Appetizer « More Cheese More Chocolate

Jun 03 2011

Quick Butter Bean Salad

After a really rainy, busy spring, free time and nice weather finally aligned for our first grilled dinner on Memorial Day. Matt picked up some kebabs and a spicy pasta salad at Whole Foods, and I threw together this butter bean mixture with things I found around my kitchen, which wasn’t much. Butter beans are so delicious that they don’t need much else, though, so it worked out well.

Quick Butter Bean Salad

1-15oz. can butter beans
sun-dried tomatoes
Fresh parsley
Olive oil
Salt

Drain and rinse the beans. Roughly chop some sun-dried tomatoes and parsley. Combine the beans, tomatoes, and parsley with a generous drizzle of olive oil. Season with salt. Let the mixture rest so the flavors can meld for about 30 minutes before serving.

Nov 17 2010

1 Comment

Appetizer, Sides

Spinach Balls

I originally did a post on spinach balls over a year ago, but the photos have since vanished so I thought I would just update the entire post.

Spinach balls have been a constant at Thanksgiving dinner in my family for as long as I can remember. Sometimes they’re smaller and served as an appetizer, and sometimes they’re larger and served as a side dish, but either way, they’re there. I won’t be spending Thanksgiving with my family this year, and I knew that I wouldn’t make it through November without eating a few, so I went ahead and made a batch a little early. I might end up making these where I will be spending Thanksgiving, but in case that doesn’t happened I will have avoided missing out on one of my favorite parts of the holiday. Because of the flavors involved these could be a nice addition to an Italian meal, but to me they just taste like Thanksgiving.

Spinach Balls

Makes 15-20 balls

2 10-ounce boxes frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed of excess liquid
2 cups (unprepared) Pepperidge Farm dressing mix
1 large onion, chopped
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 tbsp garlic salt*
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp pepper
Salt to taste

*You can substitute 1-2 cloves of minced garlic plus a little salt.

Combine the spinach, dressing mix, onion, cheese, herbs and spices in a large bowl.

Add the eggs and melted butter. Mix well.

Form the mixture into balls and place them in a greased baking dish.

These were a little larger than golf balls, and I made about 16 of them.

Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, or until the tops are starting to brown.

Recipe Notes:

This recipe can easily be doubled or tripled if you’re feeding a crowd. (According to my mom, the expert, the recipe tripled yields about 3 dozen larger balls and the recipe quadrupled yields about 75 walnut-sized balls)
Cooked spinach balls freeze well.
Yes, these are green. Yes, they contain a lot of spinach. No, they are not healthy. However, if you are interested in making them slightly healthier I think you could eliminate up to 1/4 cup of the butter and still have good results.
These take well to substitutions, so play around with them and make them your own. I think my mom usually goes light on the onion, and I’ve made changes when I was missing certain ingredients. Examples: feta instead of parmesan, breadcrumbs instead of stuffing mix, fresh garlic instead of garlic salt

Sep 01 2010

2 Comments

Appetizer, Cheese, Vegetarian

Wine, Cheese, Peaches, Tomatoes

I might squeeze in another post before heading out of town again tomorrow for a two wedding, two state, three city weekend, but in case that doesn’t happen I want to leave you with an idea for a weekend dinner. Or an eat-this-at-least-once-a-week dinner, which is my plan after eating this last night. And yes, I am aware that it is only Wednesday, but my weekend starts on Thursday. Never mind, I’m unemployed. Everyday is the weekend! Wahoo! What better way to celebrate unemployment than eating good cheeses and sipping wine? Eating good cheeses and sipping wine at a vineyard in California instead of my apartment in Minneapolis is all that I can come up with, but if I were in California then the cheese course probably wouldn’t be followed by a round of Trivial Pursuit set to the beat of the Wu-Tang Clan, so I’ll take the Minneapolis option.

Clockwise from top left: grapes, la petit cave roquefort, cherry preserves, cana de cabra, raw almonds, mahon, and olive tapenade.

Another thing, expect some poor quality photos for a while until I figure out how to work with the lighting in my new apartment.

Served with a baguette, seeded crackers, salted butter, and a salad of peaches, avocado, tomatoes, radishes, and more, which deserves its own post.

