An Inspired Kitchen

Roasted Beet and Cara Cara Orange Salad

Cara cara oranges have a beautiful ruby hue and are slightly more bitter.  You can use any orange or tangerine you have on hand, or skip the oranges completely.  You can also cheat and use Trader Joe’s cooked and peeled beets in the fresh vegetable case if you want a quick salad.  This salad is also great with feta cheese gently mixed in.  I made a champagne vinaigrette and tossed it with the beets and oranges.  You can also serve it over a spring lettuce mix.  Click here for the recipe….

Spring Vegetable Mix

This is a great side dish for entertaining because you can blanch the vegetables in the morning and quickly stir fry them to heat them up before you serve them.  I love the combination of haricots verts or baby green beans, snow peas, snap peas, asparagus, peas, onions and leeks and the fresh tarragon gives it a really nice spring flavor.  This recipe serves 10-12.  Click here for the recipe….

Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies with Toasted Hazelnuts

I love nutella and when I saw a chocolate chip cookie recipe that had nutella in it, I made it right away.  I put some chopped toasted hazelnuts in for an added hazelnut kick.  I love that ad on TV with the mother giving her family toast with nutella on it as they walk out the door.  That is the perfect breakfast to me!  She is saying it is healthy and nutritious!!?  It must be true if it’s on TV!  That must mean that these cookies are healthy because they have nutella in them too!  Click here for the recipe….

Chicken with Tarragon Roasted Tomatoes and Pan Juice

This chicken dish is quick to put together (30 minutes) and delicious with the ripe cherry tomatoes and tarragon with a hint of red wine vinegar.  Saute’ a small onion and add the cherry tomatoes and cook for a few minutes.  Add the seasoned chicken breasts and brown on one side and then sprinkle the tarragon and vinegar over the tomatoes and place skillet in the oven and roast for 15-18 minutes.  I served it over tri-colored quinoa that I just cooked in chicken broth and it was a nummy and healthy dinner. Quinoa is a seed that is cooked as you would cook rice (but less fussy!) and is considered a super food.  It’s a complete protein, contains all 8 essential amino acids, is high in iron, fiber, and gluten free.  Cooked quinoa seeds are fluffy and creamy, yet also slightly crunchy. They may also sometimes have a translucent appearance. The flavor of the cooked seeds is delicate and somewhat nutty.  You could also serve the chicken over rice, orzo, couscous or any other pasta.  Click here for the recipe….

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

This has been my go-to carrot cake recipe for years.  It was inspired by the Silver Palette cookbook and I love it because it is a dense and moist cake with pineapple chunks, coconut, spices, nuts, and of course grated carrots.  There is no butter in the cake ~ only vegetable oil so there are less calories right?!!  The cream cheese frosting takes it over the top (oh, I guess there is a lot of butter there!).   You can make it in a 9×13 pan, but I like to make it in 2 – 10-inch pans so there is frosting in the center as well!  Make sure the cream cheese is room temperature before you start making the frosting.  Beating it well to get the lumps out and then beating it with the butter also make sure you have a nice fluffy frosting.  Click here for the recipe….

Baharat Meatballs with Fava Beans

This recipe was inspired by the beautiful cookbook Jerusalem – A Cookbook that I got for Christmas. Well ok, I ordered it online and gave it to my husband to wrap for me for Christmas.  What!  Is that wrong!  Nothing like getting that perfect gift for Christmas!  The cookbook has great traditional recipes from Jerusalem and Palestine with beautiful photos and one that I love to browse the recipes with thoughts of making each and every one of them some day.  Baharat is an intriguing mixture of coriander, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, cumin, cardamom, and nutmeg. It is easy to mix yourself, or you might be able to find it at specialty food stores.  You can use whole spices and grind them yourself, but it’s one less step to use ground spices if you don’t have the time.  I used frozen fava beans because they were not in season and they are a lot easier to use.  I love fresh fava beans but it takes a lot of beans that you have to blanche and peel before you can use them but it is so worth it for their delicate flavor.  The fresh herbs add a wonderful fresh and vibrant flavor to the meatballs and sauce.  Serve the meatballs over basmati rice and orzo pilaf (click here for pilaf recipe…).  Click here for meatball recipe….

Farro Pilaf

Farro is not a wheat but a plant and a grain similar to spelt mainly grown in Italy.  Farro has a nutty taste with an overtone of oatmeal and barley and is a bit chewy and delicious in soups and salads.   You need to soak farro for 8 hours before you use it, so it was nice to see that Trader Joe’s now carries a 10 minute farro.  They also have a 10 minute barley so it is great to make pilafs with them for a different and healthy side dish.  It actually took more like 20 minutes, but still a lot less cooking time.  I sautéed an onion, red pepper and celery and lightly toasted the farro in olive oil.  Then I added chicken broth and thyme and cooked it for about 20 minutes until the broth had absorbed into the farro.  You could add more broth to make it a little soupy and add Parmesan cheese and make it more like a risotto.  Click here for the recipe….

Bunny Bark

My niece and I were making Easter sugar cookies and decided to also make this easy Easter candy.  Just slowly melt some white chocolate in a double boiler and pour it onto a cookie tray lined with a silpat liner or parchment paper.  Spread it evenly so it is about 1/4-inch thick and sprinkle Easter candy all over.  I chopped some of the candy so you could see the chocolate interiors.  Let it completely harden and break it into pieces.  We put it in cute little Easter bags and tied them with ribbon to give to her friends.  Easy and pretty good and it would be a great project for little kids.

Chicken Pot Pie

These rainy winter days make me want to make comfort food meals and chicken pot pie is a wonderfully comforting meal.  I had most of a rotisserie chicken left over, so I just took it off the bone and cut it into chunks.   You could also saute’ some chicken breasts or thighs.  I sautéed an onion, leeks (I buy them frozen at Trader Joe’s to keep on hand), garlic, and added carrots, thyme and celery and cooked them until the carrots were almost all the way cooked.  I added some butter and an equal amount of flour and cooked it for a few minutes and then added chicken broth and made a creamy sauce.  You can also add cream or half and half if you want it even richer.  I added the chicken and frozen peas to the sauce and cooked it for 5 minutes.  Making pie dough in the food processor takes 30 seconds and I quickly rolled it out and since this pie dough is already flaky, didn’t worry too much about refrigerating the dough.  You could also buy a prepared pie dough or frozen puff pastry and roll it onto the top of a casserole dish.  Then you bake it until it bubbles and the top gets nice and browned.  Click here for the recipe….

Chocolate Toffee TorteThis chocolate toffee torte is amazing and the 4 layers all combine together for a wonderful decadent dessert.  The bottom layer has a ground pecan mixture that you press into the bottom of a spring form pan and bake for 15 minutes.  The next layer is a chocolate ganache followed by toffee mousse and then all topped off and decorated with a lightly flavored espresso whipped cream.  Yum!  It has a few steps, but each step is easy to make and the effort is truly worth the reward of a fabulous dessert.  Click here for the recipe….