honey-peppered pear + prosciutto bites [porter]

Unbridge club -- where a group of my mother's friends get together and play anything but bridge -- is starting to encompass the younger generation: the daughters and nieces of the core group. It was my turn to host last night and amid the concern of having a spotless house and the worry that 50 and 60 year old women would enjoy laser tag (like I said, anything but bridge!), I knew I needed to have simple, filling and delicious finger food that would hold to my nickname of 'Martha.'

I do not have endless hostessing experience. One of my best friends LOVES to play hostess, so the majority of our casual get-togethers take place at her house. Pulling together a menu other than take and bake pizza that would allow me to interact with my guests immediately upon their arrival requires a bit of planning ahead and avoiding foods that are still delectable when not piping hot.

I bring you to pear + prosciutto! A quick, tasty, and surprising appetizer/snack/finger food that will earn you some serious host/hostess cred.

Ingredients:
makes 32 bites [serves 8-10]
4 bartlett pears
1/3 lbs, very thinly sliced prosciutto [8-10 slices, some tend to go missing in the process :) )
1T honey
1/4 c warm water
2 t fine black pepper, plus plenty for finishing presentation plate

The how to:
Heat oven to 375. Slice the pears into 8 equal segments, removing the core from each slice as you go. In a medium to large bowl, combine the honey, warm water and 2 t black pepper, stirring until uniformly combined. Add pear segments to the honey-water and toss to coat. Let sit while prepping prosciutto. Cut each prosciutto slice into 4 even strips, as best you can. I ended up with some odd shaped pieces and it worked out fine as long as the pieces are long enough to wrap around a pear slice. Wrap each pear slice with a strip of prosciutto and place seam down on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, let cool slightly and arrange on a serving platter. Sprinkle the whole platter uniformly with pepper.

Side notes:
First and foremost, I apologize for the lack of photo. In the midst of hostessing, snapping a picture unfortunately did not cross my mind. Now on to the real notes. I left the prosciutto off of a few of the slices to accommodate a vegetarian who was attending; it turns out that the honey and pepper work surprisingly well without the salty offset. To keep the pears warm until guests arrived, I kept the serving platter on the stove top to absorb some of the peripheral heat. These are still good when not super hot, or even warm, but I did not enjoy them as much 3 hours later at room temperature. Luckily, they will probably be gone by then (I had reserved some on the side for my hubby).

Tweet

baked rosemary sweet potato fries [porter]

Baked rosemary sweet potato fries

Fiance and I had a very productive day cleaning the apartment, grocery shopping, ordering save the dates, and doing laundry.  Today is the kind of day where cooking dinner is the last thing we want to do, so we made it pretty easy on ourselves.  We had left over hamburgers from July 4th, boiled corn, and these sweet potatoes fries.  Okay, so these fries don't quite fit a "do nothing" menu, but we had sweet potatoes that needed to be used.  I started using the basic idea of this recipe a couple years ago after seeing it on the ginger cook. 

Ingredients:
2 medium sized sweet potatoes
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper

The how to:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Chop the sweet potatoes into this fries.  Add to a boiling pot of water and boil for 5 minutes.  Drain water.  Add the remaining ingredients to the pot of drained potatoes and toss to coat evenly.  Transfer to a parchment paper-lined baking pan and spread to one even layer.  Bake for about 30 minutes, flipping fries halfway through (watch closely, the time will depend on how thick the fries are cut).

Side notes:
The fries are essentially cooked after the boiling, but the oven gets them to the correct crispy texture.  Feel free to finish off with a quick broil if needed to get desired coloring.  Try finishing with freshly grated Parmesan for an Italian taste.

Tweet