Easier Than Falling Off a Log
Archive for side dishes/appetizers
August 22, 2010 at 5:37 pm · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
These curry puffs are famous! They made it onto an episode of Quiet Desperation*, the Boston reality sitcom and web sensation! Well, I mean, I brought them to a party that was being filmed for it, and although I took care to stay away from cameras myself, a character tried to pass them off as his own. They are that good.
*not linked here because I know some readers prefer theirs to be a PG-13 life, and this, well… isn’t. Google it or search it on Youtube if you’re intrigued.
The recipe is from the always-inspiring Kayotic Kitchen. I only made minor changes, and they were strictly based on what I had on hand, rather than actual editorial decisions. I had phyllo left over in the freezer from the green onions in phyllo, and I’ve only got regular hot sauce and not sweet chili sauce. I don’t think the hot sauce situation made any difference – it wasn’t too spicy and wasn’t unbalanced or anything – but it would have been improved, I think, by puff pastry instead of phyllo. Partly this is because phyllo’s kind of fussy and puff pastry isn’t, partly because chicken is a sturdy type of filling and phyllo is delicate. And what can I say, I just like puff pastry better. But this was fine and everything, it worked – I just think it would have worked better the other way.
Curry Chicken Puffs
Ingredients
a bunch of phyllo dough – or puff pastry! – I used about 1 roll of phyllo
if using phyllo, a bunch of olive oil for brushing
1 chicken breast, cut up
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced (Kay grates hers; I’ve tried that but it just ends up clogging up my grater and I have to poke out the cloggy bits with a toothpick)
2 tbsp hot sauce
1/4 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp seasoning salt
5 tbsp breadcrumbs – I used the “Italian” kind because that’s what I had on hand
2 eggs
sesame seeds
salt and pepper
olive oil for cooking
Method
Preheat the oven to 400.
Grind up the chicken in the food processor.
Add in the hot sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, seasoning salt, and a few hearty cranks of pepper, and process until everything’s nicely combined.
Scoop it all into a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge while you do the next stuff.
Heat a cap of olive oil in a pan.
Saute the onion over lowish heat for about 4 minutes.
Add the garlic and continue sauteeing for another minute.
Add the curry powder and stir it through everything, then remove from the heat pretty much right away, so it doesn’t get bitter.
Get out the chicken mixture and stir the onion and garlic through it.
Stir in the breadcrumbs.
Lightly beat one of the eggs and stir that in too.
Get out the phyllo and brush each sheet with olive oil and layer a few of them. I used 3 layers, I think, or occasionally 4.
Scoop a sort of loaf shape of chicken along one edge of each square of phyllo, then roll it up around the loaf.
Repeat until you run out of filling or phyllo.
Beat the remaining egg and brush it over the phyllo rolls.
Sprinkle all the rolls with sesame seeds.
On a silpat- or parchment-lined baking sheet, bake them for 20 minutes or until just starting to brown.
Cut each roll into bite-sized pieces (I got 4 per roll).
You can eat it hot or cold – mine had to be cold, since I made them the night before, but I preferred them when they were hot.
July 25, 2010 at 9:42 pm · Filed under breads, food, side dishes/appetizers
I feel that I have an excuse for my dereliction of posting lately, despite having a huge backlog of recipes and photos and whatnot – namely, that this has been Epic July: we’ve had something every weekend, and this coming week will be the only week I’m at work every day. And you’d think that this would only give me more time to post but that’s not so; whenever I’ve been not at work, it’s because we’ve been traveling to another state, or something equally time-consuming, and then I’ve had to make up missed gym days by going every night after work when I am there. And then I get home all late and anyway my point is I’ve been busy. Here’s something I made for a work party a couple of months ago.
The recipe comes from No Tea After 12, which appears to have taken this post down? Hmm. Well, the blog is still there, so go look at the rest of it, even if this post isn’t available anymore.
Parmesan Parsley Bread
Ingredients
2 1/4 tsp fast-acting yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
3/4 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
3/4 cup whole wheat flour, sifted
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup lukewarm milk
3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
Method
Grease an 8-inch cake pan, or a brownie pan or whatever suits you.
