Quick and Delicious

I’m about to toss out a trick that caterers across the world don’t want you to know.

You ready? It’s this:

You can make stuff look classy by putting it in a baked cup.

It’s true that stuff is a lot easier to eat when it’s in an edible cup, but I’ve never really understood why restaurants and catering companies think they can charge MORE just because they are putting something in a silly baked cup.

But I digress.

Turns out that it’s dumb simple to make and fill baked cups with delicious things.

Spinach Artichoke Cups

Yield: 18-24 cups

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 large bunch of spinach, blanched and chopped (or one package of frozen spinach)
1 can artichoke hearts in water, drained and chopped
1/3 Cup mayonnaise
1/4 Cup sour cream
1 Tablespoon hot sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
1 lemon, zest only
1/2 Cup Parmesan cheese, grated
Salt and pepper
Wonton Wrappers
Vegetable Oil

Helpful Equipment:
Muffin Tin
Microplane

Directions:

1) Lightly oil a muffin tin and stuff a wonton wrapper into each cup. Shape the wrapper up against the edges of the cups.

2) Bake wrappers at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. let cook and then take out the cups.

3) For filling, blanch spinach in salted boiling water for 30 seconds. Then remove and let cool on a few paper towels. Use paper towels to press out as much liquid as possible.

4) Drain artichokes and roughly chop them. Once chopped, also press them with a few paper towels to remove extra liquid.

5) Mix spinach and artichokes with other filling ingredients.

6) Fill cups with spinach mixture.

7) Store any leftovers separately.

The Filling

The thing to remember about this filling is that it’s a filling and not a dip. So I cut way down on the creamy stuff. You basically just want enough mayo and sour cream to keep the filling together.

Not Pictured: Parm cheese

When it comes to prepping the spinach, just toss it in some salted boiling water and let it cook for about 30 seconds. Then pull it out and let it cool briefly on some paper towels.

Once the spinach is cool enough to work with, press it with the paper towels to remove as much liquid as possible. Then just chop it up!

You could use frozen in a pinch.

The artichokes are just as easy to prepare. Just drain the can of artichoke hearts and roughly chop up the artichoke hearts.

Important Step: After you dice up the artichoke hearts, again press them with a few paper towels like you did with the spinach. The artichokes retain a lot of water and if you don’t press out most of it, your filling will be super-watery.

Once your spinach and artichoke are pressed, you can mix them all together!

Just good flavors.

There’s a lot of great flavors in this filling, but the two that really pop in my mind are the lemon zest and the garlic.

I used a microplane to zest my lemon and very finely grate my clove of garlic.

Remember when you’re zesting citrus that you just want the outside layer of rind. If you get into the white part, it becomes very bitter.

Just the zest!

Just grab a bowl and mix the spinach and artichoke with all the other filling ingredients.

It’ll probably need a good pinch of salt, but should be pretty much ready to go!

Are you feeling the filling?

Making the Cups

There’s no magic here unfortunately. It’s just ridiculously easy to make these.

All you need is some wonton wrappers, a muffin tin, and a bit of vegetable oil.

The multi purpose muffin tin.

Lightly oil each muffin tin with a bit of oil.

Then kind of just form a wonton wrapper into the tin. Don’t worry too much about making them pretty or uniform. All of the little folds end up getting really crispy and are fantastic.

Ready for a bake.

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. You could go a bit longer if you like your more crispy. I baked mine for 15 minutes for a really crispy final product.

Nice and crispy.

The cups should pop right out of the tin without any problem and once they are cool enough to handle, you can fill them up! I recommend about a tablespoon and a half per cup.

CHOMP.

If you have any leftovers they both keep fine, but just store them separately. If you fill the cups and store them, then the filling will make the cups kind of soggy.

This is a really delicious appetizer that really takes only a few minutes to make.

Whether you want to start a catering company or just impress the friends and family, this is a winner.

Great spring flavors!

With Spring comes some of my favorite veggies of all time. Artichokes. Asparagus. Fresh sweet corn.

I’m in veggie heaven.

All of the dishes in the poll last week were veggie-packed but I was especially excited about the Veggie Stew idea since it gave me the opportunity to just cram in as many things as possible.

The end result wasn’t just tasty, it was also health in a bowl!

Spring Vegetable Soup

Yield: Serves 4-6.

Prep Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:

3 fresh artichoke hearts, cut into eighths
2 leeks, minced
1/2 bundle asparagus, chopped
2 ears fresh corn, cut off the cob
2 stalks celery, diced
1/2 Lemon (for artichokes)
1 Quart veggie stock, enhanced (see below)
3/4 ounce dried mushrooms, reconstituted
3 Tablespoons olive oil or butter
Pinch of salt and pepper
Fresh parsley, garnish

Enhanced Veggie Stock:
1 quart store bought veggie stock
2 Cups water
1/2 onion
2 carrots
2 stalks celery
1/2 garlic bulb
15-20 black peppercorns
Few stalks of parsley
Salt to taste

Directions:

1) Prep all veggies before starting soup. For artichokes, cut off pointy tip and cut the stalk down to the bulb. Then pull off outside leaves and use a paring knife to carve down to the heart of the artichoke.

2) Cut artichokes into eighths and put in cold water with lemon juice until you need them.

3) To make enhanced stock, add all incredients to a large pot, bring to a simmer, and simmer for 45 minutes. Strain out veggies.

4) Add 2 Cups of reconstituted mushroom liquid to stock.

