easter dinner

Yes, I’m late with this post, but only by a week.  I thought it was still appropriate, since most of these foods are still great for this time of year.

I love Easter dinner.  It is seriously one of my favorite meals all year.  I adore ham, love the cheesy potatoes, and there are so many lovely Easter “fixin’s”.  Plus my chocolate needs are completely satisfied.  That being said, I hate that seemingly everyone cooks ham with pineapple and brown sugar.  Yes, it’s true that I have 28 teeth and all of them are sweet, but strangely enough my sweet tooth (teeth) doesn’t extend to meat.  I’m one of those freaks of nature who believes that the foods on my plate should never touch, that it’s always best to save your favorite food for last (hey, that’s the taste that lingers on your tongue after the meal, right?), and that sweet and meat should never, never, ever be combined.  (I even go so far as to dislike sweet and sour, and even ~ gasp! ~ barbecue sauce, except in extreme circumstances.)

So now that we have that out of the way you might understand why I spent about an hour searching the web for an alternative to this crock pot ham recipe’s sauce of fruit chutney, dried apricots and onions.  Once that was done, I realized that I had to find an alternative to my crock pot too, since I was using that for the potatoes.  All in all I think I did quite well.  And judging by the way the food disappeared, so did my domestic animals.  Not to mention the extended barnyard family...  Here’s what our Easter meal(s) consisted of:

Garlicky Slow Cooker (or Oven Cooked) Ham

serves 8

(see the original recipe here)

one 3-4 pound fully-cooked black forest ham

2 teaspoons butter

1 tablespoon flour

1 cup chicken broth

2 tablespoons white vinegar

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 teaspoons parsley

Turn crock pot on low and place ham inside.  Or heat oven to 180°-200° and place ham in a roasting pan.

Melt butter in a small saucepan.  Whisk in flour until mixture is dark brown, about 4 minutes.  Add chicken broth and vinegar, bring to a boil.  Add garlic and parsley.

Keep boiling until mixture is thickened, about 3 minutes.  Pour over meat.  Cover and cook 6 to 8 hours.

~

Lightened-Up Slow Cooker Scalloped Potatoes

serves 12

(see the original recipe here)

1 cup plain yogurt or kefir (I used my home-grown kefir)

¼ cup flour

1 tablespoon chicken bouillon granules

2 teaspoons onion powder

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon Chef Tess All purpose seasoning (or a Mrs. Dash of your choice)

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

milk if needed

2 pounds potatoes (I used yukon gold, the original recipe called for red)

1½-2 cups shredded lower-fat cheese of choice (I used ½ cup cheddar and 1¼ cups mozzarella ~ I think I’ll try a little parmesan mixed in if I make this again)

½ teaspoon paprika and 3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives for topping (optional)

Wash and thinly slice potatoes and set aside.  To keep them from browning, I sliced them into a large bowl of cold water and white vinegar (about ½ cup vinegar to 1 cup water).

Mix flour, bouillon, onion powder and seasoning.  Slowly stir or whisk in yogurt or kefir.  Add Worcestershire sauce.  Stir in just enough milk to reach a thick, condensed soup-ish consistency.

Drain potatoes and rinse well.  Pat dry.  Add the yogurt mixture and mix until all potatoes are well coated.

Spoon half of the potato mixture into a crock pot sprayed with cooking spray.  Top with ½ the cheese.  Repeat layer with remaining potatoes and cheese.  Slide the bay leaf down the side until it’s nestled into the sauce.

Cook on HIGH for 3½-4½ hours or on LOW 7 to 8 hours.  Serve topped with a sprinkle of paprika and chives.

