Dukan Southwest Turkey Burgers (it's Paleo too!)

Southwest Turkey Burger

We loved this recipe!

This was very simple to make and very tasty!  We used Rachael Ray's recipe and made some changes so the meal would fit both Dukan and Paleo.   We did use bacon which we wouldn't use in Cruise (too much fat).  We used lettuce in place of a bun.

Not sure if it's just my imagination, but the leftovers tasted even better.

RECIPE:
Serves 2-4
Prep time: 10-15 minutes
Cook Time: approx 15-16 minutes, we cooked our burgers in two batches

1 1/4 lb. ground turkey
2 slices bacon, chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, minced finely
1 large shallot, finely chopped
1 t. dried thyme leaves
2 T. freeze dried or fresh cilantro leaves
1/2 small bell pepper, seeded and chopped finely (any color)
2 small serrano peppers, seeded and chopped finely
2 t. ground cumin
2 t. adobo seasoning (Paleo folks, making your own is best)
4 pieces of romaine lettuce to fit burgers like buns

Heat a grill pan over medium heat.  Mix all ingredients except lettuce together.  Form 4 large patties and
grill.  For the Dukan folks, spray your pan lightly with non-stick spray and for the Paleo folks, extra virgin olive oil or your choice of fat.

Grill patties approx 4 minutes on each side or until juices run clear.  It'll depend on how thick you make your patties.

Serve with lettuce pieces.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Grilled Ono with Aji Criolla Sauce (it's Paleo too!)

Grilled Ono with Aji Criollo Sauce

We loved this dinner!

It was very, very simple.  We made the Aji Criollo sauce from this post to go with this simply grilled Ono or Wahoo recipe.  We were feeling the need for a healthy, lean and easy to prepare meal, so we pulled out the Ono we had in our freezer from our fish guy.  It was perfect and the Aji Criollo gave it a nice kick without making the dish heavy.  The male half is not a fan of sauces, but he actually like this since it was spicy and light.

You don't have to use Ono for this recipe...Mahi Mahi or most other fishes would go nicely with the Aji Criollo.

RECIPE:
Serves: 2
Prep Time: less than 5 minutes (not including the making of the Aji Criollo)
Cook Time: around 10-12 minutes, depending on how thick your fish is

1 1/2 lbs. of Ono or pretty much any other fish that tastes great grilled
adobo seasoning (for the Paleo folks, we will be making our own adobo seasoning soon and will post the recipe)
Aji Criollo sauce

Heat your grill pan over medium heat.  Cut fish into pieces (not too thick and not too thin).  Rinse and pat dry your fish.  Lightly season with adobo seasoning ....you can use more...we have high blood pressure, so we usually go easy on the adobo seasoning.  

Place fish on grill pan (lightly sprayed for the Dukan folks and lightly wiped with extra virgin olive oil for the Paleo folks).  Cook until half way done, flip the fish over and finish cooking.  Be sure to cook your fish through if it's not fresh but don't overcook or it will dry out.

Top fish with some Aji Criollo sauce.   We had ours with some grilled asparagus.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Aji Criollo (it's Paleo too!)

Aji Criollo Sauce

We loved this recipe!

To be honest, it didn't wow us by itself, but when eaten on fish or an omelet, it's yummy!  It's a great low cal sauce.

We came across this recipe...ours looked closer to the second photo on Laylita's blog post.  We used jalapenos since that's all the farmer's market near us carries but we'll be trying this recipe with other peppers.  We actually have a couple aji amarillo peppers in our freezer we'd like to try.  NOTE: remove seeds from the peppers if you don't want your sauce too hot.

We've eaten a similar Aji Sauce at a Peruvian restaurant in San Francisco which they serve with bread...mmm!  We used this sauce on some ono or wahoo we grilled up.

RECIPE:
Makes about a cup and a half, sorry I forgot to measure!
Prep Time: less than 10 minutes
Blend Time: just a couple of minutes

4 hot peppers, seeds removed
1/2 bunch cilantro (stems and leaves)
1/2 c. water
3 garlic cloves
Juice from 1/2 a lime (or lemon, we used lime)
3 T. green onions, finely chopped
Pure sea salt, to taste.

Cut peppers into smaller pieces for the blender.  Add peppers, cilantro water, garlic and lime juice to the
blender and blend until peppers are very small pieces.  Pour sauce into a bowl, add green onions and mix well.   Add salt to taste.  We chilled ours before using it on our fish.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Persian Turkey Burgers (it's a Paleo recipe too!)

Persian Turkey Burgers

We have mixed feelings about this one...

It was a little on the plain side but it's always nice to try something different.  We went back to see if we did something wrong and we probably could have increased the amount of each spice since the recipe calls for 1 pound of meat and the ground turkey at Safeway only comes in 1.25 lbs -- we didn't want to save .25 lbs. of ground turkey, although we could have used it for something.  It could also be because we used ground turkey instead of ground beef.

