flesh is on the cut side.

While the artichokes were boiling I prepared the creamy balsamic dipping sauce for the artichokes. To do this I added 1 tbsp olive oil to a small sauce pan, then cooked 3 diced garlic cloves until slightly brown. Add 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp of butter and cook for 10 minutes letting the sauce reduce and bring the sweetness of the balsamic vinegar out. Cover and keep warm. Before serving add 1/2 cup of unflavored greek yogurt and stir until combined.

Health Benefits of Artichokes*

Artichoke is low in calories and fat; nonetheless, it is a rich source of dietary fiber. It provides 5.4 g per 100 g, about 14% of RDA fiber. Dietary-fiber helps control constipation conditions, decrease bad or "LDL" cholesterol levels by binding to it in the intestines and help prevent colon cancer risks by preventing toxic compounds in the food from absorption.
Artichoke contains bitter principles, cynarin and sesquiterpene-lactones. Scientific studies show that these compounds inhibit cholesterol synthesis and increase its excretion in the bile and thus; have overall cholesterol reduction in the blood.
Fresh artichoke is an excellent source of vitamin folic acid; provide about 68 µg per 100 g (17% of recommended daily allowance). Folic acid acts as a co-factor for enzymes involved in the synthesis of DNA. Scientific studies have proven that adequate levels of folates in the diet during pre-conception period, and during early pregnancy, help prevent neural tube defects in the newborn baby.
Fresh globes also contain good amounts of anti-oxidant vitamin; vitamin-C (Provides about 20% of recommended levels per 100 g). Regular consumption of foods rich in vitamin C helps the body develop resistance against infectious agents and scavenge harmful, pro-inflammatory free radicals from the body.
It is one of the vegetable sources for vitamin K; provide about 12% of DRI. Vitamin K has potential role bone health by promoting osteotrophic (bone formation) activity. Adequate vitamin-K levels in the diet help limiting neuronal damage in the brain; thus, has established role in the treatment of patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
It is an also good source of antioxidants such as silymarin, caffeic acid, and ferulic acid, which help the body protect from harmful free-radical agents. Total antioxidant strength (ORAC) of artichokes (globe or french) is 6552 µmol TE/100 g.
It is also rich in B-complex group of vitamins such as niacin, vitamin B-6 (pyridoxine), thiamin, and pantothenic acid that are essential for optimum cellular metabolic functions.
Further, artichoke is rich source of minerals like copper, calcium, potassium, iron, manganese and phosphorus. Potassium is an important component of cell and body fluids that helps controlling heart rate and blood pressure by countering effects of sodium. Manganese is used by the body as a co-factor for the antioxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase. Copper is required in the production of red blood cells.Iron is required for red blood cell formation.
Additionally, it contains small amounts of antioxidant flavonoid compounds like carotene-beta, lutein, and zea-xanthin.

*Nutrition data taken from http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/artichoke.html

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Paleo Cream of Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Grilled Romaine and Steak Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Grilled Artichokes with a Creamy Balsamic Sauce

Health Benefits of Artichokes*