Countdown to Good Taste! Best 2022 Recipes

Countdown to Good Taste! Best 2022 Recipes

Can you believe 2023 is almost here?!

Check out my top recipes of 2022 and discover why these dishes were all the rage in home kitchens across the country (and for good reason!).

These recipes are delicious, easy to make, and perfect for any occasion.

If you’re looking for some new recipe ideas to add to your repertoire, or just curious about what all the fuss was about, check out my best recipes from 2022.

Happy cooking and Happy New Year!

Cooking With Mushrooms and Spinach

Spinach Au Gratin With Sauteed Mushrooms

I LOVE cooking mushrooms. This humble fungi inspire my dishes with their complex flavors and many uses.

Spinach Au Gratin With Sauteed Mushrooms is one of my favorite recipes that is easy to make and will make you feel like a celebrity chef!

Southern Style Charcuterie with This Cocktail Pairing…

Southern Style Charcuterie

My Southern-Style Charcuterie board is really something to behold, and your guests won’t believe the spread when you set out this showstopper.

My board is PACKED with deviled eggs, spiced crackers, pimento spread, pickled okra, millionaire’s bacon, cilantro shrimp, and an assortment of turkey and ham roll-ups!

Wash it down with my prickly pear cocktail, inspired by strolls at the Farmer’s Market.

I Did It My Way! Veal Sinatra Inspired By Locanda Rustica

Veal Sinatra Recipe Inspired By Locanda Rustica

A cast-iron skillet. Thick slices of eggplant. A ladleful of marinara sauce and a double-topping of cheese. 

Take advantage of your favorite variety of eggplant using this simple frying technique to create a super Italian-inspired dish and make eggplant parm magic tonight!

how to make easy grilled veggies for memorial day

Schnitzel Parmesan & Schnitzel Milanese

Make pork two ways with this freezer-friendly meal, perfect for remixing your dinner ingredients without getting bored!

how to make easy grilled veggies for memorial day

Spring Dinner Party Menu Featuring Fresh Dinner Salads

Steal my very best springtime entertaining ideas that will guarantee you have just as much fun as your guests with these main course salad ideas!

  • Grilled Flank Steak With Roasted Onions, Sliced Tomatoes, Blue Cheese and Poblano Pepper Vinaigrette
  • Poached Chicken In Tuna Sauce
  • Roasted Salmon In the Grass With Cucumber Mint Sauce
  • Farmer’s Market Orzo Salad 
  • Sunshine Cake from Sunday Best Dishes
how to make easy grilled veggies for memorial day

The Only Fruit Chutney Recipe You’ll Ever Need 

If you’re looking for the easiest chutney recipe, look no further.

This is the best peach chutney recipe that can be used with a variety of fruits and is great on crackers, sandwiches, or even cheese plates.

Learn how to make fancy chutney with the only chutney recipe you’ll ever need from Jorj’s kitchen!

 

how to make easy grilled veggies for memorial day

Party Dip Recipe Ideas

I have made my fair share of chips and dips over the years, every which way and for just about every occasion.

From appetizers to party take-along to afternoon snacks, the versatile chips and dip dish strikes a satisfying balance of keeping us just the right amount of being full before a big meal (or in-between them)!

Salmon Secrets! In The Kitchen With Jorj

Salmon Secrets! In The Kitchen With Jorj

My best salmon recipes are your new go-to’s!

It was 20 years ago when I wrote my first cookbook, and these salmon recipes continue to endure! We’re talking salmon secrets to perfect your fish dish, with salmon served several ways that you’re sure to love! 🤫#nationalsalmonday

Join Jorj In The Kitchen!

Join Jorj for Meal Inspiration & Home Foodie Conversation!

The Art of The Fresh Market

Grab the book that contains my favorite travel adventures, with inspired original artwork by artist Susan Fazio.
New Year, Old Friends and the Birth of This Book

Watermelon Recipes: Pickled Beet & Watermelon Carpaccio!

Watermelon Recipes: Pickled Beet & Watermelon Carpaccio!

