Caridad Pineiro® Romance Author
NY Times & USA Today Bestselling Romance Author
Caridad loves to cook and is sharing these recipes and cooking tips for you!
Last week I promised you a collection of recipes and here it is! There are recipes which are mentioned and/or connected to my various novels while there are others that are just family favorites.
I hope you will enjoy both making some of these recipes as well as eating them.
If you cannot see the screen below, you can click here to read it. Please note that there is also a download capability with this PDF version.
This recipe will take a little bit of time to make but it is definitely worth the effort, especially if you are trying to watch bad carbs and need the taste of some comfort food along the lines of mac and cheese.
The first thing you need to do is to prep the squash.
I will never again make a cream sauce doing it the hard way with a roux and milk. Nope, this is much easier, creamier and less fattening.
This squash bake makes a great side dish to any meal and will have you enjoying a creamy cheesy mix that is lower in fat than traditional mac and cheese and will help you get a dose of vegetables as well.
Hope you enjoyed today’s recipe! Next week I’m going to be offering up an entire collection of recipes in one book titled Recipes for the Romantic Soul. It’ll be a freebie that you can download and I hope you’ll enjoy that as well.
Photo Credit: Forest & Kim [email protected]
During my recent visit to the wonderful blog of my friend and fellow author Kelly Moran, I was asked about my signature dish for Christmas. Now in my house, Christmas Eve is a mix of Italian, Cuban and American foods, but the signature dish has to be the Cuban-style citrus-marinated roast pork.
We, because it is a family affair to cook this dish, start preparing it the night before after a trip to Union City, New Jersey to pick up some Cuban staples and the pork leg.
I’m normally feeding anywhere from 15 to 25 people on Christmas Eve, so I need a really really big pork leg (pork shoulder/picnic ham/pernil). I normally get a piece of pork that weighs around 25 pounds, but you can buy a much smaller piece and adjust the cooking times (more on that later).
Juice all the above citrus into a large pot. We use one of those large buckets in which your grocery store deli get its potato salad, etc. Drop by and ask them for one! Ours is only used for the Christmas Eve pork.
The citrus mix should be sour, but with a strong hit of sweet (the navel oranges and grapefruit really help with that). You should have enough citrus juice to fully cover your piece of pork. Once you’ve tasted the sweet/sour mix, then add 3 to 4 bay leaves, about a half cup of garlic (less for a smaller piece of pork) and about 1/4 cup of cumin. Mix this all up.
Take your piece of pork and make multiple slits in it so that the marinade can penetrate into the meat. Place the pork leg in the citrus juice, cover and refrigerate. You’re probably wondering how I keep that big a bucket cold? Put the bucket in one of those big party tubs, place it in your garage (which should be slightly colder anyway) and fill the tub with ice. It should be icy cold in the morning unless you are in a really hot environment in which case you will need to keep on adding ice to keep the meat cold.
In the morning (around 6 a.m. or so) pre-heat the oven to 425. Remove the pork from the citrus and place it in a large roasting dish. Keep some of the citrus juice, bay leaves and garlic for use as a marinade. Discard the rest. Ladle about 1 to 2 cups over the pork and then stick the pork into the oven for one hour at 425. For a small piece of pork, cut down this initial high temp roast accordingly. For ten pounds make it around 30 minutes, anything smaller than that no more than about 15 minutes.
Do not baste the pork during this high heat roast.
When the high heat roast time is up, baste the pork and lower the oven temp to 325. Then cook until the meat pulls away from the bone in the leg and is starting to fall off. Marinate every half an hour during the cooking process. For a 25 pound pork leg, I will cook it for about 8 to 9 hours. The pork will turn this beautiful mahogany brown and just melt in your mouth.
For smaller pieces of pork, adjust the cooking times. A 10 pound picnic ham may take only about 4 or so hours. The key is to keep on basting and cooking at a low temp to keep the meat juicy.
If the pork begins to brown too much, just cover with aluminum and keep on cooking until the meat is fork tender.
Hope you enjoyed today’s Tuesday Tip. Here’s a shot of family and friends sitting around the Christmas Eve table, waiting to start the big meal!
Back on one of the Tuesday Tips I mentioned that I was battling the bulge again and some of you asked for me to let you know how I was doing.
Well, I am doing great! I’ve lost 6.5 pounds in about a month. I feel better and my clothes are starting to get loose. I’m counting the minutes until I can drop a size.
But to accomplish that I had to do some soul searching and realize something very troubling – I am a carboholic. Worse yet, that being a carboholic was so not good for my system. All that bloating and big belly started to go away as soon as I curtailed my carbs.
I did that in part with that wonderful book my daughter gave me — Eat This, Not That. I have the supermarket edition which is great because it lays out in no nonsense fashion what to buy and what not to buy and the reasons for those choices (although there is one with which I do not agree and more on that later).
First I cut back on my carbs and the carbs that I eat are lower in fat and sugar and higher in dietary fiber. Fiber is wonderful because it fills you up and keeps you from having that empty sensation.
How did I do that? Thomas’ Light Multi-grain English Muffins. At 100 calories per muffin, they have only 1 gram of fat and 8 grams of dietary fiber. In the mornings I will have it with a smear of one of those Laughing Cow Light Cheeses – also great! Only 35 calories per little wedge, but packed with flavor.
For Sunday pasta meals, we switched to Barilla Whole Grain Pasta (suprisingly on the Not That list, but I don’t agree). With 200 calories per serving, it has only 1.5 grams of fat and 6 grams of dietary fiber. Plus, it’s tasty unlike some other whole grain pastas.
At lunch I make sure to have veggies of some kind, whether alone or with grilled chicken, or a sandwich made with a muffin, low fat cheese and low fat ham (not a big turkey fan which would help, I know) or chicken.
