Food Odyssey: Spring 2021

What’s good my Christian family?! I hope you are all staying strong and encouraged in the Lord. We are already about halfway through the summer and it is a HOT one! The Midwest is seeing record heat. Me and my dog are hiding from the scorching sun and waiting for the fall to come. But this post isn’t about the summer or fall. As late as it is in the summer season, we are going to talk about spring. I feel like the spring and summer kind of blend together when it comes to seasonal recipes, but I tried to find some recipes that seemed to embody spring. Some of these recipes are good for any season.

If you’re new here, I do not claim to be a professional cook or food photographer by any means. I just find new recipes, mess around in my kitchen and take photos to share with you all. I will always share where I got these recipes because the people who created them deserve credit, of course. I am not affiliated with any of these people nor do I have sponsors in this post. I am just sharing with you what I like or dislike. Feel free to share your thoughts, recipes, ideas, tips and tricks down in the comments below. Let’s get to it.

We are going to start with the savory and then get to the sweet. The first recipe is a little something for those who love fancy toast in the morning: burst cherry tomato, basil and goat cheese scrambled egg toasts. I mean, you can only have avocado toasts so many times in a week. Let’s switch it up my fellow avocado-loving Millennials.

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I know cherry tomatoes are more of a summer delight, but for some reason, I made this toast in the spring. If you are not a tomato lover, you still might like this because the tomatoes are cooked a bit and become saucy and sweet. Basil, of course, is a natural accompaniment to anything tomato. You have the goat cheese slathered on top of a hearty bread. I like the goat cheese, but I’m sure you could do whatever cheese your heart desires. Feta would probably be a great substitute. Throw some scrambled eggs, burst tomatoes, basil, salt and pepper on top and you’re good to go. Just make sure you don’t over salt your eggs like I did and I think you will enjoy this one.

Now I am going to share a salad recipe with you all. I am not a salad person. I enjoy my vegetables cooked for the most part, but occasionally I find a salad that I enjoy. Usually, if I enjoy it, it’s not very healthy. With that being said, the recipe is sticky pork belly with crunchy salad.

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I recently discovered my love for pork belly after having red braised pork belly from a Chinese restaurant. It is an extraordinarily fatty cut of meat, but when it is braised in a sweet and savory sauce, it is so delicious. The fat just melts away in your mouth. This sticky pork belly is the highlight of this dish and it is surrounded by fresh, crunchy vegetables and topped with nuts and a quick chili dressing. The only adjustments I made to this dish was that I boiled the bean sprouts for about a minute or two before adding them to the bowl because I am not a fan of uncooked bean sprouts and I used peanuts instead of cashews. If you’re not afraid of fat, try this dish. Also, just go visit Nicky Corbishley’s blog Kitchen Sanctuary because it has some amazing looking recipes.

Alright, let’s keep pretending to be healthy and talk about broccoli green curry coconut soup. Adding Thai curry paste to a dish is one of the easiest ways to add a healthy burst of flavor. I almost always see it accompanied with coconut milk, ginger and garlic. Simple, flavorful and easy.

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I have made a couple different variations of pureed vegetable soup, but never with broccoli. It’s definitely not as smooth as a pureed root vegetable soup because of the texture of the florets, but it’s not bad. Would I make this a staple in my kitchen? Probably not. But if you like broccoli and the flavors of a green Thai curry, you would probably like this soup. You could even just use it as a side for your meal.

Now let’s talk about chicken. Something I have observed in people who like to do healthy meal prep is that they seem to always gravitate towards chicken for their source of protein. There is nothing wrong with that, but it always just looks boring and dry. Then, even worse, is that they use the same boring seasoning combinations (salt, pepper, garlic powder). I mean, I have been guilty of doing that too when I am lacking imagination in my meal prep, but I feel like we need to start putting more imagination into our chicken dishes. Chicken is practically a blank slate in terms of flavor. Go wild. For me, I decided to spruce my chicken up with a raspberry sauce.

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First, I decided to use a chicken breast here which is prone to dry out and taste terrible. To avoid this, I first brined my chicken according to the instructions laid out by simplyrecipes.com. It takes about half an hour. Next, I grilled my chicken because, in my opinion, grilled chicken is the best kind of chicken. For the sauce, the recipe calls for raspberry jam, which makes sense for a raspberry sauce, but it was not in my pantry. I ended up using an apple black raspberry jam that I had gotten from the Farmer’s market a while back and it was delicious. Since the sauce is jam based, when it hits the hot chicken, it will start to melt and get liquid-y instead of having the thickness of a nice glaze. Also, my sauce looks a lot more chunky than the photos from Life in the Lofthouse, so do with that what you will. Overall, I liked the flavor of the sauce and would not mind having it again.

Sticking with chicken for a moment, instead of chicken breasts, I tried cooking with leg quarters. I was going to throw it on the grill, but it was a particularly rainy week, so I decided to throw it in the oven.

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These leg quarters were marinated in a buttermilk hot sauce mixture, but to be honest, the marinate really wasn’t that special. I think it’s a marinade I would use for fried chicken to add a little kick to a flavorful breading. In my humble opinion, I don’t think hot sauce should be the highlight of a dish.

Ok, let’s talk about a recipe that captures spring a little better: an asparagus balsamic tart. When I think spring, I think asparagus. It can’t be just me. If you don’t get asparagus in season, it is expensive, so I went all out and made a whole tart.

