Easter Fruit Salad

A healthy addition to any Easter meal, by Helen Poore.

We normally have Easter dinner at my in-laws, and although the food is always old fashion homemade I always feel like I need something healthy to go with it, so I've began making a fruit salad that everyone raves over, even the kids.  You can use whatever fruit you like best, there are no rules, other then the dressing. I'll be sure to take a picture and post it because it's as colorful as it is good!

Helen's Easter Fruit Salad 

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  1 cup grapes

  
  
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  2 cups cut up watermelon

  
  
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  2 cups cut up cantaloupe

  
  
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  1 cup blueberries

  
  
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  1 cup sliced strawberries 

  
  
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  2 apples, sliced

  
  
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  2 oranges peeled and sectioned

Dressing:

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  1 banana, sliced

  
  
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  1/2 cup orange juice (I use fresh squeezed oranges)

  
  
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  1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

  
  
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  1/4 cup raspberries

  
  
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  1 tablespoon raspberry vinegar

  
  
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  1/2 tablespoon olive oil

  
  
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  1 tablespoon poppy seeds

  
  
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  1/2 teaspoon salt

  
  
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  1 tablespoon honey

In a food processor, puree all of the dressing ingredients until smooth.  Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.  Pour over the mixed fruit and serve.

Noodle Stir-Fry with Chicken and Snowpeas

Fast, Asian inspired one pan dish by guest author, Heather Forsyth.

I can tell it’s almost spring because I couldn’t resist buying a few handfuls of vibrant green, crisp snowpeas that appeared recently at my local grocer.  Snowpeas beg to be put in something stir-fried, with Asian flavors, and sure enough that’s what these ended up in.  For a really “authentic” taste, it’s worth buying the dark sesame oil.  It’s pricey, but a little goes a long way, and makes a big flavor difference here.  This recipe comes together quickly once you start cooking so you’ll definitely want to do your prep work ahead of time, unless you’re an extraordinarily fast hand with a knife (in which case you should give up your day job and become a sushi chef).  I use vermicelli or linguine noodles because I think the flat surfaces are best for this kind of dish, and I like the way they look, but you can use any kind you have handy.  Although I wouldn’t normally rinse pasta, in this dish you’ll want to remove the excess starch to make it easier to toss the noodles around later.

Noodle Stir-Fry with Chicken and Snowpeas

• 8 oz. dried noodles, cooked
  
• 12 oz. chicken tenders or boneless chicken breasts, cut into strips
  
• 1 t. cornflour
  
• 1 t. sugar
  
• 1/4 t. salt (I know it seems redundant with the salty soy sauce, but it seems to need it)
  
• 3 T. soy sauce
  
• 3 T. vegetable oil, divided use
  
• 2 T. dark sesame oil, divided use
  
• 6-8 shitake mushrooms, sliced
  
• 4 oz. (roughly 30 or so) snowpeas, halved lengthwise
  
• 2-3 stalks celery, cut into 1" diagonal slices
  
• 6 thin slices of fresh ginger root, peeled and minced
  
• 1 garlic clove, minced
  
• A few flakes of dried red pepper 

Cook the noodles then drain, rinse and set aside.  Mix cornflour, sugar, salt and soy sauce together in a medium bowl, then add the chicken and toss to coat. Heat 2 T. of the vegetable oil and 1 T. sesame oil in wok or large frying pan over high heat.  When very hot, add the chicken and stir fry for about 4 minutes.  Add the mushrooms, celery and snowpeas and stir-fry for 3 to 4 more minutes; then the garlic, ginger and red pepper and cook for another minute or two.  Transfer to a warm dish.  Lower the heat a little, add the remaining oils to the pan, then the cooked noodles.  Toss the noodles until heated through and coated with oil.  Return the chicken and vegetables to the pan and mix with the noodles until everything is hot.  This should serve 4, but in our house it only fed two of us, with just enough leftover to fight over for lunch the next day.

Pasta with Lima Beans

A man's take on pasta from contributing author, Dave Utrata.

I often find myself reaching for pasta for those quick meal creations: easy to do, not much time involved, and go well with wine.  The added twist recently was to use up some items lingering in my refrigerator and cabinets, while still delivering a meaty, perhaps smoky flavor.  While you can expect that the flavoring balance on this should probably be tweaked to personal preference, I was fairly pleased with how this attempt turned out.

Ingredients

• 5 "baby bella" (small portobella) mushrooms, sliced


• 6 garlic cloves, sliced


• 1-2 slices of rare roast beef, as in deli style cut - intended for sandwiches, chopped fine


