I picked up some unusual ingredients from the Farmers Market that I made into a special salad. The flavors and textures are pretty darn amazing together. Finding Glacier Lettuce is pretty difficult but if you happen to come across it you might want to pick it up because it’s special. The recipe makes slightly more dressing than you actually need so save the leftover for you next few salads.

Ingredients for about four servings

1 container glacier lettuce

1 15.8 can reduced sodium great white northern beans – rinsed very well

1/4 cup purple basil – packed – rough chopped

3 purple cabbage leaves – cut in manageable pieces

1/2 smal fennel bulb – cored and shaved

2 Tablespoon fennel fronds

1/8 sweet onion shaved

1/2 watermelon radish – sliced thin

2 cups watermelon – cubed

1 purple carrot peeled – sliced thin

1 lemon – just the fresh squeezed juice

1 tangerine – the zest and the fresh squeezed juice

1 clove garlic – ground to a paste

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1 Tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon Aleppo pepper

Directions

In a large bowl combine the glacier lettuce, beans, basil, cabbage, fennel and fronds, onion, watermelon radish, purple carrot and watermelon.

In a small bowl mix together all the remaining ingredients.

Dress the salad when your ready to eat it.

This one is a Forking Good Salad!

 

 

 

 

Tiny desserts don’t weigh you down and are great all the time and especially for family gatherings were you serve an abundant amount of foods. These tiny bite size pies are sure to be a hit at any gathering. I must give credit to Chef Lidia Bastianich here because I used her crostata dough recipe. It’s a great olive oil crust recipe that’s very easy and delicious and comes out perfect all the time. I made the apple filling with tapioca flour. It took me till this year to figure out that no other thickener is nearly as good as tapioca flour for fruit. You can make tapioca flour from just putting tapioca threw a coffee or spice blender. The Apple Pie Bites are FORKING DELICIOUS and you will want to make this recipe. You will need a mini bite size baking pan. possibly a spice grinder for the tapioca and I used a spiral slicer for the apples but if you have a mandolin that will give you a thin cut that will work too.

Ingredients to make 12 mini Apple Pie Bites. About 6 Servings

1 cup flour (plus a little extra for rolling the dough)

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/6 cup cold water (more if needed)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 large apple (I used a honey crisp)

1/8 cup tapioca flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

about 6 grates fresh nutmeg

pinch cloves

1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 cup all fruit apricot spread

non stick spray – canola or vegetable

Directions

Get a baking stone and put it in the middle of your oven. Set your oven to 375 degrees F. Spray 12 cups of a mini cup baking pan with non stick spray and set to the side.

In a medium mixing bowl combine flour, olive oil, water, 1/2 teaspoon salt, mix well and wrap in plastic wrap and set to the side.

In a small bowl combine tapioca flour, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, 1/8 teaspoon salt. Mix and set to the side.

Now get out your spiral slicer. Core your apple. Use your ribbon blade and slice up your apple like this.

Put all your apple ribbons in a bowl breaking them down or giving them a rough chop and pour the small bowl with sugar and spices on the apple ribbons. Mix and set to the side.

Roll out your dough as thin as you can using a little extra flour for the surface and your rolling pin.

Use a drinking glass and cut out 12 pieces. I note that you will have to use the scraps and re-roll the dough to get 12 pieces.

Pat each dough circle into the pan.

Stuff each one with apple filling the best as you can. if your apple is very large you might have some leftover.

Place in the oven on the stone at 375 degrees F for 15 minutes.

Take the pan out of oven and brush with apricot spread.

Put back into the oven for about 10 minutes till they look like this.

Take them out of the oven and let them cool off a bit till they are at least just warm about 20 minutes.

Serve and enjoy!

These are FORKING Adorable and DELICIOUS Mini Apple Pie Bites! Nobody is going to eat just one!

Here we have one of the most satisfying delicious and crowd pleasing appetizer or side dishes you can make that’s just roasted and not fried. It’s not heavy or greasy but full of flavors and textures. This recipe is best to make when you find the large Jalapeño peppers that have lots of flavor and not much heat. It also helps if you have a cup of leftover rice and some previously roasted corn. You do need a gadget that makes Spirals like spaghetti for doing the potato crust. I do note you will have leftover potato because you are only using the long strings. Save the small strings and the spiral middles from the potatoes and hold them in a bowl of cold water till your ready to blot them off and prepare. (I roasted them at 350 degrees F with just some non-stick spray and covered them with foil till they were good and cooked….maybe an hour…then I removed the foil and let them go about half and hour till they got gold crispy ends….came out really tasty…around two servings) The Chipotle Rice Stuffed Jalapeño Peppers with Potato String Crust come out FORKING DELICIOUS! You are going to want to prepare this one.

Ingredients for around Four Servings

6 large jalapeno peppers – remove stem end, cut in half (long ways) remove core and seeds

1 cup cooked rice

1 chipotle adobo pepper in sauce (chopped fine plus 1 Tablespoon of the sauce) (or a tad less for  less heat)

1 garlic clove – ground into paste

1/4 teaspoon cumin

1/8 teaspoon ground annato

1 Tablespoon scallions – chopped

2 Tablespoons roasted corn

2 oz sharp aged cheddar cheese – shredded

1 Tablespoon fresh cilantro – chopped

2 potatoes (I used large red potatoes)

non-stick spray – canola or vegetable

fresh ground sea salt to taste – for finishing

fresh ground black pepper to taste – for finishing

optional – micro red amaranth – two pinches for garnishing

Directions

In a small bowl mix together the rice, chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, garlic, cumin, annato, scallions, corn, cheese and cilantro. Mix well.

