As I look at that picture above, my mouth is watering. I can’t wait to have some more of it. I won’t eat it for breakfast, but I could. This salad is very, very different – of course – you need to like Brussels sprouts since you eat them raw (finely shaved) in this salad.

Numerous times I’ve mentioned recipes I’ve acquired as a result of reading Farmgirl Fare’s blog. Susan and her husband own a farm in the middle of Missouri never-never land (meaning they live way out in the sticks). They raise sheep, hay, and donkeys, dogs and cats as well as a myriad of their own vegetables every summer. Susan shares their seasonal changes (including a gushing river during springtime), farm stories and interesting photos every single day, particularly of Susan’s beloved donkeys. One of my all-time favorite recipes is a Susan one – Garbanzo Bean, Feta and Cilantro Salad. I could eat that salad every day for the rest of my life, I think. Which reminds me that I need to make it again very soon.

But on to THIS salad. Knowing that Susan’s an expert at salads, when I read about this one I knew I’d have to try it. Admittedly, I have a number of Brussels sprout recipes on my blog already, but this one – well, it’s certainly unusual – but that’s what makes it so good! Not everyone likes Brussels sprouts, I know, and especially raw ones at that. Which is why you need to cut/slice/shave the sprouts as thinly as possible. It helps to have a mandoline or a slicer blade on your food processor (I used the latter, though I have both – I just thought doing 2 lbs. of Brussels would be faster in the food processor). I used my middle-thin slicer.

The Brussels I bought were large – larger than I prefer – but that’s what was available. So I recommend that you halve them if they’re big, AND cut out the core. On the large sprouts, the core was well developed – just like a big honkin’ cabbage kind of core on a small scale – it was tough, so you do need to take that extra step – a nuisance, I know – but necessary.

Don’t be dismayed by the long ingredient list here – half of it’s the dressing (make double and use on green salads). The salad itself contains the Brussels sprouts, of course, Pecorino cheese, chives or green onions, lemon juice, and a number of optional additions to suit your taste (like dried cranberries, which I used), garbanzo beans (one of Susan’s favorites), raisins, almonds. I made this a few hours before a summer barbecue party recently, and I loved it, but I think I liked it even better the following day. In that time lapse, the dressing had softened the sprouts a little bit. The salad is chewy – know that going into it. It has to be healthy with all the cruciferous vegetable in it, although maybe offset by the fat grams in the dressing. But it’s altogether delicious!

What’s GOOD: the combo of flavors from the chewy Brussels sprouts, to the sweetness of the dried cranberries (or raisins), to the garlicky dressing that is just delish. The Pecorino cheese adds a kind of nuttiness to the flavorings – those dry Italian cheeses often do that. I loved it all, and even better the 2nd day.
What’s NOT: nothing really, unless you don’t like Brussels sprouts or the chewing of them when they’re raw. It’s not going to break your jaw – it’s just a chewy salad, that’s all.

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Need a really quick, easy and healthy slaw for summer? You could eat this any time of year, but it’s perfect for summer entertaining. It starts with the pre-cut packaged broccoli slaw from the grocery store. The rest is cinchy easy. The apple and pecans are what make this – well, maybe the curry powder added to the dressing also gives it an interesting twist.

It’s not often that I use a prepackaged anything, yet I know the package of broccoli slaw at the grocery store is probably quite healthy. It’s nothing but broccoli STEMS and carrots, I think. You could make your own if you have sufficient broccoli stems and carrots on hand. The mixture is tossed with a yogurt/mayo dressing which has the addition of some curry powder (I used a medium – meaning hot – heat level in mine and liked it a lot). The dressing is nothing but equal quantities of yogurt and mayo (and you could probably use nonfat or low fat of either or both), honey, rice vinegar, pepper and curry powder. Easy.

If you have some red cabbage on hand, add that to the salad mixture – my store bought package didn’t have it included. You do have to cut up a tart apple into julienne pieces – I peeled a green Granny Smith, cut off the domes on all 4 sides of the apple, put it through my alligator slicer and it made short julienne. That was really, really easy to do. Then I added pecans.

