From Dip to Hors d'œuvre

It just so happened that a couple of days after making Artichoke and Goat Cheese dip for the Oscar party, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law were in town and we had a semi-impromptu gathering in their honor. I had left-over dip and it would have been super easy to serve the dip again with crackers and bread, but I was feeling creative. I had a notion that the dip would also make a good filling for a hot hors d'œuvre.

I bought some phyllo dough at the store and defrosted a roll overnight in the fridge. I’d never really worked with phyllo dough before, but I felt a little adventurous and figured I’d improvise my way through creating a vague representation of what I had in mind. I unrolled the dough and cut it into squares.

You’re supposed to keep it moist by keeping any dough you’re not immediately working with under plastic wrap, and then layering a damp cloth over it. I accidentally splashed water over half of it, turning the lovely delicately sheeted dough into mush. Oh, well, I wasn’t going to use them all anyways.

Once the dough was cut into squares, I took a stack of a few sheets at a time (4-5) and brushed the top with little bit of melted butter.

Then I spooned a little bit of the goat cheese mixture in the middle. Then I simply gathered up the sides around the middle to create a little cup. (But make whatever shape you want. I left the cups open, but you could close them up to make little bundles, or fold them over to create pockets.) I then brushed a little more butter around the sides to help them turn golden in the oven. Once I had all the cups made and lined up, I placed them on cookies sheets and baked them in the oven at 350, for 25 to 30 minutes, or until golden.

I must admit, not a bad first attempt. If the whole phyllo dough thing sounds too complicated, I also saw that Pilsburry makes a puff pasty dough especially for this type of use. I saw cans of this in the refrigerator section of the grocery store, in same area where you find the cans of pre-made biscuits and cinnamon rolls. As another alternative, if you have a restaurant supply store near you (there is an awesome one in Culver City called Surfas) they might carry pre-made hors d'œuvre shells. You could simply spoon in the dip and serve hot or cold.

I had another party come up this past weekend. A pot luck this time - or PoT LoVE, as my friend Kim’s yearly tradition is called. I’d had a rather crazy week, so I wasn’t up to attacking a new recipe, and figured I’d give the Artichoke Goat Cheese Baskets another go. I considered trying a sun-dried tomato version, but when I went to get started early last Saturday morning, the jar of sun-dried tomatoes proved difficult to open and I gave up five seconds later, returning to the easy to open can of artichokes with a trusty can opener. Even so, I have no doubt this would have been a delicious variation.

I can, however, tell you that the prepped, unbaked cups do travel decently well. I put the cups on sheets of foil and stacked them gently in a larger tupperware container and kept them refrigerated until it was time to go. I would just say to make sure to brush the bottom of the cups with butter to keep them from sticking. Upon arrival to the party, I commandeered the gracious host’s oven and baked up the cups right away.

One batch of artichoke and goat cheese dip is just about the right amount for one roll of phyllo dough. This yielded approx 25 cups.

As a final note, I have to admit that I wanted to tweak the consistency of the filling a bit, and I still haven’t quite got it right for the cups. Ideally, I’m aiming at a consistency in between the two versions I described in my previous post. Smooth and creamy, but a tad more firm and dry so that it’s able to get that nice baked goat cheese gold on top. I’ll keep you posted of future attempts.

Fabulous Party Dip

Years ago my friend Steff gave me an absolutely ADORABLE cookbook called Mary Engelbreit's Let's Party Cookbook. Despite the fact that I’ve thumbed through the pages of this book a million times, I must admit that I have not made all that many of the recipes.

There is one recipe, however, that I latched onto early on, and have made it a hundred times since – Artichoke & Goat Cheese Dip. I LOVE goat cheese and this recipe is super quick to whip up.

