Our Catholic Seder menu is a way for those wishing to share a meal with friends and honor the Passover meal to do so. There are also some fun craft projects.
I don’t know why I wait for Easter to make a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. I think it just seems appropriate for the rabbits of Easter to have a carrot cake treat. This is a really rich cake, not something for every day.
This is not something for every day. Green tomatoes are wonderful in the spring before the beautiful red tomatoes are ripe – that is if you can keep from eating them!
When I was a little girl, my mother had the entire collection of The Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cooking, and there was a recipe in for Hungarian Porkchops, which I have been making for many years. Today, I decided to change the recipe a bit and came up with Pork Chops Paprikash.
In Glendale, California, which has a large Armenian population, we have Red Pepper Sauce. It’s basically paprika peppers, and I use it quite often, in sauces, eggs, and other dishes. There are many brands and you can probably find it in ethnic European stores. I highly recommend it.
Paprikash dishes call for sour cream. I have probably talked about this before, and I will say it again. When you buy sour cream, please only get the kind that has cultured cream. The other stuff has gelatin and other ingredients as fillers, and they just are not real sour cream. The Alta Dena brand has a wonderful saying on the top of the tub, “Those cravings you feel are totally natural”. I love that because it’s true – there is nothing in that sour cream except cultured cream, the way sour cream should be.
Mise en Place – Sour Cream, Red Pepper Sauce and Beef Base
There was a wonderful tip from America’s Test Kitchen that I’ve been doing for quite a while, only not as efficiently. To protect iced cakes from plastic wrap, I’ve been sticking the top with toothpicks. America’s Test Kitchen uses spaghetti noodles – they’re more plentiful, and easy to break for whatever length you want.
So, when I decided to make my pie today, and didn’t want it getting over burdened with plastic wrap, I took linguine noodles, stuck them in, covered my pie, and stuck it in the refrigerator. Now it won’t pick up any bad smells, or have any of it come off with the plastic wrap. There’s a bunch of other transport tricks at America’s Test Kitchen.
Spane liked the Balsamic Strawberry and Blueberry Trifle so much that he asked me if I could make it again. There were fresh raspberries and blueberries on sale at the market, but I didn’t want another trifle, I wanted a tart.
When thinking about making this Balsamic Strawberry and Blueberry Trifle with Lemon Cream, it reminded me of something that happened many years ago. I was asked to bring something to a 4th of July potluck. I was making a yellow cake and using strawberries and blueberries for filling, with a whipped cream topping. As I was taking the cake out of the pan, my cat Lazer startled me, and I dropped the cake on the counter. I went into bunch of little pieces. Well, I had a trifle bowl, so I scooped everything up, put in the bowl with the cream and fruit, presented it as Oops 4th of July Trifle, and called it a day.
This year, I wanted something along the same lines, but a little more fun. Strawberries and balsamic vinegar are perfect together. Strawberries and Mascarpone are even better together, but I didn’t want anything that thick. So I developed a wonderful lemon cream.
A funny story here. My friend Amber and her husband, Stevie went to the local Home Depot some time in 2010, and I was looking at Weber barbecues. The last one I had got toppled by a BVM Sister – the Sister was not hurt, but the Weber was a goner. The Weber at the Home Depot was on sale, and Stevie said I should get it, and I could keep it their house until Spane and I found a place with a yard. Stevie has one of those big drum barbecues, and he barbecues enough for a few days on that grill, so he likes to use mine for smaller meals. I get to “borrow” my barbecue about once a year. We’re good friends, and we laugh about this all the time.
So, tonight I decided to do kind of like Stevie does. I cooked a few things on the barbecue so I won’t have to cook tomorrow. I grilled a fillet mignon, bake potatoes wrapped in foil, and the Asian pork chops.
Amber came by tonight and shared our dinner. The Asian pork chops were moist, tender and full of flavor. The steaks with their blue cheese were just fine, accompanied by the wonderfully smoky baked potatoes and balsamic grilled vegetables. It was a great dinner to share with a very good friend.