5) When ready to make soup, add a few tablespoons of oil to a pot. Add leeks, celery, and artichokes. Cook for a few minutes over medium heat.

6) Add stock, asparagus, and chopped reconstituted mushrooms.

7) Cook for 10-15 minutes until asparagus and artichokes are tender.

8) Add corn and cook for another minute or two.

9) Serve with crusty bread and parsley.

Veggie World

If you need practice on prepping strange veggies, this is the recipe for you. I used four veggies in this post that are all kind of tricky in their own way.

Spring TIME!

Asparagus is easy enough. Snap off the rough ends and chop into about 2 inch segments.

For the corn, just strip off the husks and stand it on its end in a bowl. Use a knife to carve off the kernels. The bowl will catch the kernels so they don’t fly all over your kitchen.

For the leeks, chop off the roots and most of the greens. You’ll probably be left with about 3 inches of leek that’s edible. Slice each leek in half and run it under cold water, pulling the layers apart to wash out any dirt in between. Then chop them up.

That leaves us with the most pesky of any vegetable: ARTICHOKES.

I’ll be completely honest. I hate prepping artichokes like this. My favorite way to eat artichokes is to steam them and serve them with butter (a separate post). But for this recipe you need to trim them down to just the heart.

No two ways about it… It’s hard work.

Start by using a sharp knife (I like to use a paring knife) to chop off the pointy top of the artichoke.

It’ll be pretty, but vexing.

Strange things...

Use your fingers to rip off any of the outside leaves that you can. Then use your paring knife to slowly whittle down to the center of the artichoke. In the center, there are like a thousand annoying little stamen things. The easiest way to deal with them is just to cut out the whole section in one swoop.

Eventually, you’ll be left with a few ounces of artichoke that’ll be very tender and delicious in the soup.

Whoever ate these first must have been very hungry, but thank god they figured it out because they are really tasty.

Carve out my heart!

I quartered my hearts as I did them, but I think that was a bit big for the soup. I’d recommend cutting them into eighths.

When you’re done with each heart, add it to a bowl of cold water with some lemon juice in it. That’ll keep the hearts from turning really brown.

Soak a 'choke.

Enhancing Stock

PHEW. Seriously, the artichokes are the hardest part of this recipe. It’s smooth sailing from here. If you wanted to leave them out you definitely could.

It’s no secret that a good stock is the most important part of any good soup or stew.

That said, sometimes you may not have time to make stock from scratch. The recipe above is what I do to enhance store bought stock to give it a bit more flavor.

I start with store bought stock and a few cups of water and then add lots of fresh veggies and aromatics. I bring everything to a boil and let it simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes or so.

It’ll end up being very good and trim a few hours off of making homemade stock.

Taking stock...

For this version, I also reconstituted some dried mushrooms by adding them to a big bowl of hot water.

After they sat for about 15 minutes, I added 2 Cups of the mushroom broth to my stock also which gave it a great earthy flavor. You can chop up the mushrooms obviously and add them to the stew as well.

Lots of flavors here...

Making the Stew

Before you get started on the stew, make sure you have everything ready. It comes together pretty quickly actually and you don’t want to overcook it or your veggies will get really soggy.

So have everything ready!

Nothing beats fresh veggies.

Start by adding a few tablespoons of oil or butter to a large pot over medium-high heat. Once it’s hot, add the leeks, celery, and artichoke hearts to the pan. Cook them for about 6 minutes until the leeks are starting to get soft and are nice and fragrant.

Starting the soup...

Then add all your stock to the pan along with the asparagus and mushrooms. Bring it all to a boil and let it simmer until the asparagus and artichokes are tender, probably another 10-15 minutes.

You want them tender, but not soggy!

Then stir in the corn and cook for another minute or so. It’ll cook really quickly.

Then you’re all set!

Try not to cook it down to mush...

Before you serve this be sure to taste it for salt and pepper. Depending on the stock you use, it may not need much. Mine needed a good pinch of both though.

Serve this garnished with some fresh parsley and lots of crusty bread.

Artichoke pieces were a bit large.

When I was picking veggies for this stew, I just went to the produce section and picked out a few things that looked fresh and nice. I’d recommend you do the same. You could use frozen, but fresh is always best! If you can get your hands on some fresh peas, they would be great in this also.

Betsy and I have been eating on this for a few days now and I feel really healthy every time I have a bowl of it.

The pita just dove right in.

This is one of those special dips (you know the kind) that takes practically no time to prepare but gives the impression that you were slaving away for hours peeling artichokes and chopping olives. It also won the poll last week!

OK. Actually, if you can convince someone that you peeled like 20 artichokes then you are partying with the most gullible person on the planet. But still, people will be impressed because it’s a delicious thing and the flavors are fairly complicated considering it’s really only a few ingredients tossed together and baked up.

Artichoke and Olive Dip

Yield: 8x8 dish

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

1 (15 ounce) can artichoke hearts, chopped
1 (8-10 ounce) jar olive tapenade, no specific brand needed
1 Cup grated Asiago or Parmesan cheese
1 1/2 Cups grated Monterey Jack cheese
1/2 Cup fresh basil, chopped (plus some for garnish)
1 Serrano pepper, diced (optional)
Salt and pepper
6 pita breads
Olive oil

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cut pita chips into sixths and peel apart each side. Each pita should make 12 chips. Lay out chips on two baking sheets and drizzle with oil and a pinch of salt.

2) Cook pita chips for 10-15 minutes, stirring once until they are a light golden brown. They will continue to crisp up out of the oven as they cool.