• 1 can Lima beans (with bacon added), drained


• 1 cup pasta/tomato sauce - I used Bertolli's garlic & Vidalia onion sauce
  


• 1 chipotle pepper from can in adobo sauce, chopped


• some small green olives, sliced


• dash white wine vinegar


• olive oil as needed


• rotini (or your favorite) pasta

    Start the pasta by getting enough well salted water to boil; follow the typical timing to prepare.  In a pan, begin sauteing the garlic and mushrooms in some olive oil.  When the mushrooms have absorbed oil and the garlic is just browning, add the roast beef bits and the chopped pepper.  Stir well, and then add the pasta sauce.   Stir in the green olives and the Lima beans. 
    At this point, you want to keep an eye on the mixture.  The beans can thicken the sauce too much if you're not careful.  Keep stirring and don't let the heat get too high.  The vinegar was used to thin the sauce, but it also seemed to accent some of the sweeter or more pungent notes in the taste, the sharpness of the olives, for example, while not overwhelming the smokiness of the bacon flavor of the beans and the chipotle.  Also, a bit of the pasta water may be used to think the sauce to the desired consistency.
    Drain the pasta, pour on the desired amount of sauce (this recipe provided me with enough sauce for two good sized pasta helpings) and add grated Parmesan as desired.  Serve with red wine, duh.
    As Heather pointed out in her last pasta offering, refrigerating some of this for tomorrow's dinner really does enhance the taste.  I don't know if this is because the pasta more fully takes on the taste of the sauce or if some cosmic melding of the flavors creates some new nuance of flavor.  But if I was happy with this the first night, you can be sure I smiled big the second night when I tasted it the next day!

Slow Cooked Pork Roast with Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Budget cooking by Helen Poore.

My local grocery store has been having a lot of "buy one, get one free" specials so this week I took advantage of the pork shoulder blade roast and bought 4 of them (it was a $20 savings!). I know it's a cheaper cut, but we love pork so I figured as long as I slow cooked it, how bad could it be? I'm still loving those cooking bags which I've used for whole chickens, pot roast and corned beef but I think this would work well in a slow cooker too. It made great pulled pork sandwiches the next day too. And how can you have a roast without mashed potatoes? 

Pork Shoulder Blade Roast - Slow Cooked

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  1 Boneless Pork Shoulder Blade Roast



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  1 large sweet onion, sliced



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  1 cup red wine



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  1 tablespoon flour



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  1/2 tablespoon rosemary



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  1/2 tablespoon thyme



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  salt and pepper to taste

preheat oven to 350

Add the flour to the cooking bag and place the roast on top of flour.  Pour red wine over entire roast.  Season the roast with the rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper.  Layer the onions over roast and close bag.  Make 6 small slits for steam.  Bake for 2.5 hours. Remove and save gravy for potatoes.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes

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  8-10 large red potatoes, quartered, skin on



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  6 cloves of garlic, peeled



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  1/2 cup of milk



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  1/4 cup of sour cream



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  3 tablespoons butter



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  salt and pepper to taste

Wash and cube potatoes (do not peel).  Place in pot and cover with cold water.  Add all of the peeled garlic cloves and bring to a boil until potatoes are fork tender.  Drain.  Add remaining ingredients to cooked garlic and potatoes and let sit, covered, for 10 minutes.  Just before serving, mash potatoes with either fork or masher.  Drizzle with gravy from pork roast.

Easy Minestrone with Pesto Toast

By guest author, Heather Forsyth.

We had guests for dinner Saturday night, one of whom is a vegetarian, so I had fun creating a meatless menu for the first time in awhile, since I became omnivorous almost a year ago.  We started with asparagus (served with egg, toast crumbs and capers), continued with homemade mushroom ravioli with brown butter sage sauce and roasted beets, then this light but very flavorful version of minestrone soup.  After tongues wagged dry over more wine, we ended with individual chocolate souffles.  Most of this menu is not for quick cooks, but the soup got rave reviews, and mostly cooked itself, so I thought I'd post the recipe to share.  It's a nice seasonal segue soup as it relies on root and canned vegetables, but early spring greens for the pesto.  It makes six servings, but you can make fewer servings at a time by making just as much pesto toast as you need.

Minestrone Soup with Pesto Toast

• 4 T. olive oil
  
• 1/2 onion, chopped
  
• 2 stalks celery, chopped
  
• 2 carrots, chopped
  
• 2 small, red-skinned potatoes, cubed
  
• handful of raw shredded cabbage
  
• 1 15 oz. can small, white beans, rinsed and drained
  
• 1 14 oz. can stewed tomatoes
  
• 1 T. tomato paste
  
• 4-5 c. vegetable broth
  
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 3 T. fresh parsley, minced
  
• salt and pepper, to taste
  
• 6 slices of coarse crumb bread, about 1/2" thick, toasted
  
• 6 T. Pesto (recipe below)

In a soup pot over medium heat, warm olive oil and add onion, celery and carrots, saute for a few minutes until vegetables begin to relax.  Add potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, tomato paste, beans, 4 cups of stock and about a teaspoon of salt to the pot.  When it's quite hot, but not boiling, reduce heat, cover and simmer gently until vegetables are just tender (this may take 60-90 minutes depending on your stove).  Add garlic and parsley, additional salt and pepper to taste, and additional vegetable broth, if needed.  You want this soup to be fairly brothy as the toast will soak up some of the broth.  Simmer for about 5 minutes more.  Spread 1 T. pesto on each slice of toasted bread.  Ladle soup into wide bowls, top with pesto toast, and serve.

Pesto:  2 c. bitter greens, packed (I used a mixture of mostly arugula, with some spinach), 6-8 T. olive oil, 1/2 c. toasted walnuts, 6 cloves of roasted garlic, 1/2 c. parmesan.  Place the garlic in their skins in a heavy skillet over medium heat for several minutes until skins begin to brown and cloves soften.  Cool and remove skins.  Place all ingredients and 6 T. of olive oil in food processor and blend.  Check for consistency; if it seems to thick add additional olive oil until it becomes spreadable.  If you don't want to bother roasting the garlic, you can use raw, but I'd use 3 cloves instead of 6, at least to start.