Green Pea and Cheese Salad

Every spring, I start seeing recipes using fresh green peas yet I have never seen them in the market. Green peas are not a Southern crop and they are too perishable for shipping. Therefore, when I want peas, I buy frozen, which are quite good.  (I find many frozen vegetables to be unpalatable). 

After I made this salad, and ate a delicious, refreshing serving, I mused that I must have already been thinking about our upcoming Curry-Palooza.  It is my turn to choose a recipe, which we will post (always the first Friday of each month) on June 3.  I chose the recipe, Muttar Paneer, which is curried peas with cheese. But Muttar Paneer is nothing, nothing, like this salad, they just happen to share the same two main ingredients. We would love to have you cook along with us. Just let Grapefruit or I know and we will happily send you the recipe we are using. 

Back to the pea salad, here is a recipe for you. Make the dressing first and refrigerate until needed. Making it the day before is even better. This enables the mayo to lose that gloppy appearance and acrid smell I don't care for.

Green Pea and Cheese Salad
16 oz. frozen peas, thawed
1 cup diced celery
1 small sweet onion, diced
3 - 4 Tbsp. chopped sweet pickles
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
Half a red pepper, diced
4 oz. cheddar cheese, diced into small cubes

Dressing
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp. honey
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp. fresh, minced dill weed

Whisk the dressing ingredients together in a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Toss together the peas, celery, onion, pickles, egg, pepper, and cheese. Stir in the chilled dressing and stir gently to blend. 

Cauliflower Cheese

Just the fact that it is called Cauliflower Cheese, not cauliflower and cheese, or cauliflower with cheese sauce, or even cauliflower gratin, alerts you this is quintissential English fare.  It can be served as a side dish, often with the Sunday beef roast dinner. I put the cauliflower in indivdual baking dishes and served it as our main dish.  Delicious and satisfying. For this dish, please choose an excellent quality, sharp cheddar cheese. I used my favorite extra-sharp Vermont white cheddar. 

Cauliflower Cheese
1 large cauliflower
3 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 tsp. mustard powder
1/8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
8 ounces freshly grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup breadcrumbs

Wash the cauliflower and cut into florets. Plunge the florets into a pot of boiling, salted water; lower heat and simmer gently until just tender, about 5 minutes. Drain well in a colander and set aside.

In a saucepan, over medium heat, melt the butter. Stir in the flour until well blended, then whisk in the milk until the mixture is smooth. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture begins to boil. Stir in the mustard powder, nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste.  Remove from heat and stir in half the cheese. Add the cauliflower to the cheese sauce and mix gently to coat.

Place the cauliflower mixture into a buttered 2 quart baking dish, or individual dishes.  Mix the breadcrumbs with the remaining cheese and sprinkle over the top.  Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes (10 - 15 minutes for individual dishes) until golden brown and bubbly.

Serve right away.

Fruit Summer Rolls and Peanut Dipping Sauce

Part of the beautiful food my husband came home with recently included a pineapple and two mangoes. I used half of the pineapple and one mango to make the salsa for my fish tacos.  With the other half of the pineapple and the other mango, I made these delicious and refreshing Summer Rolls.  I blogged about Summer Rolls before and gave more information about the rice paper used, here. 

Pineapple and Mangoes

For this version of Summer Rolls, I used spears of fresh pineapple and mango, carrot sticks, red bell pepper and cucumber strips, as well as freshly washed and spun dry baby spinach leaves. And I served them with a peanut dipping sauce.

Peanut Dipping Sauce
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 Tbsp. fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1 tsp. toasted sesame oil
Juice of 1 lime
Dash of cayenne pepper
Salt to taste
1/2 cup water--or more as needed

Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring constantly, until tender. Add ginger to the onions and saute a couple minutes more. Place the onions and ginger along with all the remaining ingredients in a blender and puree into a creamy paste. Carefully add more water, a little at a time, until the consistency you desire is reached. 

Homemade Grape Jam and Angel Biscuits

Sometimes my husband likes to shop for groceries. And when he does, he brings home the most beautiful foods.  He will call and ask if I need anything; if I do I say, but otherwise I tell him to buy whatever looks good to him, bring it home, and I will cook it. I love when he does this.  It inspires me to make things I may not have ordinarily thought of.  He recently came home with a bag of grapes

I thought about those thin-skinned, seedless red grapes for a couple of days, then decided to make a small batch of grape jam, which is one of Pritchard Parker's favorites for his Amazing Waffle Stack.

A Small Batch of Grape Jam
Approximately 2 pounds seedless, thin-skinned grapes
2 cups sugar
Juice from half a lemon, about 1 Tbsp.

Wash the grapes and slice in half. Put into a large pot with sugar and lemon juice. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir often to make sure the mixture is not sticking to the bottom of the pan. If it starts to stick, lower heat to avoid scortching.

Pour the mixture into a clean pint jar and let cool to room temperature. Refrigerate until used--which probably won't take long.

My friend, Melynda, recently blogged about Angel Biscuits (even though she is not a Southerner-wink wink) and some of the things she made with the dough. I loved her idea of cutting the biscuits into a scone shape, rather than rolling them out. 

I blogged about Angel biscuits a couple of years ago. I listed my recipe here and blogged again about what I did with those bits left from rolling and cutting the dough, here.

When I made my Angel biscuits, earlier in the week, I divided the dough and used half to make the scone shaped biscuits. The other half of the dough has been hiding out in the refrigerater for a couple of days and today I have a surprise for it.  So stay tuned. . .

Wordless Wednesday: Incognito