The nice thing about this is that it keeps for days. I made this the day of a summer dinner party we were having, and it was still wonderful 4 days later. As I’m writing this, we’re going to someone else’s home today for a barbecue and I’m going to use the 2nd package of broccoli slaw and just add another apple and more dressing to what I have left over from the first batch. The recipe came from Lydia over at The Perfect Pantry, a blog I’ve been reading for years and years.

What’s GOOD: the crunch for sure – of everything, including the pecans. The apple and pecans make this salad (to me anyway) and the dressing is very light. It’s got to be very healthy as well!
What’s NOT: gee whiz, nothing at all. It’s easy to make and great for a crowd.

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This is a lesson in what to do with left over Artichoke Heart & Lemon Dip. The recipe, posted yesterday, made more than I’d expected – there was about a cup left over. It became the base for this fantastic pasta to which I added chicken cubes, more artichoke hearts (cut in quarters), broccoli and peas.

Perhaps you’ll recall reading the post yesterday about the artichoke lemon dip (picture at right) I made for a dinner party we had. Even so, I had a bunch left over. As I began thinking about it, pasta sounded like the best way to use it – my friend Darci suggested it – and I just started thinking about what would taste good with it – fresh broccoli florets, cubed chicken, more canned and quartered artichoke hearts and some frozen peas. It was cinchy easy to make.

First I got all the different additions ready – I steamed the broccoli in the microwave, and I prepped the artichokes too. I buy Trader Joe’s canned (not marinated) artichoke hearts. The two cans I opened (one for the dip and the next day another one for the pasta) had fairly large hearts, and the outer ends were quite tough to eat (I tested one), so on each heart I cut off about 1/2 inch and discarded it.

I put a big pot of water on the boil for the pasta, then got out a pretty large skillet (enough to hold the sauce and the pasta both) and gently began warming the dip. I added a bit of half and half to the dip to loosen it up some. I did not bring it to a boil but just below that. Then I added in the broccoli and artichoke hearts and warmed those through, then lastly I added the chicken and frozen peas, which took maybe 90 seconds to heat through. Once the pasta was done, I drained it and tossed it in with the sauce. Onto a plate, sprinkled it with freshly grated Pecorino cheese and dinner was done.

So, on the recipe below, I’ve given you the ingredients for making HALF of the dip. You could make the full amount, serve part of it as an appetizer and use the balance for the pasta. I didn’t want you to have to go find and print the other recipe, so it’s all contained below.

What’s GOOD: gosh, it was delicious. The artichoke heart dip (made into a sauce) lends a nice, subtle artichoke flavor. It has a nice creaminess to it, of course and it sticks to the pasta very well. I liked the combo of veggies (broccoli and peas and more quartered artichoke hearts). Altogether good!
What’s NOT: nothing, really. It’s so easy to make if you have the ingredients on hand.

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No mayo in this – but there is cream cheese. You use canned artichokes (not the marinated type), parsley, Parmesan (I used Pecorino), lemon juice and zest, and fresh garlic. Really very VERY easy to make. Delish too.

If you aren’t a reader of Simply Recipes, you should be. Elise Bauer runs the blog, but the recipes come from her as well as several members of her family. I’ve been reading her blog for years and years. I’ve made several of her recipes, and have a bunch saved to my MasterCook to-try file as well. This is one of them, and it’s a real keeper. Not only is this easy – cinchy easy – but it can be made ahead and will keep for a loooong time. With the left overs I’m going to mix some with pasta – maybe I’ll add some chicken, some half and half to thin it out a little bit, perhaps some peas. Zucchini would be a good addition too. You do need to make this dip.

What’s GOOD: the garlicky, zesty taste – you definitely taste the artichokes. And the garlic, I did mention the garlic, didn’t I? I used one large garlic clove – if you’re at all sensitive to that, use a very small clove, or half a one. Really good with relatively plain crackers. I used those heart-shaped water crackers, but Triscuits would also work well, I think.
What’s NOT: nothing at all. It makes a LOT – if you’re only having a few people I’d recommend halving the recipe. But make it you should.

