And now for my latest magic trick, I actually cooked a Paleo Diet Meal: a big 2 kilo chunk of grass fed roast beef sirloin. Now my friends at rawpaleoforum.com will be miffed by this little stunt, but it’s for a good cause. My father in law celebrated his 74th birthday and our task for the evening dinner was to provide beef prepared in the Mexican way.
I scrounged Google for recipes. I finally settled for a Youtube video that had a Mexican touch. It was not paleo, but I figured I could get rid of that dang flour so the meal can stay paleo. So here is what I did:
For the soup stock: First I bought more than 3 kilos of bones at Farmers market. They sold it for 70 pesos per kilo. i was even lucky to get quite a good amount of raw bone marrow! So what if this was refrigerated overnight? I ate a good amount of raw bone marrow at the butcher while they were preparing the bones. At home I gathered the raw bone marrow in a bowl. Yummy.
We made the soup stock by putting the bones in a broken pressure cooker and putting it on our charcoal stove. Had it sitting there from 12:30 pm to 4:30 pm.
For the roast beef: I chanced upon the best end part of sirloin, they call madera cut which was exactly 2 kilos. Yummy yellow fat. Bought it whole.
At home I first put sea salt and freshly ground pepper on the muscle sides, rubbed them in. Then I got a wok and seared the muscle sides of the sirloin for some 2 minutes per side. This was to seal / lock the juices in the meat to prepare for roasting. I then popped the whole 2 kilo chunk of meat in the oven running at 150 degrees Celsius. Turned the meat on each side for a total of 1.5 hours. A little later I lowered the temp to 100 degrees Celsius. Got the meat to be served medium rare.
On to the stock as used for broth where the meat was served laying in the broth. In the wok where we seared the chunk of meat, I deglazed it by putting 2 bowls of beef stock in it and put slices of onions, added sea salt and freshly ground pepper, added cumin and later added some fresh cayenne pepper bits. Ta dah, here is your sauce.
After the roasting of the beef, I gathered the drippings and made another batch of sauce. This one with more fresh cayenne pepper bits.
So we served the 2 kilo roast beef sirloin on the table with some cooked carrots with the uncut solid 5 inch wide chunk beef sirloin bathed in our stock based sauce, the taste and smell of cumin dominant.
And what do you know? Everybody liked the roast beef! Clap clap clap clap! Any dork can follow Youtube. Imagine, a raw paleo dieter like me can cook! It’s my first time you know. But this is for my father in law’s birthday, so somebody has to do it.
Other Mexican dishes in the dinner party were spicy prawns. Then burritos. Then a salad. Burritos are not paleo, I did not bring those. The pre-dinner drink was raw avocado blendered with fresh raw coconut milk and raw wild honey from Palawan. Add some ice cubes in your slush and ta dah… it’s like ice cream. The healthy raw avocado ice cream kind.
I also served a healthy lunch for my father in law with raw tuna sashimi and raw sea urchin / uni. Hey, he’s 74, something to celebrate indeed.
The celebration was a total blast. Almost all his children and almost all his grandchildren came. It was a riot of kiddie games and musical performances. My wife played the harp, 12 year old grandson played the guitar and my 5 year old girl played 2 harp pieces. The garden was a good place, in the terrace, under the fan.
Special for the night was the presence of 1 month old and newest grandchild Shawn Andy.