In a small bowl, stir the yeast into the lukewarm water and leave it to dissolve and foam up. If it doesn’t, chuck it out and start over. You don’t need to waste your time with LOSER YEAST.
While that does its thing, stir together the flours, sugar, and salt in a different bowl.
Cut the flour into it with a pastry cutter, until it resembles coarse sand.
Beat in the egg, yeast, and milk (I used the dough hook on my stand mixer, because it’s bread) until it starts coming away from the sides of the bowl.
Put it into the pan and cover with plastic wrap and a damp cloth.
Leave it for 2 hours or until doubled in size.
A little before the time is up, put your oven on to preheat to 375.
When the dough is ready, dot the top with little nuggets of butter.
Bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until golden brown.
It was pretty successful at the party!
July 4, 2010 at 11:09 pm · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
I brought these to a barbeque on, um, Memorial Day weekend? Not sure. Anyway, you can tell how behind I am.
The recipe comes from Tobias Cooks. I love green onions, so this sounded pretty delicious, and while I’ve used frozen puff pastry before, I’d never used phyllo pastry. Turns out I’m better with puff pastry, but this wasn’t a disaster or anything – just a little awkward and crackly. I did have an impossible time trying to get the leftover phyllo rolled back up in its little wax paper burrito again – couldn’t fit it back into the box it came in – so there are little shards of frozen phyllo debris all over the freezer. I suppose I should really do something about that.
Green Onions in Phyllo Pastry
Ingredients
8 green onions, chopped
frozen phyllo pastry (I didn’t use the whole package)
olive oil
salt and pepper
sesame seeds
Method
Preheat the oven to 400.
Take your chopped-up green onions and toss them in a bowl with some olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Take a sheet of phyllo and brush with olive oil.
Layer a second sheet over that and brush with some more oil.
Put a scoop of the green onion mixture along one edge of the phyllo – I preferred putting it along the short edge, but I also think my phyllos were a bit misshapen since I couldn’t get them to unroll the whole way. Try both and see what works best for you.
Roll the phyllo up in a tube around the filling and try not to let it fall out the ends. Actually, the falling out was more likely to happen, for me, at the cutting stage, but who am I to tell you about your life?
Repeat the phyllo-and-rolling process until you use up the filling.
Cut the tubes into bite-sized units with a knife – careful that you don’t utterly savage them like I thought I would do more than a few times.
Brush a little more olive oil onto the top of each piece and sprinkle sesame seeds on it.
Place the pieces on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silpat.
Bake for 30 minutes.
The original recipe says that you can serve them warm or cold, but I definitely preferred the one I ate hot out of the oven. The other ones weren’t bad, but the texture is better all crispy and hot. Also, I feel like I always needed to add another layer of phyllo. This might have been because of my truncated and misshapen phyllo layers, I don’t know, but the couple of times I went ahead and added another piece, it didn’t ruin it. So if you feel like adding extra sheets, I figure go for it.
June 26, 2010 at 7:58 pm · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
A few weeks ago, a friend and I were going to meet up and go on a picnic. I made this and also some cookies (next post!), and bought some fancy bread and cheese, got grapes… and then we didn’t wind up going. So I ate this for lunch for a few days.
This is a pretty good potato salad. I love dill, and that comes out pretty strongly in this one; the balsamic vinegar also adds a nice sweetness to it. The recipe comes from Dragon’s Kitchen, which I’ve long had on my blogroll (see… just to the right there… looky). I didn’t really change much. I halved it, and I substituted the cilantro with more parsley, but that’s it. I mean, like I said, it’s a pretty good potato salad – it’s a more or less traditional one, with the mayonnaise-based sauce and the celery and all that, which is by no means a bad idea (at least if you’re me). The number one potato salad in my heart remains this one, but that’s a totally different kind of beast (and it has bacon), so I don’t think I’m cheating on either one when I praise this one.
Dill and Balsamic Vinegar Potato Salad
Ingredients
5 red potatoes, cleaned but not peeled, and cut into bite-sized pieces
2/3 cup celery, chopped, which was… a couple of ribs, I guess?
