A super easy pressure cooker recipe for country ribs. Not only was it easy, but the flavor of the sauce was outstanding. You can see the little pieces of onion in the sauce.

Going to the freezer, I grabbed a small package of the Berkshire pork we purchased last summer. I’m embarrassed to say that this is the first of it I’ve used (we bought a quarter of a 4-H Berkshire pig). My freezer has been just overflowing. I’ve not purchased any fresh meat for months (except for additional chicken which we eat often), in an attempt to use up some of the good stuff we have in the freezer. But with just two of us eating, it takes awhile to make much of a hole in the jam-packed freezer contents.

In addition, I didn’t even think about how I’d  prepare it. So I went to Eat Your Books, searched for “country ribs” and it told me in the short form what ingredients are in each recipe. Choosing one, yup, I had all that was needed. I can’t say that I have ever done country ribs in a pressure cooker. What a winner of a recipe this is. 25 minutes in the pressure cooker and it was done! Wow. Ordinarily I would have simmered the ribs for awhile in water, then we would have grilled them on the barbecue. Not needed with this recipe. It came from Pressure Cooking for Everyone by Richard Rodgers.

First the ribs were browned in oil in the pressure cooker pot. That was easy and took just a few minutes. The ribs were removed, then I lightly sautéed an onion, with a bit of garlic added in at the end. Catsup was added, some jalapeno jelly (or you could use apricot preserves instead), chili powder and some water to give it just enough saucy consistency. The ribs were added back in, on went the lid and I brought the pressure cooker up to steam and it cooked for 25 minutes. I brought the heat down right away by putting the pressure cooker under the cold water faucet in the sink. Done. While it had been hissing away I made a green salad and some cauliflower.

The pressure cooker pan did have a bit of grease in it, so I spooned that out, then scooped out the remaining barbecue sauce onto the cooked ribs. Oh, it was fantastic. This recipe was so easy – I’d make it again any day. And I just loved the flavor of the sauce.

What I liked: the flavor of the sauce was just right as far as sweet scale. Because the onions are chopped, they don’t disintegrate, and I liked that little bit of texture in the sauce too. Easy to make too. I loved how quickly it cooked too. Just what a pressure cooker is for!

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. (If you were going to make mashed potatoes or rice on the side, I’d suggest you double the amount of sauce as you’ll want some to spoon onto the side dish.)

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This time of year there isn’t all that much variety in fresh vegetables. We went to our local farmer’s market the other day and about all I saw was broccoli, cauliflower, kale and Swiss chard, cabbage and potatoes. Well, there were salad vegetables of many varieties (including some cute little baby turnips that the produce guy told me I should use like fresh radishes, which I did). Asparagus has begun to show up, but it’s early days for that treat, and most of the stalks available are pencil thin. Not the kind I prefer to buy, and they were really expensive too. So I bought cauliflower and broccoli.

But I needed a new way to make cauliflower, so I did a little search around and found a roasted version using thick planks, or slices (including the root end to hold it together). I google searched for “cauliflower slices” and a recipe from the Seattle Times matched up with my idea of what it should be – roasted at high heat and seasoned with oil and balsamic vinegar, plus a bit of butter. And some thyme. It was altogether easy to make – it cooked completely in my little Breville Smart Oven that my DH bought me for Christmas. What a fun tool that’s been for heating small things, broiling things and in this case roasting a small pan of cauliflower. Would you believe me if I told you that I’ve not owned a toaster oven before? So far, I’m loving it.

So, you have to slice the head – remove any of those leafy tendrils and then slice 1/2 inch planks, leaving the root on to hold the pieces together. Meanwhile, heat your oven, or toaster oven if you have one that can accommodate this, to 400°. I lined my tray with foil (for easy cleanup) then added the butter, along with the oil and balsamic – heat in the oven while you slice up the cauliflower. Dip the slices into the mixture, bake for 15 minutes, turn them over and bake another 10 and they’re done. If you happen to have some fresh thyme in your garden, sprinkle that on top. I didn’t so I sprinkled a bit of dried thyme instead. It was fork-tender and just really tasty.

What I liked: how easy it was to make and how quick it was to bake. My little toaster oven heated up in about 5 minutes, and then it bakes for a total of 25 minutes. Definitely I’d make it again.