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If you’ve never been a user of recipe software, you’ve probably not paid any attention to the little links I include with every recipe (just above the red recipe box on nearly all my posts) that indicate you can download a MasterCook file. It will import directly into the recipe program – it just simplifies importing a recipe from the web and usually needs no other steps.

I’ve been a MasterCook user since the old-old days – back to about MasterCook version 4, I think it is, and with each new version, I’ve migrated to it. A few years ago Sierra sold MasterCook to another company, ValuSoft. Oh so sad at the time, because Sierra had decided the program wasn’t worth keeping and they no longer wanted to invest in updating it, upgrading it or improving it. Whether Sierra just didn’t know how to market the product (that’s my guess) or whether most of the computer geeks who worked on the program just couldn’t get into recipe software, I don’t know.

It’s been a few years, and those of us who have been die-hard MC users have continued to use it. ValuSoft has done a couple of revisions, but the changes were very minimal – mostly to make the program compatible with newer operating systems and to fix some bugs.

In the ensuing years I’ve continued to LOVE the program, and have been faithful to it. It had some glitches (not liking being shared on a network, though a few people were able to do it). I had a couple of big issues – once my computer shut down when I had a recipe in process and the program wouldn’t start after that. But fortunately, there have always been some fantastic resources to go to for help. Pam Erickson and John Shotsky run a Yahoo Discussion Forum (and have for decades) to address MC issues and to coach newbies to the program. I’m telling you about this because IF you decide to buy MC, I highly – HIGHLY – recommend you go to the Yahoo MasterCook Discussion and join the group (no charge, just sign up).  Once you’ve joined, you can choose to receive all the daily questions people query about – from old version questions to the newest 14 (in individual or digest form) OR you can choose to not get any of them (that’s what I do, but that’s because I’m a relatively seasoned user). I just go to the website when I need to, input a search string and see if others have had the problem. If not, I post my own question and usually within a day the moderators have answered my questions. On the issue of the program not running, I sent via email the cookbook that was having the problem and the moderator fixed it for me. No charge. Just fixed it – bless her heart! Every single time I’ve had trouble in the past they’ve been able to resolve my problem.

Now, to current news. Sometime in the last year ValuSoft was sold to a group of 3 investors and they have taken a look at MasterCook and they like it. A lot! Not only have they updated it, but the 3 investors and their families have been using MC for awhile. That’s the kind of support MC needed – once people use it, they love it. MasterCook 14 was released about 3 weeks ago, and I purchased it right away. Because I would prefer to have my own CD, I purchased the program (which I downloaded and it worked immediately) but I also purchased the CD for an additional $6.99. The program is $19.99 if you are new and it’s $14.99 if you upgrade your current version (plus the $6.99 for the CD) so it all is about the same price. If you’re interested, here’s the link to purchase the program.

What’s new – well, there are a lot of things. The software itself has been updated some (new color scheme, font adjustments, email capabilities) but with the purchase you also get a 1-year subscription to a presence on mastercook.com where you can store your recipes/cookbooks (probably will have to pay for that after a year, though) so you can access your recipe database from any computer where you have the program loaded. I haven’t done that part yet, but will sometime soon. Since I have a blog, and most of my favorite recipes are already on the blog, I can access it (and I do) when I’m out, or at the grocery store. But for all of YOU with your own recipe collections and no blog to go to, once you have all your recipes in MasterCook and you upload them to the cloud, then you’ll be able to access yours anywhere, anytime. Your cookbooks and recipes can also be stored on other cloud storage locations like Google Drive, SkyDrive, & Dropbox.

There’s also a new widget that will allow you to grab (copy) an online recipe and upload it to your mastercook online cookbooks. There’s a default cookbook (called Web Import) at the website and once you highlight, click the widget, up comes a box, you check it over, categorize it and click Save. All done. Works beautifully. For those of you who are MC users already, you don’t have to use the Import Assistant anymore. It’s seamless! Whoopee!

