Tomato Mozzarella Salad with Pomegranate Seeds #recipe

From Daryl aka Avery:

And the winner of last week's giveaway is…

Kate!  KaroS... at yahoo dot com.  I'll be sending you an email to let you know. Congrats!  And thanks for pinning on Pinterest.


 Lately, I've been getting into cheesy dishes again (big surprise) as I approach the release of my next Cheese Shop Mystery (coming February: DAYS OF WINE AND ROQUEFORT).


Here's a beautiful salad to put on your holiday menu. I know, salad? Really? When it's the prime of cookie and candy season?

But this one, as a full salad or as a side, is so perfect for the holidays. Sweet, savory, fun! And colorful!!!

I had something like it at one of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles, Mistral (in Sherman Oaks). It's a quaint French bistro and does a fabulous job with everything on the menu. The salad was a simple twist on an old classic, tomato and mozzarella salad. But the restaurant added pomegranate seeds. Oh, divine. The pop of the pomegranate. The sweetness with the saltiness of the cheese.

Now a pomegranate…I was scared to get into this fruit. I've avoided since I was a kid when the first and only time I tried to pop pomegranate seeds from the fruit, I ended up with stained fingers. For days!!  I had no clue how to do it, and neither did my mother or friends.

But now, with the advent of YouTube, you can find out how to do pretty much anything. I'd seen one video where you submersed the pomegranate in water and popped out the seeds, but I searched further and found one where you pound the darned seeds out. That's right. Pound them out.

You take a common kitchen wooden spoon, a salad bowl, score the pomegranate, peel the two halves apart...

...and then holding the pomegranate, seed side down toward the bowl, spank the back of it with the wooden spoon. Out they pop. No kidding.

It's so easy I'll probably have pomegranate seeds every week from this point forward. I love them and they add so much texture.

TOMATO MOZZARELLA SALAD WITH POMEGRANATE SEEDS

Ingredients for the salad:

(serves 4-6)

Assorted lettuce
2 thick slices of tomato per person
2 slices of soft fresh Mozzarella cheese per person
1 pomegranate, deseeded as per above (enough seeds for 6 salads)

BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE DRESSING

(makes 1 cup)

Ingredients:

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

2 teaspoons sugar or brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3/4 cup olive oil

Whisk all ingredients together. Whatever you don’t use, refrigerate.

Arrange the salad by setting lettuce on the plate. Layer the tomatoes and cheese. Drizzle with balsamic dressing. Adorn with 2-3 tablespoons of pomegranate seeds.

BTW, I'm thinking about a Christmas cookie using pomegranate seeds.  Suggestions? :)


LAST BUT NOT LEAST, Krista Davis, Lucy Burdette, Julie Hyzy and I are having a contest on Facebook. It's fun with lots of ways to win. We're giving away a fabulous gift basket from Salt and Pepper books (you know, the store that inspired the Cookbook Nook mysteries) as well as our books. And we might even sweeten the deal in weeks to come. Runs to the middle of December. So check it out. Click on the picture for the link!

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Next up: 

Days of Wine and Roquefort Feb 2014, preorder here

Inherit the Word March 2014, preorder here

If you haven't done so, sign up for the mailing list 

so you can learn about upcoming events, releases, and contests! 

Easy, savory roast chicken #recipe from @DarylWoodGerber

From Daryl aka Avery

This past week, I have had two long (delightful) weekends of family plus a new doggie in our lives. Oh, yes, and a major cold hit me.

I needed something easy to make for dinner. I mean easy. My character Jenna, in the Cookbook Nook mysteries, needs recipes that use only five ingredients. She's not much of a cook yet. I am, but that doesn't mean I don't like simple.

When life comes at you fast, go simple! New slogan. :) You know what I mean. Return to the recipes you can make with your eyes closed. The ones you can tweak if you like with extra herbs. The ones that look pretty and fill the house with a fabulous aroma. To me, other than sweets--which always do the trick--the aroma of roast chicken or turkey just make me calm. So, today, in an effort of keeping it simple…

I'm sharing roast orange chicken.

But, first, more pictures of Sparky.

By the way, I had NO idea a puppy could chew so much!

Okay, that's a lie. Yes, I did, but honestly, wow!  Chew, chew, chew.

It's endless. Unless, of course, he's sleeping…or wanting to play ball, or wanting to play hide and seek behind the bushes because he found something yummy to stick in his mouth and doesn't like mommy's tone about dropping whatever the heck it is.

Oh, wait, that's not Sparky. Yes, the little one (Tyler) wanted to see what it was like to live a dog's life.

Sparky especially likes the pant legs of little helpers in the kitchen.

He also likes being under things. He will soon outgrow this stool!