1/4 cup parsley, chopped or something – I hate chopping parsley, it’s so flat, so I just kind of tore it up and bruised it in pulling it off the stalks, and that released the flavour and bob’s your uncle.
2 tbsp dill
juice and zest of 1/2 a lemon
2/3 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper
Method
Boil the potatoes until tender (15 minutes-ish?).
Drain them and set them aside to cool to room temperature. If this means you have to eat a couple of pieces just to check, well, that’s unavoidable.
While the potatoes cool, mix all the rest of the ingredients together in the bowl you’re going to use.
Add the potatoes and mix it all together gently so as not to destroy the potatoes, but make sure everything gets nicely coated.
Store them in the fridge, but take out half an hour prior to eating. An instruction which I did not always obey, mind you.
June 4, 2010 at 10:40 pm · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
A friend of ours is moving away, and so she threw a barbeque for a going-away party. I brought this cucumber salad from Pikelet and Pie, as well as cookies that I’ll detail in the next post. I ate this salad as, well, a salad – a complement to the other foods on offer, and that’s how I expected it would be received by other people as well. But one genius put some in a pita with some of the grilled meat and some greek yogurt, and I was basically dumbstruck with what a good idea that was. I wish I’d thought of it myself – or at least seen this guy do it before I’d eaten, so I could have copied him!
Cucumber Salad
Ingredients
3 cucumbers, cut into bite-sized chunks
1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
2 tsp sesame oil
1 – 2 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp sugar
a few cranks of salt
a couple of cloves of garlic, smashed and broken up – or more if you’re into it
Method
With your hands, smoosh the salt into the cucumber chunks.
Put in the fridge for an hour.
In another bowl, whisk together the sesame oil, vinegar, and sugar until the sugar is dissolved.
When it’s time, take the cucumbers out of the fridge and drain the excess liquid off.
Stir the garlic into the cucumber.
Toss with the dressing mixture.
Sprinkle the sesame seeds over the salad.
March 15, 2010 at 12:12 am · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
Brought this dip, with the thyme flatbread, to the Lost party. It doesn’t look like much – I mean, it looks like pink stuff in a bowl – but it tastes awesome. AND it’s vegan. I don’t think I’d be as impressed with myself for making delicious vegan snacks if I actually were vegan – I mean, I’m not that impressed with myself when I make a sandwich, or whatever… actually, no, that’s kind of a lie, I am totally impressed with myself whenever I make anything delicious. So never mind the digression I was about to go on about how this food should be judged on its deliciousness merits, not on whether it fits into a certain dietary framework.
The recipe is from The Urban Spork, which, P.S., is not the same thing as just “Urban Spork.” The latter does not exist and will cause you much consternation if you search for it. I look out for you, dear reader.
White Bean and Red Pepper Dip
Ingredients
1 14-oz can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 clove garlic, smashed
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
2 roasted red peppers – I used jarred ones, which means it was an approximation of 2, because they’re all disassembled in there (if you use jarred ones as well, drain the oil off them first)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp lemon juice
salt and pepper
Method
Put everything but the lemon juice and salt and pepper into a food processor and mash on that button until it’s smooth.
Stir in the lemon juice.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
March 14, 2010 at 12:06 am · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
Last week, we went over to a friend’s house for a Lost-watching party. I like this kind of thing, because I like the environment where everyone bounces ideas and theories off each other (also known as my work on a Wednesday morning), and I’m not really bothered if I only know one other person there – I mean, obviously, I’m talking to the entire internet right now, not that they’re listening – and I feel like I notice more, not less, when I’ve got other people around to help. Matt feels the opposite way and does not even want to hear my theories about what’s going on, because what if I turn out to be right? It will have been a spoiler and I won’t even have known that it was one at the time. Plus it’s a bunch of noisy strangers impeding his enjoyment of the show, and if you know Lost, you know that it’s a show that requires a certain amount of concentration. So I don’t know if we’ll go again, but if we do, we can get our Tupperwares back.