National Watermelon Day can create unexpected opportunities! Learn how to craft a darn delicious fancy appetizer that you’ll soon crave! From my book, “Canvas & Cuisine: Art of the Fresh Market”.

The fusion of different flavors is what tasting different cuisines is really about.

Ingredients that don’t appear together in our culture are often traditionally paired in others.

If you take that concept into your home kitchen, you give yourself permission to become creative in your cooking.

Just like Sue’s creativity on canvas, your cuisine will have a taste all its own!

For this dish, peppery, crisp radishes are elevated by pickling them in a quick brine.

I put these together with an Asian-flavored pesto on some crunchy crostini and you have a first-course appy that makes you say, “Whaaaaaaat!”

Pickled Beet & Watermelon Carpaccio from
“Canvas & Cuisine: The Art of the Fresh Market”

Servings

A Crowd

Ready In:

30 minutes plus 1 hour or so for roasting

Good For:

Appetizer
Salad

For pickled beets: 
4 medium red beets, tops removed, scrubbed 
4 medium golden beets, tops removed, scrubbed 
½ red onion, peeled and thinly sliced 
4 cups apple cider vinegar 
1 cup granulated sugar 
1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 teaspoon coarse ground pepper
 
For vinaigrette: 
¼ cup white balsamic vinegar 
Juice from 1 large orange, about ¼ cup 
1 medium shallot, peeled, about 1 tablespoon 
1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard 
½ cup olive oil
For carpaccio: 
6 thin slices prosciutto 
¼ medium watermelon 
½ fennel bulb, tough outer parts remove, (save a few of the top leaves for garnish) 

Tried it? Tag it!

I would love to see what you did with this recipe.  Share your creation by tagging #inthekitchenwithjorj and with Scrumptious Possibilities With Jorj, my free private home cooking group.

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Wrap the beets in aluminum foil and place them into a baking dish. Bake until the beets just begin to soften, about 1 to 1 ½ hours. Remove the baking dish from the oven and cool the beets to room temperature. Remove the skin from the beets by rubbing with paper towels. Use a mandoline slicer to slice the beets as thin as possible. Place the beets into a bowl with red onion slices.

Whisk together the apple cider vinegar and granulated sugar in a separate bowl until the sugar is completely dissolved. Stir in the salt and pepper. Pour this liquid over the beets and onions and gently toss so that all the slices are coated in the brine. Set the bowl aside for at least 30 minutes. (You can cover and refrigerate the beets at this point for several days.)

Pour the balsamic vinegar and orange juice into a blender. Add the shallot and mustard. Pulse to emulsify. With the machine running, slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Season with additional salt and pepper. Place your serving platter into the freezer to chill. Increase the oven temperature to 400°.

Place the prosciutto slices onto a parchment line baking sheet. Bake until the prosciutto is crisp, about 5 to 8 minutes. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and cool the crisp prosciutto to room temperature. Cut the watermelon into ¼-inch slices. Use a 3-inch round biscuit cutter to cut medallions from the watermelon slices.

Use the mandolin slicer to thinly shave the fennel bulb. Remove your serving platter from the freezer and brush it with olive oil. Remove the beet slices from the brine. Lay the beets and watermelon onto the plater, slightly overlapping each round.

Break the prosciutto into pieces and scatter over the top. Scatter thin slices of fennel over all. Drizzle just a spoonful or two of vinaigrette over the carpaccio. Garnish with the fresh green leaves cut from the fennel.

 

Stop Food Waste With These Recipe Remixes

Stop Food Waste With These Recipe Remixes

Stop Food Waste Leftover Remix

Make Earth Day every day in your kitchen! Take the pledge to stop food waste with my best tips for reusing produce and remixing leftovers! #StopFoodWaste

Stop Food Waste Day was first introduced in 2017, and this years marks the fifth year of inspiring action around food waste reduction.

Who even knew this was a THING?  

 I discovered very early in the family kitchen that fruits and veggies lingering a little too long must be given a new lease on life! And that leftovers getting too comfortable on the fridge shelf demand an encore.

In honor of Stop Food Waste Day and the innovation and creativity in reducing one’s food waste impact, here’s Jorj’s list of what to do with leftovers.

