The Headbanging Hostess never follows a recipe exactly. No one should - unless you have no taste buds.
When an idea hits me I quickly shove-off to Googleland searching for recipes I'm not sure exist. Most of the time I find what it is I'm looking for. Sometimes all I get is something close. With Mint Night I was forced to do a lot more creative cooking in the dark. I took a little from this recipe, a little from that and lo and behold I made a kick-ass dinner.
I'll start with the Cucumber Melon Soup with Apple Mint. My least favorite dish of the night. The flavor wasn't bad, I think my food processor failed me. But I'm not completely sold on the whole cold soup thing. The soup I made for Blueberry Night was delicious! I think the secret there was the wine. This one? No wine. Here's the recipe I used as a guide - I pretty much left out the radish and mixed it all together.
The Pineapple Mint Pulled Pork was out of this universe delicious. I used two recipes as a jumping off point for the pork and found something I could work with for the sauce. The big thing was substituting Pineapple Mint for the Cilantro.
The key with both the pork and the chicken was, of course, the crockpot. If I had to throw out all my cooking toys and only keep one, it would be my crockpot.
The Orange Mint Chicken was again a little from this recipe a little from that one. I followed the latter a little more closely - but the results were STUNNING! Really tender, tasty, homey! I would definitely make it again.
Both meat dishes were keepers.
I hope this helps those of you who were stumped when it came to mint recipes. I think the key is using the fruit mints. Next year plan on having a few in your garden!
Bang on, my peeps!
-HH
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