3) Drain and chop artichokes and chop basil and pepper if using it.

4) Add veggies in a medium bowl with olive tapenade and grated cheese. Stir to combine and pour into a 9x9 baking dish or a 2 1/2 quart round or oval dish.

5) Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes until bubbling and browned around edges.

6) Let cool for a few minutes then serve immediately with pita chips.

Making the Pita Chips

This dip is so simple to make that the least you can do is make some nice, homemade pita chips for your guests. Of course, if you’re in a crunch, you can buy some or also just serve the dip with crusty bread.

But homemade pita chips are so easy and delicious that it makes sense to me to make them any time I get the chance.

Just chop up 5 or 6 pitas into sixths and then peel apart the two sides of each sixth. So each pita should make 12 chips. They won’t all be perfect and that’s okay.

Then lay them out on a baking sheet (probably need two) and drizzle the pita slices with olive oil and a pinch of Kosher salt. Bake at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes, stirring once halfway through.

It's the little things...

Just be sure not to burn the chips though. They’re done when they are slightly golden brown. They will continue to crisp up as they cool out of the oven also.

Literally, that’s about the hardest part of this dip. Good thing we got it out of the way.

Making the dip

This could be an incredibly hard dip to make if you peels all the artichokes from scratch and made the olive tapenade from scratch, but we’re going to do neither of those things.

Oh. And if you don’t love olives, you can cut back on the tapenade or replace it with sun-dried tomatoes. The original recipe just called for like 1/2-3/4 of a cup of tapenade, but I wasn’t going to keep a tiny jar of tapenade which would quickly get lost in my fridge so I just used the whole jar.

It's okay to cheat here.

Chop up your pepper and basil and grate your cheeses. If you’re using the Serrano pepper, dice it pretty tiny so someone doesn’t get a big bite of heat.

For the artichokes, just drain them and roughly chop them up. Easy enough.

Again, canned or jarred is what you want here.

Combine everything in a big bowl and stir it together! There should be plenty of salt and oil from the tapenade but give it a quick taste anyway and adjust.

I used two kinds of cheese (Asiago and Monterey Jack) for this dip. I figured the Asiago would give it some nice flavor and nothing melts like Monterey Jack so it’s always good to throw into a dip.

Just stir everything together!

Already smells good!

There’s enough oil in this dip that you don’t need to worry about greasing your baking dish at all. Just fill it up!

Bake it up!

Bake this guy at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes until bubbling and browned around the edges.

If you want to get fancy you can sprinkle some more chopped basil on top just to make it pretty.

A sprinkle of basil to make it pretty.

You’ll want to let this cool for a few minutes before diving in, but man is it good.

Dip on a chip.

This is a really nice fall dish. It uses mostly canned/jarred stuff and is completely warming.

If you make this though, I highly recommend the homemade pita chips. They’re maybe the perfect chip for this dip.

The half and half!

I’m headed out of town for almost a week for a work function and anytime I go out of town Betsy asks me to make her some frozen meals or else she threatens that she will do nothing but eat at McDonald’s everyday. I think this is mostly an empty threat, but I usually just play it safe and make her some frozen things to eat while I’m gone.

Normally, this is burritos because she’s a Tex-Mex kinda gal. But when I mentioned burritos this time around she had an even better idea! She said that I should try to figure out how to make frozen personal pizzas like you can buy at the store.

Challenge accepted!

I asked for toppings ideas in last week’s poll and you guys answered with artichokes and pepperoni. Easy enough!

Frozen Personal Pizzas

Yield: 12 personal pizzas

Prep Time: 30 minutes + dough time

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

Dough: (Adapted from American Pie)
If you're using a mixer, it's a good idea to do this in two batches.
10 Cups (45 ounces) bread flour
3 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons kosher salt (or 4 Teaspoons normal salt)
1 Tablespoon instant yeast
6 Tablespoons olive oil
3 1/2 Cups room-temp water (70 degrees F)

Sauce: (Adjust to your liking)
1 28 ounce can whole tomatoes
1 Tablespoon dried parsley
1/2 Tablespoon dried marjoram
2 Teaspoons garlic powder
2 Teaspoons onion powder
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon sugar (optional)
1 Teaspoon vinegar (optional)
Salt and pepper

Toppings:
2 pounds of mozzarella cheese (a bit over 2 ounces per pizza)
Various other toppings like canned artichokes (sliced), pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers, bbq chicken, etc.

Helpful Equipment:
Pizza Stone
Pizza Peel
Digital Scale

Directions:

1) To make the dough it's best to split it into two batches, especially if you're using a mixer. Add all the ingredients except flour to a large bowl or the bowl of a mixer. Stir and let sit for 5 minutes until yeast foams. Add flour and mix until it comes together.

2) If you're using a mixer, mix on low with the dough hook until the dough forms a course ball, about 4 minutes. Let it rest for a few minutes, then continue to mix for another 5 minutes on medium-low.

If you're mixing by hand, dip a hand or a spoon into a bowl of luke warm water and mix vigorously until it forms a soft ball. Whether you're mixing by hand or by mixer, the dough should be soft but not really sticky and it should pass the windowpane test.

3) Divide the dough into 6 ounce balls and put them in oiled plastic bags. Let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes, then store in the fridge overnight. Be sure to let the dough come to room temperature before using.

4) To make the sauce, blend all ingredients until smooth.

5) To make pizza, roll out dough to an 8 inch pizza, sauce lightly.