What I didn’t like: nada, nothing. Next time I might try to use fresh thyme if I have it, but that’s a very minor detail. I can’t say that it looks all that pretty, but cauliflower is what it is – kinda bland looking no matter what you do to it or with it.The balsamic gives it a roasted color at least.

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My friend Gloria was telling me the other day about a chicken dish she’s been making for many years, and is a top favorite of her husband, Grant. A recipe she said she’d pulled out of a Martha Stewart Living magazine years and years ago. She didn’t have the recipe handy, but described it to me, so I went online to search, and voila! it was there at the website. This technology is amazing sometimes!

The recipe is very, very easy. Actually when I opened the pouch of chicken breast(s) I discovered there was just ONE in it. But it was a large one, and once I pounded the chicken to an even thickness between pieces of plastic wrap, there was ample for the two of us. I made several changes to the recipe: (1) I used a lot less sliced almonds [the recipe called for 1 1/2 cups for 4 servings]; (2) I left the almonds in their full sliced shape and didn’t chop them up [I wanted to see the bigger pieces, which also meant not as much stuck to the chicken, I suspect]; and (3) I drizzled the finished servings with a bit of freshly squeezed lemon juice [this part wasn’t even IN the recipe but I thought it needed a little something to brighten the taste]; (4) I didn’t bake them at all [the original recipe has you brown the chicken, then put the pan into a hot oven for 10 minutes]. Because I had pounded the breasts thinner, I  knew they wouldn’t need to go into the oven. They cooked in about 6 minutes on the stove top. I also sprinkled the top with some chopped Italian parsley, but that was just for show.

It’s really very very easy to make. I know, I said that already. Forgive me! The chicken breasts are dipped in a mixture of egg and a little tiny bit of water, into bread crumbs, then into the egg again, and finally into the almonds. They’re sautéed in a bit of oil and butter. That’s it! I drizzled the lemon juice onto each serving when it was on the plate and then sprinkled on the parsley. Dinner was cooked and on the table in less than 30 minutes.

What I liked: obviously, how easy it was. The flavor was good. Not exactly over the top – I mean, there’s just chicken, bread crumbs and almonds in it. Well, a little egg. And the lemon juice. It gets lovely-pretty brown (the little bit of butter helps that along). Next time I might try Panko crumbs instead of plain bread crumbs.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. Next time I might possibly sprinkle the top with some lemon zest (you wouldn’t want to put it in the breading mixture because it would burn). I just didn’t think of doing  it this time.

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Nothing whatsoever, in any way, shape or form, like Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. Enough said!

This little recipe has, for 6 servings, just 1/4 cup of heavy cream in it. If you were to eat a bowl of it, you’d be eating about a tablespoon of cream. That’s it. And that gives it a unctuous creamy quality. Not a pale-looking creamy, but a full-blown creamy. What it also has in it is a LOT of mushrooms (a full 2 pounds for those 6 servings). And a ton of flavor. If you love mushrooms like I do, then you’ll need to do yourself a favor and make this soup. What it doesn’t have in it is a lot of stick-to-your-ribs carbs or tummy fillers like potatoes or rice. It also doesn’t have any thickener in it at all. What this contains is mushrooms, broth, herbs, and a jot of brandy, along with that little tiny bit of cream. Therefore, it’s very low calorie. 190 calories per serving, actually. Probably not enough, as it is, to fill you up for lunch of dinner. I made it the other night with several baguette slices with Parmigiano cheese sprinkled on top. Very loverly, as the saying goes. The recipe came from Food52, and was one of the winners of their contest in the mushroom soup category. It’s also in that new book I was telling you about, the The Food52 Cookbook: 140 Winning Recipes from Exceptional Home Cooks.

What I liked: the really strong, full-of-character mushroom flavor. There is no question this is a mushroom soup, in other words.  Those mushrooms have to be washed, cleaned, and precisely chopped (something the soup developer, MrsWheelbarrow, suggested). But they truly offer lots of flavor – the more varieties the better. This recipe calls for crimini and whatever kind of mixed mushrooms you can buy.

What I didn’t like: I’d have liked the soup to have a bit more toothsome substance – which is why I might add just a couple of tablespoons of rice to the soup maybe. With the leftover soup I added some small bites of cooked potato (that I had leftover). Or I’d thicken it with some flour just for texture. Even so, will I make this again? Absolutely.

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Just plain and simple fish soup – no cream – nothing all that unusual, just lots of flavorful spices, tomatoes and some delicious broth – altogether good.