The friend is vegan, and his lady friend might be, or she might just be vegetarian, or, I don’t know, she might worship at the church of bacon, but you have to cook for the most restrictive common denominator, so these little babies are vegan-tacular, and so is the dip I made with it (next post!). Apparently the flatbread dealies reminded our friend and his sister, who was in attendance, of something their parents used to make when they were little. So… win?
The recipe for these comes from Tracey’s Culinary Adventures, where she refers to them as being crisp. Mine were not crisp – granted, I didn’t have enough time to let them cool fully, just enough so that they wouldn’t be too hot to tear them apart into useable pieces (and the last one, not even that long, really), so maybe if I’d left them out on the rack they’d have gotten crispy. But I liked them in their more bready state. Maybe you will too.
Thyme Flatbread
Ingredients
1 3/4 cup flour
1 tbsp fresh thyme, plus some extra florets, if you will, to use as a garnish
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup olive oil, and keep the bottle on hand to brush the tops of the flatbreads
some kind of coarser salt for sprinkling the tops
Method
Put a baking sheet in the oven and turn the thing on to 450.
In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, thyme, salt, and baking powder.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour the water and oil in.
Stir until the dough comes together.
Knead it 4 or 5 times.
Divide the dough into 3 balls and take one out to roll. Cover the other 2 with plastic wrap.
Roll out one ball at a time, to about 10″ in diameter, or until it’s fairly thin all over. Either roll it on a parchment paper or Silpat (P.S., Matt got one for me for Valentine’s day!), or roll it out and then slap it on a parchment or Silpat.
Sprinkle the top with thyme and salt, and brush with olive oil.
Get the hot baking sheet out of the oven and put the parchment or Silpat, flatbread and all, on it and put it back in the oven.
Bake for 8 – 10 minutes or until the edges start to get brown and crispy and the bread puffs up in some places.
Take it out and put the bread (only) on a rack to cool.
Repeat the process with the other 2 dough balls, one at a time.
As each flatbread cools, break or tear it into smaller pieces.
January 10, 2010 at 11:25 pm · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
I brought these curry cashews to Christmas for snacking purposes, and OH MY GOD they are ridiculous. You literally cannot stop eating them once you start. You end up having to remove yourself from the room. I have an extra can of cashews sitting on the counter (I overbought when I was making them) and I am seriously considering turning them into curry cashews as well. If you want this kind of temptation in your life, read on; otherwise, you should probably stop here and go do something else.
The recipe comes from Les gourmandises d’Isa, which the astute among you may notice is in French. Thank you, 6 years of French immersion elementary school! You know, even when I lived in Montreal, I didn’t feel like I needed the language to get by. I mean, it helped, it made things easier, but I could’ve gotten by without it. But where do I really find it coming in handy? In Boston, maybe the least Francophonic city in the US, reading recipes online in French!
Curry Cashews
Ingredients
3 cups unsalted cashews (or if, like me, you could only find the salted kind, get the “lightly salted” kind and omit the salt in these ingredients)
if your cashews are unsalted, 2 tsp salt – omit if salted
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp butter
Method
Preheat the oven to 350.
Grease a baking sheet.
Spread out the cashews on the sheet in a single layer.
Bake for 10 minutes or until fragrant.
While they’re baking, mix the spices (and the salt, if adding) in a bowl and set aside.
When the nuts are ready, take them out and just leave them lying around until you need them, but leave the oven on.
In a pot, bring the water, butter, and brown sugar to a boil, stirring constantly.
Stir in the cashews gently, just enough to get them coated.
Turn down to a simmer and leave it to it for 3 minutes or until the liquid is completely evaporated.
Stir in the spice mixture until everything is well coated.
Spread the nuts back out on the baking sheet. I hope you didn’t throw it in the sink or something.
Put it back in the oven to bake for another 10 minutes.
Let cool before devouring compulsively.
December 22, 2009 at 10:05 pm · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
This is the other thing I brought to the party on Saturday, as well as the beer bread. Of course, I realized I was being “that guy” and bringing a vegetable dish… with meat in it. I made a meatless portion, with the vegetables sauteed in olive oil instead of bacon grease, for the one vegetarian present, though, so relax.
