Amuse Bouche: Orange You Glad You Can Cook?

Today, Florida is holding its presidential primary. Well, sort of. While both parties are holding primaries, only the Republican one actually counts, delegate-wise. Furthermore, since Florida has early balloting, many of the votes have already been cast. Whatever! We’re still excited to see how things shake out. Will Obama continue his momentum? (Not tonight, because older Americans love Hillary!) Will Giuliani’s campaign finally take off? (No, because he has a terrible strategy!) As we did for Michigan and Nevada before their primaries, we’d like to do a rundown of some Floridian-inspired food. When we hear the word “Florida”, we automatically think “orange”, so we’ve created an orange-based meal for you to enjoy while you watch CNN tonight. Note: we totally won’t judge you if you flip back and forth between the results and American Idol.

Salad: We are notoriously terrible at motivating ourself to eat a salad, so any salad that wants to make its way into our tummy needs to have a lot of interest. We adore the flavor profile of this arugula and mint salad with oil-cured black olives, oranges, and ricotta salata. Each bite contains the perfect balance of salty and sweet.

Entree: Linguine with clams is a standard and yummy dish in this part of the country, but after a while, it can get to be the slightest bit dull. Spice things up with a recipe that adds a tomato-fennel sauce with more than a hint of orange. The best part? The whole thing comes together rather quickly.

Dessert: All we’re interested in these days are cupcakes. These sunken chocolate-orange cupcakes sound like an absolutely perfect blend of a cupcake and a flourless chocolate cake: two of our very favorite things.

Arugula and Mint Salad with Oil-Cured Black Olives, Oranges, and Ricotta Salata [Epicurious]
Linguine and Clams with Tomato-Fennel Salsa [Epicurious]
Sunken Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes [Epicurious]

[Photo: OrlandoFun]

Amuse Bouche: Orange You Glad You Can Cook?