EdHart.me
The test kitchen was busy on a week night getting ready for the weekend! This recipe is a new riff on one of my favorite desserts, but instead of raspberries and balsamic vinegar I’m using the same principle with fresh ripe peaches and a marsala wine syrup. It’s really quite the delicious flavor bomb. This recipe is a serving for 2, so make proportional adjustments for more servings.
Tonight we were in the mood for something on the lighter side. I considered my other roasted cauliflower recipe, but wanted a bit of a different flavor profile, and I like the idea of a more steak-like presentation. I had a great blackened rub in the spice cabinet, so decided to go with a basic pan-seared cauliflower steak with some caramelized onions. I used butter in the skillet to sear the cauliflower since I figured that the whole thing was already pretty economical on the calories, so a butter flavor bomb with the blackened seasoning would be totally fine. It was really good!
I love breakfast. But it’s one of those meals that is so easy to shove off to the side when I’m in a hurry to get out the door for work and I feel like I’m already behind. Problem is, when the morning starts off in crisis mode, the whole day tends to follow that pattern, for me at least. There’s something cathartic crafting a breakfast experience that’s a little outside the norm and that forces a pause in the morning before the chaos begins. Of course, that requires a little effort and planning to pull off mid-week, but maybe that’s a discipline I need a little more of!
Just thinking about Sangria on a hot & humid southeastern afternoon makes me thirsty! There’s a million Sangria recipes out there, but this is pretty much my go-to version when folks are coming over for a party. Easy to make and I usually have the ingredients on hand and a couple bottles of Trader Joe’s $3 Chuck makes this a really economical party favorite.
This is a refreshing citrus vinaigrette with just a hint of sweetness.
I had planned on having a lot of prep time, but after the wedding and our visit to the art museum, I fell asleep for a couple hours. Then had to go to the store and shop for ingredients and then on my way home I remembered that we hadn’t gotten any food for our Mother’s Day picnic the next day. On top of that, I couldn’t find a pre-prepared pastry crust at the grocery store (mainly because I was still half asleep when I was shopping) so if we were going to have the quiche, I needed to make a pastry crust from scratch. By the time I started prepping, it was about 6:30 in the evening.
This evening was a particularly nice spring evening and we kicked off the date night dinner with an appetizer of fried oysters, followed by a wine walk around the neighborhood (so we would’t feel guilty!) before settling in for the main course. The nice thing about this menu is that all the work is up front on the appetizer. The main course requires very little prep, just timing. Main thing is to cut up the potatoes before even starting on the appetizer and pre-heating the oven while making the oysters. I’m all about efficiency, particularly on a date night, so we can maximize the enjoyment part and minimize the food prep part.
This is a classic quiche recipe that I got from the Spring 2018 issue Magnolia Journal and one that I use as a base for lots of quiche experimentation. It’s eggs, cream and bacon in a pie shell so how can it be anything other than delicious?
Get ready for a flavor bomb mushroom soup recipe. Compared with so many of the recipes found online, this looks deceptively simple and basic, but it’s actually amazing. The proportions in this recipe really serves 2 with maybe a little left over if this is a main course. If you’re serving tiny cups of soup you could get away with 4, but it’s so good you probably won’t want to. So the recipe can easily be doubled. Also, if you like a more creamy consistency (not so many mushrooms), you can either use an immersion blender to incorporate some of the mushrooms or take a cup or more and puree it in a blender and then add back to the soup. Either way, this is a really awesome and hearty mushroom soup recipe.
When I first started making fried oysters as a date night appetizer, I was buying them fresh from the seafood counter. But as we’ve gotten busier and date nights have become less about the production and more about spending time together talking. Unless you’re a pro, shucking 12 oysters for an appetizer is a job. So I’ve been buying [these] from Publix and while I’m all about ‘the fresher, the better,’ I haven’t been disappointed yet.