Recently, I've been trying to design dinner menus with a theme. For instance, this Indian-themed dinner with coconut curry, homemade naan, and mango chutney.
The coconut curry recipe is from one of my favorite websites: Oh She Glows.
Now that the sun is out for more than 20 minutes a day and we can walk outside without fear of frostbite, Hubs and I got bit by the grilling bug. We couldn't wait to take the cover off and fire it up! We decided that this grilled veggie salad would get our spring off on the right foot.
Last summer, we bought some Jamaican Jerk marinade from Williams-Sonoma (definitely one of my favorite stores!) but never got around to opening it. I was so excited when I found it a few weeks ago! We decided to make some Jerk shrimp and it turned into a delicious salad!
The grilled bananas really made this salad! It was sweet, smoky, and spicy! Such a great combination! I made the dressing out of a reduction of the reserved marinade, but that turned out to be a bit of a mistake. That marinade has some kick! Next time, I'll stick to making my own. I think something with oil, vinegar, garlic and a little sugar would be perfect!
These salad tongs are great! They were a gift from my little sis after a trip to Kenya. I just had to include a picture!
And now on to the "sweets". First up is a chocolate raspberry frangipane. What? You don't know what a frangipane is? Honestly, neither did I. I picked this recipe out of the cookbook because I thought it looked amazing! Actually, the recipe called for cherries instead of raspberries. Unfortunately, Hubs has a strong dislike of cherries, so a small substitution was needed. But the raspberries were great! Frangipane is an almond filling. According to Wikipedia (my go-to source for just about everything...) it was originally an almond custard, but the term is now applied to a general almond filling for cakes and tarts. From the pictures below, it's pretty obvious that this one is a tart. And a delicious one at that!
It starts with a pastry shell. Then, you scatter the bottom with chopped chocolate and cover the chocolate layer with raspberries. Honestly, any recipe that starts this way is bound to be good in my book! The almond filling then goes on top of the raspberries.
What dessert would be complete without a chocolate drizzle on top? Definitely not this one! The raspberries poked through the filling more than I would have liked. But in the end, the dimpled top with the red tips sticking out gives it a bit of an unpolished charm.
Pastry, chocolate, raspberries, and almond? This tart was amazing!
Last up is the pound cake I made as dessert for our Easter dinner. Some friends were kind enough to invite us to join them for a wonderful Easter dinner with lamb and some awesome veggie sides. So, we brought this cream cheese pound cake with lime glaze (recipe from Williams-Sonoma).
This cake is so dense! I love how the tart from the lime complements the sweetness in the cake and the glaze.
Wow! That was quite the marathon post! They definitely won't all be like this, but I had all these pictures on my camera that I wanted to share. Please excuse the roughness of the site as I get everything set up. I've had this blog in the works for about 6 months now, and I finally decided that if I didn't just start posting, it would never got off the ground. Enjoy!
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