6) Preheat the oven to 450 degrees with a pizza stone if you have one.

7) Slide formed pizza onto stone and cook for 5 minutes.

8) Remove pizza. It won't be cooked all the way but will be partially cooked.

9) Top pizza with a few tablespoons of sauce, cheese, and any toppings you want.

10) Put in freezer for 10 minutes to chill.

11) Double wrap pizza with foil and label. Store in a plastic freezer bag for up to 3 months.

12) To reheat pizza, unwrap and cook at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until crust is browned and cheese is melted.

13) Eat it up!

The Freezing problem

I wasn’t quite sure how to tackle the frozen problem. I couldn’t cook the pizzas entirely because then they would be like cardboard when you re-heated them. I also couldn’t leave the dough raw just because it would be hard to work with and might burn on the outside but not cook through on the inside when re-heating.

My solution: The half-cook. Basically, I semi-cooked each pizza round, then topped it, and then froze it. This works surprisingly well!

I’m getting ahead of myself though. First, let’s make…

The dough!

I knew that it would be really hard to maintain a perfect crust through the freezing process so I didn’t go with a really thin style crust like I normally use. This crust will end up a bit thicker and slightly more doughy which is a good thing for this kind of recipe.

I'm getting pretty fast at pizza dough.

If you’re in a rush, you can use store bought dough for these pizzas without too much of a problem. I just really enjoy making pizza dough actually so I always make my own.

I want to focus more on the freezing procedure in this post rather than the dough procedure. If you want detailed instructions on the dough, check out my farmer’s market pizza post. It uses the exact same procedure as I used for this dough, but instead of 10 ounce dough balls, I cut each ball down to 6 ounces which makes each pizza a bit smaller.

You can also check out the printed recipe for this post where I list the entire dough making procedure. Remember that this recipe makes 12 pizzas. If you’re going to freeze pizzas, I feel like that’s a good number. To do less than that wouldn’t really be worth it in my opinion.

The Sauce

I whipped up a basic marinara sauce for all my pizzas. I wanted something simple and quick.

Basic stuff.

I just added my canned tomatoes to a blender (you could also use a food processor or just buy tomato sauce rather than whole tomatoes). Then added a bunch of different dried spices until I had a flavorful sauce!

That’s all there is to it!

All blended up.

Before you start making your pizzas make sure you have all of your toppings chopped and ready. The pizza process is kind of a crazy assembly line and the last thing you want to have to worry about is chopping or grating stuff while you’re doing it.

Various toppings.

The Setup

This is the set-up I came up with to make my life easier for this project.

- Pizza Stone. I put my pizza stone in the oven and pre-heated it to 450 degrees which is slightly cooler than I normally bake pizzas.

- 2 Sheet Pans or plates. I set up two sheet pans. One to move a pizza crust to after it comes out of the oven and one in the freezer to cool off the pizza once it’s topped.

- Pizza Peel. A good peel is pretty essential for this.

- Foil. I double wrapped each pizza individually in foil to ward off dreaded freezer burn.

- Gallon sized freezer bags. After the pizzas are wrapped, I stored them in large plastic bags which will make sure they keep for even longer. I was able to fit three pizzas in a bag so I needed four bags total.

The Process

I was able to get into a serious groove while doing this and was able to completely finish all my pizzas in a little over an hour. That’s well worth it in my opinion to have 12 ready-made meals in the freezer for future use.

To start, take a ball of dough and roll it out into a rough circle. I was shooting for about 8 inch pizzas. Add a very light layer of sauce to the pizza which just keeps it from puffing up too much while cooking.

Ready for the oven.

Slide this onto a hot baking stone and cook it for about 5 minutes. While it’s cooking, go ahead and roll out the second pizza, but don’t put it on the peel yet (because we need the peel to take out the first pizza).

After five minutes, pull out the first pizza and toss it on your reserve sheet pan. Add your second pizza to the peel, lightly sauce it, and slide it in the oven.

You’ll end up with this partially cooked crust:

Just to firm it up.

Add a Tablespoon or two of additional sauce, cheese, and any toppings you want. I did four different varieties for my pizzas: Artichoke, pepperoni, mushrooms and peppers, and BBQ chicken using some leftovers from my BBQ chicken nachos.

This is my artichoke version.

Ready to freeze!

After it’s topped, slide it into the freezer on your sheet pan. You should have time to then roll out your third pizza before you take your second pizza out of the oven.

Get it?

The Freezing

The reason it’s important to put the topped pizzas in the freezer for 10 minutes or so is to give them time to cool way down before you wrap them. Otherwise, you’ll have a lot of moisture and condensation in with the pizza and that’s bad news for freezing things.

As you repeat your process though, eventually you’ll have two pizzas on the sheet pan in the freezer and when you need to move your third pizza into the freezer, take your first pizza out and wrap it in foil. It should be pretty cold by this point.

I double-wrapped my pizzas in foil and labeled them with the topping and date!

Double wrapped and labeled.

Reheating

Eventually you’ll have 12 tightly wrapped pizzas ready for the icebox!

Someday, you’ll want to eat one or two of these beauties and when you do, it’s as easy as unwrapping them and putting them on a baking sheet.

Bake them at 450 degrees until the cheese is melted and the crust is golden brown, probably about 20 minutes.

You’ll be well-rewarded.

A baking sheet is fine for reheating.

I judge pizza by the crust and the crust alone generally.