Thanks to my amazing mom for helping me move apartments and funding a trip to the grocery store to buy items that would not ordinarily be possible on the budget of someone who’s unemployed.

The leftovers make for an exquisite lunch – a tomato, avocado, spinach and blue cheese sandwich with cucumbers and olive tapenade on the side.

Feb 16 2010

3 Comments

Appetizer, Cheese

Sweet + Savory Palmiers

Last Friday night marked my third and final law prom, and to celebrate the occasion I spent the first half of the day baking. Whereas in high school I considered drinking to be the key factor in having fun at prom, these days I see whipping up some appetizers to be of rather high importance. Well, at least somewhat high importance. We all know that a few glasses of the sauce trump puff pastry in terms of pre-prom necessities, but puff pastry is a close second.

For law prom festivities last year I made a quick and easy Brie en Croute, but since our pre-party was taking place in a hotel room this year and I was unsure of when we would actually be consuming the appetizers I figured I should make something that could be completely finished ahead of time and required no last minute heating. I couldn’t seem to get the idea of puff pastry out of my head, so after a little digging around on the internet I decided on palmiers. While they’re slightly more work than brie en croute, once you get started you get into a rhythm and can whip out several varieties of them in no time. I read that they freeze well uncooked, so they’d be a great thing to make a few extra rolls of to have in the freezer for emergencies. Puff pastry emergencies.

Here’s what you’ll need for all varieties of palmiers:

Puff pastry, thawed
1 egg
1 tbsp water

One sheet of puff pastry yields 12-15 palmiers. The egg and water are for an egg wash to brush on the dough before baking. One egg should get you through several sheets of puff pastry.

Start by rolling out a sheet of puff pastry on a lightly floured surface until it’s about 12″ long. Try your hardest to keep it a rectangle. The world will not end if you roll out a blob instead of a rectangle, but a rectangle will be easier to work with.

Cheddar, Bacon & Thyme Palmiers

Step 1: Fry some bacon. I think I only used three of the four strips pictured here, but it’s better to make more and snack on some than to not make enough. I promise.

Sprinkle the pastry with grated cheddar (I probably used a few ounces) and fresh thyme. Or dill. Or chives. This is probably as generous you can get with fillings without making it impossible to roll up and slice the pastry.

Crumble the bacon into small pieces (even smaller than this would be good), and sprinkle it over the cheese and herbs.

Roll up the dough lengthwise as tightly as you can, but stop when you’re about halfway. If it’s not rolled tightly you risk having the fillings fall out once you slice it.

Roll up the opposite edge toward the center so you have a log like the one pictured above.

Wrap the log in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes or freeze it until your next puff pastry emergency.

While the pastry is chilling you can whisk an egg with a little water to make an egg wash.

Preheat the oven to 375. Brush the pastry with the egg wash and then cut it into about 1/2″ slices with a sharp knife. I found that my bread knife did the best job, but that might have been because my other knives were overdue for a sharpening.

Place the slices on their sides on a baking sheet that’s either greased or lined with parchment paper.

Bake for about 10 minutes, then flip and bake for about 5 more minutes or until golden brown. Check out that bubbly cheese!

Post-flip and ready to eat!

Blue Cheese & Toasted Walnut Palmiers

I’ve been on a bit of a blue cheese kick lately, so I knew I wanted to make some blue cheese palmiers, and I had some walnuts in the freezer which were the obvious partner for the blue cheese. Next time I might add a little jam or apple butter into the mix, but they were perfectly delicious with just the blue cheese and walnuts.

This is just a handful of walnuts, toasted in the oven and chopped.

Sprinkle the blue cheese and walnuts over the pastry. A tiny bit more blue cheese than this probably wouldn’t have hurt.

Roll it up.

Refrigerate. Egg wash. Slice. Even in its raw state it looks tasty.

Here’s a before-the-flip/after-the-flip shot. Notice how much the bottom browns.

Berry Jam & Brown Sugar Palmiers

After a couple savory batches I figured I should make a sweet one, and it was the perfect use for the remainder of a jar of mixed berry jam that was in my fridge. I wasn’t overly excited about this mixture and assumed that one of the cheese ones would be my favorite, but once I tasted the results I was really, really into the sweet batch.