Cheese Quesadillas

I like to pan fry my quesadillas rather than microwave so they get a bit crispy on the outside.

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Butter one side of a tortilla and lay it butter side down. Sprinkle grated cheese (Cheddar, Jack, Colby or a Mexican blend) to lightly cover.

Spread butter on one side of another tortilla and place it butter side UP. Cook a few minutes, till lightly browned on the bottom, then gently flip over with a spatula.

When the cheese is all melted, put it on a cutting board and cut into wedges.

Want less? Butter a single tortilla, start it cooking, spread the grated cheese over half the tortilla, then fold the tortilla in half. Flip when browned on one side, cook a few more minutes, slide out onto a cutting board and cut into wedges.

For a breakfast quesadilla, add applesauce and sprinkle with cinnamon, then add the cheese.

Cocktail Sauce Recipe

We splurged on New Year’s Eve and had some fresh crab and shrimp.  I mixed up a homemade cocktail sauce recipe for the shrimp, and mixed some with a fair bit of mayonnaise for the crab.  The joy of making your own is that you can adjust the seasonings to make it as spicy or mild as you like.

• 1 cup ketchup or 1/2 cup ketchup and 1/2 cup chili sauce for a spicier version
• 1 Tbs lemon juice
• 1 Tbs horseradish sauce
• 1 Tbs minced onion
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 tsp dry mustard
• Tabasco sauce to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl and mix well.  Chill 30 minutes or so to blend the flavors.

The next day I made crab cakes with the leftover crab and mixed some mayonnaise with the last of the cocktail sauce to top the crab cakes. Delicious!

Last year a client gave me some Penzey spices for a holiday gift and I’m just getting around to opening some of them. Last night we tried the Sate seasoning, which has salt, brown sugar, garlic, onion, coriander, shallots, ginger, tumeric, sweet paprika, Ancho pepper, galangal, cayenne red pepper and lemon grass in it! Whew!  Much easier to use a blend for sure, although I rarely buy them myself.   You could just sprinkle this stuff on some meat for some excellent flavor but I followed the recipe in their catalog and it was awesome!

I didn’t feel like going out and lighting the barbecue as I had just put the cover on it, expecting rain tonight or tomorrow.  I thought I’d try the George Foreman Grill for this and it worked great! (Note: I do not have the one with the removable plates but I would get that one were I to get a new one.)

• 2-4 Tbs Penzey’s Sate seasoning
• 2 Tbs water
• 3 Tbs soy sauce
• 1/4 cup peanut oil
• 2 Tbs rice vinegar
• 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut in 3/4″ cubes

Mix together the water and sate seasoning and let sit a few minutes to blend.

If you’re using wooden skewers, throw those in the sink and cover with water and let soak. This is probably less important on the George Foreman grill but very important if you grill them with a live flame.

Add the rest of the ingredients except the chicken to the sate seasoning and water, mix well, then stir in the chicken. Cover and refrigerate at least an hour, preferably two. I only did an hour.

The chicken will only take a few minutes to cook, maybe 4-5, so estimate how long it will take you to skewer the chicken and start some rice going at some point. I made saffron rice in the rice cooker and it came out great.

Put the chicken chunks on the skewers while the grill is heating. Cook 4-5 minutes.

Serve with some dipping sauces if you’d like. I used a bottled Thai peanut sauce that I had around.  This one would probably work good:

• 1/3 cup peanut butter
• 3 Tbs hot water
• 1 tsp lime juice
• 2-3 tsp plum sauce

These would work well as appetizers at a party but we served them for dinner, with saffron rice and a green salad.

The tomatoes are so good this time of the year!  And I could eat this sauce on practically anything. Serve it with tortilla chips for an appetizer or with quesadillas. Spoon on some black bean soup. Serve with grilled chicken or fish… the possibilities are nearly endless!

Tonight we used it on some burritos made with some leftover bbq’d steak, black beans, and sliced avocados.

• 2 large beefsteak tomatoes, seeded and chopped
• 1/2 small onion, diced
• a handful of fresh cilantro, chopped
• a few good squirts of lime juice
• 2 small cloves of garlic, minced
• salt to taste

Stir and mix, taste and adjust seasonings as per your tastes.

laying out the wrap

My eldest packed this for lunch for her first day of school. We bought some wraps and spread flavored cream cheese (chive and onion in this case but we often just use the “veggie” one), baby spinach leaves, grated carrots, chopped olives and turkey.