I had a number of filet of sole, individually frozen, in the freezer. And a nice piece of halibut. Plus a package of Trader Joe’s mixed shellfish. A marriage was made in this soup. My photo shows the title as Freshwater Fish Soup – well, I didn’t have the catfish and trout suggested in the recipe, so duh – it’s not really a freshwater fish soup at all. Forgive my mistake.

What I did have on my pantry shelf is, however, a can of Muir Glen tomatoes. I don’t know about you, but I always keep numerous cans of different tomato products on my pantry shelves – whole tomatoes, diced organic tomatoes as you can see in the photo, the fire-roasted tomatoes that are dear to my culinary heart, tomato sauce, tomato paste and even some sun-dried tomatoes too. So this time, I grabbed the diced tomatoes and added them to this simple soup – no cutting and chopping required. And nearly all of them are Muir Glen. Most grocery stores carry one or two types of their tomatoes, rarely do you find one that carries them all, so each different store I visit, I’ll pass by that section just to see.

Recently Muir Glen offered to send me their 2011 reserve selection – a lovely 4-pack of tomatoes, including two of their premium cans of “reserve” tomatoes. Those are only available by mail order, to the best of my knowledge. I certainly don’t hide my preference for Muir Glen tomatoes, and have mentioned them numerous times in the past with recipes.

Anyway, back to soup . . . using the website Eat Your Books, I found a recipe in an old cookbook I have – Crescent Dragonwagon’s book The Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook. The Inn (in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Ozark country) isn’t open any longer, I discovered. We have friends who once stayed there; otherwise I’d have never discovered any of the numerous cookbooks by the author. Anyway, I own just this one book and have made soup from it numerous times (none of them since I’ve been blogging, I don’t think).

What I’ve always liked about the recipes is that they’re full of flavor. That’s my idea of a good cookbook. This recipe isn’t a difficult one – it’s really fairly straight forward. Don’t be intimidated by the long list of ingredients – it’s not all that difficult – or time consuming – to make this. I have in my frig a small container of fish soup base, that wonderful stuff made by Penzey’s. The recipe called for chicken stock, but why use that when you’ve got fish stock? The finished soup is very flavorful – it’s mostly fish, tomatoes, the soupy stock and a bit of rice. Not a lot of other vegetables, really. I added the baguette slices (they’re not in the recipe). Suit yourself – but we enjoyed that as a texture addition. The recipe has two components – the soup – and the fish. And really a third – the rice. The author fixes a pet peeve of mine – when you make fish soup, all the fish falls apart as you’re making it. Dragonwagon has you prepare the fish separately (and you use all the good broth from it in the soup so nothing’s wasted). And the rice – and not very much rice, which I liked. Only in the bowl do you co-mingle everything. A great idea, I thought. It’s a trick she developed when she ran her restaurant – people don’t like to eat fish soup with tiny flakes of fish – they want pieces. Her method works like a charm.

What I liked: this was clearly a fish soup – no waffling – there’s lots of fish in it. Good flavor; good broth. No cream. No thickening agent. Just the straight stuff. The different components are combined in the soup bowl – as long as the soup stock part is nearly boiling, you can pour it over the fish and rice and it all warms up to the right eating temperature.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. Not very suitable for freezing, though. The fish would disintegrate, I think, in the process. So, make and eat.

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Have you seen the new Pinata apples at your local market? I did, just the other day, at my local Trader Joe’s (see photo below).

Recently I was contacted by the producer of this apple, the Stemilt Company asking if I’d like to sample them. I said “sure.”  A week later a small package arrived containing two of these tasty apples.

I suppose we could ask – do we really need yet another apple variety to choose from? Well, we can hardly have too many, right? I don’t buy Red Delicious anymore – in fact I don’t know that they ever come to market any longer. So many tasty varieties have been developed (like Braeburn, Gala, Honeycrisp, or Fuji) that far surpass the flavor and shelf life of Red Delicious. A couple of years ago I did a long write-up here on my blog about apples, if you’re interested.

What I buy are Granny Smiths for cooking, when I want the apples to stay in their shape, and the other varieties I buy for an eating apple – one that’s crispy and sweet.

At right is a photo I snapped with my iPhone at Trader Joe’s last week – the Pinata apples were 59¢ each. They will be available starting next month at most grocery stores.

