Strawberry, Arugula & Avocado Tostada

Something light and healthy that you could eat with friends and family on the deck this summer! Crisp, tangy, salty, creamy and peppery, topped with sweet delicious strawberries!
This is such an easy appetizer, different and fun, perfect for a Summer party on the deck with some friends!

I got a call out of the blue.  I was being asked to create a blog post to celebrate California Giant Strawberries!

Heck yes, I will! 
In full disclosure, they are paying me, and they sent me a special delivery of Giant strawberries too!  I must be living right to have this fall into my lap!

I think everyone can get excited about the new crop of fresh strawberries after a long winter and rainy spring.  But my friends, NOW is the time to get out and get some of these California Giant Strawberries.  If you are a Costco shopper (like you know I am) they are easy to find in the big 4lb tubs, plus lots of local grocery stores, like QFC and Fred Meyer are highlighting these right now too. 

While I know that you can think of the popular strawberry stand-by recipes (strawberry shortcake, strawberry scones, strawberry smoothies, and more). I wanted to make something different with these strawberries!  My inspiration for this dish was from a recent trip to Southern California for a personal trip.  We ate at this cute place in Hollywood where they made appetizer tostadas out of the pre-crisped corn tortillas with crazy veggie and cheese combination. 

A couple of tricks with strawberries since they are in season right now:
- Add them to salads, with some salty cheese and some crunchy nuts
- Freeze them to make great low-calorie smoothies that are thick and cold like ice cream!
- Make some jam to keep remembering these beauties throughout the year
- Make a strawberry simple syrup, and then you are most of the way there to make a great iced beverage, like a strawberry margarita, daiquiri or martini, or no alcohol strawberry iced tea.

I did my research and this is a very cool company; family owned, earth friendly,  and many philanthropic initiatives to support their community who just happens to grow the biggest, most beautiful strawberries that I have ever seen!

Plus, look what was on my front door step when I came home from work the other day?


Some details that you will want to know about...

• California Giant Strawberries are available at Costco and Fred Meyer in Washington
• It’s the best time to buy them right now because of the flavor and seasonality – stock up and freeze for later!
• Download the iBotta app on your phone for an exclusive California Giant coupon to use at your local Costco or Fred Meyer https://ibotta.com/get-the-app
• California Giant has partnered with other fresh produce brands to offer the chance to win a $5,000 vacation this summer – enter the sweepstakes at http://promos.calgiant.com/summer-snacking-sweepstakes-gotitcookit

 

Makes about 6-8 tostadas
Ingredients

8 oz Cream Cheese, softened
1/2 cup feta
1/2 bag of fresh Aruglua (or spinach)
1 avocado, sliced
1 lb of California Giant Strawberries, sliced
A bit of oil
A bit of lemon
1 package of crisp, flat tostada shells (in the tortilla section at most grocery stores)


In a food processor, thoroughly mix the cream cheese and the feta until you have a soft spreadable mixture.

In a bowl, add the arugula, or baby spinach, and toss with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper.  Go easy on the salt as the feta/cream cheese mixture is salty too.

Slice the strawberrries into a bowl, toss gently.  No sugar will be needed for this dish, the berries should be fresh, tangy and sweet, perfect contrast to the creamy avocados and peppery arugula..

Assemble the tostadas like this:
- Spread each tostada shell with a bit of the cream cheese/feta mixture
- Top with a small amount of arugula (or spinach)
- Layer on the sliced strawberries
- Top with 3-4 thin slices of avocado
- Top with a grind of fresh pepper, if desired

I'd suggest enjoying these on the deck as a "happy hour" snack with a glass of wine, beer, or heck, why not a strawberry margarita???

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Pineapple Cucumber Salad

How about a four ingredient salad?
Yep, this one is so easy, fresh and tangy. And good for you.

I know some of you don't like cilantro, that's okay, I'd suggest substituting mint, or parsley.

This would be great for a barbecue, or a picnic, or even a weekday salad with some grilled fish.

Serves 4
Ingredients

1/2 fresh pineapple, cut into chunks
1 English cucumber (or 6 Persian cucumbers) cut into chunks
2 limes, juiced
1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
Salt, to taste (optional)

Cut the pineapple and cucumbers up and put in a large serving bowl.  Chop the cilantro, add to the pineapple mixture.  Juice the limes and stir to combine.  Taste and see if you'd like to add salt.  You could add a sprinkle of sugar too.. I guess it depends on your taste buds.

Enjoy!


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Spicy Melon Salad

Sometimes you just want something different.
Not the same old green salad, not a fruit salad... 
Something to tantalize your taste buds.
Do you like Thai food?