The recipe is from All That Splatters, and I pretty much just changed the pancetta to regular bacon and used regular white button mushrooms instead of creminis (which don’t even exist at our grocery store). Oh, and I think I substituted white wine vinegar for sherry vinegar, but once it’s in the sauce, who can tell? And Matt doesn’t like Dijon, so we just have regular grainy brown mustard around and I used that. I don’t think any of these changes made a big difference, although it’s pretty clear that in every case I went downmarket. Look, until very recently I was out of work, and anyway why spend more? Nobody at this party was doing a palate challenge or turning up their noses at anything in here, and it tasted great, so don’t break the bank.
Green Beans with Bacon, Shallots, and Mushrooms
Ingredients
1 1/2 lbs green beans
5 slices bacon
8 oz sliced mushrooms (I used one of those little containers from the grocery store… I’m pretty sure it was 8 oz; otherwise, however much that is, that’s how much you should use)
2 shallots, sliced thinly
1/4 cup sage leaves, sliced thinly
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp grainy brown mustard
salt
Method
Set a pot of water on to boil.
When it’s boiling, dump the beans in and continue to boil for 4 – 6 minutes, or until tender.
While they’re cooking, get an ice bath ready – a bowl of cold water, big enough to hold all the beans, with ice cubes in it.
When the beans are ready, drain them and plunge them into the ice bath.
The idea is to drain them after 2 minutes, but I kind of forgot about them for more like 5 minutes and they were still fine. Anyway, drain them and set them aside.
While you’re cooking/draining the beans, have the bacon cooking.
When it’s done, take it out to drain on a paper towel. Don’t drain the pan, though – you’re going to use that bacon grease.
Whenever you have a minute, crumble the bacon into small pieces. Doesn’t have to be right this second.
Throw the mushrooms and shallots into the bacon grease and salt them appropriately, or not at all – they are in bacon grease, after all.
Saute them for about 5 minutes.
Add the sage and continue sauteeing for another 30 seconds or so.
Remove the pan from the heat.
Stir in the vinegar and mustard.
Add the green beans and bacon back in and stir to coat everything fully.
Turn the heat back on under the pan to heat everything through.
I thought the beans would be cold by the time we got to the party, since it was about minus a million degrees outside and windy – plus my friend lives down by the beach, so it’s even windier and colder, and it takes around an hour of T-riding to get there – but they managed to stay warm. They were only protected by a tupperware inside a plastic bag inside my backpack, so who knows. Magical beans!
December 13, 2009 at 10:15 pm · Filed under food, meals, side dishes/appetizers
Last week, Matt had to work late a few times. I made myself these stuffed mushrooms one of the nights. I realize they’re supposed to be an appetizer, but eating half a dozen of them is a meal, isn’t it? Plus, they left us with salami, great for sandwiches – and we even made a pizza with it last night!
The recipe is from My Gourmet Connection. I halved it, but I still had a little extra filling, which I just ate straight out of the pan. Delicious.
Stuffed Mushrooms
Ingredients
8 oz white mushrooms
1 tbsp olive oil
3 slices Genoa salami, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small onion, diced
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup breadcrumbs (I used Italian seasoned ones, and while of course I have nothing against which to compare it, I’d say this is a great choice)
a little shake of crushed red pepper flakes
a little handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 tbsp parmesan
shredded mozzarella to top
salt and pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 350.
Clean the mushrooms and dig the stems out.
Throw the stems in a food processor and cause them to become tiny bits. Or, y’know, just chop them finely.
Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat.
Add the chopped mushroom stems, garlic, onion, and salami, and saute for 5 – 6 minutes.
Add the butter and let it melt.
Once it’s melted, add the lemon juice and breadcrumbs and stir to combine.
Add the red pepper flakes and salt and pepper to taste.
Now add the parsley and parmesan and remove from the heat.
Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.
Pack the crumb mixture into the upturned mushrooms (and your mouth).
Sprinkle the top of each mushroom with mozzarella.
Bake for 15 minutes.
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