EdHart.me
After an entire day of laying hardwood floors in Elizabeth’s bedroom, I was pretty wiped out but still hungry for something different for our date night. Laying on the couch to rest my sore back (if you’ve ever laid hardwoods, you know what I’m talking about!), I flipped through the July issue of Bon Appétit
Making the transition from recipe to creation is both liberating and a bit intimidating. I’ve always considered myself a “creative cook,” but what that practically means is that I like to fuse together different recipes and tweak the ingredients if something else sounds better or if the ingredients are so obscure or expensive that it’s jut not worth going to the trouble.
For Laree & my Date Night Dinner this week, we basically combined a series of appetizers into a meal. I got inspired for this by a couple of things. First of all, how often have you fixed a killer appetizer that was so good you weren’t hungry for the main course after eating it all up? Happens to us all the time. And with all the spring time fruits and vegetables hitting their peak, I wanted a smorgasbord of fresh and healthy flavors that would satisfy and celebrate the beginning of summer and kind of balance each other out and create a full meal.
One of my favorite breakfasts is pancakes, especially after an early long run on Saturday morning. Even then though, I’m not fired up about all the processed and refined flour, so I’ve been experimenting with other options for my pancake fix. Here’s my latest creation using spelt flour (made to server me and 3 hungry children, you can decrease or increase proportionately).
Seems that I’ve tumbled across more articles lately about how bad sugar is for you. I’m not sure if it’s just what I happen to be reading or if there’s a sudden surge of publicity about the negative effects of sugar, but it’s gotten me to really think about how much sugar, particularly refined sugar, I’m ingesting every day.
I’m not exactly sure where this recipe originated otherwise I’d give credit to the genius that concocted it! We had this salsa last weekend and it is totally awesome. This recipe is the most recent addition to my list of healthy snacks to keep on hand along with hummus and good old regular salsa.
Combine the first 7 ingredients in a bowl. Season to taste with salt & white pepper.
This salsa gets better the longer it sits as the flavors blend together. The hardest part of this recipe is cutting up the mango. If you’ve never cut one up before, the seed is shaped more or less like a disc and runs up and down, so the best strategy is to peel it first and then slice it lengthwise down the side trying to get as much of the flesh as possible. It’s kind of like filleting a fish, so get the two sides off then try as best you can to slice the rest of the flesh around the seed.
The other thing that really makes this salsa visually appealing (that’s every bit as important as the taste of the dish itself!) is to wash the black beans after draining them. Otherwise you’ll end up with a kind of gray residue that takes a little of the vibrancy out of the dish.
The recipe calls for white pepper, but you can use whatever you have on hand. But the white pepper does have a different taste and compliments this dish perfectly, so if you’ve got it, I recommend using it over black or telicherry.
Enjoy and let me know what you think if you try it!
We’re still trying to eat a little healthier and going after some lighter fare for our Date Nights. Not that we’re totally eating diet food, but we are trying to scale back on the butter rich appetizers and heavy red meat and sauce reductions! So for our Date Night Dinner this Saturday evening, we went with a little Mediterranean fare starting with a Greek salad. That’s what I want to talk about here.
Dinner was baked Greek-style fish and roasted baby red potatoes, but that was as easy as it gets… Baked 4 fillets of tilapia coated in olive oil & Cavendars Greek Seasoning on 450° for about 10 minutes (for 1 inch thick fillets) and also roasted a handful of quartered red potatoes (also prepared in olive oil and Greek Seasoning). Brutally easy and really good. That’s a recipe for success!
But the salad was noteworthy because of the salad dressing. I’ve been trying out a variety of salad dressings for a while for Greek salads, both store bought and prepared from scratch and I’ve been yet to approximate any of the red wine vinegar dressings that I really like.
There’s the dressing from Nabeel’s that totally rocks. Then there’s one of my all time favorite red wine vinegarettes from Leonardo’s. It doesn’t get any better than that. Then there’s one of my new favorites at Joe’s Italian. It’s in the same league. But my homemade versions and Newman’s own (despite the contributions to charity) just aren’t there.
So I was poking around on-line for something that might work, since I was really in the mood for a good salad and ran across what is now going to be my “go to” house dressing on allrecipes.com.
Here’s the recipe, and you can also link to it on allrecipes.com and while you’re there, check out the totally cool feature that lets you scale this recipe up or down as you need (in my case I made 4 servings):
And here’s a little something that’s very cool on AllRecipes.com:
We topped this off with a dessert of Greek Style yogurt and honey. That makes for a lighter and really delicious finale to a great Mediterranean Date Night Dinner. Bon Apetite!