Pinatas have an interesting heirloom parentage – it’s a cross between Golden Delicious (a truly American apple), Cox’s Orange Pippin (an English variety), and the Duchess of Oldenburg (from Russia). The apple was developed in Germany about a decade ago and was transplanted to the U.S. 6-7 years ago. The trees must now be bearing enough fruit for nationwide distribution. They’re grown in central/eastern Washington State. Good, solid apple country! We liked them. They have the flavor of the golden delicious, but the crisp texture of a pippin. The ones we sampled were just a slight bit on the tart side of sweet – if a scale existed from 1 to 5 of sweetness of this crispy sweet apple, it would be on the lower side. The Honeycrisp would be a 5. I didn’t try cooking with them – they were eaten out of hand. I’ll try more of them, though. See what you think.

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Not every book I read ends up as an actual blog post. Most of them flit through my sidebar over on the left on my home page. Lots of books  get an honorable mention and a short write-up there and I don’t necessarily mention them here. So if you don’t actually GO to my website you’d not even know that I’ve read 5 books since Christmas. And this book I’m telling you about today isn’t one of the best written of books I’ve ever read, but it’s interesting. It’s about a subject you’d not find on very many blogs. But obviously, if I’m writing a blog post about it I found it noteworthy.

Neil White, the author of In the Sanctuary of Outcasts , has written a memoir of a year he spent in a prison in Louisiana. That, in itself, would hardly make this book noteworthy. But there’s a whole lot more to the story than that. Let me give you the background.

The author, prior to being sentenced to a year at this prison, was a highly successful entrepreneur. A college graduate. Smart. Likely he has some charisma thrown in too. The son of very successful parents. He was a hard worker. He was married with two young children. He led the kind of life lots of people would aspire to – he had a beautiful home, went on lavish vacations, had nice cars, dined out regularly in the best restaurants, and was well recognized in his town – lots of people wanted to know him. He thrived on the attention and accolades. He saw himself as a rising “star” in the media world. After starting up a newspaper in a medium-sized southern city (it failed, actually) he decided to become a magazine publisher. He was good at that. He was able to sell advertising – he was exceedingly good with people. There’s that charisma thing, I’m sure, although he never mentions that word. He’s an idea man too. Always thinking about where he’s going to make his name, where he’d make his “big break,” to get into the big time. He was never quite satisfied with where he was (career-wise). One more magazine, one more something. All requiring more cash to start and run. He borrowed money. He asked friends and family members to invest in his dream. They did. They believed in him. Saw no red flags.

Obviously, he wasn’t quite as good at looking at the bottom line. A few people (companies) couldn’t quite pay their advertising bills. The problem was, Neil had already spent or used the money. He factored his income in the publishing business (a common enough tactic for small companies, although not always wise); he borrowed money from Peter to pay Paul. I’d not realized until I read this book what “kiting checks” really meant (it’s fraud). He’d write checks from one account to pay another, and likewise that one to pay yet another. When you do it with different banks, it may take awhile for someone to catch on, especially since he’d do most of the transacting minutes before the close of the day. He’d convinced himself he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He got caught (rightly so) and was sentenced to a year in this low-level, minimum security prison called Carville, in Louisiana. He lost absolutely everything.

To say that Neil White had a big ego is an understatement. When he reported for his year of incarceration, he still had a pretty big ego going. He was embarrassed about what happened. He felt badly for his wife and children (and on the advice of a therapist he and his wife decided to tell their two children that Daddy was going to “camp”). He had duped a lot of people, many family members included, who all lost money in their misguided belief in him. In prison he felt like he didn’t belong – the business-dandy that he was, was “above” these uneducated prisoners from all walks of life. He never had worn an un-ironed shirt. He had been obsessive about cologne and cleanliness. He had to adjust to wrinkled uniforms, no privacy, no doors anywhere, lights on 24-hours a day. Yet within days he was already mentally scheming how he was going to do an exposé about prison life at Carville.  How would he do that? Well, he discovered right off, that this prison also housed (not imprisoned) the last survivors in the United States who have Hansen’s Disease (leprosy).

