Rosemary-Balsamic Pear Salad

An updated, balanced twist on the classic pears-and-cheese combo.

Ingredients:

1 ½ c. whole spelt berries
3 c. water
3 Tbs. plain yogurt or vinegar
3-4 fresh, ripe, pears
1 lemon
5 oz. crumbled Gruyère cheese
approx. ½ c. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbs. rosemary
sea salt, to taste
optional: 3 oz. prosciutto

Directions:

Soak the spelt berries overnight in the water and yogurt (or vinegar). Drain off water in the morning and rinse in clean water. Drain again.

Cut the pears into chunks. Juice lemon and toss with pears.

Toss pears with spelt berries, cheese, thinly sliced prosciutto, rosemary, and salt.

Heat balsamic vinegar in a small pot over medium-high heat until it reduces to a slightly thick syrup. Immediately pour over salad and toss. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil.

Notes:

Can be served cold or at room temperature. Makes approx. 5 servings.

This can be made with any combination of fruit, cheeses, and spices that you like – whatever is in season and locally available. Some other good fruits for this recipe are apples (with nutmeg and/or cinnamon) and peaches (with ginger and/or cinnamon). Some other good cheeses are goat’s cheese and gorgonzola. This would also be pretty good with Kamut grains.

Green Beans & Shrooms

Hello tasty world -

Here’s a super-easy side dish that I make pretty frequently in some variation or another; hope you enjoy. The name is fairly self-explanatory:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb. or more fresh green beans*
• 3-6 oz. of sliced Portabella Mushrooms
• 1/2 Sweet Yellow Onion, thinly sliced
• 1-2 tbsp. Balsamic Vinegar (Red Wine Vinegar works great, too)
• Spritz of Olive Oil to coat your pan

*Half poundish is usually enough for two people for a side dish (mileage may vary).

Directions:

• Wash all your veggies. You don’t know where those things have been.
• Start with the mushrooms and slice them in half, begin to sizzle those up on about medium heat in a skillet coated with some olive oil.

• While those guys are cooking, remove the ends on your green beans (I usually just use kitchen shears to chop them off).
• Pull the ‘shrooms aside and then put your green beans in the skillet. Depending on your skillet you may need to add a smidge more oil.
• Add your vinegar to the skillet at this point and toss the green beans around to coat them in the vinegar.
• Cover your pan; this helps the green beans stay nice and moist.

• At some point while cooking, usually anywhere from 5-10 minutes depending on the heat of your stove, the beans will start to change color. A mixture of colors that looks like the different Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is pretty normal, but ultimately we’re going for a Donatello-green as shown below:

• Once all the green beans are a nice olivey dark green and showing some burn spots, they’re perfectly good to go. Take them out of the skillet and set them aside for now.
• Throw a little more vinegar in your skillet and toss around the finely sliced onion – let it carmelize and absorb all the flavor of the vinegar.
• Once the onions are ready, combine all three (mushrooms, onion, green beans) in a bowl/skillet/whatever vessel you have handy and toss them all together.
• Voila!

As a note, this method of cooking the green beans leaves them a bit on the crunchier side, while still leaving them soft enough to be enjoyable. If you can’t stand/want something a bit different, I’ve broiled them, after skillet-ing them, in the oven on High for about 5-7 minutes to soften them up. If you do decide to go that route, I’d recommend  you wait to toss in the mushrooms and onions (don’t want those guys to burn!). Hope you enjoy!

Cheers.

Sweet Potato Casserole

This delicious recipe comes from Mary Lou from our church.  She made it for a church dinner and mmmmm it’s soooo good.  It’s sweet with a brown-sugary and nutty, crispy topping.  It’s definitely a change from the normal sweet potato, marshmallow, and syrupy combination that you usually find at Thanksgiving (at least we do, anyway).  The recipe below is the original from Mary Lou, and the comments afterwards are some thoughts and suggestions for alterations.

Filling:

3 cups sweet potatoes (4 good-sized)
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 c. milk
1/2 c. flour

Topping:

1/3 c. butter
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. flour
1 c. chopped pecans

1. Peel, boil and mash potatoes
2. Mix in remaining ingredients
3. Put in 9×13″ dish
4. Mix topping ingredients (mix dry stuff first, then cut in butter).  Sprinkle over the top of the filling.
5. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes.

Notes and suggestions:

• After boiling, I used a food processor to mash and mix everything.  This made for a super-smooth filling.  If you like chunks (like Matt does), then mash them by hand.
• Make sure the taters are cool enough before you add the eggs, otherwise you might get cooked egg chunks.
• I used less butter and less sugar in the filling because the taters are already sweet!  I would recommend not changing the amount of sugar in the topping, or at least keeping the sugar and flour proportions the same.
• You could also use oatmeal for the topping – 1/2 cup oatmeal and 1/2 cup flour.
• Another thought we had is that marshmallows would still be good in this recipe.  Push the small mallows into the filling before adding the topping.  Later….Gooey chunks of mallow…mmm, yes?  You could also add some on top to get that crispy browned mallow that is sooo good.
• You might also add some cinnamon or other such spices, to taste.