Fish & Seafood
Baked Cod with Olive Tapenade and Tomatoes
My husband is not a big fan of white fish, but I love it. Sometimes I eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner when he’s out of town on business just so I can get my fill of it. Most of the time I just pan fry it and squeeze a little lemon on it. My friend, Julie, is an amazing cook and she suggested I try it with some olive tapenade smeared on it. I didn’t get an exact recipe from her (meaning her dish is probably way better than mine), but this is how I did it. I added a little extra nutrition punch by sprinkling hemp seeds over the top. You can read all about hemp seeds here.
Ingredients
- Cod (or any white fish you like), 1-2 pieces per person
- About 1 teaspoon olive tapenade per piece of fish
- 1 tomato, sliced
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1/2 teaspoon thyme
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Olive oil for drizzling
- 1 teaspoon hemp seeds (optional)
- 1 teaspoon hemp seeds
Instructions
- Pat the fish pieces with a paper towel and then lightly salt and pepper.
- Place in an oven proof dish (I used a pie pan), and spread the olive tapenade over the top of each piece. I spread a pretty thin layer over mine, but you could put it on as thick as you like.
- Divide the minced garlic between the pieces and sprinkle it over the tapenade layer.
- Lay slices of tomato over the pieces of fish.
- Sprinkle with the dried thyme.
- Drizzle with olive oil and then sprinkle with hemp seeds (optional)
- Place in a pre-heated 200 C (400 F) oven and bake for 15 minutes.
Seared Scallop Salad with Bacon Crisps and Mango Salsa
I made this for lunch and surprised myself with how good it was and how fancypants it looked. I didn’t have much on hand and had no plan when I started out, but I did have some left over mango salsa (as a topping for a seared tuna with poppyseed crust a few days ago) and I did have some scallops. I am in love with elegant salads!
Here is a little video on how to get beautiful seared scallops with a lovely brown crust.
Ingredients
- 200 grams scallops (which was 11 small scallops for me)
- 1 Tablespoon butter or ghee to pan sear the scallops in
- 4 thin pieces of bacon, cooked crispy and then crumbled
- salad greens of choice, about 2 cups per person
- 2 Tablespoons of Mango Salsa (or more if you want) per person
- Water cress, cilantro or some other sprouts to garnish (optional)
- 1 ripe mango, diced
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- Cilantro, chopped (about a handful or 1/4 cup)
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- salt and pepper to taste
- Juice of one lime
Instructions
- Pat your scallops dry and lightly sprinkle with salt before searing. Sear your scallops in the butter or ghee until golden brown (see video above for technique).
- Place the scallops on top of a plate of salad greens.
- Sprinkle the crispy bacon crumbles over the top.
- Mix all of the dressing ingredients together and then spoon it over the top.
- Garnish with water cress, cilantro or sprouts.
Pan Seared Tuna with Nectarine Avocado Salsa
I would have never cooked up a meal like this before I was paleo. I have become so much more adventurous in the kitchen and have learned a lot about combining flavors. It’s amazing how good real food tastes. Now that it’s summer, I’m adding fruit into my savory dishes and loving every bite. I’ve made a mango salsa before and put it on fish cakes and this recipe is a variation on that theme. It is super easy and quick to make. This was truly delicious and the only thing that stopped me eating until it was all gone was that I wanted to be able to eat the left overs the next day. I love it when I have good left overs to look forward to.
Light and summery
Ingredients
Easy ingredients
- Tuna steaks (mine were about 120 grams/4 oz each)
- 1 nectarine, diced
- 1/2 red chili, finely diced
- 1-2 Tablespoons fresh cilantro (coriander), chopped
- 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, finely chopped
- 1 spring onion (green), chopped
- 1/2 avocado, diced
- Juice of half a lime
- 1 Tablespoon while balsamic vinegar (or other white vinegar)
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- Pinch of salt
What to do
- Add all of the ingredients for the salsa together in a small mixing bowl and stir to combine. Set aside in the fridge while you cook the tuna.
Salsa
- Salt and pepper the tuna steaks.
- Sear the tuna on both sides in a lightly greased skillet over medium high heat.
Seared tuna
- Spoon the salsa over the tuna and enjoy!
Summer dinner
Ingredients
- Tuna steaks (mine were about 120 grams/4 oz each)
- 1 nectarine, diced
- 1/2 red chili, finely diced
- 1-2 Tablespoons fresh cilantro (coriander), chopped
- 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, finely chopped
- 1 spring onion (green), chopped
- 1/2 avocado, diced
- Juice of half a lime
- 1 Tablespoon while balsamic vinegar (or other white vinegar)
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Add all of the ingredients for the salsa together in a small mixing bowl and stir to combine. Set aside in the fridge while you cook the tuna.
- Salt and pepper the tuna steaks.
- Sear the tuna on both sides in a lightly greased skillet over medium high heat.
- Spoon the salsa over the tuna and enjoy!