Because I think you should read this book, I don’t want to give away everything about the story. Here I’ve shared quite a bit about the author’s background. And hardly anything about the facts of leprosy, its progression, the medication now used to stop its advancement. Or about the people who live at Carville. I am telling you about the author’s abhorrence of catching the disease had him holding his breath sometimes – this, when we first arrived at the prison. And yet, eventually, with time, he learns more about the disease and befriends several of the patients and inmates in the prison. (There are inmates – like him – and patients like those with leprosy – and also there were inmate patients – prisoners who were too ill to be in some other prisons). There was a separation between the groups, but because it was a minimum security prison, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out ways to get around the rules about not fraternizing. Most of the inmates wanted nothing to do with the Hansen’s patients. They stayed clear of them for fear they’d “catch” it.

During the year, Neil White learns a whole lot about himself. Discovers how much he cares about these people – the Hansen’s patients, particularly a few special ones. They teach him a lot about life; they make him look into himself for answers; fortunately for him, he listens to them, although he’s hard-headed. It would be easy to dismiss this book as an ex-con’s way of making a living after his release, but you’d be missing the gist of the story, which is about Hansen’s Disease and what happens to all of the people who live there. These people who have no other home. It’s a story that needed telling, even if it is cloaked in a small book about one man’s prison journey. If you don’t read this book you’ll miss out on the redeeming value this book offers you, a friend, or someone in your family, perhaps, who has made a wrong-turn in life. In the process you’ll learn a whole lot about leprosy, which is something everyone should better understand. If you go to Neil White’s website, you can see a few photos of the prison. This book may not be for everyone. And, of course, since it’s a memoir, there’s no way of knowing whether everything he recounts in the book, is true. Neil White talks about that in the book – about how he was told by several people to not believe what both inmates and Hansen’s patients had told him. That they embellish or outright lie. Since truth became an important word to Neil White during his year, I’d like to think this book speaks it. I’m very glad I read it.

National Hansen’s Disease Museum (Wikipedia)

Karen’s Orphans and Forgotten Residents

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Check out the steam wafting up from those little grilling babies? An easy side dish for a weeknight meal, or for guests – although you will want to do the grilling at the last minute if at all possible.

Another winner of a recipe from Food52. And it was a winner of a contest at the website for the best Brussels sprouts recipe. Yes, they’re delicious. I know – the food blog police are going to come after me for over-using the word delicious. I need to write down a bunch of other adverbs to help me describe the taste of things. Let’s see . . . salty, succulent, good texture, bright with flavor . . . how’s that? They were all those thing as well.

First you simmer the whole Brussels in water (with a tiny slit in the root end) for exactly 5 minutes. Not a moment longer. Why? Because after they drain and cool, you’re going to grill them for awhile to get all that good blackened flavor all over them – and they cook sufficiently more on the grill. A bit of olive oil goes all over them, then they’re rolled or tossed in a simple mixture of pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, celery salt. You might be tempted to cut the sprouts in half, but don’t. They’ll take up too much room on the grill (well, at least they would on my indoor grill you see above in the photo) and they might fall apart more readily. So control the urge and just grill them whole. Takes about 12 minutes or so and then you sprinkle them with your choice of additions – lemon zest (yes, I did that one), Parmesan cheese (I did that one too, but most of it didn’t cling to the sprouts so what was the sense of wasting the cheese?) and/or bacon (I opted not to add this one). If you have any of the seasoning mixture you can toss the sprouts in that again after grilling them. I didn’t have any so they were ready to serve. There were 4 of us for dinner that night, and everyone slicked the plates clean. I’ll be making these again.

What I liked: how easy they were, and the seasoning mixture that clings to the outside edges. Oh, and the blackened pieces were so good! Definitely worth making.

What I didn’t like: well, the only thing I’ll mention is that I thought they were too salty. The original recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of kosher salt. With the addition of celery salt too, I thought it was too much. Next time I’ll leave out the kosher salt and see how it tastes. I’ve made a note of it in the recipe. But I’m sensitive to salt in lots of things. No one else at the table noticed.

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I got the niftiest thing for Christmas. And it’s interesting enough, and works so well, I thought you should know all about it. I put it on my amazon wishlist and one of our kids got it for me. It’s a stand for holding my iPad. I suppose it works for most tablet computers, and it works like a charm for me! I use it here in the kitchen – when I’m cooking and need to refer to my blog, for instance, where most of my recipes have been posted. Or, I can go anywhere online – not just my own blog, of course. My iPad lives here in our kitchen. We have a very large island and my desktop computer lives on one side and my iPad on the other (that sounds really decadent, doesn’t it – two computers in the kitchen). But, you know, the iPad won’t do a lot of things – like print anything – and it doesn’t display things in my Google Reader very well. And I don’t blog from it. But it’s fantastic for looking up things. It’s great for travel (reading email). It’s connected to our wi-fi, so I can go almost anywhere in the house with it.