~

Spring Vegetable Orzo Pasta Salad

serves 12-15

source: http://foodformyfamily.com/recipes/spring-orzo-pasta-salad-with-asparagus-and-artichokes

1 bunch asparagus, about 3 cups diced

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 shallots, minced (I used a generous sprinkle of onion powder)

2 cloves garlic, minced

12 ounces orzo pasta, cooked to al dente and cooled (I used 16 ounces)

15-ounce can artichoke hearts

1½ cups sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil (I used a drained can of diced tomatoes)

1 lemon, zested and juiced

¼ cup white wine vinegar (I used white rice vinegar)

1 teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

1/3 cup olive oil

Bring a medium saucepan full of water to a boil.  Turn off the burner, add in asparagus pieces and blanch for 2-3 minutes.  While the asparagus is in the water, heat one tablespoon olive oil in a small sauté pan.  Add shallots and garlic and sauté for 1-2 minutes, just until tender.  (I used this garlic, and onion powder, so I skipped this step.)

Drain the asparagus and rinse with cool water.

In a large bowl add cooked orzo pasta, asparagus pieces, shallots and garlic.  Drain artichoke hearts and quarter them, adding them to the bowl.  Add in tomatoes (with oil) and lemon zest.  Stir to combine.

In a small bowl or container, whisk together lemon juice, vinegar, salt and pepper.  While continuously whisking, slowly pour olive oil into the vinegar.  Once emulsified, stir the dressing into the salad.  Move to the refrigerator for at least 5 hours for flavors to combine.  Serve cold.

~

Lemonade Cupcakes with Raspberry Frosting

makes 2 dozen

source: babble.com

1 cup butter, at room temperature

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

grated zest and juice of a lemon

1 cup milk, divided

Preheat oven to 375° and line 24 muffin tins with paper liners.

In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar and lemon zest with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.  Beat in the vanilla.

In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt.  Add to the butter mixture a third at a time, alternating with half the milk and half the lemon juice after each of the first 2 additions of flour.  Beat until just combined.

Fill the prepared tins and bake for 20 minutes, until springy to the touch.  Tip the cupcakes in their tins to help them cool.  Let cool completely before frosting.

Fresh Raspberry Frosting

1 cup fresh raspberries (or thawed from frozen) (I used about ½ cup of this)

1 cup butter, at room temperature

3 cups confectioners’ sugar

In the bowl of a food processor, puree the raspberries until smooth.  If you like, press the mixture through a sieve to get rid of the seeds.

In a medium bowl, beat the butter and half the sugar until smooth. Add the raspberry puree, then more sugar until you have a fluffy, spreadable consistency. Add a splash of water, too (a tablespoon or two) if it needs it.    If you like, sprinkle with colored sugar.

The ham was a big hit.  Middlest doesn’t much care for ham (how does anyone not like ham?  I just don’t get it) and so wouldn’t even try it, but everyone else gobbled it down.  Littlest especially loves “that pink stuff”.  (Pink just happens to be his favorite color, and he loves eating anything pink.  And yes, he knows he’s a boy.  He just loves pink.)  We used some of the leftovers last night for my mother-in-law’s famous ham and cheese croissants (one of my husband’s favorites, which his mother served at our wedding breakfast.  I’m definitely going to have to post that recipe.)  The potatoes tasted a little sweet to me, and although my husband and Middlest liked them (somewhat strangely, since Middlest isn’t usually a potato fan), Oldest didn’t.  I wonder if I got too much Worcestershire sauce in there... Anyway, I’ll still be looking for a great potato recipe. 

And that brings us to the pièce de résistance: the salad.  If you look at the picture at the top of my post, you’ll see neither the salad nor the cupcakes included in our Easter feast.  We had an extended family egg hunt to which we were asked to bring a salad and dessert.  Lucky me, a couple of days before Easter my husband’s sister just happened to bring us a bunch of fresh-picked asparagus from her farm.  Oooo baby!  Can I just say, if you’ve never had farm-fresh asparagus, you don’t know what you’re missing!  I cut up what I needed for the salad, blanched it, and couldn’t stop picking at it.  So I blanched the rest for our personal Easter dinner.  Added a little salt (which it probably didn’t need) and a little butter (to which I’m admittedly addicted) and everyone ~ Littlest, my vegetable hater, included ~ enjoyed every last bite and went sniffing around for more.  Once we got to the party, everyone who tried it commented on how good the salad was.  I’m a big pasta salad fan.  I make it quite regularly in the spring and summer, and eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner.  I was hoping for leftovers, but there was only about a spoonful to take home.  My husband even said this was his favorite of all the pasta salads I have yet created.  Wonder if it tastes as good without the farm-fresh asparagus?  Hope I never have to find out!