And for a frozen pizza, I have to say I was really impressed. It wasn’t perfectly crisp, but it wasn’t soggy at all either. And the edges were really good actually.

It had some chew to it and a slight bite which is good. I’d put it up against any frozen pizza on the market any day.

Not bad!

This is one of those posts where I expect to receive many emails about my insanity for wanting to make my own frozen pizzas.

I get it. It’s a little weird and might seem like a lot of work, but let’s add up the time quickly and see where we stand:

Making dough: 30 minutes (This is if you’re doing it by hand!)
Making sauce: 10 minutes
Chopping/grating toppings: 15 minutes
Making/freezing pizzas: 75 minutes
Clean up: 10 minutes

Total time: 2 hours and 20 minutes which is less time than it took you to watch Avatar.

And you get 12 delicious meals out of it when Avatar just left you with an intense desire to watch Avatar again.

When I think of artichokes, especially for an appetizer, I got straight to a spinach artichoke dip. It’s really everything I want in a dip: creamy, cheesy, hot, and lots of flavor. You can even make it spicy if that’s your style.

As you might imagine, there are a lot of spinach artichoke dips on the Internet. After checking out various recipes, I decided that it’s really hard to go wrong with this dip as long as you put some creamy stuff in it, use lots of artichokes and spinach, and bake it. (Okay. Some versions don’t even bake the stuff.)

So let’s make my version!

Artichoke Dip Ingredients

Two Thanksgiving Appetizers

Yield: Serves 8.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:

Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip

2 14 ounce cans artichoke hearts in water (I like mine really artichokey.)
1 10 ounce bag frozen spinach (thawed and patted dry)
6-8 ounces cream cheese
1/2 Cup mayonnaise
6-8 ounces silken tofu
1 Cup Gruyere cheese, grated
Salt and pepper
Pinch of cayenne (optional)
Parmesan cheese for topping
Chips, crackers, or spoons for dipping

Cranberry Relish

3-4 Cups of fresh cranberries
1/2 Cup sugar
1/4 Cup orange liqueur, also known as Triple Sec. If you don't have this, you can also use orange zest.
1/2 lemon, juice only
Tiny pinch of cinnamon
You'll also need...
1 wheel of brie
Crackers

Directions:

For artichoke dip:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2) Drain artichokes and roughly chop them. Add artichokes to a bowl with all the creamy ingredients and tofu.

3) Thaw frozen spinach and press it between a few paper towels to press out as much liquid as possible. Chop up the spinach and add it to the dip.

4) Add in grated Gruyere cheese and salt and pepper the dip.

5) Add dip to a square 8x8 baking dish and top with Parmesan cheese.

6) Bake dip at 350 for about 45 minutes until it's golden brown. Serve with pita chips, tortilla chips or bread.

For Cranberry Relish Brie:

1) Rinse off cranberries. Add them to a pot with enough water to just just make the cranberries rise.

2) Add sugar and bring to a simmer. Let simmer for about 20 minutes and use a spoon to mash up cranberries as it cooks.

3) Taste the sauce (let it cool) and adjust the flavors. it might need more lemon or more sugar depending on how you want it.

4) Let this cool for at least 2 hours so it can thicken fully.

5) Slather a wheel of brie with the relish and bake at 300 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Serve it with crackers!

Spinach Artichoke Dip

First thing’s first, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Then drain all your artichokes and roughly chop them. I like mine on the more rustic side so I don’t over chop them.

Chunks are okay here people.

Add your artichoke to a large bowl and then it’s on to the creamy ingredients. You can use a bunch of different things to make this dip creamy including the cream cheese and mayo I list in my recipe, but you could also use sour cream, heavy cream, etc.

In an effort to make this just a very tiny bit healthy, I decided to add about half a block of silken tofu to the dip. When it’s mixed in it produces a creamy texture and literally you can’t taste it at all.

If you’re completely opposed to this stuff, you can substitute any other creamy ingredient without a problem.

Secret Health Ingredient!

Prepping the spinach

I like to use frozen spinach for this recipe. If you use fresh, make sure to blanch it in hot water and then press out the water with paper towels or you’ll have a really watery dip.

For frozen spinach though, just thaw it out and then press all the spinach between a few paper towels. There will be a lot of liquid.

Once the spinach is dry, add everything to the a big bowl.

Also, add your grated Gruyere cheese! This made it even creamier although I’ll say that I had a hard time actually tasting the cheese in the final product which was shocking to me.

Don't forget the spinach!

Salt and pepper the dip to taste (yes I recommend tasting it cold. If it’s good cold, imagine how good it will be hot!) Mix everything up and pour it into a 9X9 baking dish. Top it with a fare amount of Parmesan cheese.

Ready for the oven!

Bake this at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes or until it is nice and golden brown. Serve it with pita chips, tortilla chips, or just a bunch of spoons! (Joking on the spoons… kind of.)

Creamy and delicious.

Cranberry Relish Brie

During the holidays, I like to make a batch of cranberry relish (or cranberry sauce). It’s great to just eat with turkey obviously, but it can used for all kinds of other things. I also used it for an awesome brunch dish that I’m posting on Saturday.

For a good quick appetizer though, you can just slather the cranberry relish on a good wheel of brie and bake it!

Basic Cranberry Relish.

This really couldn’t be easier to make. Rinse off all your cranberries to remove any dirt or stems and then add them to a large pot. Add all your other ingredients and just enough water to rise up to the cranberries. I found that it was about as many cups of water as cranberries. Don’t worry about it though, if you add too much, you can just reduce it more later or add more water if you need to.

