Bakers Royale

Crisp Poached Pears Stuffed with Chevre & Haroseth served over a Pomegranate Molasses Sauce ~ Sweet and savory with a dash of tart—your tastebuds will be wondering where has this lovely dish been.

Crisp Poached Pear Stuffed with Chevre & Haroseth

 This is my first submission for the Paper Chef challenge. The challenge provides the participants a set of ingredients and that’s it. No recipe, just your baking hands and some creativity.

This month’s ingredients included:  dried dates, cranberries, flour, candied orange peel.

My first thoughts of course went in the way of date bars and muffins. Wanting to stretch myself as a baker I pitched all that aside and went with what you see here.

Let me say, I’m quite happy with the end result. The pairing of sweet and savory is perfectly tuned between the chevre and haroseth while the pear provides a nice fruity and textural break between the two. But what I love most in this recipe is the pomegranate molasses sauce. The subtle tartness of the sauce ties it all together for a perfect bite that hits almost all your tasting thrills in harmony. » Read the rest of this entry «

Light and Healthy Summer Pasta Salad ~ Summer’s best vegetables take on a twenty minute prep time for a light and easy side dish. Throw in some grilled chicken and this side dish can quickly be scaled up for a fast and easy dinner.

Light and Healthy Summer Pasta Salad

This is a healthy recipe that will win over even those who refuse to eat raw vegetables unless they are dunked in ranch dressing. . . Ahem, not mentioning any picky eater names here.

In order to disguise the fact that the vegetables are raw, I dice them into tiny bits to mitigate the crunchy raw texture. » Read the rest of this entry «

Roasted Summer Vegetables ~ Keeping summer vegetables simple with a quick roast of squash and zucchini for a fast and healthy weekday side dish.

Roasted Summer Vegetables

I know I’m not alone in this, but hot summer days make me lazy, traffic makes me cranky and complicated dinners on weekdays make me crazy. Given all that, I try to keep things simple Monday through Friday.

My favorite weekday meal: Grilled Chicken with Roasted Vegetables.

I love it even more because Matt does all the grilling and he is a master at it, while I have the one simple task of doing the vegetables.

Sorry no pics of the chicken, his philosophy, respect the food first. That means food is eaten while hot and not after I have spent 30 minutes toiling around with the composition and lighting.  Yeah, I know-I’m slow, but I’m also a novice with this photography thing.

Staying mindful of the theme for simplicity in this post I am keeping this one short. » Read the rest of this entry «