The other really wonderful thing is that v. 14 allows me to upload a MC compatible file to my blog that also contains the photo I have with the recipe. So if you have the program you can import the complete recipe from my blog or anywhere else on the web (and photo) directly into your MC program. So, you’ll now see two links on all my recipes – one for older MC recipes since MC5, and another link for just MC14. So, see, there’s another reason you should buy this. I don’t get anything if you to buy MasterCook 14 – I’m just encouraging you to do so. So in the case of my blog, you have to go TO my web page to do this (can’t do it from a blog reader) and click so you have up just the blog post you want, click the import button – the program figures out what to grab, it does, and that’s it.

Pam Erickson, the wonderful person who has dispensed advice all these years from Yahoo is on staff with the new ValuSoft Cosmi. The folks there have taken her seriously (she’s a programmer and also a cook) and she’s part of their team now. I feel like I know her (I don’t) since I’ve communicated with her numerous times over the course of about 12 years!

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We all know guacamole, right? Avocado, lemon or lime juice, maybe garlic? Maybe a bit of onion, cilantro and chili powder. Well, this one’s a twist on the regular one – a Thai twist with a Thai chile if you can find one, fresh ginger, fresh mint, and some fish sauce. Yes, fish sauce. It’s wonderful!

Really, I enjoy reading Food52. That website is just a treasure trove of recipes, and I don’t mean ordinary brownies or black bean salad. The contributors really offer some different riffs on standard recipes – like this one. At Food52, this recipe was what they call a “community pick.” That means the cooking community at Food52 (the readers and testers and tasters) picked it as something special. I agree.

It’s guacamole, but as I listed above, with some different ingredients. I couldn’t find any Thai chiles, so had to substitute a serrano instead. I had fresh ginger and garlic (which I smashed rather than grated). I had mint and cilantro. And regular basil, not Thai basil. But even with my minimal substitutions, this dip was just fabulous. We had guests over that night (I made half of a recipe – using just one avocado), and I can tell you that they scraped every last little smidgen of this dip out of the bowl pictured above. A good sign, of course! They raved about it, my hubby raved about it, and I got my fair share also. All delicious.

If you’ve never used fish sauce before, PLEASE don’t bypass this recipe thinking the guacamole is going to taste fishy. It absolutely doesn’t. Fish sauce smells fishy, but it doesn’t taste fishy and it adds a depth to almost anything you use it with. I always have a bottle of it in my pantry and it doesn’t require refrigeration. If at all possible try to buy the one with the picture of the 3 crabs on the label. It’s considered by most sources as the best.

What’s GOOD: just everything about the taste. I love it when someone comes up with a different taste change to a standard we’ve always made. I’ll make this again for sure!

What’s NOT: only a problem if you can’t get all the ingredients – like the herbs, but as you can read, I substituted several other items. This one’s a keeper.

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A real Stradivarius violin; photo from broadconversation.com

Until a couple of nights ago I’d only read about the famous violins, the Stradivarius. Then we went to a concert at our local outdoor amphitheater 2 nights ago and listened to a gifted young 21 year old woman, Caroline Goulding, play a real, honest-to-goodness Strad. During the concert I didn’t know she was playing one, but I noticed what a true sound came from it – it was unbelievable. I was awed. She played Mozart’s Magic Flute, for about 20 minutes, nearly nonstop, and all from memory. Amazing.

I don’t play the violin. Never have, but I wondered as I sat there soaking in the sound at the spirited playing by this young woman, that she must be playing a really good instrument. At the end someone read it in the fine print of the program – she had played a Stradivarius! Wow. I wished I’d known all through it. Not that I didn’t pay attention to it, but I’d have paid MORE attention!