Here’s the list of ingredients:

- One 14 ounce can of artichoke hearts, drained and rinsed
(I never really bother to rinse them)
- One 10.5 to 11 ounce log of Montrchet or other mild fresh goat cheese at room temperature.
- 3 tablespoons light cream, half and half, or milk
- 1 teaspoon minced fresh tarragon or ½ teaspoon dried
(Just tarragon??? Please. Shake in a little of this and little of that, to taste. Whatever herbs your heart desires or happen to have—basil, thyme, rosemary, dill, oregano -- just go ahead and sprinkle it in! This past occasion I had thyme, so that's what I used. To further cheat, get one of the goat cheese logs that is already rolled in herbs and use that as a starter)
- Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
( I also like to use a spice blend G introduced me to called Cavender's All Purpose Greek Seasoning . It comes in regular and salt free varieties and goes great on a million things. Eggs in particular love this stuff)
- Crackers to serve (or bread, or crostini, or whatever you feel like serving the spread on)

1. Gently squeeze the excess liquid from the artichoke hearts. Cut them lengthwise into slivers and transfer them into a medium bowl. Add the cheese, cream, and tarragon and blend well with large wooden spoon. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 24, to allow flavors to blend.

2. About 15 minutes before serving, remove the dip from the refrigerator. Serve with crackers and several small knives for spreading.


The majority of the times that I’ve made this dip, I have made it just like this. It’s quick and easy, but you can play around and tweak the herbs and spices to your liking. It also makes a good sandwich spread because it has a thick and chunky consistency, given the pieces of artichokes that are mixed in.

Recently, I made batch to take with me to an Oscar party. This is a great item to bring to a party because it travels very well – just put in a portable container, grab some crackers or a baguette and you’re good to go,

On this occasion, I thought I’d play around with the texture a little bit. I brought out my Hand Blender and simply blended until smooth. A blender or food processor would work fine as well, but the hand mixer gives you a little more control. The artichokes breakdown pretty quickly and the result was somewhat more liquid -- now more a typical dip consistency, rather than a spread. At this consistency, it could also work well with crudités. Both versions are good, but actually really different. Try them both and let me know what you think.

February Supper Club: Won Tons - Part 2. Fill, Wrap, Fry

Next up on the won ton odyssey was the filling.

The filling was actually incredibly easy. If spending all day playing with kitchen toys doesn’t sound appealing to you, just buy won ton skins at the grocery story and the whole process will actually be very easy and fairly quick.

I took my recipe from a Chinese cookbook I received as a Christmas gift:
Encyclopedia of Chinese Food and Cooking
I used Won tons 1 recipe.

1 Egg
½ ground pork
1 tablespoon scallion
8 water chestnuts
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
12 won ton skins

(I skipped the water chestnuts, added 5 spice powder, and a little hit of chili sauce. I also doubled the recipe)


- Beat egg

- Mix All ingredients well

- Fill each Won ton skin with 1 tsp of pork mixture
Shape each into a cap to make won tons by drawing the four corners together and seal by pressing gently at juncture.

I had fun creating different ways to fold the won tons. G helped too , creating some sausage-esque won tons.

- Boil 2 qts of water, add won tons, bring to boil and cook 5 minutes. Drain won tons in colander, run cold water over won tons to cool. Cooked wontons can be frozen or left in refrigerator for a few days.

To deep fry, I busted out another new toy—my mini deep fryer. I filled the deep fryer with peanut oil and plunged the suckers in for a few minutes each until they reached a toasty color. The mini deep fryer is super convenient, but it is compact and the room inside is limited. I had to turn some of the won tons to get a more even color. If you don’t have a deep fryer, I think you could just as easily fill a giant pot with oil and scoop out with a strainer. You would just need a thermometer to know when you’d reached the proper temperature. Once fried, I just placed them on paper towels as they came out to soak up excess oil.

We served them with dipping sauces. We mixed up soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, and hoisin, but they would be good with any one of those on it’s own.

I have to say I was actually pretty impressed with my first attempt at making these guys from scratch. Next time, I’ll try to get the dough even thinner, as a few came out a wee bit doughy in spots. As well, I would try to make the won tons smaller, because they puff up and expand A LOT during the cooking phase. On the whole though, they were SUPER tasty. Go me!

