Another month and another blog event. This is my first time joining in with a lot of my blogging friends for the Royal Foodie Joust, hosted by the lovely Jenn (a.k.a. The Leftover Queen). The joust really is the perfect challenge for me, since you’re presented with a triplet of ingredients and challenged to come up with something unique using them. What more could the king of cooking without a recipe ask for?!?
The ingredients for this round of the event were chosen by Elle, the winner of last moth’s joust. Her choices? Raspberry, almonds and lime. While these three could easily be used to create something very sweet and decadent, there was a hint that she’d like to see something savory come out of it. I knew what direction I was going to take these ingredients immediately, all I had to do was go get some berries!
While I would have loved to use fresh raspberries for this, we’re not exactly in raspberry country. The “fresh” raspberries in the market were not only outragiously priced, but smelled more of plastic than berries, so they were out. I considered using frozen berries, but they tend to muddle the colors of other ingredients, and don’t present well, so I went with 100% all raspberry preserves, and the result was just a bit on the sweet side for me, but still fantastic!
If you’re looking for the perfect main course for a hot summer night, this is your dish. The texture is cool and wonderful, with a load of crunch from both the iceberg lettuce and the almonds, but still quite a bit of toothiness from the romaine. The queso fresco is the perfect accompaniment, as it has a texture much like feta but is more mildly flavored, like a cross between a goat cheese and ricotta, and blends perfectly with the other flavors.
My wife’s response was simple. She just looked at me and asked; “We’ll be making this again, right?”
Yes honey, we most definitely will.
Popularity: 1% [?]
12 Comments