I thank my grandma’s for the training on this one.

EGGS 

Don’t throw away left over scrambled eggs. Use them in tomorrows egg sandwich or burrito.

WAFFLES

Cut leftovers into chunks and toast them in the oven with a bit of cinnamon and sugar. Now you have waffle croutons for your ice cream dessert.

PANCAKES

Slather left over pancakes with cream cheese or peanut butter. Roll up and place into a baking dish. Douse with syrup and bake until warmed through. Pancake roll-ups for breakfast!

SALAD

Leftover salad with dressing is not as good as it is the first day, but it will work on sandwiches and subs. However, leftover everyTHING will make a great salad. Look in the back of your fridge’s veggie drawer and use those ingredients to doctor up your everyday garden salad. Carrots, fennel, radishes, cukes, peppers, cauliflower… these all work. Look into your jars too. Pickles, sun-dried tomatoes, and olives are perfect additions. Don’t forget the cheese. Salads are a perfect dish to avoid food waste!

CHEESE

I’ve written about cheese about a hundred times. But here are some highlight dishes that are perfect for your leftover cheese: grilled cheese, cheese spread, hot cheese dip, cheesy deviled eggs, cheese-filled omelets, veggies in melty cheese sauce.

NOODLES

Leftover pasta is my go-to thing for that morning-after breakfast. But left over noodles are great for reinvention. Leftover Alfredo pasta top pork cutlets and sauteed eggplant for an inspirational mid-week dish. Stuff some leftover mac ‘n cheese into your next roast beef panini sandwich. And don’t forget spaghetti pie, noodles in casseroles and pasta turned into frittatas.

CHICKEN

Besides chicken salad there’s chicken quesadilla, chicken soups, chicken casserole, chicken burritos, chicken hash, chicken pot pie…… this one’s easy.

FISH

Salmon and tuna turn into salmon and tuna salad with just a couple of additions. Other left over fish can be turned into croquettes, chowders and spring rolls.

BEEF

Leftovers work perfectly in fajitas, cheese-steak subs, stuffed peppers, open face steak sandwiches on Texas toast, quick beef stew and beef and potato hash.

PORK

Shred leftover pork and douse in barbecue sauce for a pulled pork sandwich. 

VEGGIES

I challenge you to give me ANY veggie and I will give you three ways to repurpose the leftovers. These will all revolve around soups, stews, quesadillas, cheese spreads, hot cheese dips, salads, croquettes, veggie bread puddings, veggie filled omelets, casseroles, veggies with pasta, veggie enchiladas, stuffed peppers, hash, veggie pies…. Get the idea?

DESSERTS

Whether you have leftover cake, pie or cookies you can use these to create a crispy topping for ice cream, a base for bread pudding, a fruit crumble and a layer or two for your favorite parfait.

I think you have the picture. (I also think I watch too much CHOPPED!) 

Now, let’s hear what THING you can create with your everyday leftovers.

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Southern Super Supper Book Club Menu

Southern Super Supper Book Club Menu

It’s “Read An eBook Week” and my recipes and read are available for immediate download! Host a Southern-style book club supper with “Almost Sisters” by Joshilyn Jackson and my “Sunday Best Dishes” menu.

This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. 

Last year I discovered author Joshilyn Jackson and devoured every book she’s written in record time.

For me, her characters, strong Southern women, strike a chord with so many attributes I aspire to. Her heroines face challenges that we can identify with, although hopefully in not such a dramatic manner!

For this book club, I’ve chosen the book “The Almost Sisters”.

This is not her most recent book, but I find it to be very current given our present political climate. And although this book is in no way political, it does deal with issues in the headlines.

Here is a summary from Amazon:

“With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality—the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are.

 

Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs’ weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.

 

It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She’s having a baby boy—an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight-year-old’s life. But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel’s marriage implodes.

 

Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she’s been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.

 

Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother’s affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she’s pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she’s got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie’s been hiding.

 

Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family’s freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows.”

