Weekend Cooking is a weekly feature hosted by Beth Fish Reads, linking up food-related posts. Click here for links to this week’s Weekend Cooking posts on Beth Fish Reads and other blogs.
I wrote a post a while back about venturing onto Pinterest, wary of another social media site to keep up with. Actually, I can blame Weekend Cooking for my crazy bouts of pinning since then, because that post, Honey Beer Chicken, Pinterest, and Me, came about after I read bookchickdi’s Weekend Cooking post about pinning that recipe (and making it), among others.
Menu planning is the most fun part of hosting Easter dinner. Making the desserts is the second, and spring cleaning for company comes in a distant tenth or fifteenth. So, when I saw this recipe for a naturally gluten-free dessert, Lemon, Ricotta and Almond Flourless Cake, on a baking blog with a cute name, Cakelets and Doilies, that seemed perfect for an Easter dessert, I just had to start a Gluten-Free Easter Pinterest board, to go with my Gluten-Free Thanksgiving and Gluten-Free Christmas boards.
I also pulled out my new cookbook by Mollie Katzen, The Heart of the Plate, and picked out some veggie recipes to try from there, that I couldn’t pin because they aren’t online. So far I have made the Grated Carrot Salad (easy, once the carrots were grated) and made the polenta for the Crispy Polenta Triangles.
In the end, I didn’t plan to use any recipes that I found online except the cake, so I guess I still trust my printed cookbooks more than Pinterest. The cake was also an experiment in using the Speed Bake function of our oven because the recipe called for convection cooking. I ended up baking it about 10 minutes longer than the 40-45 minutes, because the middle still seemed wobbly, so it’s possibly overcooked, but it looks good in the pan, before and after baking! Will try to remember to take a picture after sifting confectioner’s sugar on top and slicing it. (We have an assortment of gluten-free cookies from the freezer as back-up, if the cake is a failure. The recipe had to be converted from the original Australian metric weight measurements to American volume measurements, so it’s iffy!)
Easter Menu Plan
Appetizers
Deviled eggs
Fresh-roasted cashews
Cranberry Salsa and tortilla chips (not Easter-y, but will use the last of our frozen cranberries up)
Fresh cantaloupe
Side Dishes
Steamed asparagus (of course!)
Crispy Polenta Triangles (The Heart of the Plate)
Grated Carrot Salad (The Heart of the Plate)
Citrus-Pine Nut Broccoli Slaw (from The Associated Press)
Roasted Vegetables (my mom is bringing)
Main Courses (Carnivore and Vegetarian)
Ham (with Maple-Mustard Glaze from The Heart of the Plate)
Kashmiri Koftas (from Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cooking) — Hubby is making these!
Carmelized Onion Frittata with Artichoke Hearts, Zucchini, and Goat Cheese (The Heart of the Plate)
Bread
Orange Juice Bread (from Gluten-Free Baking Classics)
Gluten-Free Cheesy Biscuits (from a Tastefully Simple mix I bought at a farmer’s market because I felt sorry for the salesperson and later discovered was manufactured in a facility that also processes wheat, so I’m going to use it up while we don’t have anyone for dinner who is on a gluten-free diet.)
Happy Easter and Happy Weekend Cooking!
After Dinner Update: Didn’t get the G-F Cheesy Biscuits made. Or the Maple-Mustard Glaze. Left the goat and Parmesan cheeses, and the onion, out of the frittata. Otherwise, everything else got done, and the Lemon, Ricotta and Almond Flourless Cake was pretty amazing!
