The Easiest Easter

This year for your holiday dinner, how about a “holiday” for hard work cooking? Oh it will still be elegant and great tasting but these dishes give us time to make other memories, If you know what I mean! ;-)

Here are super easy recipes for 5 dishes that will comprise an Easy Easter Feast:

Desert: 2 ingredients

Appetizer: 2 or 3 ingredients

Entree: 5 ingredients

Side A: 3 ingredients

Side B: 2 ingredients

Every one of these are stupidly easy and quick. We have other things we want to do on this day! Let's go!

Ingredients Shopping list:

1 pre-cooked ham quarter – size depending on number of eaters (used a 2½ lbs)

6 Eggs Hard Cooked

1 lbs fresh asparagus

5 or 6 pieces of bacon

20 to 25 gingersnap cookies

1 cup brown sugar

2 Tbs of mustard

less than a ¼ cup Jack Daniels (used 4 Tbs)

Balsamic vinaigrette dressing

Honey mustard dressing

1 box angel food cake mix

1 20 oz can of crushed pineapple in juice

On The Night Before:

Just Too Easy Angel Food Cake

1 box angel food cake mix

1 20oz. can crushed pineapple in juice

Pre-heat the oven according to the box, setting the shelve on the lowest rack.

Use a CLEAN angel food cake pan – in fact, wash and dry it again.

Dump the pineapple and juice into the cake mix and mix it according to the box, (add nothing else to the mix)

Bake according to the box.

THATS ALL! No frosting necessary! Cover it when cool and set aside for the meal.

Deceptively Quick Deviled Eggs

6 eggs: Hard cooked

2 Tbs of Honey Mustard salad dressing I like to use low fat.

3 tsp of yellow mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

Sweet paprika to garnish.

Hard cook the number of eggs you will use, even for guests you rarely need more than 6 or 8. Remember they are served in halves! Most egg plates hold 6 eggs or 12 halves. Any extra empty “dents” in the egg plate can hold Easter candy! Choose anything with bright colors.

Remember from last year the best way to hard cook the eggs in to put them in a steamer basket and steam them for 11 minutes. Then plunge them into ice water while you peel them.

Remove the shell and cut in half the long way.

Pop out the yolks into a medium bowl. Mash them with a fork and keep adding by spoonfuls a good honey mustard salad dressing and yellow mustard until it is about the consistency of spreadable frosting. Salt and pepper to taste. Check it - taste as you go - some salad dressing is much sweeter than others.

Spoon this into a zip lock bag. Cut off the tiniest part of one of the bottom corners. Then use this to squeeze in enough mixture to fill each egg half!

Put some in each “boat” then continue to fill with what you have left. Dust with that sweet paprika or if you like use some cayenne pepper instead. Cover with plastic warp and stick in refrigerator overnight.

The Big day!

Pre heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Elegantly Easy Asparagus:

1lbs Asparagus

5 slices of bacon

Balsamic vinaigrette dressing

Take out the asparagus and wash it well, then cut the bottom 1½ inch off.

On a sheet of waxed paper, lay out one strip of thick bacon.

Hold three asparagus sticks together and starting from near the bottom lay them at an angle then roll them onto the bacon, picking the bacon up as you go. This is an easy to warp a piece of bacon around a bundle and let it overlap as you go, then pin it on with a tooth pick.

When all are in bundles, lay them together in a sprayed baking dish and carefully drizzle no more than 4 Tbs or less of a good balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing over them.

 

An Easy Take on Chef Alton Brown's City Ham:

1 pre-cooked ham quarter

20 to 25 gingersnap cookies

1 cup brown sugar

2 Tbs of mustard

less than a ¼ cup Jack Daniels (used 4 Tbs)

Take out the pre-cooked ham quarter and remove all of the plastic and netting! Pat it dry with a paper towel and place it in a baking pan with the cut side down! 

In a food processor pulse the ginger snaps until they are large crumbs transfer to large mixing bowl. (Or just put them in a plastic bag and pound them with the rolling pin!)

Stir in the brown sugar, mustard and Jack Daniels until it forms a nice thick paste.

Using as large spoon ladle this thick mixture all over the ham so that it sticks as a layer of goodness! Use the back of the spoon to make sure all the top and sides have some. Any extra goes on top and will melt down and provide a tasty glaze.

Then into the oven, along with the asparagus bundles (plan for it to take about 25 minutes per pound), but check it with an instant read thermometer. It has already been cooked so you just want it to read 140 degrees.

The asparagus will roast well and the bacon will be done in about ½ an hour. So you might wait depending on how big the ham is. Just time it so they both come out about the same time. If the ham takes 1 hour, wait a half an hour to put the asparagus in. Check it and remove if it starts to get too dark around the edges before the ham is ready.

Peanut's Pushover Peaches

1 can peach halves in juice

Lower fat peanut butter

 

Drain a can of peach halves (from their own juice) and place them like cups on a lined baking pan. Spoon some reduced fat peanut butter in the “bowls”. Approximately a tablespoon in each each.

When the ham reads, 140 take the dishes out and let them “rest”: Slide the tray with peaches into the oven long enough to melt the peanut butter and get them nice and hot! Son of a gun, that will be the same amount of time the ham needs to rest! About 15 minutes!

Sit the ham on a plate to carve. Use a serving spoon to transfer the hot peaches to a plate or platter. Put the baking dish with your elegant asparagus bundles on a hot pad. Set out the plate with the deviled eggs.

Inform your Master that His holiday dinner is served. As you sit down, glance around at the feast you have prepared: Your fancy Easter Dinner is ready. Don't forget your cake for desert. Simplicity in itself. It couldn't be any easier and still be home made!

It is good to simplify at times. That does not mean that you are not serving, only that you are serving more efficiently. Slave hopes your Easter is filled with all the promise the season offers.

New Beginnings – New Chances!

Gladly serving my Master Indy

socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!

Please buy slave's cookbook:

The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by Dan White http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTM via @amazon