Roasted Salmon with Grapefruit Basil Sauce
Becoming a food blogger has really broadened my cooking horizons and made me much more adventurous in the kitchen. I think I was in a food rut for most of my life; eating the same things over and over again. Now, I have fun in the kitchen and I’m always pushing myself to do new things so that I have something to blog about.
Adventures in cooking!
I love salmon, and I have always only cooked it in about two different ways. For years, I made it with a teriyaki marinade and then I started making my Zesty and Saucy Salmon (the sauce has pumpkin seeds and cilantro and mint etc…). It’s a great recipe, but I had to wonder what else I could do with salmon.
I think fish pairs well with citrus fruit, so why not try grapefruit? It worked beautifully! Yay for another weird kitchen experiment that actually worked 🙂 !
Really fresh and tasty
Ingredients (serves 2)
- 400 grams (about 14 ounces) salmon, cut into two servings
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 grapefruits
- 2 teaspoons ghee or coconut oil
- 1-2 Tablespoons minced shallot
- 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, finely minced
- pinch of cayenne pepper
- 1 -2 teaspoons honey
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 2 Tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
What to do
Roasting the salmon
Pre-heat the oven to broil. Salt and pepper your salmon and place it on a foil lined baking sheet. Broil for about 10 minutes. Keep a close on eye on it. It’s done when it’s firm and getting golden brown on top. My little Swiss oven is bound to be different than yours 🙂
Perfectly broiled
Making the sauce
- Peel one of the grapefruits and remove the sections from their casing. Cut each section in half and set aside.
Grapefruit sections
- Juice the second grapefruit and set the juice aside.
- Mince the shallot and ginger.
Shallots and ginger
- Cook the shallot in the ghee/coconut oil over medium heat until translucent.
- Add in the ginger, honey, grapefruit juice and cayenne pepper and bring to a simmer.
- Simmer until reduced by half (about 10 minutes).
- Add lemon juice and a pinch of salt.
- Toss in the grapefruit sections and fresh basil just before serving.
- Spoon over the salmon and serve.
YUM!!
Paleo Sushi
I love sushi. It costs an arm and a leg to go out for good sushi where I live, so we don’t do it up big in a restaurant very often. I learned to make my own sushi years ago before going paleo and it was something my daughter would frequently request. She’s now a very talented sushi maker herself and it’s her absolute favorite meal.
I’ve eaten sushi (yes, with rice) a few times since going paleo (on visits to the States), but I haven’t made it myself in ages since we don’t have rice in our kitchen anymore. We make cauliflower rice all the time and I’ve seen other people use it in sushi, so I decided to give it a try.
Usually, sushi rice is made by adding rice wine vinegar and some sugar to the rice to make it sticky so it holds together. Cauliflower isn’t sticky at all and I played around with a few different things to see if adding stuff to the cauliflower made any difference to my sushi rolls. In one roll, I added a splash of cider vinegar and a little bit of honey. In another roll, I mashed some avocado with the cauliflower and in the last two rolls, I just used plain old cauliflower. In my opinion, they all worked just fine and I didn’t find much of a difference in the taste or “rollability” between the three.
Ingredients
- 1 medium head of cauliflower to make the rice
- Nori (seaweed) sheets
I got mine at Migros
Now, when it comes to fillings for your sushi, you should use the things you have on hand or like the most. We used:
- raw sushi grade tuna
Raw tuna
- blanched carrots and green beans
- egg omelette (whisk a few eggs together and make a flat egg omelette and then cut it into strips)
The egg
- avocado.
What to do
Make your cauliflower rice
Cut your raw cauliflower into florets and pulse them in a food processor until they are the size of grains of rice. Transfer the raw cauliflower grains to a pan with a splash of water. We use oil instead when we are making fried rice. Cover the rice and stir occasionally until it’s tender but not mushy (5-10 minutes). When we make this rice to serve as a side dish, we often add spices, onions and garlic; but for this we left it plain. Let it cool before rolling your sushi.
Cauliflower “rice”
Rolling the sushi
Actually seeing sushi being rolled is better than written instructions, so have a look at this video on rolling sushi.
Ready to roll
The finished rolls
The verdict
We served our sushi with a side of pan seared tuna and sauerkraut because, seriously, when was the last time you actually got full just eating sushi? The sushi tasted pretty much just like sushi to me, and the rolls held together well. They even tasted good the following day as left overs.
With a side of sauerkraut
Bok Choy Shrimp
My husband, who does an awful lot of the cooking around my house, is away in Germany on business. This means that if I want to eat; I have to cook. I cook up things that are fast and easy when I’m on my own. This meal took me about 10 minutes to make from start to finish.
My quick and easy dinner
I paired my shrimp with some stir fried bok choy.