One note: Cranberries float. If you try to keep adding water until it covers the berries, you will fail.

Ready to cook!

Put this over medium heat and stir it slowly until all the sugar is melted. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes. The cranberries will all burst and start to break down and the whole pot will thicken up nicely due to all the pectin in the cranberries.

At this point, make sure to taste your mixture. Get a spoon and scoop out a little. Let it cool for a minute or two and then give it a taste. Too bitter? Add a bit more sugar. Too sweet? Add some more lemon. If it’s really runny, let it cook for a few more minutes.

Please don't burn your mouth.

Ideally, your final product will be the consistency of warm honey. It should be thick, but flow freely. Pour it into a container and let it cool at room temperature for 15 minutes and then at least two hours in the fridge. As it cools it will thicken up a lot.

Lovely.

Slather this stuff on a wheel of brie and bake it (I baked mine in a cake tin) for about 25 or 30 minutes at 300 degrees. You just want everything to be warm and gooey.

Some recipes call for wrapping the brie in puff pastry and that’s good also (although you then need to bake it at 350), but it’s okay to just bake it as is.

Serve it up with crackers!

My brie sprung a leak...

Obviously, the warm brie is delicious, but the cranberry really sends it over the edge.

So, if you’re looking for a quick and tasty appetizer or two in the next week, check these out.

Do you have any quick holiday appetizers? Leave a comment!

Artichokes are hands down one of my favorite veggies even with all their annoying prep work. I was skeptical that stuffing the artichokes would be better than just steaming the guys and eating them with butter, but I think I’m a convert.

I mean come on. Just look at these things.

Each one of these weighs like 5 pounds.

I’m not going to lie to you, this recipe takes some time to prepare. Not an insane amount of time or anything, but probably 30-45 minutes just because the artichokes are kind of cumbersome, especially if you haven’t worked with them before. Totally worth it though in my opinion.

As an appetizer, you could easily split one of these with another person. I’ll admit though that when I made these I had two of them in one sitting which probably bordered on approximately 4,000,000 calories. It’s cool though. I had a lite beer to counteract the effects of the calories.

Stuffed Artichokes (Adapted from a recipe in Eating Well in Season)

- 4 medium to large artichokes
- 2.5 Cups bread crumbs (I prefer Panko)
- 1 Cup sun-dried tomatoes, chopped (yes this is a lot)
- 1/2 Cup fresh basil, chopped
- 1 Cup Feta cheese, crumbled
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 1/2 Cup white wine
- 1 lemon
- olive oil
- Salt and Pepper

I made my stuffing first which basically just involves chopping up the tomatoes and the basil and mixing everything together.

Chopping stuff for the stuffing.

Be sure to take your time on the tomatoes. You don’t want any enormous chunks in the final product. Combine the basil, tomatoes, bread crumbs, cheese, and one clove of crushed garlic in a large pan. Season with salt and pepper. I probably used about a Teaspoon and a half of each.

Mix it all up!

Good to eat just like this!

The Artichokes. On to the subject at hand, these bastards:

The subject.

To prep these for stuffing we need to do four things:

1) Cut the stems off. Yes there is some good artichoke meat in the stems but they have to go if you want your artichoke to sit up nice and tall while it is cooking. And trust me, you do. Otherwise your stuffing will just fall out. (Artichoke at 12 o’ clock in the below photo.)

2) Cut about the top inch or so off the artichoke. I hope you have a decent knife because the leaves are pretty tough. (Photo at 9 o’ clock.)

3) Get your fingers in the middle of the artichoke and pry it open. Don’t worry about being gentle. This thing is stronger than you. It’s ok if a few of the leaves split also. Really work to pry the leaves open though because we are going to stuff deliciousness between all the individual leaves. Eventually, you will expose the pinkish spiky center leaves. (Photo at 3 o’ clock.)

4) Now you need to cut out the center which is not an easy task. Not only are the leaves tough, but there are a lot of them and about a million little thistle things way down inside. I’ll just say this: Whoever first figured out you could eat these things was really hungry.

Ok. I’m exaggerating. It isn’t that bad. If you have a grapefruit spoon (or maybe a Spork?) you can make pretty quick work of the job. Or if you have a good paring knife just cut around the inside in a circle and then scoop out all the insides with a spoon. Again, don’t worry about being gentle. (Photo at 6 o’ clock.)

Can you follow this?

I would say it probably took me 5 minutes for the first artichoke, but I got pretty fast at it after that. It’s a pretty quick learning curve once you realize the goal. Also, on the thistle thing, there will be a bunch. Don’t worry about getting every single one. They will basically dissolve when it cooks. Get as many as you can though.

This was my garbage for just four artichokes.

Nick 1. Artichokes 0.

Stuff the thing! Now that your choke is ready and your stuffing is ready, you know what to do! Basically start at the center, filling the big hole, and work your way out. You shouldn’t really have any leftover stuffing if you are using four artichokes. Make sure to pull apart the leaves and get the stuffing down in between each leaf. There is no better tool than your hands to get this job done.

Cooking this monstrosity. There are two ways you can cook these guys. Either way you need to start by preheating your oven to 375.

Cast Iron Method – If you have a 7 quart cast iron Dutch Oven then you are in luck as it can go from stove top to oven. Start by sauteeing 1 clove of chopped garlic in a Tablespoon of oil over high heat for a minute or two and then add 3 cups of water, 1 1/2 Cups of white wine, the juice of a lemon, and a pinch of salt.