February Supper Club: Won Tons - Part 1. Skins

For February’s Supper Club, we decided to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
G and I hosted this month, and since a couple of other’s had offered to make entrées, I decided to take on Won Tons. I figured this would give me cause to bust out some Kitchen Toys I had never used before

My Mother-in-law had recently gifted me a pasta attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer. Thus, I decided to use it to attempt to make the won ton skins from scratch. (Trust me, I was ready to run to the store to buy won ton skins should my experiment fail)

I thought it best to go with the manufactures recommendations on my first attempt, so I used the recipe for Egg Noodles that’s included with the recipe booklet that came with the pasta attachment. It was actually very close to the recipe in my Chinese cooking book anyways.

Here’s the recipe:
4 large eggs
1 tbsp water
3 ½ cups sifted all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon sat

Place eggs, water, flour, and salt in mixer bowl. Attach bowl and flat beater. Turn to Speed 2 and mix 30 seconds

Exchange flat beater for dough hook. Turn to speed 2 and knead 2 minutes. Remove dough from bowl and hand knead for 1 to 2 minutes. Let it rest for 20 minutes. Divide dough into 4 pieces before processing with pasta sheet roller attachment. You’ll have to repeat a few times at increasingly thinner settings to get the right level of thinness. Once the pasta sheets are thin enough, cut into squares for won ton skins.

The dough has to be pretty dry to work with it, but can hit too dry, so there is a bit of a back and forth that happens between having to add more water, then getting it sufficiently dry to work with again. Keep lots of extra flour on hand to flour the sheets as you go.

It is mostly a fun experience -- like playing with play-dough you can actually eat. It can even feel a bit meditative at times. However, it does require a lot of time, and can become stressful if you’re trying to rush. After a long while of playing happily with my new toy, at one point at the end of the pasta making process, the last sheet was giving me a particularly hard time. The consistency was all wrong and it kept falling apart or not wanting to feed through the pasta roller. I went back and forth between drying it, then rewetting the dough, then reworking it, but it just did not want to work with me.

I started to realize that the time was slipping away and soon people would be arriving, and the apartment wasn’t even clean yet, and oh, by the way, neither was I. I started to get kind of frustrated and was about to start taking my aggression on the mostly innocent mixer. Luckily at this point G gallantly stepped in and announced that he had not yet had a chance to play with the new toy yet and wanted a turn. He got it going again and kept me from throwing the uncooperative sheet at the mixer.

Lesson learned - To keep it a fun, zen experience, give yourself a lot of time.

French Toast Brunch

I hosted a brunch for a bunch of lovely ladies recently and served this French Toast Casserole from Cooking Light. The night before some friends invited G and I out to a wine bar last minute. Well, of course, I just couldn’t say no. When we got home late that night, I realized I still needed to get things in order for the morning.

No problem. My plans to be a fabulous hostess would not be foiled by a spontaneous outing with friends! I discovered this recipe a while back and it’s becoming a go-to for brunch in a pinch, because it’s fast and requires almost no thought. I had bought all the ingredients the day before and this baby was assembled and in the fridge about 15 to 20 minutes later.

The next morning, when I was hustling about trying to finish cleaning up, running to the store to pick up the napkins I’d forgotten, and otherwise get things ready, I was oh so happy that the only thing I really had to do in the cooking department was to pop this in the oven.

To be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of orange marmalade, so I usually opt for a berry flavor. Even better, just defrost a bag of frozen berries. (As you probably can start to tell, I usually have a bag or two on hand in the freezer because I find them so versatile) The berries will get really saucy. Just distribute them over the first layer of bread. I think using whole berries makes the dish a little more special. I also really like using cinnamon raisin bread in place of the sourdough.

I can think of a hundred ways you could further jazz this baby up. Well, that is if you’re not putting it together in the middle of the night after a couple of glasses of wine or running around like a crazy person. If I had more time, I might make the Blackberry Port Sauce ahead of time and incorporate that into the recipe.