Beautiful bok choy
Fun facts about bok choy:
- Bok choy contains certain anti-oxidant plant chemicals like thiocyanates, indole-3-carbinol, lutein, zea-xanthin, sulforaphane and isothiocyanates. Along with dietary fiber and vitamins these compounds help to protect against breast, colon, and prostate cancers and help reduce LDL or “bad cholesterol” levels in the blood.
- Bok-choy has more vitamin A, carotenes, and other flavonoid polyphenolic anti-oxidants than cabbage and cauliflower. Just 100 g of fresh vegetable provides 4468 IU or 149% of daily-required levels of vitamin A.
- It’s a very good source of vitamin K, providing about 38% of RDA levels. Vitamin-K has a potential role in bone metabolism by promoting osteotrophic activity in bone cells. Therefore, enough vitamin K in the diet makes your bones stronger, healthier and delays osteoporosis. Further, vitamin-K also has an established role in curing Alzheimer’s disease patients by limiting neuronal damage in their brain.
- Bok choy is one of the most nutrient-dense foods in the world, and it is uniquely beneficial for its calcium availability – bok choy is lower in oxalate, a substance that binds up calcium and prevents it from being absorbed, than most other leafy greens. 54% of the calcium in bok choy can be absorbed by the human body – compare this to 5% in spinach, a high oxalate vegetable, and 32% in milk. We can much more readily absorb calcium from bok choy than from dairy products.
Recipe Ingredients
- 100 grams of shrimp (per person)
- 1 clove of garlic, crushed
- 1 handful of chopped cilantro
- juice of half a lime
- 2 Tablespoons ghee or coconut oil
- 2 Thai chilis
- salt to taste
- 1 large head of bok choy, chopped
What to do
- Heat your oil in a pan over medium heat.
- Throw in your garlic, shrimp, cilantro, lime and whole chilis and cook until shrimp starts to brown.
Sizzling shrimp
- Add in your chopped bok choy and continue to cook until it is wilted and tender.
- Salt to taste (or use fish sauce).
Super nutrition in a bowl
Zesty and Saucy Salmon
We used to always make a wonderful salmon dish that we served with a black bean salsa, avocado salad and brown rice. It was one of my favorite recipes and I’ve since cleaned it up and made it paleo friendly. This recipe packs an amazing punch when it comes to nutrition. Salmon. pumpkin seeds, avocado and fresh herbs all add up for a nutrient dense combo.
Vitamins, minerals and fat…Oh My!
A Little Information About Salmon
The lovely “pink” fish
All species of wild-caught Salmon from Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California are sustainable choices. I buy my wild-caught Salmon at my local Migros. Don’t overlook frozen fish if you live in a land locked country like I do. It may end up being much fresher than the fresh stuff at the fish counter. The best way to store fresh Salmon is to remove it from the store packaging and then rinse it and store it in a plastic bag. Place the bag in a large bowl with ice in your fridge until ready to cook. I always try to cook my fish the same day I buy it if I’m using fresh fish, but it will be fine for a day or two. Have a look here for everything you ever wanted to know about the nutritional content of Salmon.
Ingredients
- 500 grams salmon (about a pound)
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 Tablespoons fresh chopped cilantro
- 1 Tablespoon fresh chopped mint
- 1 Tablespoon fresh chopped basil
- 3 Tablespoons lemon juice
- 3 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1 Tablespoon chopped pumpkin seeds
What to do
- Pre-heat your oven broiler. Salt and pepper your Salmon fillets and place them on a foil lined baking sheet.
Ready to go under the broiler
- Place them under the broiler for 10 minutes (or until browning and flaky).
- Make your sauce while the Salmon is cooking.
- Start by chopping your pumpkin seeds.
- Then chop your fresh herbs.
- Mix all sauce ingredients together in a small bowl and add salt to taste.
The sauce
- Spoon your sauce over your Salmon before serving. We like to serve this dish with sliced avocado (which we also drizzle the sauce over—YUM!)
My dinner
Seafood Soup
This soup is incredibly easy to throw together any night of the week. It’s also elegant enough to serve for a special occasion. We actually served this as our Christmas Eve dinner this year. You can alter the recipe to add your own personal favorites when it comes to seafood/fish.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 onion, chopped
- 1 red bell pepper, chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tsp red pepper chili flakes
- 1 Tablespoon tomato paste
- 2 14oz cans of chopped tomatoes
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 cup of white wine (or use water/bone broth if doing a Whole 30)
- 1 tsp dry basil
- 200 grams of shrimp
- 200 grams of scallops
- 200 grams of cod or other white fish
- 300 grams of small mussels or 12 large ones
- splash of olive oil
- salt to taste
What to do
- Saute your onions, garlic and red bell pepper in a splash of olive oil until onions become translucent.
- Add the wine and bring to a boil for 5 minutes.
- Add in canned tomatoes and all of your spices and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Stir in your tomato paste.
- Add shrimp, scallops and cod and cook for 5 minutes.
- Add in the mussels and cook for another 5 minutes or until your mussels open up.
The finished product!
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