And when I’m cooking, it’s such a waste of paper, these days, to print out another copy of something when I can just read the recipe online. I merely unhook my iPad from its charging cord and set it up right in front of my kitchen prep area on this stand. The rubber type wand will move the screen up/down/left/right as necessary. That way I won’t get grated cheese on the screen, or smear butter on the edges. If my hands are messy, it’s easy to clean it off the wand – a whole lot easier than getting it off the iPad screen! And I’ve set up my iPad to never go to sleep, so for the duration of my cooking time it’s “on.” It’s called a Belkin Kitchen Stand and Wand for Tablets. It’s $29.26 at the moment from amazon. A great tool for cooks, I think.

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Oh my goodness. Oh my gracious goodness, are you going to like this stuff. I could hardly keep my tasting spoon – that very spoon you see in the photo – out of the cruet.

It has so many possibilities – on a salad, yes, even a green salad. Or on sliced tomatoes. On green beans. On steamed cauliflower. On broccoli – oh yes, broccoli for sure. Or on some sliced beef (fresh out of the oven or with leftovers), or some sliced leftover pork roast. Or a dunk for shrimp. Or, or, or! The list could be endless.

The venerable duo of Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs have their own website. If you’re not already reading it, you should be – Food52. They’re the hard-working team who created (edited and wrote) the monstrous cookbook, The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century. Sorry for mentioning that book so frequently, but I surely do love that cookbook! Anyway, after Amanda and Merrill collaborated on that book, they decided to start something else because they so enjoyed working together. That’s what Food52.com is all about. That’s food 52 weeks a year, and a good part of their blog come from contributions from home cooks just like us. This recipe included.

As a part of their blogging (and it’s an ongoing thing) they have contests for everyone’s favorites. I think the duo does most of the honing down of lists, then they ask readers to try them, taste them and vote. As a result of that contest, a book was written, The Food52 Cookbook: 140 Winning Recipes from Exceptional Home Cooks. I gave the cookbook to two of my friends for Christmas. I wanted one for myself, but I know where all the recipes are on the site, so I printed out the ones I knew I’d want to try and have already prepared two of them. So far, so good! If you want to look at the contest winners, you can do just that with this link. This particular recipe by “linzarella” won for a category they call “wildcard.”

This dressing – or sauce – has such an unusual list of ingredients – it drew me in immediately. It’s yogurt, some crème fraiche, honey, lemon juice, lemon zest, Dijon, prepared horseradish, salt and pepper. That’s it. Combine it in a bowl, or even easier put it into a lidded jar and shake. Done. How easy is that?

Having read what people had to say about this recipe, I know that it’s delicious on green salad, even though that probably wasn’t its original intent. As Linzarella explained about her development of the recipe, she isn’t a fan of chiles, so she uses horseradish as a way to gives things a kick. What would it be good on? Sliced tomatoes. As a dip for artichokes. Or asparagus. It has a hint of sweetness to it, and you don’t use much on any one serving. I could even see it as a dollop on sliced oranges. You might think the horseradish would overwhelm – it doesn’t AT ALL. Unless you don’t like horseradish, in which case stop reading. It could be a dip – for vegetables even. And I’m always wanting some kind of something to put on top of leftover meat or fish – like chicken, shrimp, sliced beef (this would have a natural affinity for sliced roast beef), even pork, or lamb. Ah, halibut. My mouth is watering . . . Someone suggested it would be good with corned beef and cabbage. Sounds divine. Or if you’re wicked, just spoon it out of the bowl directly to mouth. Do note, using about a tablespoon per serving, there are just 22 calories and 1 gram of fat. This recipe is going onto my Carolyn’s Favs list, just so you know, in case that tells you anything!

The photo at right shows some of those Kumato tomatoes (they’re really good in case you haven’t tried them) with a dollop of the sauce on top, some freshly minced rosemary and a few little pieces of kumquat. And a little pepper too. This was absolutely delicious!

What I liked: oh, ahhh, just everything about it. Can’t wait to find other things to use it on … . .

What I didn’t like: can you guess? Nothing at all!

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