Once it’s out of the oven, simply serve with syrup and coffee or mimosas. I think you’ll find it’s just as tasty as the classic variety and requires less fuss and attention. It’s also very pretty – although sadly I have no pictures to show you this time. Super quick to prepare, super easy, hard to beat.

January Supper Club: Day-O! Shrimp Cocktail

A group of our friends recently decided to start a Supper Club. We pick a theme for the month and then everyone brings a dish related to the theme. Our first dinner was in January, and as the date of the dinner happened to coincide with the Golden Globes, the theme was food inspired by films.

G brilliantly thought of the Day-O scene in Beetlejuice. The Deetz’s dinner party guests are all forced into a crazy dance around the dinner table, at the end of which they are all attacked by their shrimp cocktail.

I love Tim Burton and my brother and I must have watched that movie hundreds of times as kids, so Shrimp Cocktail it is! I also think it’s a somewhat overlooked classic and healthy to boot.

I adapted Alton Brown’s Shrimp Cocktail recipe.
Here’s what I did:

I bought the shrimp at Whole Foods

For the Cocktail Sauce:

1 (14 1/2-ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 cup prepared Thai Style Chili Sauce (Kikkoman)
3 tablespoons prepared horseradish
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Quick Pour of olive oil – roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons
Quick pour of Worcestershire Sauce
Sprinkle of Cavender’s Greek Seasoning
Sprinkle of Trader Joe’s Seafood Grill and Broil

Blend everything in a blender until smooth or at desired consistency. Chill until ready to serve. When it's time to eat, arrange sauce and shrimp in a cocktail glass -- I used plastic champagne glasses -- serve and eat!

After this, I don’t think I’ll ever buy cocktail sauce again. It’s sooooo easy and tastes so good.

I used the leftover sauce in place of ketchup or tomato sauce to glaze a freeform meatloaf. Aesthetically speaking, it wasn’t the most pleasing of my impromptu creations. I thought I had more meat than I actually did, so the proportions were all off. It kind of looked like a giant meatball; however, it was DELISH! The cocktail sauce definitely provided an extra kick.

On Stock

G and I started making our own stocks in the past couple of years. Honestly, it is soooo easy.

1. Just pile a bunch a bones in a large pot
2. Stick in a few veggies
(we save scraps from veggies we cut up in the freezer to toss into stocks)
3. Cover with water and boil for a few hours

If you’re pressed for time or if you want to make it even more foolproof, boil everything in a crock-pot overnight or while you’re away at work. Or, if you want to get a little more fancy, roast the bones in the oven for a bit before boiling to add extra flavor.

Once the stock is done and has cooled, pour it into a container and store in the freezer. For ready to use small doses, freeze stock in ice-cube trays, then just pull out a few at a time as needed.

G loves making stock for us. We store bones up in the freezer. (Sounds sinister, doesn't it?) The leftover carcasses from rotisserie chickens or buffalo wings are great for this because they’re already packed with flavor. Once we’ve racked up enough bones, he has a stock making session. It’s one of his biggest and best contributions to our kitchen, because now we always fantastic stock on hand in the freezer.

As you can see, our approach is very much just throw in everything but the kitchen sink and boil it, but if you’d do better with a more step-by-step description check out this great post by my friend the Domestic Diva.

Once you start making your own stock, you’ll never go back. The only problem is that now wherever we go—restaurants, friend’s houses, etc -- we find ourselves momentarily considering plans to smuggle out any lovely leftover bones.

Soup, Glorious Soup!

There is a point in the winter where I crave soup non-stop.

Yes, even in LA.

A few weeks ago, I hit just such a spell and happened to come across this recipe for French Onion Soup in an old Cooks Illustrated and decided to take it on.

If you’re not familiar with Cooks Illustrated and you’re trying to become a better cook, I highly recommend picking up some issues. It’s great for a nerd like me because they explain everything in great detail, so you know exactly why you’re doing something a certain way. They also test and retest recipes hundreds of times before arriving at the version they publish. Thus, if you don’t really care about the why, or are feeling too lazy to read all the back-story, you can feel confident that the recipe is tried and true.

