Greek Pasta Salad
This salad is so good with the sweet summer tomatoes and crispy English cucumbers in the markets now. I made a Greek salad and tossed it with cooked pasta to make a great salad full of flavor with the addition of feta cheese and fresh oregano. You can use any pasta you have on hand but I like the rotelli pasta because it catches the fresh oregano and parsley in each bite. Light and refreshing! Click here for the recipe….
Smashed Potatoes with Olive Oil, Caramelized Pearl Onions, Lemons, Dill, and Parsley
This is Bobby Flay’s recipe and I love it in the summer alongside a grilled chicken breast. You boil baby red potatoes and mash it with olive oil, fresh dill and parsley, lemon slices, and caramelized pearl onions. I buy frozen baby pearl onions which are easy because they are already peeled and slowly caramelize them in a skillet with butter and a touch of salt and sugar. Right before you serve you mix thawed green peas with the potatoes, and the herbs for even more color. The lemon and olive oil in the potatoes is a delicious combination and I really had to taste them to be won over. You can make and assemble all the ingredients earlier in the day and before you want to serve, boil the potatoes, smash them and add all the ingredients and drizzle olive oil over to serve. It’s really a wonderful side dish. Click here for the recipe….
Happy 4th of July!
Pulled Pork
Baked Beans
Laura’s Butter Sugar Cookies
I hope you had a great 4th of July! We had friends over for dinner and I decided make pulled pork with Hawaiian buns, coleslaw, and good old fashioned baked beans. For dessert I made a Red Velvet Cake. My friend Laura brought over some delicious sugar cookies that she sprinkled with blue and red sugar. The nice thing about making pulled pork, is that you can make several days before and heat it just before you serve it with barbecue sauce. Because there are so many small batch and great barbecue sauces, I decided to cheat and used a gourmet sauce to pour over the pulled pork when I was heating it up. I also have a good recipe on the website you can use that I make for baby back ribs if you want to make your own sauce. I made garlic butter and spread it over the Hawaiian buns and grilled them to add a little texture to the soft and buttery buns for the sandwiches. I made a classic coleslaw to pull it all together. I made my go to baked beans which is Susan’s recipe and it is so good because it has bacon and ground beef which makes it very hearty and the butter beans add creaminess to the dish. You can also make it a few days before which makes having a get together easier and one thing less to do on the day. The Red Velvet Cake is a classic American cake and it’s my dear friends Mother’s recipe that I have posted before. It uses 1 ounce of red food coloring which is a little daunting, but the frosting overrides my questionable use of the food coloring because it is so delicious, rich and creamy. When you read the directions, it seems a little strange because you make a paste by cooking flour and milk together and cool it before you add it to creamed butter, sugar and vanilla and then you whip it like crazy until it is soft and fluffy. I double the frosting recipe because it is so good and it gives me extra to decorate. I made simple rosettes on the cake and used a toothpick that I dipped in food coloring gel and “brushed” the toothpick on the rosettes to add color and a little fireworks effect. I found some candy at the store and placed them all around the cake and printed some stars that I found on line and taped them to some wood sticks that I painted white. If you had some pretty red or blue striped straws, that would also work. The day was perfectly topped off with a fireworks display from all the pyromaniac people that live on the lake that went on all evening long. Click here for the recipes and printable stars….
Pavlova with Mixed Summer Berries
Pavlova is my Dad’s favorite dessert so I made it for his birthday. Meringue can be kind of tricky and can crack like mine did and not be perfect, but it still tastes good! You could also make individual Pavlova’s or pipe the egg whites onto the parchment paper and make meringue cookies. Some tips for making meringue are to have your egg whites at room temperature with no traces of yolk. Crack each egg individually into 2 bowls. If you get yolk in the whites, throw it away and start again so you don’t ruin the entire meringue. Use a very clean stainless steel bowl with no traces of oil. Use superfine sugar or put granulated sugar in the food processor and break it down a little bit so it melts easily into the egg whites. Adding cornstarch to the sugar can help stabilize the whites, and adding the vinegar also helps to stabilize the whites. Cooking at a low temperature allows the whites to cook slowly and turning the oven off after an hour and just leaving the meringue in the oven to cool also helps ensure that it is cooked through and light and crispy. Use any combination of fruit you like and drizzle chocolate ganache over the entire dessert for even more wow factor. Click here for the recipe….