Once this comes to a boil, nestle your four artichokes in the liquid, cover your pan, and stick it in the oven for 50 minutes. Then take off the cover and cook it for another 10 minutes.

Baking Dish Method – If you don’t have a cast iron pan, prepare the liquid in a normal pan, bringing it to a boil, and then pour it into a normal baking dish and sit your artichokes upright in the dish. Cover the whole thing with foil and cook for 50 minutes. Take off the foil and cook for another 10 minutes.

No matter which method you use, your house will start smelling amazing around minute 27. After one hour you will have something like this:

This thing is just begging to fall apart.

You’ll have to be gentle because literally, the leaves just fall off. So tender and delicious.

One delicious leaf out of many.

It’s really fun to eat because you get to use each leaf as a spoon for the filling and then just scrape out the artichoke meat on the leaf with your teeth. While these were some work, I think they were 100% worth it. One of the best appetizers I’ve made I think.

We’ll do something else on the real V-Day that doesn’t involve going out to a restaurant because that is pure madness in my mind.

I know that there are mixed feelings on Valentine’s Day and that is understandable. I’ve always sort of thought of it as a time to show thanks to those you care about. That could be a person that you are dating or married to, but could also be a roommate or you could just bring cookies into the office or something.

When I used to live in a group house we would occasionally have a big Valentine’s Day feast together and it was always a lot of fun. We would make multiple courses and really live it up.

I tried to replicate that this year except it was just for me and Betsy and our new cat Tipsy. It’s possible that I went a bit overboard for this meal. I wanted to test my skills at planning a full four course meal, cooking everything from scratch, and actually doing it all on time.

I think I more or less succeeded. Over the next four days I’m going to share each course that I made and at the end I’ll give a little wrap up on the way I planned the meal.

SO, let’s get started with the first course: Artichoke Fritters with a Green Goddess Dipping Sauce

Artichoke fritters. Excellent.

Fritters are delicious and not too terrible to make. I had to set up the frying station for a later course, so it wasn’t too much extra work. The only thing that made this recipe difficult was the pesky artichokes. I’m really not good at dealing with them. When Bets saw this recipe in the most recent Bon Appétit though, she let out a small yelp of excitement. So I knew they had to be on the menu.

Let’s start with the dipping sauce. The recipe called for a tangy green goddess dipping sauce. Sounded good to me.

Green Goddess Sauce
1/4 Cup chopped chives
1/4 Cup chopped parsley
1 Tablespoon chopped taragon (optional)
2 Teaspoons anchovy paste or 2 anchovy fillets (optional)
2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar
3 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 Cup creme fraiche, sour cream, or Greek yogurt. I used the later.

This stuff is tangy!

You could make the sauce the day before if you wanted. It would keep fine.

Now on to the fritters. This is what you will need:

Fritters
1 Cup plus 2 Tablespoons flour
1/2 Teaspoon salt
3/4 cup lager
2 large eggs, separated. We’ll use the yolks and whites separately
3 Tablespoons Olive oil
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
Lemon zest from half a lemon
2-4 large artichokes (the original calls for 6 which seems like too much)

Don’t even get me started on how infuriating BA’s instructions can be sometimes. If I would have followed their recipe exactly, I think it would have been a failure. It’s not that they say anything blatantly wrong (although I think 6 artichokes would have been complete overkill here), they are just very vague about preparation sometimes which is super annoying.

Especially when you are dealing with what has to be the oddest vegetable out there – the artichoke. I’m not sure who figured out they could eat these things, but they must have been hungry.

Let’s deal with them. Do one artichoke at a time and when you are done with it quickly put the slices in a lemon water bath. Otherwise they will brown horribly. First slice the top off of the artichoke and then cut off the stem. Leave about 3/4 inch of the stem. Then cut off all of the hard external leaves. Leave about 2 or 3 layers of fairly soft leaves. Also peel the stem part with a vegetable peeler or knife. Basically whittle it down to nothing.

Then slice the artichoke in half and you will reveal the flower part of the thing. There is no easy way to do this but you have to get all of that stuff out. The easiest way that I have found is to get a paring knife and slide it all around the little fibers. You want to keep them mostly intact if possible. Then they should just sort of fall out. They won’t. But they should.

Like. WHAT?

Once you have it clean, set the choke on its top so its stem is facing straight up then slice it into 1/2 inch slices.

After a soak in lemon water.

Eventually you will end up with a bowl of artichoke slices. Unfortunately, you are not done. Now you have to cook these guys. Add a tablespoon of olive oil to a pan and then add your artichoke slices. Drain them first. Add about 1/2 cup of water and a good pinch of salt and pepper to the pan. Then cover and let simmer for about 10 minutes until the artichokes are very soft.

Done and sort of mushed up.

You will want to make the batter at least 30 minutes ahead as it will need to rest. Basically, just combine your flour, salt, egg yolks only, beer, and two Tablespoons olive oil in a boil. Whisk it up.

Batter is a go.

Then take whatever your favorite deep-frying pan is and fill it up a few inches deep with canola or peanut oil. Something neutral. You want to heat this to about 375.

While that is heating, take your egg whites – you saved them right? – and beat them until they are fluffy, but not dry or stiff. Then gently fold them into your batter along with the artichokes.

Everybody in the pool.

I always like to do a test run to make sure everything is good. Fold together your batter and then scoop about Tablespoon sized drops into the batter. Be careful not to spray hot oil everywhere.

This is a test.