For snacks – nuts, nuts, nuts. A handful of almonds (approximately 12), cashews or walnuts are a great snack at around 3 pm.
At night we try to keep it simple. Grilled steak, chicken or eggs with veggies and a salad. Actually, we’ve been eating a lot more eggs. They are not as bad for you as people think and if you buy some Eggland’s Best or another high quality egg, they are packed with vitamins and have lower cholesterol than regular eggs. I always look for a sale on them and stock up.
For a late night (around 8 pm) snack, I’ve been making our own desserts – like a low fat fruit-packed ambrosia — or having a small handful of Brookside Dark Chocolate Covered Pomegrantes. I get a 2 lb bag at Costco and they are absolutely delicious. 22 pieces are about 200 calories, but I stick to about half that amount because they are so decadent and dark chocolate and pomegrante are packed with anti-oxidants.
Adding all those fruits, nuts and veggies has gone a long way in helping as well. They keep me feeling fuller and I’m not having those horrible hunger pangs that wreck most diets. In fact, I’m not even thinking about this as a diet anymore, but as a lifestyle change because I can see myself eating like this for the rest of my life.
So, that’s my confession about being a carboholic and how I’ve changed some of my habits. I’ve also been going to the gym regularly and that’s been a big help. Any increase in activity is good for you, including a brisk walk!
Hope today’s Thursday Thoughts might be of help to you. 🙂
I love the taste of kabobs whether they have lamb, beef, chicken or shellfish. But the last thing I want to do at night after a long day at work is to come home and have to worry about skewering everything. Of course, I could do it the night before, but again, it’s too much effort on a weeknight.
So what can you do if you love that melding of veggies, but don’t want all the work of kabobbing them?
You can make your kabobs in the skillet sans skewering!
Place a little olive oil in your skillet, preferably a large cast iron one. It’ll hold the heat better and will also give you some dietary iron for your system.
Put the skillet on high heat and get it nice and warm. While you are doing that, wash and slice the mushrooms. Place them in the skillet to cook first on high heat. Mushrooms have a lot of water and you want to evaporate all that water and get the mushrooms starting to brown before you add any other veggies, otherwise you will just be steaming them and not pan broiling them.
Next, cut the red pepper into inch cubes. Add to mushrooms once all the water is gone. Set the heat to medium-high.
Cut the onions into one inch cubes. Once the red peppers are starting to sweat a little, add the onions. Give everything a good stir every now and then.
Prep a second pan with a little oil for your protein or if you have a grill handy, get that warming up.
On a different cutting board, slice your beef/lamb/pork/chicken into thin slices for faster cooking. If you’re using shrimp or scallops there is no need to do anything with them other than cook them.
Chop the yellow and green squash in half and then slice into uniform slices. About 1/4 inch thick since we want it to cook fairly fast. Once the onions are starting to look translucent, toss in the squash.
In the second pan, place your slices of meat or shellfish. Leave them on one side until they are starting to brown and then turn. Keep an eye on the veggies and give them a stir or two.
While the meat/fish is cooking, slice the tomato into eighths and then cut those eighths in half. You want to toss the tomato in at that very last minute. You can also substitute grape or cherry tomatoes, but not very big ones.
Once all the meat is cooked, place it on a plate and let it rest for a second. You are going to slice it into strips and then mix it in with the veggies. Once it is all mixed, add the sherry/balsamic vinegar (not apple vinegar as it is too strong) to the veggie/meat mix and stir. Then add the tomato sauce/juice/ketchup. Not too much. Give it a stir and cook for just a few minutes.
That’s it. Skillet kabobs! Serve them over rice, couscous or rice pilaf.
Hope you enjoyed this Tuesday’s Tip!
I don’t know why, but toward the end of the summer I developed a taste for sangria again. Maybe because it was a delightful way to cool off on those hot summer days and nights. I’ve been playing with the recipe and have created this refreshing variation on the traditional mix!
I hope you enjoy it.
Ingredients
What I like about this mix is that you get the extra fruitiness and sweetness with the addition of the cider and don’t have to add sugar to get that.
Some recipes call for lemon in the mix and also don’t ask you to peel the citrus, but I find that the lemon and the peels make the mix too acidic. For a change of pace, cube some apples and toss them in or go even more tropical with some pineapple and changing to a white wine.
Hope you enjoyed today’s Tuesday Tip.
Don’t forget to drop by Julia Amante’s blog for a chance to win a copy of SINS OF THE FLESH and a T-shirt. You can click here to visit Julia Amante’s blog.
The other day I needed to clean out fridge and freezer in anticipation of the space that I would need for all the Christmas Eve food prep! But what does one do with frozen berries and sour cream (they had a sale so I went a little overboard!).
Then there was the box of vanilla wafers just sitting on the shelf and I thought, why not a variation on a simple trifle. It took just a little prep, some sitting in the fridge and even my hubby, who is not a dessert person, loved it.
So, next time you want something quick, semi-healthy and light, try this Trifle with Berries and Sour Cream!
Ingredients
Directions
Easy, right? Now there are several variations you can do to this recipe. For starters, use light or fat free sour cream to reduce the calories. If you don’t like Splenda, substitute confectioner’s sugar. Real sugar will be too coarse in the sour cream mixture. Want to make it a little more adult? Add a touch of alcohol to berry mixture. Amaretto, Frangelica or Navan vanilla brandy would all be delightful. If you want to do strawberries only, try adding Godiva Chocolate Liqueur.
You can also add frozen or fresh raspberries to the mix. Just keep the ratio of 3 pounds to the one pint.
If you find as you’re doing the layers that you’ve got left over berries/sour cream, just keep on layering. You can also puree some of the berries for a sauce that you can drizzle over the trifle once it’s served.
Hope you enjoy this little treat!