For those of you who aren’t musically inclined, a Stradivarius, commonly called a “Strad” is a superb violin made by Antonio Stradivari (from the town of Cremona in Italy) back in the late 1600’s and early 1700s. The one Caroline Goulding played is called the General Kyd Stradivarius and is believed to have been made in 1720, which is on loan to her. At the rare times Strads come up for sale, they go for millions and millions of dollars. Stradivari also made harps, guitars, violas, and cellos–more than 1,100 instruments in all, by current estimate. About 650 of these instruments survive today. Experts, to this day, don’t truly understand why a Strad plays such a special tone and resonance. From Wikipedia: it is known for certain that the wood used included spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. There has been conjecture that this wood was treated with several types of minerals, including potassium borate (borax), sodium and potassium silicate, and vernice bianca, a varnish composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white.

If I had a bucket list, that would have been on it, to have listened to a Stradivarius. So there’s your music lesson for today!

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A mustard and thyme rub on the pork gives it good flavor, and a short roast in the oven. But it’s the grape chutney – grape chutney, I ask? Really. Yes. Delicious. Easy.

It had been awhile since I’d been to a Phillis Carey cooking class (this was about a month ago) and after enjoying every single dish, once I got home I discovered that my friend Cherrie and I had already been to classes where she’d prepared 3 of the 5 things. First, it was the prosciutto and fresh mozzarella pizza topped with an arugula salad and pine nuts. It was fantastic! Then she made asparagus pesto on broiled lemon salmon. And lastly, Phillis, the queen of chicken breasts, made lemon-basil grilled chicken breasts with tomato, cucumber and basil beurre blanc. Cherrie and I do attend Phillis’ classes in more than one location, so perhaps that’s what we did – as Phillis tries not to repeat at any one class location. We’re going to need to read the menu synopsis more carefully for future classes!

But, she did make 2 things we’d not had before, this pork tenderloin and a lemon panna cotta which I’ll write up in a couple of days.

You might think chutney is a misnomer here, since most people only know quite sweet fruit-based chutneys. And this one has fruit, but no sugar at all. Yet chutney (a word derived from Sanskrit) refers to a family of condiments from South Asian cuisine that usually contain some mixture of spice(s), vegetable(s) and/or fruit(s). Chutneys may be either wet or dry, and can have a coarse to a fine texture (from Wikipedia). The first chutneys were from India (my first introduction to chutney was with a 21-boy curry and referred to Major Gray’s bottled chutney). From there I made my own a time or two, and prefer it to any prepared chutney.

So, THIS extremely simple chutney is just a combination of red and green seedless grapes, olive oil, red wine vinegar, some dried thyme, S&P. That’s it. That mixture is spread on a parchment-lined baking sheet and roasted for about 20 minutes – you want the grapes to shrivel, but not fall apart. You can also make these ahead.

The pork – easy – just rub with a mixture of Dijon, dried thyme and olive oil and roast for about 20-25 minutes. See, I told you it was easy.

What’s GOOD: the tender, juicy pork, and just one grape with each bite is just delicious. The grapes just barely pop in your mouth – not really – but just about. One pork tenderloin will usually feed 3 light eaters (the ones from Costco are quite large). If you happen to buy a lot of grapes, I’d suggest you make a double batch. For sure you’ll want more of the chutney – it would also be wonderful with fish or chicken.
What’s NOT: absolutely nothing at all.

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Revisiting this salad was a not a tough decision. In between making new things to post about on my blog, I also crave some of my old favorites. This one? I got a craving for it the other day – the day our weather turned from pleasant to hot and I wanted salad for dinner.

So this time I decided to ramp up the flavor just a bit – I added a poblano chile to the roasted veggies – and I added a few shallots to the mix as well. Other than that, the recipe is identical to the one I posted 4-5 years ago. But since I know many who have come to my blog somewhat recently haven’t ever gone back to look at old recipes, it’s a good time to revisit this one. It’s been on my Favs list all this time, and I always make it at least once every summer. It just begs for a nice piece of grilled chicken or pork. Even a juicy steak. Or ribs for that matter. If you want to read about my original post, you sure can.