Note the candy thermometer. They run like $6. If you are going through the trouble of making fritters from scratch – invest in one.

See that sauce in the back? That's for a different course. Betcha can't guess.

These guys only need a few minutes per side and then scoop them out onto a waiting paper towel to drain a bit. Serve while hot with the dipping sauce.

This was delicious.

This was the first course and they were very good. If only artichokes were a bit easier to work with. You could use the canned stuff maybe, but for this recipe, the fresh ones give a bunch more flavor I think. I think you could sub out the artichokes with Zucchini or something and still have very delicious fritters. A bit of a hassle no doubt, but they are delicious if you have the time.

We snacked on this leisurely while we watched the cat attempt to touch every square foot of carpet in our apartment at the same time. Crazy cat.

After this, you might want to check out the Second Course: Pear and Pecan Salad!

After my last few posts, I got an email from a friend of mine, Julie (Hi Julie!). Julie has a problem of accumulating items in her pantry that she doesn’t know what to do with.

This was the list she sent me:

artichoke hearts
canned pumpkin
garbanzo beans
macadamia oil
avocado oil
basil dipping oil
chili paste
fish sauce
chopped spinach

Nine items. I thought about it for about two minutes before I concluded that it would be impossible to make one dish using all of these ingredients. At least it would be impossible to make one edible dish.

I did find a way to use all of them though. Let’s pick the low hanging fruit first.

Canned pumpkin – Honestly, I would just hide this bad boy until Thanksgiving next year and then make a good pumpkin pie. Cooking for Engineers has one of the best pumpkin pie recipes I’ve seen.

If you wanted to make something sooner though, I would recommend something curried. Pumpkin and curry go really well together. Maybe try this pumpkin curry soup.

Chopped Spinach – Considering you emailed me this list awhile ago, if you still have this spinach throw it out. It will be a bag of mush by now. If you have a new bag of chopped spinach, I recommend making a salad and sprinkling one of those lovely oils you have over the top (avocado sounds really good).

Basil Dipping Oil – Make this bread or this bread. Take the next bus to Delicioustown.

Macadamia Oil – This could also be used as a dipping oil. Personally though, I would use this stuff for a stir fry. Check out the recipe list at the oddly named site: Mac-nut-oil.com.

Avocado Oil – I almost bought some of this just so I could make this, but I would try making a simple bruschetta. Instead of olive oil though, use avocado oil. BAM. Guacamole bruschetta.

Artichokes and Garbanzo Beans

Two of the things on the list immediately called out to me:

Made for each other.

Homemade hummus is one of my favorite things. It is quick and easy to whip up, stores for a long time, and is packed with flavor. Traditionally, hummus has Tahini paste in it. I left it out of this recipe though and it was still delicious.

The reason why I left it out was because the whole idea of these posts is to get rid of stuff. It’s not much of a trade off to get rid of some artichokes and chick peas if you end up with a huge can of Tahini paste that you don’t know what to do with.

That said, we do need to add some flavors to this:

I consider these pretty common ingredients

This is the recipe I ended up with:

Artichoke Hummus

1 Can Garbanzo Beans
6 ounces artichoke hearts
3 cloves garlic (tone it down if you don’t love garlic)
1/2 Teaspoon red pepper
1 lemon, juice only
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Pinch of salt and pepper

Basically you just combine all of this stuff in a food processor.

Ready for blending

Pulse this for a few seconds until it forms a smooth paste. Add a bit more olive oil if needed.

Serve the end result with pita.

Healthy snack.

I really liked this and have been snacking on it for a few days now. The Macheesmo taste-tester was not in love with it. She didn’t like the artichoke/chickpea combo. It definitely tastes different than normal hummus, but I enjoyed it.

Also, I found that it is better on day two or three when the flavors have had time to really meld.

So we have knocked off seven of our nine ingredients. We are left with fish sauce and chili paste. I tried a few different things with these two ingredients. I tried a salad dressing (meh.) and basting some chicken wings (NO!). Try number three gave me something good though: Thai Beef Skewers.

Fish Sauce and Chili Paste

To our two ingredients, we are going to need to add some other flavors to get were we want to be.

Marinade ingredients

Did you notice my screw up? Julie had chili paste in her pantry. I used chili sauce. For this marinade, I’m just looking for something a bit spicy, so I think you could sub them out without too much trouble.

Thai Beef Skewers
(I adapted my recipe from this one. Thanks @ekerekes for the link.)

1 pound sirloin, cut into strips
2 Cloves garlic, chopped
2 Tablespoons fish sauce
2 Tablespoons sesame oil (maybe you could use macadamia oil?)
2 Tablespoons honey
1 Tablespoon chili sauce (I would use less chili paste. Maybe 1 Teaspoon depending on how hot you want it.)
Handful of cilantro, chopped
Pinch of salt and pepper

Mix up all your ingredients and add your sirloin.

Sweet sweet marinating meat.

Let this marinate for at least an hour. You could leave it overnight in the fridge.

I like to use wooden skewers. Always be sure to soak them in water because, ya know, wood burns.

Stabbed and ready for the oven.

Ideally, you would broil these guys for about 5 minutes. I don’t have a broiler that works so I baked mine at 450 for 5 minutes. Still delicious.

No need for a sauce on these guys.

So I think that pretty much covers it. These beef skewers were a real hit.

If you have an ingredient that you don’t know what to do with, or a pantry full of them… send me an email or leave a comment! If you wanted to be really cool, you could even include a photo of your pantry items.