Anyway, we also didn't try any of the sauce recipes listed on the recipe page and the yogurt sauce would've been a good one to try with these burgers.  So, this wasn't a bad recipe, the burgers were juicy, just not one that knocked our socks off because it was bursting with flavor.  We'd definitely try this recipe again.

The nice thing about this recipe -- it fit both the Dukan and Paleo diets without any changes...well, except we didn't cook ours with ghee.

RECIPE:
Serves 3-4 (we ate it as a Cruise/Paleo meal, so with veggies only, no starch)
Prep Time: less than 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10-20 minutes

1 1/4 lb. ground turkey or 1 lb. ground beef
1 small onion, diced finely
1 egg
1 t. kosher or sea salt
1/2 t. black pepper
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. dried oregano

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.  Form patties (we made 8 small patties).  Heat grill pan over medium.  If you're on the Dukan Diet, spray your pan with a little bit of nonstick spray.  If you're on Paleo, use your choice of fat.  We lightly brushed on a small amount of extra virgin olive oil on our pan for the first round of patties and didn't need any additional oil for the second round of patties.

Cook patties until they are half cooked, then flip patties over and cook until done.  We usually cook ours about 3-4 minutes per side or until there are no pink juices coming out of the patties.

We had ours with steamed broccoli.  The leftovers were broken up into small pieces and made into a Persian Burger Scramble for my breakfast.

Dukan and Paleo Pulled Pork

Easy Pulled Pork

We loved this recipe!

Ok, first of all, our first time on Dukan, we stayed away from fatty meats...hardly used our slow cooker.  This time around, instead of just a 30 minute walk per day, we are trying to do 30-45 minutes of aerobic exercise which is why during Cruise, we weren't afraid to have pulled pork.   I usually eat Pork Adobo once a week from a little Filipino shop near my work -- it's made with pork shoulder -- I discard all the fat and eat only the meaty pieces and I've lost almost half the weight I set out to lose.   If you've still got a lot of weight to lose and you're not doing some sort of almost daily aerobic exercise, you may want to wait until Consolidation to try this recipe.

The first week of January it was rainy and windy here...almost every day.  It seemed like the temperature was always 68 degrees when I checked my phone.  So, Thursday, our usual 'meal planning' day, we pulled out a Greek Chicken Stew recipe and this Crock Pot Pulled Pork recipe.  They were perfect for the rainy, windy and chilly weekend.

We found this recipe soon after we decided to start easing into the Caveman way of eating.  Saved it and didn't intend to use it until we lost all our weight and truly eased into the Caveman diet.  We couldn't wait :-)  This recipe is very easy and very tasty -- oh and it's a lot for two people.  We froze half the pulled pork and the other half we ate for two meals with no rice or bread.

Mix your dry rub.

1/2 the onions line the bottom of the crock pot

Rub all your dry rub on your pork (before placing it in the pot of course)

Place the rest of your onions on the top of your pork, cover
crock pot and cook according to the directions below

RECIPE:
Serves: a lot (see paragraph above)
Prep Time: 10-15 minutes (we cut some fat from our pork shoulder)
Crock Pot Cook Time: 5-6 hours on high, then 3-4 hours on low
6 Qt. Crock Pot used

4-5 lb. pork shoulder/butt (some fat removed), rinse and pat dry
1-2 yellow onions, sliced (we used one)

Dry rub:
3 T. chili powder
1 t. coriander
2 t. ground cumin
2 t. onion powder
1 T. dried parsley
1/4 t. chipotle chili powder
2 t. kosher or sea salt

Mix all dry rub ingredients together, set aside.  Rub dry rub all over pork.  Be sure to use all the dry rub.  We let our pork sit out on the counter for about 20 minutes.  Line your crock pot if you have liners (they make clean-up so easy!).  Place half your onions on the bottom of the crock pot.  Place your pork in the pot.  Place the remainder of the onions on top of the pork, cover and cook on high for 5-6 hours (we cooked it for 5 hours).  Then cook for another 3-4 hours on low (we cooked it for 3 hours).  After the 8 hours of cooking, we opened the pot, checked to be sure the pork was falling apart, then pushed the pork into the juice.  Turn your pot to warm and cover to let the top part of the pork that wasn't in the juice to soak up some liquid.

In the meantime, prepare any veggies you will be having with your pork.  Depending on which diet you're on and if you're not trying to lose weight, you can make a gravy with the drippings and use sparingly.  We dipped our pork in the juice to add a little moisture...it was very tasty just like that!

