A Day Behind…
I know, I’m running a day behind here. I posted about spinning on Wednesday and now food on Thursday! Okay, those of you that put off reading on Wednesdays because of the food, I’ve warned you! This is a food post today. If you don’t want to be hungry don’t read any further :-)
Excuse the flash photography! When we grilled these great kabobs from the recipe at 101cookbooks.com (a great food blog BTW) it was after Stitch ‘n Bitch so it was very nearly dark when we finally sat down to eat. We grilled tofu, squash, onion, and mushrooms with some wedges of lemon on our metal skewers and served it with the sauce and couscous. Since I didn’t want to drive across town in search of the pomegranate molasses called for in the sauce I decided to take the alternative ingredient to the extreme. I took 1/2 of a bottle of Pom 100% pomegranate juice and reduced it to the called for 2 tablespoons. The sauce made an awful lot so on the 4th we again served the sauce with couscous, but we grilled more or less the same mix of things on a veggie pan rather than dealing with a ton of skewers. Seeing as we were serving 12 or so it made much more sense labor-wise. I think pretty much everyone liked it. A few picky eaters weren’t pleased with the veggie mix, but if you’re not going to eat vegetables I don’t know why you would be vegetarian!
I also made some cucumber yoghurt salad to serve along side of it to cut the slight heat of the sauce. It went *very* well with the non-kabobs and sauce if I do say so myself. It also used mint from our own garden and cucumber from the farmers market and yoghurt made made down in Denver! The non-kabobs were all local as well except the lemons, though the sauce was mostly spices and canned things such as tomato paste (yes, I know we could make and can our own) and the pomegranate juice so that wasn’t quite as local. But we try!
For dessert I was trying to think of something “traditional” besides the cheesecake or angelfood cake served with blueberries and strawberries. We had talked about having a fire that evening so smores kept popping into my head. However, 75% of the guests are vegetarian and thus marshmallows were out. Then I got to wondering if one could do a smores pie with marshmallow cream. I poked around google and found a lot of smores pie recipes, but many called for real marshmallows on top. Then I came across a recipe at Land ‘o Lakes. It’s dead simple and really yummy. If it isn’t quite simple enough for you, oddly the marshmallow cream mixed with whipped cream tasted nearly like Cool Whip. The chocolate part is a ganache, so it is kind of firm, but that allowed it to hold up to the heat pretty well. I think I would like to try a bit lighter version with a filling that is more like a mousse or pudding. But it was wonderful to have this flavor combination again! Part of me is also contemplating a pure marshmallow or stronger marshmallow cream topping and taking a creme brulee torch to it to “toast” it! I don’t know if the cream version would toast though.
So, that’s two of my most recently discovered recipes that I like. I’ve gotten 10 e-mails for the recipe chain e-mail thing. I’m sorry, I don’t know 200 different people to pass it on to. Really, the 10 of you who sent to me would have been the top of my list so that doesn’t much work. I know I’m breaking the chain and all, but I just don’t have anyone to send it on to. Not to mention, on a semi-regular basis I share recipes with EVERYONE! :-) So please take this as my contribution. If you wish, send along http://blog.designedlykristi.com/?cat=12 to your other cooking peeps so they can peruse the recipes and links to recipes on my site.