Four Bean Salad
This salad is a favorite of my Dad’s and I adapted it from Cook’s magazine. It has the right balance of sweet and tangy for my liking. You make the vinaigrette on the stove top by adding red wine vinegar, canola oil, garlic and sugar and bring it to a boil and cooking it for 5 minutes. After it has cooled, you add fresh chopped parsley and onions to the beans. I like to blanch green and yellow beans and shock them in ice water to keep them as green and yellow as possible, but I use canned kidney and garbanzo beans. When I can’t find yellow beans in season, I have used canned and they are ok. It’s best to make this salad the day before so the flavors can meld all together. Click here for the recipe….
Vietnamese Chicken and Lettuce Wraps
The combination of the fresh vegetables and grilled chicken is so perfect for a hot summer dinner. I marinated chicken in teriyaki sauce and grilled it. The recipe is more about assembling than anything. Grate some carrots, chop some cucumber into baton pieces, soak some rice noodles in water and drain, chop some green onions, and pick some fresh mint and cilantro leaves and put them in a dish. Take butter lettuce leaves and wash them for the “tortilla” to bring all these vibrant ingredients together. The sauce is green onion, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, garlic, Thai bird chilie and warm water to round out the sauce. Place all these ingredients in the butter lettuce and you have a wonderful and healthy meal. You can use beef or shrimp instead of chicken or omit the meat and make it vegetarian. Click here for the recipe….
Lamb Köfte with Yogurt Sauce and Muhammara
This is a great departure from the same old hamburgers you might have been grilling this summer. Kofte are Middle Eastern burgers and are made with ground lamb (you could also use beef), fresh mint, garlic, onion, cumin, and cayenne and have such a great flavor. Muhammara is usually pureed together to make a dip, but I used some of the traditional ingredients and grilled red and yellow peppers with onions, (you could also use jarred red peppers) and mix it with sautéed onions and then drizzle with pomegranate molasses which is a sweet and slightly sour syrup that really compliments the sweetness of the roasted peppers and onions. The yogurt sauce is made with tahini (sesame paste), yogurt and lemon juice and then quickly grill some Middle Eastern flatbreads and put it all together for an incredible combination. Click here for the recipe….
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Salad with Raspberries, Blueberries, Shallots, Toasted Almonds and Goat Cheese with a Raspberry Vinaigrette This is a great summer salad for using fresh raspberries and blueberries in season, and the goat cheese gives it a nice creaminess. The dressing is made … Continue reading
Breakfast Pastry with Prosciutto, Caramelized Onions and Boursin Cheese
I was inspired to make this after our trip to the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas a few years ago. We had this for breakfast and they served it with smoked salmon and fresh dill which was delicious. It would also be wonderful for lunch or brunch served with a simple salad. I decided to make it one morning and didn’t have gravlax on hand, but had some prosciutto (one of my freezer staples) which I used instead or you can use bacon lardons. Caramelize some onions. Sauté some prosciutto. Thaw some puff pastry and cut it into 5-inch squares. With a pizza cutter or sharp knife, cut halfway through the puff pastry to create a border inside the pastry and make little scores around the edges. Brush the edges with a beaten egg and crumble some Boursin cheese in the center of the pastry. Bake for 12-15 minutes and when the pastry is golden brown, remove and sprinkle with the onions and prosciutto. Garnish with a chiffonade of fresh basil and serve. Click here for the recipe….
Pound Cake with Meyer Lemon Glaze
Pound cake is such a great old fashioned dessert and in the summer I love to serve it with fresh berries macerated with sugar so it makes a nice syrup to soak into the cake and top each piece off with vanilla whipped cream or ice cream. Sometimes I add orange liquor or raspberry liquor to the berries. I have heard it was named pound cake because it was originally made with a pound of butter, sugar, and flour in the recipe, but I have never weighed it out. There are no leavening agents in the cake, so it is really important that you beat the eggs into the butter really well because that is what really helps make the cake rise. This cake can serve up to 12-14 people and also freezes well so you can have a quick dessert on hand. You can bake it in a Bundt pan or a loaf pan. I made a quick glaze with Meyer lemons which have a wonderful sweet and bitter orange flavor to drizzle on top of the cake but you can also use Eureka lemons, oranges, grapefruit, or limes which are more readily available. Click here for the recipe….