Now maybe putting sriracha and fish sauce is not your idea of a great idea, but if you like Thai food, I'd say give this one a try.
It got so many great qualities; Fresh, Cool, Crunchy, Sweet and Spicy

I love the crunch of the peanuts, the zip of the cilantro and the sweet tangy spice of the dressing on the cool, sweet melon.  

For the record, you can't even taste the fish sauce.  If you wanted you could substitute soy sauce instead.  However, soy sauce is technically fish sauce too... just saying.

Serves 2-4
Ingredients

1/2 cantaloupe, peeled and sliced
1/2 honeydew melon, peeled and sliced

Dressing:  
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 Tbsp fish sauce
1 teaspoon Sriracha 
Zest and juice of 1 lime
2 Tbsp chopped peanuts
1 Tbsp fresh Cilantro, chopped for garnish
1 Tbsp fresh Mint, chopped for garnish (optional)

Remove rind and slice thinly (about 1/4 inch) the melons.  Arrange on a plate.
Whisk the sugar, veg oil, fish sauce, sriracha and lime together.  Drizzle over the cantaloupe and honeydew melon. Top with chopped peanuts, cilantro and mint.

Fruit Salad with Honey Lime Poppy Seed Dressing

A little sunshine as summer approaches.
Warms the soul and excites you for the coming Summer season.

This one is so yummy; tangy, sweet and a little different with a crunch of poppy seeds.  I cheated and bought the pre-done mango at Costco because it is SO easy.

Do it with whatever fruit you have... raspberries and blackberries would be terrific, and oranges too.  Make it your own.

Serves 6-8
Ingredients

Dressing:
1/4 cup  honey
2 limes, juiced
2 Tbsp poppy seeds

1-2 cups mango, chopped
2 lb; strawberry, hulled and quartered
4-5 kiwi, peeled, quartered and chopped
1 cup blueberries or blackberries
1/2 pineapple, peeled, cored and chopped


Mix the dressing ingredients together in a small bowl.

Prep the fruit and add to a large bowl.  Leave layered and don't mix until you are ready to serve. Chill. When ready, toss together and serve.

Just lots of peeling, dicing and slicing going on, so I make sure to compost all this.  I'm not the "green" composting gal, so I just add it our yard waste (which is OK in Seattle).

Here's what I've been making:

One year ago: Watermelon Margarita
Two years ago: Arugula Salad with Watermelon & Feta
Three years ago:  Baked Greek Chicken with Tomatoes and Feta
Four years ago: Hazelnut Cake

Peach Streusel Coffee Cake

An easy to make coffee cake from Food & Wine. 
You don't even have to wait for peach season, go ahead and use frozen peaches!  
But heck, you got fresh?  Use that, of course!

I'm thinking this would be a great recipe with any kind of fruit, so use your imagination and use what you got!

I made this one evening, and brought it to work for a morning meeting.  The springform pan makes it an easier traveler too, the sides of the pan protecting it until you get there.

Makes 9" cake
Ingredients

Streusel

    1/2 cup all-purpose flour

    1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

    1/4 teaspoon salt

    3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

    1 cup chopped toasted pecans

Cake Batter

    2 cups all-purpose flour

    1 teaspoon baking powder

    1 teaspoon baking soda

    1/2 teaspoon salt

    1 stick unsalted butter, softened

    1 cup sugar

    2 large eggs

    1 cup yogurt, or sour cream

    2 teaspoons vanilla extract

    One 10-ounce bag frozen peaches, coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 325° and butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan.
Chop Peaches

In a bowl, using your fingers, combine the flour, brown sugar and salt. Add the butter and mix until smooth. Add the pecans; press the mixture into clumps.

In a bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar at medium-high speed until light, 3 minutes. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time; beat in the sour cream and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and beat at low speed until incorporated.

Spread two-thirds of the batter in the pan. Fold the peaches into the remaining batter and spoon into the pan. Scatter the streusel crumbs on top. 

Bake the cake for 1 hour and 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean; loosely cover the cake with foil for the last 15 minutes of baking.Transfer to a rack and cool for 30 minutes, then remove the ring and let the cake cool completely before serving.  

Mine looks a little gooey on the top, but it was fully cooked.  I did cook mine about 10 minutes longer than the original recipe suggested, but I did use more than the 10 oz of frozen fruit.

Raspberry Rhubarb Crisp

Looking for a quick dessert with company coming... so I made a quick perusal of my freezer and pantry.  I had some stuff I wanted to use up; frozen rhubarb and a half bag of frozen raspberries leftover from my Chocolate Raspberry Jam episode.

