Alcatra
Right Out of Terceira
Nope, not Grandma Rose’s recipe but she’d rave about this if she’d a taste. A young friend who shares recipes with me now and again says this will be prepared as one of the meats served at Easter. Melissa’s family is right out of Terceira. She just had a birthday and complains she’s in her thirties. Ha. Albeit she’s been cooking since she was a child. Her recipes, yep I’ve tasted her Portuguese Beans, are a mixture of traditional Portuguese and well, American dishes. She tweaks her American dishes but her traditional dishes not so much. I tweaked this one just a little … lack of availability of slab bacon or “bacon steak” as Melissa calls it, and well, my handful of spices may be different from Melissa’s. Slab bacon isn’t really too difficult to find but I wanted to make the dish now … And not have to travel 40 minutes to our special Portuguese grocer.
Warning, this dish is not for the faint of heart … it’s rich and you just can’t stop at one serving.
Here we are about to sit down to our St. Patrick’s Day Dinner! The
What do you do when you buy too many Girl Scout Cookies? You use the cookies for pie crusts. Yes, all varieties will work! The secret is to have a good blender capable of pulsing the cookies to a fine crumb. This pie is an adult recipe with, yes, crème de menthe. Just in time for St. Patrick’s!
A tweet shared with me goes something like this, “A Sister asked this Priest (apparently a good cook) for a kale recipe.” His advice … “Chop it up, toss it in the garden and grow something good!” I must say I’ve met more with this attitude about kale than not. As for me, I haven’t met a green I didn’t like! In this dish I simply sautéed the closely chopped kale separately and layered the pasta mixture right over the top. There’s just enough sweetness in the pasta sauce to counter the usual slight bitterness of kale. I love this dish for so many reasons. If you haven’t tried gnocchi shaped dried pasta you must. The pasta cooks up beautifully. And look how it holds the meat sauce perfectly!
Earthy beefy Chile Colorado! Thinking quickly I turned the last little bit in the serving dish into this quesadilla. That’s what I get … attempting to do a food photo while everyone is eating. Wait! Two slices of 
Hatch Chiles from New Mexico make this red sauce. The ornamental cluster of dried pods was a gift from a good friend. Now one of my best friends! Ha! My
This is so quick and easy to make and perfect for breakfast. My Valentine had this for his breakfast! Very little added sugar, salt & fat. In fact, you could cut back on all three without poor results. Amazingly rich! Yes, you must love raisins! This old recipe is taken from my Mother’s favorites. Charlotte, one of Mother’s best friends, put this together. You might have enjoyed Charlotte’s Pineapple Cream Angel Food Cake,