Originally posted by Sarah – July 5, 2015
Happy Independence Day! I know, it’s the 5th today, but we have been celebrating all weekend and that continued tonight for our Sunday Night Dinner. Yesterday we enjoyed watching the parade and having a cookout with friends and neighbors. Today we had 4 boys that were still excited about this weekend. Why not keep it going and enjoy a delicious dinner, followed by sparklers and a festive dessert? I hope all members of our Springdell family enjoyed their holiday weekend!
We had some wonderful fresh trout filets tonight for dinner. I simply used some oil and fresh herbs from the Springdell garden to flavor these filets. They were delicious. I made a rice dish for our side that featured the English peas and pak choi from the share.
I find it strangely satisfying to shell peas. Maybe because I know the beauty and sweetness of a pea straight from its pod. So while I started cooking the rice in a half water half stock mixture I sat on the deck enjoying the day and shelling some peas.
I also washed the pak choi and cut the leaves from the stems, I will save the leaves for another dish or a breakfast smoothie, today I wanted to use the stems to add a crunch to the rice dish.
Into to a pan with some oil and butter went the stems, just to tenderize them slightly. After about 3-4 minutes of cook time I added in the English peas with a bit more butter and let them cook. You should cook the peas to take some of the starchy flavor out of them, and sweeten them up.
You will see the color in the peas change to a darker vibrant green as they cook. I suggest you test one to see if it is tender to your liking before adding the rice to the pan.
The herbs from the fish and the fresh veggies in the rice make for a very clean and fresh meal.
What better way to end the weekend than a festive, red white and blue dessert. I made pound cake in an 11×18 dish and used a circle cutter to make even circles. I sandwiched my rhubarb ginger jam in between two circles of pound cake, put a dollop of whipped cream on top and drizzled a blueberry mint sauce on top. I used the blueberries from the super fruit share for this sauce.
My rinsed blueberries went into a saucepan with 8 leaves of mint, 3 Tablespoons of water, 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice, and 1/3 cup of sugar. Heat that and stir constantly until the sugar has melted. Allow the mixture to simmer and thicken for about 10 minutes.
Put the sauce through a fine mesh strainer and add 3-4 more leaves of minced mint leaves to the sauce. Drizzle and you are good to go. Enjoy!