You could use any fresh or frozen fruit for this one, just substitute about 5-6 cups of something else that you have, or like.  I think it would be yummy to use mango and pineapple!

Serves 6
Ingredients

5-6 cups of raspberries and rhubarb, fresh or frozen
2 Tbsp corn starch
1 1/2 cups sugar

Topping:
1/2 cup butter, cold and cut into small squares
2/3 cup flour
2/3 cup oatmeal
2/3 cup brown sugar
Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Mix the fruit and any juices with cornstarch and sugar.  Mix well.  Add to small dishes, or to one 8x8 baking pan. Put it on a baking sheet (very important... see the bottom for why)

In a separate bowl, mix the oatmeal, flour, chunk of cold butter and brown sugar.  With a fork (or your hands) and mash the butter into the mixture creating lumps of the mixture.

It should look like this.  Don't worry if it looks dry.  It will be fine once it bakes.

Add a generous amount to the top of each dish.

Bake for 35-40 minutes at 375 degrees until the mixture looks hot and bubbly.  The topping may not look "crisp" at first, but will continue to cook and harden as the dessert cools.

Serve hot, warm or even cold with either ice cream, whip cream, or just plain.  Also good with plain Greek nonfat yogurt too.

Mango Jam with Lime & Saffron

Sunshine in a jar.
I bought the big six pack of mangos at Costco the other day.  I used two trying another recipe that failed... but couldn't get going on my leftover four big mangos.
Finally, I figured... why not Mango jam?
There are plenty of good recipes out there, that are quite easy.  
I saw some fun ones with ginger and mango, and lime and mango, and one with ginger and saffron.  Kind of fun, so I came up with my own with lime and saffron.  I know not everyone has saffron around, and frankly I'm not sure I could really taste the saffron in the finished jam, but it was yummy and a beautiful color too.

The picture above was taken on a my sister's boat in the San Juans, she graciously searched through her stuff to find a woven placemat, a cute paper napkin and a paper plate for the "photo shoot".  She also made the really marvelous scones too.

Makes 5 8oz jars
Ingredients

4 cups fresh mango, chopped
3 cups sugar
2 limes, zested and juiced
3-6 threads of saffron (optional)
1 pkg liquid pectin

Cut each mango in thirds, slicing as close to the center pit as possible, leaving two bigger outside pieces with the skin still on.  If you get too close to the pit, go ahead and pick that part off.

 Using a paring knife, score a criss cross pattern through the fruit, but not through the skin.

Push the back side of the cut fruit in, so all the squares of fruit stick out.  Cut them from the skin, but if your fruit is really ripe, you can probably use your hands.

Four big mangos, gave me 4 cups of chopped fruit.  If the chunks are too big, you can use a pair of kitchen scissors to chop the pieces smaller while in the measuring cup. 

Get a big stock pot of water simmering on medium low on a back burner.  Add your canning jars to your water to sterilize for 5 minutes, remove and drain.  They will dry on their own quite quickly while you are making the jam.  Have your individual tops and jar bands in a smaller pan of hot water and keep there until you are ready to jar them up. 

To make the jam,
Bring the chopped mangos, the sugar, lime zest and saffron to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes.  Add the liquid pection and set your timer for 1 minutes. 
Add the jam to the jars, leaving about 1/4 to 1/2 inch at the top.  Add the top and secure with the band.  Add all the jars back to the water, turn up the water so it begins to boil again and let them process for 10 minutes.  Remove and let sit for 24 hours.  

Don't freak out if it looks a little thin at first, it usually takes a full 24 hours for it to set. 

IF for some reason your jam doesn't set up, go ahead and unseal the jars, and empty the mixture into another pot, bring to a boil and add another pouch of liquid pectin.  Re-can and process.

I really like to make jam, here's some others:
Chipotle Nectarine Jam
Drunken Fig Jam
Honey and Lemon Jelly 
Pepper, Peach & Rosemary Jam
Strawberry Jam (No Pectin)
Strawberry Habanero Jam
Tomato Jalapeno Jelly

Berrylicious Berry Trio Pie

Seems like just about everyone buys those big bags of frozen berries from Costco for smoothies.  But sometimes I would also like to do something else with them.. and the perfect thing is that you can also bake a great pie using the frozen berry trio mix.  

Of course, fresh berries would be best... if blackberries are in season, and you have someone to pick them for you! I saw a snake once, on top of a blackberry branch and that pretty much cured me of wanting to pick anymore berries myself... I know it's ridiculous, I just don't like snakes hiding out in berry bushes scaring unsuspecting cooks like me. Either you pick them for me, or I'm buying them.