Use a spoon and stuff your peppers.

Get out your spiral cutting machine and turn your oven on to 350 degrees F. Prepare a baking sheet (s) with non-stick spray.

Use the blade that makes potatoes like spaghetti.

Pull off around 10 inches and wrap it around the pepper and place on baking sheet.

Repeat until all your peppers are done.

I note that you will have extra potatoes, smaller strings and the potato core that you can’t use for the peppers. Just save them how I described and either prepare the way I suggested, fry them or discard them if you prefer.

Spray the top of the peppers with non-stick spray. Put the peppers in the 350 degree oven till the potatoes start to crisp. About 25 minutes.

Now top them with fresh ground sea salt and black pepper.

Serve them up and enjoy!

Forking Amazing!…… Something New and Original…….You will love them!

 

These Corn Cakes are crispy and sweet on the outside and LIGHT textured and MOIST on the inside. They do lose the crispness on day two but are still mighty delicious.No worries…the 2nd day you can reheat them in the oven and get the crispness again if you want. They are light, sweet and very corn like in taste. They have that perfect sweet to salt to yummy corn flavor. They come out like you baked them in cast iron. I made a slight accident when I cooked them and I don’t know if that contributes to the yumminess. I accidentally topped up the cornmeal cup of flour with chickpea flour. At the time I thought I added cornmeal flour that looked funny but latter I figured out I used about a 1/4 cup of chickpea flour because I had my chickpea flour in the wrong spot in my pantry.

Well any who these are mighty flavorful and delicious. The come out sweet, moist, (day 1) crispy like fried and yummy.

Ingredients for 20 corn cakes 20 servings Extras can be frozen

3/4 cup corn meal

1/4 cup chickpea flour

1 cup flour

1 1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter – melted

1 XL egg – beaten

1 cup sweet corn – fresh cooked

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt

1 cup non-fat Greek Yogurt

non-stick cooking spray

Directions

Set oven to 350 degrees F. Spray two muffin pans with non-stick spray and set to the side.  In your large bowl stir by hand with a fork your butter and sugar till mixed well. Now add your egg and mix well again. Dump in all your dry ingredients followed by the yogurt and mix well. Stir in your corn. Now fill the cups of your muffin pan a little over half way.

Bake for about 25 minutes. They will be brown on top and did look possibly raw but weren’t. I let them cool maybe 10 minutes. Gave each one of them a little turn to make sure they didn’t stick and then lifted each one out.

This is something that everyone would like.

 

 

 

Pumpernickel Bread is very similar to Rye Bread and is basically a dark rye made with coarse rye flour. There are many different styles of Pumpernickel bread. The varieties that I’m familiar with are American, German and Russian. The German style is very dense and is slow cooked all night long or possibly a day to cook. The Russian Style is a very flavorful dark and moist and is sometimes topped with garlic, onion, poppy seeds, sesame seeds and pretzel salt. The American Style is similar to rye bread but has molasses and coffee added to the dough. My style runs in-between American and Russian. I was just aiming for a delicious bread.

Ingredients for about 25 servings

3 1/2 cups bread flour (+ extra to rest your dough in)

2 cups dark rye flour

2 cups whole wheat graham flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/3 cup dark brown sugar

1 Tablespoon active dry yeast

1/4 cup caraway seeds

1/4 cup molasses

1/2 cup canola oil

1 1/2 Tablespoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon coriander

3 cups hot water

1/4 cup semolina –  FOR RESTING THE DOUGH on

1 teaspoon granulated garlic

1/4 cup sweet onion – minced

1 teaspoon poppy seeds

2 big pinches course sea salt (one for each loaf)

1 XL egg beaten (to brush on loaf)

 

Directions

All dry ingredients (EXCEPT SEMOLINA flour, granulated garlic, sweet onion, poppy seeds, pinches of sea salt)  in your mixing bowl from your stand mixer. Now add all the wet ingredients (EXCEPT FOR EGG) and stir till combined.

Bring up your mixer to medium/high speed (on mine #6) and let your mixer mix the dough for 10 minutes till the dough is like elastic and pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

It should look like this.

Get out a large bowl and put in some bread flour for the dough ball to rest.

Pull the dough off the mixing hook and get all the dough out of the bowl and knead it a bit and make it into a dough ball using a little bit of the flour.

 

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place for about an hour or until it rises.

Divide the dough into three.

Put down semolina for the dough balls (or flat bread)…..I used some on an oiled pizza pan and some on a wooden board for the loaves.

You can make either three small loaves of bread or a non traditional pizza or sort of flat bread and two loaves of bread like I did.

The semolina that allows your bread to slide off easily and also makes the crust taste delicious and nutty.

Put the resting board in a warm place till the loaves double in size.

I did the pizza first and let the bread rise.

The NON Traditional pizza I put in a 350 degree F oven for fifteen minutes.

I took it out and flipped it over and then topped it with Swiss Cheese, munster Cheese, tomatoes, black garlic, padron peppers, extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper.

Put it back in the oven just a few minutes to melt the cheese.

Now back to the breads. We ate two pieces for lunch and the rest can be frozen for another time.

Back to the breads.

They are nice and puffy so I mixed up the remaining ingredients and brushed them on the loaves.

I put one in the oven at 400 degrees F for thirty minutes and then the other for the same.

They taste great and are attractive too!