Now, back to previously schedule post: Food!

ROAST ORANGE CHICKEN

Ingredients:

(serves 4-6)

1 roaster chicken, whole, 5-6 pounds

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon black or white pepper

1 teaspoon rosemary

½ orange

4 cloves garlic

Directions:

Put chicken in a roaster pan. Add a cup of water. Stuff the chicken with the garlic. 

Squeeze the orange juice over the chicken and put the orange in the chicken cavity, too. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and rosemary (crushed).

Bake at 300 degrees F for 1 ½ hours. Remove the top of the roaster pan, and bake at 400 degrees F for 10-20 minutes. If desired, cut up and then broil the chicken for about 10 minutes to make all the pieces really crispy. 

Enjoy!

Does anybody have a good cold cure???

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Friend Daryl on Facebook

Friend Avery on Facebook

Follow Daryl on Twitter

Follow Avery on Twitter

Follow both of us on Pinterest

Check out our website.

Next up: 

Days of Wine and Roquefort Feb 2014, preorder here

Inherit the Word March 2014, preorder here

If you haven't done so, sign up for the mailing list 

so you can learn about upcoming events, releases, and contests! 

Pop goes the Weasel

From Daryl / Avery: You’ve probably heard by now that my new protagonist in A COOKBOOK NOOK MYSTERY series isn't much of a cook. Jenna is a recovering ad executive. She was responsible for the Poppity Pop Popcorn ad and so many more. She’s a marketing wizard.

Back in high school, Jenna tried an angel food cake from scratch in high school. Disaster. She can make a boxed cake mix and meatloaf and such. Why create a clueless cook in a serie set in a cookbook shop?

My mom. She graduated college early, at the age of 19, and was a genius at just about anything she tried to do, but she’d never learned to cook. Her mother did all of it. I found letters from my mother to her grandmother, after she married my father, and she was giddy that she was learning to cook.  She’d dared to make a green Jell-O with pineapple. Wow! And she’d made a meatloaf. Superb. It was so sweet reading these darling letters. I wanted to create a character with that kind of fresh joy while learning in the kitchen.

This recipe for cheese popovers is something Jenna could make. Because they’re so pretty, popovers can seem daunting, but they’re not. You can make these with regular flour, but I made these gluten-free so any of my readers that need to eat GF can enjoy them, too.  I did invest in a popover cooking pan, which made them even easier to bake, though I tried them in a cupcake pan and that worked pretty well.

Remember to really grease the individual cups so the popovers, um, POP out.

PS  Poppity Pop Popcorn – fictional, just like the town where the Cookbook Nook Mysteries is set – Crystal Cove, California…somewhere along the Central Coast. It's so beautiful! The scent of the sea, a coastal breeze!

Enjoy!

CHEESE POPOVERS

Gluten-free

Ingredients:

3 eggs

¼ cup heavy cream

1 cup 1%-2%  milk

1 1/4 cups sweet rice flour and potato starch mixture, sifted

1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon white or black pepper

3 tablespoons butter, melted

3/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Generously butter 6 cups in a popover pan or 6 six-ounce custard-style cups.

In a large bowl, beat eggs well with mixer. Stir in the milk and cream.

Add gluten-free flour, xanthan gum, and spices, and beat until smooth.

Stir in melted butter. {This will be gooey batter, like biscuit batter.}

Fill cups 1/2 full with batter. Top with cheese (about 2 tablespoons each) and add remaining batter.

(Note: if you want to make these regular, change the flour to your regular brand and don't include xanthan gum!)

Bake 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 275 degrees and bake another 5-10 minutes, until deep golden brown. These are luscious right out of the oven. Like all gluten-free breads, they get a little “doughy” by day two if kept in the refrigerator. However, I kept them out of the fridge, wrapped in foil, and the next day reheated them in a 200 degree oven for about 10 minutes. They were delish!

*I made these without the cheese and they were delicious, too. Fluffy.

* * * *

Daryl Wood Gerber also writes as Avery Aames, 

author of the Agatha Award-winning,

nationally bestselling CHEESE SHOP MYSTERY SERIES 

The 1st in A Cookbook Nook Mystery series is coming July 2013!!

FINAL SENTENCE.

You can pre-order the book HERE.

The 4th in A Cheese Shop Mystery series is out! 

TO BRIE OR NOT TO BRIE

You can order the book HERE. 

You can learn more about me, Daryl by clicking this LINK. "Like" my page on Facebook and "follow" me on Twitter. And if you haven't done so, sign up for the mailing list

 so you can learn about upcoming events, releases, and contests! Also, you probably know by now about my alter ego, Avery Aames. Chat with Avery on Facebook and Twitter.