Tag: Side Dish

Pineapple Slaw

Posted June 9, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 2 Comments

Time for more tropical goodness! This recipe is a snap to throw together and includes multiple ingredients mentioned in Swiss Family Robinson: pineapple, cabbage, carrot, and lime. Plus, it’s dotted with cute little carrot hearts. Let’s make some Pineapple Slaw!

Pineapples turn up regularly in Swiss Family Robinson, so even though I used them in my Seared Salmon with Pineapple Mango Chutney, I wanted to use them again. I loved the idea of a cold, fresh side dish to pair with my salmon entree, so I went hunting on Pinterest and found this Hawaiian Slaw recipe from The Skinny Fork. I love that it uses so many ingredients from the book, and it has a touch of gingery, peppery spice to complement the chutney in my entree. Plus, how cute are those little veggie hearts??? I just made a few minor changes to suit what I had in the fridge.

With the weather heating up, this refreshing, sweet-n-spicy side dish is the perfect thing to keep in mind when those sweltering summer days are upon us. Enjoy!

Carrot Crescent Horns with Chicken Salad

Posted March 31, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Even though Peter Rabbit doesn’t eat any carrots in his story, I feel like a rabbit-centered menu needs a carrot recipe, y’know? However, I suppose it’s rather fitting that this recipe doesn’t have carrots in it either—just crescent roll horns disguised as carrots! 😉 This super cute idea for crescent roll carrots was originally developed by Beth at Hungry Happenings, though I did change it a bit. The idea is super adorable, and Beth also uses an amazing shortcut for diy pastry cones if you don’t have cream horn molds. The secret? Ice cream cones! I used waffle cones for mine. Since they’re bigger, than means more room for filling!

For the filling, I used my favorite chicken salad recipe, which uses poppy seed dressing from my Petunia Bowl Salad instead of mayo. It’s a bit healthier than regular chicken salad, and it’s great alternative if you have an egg allergy (like my daughter).

My kids LOVED this. And talk about a perfect Easter recipe! 😀

Mrs. Arable’s Canned Peaches: Learn to Can with Me

Posted February 3, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

One of my favorite things about food blogging is it pushes me out of my comfort zone on the regular. For example, even though I found eclairs super intimidating when I first learned to cook, I made lavender lemon eclairs after only a year of blogging because they were perfect for my Secret Garden menu. I used to be terrified of cooking big birds, but now my cookbook, A LITERARY HOLIDAY COOKBOOK, has recipes for turkey AND goose. Over time, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable pushing my culinary boundaries, and just this past month, I tried something I’ve had my eye on for years: canning.

In CHARLOTTE’S WEB, Mrs. Arable serves canned peaches to the farmers. Peaches are a great intro to canning because they are high in acid (making them a pretty safe option) and easy to process. Here was my perfect opportunity to take canning for a test drive to see if I like it! I don’t have any special tools (canner, jar rack, jar lifter, etc.), so I used tips from a few different sources to help me learn to can with the tools I already have. Here are the sources I consulted:

“Canning Peaches Safely at Home” from Practical Self Reliance
“How to Process Foods in a Water Bath Canner” from The Spruce Eats
“20 Canning Mistakes to Avoid” from Because We Can (this one is a Youtube video)

Canning is an exact science, so I highly recommend researching before you begin. This will help the whole process go smoothly and safely. Plus, I’m a novice myself, so the recipe below isn’t the be-all and end-all of canning advice. It’s a description of my experience, which worked well for me, but I’ll probably change my methods a bit as I learn more.

Overall, I had a good experience. I think it’s a bit too much work for small batches, but it’s a great option if you have a lot of fruit, jam, sauce, etc. and don’t want to waste any. I don’t think I’ll buy any canning tools quite yet, but I have lots of young berry bushes started in the backyard. Once those are fully established, I could definitely see myself having enough berry jam for big-batch canning. I’m glad I gave it a whirl!

NOTE: Just to reiterate, I am not an expert. Fully research canning before you begin and use recipes that have been approved for canning. This post is not a comprehensive guide and does not address every variable that can affect the canning process (such as elevation or lower acid foods). Consuming improperly processed canned goods can result in botulism. Be safe out there!

Maple Cinnamon Roasted Hazelnuts

Posted November 18, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments

I had an open-fire entree planned for this week, but I haven’t been able to make it yet due to prolonged rainy weather. So while we wait for more clement conditions, let’s make a side dish: roasted hazelnuts!

For all the recipes in my HATCHET menu, I want to draw inspiration from the rugged setting of the book. The main character, Brian, eats a variety of nuts and berries, including hazelnuts, which caught my interest since I don’t get to cook with them much. At first I planned to make roasted nuts seasoned with fresh oregano, but then maple syrup popped into my head. It’s the perfect seasonal ingredient for November, and I’ve never seen maple roasted nuts before. I decided to experiment using my go-to candied walnut recipe as a base.