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If you know asparagus, you can already tell that I made quite a few mistakes with tart. First, I did not trim the asparagus enough. Second, the original photo from the cookbook had the asparagus heads alternating, having every other head at the top and then the others at the bottom of the tart. That makes total sense, but when I was making it, I thought it was cool that when I laid the asparagus down, it looked like a picture of a forest or something, so there was no thoughtfulness that went into the orientation of the asparagus on the tart on my part. The asparagus in this tart was hard to eat. When I would bite part of the asparagus, the rest of it came off the tart. There were no clean bites. The best part of the tart were the balsamic caramelized onions underneath the cheese. If I were to make this again, I would cut the asparagus into bite-sized chunks and then lay them on the tart. Would I make this tart again? Probably not. I would make the balsamic caramelized onions again though and throw them on a different dish.

Ok, now for the moment we have all been waiting for: dessert. First, let’s talk strawberry shortcake. I have had store-bought versions of strawberry shortcake using already made angel food cake and whipped cream, but this was the first time making all the components and using a traditional biscuit. This recipe is was a little different because it incorporated fresh thyme and was sweetened with only honey. Why I couldn’t just make a traditional strawberry shortcake? God only knows.

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I’ll give it to you straight. The biscuits on these were not the best buttermilk biscuits I have ever had. In fact, they are probably not even in my top fifteen, but they weren’t terrible. The whipped cream was sweetened with a little bit of a simple honey syrup, but it tasted like it wasn’t sweetened at all. The strawberries were also sweetened with the honey syrup and smashed together with thyme, but again, not much of a difference. The recipe wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t special or super flavorful. I enjoyed these the most when I basically drenched the biscuit in the honey syrup and topped it with the whipped cream and strawberries. Would I recommend this to you for a strawberry shortcake recipe? No, not really. I mean, you could say it has the benefit of only being sweetened with honey, but biscuits don’t really have a lot of sugar in them in the first place. If you’re going to have strawberry shortcake, do it right and break out the granulated sugar.

Ok, next up for dessert we have some apricot coconut bars. I think apricots embody the spring season as well. I love dried apricots, but had never tried a fresh one until this year. I’ll be honest, as far as fresh fruits go, there are better fruits out there for you to try. I would go for a peach over an apricot any day. But let’s not rule out putting them in a baked good.

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These were delicious. They had a buttery shortbread crust, a fresh apricot filling and a coconut topping. Butter and coconut is never a bad time for me. As for the apricot filling, maybe it was the addition of processed sugar, or perhaps it was the process of baking the apricots, but it was very nice. The apricots still had a nice crunch to them and the taste was reminiscent of dried apricots to me. I would recommend this recipe for all you coconut lovers out there.

Speaking of fruity baked goods, I tried blackberry lavender white chocolate scones. Whenever you throw in a floral flavor in a baked good, it just sounds so fancy. I had never baked with lavender before, so I decided this was the year!

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Before we go any further with these scones, don’t judge them by my terrible picture. Half baked harvest has beautiful, appealing pictures of these scones. I should have added more buttermilk so that they came together better. The scones themselves were just like any other scone recipe except with the addition of blackberries and white chocolate chips. The lavender flavor came from the glaze. Milk was warmed in a saucepan and dried lavender was added and allowed to seep in the milk for about five minutes. I added the whole tablespoon of lavender because that was the flavor I came for and a tablespoon gave it to me. I really liked the combination of blackberries and white chocolate in the scone, but the addition of the glaze made these too sweet. You may be saying to yourself, “Duh, you drenched them in glaze.” That’s fair. From the pictures on the website, it looked like the glaze was applied liberally, so that’s what I did. I came to regret that decision later. If I were to make these again, I would nix the glaze and throw some lavender straight into the scones, or perhaps try seeping the lavender in the buttermilk ahead of time and use that to make the dough.

Ok, so this next dessert gives no spring vibes. I made some millionaire shortbread bars for the first time at the request of a friend. You have probably seen these on some form of social media. I saw them all over Pinterest for awhile. I was happy to make these bars, if not just to satisfy my curiosity.

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I was surprised at how much I enjoyed these. I was thinking that they would be way too rich and chewy to enjoy, but I was wrong. They were rich, but they were so soft and went down easy. The caramel was made from condensed milk and I really enjoyed the milky flavor and soft texture of it. Even my friend was surprised at how soft every layer was. I definitely would recommend these to all who like to indulge in a nice rich dessert bar every now and then. They freeze beautifully and taste great cold.

Before I share this next dessert, I have a confession to make to you all. I just recently joined the Chip and Joanna Gaines bandwagon. I had no idea who they were until this year. Now, I love them and I have both of Joanna’s cookbooks. In her second cookbook, she has a recipe for oatmeal cream pies, a Little Debbie dessert classic.

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If you’re not sure what an oatmeal cream pie is, it is basically a sandwich cookie with frosting in the middle. These were easy enough to prepare, but just a little too much for me sugar-wise. I almost feel like they are missing a dimension of flavor too. I almost want the oatmeal cookies to have a deeper molasses flavor to them. I would recommend this recipe to anyone who has a major sweet tooth. This may have been a bit of miss for me, but we have a lot of other recipes to try from her cookbooks, folks. Stay tuned.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is all for this Food Odyssey. Make sure to leave your comments down below and as you do, please enjoy the picture of Hunter. He got a brand new bed in his corner of the bedroom and he has the most comfortable and peaceful sleeps of any dog I have seen. I hope you all have yourselves a lovely summer.

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