Remove pork from crock pot, take two forks and shred pork removing fat as you go.  We had this with sauerkraut and broccoli.  Made an omelet with some of the leftovers and are considering lettuce wraps with the half we froze.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Frittata Crazy: Dukan Broccoli Bacon Egg White Frittata

This photo is of our Rotisserie Chicken Egg White Frittata
but the Broccoli Bacon one looked similar.

We loved this recipe!

Well, I started to go frittata crazy this week...the male half of this couple scarfed half of the frittata down with no problem but I got the look -- the "need variety" look.  So, we'll be giving frittatas a rest for a week or so :-)

This recipe is really the same base recipe we used for our Dukan Rotisserie Chicken and Broccoli Frittata -- we used bacon instead of rotisserie chicken and no basil.  We treated ourselves to the bacon...trimmed some of the fat from the bacon and got rid of most of the bacon grease after cooking the bacon.  We are very new to the Paleo diet and are still learning -- as mentioned before, there are different versions and we're trying to figure out our Dukan - Paleo plan for 2013 -- that said, this actually turned out to be a Paleo recipe too!  We're still in Cruise (Dukan) but we went ahead with the bacon (a.k.a. more fat than we probably should consume during Cruise) anyway.  We're listing this as a Cruise recipe too, you can always use turkey bacon instead.

We didn't take any photos because the steps were almost the same as our Dukan Rotisserie Chicken and Broccoli Frittata and it looked very similar.

RECIPE:
Serves  2 (no starch/carbs served with the Frittata)
Prep time: less than 10 minutes
Cook Time: 15-20 minutes

3 slices of bacon, chopped (some of the fat trimmed and let it sit at room temperature for a few minutes before frying)
1 1/2 c. broccoli, chopped into small pieces
1/4 sweet yellow onion, diced small
2 button mushrooms, we minced ours, but thin slices will work too
3/4 c. egg whites
1/3 c. water
1/4 c. or less mozzarella cheese, shredded
1/2 t. adobo seasoning

Fry bacon over medium heat until cooked (depends on how you like it, we would have rather cooked ours until crispy but we had a lot of holiday baking to do this night).  Remove most of the bacon drippings (we reserved ours for future Paleo meals).  We left approx 1/2 T. of bacon drippings in the pan.  Add onions and mushrooms, saute until tender.  Add broccoli, cover and steam for approximately 2 minutes (less if you want crunchier broccoli and longer if you like soft broccoli).  In a bowl, mix egg whites, water, cheese and adobo seasoning, set aside.  Remove cover, add bacon back, mix everything up.  Add egg white mixture, cover and let your frittata cook until eggs are done -- ours took approximately 5-6 minutes.  Cut into wedges and serve.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Mushroom Marinara

We loved this recipe!

We've had this recipe for a while now...we wrote it down on a piece of paper, threw it in our old recipe box intending to eventually type it up -- of course we can't even remember where we found it!  The male half of this couple LOVES pasta with marinara -- doesn't have to be anything special, but the marinara has to be flavorful.  He really enjoyed this one (even though it isn't exactly like the one from Island Subs and Burgers here in Manoa).

We used this marinara in a baked pasta dish -- it's my practice run for the male half's upcoming birthday dinner.  He dislikes going out to eat, so he always requests Baked Ziti for his birthday.  This marinara may end up in our Birthday Baked Ziti dish!

We recommend making this sauce a day before.

This is a Dukan'd recipe.  It is almost Paleo -- we already had crushed tomatoes and tomato sauce in our kitchen, so we did not use organic -- so we're calling it Paleo - ish!

RECIPE:
Sorry, I forgot to measure how many cups of sauce this made, but we mixed it with pasta and filled two - 9" foil pans to the top with the pasta/marinara mixture.
Prep Time: 10-15 minutes
Cook Time: at least 2 hours 5 minutes

2 tsp. olive oil (or nonstick spray)
1/2 sweet yellow onion, diced
6 oz. button mushrooms, minced (we minced them because the male half doesn't like the texture)
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 - 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 - 15 oz. can tomato sauce
1 tsp. balsamic vinegar
1 T. fresh parsley, chopped
1 T. fresh basil, chopped small
1 t. dried oregano
1 t. fennel seeds, crushed
1 t. natural sweetener (we used Xylitol)
1 pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
kosher or sea salt and pepper to taste

The finished product - Baked Penne
will post recipe soon!

Heat oil in a pot (we used our stir fry pan because the male half's pots are not non-stick) over medium heat.  Add the onions and mushrooms and saute until tender.  Add the garlic and cook for 60 seconds, stirring frequently.  Add the remaining ingredients.  Simmer for at least 2 hours, stirring every once in a while.

Cool and keep for future use or use immediately on pasta or shirataki noodles like the Nasoya brand pasta or with Dukan meatballs, etc.

Enjoy...we sure did!