Potluck Offerings

Every year my partner's father's cousin hosts Ribfest. He cooks tons of ribs, everyone brings sides and deserts, we eat, drink and head to a UNH hockey game. This year we brought apple sweet potato tarts and kale salad. 

Step 1, turn on some tunes, get some good cooking music cranking...

I started by cooking down 6 small apples and a large sweet potato (from our farm share) in about 1/2 a stick of butter. While that was cooking I combined 

1/2 cup bourbon

1/2 cup maple syrup

1/2 large lemon and some lemon zest

I added some cinnamon to the pan and stirred it in, then added the liquid mixture and 1 cup of chopped pecans and let that simmer. 

I ended up putting the filling in the fridge because I didn't have any pie crust on hand and didn't feel like making any. Once I got the pie crust I greased mini muffin tins, filled them with crust, let it cook about 7 minutes at 400 then added the filling and let it cook another 7 minutes. 

Kale Salad 

We've been going to this restaurant that recently opened a branch near us, Life Alive, and I love their Green Goddess Bowl so I made a kale salad inspired by that. 

I had lacinato/dino kale on hand so I used that, cleaned, chopped and then really briefly steamed to soften it just a bit and bring that bright green color out

I sautéed  butternut squash in a little olive oil (I had it on hand from the farm share but a sweet potato or other squash would have been good)

I cut up extra firm tofu and sautéed that in some olive oil too 

The dressing glop - I should have written down the amounts because this turned out really well but all I have is the ingredients I used

soy sauce

sesame oil

juice from one lemon

olive oil

fresh garlic

maple syrup

salt

avocado

raw cashews

I put it all in a small food processor type thing but a blender or immersion blender would work fine too I think it was a pretty thing concoction about the consistency of yoghurt. 

About 30 minutes before food was going to be served we mixed the dressing with the greens & squash & tofu to get it kind of coated and let the flavors settle together.