They turned out amazing! The buttery earthiness of the hazelnuts is balanced by the warm sweetness of the maple, and the cinnamon adds just a hint of aromatic lift. It’s a food that feels fancy but is actually just a combo of a few raw materials. Those materials are a match made in trail snack heaven. Enjoy! 😉

Split Pea and Ham Soup

Posted October 7, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

When I started reading the Nancy Drew series in preparation for this menu, I crossed my fingers and prayed one of the books would have split pea and ham soup in it. A little weird, right? Stick with me. 😉

For ages, I’ve been looking for an excuse to share one particular split pea and ham soup recipe with you guys, and I knew the Nancy books were my best chance (they were first published in the 1930s, when pea soup was especially popular). As it turns out, luck was on my side–Nancy eats split pea and ham soup in mystery #5, THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE!

So here it is, my go-to pea soup! This little beauty is called Wisconsin Split Pea Soup. It comes from Taste of Home, and it’s one of my favorite cold weather recipes (possibly even my favorite soup ever). I tweaked it just a bit to suit my preferences, but it was practically perfect already. It’s meaty, savory, salty, and oh so comforting. Plus, it’s SO easy.

Grab your favorite mystery novel and cozy up with this steamy bowl of goodness. You’ll thank me. 🙂

1940s-Style Slow Cooker Applesauce

Posted June 3, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Remember earlier this year when I made a historically accurate JANE EYRE menu? Today I’m adding a historically accurate recipe to my STEWART LITTLE menu too! Although the story is set in a fictional New York and no time period is given, the book was published in the 1940s, and the clothing and speech styles of the characters give that vibe. So let’s make some 1940s food!

Swiss Potato Rosti with Goat Cheese and Leeks

Posted April 1, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

When planning my HEIDI menu, it was very important to me that at least one recipe include goat cheese. Heidi and her grandfather are always drinking goat’s milk and eating cheese, and, along with soft white rolls, these are the foods mentioned most frequently in the book.

I toyed with the idea of making my own goat cheese, but most stores carry ultra-pastuerized, which is no good for making cheese. Instead I decided to incorporate store bought cheese into my side dish. I already knew I wanted to make a potato/cheese side dish, since Heidi eats them in the winter in Dörfli, so I started researching and discovered potato rosti.

Potato rosti are a traditional Swiss side dish (Heidi lives in the Swiss Alps). They’re essentially hash brown patties, sometimes made with fillings or toppings. I don’t need much of an excuse to make fried potatoes, and I was extra pleased when I found a potato rosti recipe with goat cheese and leeks by Serena from Domesticate Me. The only big change I made was swapping out the thyme for oregano, since I had some leftover from making baked walleye. It turned out amaaazing! I loved how the oniony sweetness of the leeks and creaminess of the warm cheese offset the oil of the fried potatoes.

With a few key tips, this recipe is really easy to make:

If using cast iron, make sure it’s very well-seasoned. Otherwise your potatoes will fuse to the pan, and there’s NO WAY you’re flipping that thing in one piece.
When adding your layers, move fast. Each side only needs to cook for a few minutes. You don’t want it to burn while you’re arranging leeks.

Enjoy!

Mini Zopf Bread: Soft, White Rolls from HEIDI

Posted March 4, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

March is here and, with it, a new menu! For March-April, I’ll be making recipes inspired by the book HEIDI by Johanna Spyri. If you ever needed a sweet, wholesome read, this book’s for you. It’s a darling gem of a story about a little orphaned girl who goes to live with her grandfather in a cottage in the Swiss Alps, where she is a force for good in the life of everyone she meets.

If you’re familiar with the book, you know exactly what food we’re making today: the soft, white rolls! When Heidi befriends Granny, the goatherd’s grandmother, she learns the old woman cannot eat tough black bread. Since that’s the only kind of bread the family can afford, Granny hasn’t tasted bread in years. Heidi is extremely distressed by this, so when she’s served soft white rolls while staying in Frankfurt, she resolves to bring some home to Granny. At her departure, her friend Clara sends her home with a heaping basketful! The rolls are the most prominently featured food in the story–arguably synonymous with the book itself–so I knew they had to be the first item on the menu. Read More

Roasted Potatoes: My Take on an Early 19th Century Recipe

Posted February 4, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Today my foray into early 19th century cooking continues! I’m making a recipe for roasted potatoes I found in the 1823 cookbook The Cook’s Oracle by William Kitchiner. Roasted potatoes may sound like a dull choice, but I think this is the perfect recipe to showcase one of the fascinating differences between modern and historical cookbooks: the level of detail in the recipes. Read More

Sleepy Hollow Smashed Pumpkin Soup

Posted November 15, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Since this is a Sleepy Hollow recipe, I had a grand scheme to serve this soup in roasted pumpkin bowls. It would be a perfect nod to the headless horseman’s jack-o-lantern; plus, it would look seriously cool in the photos! Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Every single grocery store I visited in a 20-minute radius of my house sold out of pie pumpkins two weeks ago and won’t be getting any more this season. Ergh!!! So I shelved my dreams for the perfect Pinterest photo and bought a ceramic pumpkin bowl instead. Pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself…but I’m still considering retaking the photos next year when I can get real pumpkins again!

Dashed hopes of inspired plating aside, this recipe actually turned out really well. It’s a variation on the Milady de Winter Soup I made for my Three Musketeers menu. This time, I swapped the butternut squash for pumpkin, the red pepper for carrot and parsnip, the thyme for rosemary, and the store bought chicken stock for homemade. I liked it so much, I’m making another batch to freeze for after the baby is born in January!