M’s mash (or garlic mashed potato massacre)

As promised, I’m giving you my mashed potatoes recipe.  But let me warn you now, it was a bit of a disaster.  Quite a massacre, actually.  I don’t know where the recipe-writer is from, and I really should have known better because around here you cannot oven-bake potatoes in 20-30 minutes.  To give myself a little credit, the potatoes were small.  And I don’t bake them in the oven very often.  (Ok never ~ I’m a microwaved potatoes kind of girl.)  And yes, I used Yukon golds instead of reds.  (Love love love the Yukon golds and they happened to have some at the store where I shopped for our double-take-giving items ~ not Wal-Mart.  Stoopid [yes, I spelled it that way on purpose] Wal-Mart hasn’t had them in in forever.)  But I know from watching my mother cook a hundred billion Sunday dinners that potatoes just don’t bake in 20-30 minutes.  So if you’re going to try this recipe, please add bake time appropriate to your area and the size of your potatoes.  That being said, here’s the recipe:

Bennigan’s Garlic Mashed Potatoes

source: Copykat.com

1 pound red potatoes

3 tablespoons butter

¼ cup half and half or milk

4 cloves roasted garlic

To really get their flavor, these potatoes need to be baked, not boiled.  So bake them in a 350° oven for about 20-30 minutes.  This would be a great time to roast that garlic too.  You can either use a traditional roaster, or you may wrap a bulb of garlic in foil and roast that – be sure to coat the bulb with some olive oil before you roast it.

Remove potatoes from oven and allow them to cool.  You can leave the peelings on or off; I like to leave a few of them on.  Chop potatoes, add butter, and half and half, and mix with an electric mixer.  Add cloves of garlic, and salt and pepper to taste.  You will want to heat these potatoes in a saucepan until they warm up again.

We don’t have a Bennigan’s where I live.  From what I read on the website there isn’t a Bennigan’s where anyone lives anymore, but I had never even heard of Bennigan’s before finding this recipe.  These potatoes just sounded really good, so I thought I’d give them a try.  I even put my garlic in a little foil wrapper and put it in the oven with my potatoes.  That didn’t come out done in 30 minutes.  Did I mention that yet?  It really, totally irked me that I was so sillily stoopid.  (The word of the day is stoopid ~ it means so stupid that you can’t even spell stupid, and I totally felt that way for being such an idiot.)  All of dinner was done and I went to mash the potatoes in my handy dandy fairly new stand mixer.  I put in the butter, I put in the cream, I put in the garlic.  I bent my whisky thingy on the undone potatoes and sprayed the kitchen and myself with the butter, the cream, the garlic and little chunks of potatoes.  At this point I’m feeling humiliatingly stoopid (come on, say it with me: STOOPID) in front of my father-in-law who came to share our yummy double-take-giving feast.  Dumped everything in a glass 9x13 and stuck it in the microwave for 10 minutes.  Still mostly hard.  Stuck it back in the microwave for another 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, the carrots, the corn, the TURKEY, the rolls are all getting cold.  Boo!

After 20 minutes in the microwave they still weren’t particularly soft and squishy, but they did break apart with a fork so I poured everything back in the Kitchen Aid ~ using my porcelain thingy this time, and the little plastic thingy that fits around the rim to prevent food-flinging ~ and turned it on.  Poured in more cream.  Poured in some milk.  Poured in some more milk.  Plopped in about 4 ounces of cream cheese.  Added some salt and some more milk.  By this time we were all starving, everything but the gravy bubbling happily away on the stove was cold and I gave up.  Don’t know if you can see the lumpiness of the potatoes, but they were almost, but not quite, entirely unlike mashed potatoes. 1  Before ever tasting them my husband dubbed them M-Style Mashed Potatoes, thinking, in my opinion, to tease me ever after with how horribly they turned out.  However, he decided they were quite good and actually like the lumpiness.  Go figure.