The filling is yummy and thick with a natural tang from the mixture of raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. It was much thicker than the picture at the bottom of this posting leads you to believe. I took this picture after most the family had already dove into the pie and I threw one last piece on a plate to try to take it's picture on Thanksgiving Day.  Food and wine coma definitely impaired my judgement on what a good pie picture should look like.  
Please accept my apologies,  just shut your pie hole, you will like this. 

This wasn't my prettiest pie, I will admit I had trouble with it. 

I was trying to rush to make a vegan pie for my niece on Thanksgiving, so I made a different pie crust than usual.  I used the Crisco recipe (all vegetable shortening) but I found that it was very hard to get it to stay together, and my crust broke to bits once I tried to pick it up and put it on the pie.  Once your dough touches your berry filling, you are pretty much committed to continuing to put it on the pie.  While the crust did not look that great, it did taste extremely good. It's on the Crisco baking sticks package if you want to try it.  Next time I will buy the pre-made Pillsbury crust or make my own easy Basic Pie Crust recipe, or even make a cobbler or crisp with this filling.

Makes 1 double crust pie
Ingredients:

2 Pie crusts, one for the top and one for the bottom

Filling:
1/4 cup cornstarch
11/4 cup sugar
6 1/2 cups frozen berries, thawed* (retain juices)
Coarse Sugar for sprinkling on top
     *At least semi- thawed....

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Stir together the cornstarch and sugar in a large bowl, add the berries and the juices and combine well. Add to the unbaked pie shell, add cut outs to the top, brush with egg yolk, or water, and sprinkle with coarse sugar. I had Blueberry sugar (shown above) so I used that.

(You know you're in trouble when the filling oozes out before you bake it...my crust was too small and had too 

many holes in it to completely keep the filling in.  Yours should be different, but either way it tastes great!)

Put the pie dish onto of a baking sheet to catch any drips. Bake until the filling bubbles and crust is golden, about 55-60 minutes.  If needed, add foil covers to the crust edges to keep from browning too much.

Let the pie cool for about 2-3 hours.  The filling will continue to thicken somewhat as it cools, so don't panic if it looks too juicy.

Peach Butterscotch Pecan Upside Down Cake

A great little cake, perfect for a family dinner, a coffee meeting or a brunch.

Saw this recipe in the online Seattle Times yesterday, but wasn't feeling the Plum Blueberry thing... and wanted to use up some of these white peaches staring at me. I added nuts and went with a butterscotch theme. The cake is tender and delicious, but not too sweet. You could add a thicker layer of peaches (I used 2) but it's up to you. Try another type of fruit if you like.... apples, blueberries, canned pineapple.

Made this for a get together last night, we were all too full to eat it, so now I am sitting here contemplating cake for breakfast. I act like I haven't done it before...

Makes 8 to 10 servings
Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 2 Tbsp butter, room temperature

1 cup packed light-brown sugar, divided

2-3 large peaches, peeled and sliced

2/3 cup pecans, toasted & chopped, (divided into 2 portions)

1 large egg plus 1 large egg white

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon fine salt

1/2 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Toast the pecans for about 6-8 minutes in the oven.

Lightly butter an 8-inch round cake pan (2 inches deep); line bottom with parchment paper.
I fold my parchment into quarters, then in half again, making a wedge like below.  Then hold it into the center of the pan, then cut off the excess to make a quick, well fitting round.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter and pour into pan; swirl to coat paper. Sprinkle 1/2 cup brown sugar evenly over butter. Arrange peaches and half the toasted pecans over the top

 

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat 8 tablespoons butter and 1/2 cup brown sugar on high until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in egg and egg white until combined. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. With mixer on low, beat flour mixture into butter mixture until combined. Beat in buttermilk and vanilla until smooth. Add pecans.

Transfer batter to pan. Tap pan firmly on counter several times to remove air bubbles; smooth top. I used a spring form pan to make it easy to get it out, but any pan would work. I wrapped the bottom of the spring form to reduce buttery sugary drippings in my oven!

Bake until cake is deep golden brown, juices are bubbling around edge and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 35-40 minutes, rotating pan halfway through. Let cake cool in pan on a wire rack, about 1 hour. Run a knife around edge of pan and invert cake onto a serving plate, remove parchment. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Here's some other fruity desserts that you might like:
Apricot Oat Walnut Bars
Kauai Banana Bread
Nectarine Crostada Pie
Plum Kuchen
Strawberry Flan (Tart)