Sunday Supper -- Mini Monte Cristos and Farmhouse Salad

This past Christmas, I tried a new recipe for Mini Monte Cristos and well... they were a hit.  I adapted my recipe from the PET Evaporated Milk website, so I'll detail my adaption below.  Traditionally, Monte Cristos are made with Swiss cheese, but I substitute with Provolone.  They are also commonly sprinkled with powdered sugar and served with raspberry jam.  While they are insanely good this way, my family would prefer them with a Honey Mustard Dip (I've given this recipe before with my Pretzel Bites, but I'll reprint it below).  Tonight, I made up a batch of these little guys and paired them with what I have named a Farmhouse Salad with homemade Ranch Dressing.  Sit tight.  This is going to be a long post with a lot of goodness.  :)


Mini Monte Cristos

Ingredients:
8 slices soft white bread
8 very thin slices, fully cooked ham
8 very thin slices, fully cooked turkey
8 very thin slices, Provolone cheese
2 large eggs
1 (12 ounce) can PET Evaporated Milk
1 cup Hungry Jack Complete Buttermilk Pancake & Waffle Mix (Just Add Water)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
oil for deep frying

Directions:
Trim the crusts off each slice of bread (this is totally optional -- I've done it both with and without crust and either way works just as well) and then flatten the slices with a rolling pin.  Layer each slice of bread with one slice of ham, one slice of turkey, and one slice of cheese.  Roll each "half sandwich" into a tight log and wrap tightly with plastic wrap.  Chill the sandwich logs for at least 30 minutes to an hour.

Heat 1.5 inches oil in a deep skillet.  Whisk egg, evaporated milk, Hungry Jack mix, salt, and cinnamon in a small bowl until smooth.  Unwrap each sandwich log and insert 4 toothpicks in even increments.  Slice the logs into 4 equal pieces with a sharp knife.

Working with a few pieces at a time, soak each piece in the batter for about 15 seconds.  Fry in hot oil for 1 to 1.5 minutes or until golden brown; turn frequently.  Drain on papertowls.

Serve immediately or keep warm in a 200 degree oven.  Suggestions:  Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with Raspberry Jam.  Or serve with Honey Mustard (recipe below).

Honey Mustard

Ingredients:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons prepared mustard
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions:
Whisk together ingredients until smooth.  Store covered in the refrigerator.


Farmhouse Salad

I call this a Farmhouse Salad because it's a bit of everything fresh that you have laying around, plus some other goodness added in for good measure.  Tonight's addition of Farmhouse Salad included:

Romaine lettuce
spinach
kale
avocado
hard bolied eggs
red bell peppers
red onion
grape tomatoes
cucumber
chick peas
sunflower seeds
croutons
topped with homemade Ranch Dressing (recipe below)


Ranch Dressing
yields one quart

Ingredients:
1 cup buttermilk
1 ounce ranch seasoning mix
2 cups mayonaisse
8 ounces sour cream

Directions:
Whisk together until smooth.  Store covered in refrigerator.

Pretzel Bites with Honey Mustard Sauce

Why, yes, this is another Pinterest find.  I can't help it.  But this doesn't even begin to cover the multitude of recipes and ideas I've been pinning.  It's a sickness, I tell you.

Anyway, these pretzel bites are just as good as they are in the mall stores!  They don't keep well, though, so you may as well eat them all at once.  Just throwing that out there.  You're welcome.

As for the Honey Mustard Sauce -- It's incredibly simple to throw together and is (rather surprisingly) really good!  Much better than the jarred stuff on the market, I think.

The pretzel bites come from the blog Two Peas and Their Pod.  They share an amazing sounding/looking and easy cheese dip here as well.  I'll definitely be trying that some day, but on this particular day I used a Honey Mustard recipe I found online somewhere.  This would also be great with chicken strips or as a dressing on a salad.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoon prepared mustard
2 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon lemon juice


Directions:
In a small bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, honey, and lemon juice.  Store covered in the refrigerator.

Sarah's Homemade Tomato Sauce

In her own words, Sarah describes the process for her tomato sauce.  When TR and I made this, we didn't add the ground beef, simply because we didn't have it thawed out in time.  ;)  I can definitely see doing this in the future and doubling, even tripling the recipe (it looks intimidating, but honestly it's quite easy) and canning the sauce for use later.

Ingredients:
3/4 pound sweet Italian sausage
3/4 pound lean ground beef
1/2 cup minced onion
8-10 tomatoes, med-large in size
1 can tomato paste
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
1/2 teaspoon fennel seed
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preparing tomatoes:
In a pot of boiling water, put 2-3 whole tomatoes at time. Boil until you see the skin split and start to peel. Transfer tomatoes from boiling water to ice water. Repeat for all tomatoes. Pull tomatoes out of ice water and peel skin off and cut out the core. The skins should slide right off very easily. Take the seeds out of the tomatoes by squeezing or using your fingers to dig out the seeds. Put seedless tomatoes into blender and blend to desired smoothness or chunkiness. I usually purify most and then leave 4 tomatoes or so chunkier.

Sauce Directions:
In a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat, cook the sausage, beef, onion, and garlic until well browned; drain fat. Stir in blended tomatoes and tomato paste. Mix in sugar and season with basil, fennel seed, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. (This makes a lot of sauce. For my family it's at least 2-3 meals worth of sauce. I take out 4 cups at a time after it's cooled and bag it and freeze it. 4 cups = 1 jar of spaghetti sauce.)

Herbs - I use what's on hand. I used mostly fresh this time, just chopped up thyme, oregano, basil and Italian parsley. I then added dried fennel seed, dried oregano and dried basil as well, plus the salt and pepper.

Olive Oil - I just did 4 swirls of the pan or so (so I guessed about 4 tbsp.). You can add more or none. This was the first time I added it.

Meat - You don't have to even add meat, but I think it adds to the flavor. This time I used nitrate-free already cooked Italian sausage. I just cut it into tiny cubes and added it with the hamburger. In the past, I've used ground turkey sweet Italian sausage. I would cut the casing and just add the inside and it mixes with the beef. I prefer this method so it's all uniform and cooks better. You could also add ground pork, ground steak or whatever your family likes.

Some recipes call for water. Every time I've added water, it gets way too runny. Probably because it's fresh tomatoes. Don't add water!! You might even want to add another can or two of tomato paste to thicken it up if you like a thicker sauce. Also, if you plan to freeze it, that can water it down, so when I go to heat it up again after it's frozen, I'll sometimes add a can of paste.

It seems like a lot of steps, but it's actually quite easy! And once you do it once it's even easier!! Enjoy!!