Here’s a quick review of the recipe: you combine raw, peeled sweet potato, red onion, shallots and a poblano chile, toss them with a little bit of olive oil and roast them just until they’re tender. Meanwhile, you rinse and drain a can of black beans and make a spicy jalapeno dressing in your blender. I didn’t make any additional dressing – it seemed to be enough for the added ingredients. You can make this several hours ahead, and it keeps for a couple of days. Just return it to room temp before serving – that way the olive-oil based dressing will be loose enough to toss a bit better. I think I also added some green onions to the finished salad.

What’s GOOD: there’s something special about the sweetness of the potato countered by the heat of the dressing and the lovely color from the black beans. The onions are sweet too. Even though the dressing is made with jalapeno chiles, you’d hardly know it – it must be the sweet potatoes temper the heat somehow. But then, sometimes jalapenos are hotter than other times. Perhaps this one was particularly mild. I also love that it can be made ahead – in the morning when your kitchen is cool. And it really does keep for at least a day or two.
What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of. If it’s been on my Favs list for years, you know it must be a keeper!

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Three separate things to make for this meal – marinate the fish (easy) – chop up the tomato salsa stuff (also easy) – and whisk the balsamic vinaigrette (nothing to it, really). It’s worthy of a company meal. Plus, except for cooking the fish, everything can be done ahead.

First thing, I grabbed the package of fish out of the freezer. It was vacuum sealed, so I put it in a large bowl, filled it with cold tap water and weighted it down for a couple of hours. That method doesn’t work quite as well with big roasts and things, but it sure is a simple defrosting method for anything flat. I’ve learned now that it’s very safe leaving that kind of defrosting package, in the bowl, in the kitchen sink, weighted, for several hours. Not all day – that wouldn’t work, I’m afraid – if you’re at work all day.

Then I made the vinaigrette. I have a bunch of different balsamic vinegars – the one I used this time was tangerine, but you can also use just plain, ordinary types too. Even the cheap grocery store stuff will work on this recipe because the astringency of the balsamic is muted significantly by all the other stuff going on on top of this fish! Then I made the salsa – now, this isn’t an ordinary Mexican style salsa at all – it’s an Italian style. Except for the fresh chiles, it could be a Latin type. This one uses cayenne – I used the Mercken spice I have in my pantry – it’s a Chilean chile powder mixture that’s a regular condiment on the tables of most people in that country. But just use cayenne, since most people won’t have the Mercken. The salsa has parsley instead of cilantro and fresh oregano instead of any other seasoning. Taste it as you make it – to make sure it has balance (of sweet, sour, salt, etc.).

Meanwhile, the fish is marinated, sort of, in a little bit of olive oil, fresh chopped thyme, salt and pepper. You could do that several hours ahead, cover and keep in the refrigerator. I just let it sit for 30 minutes or so, out on my kitchen counter. I cut the fish into serving portions just to make it easier to cook it in a frying pan.

The original recipe for this came from an Italian cook and chef, Nadia Frigeri. Many years ago I took several cooking classes from her – and learned how to make her polenta, and a variety of other Italian dishes. And this was one of them, and I forget about making it!

The recipe indicates to grill the fish – which you can – but it was blisteringly hot the night I made this, and I didn’t want to make my hubby stand outside at all. I’d cranked our A/C down to 73° so I could stand to cook in the kitchen at all. First I browned the fish on both sides in olive oil, then added some water and a lid and let it steam/simmer for a few minutes. Nothing fancy about that. Just don’t over cook it!

To serve, you drizzle a bit of the vinaigrette on the plate or platter, place the hot-from-the-grill fish, then spoon the salsa on top, drizzle with the remaining vinaigrette and top with toasted pine nuts.

What’s GOOD: the lovely, white flaky fish is foremost, of course. I loved the salsa and the balsamic sauce – it was just a wonderful combination. And the little bit of crunch from the pine nuts too. There’s enough of the salsa for each bite to contain some.
What’s NOT: there is nothing not to like about this. As I mentioned, it would make a great company meal. Easy too.

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