There’s a pivotal scene in the book that serves as the catalyst for bringing Leia home to Alabama and her grandmother. Birchie and her caretaker, Wattie attend a potluck supper after Sunday church. It’s Birchie’s out-of-character outburst in front of the parishioners that sends a distress call to Leia.

Sunday after church potluck suppers are a tradition in the South. I must have been on the same wavelength with Ms. Jackson when I wrote an entire chapter of the potluck recipes in my book, “Sunday Best Dishes.”

This book is the perfect one for recipes for your book club menus. Buy one and share it with all of your book club members!

This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. 

Here’s a menu that will work perfectly for your book discussion of “The Almost Sisters”:

Pretty Potluck Beans

Sunday Best Dishes, page 73

Southern-Style Chicken Pot with Okra and Collards

Sunday Best Dishes, page 79

Scalloped Potatoes with Ham and Green Onions

Sunday Best Dishes, page 83

Trio of Picnic Salads

Sunday Best Dishes, page 123

#RecipesAndReads

 

Here are a couple of book club discussion questions to get you started:

  • There are multiple relationships in the novel that fit the title The Almost Sisters description. How did the title take on new meaning to you as the story developed?
  • Despite her worsening dementia, Birchie is still a strong character throughout the book. How would you describe her lifelong friendship with Wattie? Did your impressions change throughout the novel? Why do you think Birchie chose to keep their true relationship a secret even as times changed?
  • Leia makes the decision to hide her pregnancy early on and keeps her secret throughout much of the story. Do you think Leia made the right decision? Were you surprised by the characters’ reactions when her pregnancy was revealed?

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Celebrate Labor Day 2021 With These Backyard Party Recipes

Celebrate Labor Day 2021 With These Backyard Party Recipes

Can you believe that it’s Labor Day 2021 already? Whether you’re cooking for one or many, there’s never been a better time to let your creativity shine with these tried-and-true backyard recipes!?

Labor Day 2021 has long signaled that Summer is winding down to a close and Fall will soon be ushered in.

We’re not letting our tasty backyard celebrations slip by just yet. What better way to celebrate than with these Labor Day recipes?

Check out these delicious party ideas that are perfect for any outdoor celebration!

All of these recipes can be made in under an hour and most have ingredients you may already have in your fridge.

I always find ways to let cheese creep into my recipes, slowly but surely.

Take a walk on the cheesy side with a few of my favorite dishes that answer the call of your Cheese Day cravings!

Watermelon Margarita Fruit Cocktail for Labor Day

WATERMELON MARGARITA

I concocted a cocktail that turned out to be a BIG hit at a backyard BBQ!

You might want to serve this easy and tasty festive, summer drink at your Labor Day picnic.

We use our fruit-flavored tequila to make this “Watermelon Margarita”:

THE RECIPE:

Prepare the base for the cocktail by emulsifying the inside of a seedless watermelon.

We mushed up (this is a highly technical culinary term – not used by Julia in any of her 700 pages) two large watermelons for our outdoor party.

Add two or more large cans of lime concentrate to the watermelon slush. You can prepare this base in advance. Pour it into a large container and refrigerate.

For Watermelon Margaritas, take a lime wedge and run it around the rim of a margarita glass.

Combine margarita salt with a bit of granulated sugar and place onto a small plate or into a shallow bowl.

Dip the rim of the glass into the salt/sugar combo.

Pour the slush mixture into the glass. Top with a drizzle of Triple Sec Liqueur and a generous splash of fruit flavored tequila. Top with a fresh, pitted cherry.

how to make easy grilled veggies for memorial day

STREET CORN CAESAR SALAD

Hand salads open the doors to your creativity. Yes, this is salad you can eat with your hands. Think lettuce cups and endive spears filled with salad ingredients.

Original Eggplant Parm

STEAK FAJITAS

Cook flanks steaks on an outdoor grill and serve all the fixin’s on the side for your Labor Day guests to savor!

how to make easy grilled veggies for memorial day
how to make easy grilled veggies for memorial day

POBLANO PEPPER SHORT RIBS

Social-distance Summer just got hotter with pecks of peppers, two ways! Add fresh air and “bubble friends” for this backyard feast!

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