On last nights episode of "Tuesday's dinner for Two" ...
So Patrick and I have decided to make a re-occuring event of "Tuesday's Dinner for two". Since he cooked that wonderful steak dinner last week I felt it was my turn to impress so I planned a Italian inspired meal with a perfect paleo twist. Dinner was made up of perfectly seared scallops and shrimp on top of roasted spaghetti squash topped with a lemon garlic butter sauce. I also decided since we're near the half way mark of our first month to make a special dessert!! A little bird told me Pat's favorite dessert is red velvet cheese cake with oreo crust..sooo Paleo Red Velvet Cheesecake (well I guess technically Primal Red Velvet Cheesecake) became my next challenge. The actual cheesecake and crust was all paleo, made out of blended cashews and beet juice for the red coloring and used almond flour to create an oreo-like chocolate graham cracker crust. The cream cheese frosting was obviously more 'primal' using only grassfed cream cheese and sour cream as the main ingredients.
Lemon Garlic Butter Recipe:
1/3 Minced Onion
3 cloves Minced Garlic
Lemon Juice
White wine (optional if you're anti alcohol..i'm clearly not)
EVOO
Butter (Grassfed)
Salt/Pepper
Mince 1/3 medium sized sweet yellow onion and 3 cloves of garlic. Toss them in a pan thats been lightly warmed with just enough extra virgin olive oil to coat the pan. Let the onions and garlic slowly cook on low until they are close to a caramel color. Add salt/pepper. Be careful not to burn the garlic it can taste bitter. Add the white wine and lemon juice and turn up the heat. Once it reaches a boil bring it back to a simmer and let it cook on low until it starts looking like an oat meal (sounds super appetizing doesn't it!) Once the oatmeal looking mixture has completed you can take it off the heat. When you're ready to serve your meal, cube pieces of butter and slowly melt and mix the butter into it so that it looks like a thick butter sauce.
Roasted Spaghetti Squash (super easy)
1 Spaghetti Squash
EVOO
Salt/Pepper
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut the spaghetti squash in half and remove the seeds. Lightly drizzle/paint on the extra virgin olive oil. Add salt and pepper. With the 2 halfs face up, place on pan and stick it in the oven for 50 minutes. Let it sit for 5 minutes after you take it out of the oven and then use a fork to scrape out the insides. Looks like spaghetti! It truly is a great substitute if you're a pasta lover!! Anyways, for this dish I tossed it in a little bit of the lemon garlic butter sauce (from above) in a pan, and then served it on the plate.
Once the sauce and 'pasta' is complete, I topped it with seared scallops and shrimp that were both cooked in EVOO. Yum!!
By the way, last nights Tuesday for two dinner was full of multi-tasking. My job was busy so I got home late and then I had to sign back online for work. While working I was cooking the items above, as well as this red velvet cheese cake! I was a 3 ring circus on my own! So I'm glad dinner came out tasty!
So for the big finale we have the Red velvet Cheesecake.
"Oreo" crust
1/4 cup coconut oil (or you can use grassfed butter)
1/4 cup pure maple syrup (not mrs. butterworth)
4 drops of stevia extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups almond flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder (unsweetened)
dash salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup water
Using a food processor or stand mixer (flat dough blade) put the dry ingredients (almond flour, cocoa powder, cinnamon, baking powder) and have the mixer on low. Add maple syrup, coconut oil, vanilla, stevia and cinnamon to the mixture. Then slowly add in the water. Once ingredients are incorporated, cool in the refridgorator in the mixing bowl for an hour. I actually made this a day ahead of time. To make crust: Press the dough into pan about 1/4 thick. Bake at 325 for 15 to 20 minutes or until the top looks dry and slightly toasty, a tooth pick should come out clean. You can also use this recipe to make graham crackers (if you remove the cocoa..or you can make them chocolate graham crackers)..I really think I'll be doing this in the future.
"Cheesecake" Filling Paleo style
5 cups of raw cashews, soaked over night
1 cup coconut oil
1 cup pure maple syrup
2/3 cup lemon juice
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup cocoa powder
3 beets -- juiced
Using a food processor (or a blender) blend all the ingredients until the texture is very creamy. This may take a few minutes...be patient cause its totally worth it! Make sure there are no chunks! AH This is so good! You'll seriously be in disbelief that you're in fact eating cashews. Once its perfectly creamy add to your pan and put it in the refrigerator over night or the freezer for an hour. I personally love it frozen!!
Primal Cream Cheese Frosting
1 Package 8 oz Grass fed Cream cheese
1 cup of grass fed sour cream
1 tsp ginger
1 tbsp pure maple syrup
Use a hand blender to mix all the ingredients together. Make sure there are no chunks of cream cheese. The texture will be fluffy and wonderful!! Pat got lucky that this was one of the last things I was making when he got here and got to lick the spoon!
Finally combine everything together! I stuck it in the freezer until after dinner, so maybe about an hour and it came out awesome!! Tuesday's Dinner for two has been another success and I cannot wait for next weeks! OH and stay tuned because this Thursday Patrick and I are going to have a Paleo Chili Cook-off..its going to be epic!
Kim
