Donna's Daily Dish
Inspiring people to create every day recipes
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Inspiring people to create every day recipes
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![]() During recovery from hip surgery, my neighbor very kindly prepared several dinners for my husband and I. To show our gratitude, I made dinner for she and her husband Sunday evening. Thank goodness the weather has cooled down as this played into my menu selection. I also wanted to have most of my dinner done before my guests arrived. After a bit of internet research, I found the perfect recipe at Williams-Sonoma, braised short ribs with creamy polenta. Now that my entree was selected it was time to round out the menu with a few appetizers and salad. For appetizers, I selected two and kept them simple. I made basil pesto cream cheese filled tomatoes. While the recipe called cherry tomatoes, I opted for grape tomatoes. The cream cheese filling was a nice foil to the tartness of the tomato. My other go to easy appetizer is crab spread from Mr. Shrimp in Belmar. I serve the crab spread on Keebler Club crackers.
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![]() My husband came home with 15 ears of corn last week. It put me into overdrive to find different recipes in which I could use NJ sweet white corn. While going through my Instagram feed a few weeks ago, Talula's, a restaurant in Asbury Park, had a blueberry cobbler with sweet corn ice cream on their dessert menu. I was intrigued, corn flavored ice cream, why not. ![]() I can't get enough of this summer's corn! It has been so sweet and delicious and I've been scouring my files for any recipe I can find. Find one I did. In July 2010, but I picked up a flyer at my local Williams-Sonoma store. The flyer was Technique Class: Farm to Table and featured sweet corn. Among the recipes in this brochure was one for cherry tomato frittata with corn, basil and goat cheese, all my favorites. ![]() The best way to prepare vegetables is to cook them when they are in season.This year I find the New Jersey white corn to be especially good. I recently shared a corn chowder recipe from Delicious Orchards. I dug through my files again and found a recipe for sweet corn pudding. The recipe was published in a magazine that I'm assuming was called Garden Plate. The reason why I'm unsure is that while the corner of the torn magazine sheet reads "August/September 2006 gardenplate.com," I was unable to locate it via a web search. The recipe was originally published in The Summer House Cookbook, Random House 2003. ![]() Sometimes if my daughter has an overabundance of produce in her Dreyer’s Farms CSA box, she’ll pass along some items to me. In one of her boxes, she gave me had a half of head of cabbage and a purple spring onion. At first, I was puzzled as to what do with these two items, but after going through my recipe files, I came across a recipe from the March 1996 issue of Bon Appétit Magazine for Carolina Cole Slaw. What is great about this recipe is the fact that there is no mayonnaise in this slaw. Fortunately for me the half of head of cabbage yielded the 1-1/4 pounds of thinly sliced cabbage I needed. I also used the purple spring onion instead of regular yellow onions for a little color. A sliced green pepper is also in the slaw. In order to get the cabbage and onion nice and thin, I used my mandoline slicer for both. ![]() It’s been almost four weeks since my hip replacement surgery. Sitting still is not something I can easily do. I was, in my mind, very good the first two weeks of recuperation. Since then, I’ve been able to move better and being careful at what I chose to do. I’ve missed cooking during this time. The meals that we prepared were easy and unimaginative. However, as my recuperation progresses, the meals are getting better. Some of the things I have made in the past, but I do have a few new ones. I was able to try out some these recipes on my family this weekend. ![]() My son loves to fish. Be it off the jetty or on the ocean he’ll spend his summer days fishing whenever he can. Last week he was fortunate to have a friend invite him on their boat. They left the marina at 6 AM and by 7:30 had caught their limit. My son caught three large strip bass. Lucky for me and his sister, he was kind enough to give a large fillet to each of us. I prepared mine the other evening very simply to let the freshness of the fish shine through. I made my fish en papillote, meaning I placed the fish on a sheet of parchment and proceeded to enclose the fish in a pouch. I did this to keep the fish moist as it baked in the oven. I seasoned the fillet with salt, pepper, EVOO, a sprinkle of panko breadcrumbs and fresh chopped parsley. ![]() My husband recently decided that he wanted to reduce his carbohydrate intake. He switched to lettuce wrap sandwiches instead of using bread and occasionally he wanted eggs for breakfast. I don’t know about you, but at 5:30 neither he or I are ready to scramble eggs. Instead, I decided to dig through my breakfast file and came up with two great recipes that are working as a pre-made breakfast. ![]() What an awful morning it was today. Despite the downpour this morning, grocery shopping had to be done. While checking off the items on my Wegmans’ shopping app, I was trying to figure out supper for tonight. My initial plan was to prepare a pasta casserole, but then saw Wegmans reduced the price of scallops. The fishmonger said that over the weekend and today, scallops had a special price of $14.99/lb., down from a high of $18.99/lb. I couldn’t resist this impulse purchase. ![]() Easter in an Italian family may be celebrated with several different specialty items such as Pastiera (wheat pie) Quaresimali (Lenten biscotti) and Pizza Rustica. Pizza Rustica also called pizza ripiena (stuffed pie) or some Italian Americans call it pizza gain, as my family does. Pizza gain is a savory dish filled with ricotta cheese, diced cheeses and pork products. It is made to celebrate the end of Lent and the fasting from eating meat. As I now have a granddaughter, I felt the need to continue the family tradition of making pizza gain. |
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