The recipe calls for the following:

For the soup
3 Tbsp unsalted butter
6 large yellow onions, cut into slices
Table salt
2 cups water, plus extra for deglazing (you’ll need quite a bit)
½ cup dry sherry
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups beef broth
6 sprigs of fresh thyme (I couldn’t find any at the store that day, so I went with dry)
1 large bay leaf
Ground Black pepper

For the cheese croutons:

1 small baguette, cut into slices (I used sourdough, and it tasted great)
8 ounces of Gruyere, shredded (yeah, who are we kidding, you’re probably going to want more)

I luckily happened to have both homemade chicken stock and beef stock on hand, so I went out to the store to pick up all the ingredients I was missing. When I returned I was distracted from the task at hand by G, who roped me into a little cuddle session in front of the TV. A worthwhile cause for procrastination, but once I got back to cooking, it had started to get late, and I realized I wasn’t going to complete the recipe that evening, since it is a slow cooking process.

I figured I’d at least get step one going. I put the butter, salt, and onions into my beautiful blue Le Creuset French Oven. (This is my favorite pot. It cooks so well and it’s sooo pretty. Cooking with it always make me happy. I love any excuse to use it!) Then I just popped the whole thing into the 400 degree oven. I got something else going for dinner that night, and let the onion cook for the next 2 and half hours, opening it occasionally to stir. By the end of the night, the onions had begun to caramelize beautifully, and I moved the pot to the fridge to continue the next night. My hope was that this extra time that was forced upon me would help “deepen the flavor” -- because as cooks are always taught through the wisdom passed onto them through the generations of moms, grandmas, and the other venerable cooks that came before them, almost everything is better the next day.

The next night, I came picked up at step two. Basically, you go through a few rounds of cooking and deglazing. The idea here is that you want a “fond” to form, which means you want a to create a crust at the bottom of the pot, which means you’re basically allowing it to start to burn. Then just as it’s really about to burn, you pour in more liquid and scrape the bottom of the pot, reincorporating all those burny bits along with smoky, caramelized flavor they’ve acquired.

Once all the deglazing is done, you add in the sherry and cook that off for a few minutes. Next come the broths, water, and the rest of the soup ingredients. Bring it all to a simmer. Once you’ve got the simmer going, reduce heat and step away from the pot for 30 minutes.

I used this time to squeeze in a yoga dvd.

Once savasana was over, I returned to get the cheese toast going. Ideally, you’d toast the bread, float a piece onto each bowl of soup, add cheese on top, then pop the whole thing into the broiler to melt the cheese. My bowls didn’t fit in the broiler or the toaster oven, so I just made cheese toasts and put one on each bowl of soup and then sprinkled on some extra cheese. (Note, if you use fresh herbs, remember to spoon those out of the pot before serving soup into bowls)

I served the soup with a light spinach salad and a chardonnay.

I found this website, WinedIn.com , that helps pair wine with food.
Chardonnay was amongst the suggestions, and I went with a Chard from Red Bicyclette, because it was on sale at the store and I was trying to stay on a budget. I don’t really know whites all that well (really, I’m still a fledgling in the world of wines in general), but it was pretty blah. I guess one gets what one pays for, but I think you can do better even at the price. I also think I would have preferred a slightly sweeter wine to contrast with intense savory flavors in the soup.

So, the wine was just meh, but the soup was fabulous if I do say so myself. It was smoky and rich, with all of those caramelized flavors in the back-ground. It was incredibly soul satisfying. Next, I’d say I don’t think I would do quite as many rounds of deglazing. I think 2 to 3 would be just fine. After four, there were a few smoky bits going on here and there. I’d also add a little more liquid because the bread just soaks it all up like a sponge very quickly. However, on the whole this is a great recipe and definitely worth the wait when you have the time.

Maybe cook it up on a lazy weekend day when you’re puttering around the house.