Spread the cream cheese on the wrap first, then lay out the ingredients you like. For mine, I added some Major Grey’s chutney.

Roll it up tightly starting at one the narrow end. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate if you’re going to slice it up.

It’s somehow more appetizing when cut into smaller pieces but that’ s strictly optional.

We serve these as appetizers at large holiday dinners to tide folks over until the big meal. We like to add some spicy stuff to some and keep a few vegetarian. Add sliced red peppers if you like ‘em and any thing else that sounds good!

We packed these for lunch today and my eldest thought they were good. I found them a bit bland but I think it’s because of the wrap we used rather than the ingredients. I like things with a bit more kick to them that she does though so for kids who like things plainer, these are great.

You really don’t need a recipe for this. What you need is really good tomatoes and basil and fresh mozzarella. And olive oil.

I grew the tomatoes and basil and bought the mozzarella and olive oil.

Layer slices of fresh tomatoes and mozarella, then drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sliced slivers of fresh basils (or whole leaves of basil if you really like basil!).

I would have taken a picture but this was getting eaten about as fast as  I could make it!  Hard to guess on quantities so take the following as guidelines rather than a rules.   For about 12 slices from a small baguette:

• 4 – 5 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1 -2 Tbs chopped fresh basil
• 1 -2 tomatoes, seeded and chopped
• 1 green onion, chopped
• 1-2 Tbs capers chopped (or use some black olives)
• 12 thin slices from a French bread baguette

Mix the cream cheese and the basil.

Mix together the tomatoes, onion and capers.

Lay the slices of bread out on a cookie sheet and broil until lightly toasted on one side. Flip the pieces over and spread the cream cheese over the untoasted slices. Put back under the broiler a minute until softened. Top each slice with a spoonful of the tomato mix.

Devour.

Roasted garlic is one of those things that seems to have some underserved mystique about it. The mystique about the flavor is well-founded. It is deliciously soft and smooth and wonderful.  But any mystique about its preparation is not.  Set aside half an hour or so and know that you can roast garlic ahead of time, then cool it, bag it, and store it in the frig for 2-3 weeks.

For each head of garlic, cut the tips off to open up the cloves.  So if you don’t grow garlic, you may wonder “What are the tips?”  The opposite of the root end!  Basically, the cloves grow up into a point and the green shoots rise up out of the ground from the pointy end. So the tips you want to cut off come to a point. (And if you haven’t grown garlic, try it!  it’s so easy! Where I live, in the SF bay area, we plant towards the end of October and harvest towards the end of June. Each year, I set aside my largest heads to replant so I basically haven’t bought garlic in however many years I’ve grown it. I’ve yet to run out before the next crop is ready.)

So preheat the oven to 375 and cut enough off the tips of the bulbs to expose most of the heads. Find a baking dish just large enough to fit all the heads you want to bake. Rub a bit of olive oil along the bottom of the dish and place the heads cut side up in there. Pour just a bit of olive oil across the top of each head.  Bake 20-30 minutes, testing that the cloves are done by poking a toothpick into the exposed side. They should be soft.

Use in dishes like Potato Soup with Roast Garlic, use for a softer garlic bread, make a fantastic baked Brie appetizer by spreading some roast garlic, olive oil and pine nuts across the Brie, barbecue some fish with roast garlic and butter and lemon juice in a foil pan, mix in with some mashed potatoes, …  The options are nearly endless!

What’s your favorite way to use roast garlic?

A neighbor is throwing a Memorial Day wine tasting potluck that starts in about 5 minutes and I’m signed up for appetizers.  I wanted to bring something that would be good at room temperature and didn’t require much last minute fussing. These fit the bill and are delicious and pretty!

Stuffed Radish Roses

First the radishes.  I was told to trim the ends, then cut a deep X in the tops almost down to the bottom, then soak them in ice water for a few hours so they’d open up. They never opened up.    So I just cut some slivers off to provide an opening in the center for the stuffing, which is a cream cheese and blue cheese mix.  This stuffs about 20 radishes.

• 3 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
• 2 Tbs crumbled blue cheese
• 1 Tbs milk (but I actually forgot this !)
• a few dashes of salt, maybe 1/8 of a tsp
• 1 Tbs minced fresh parsley

Stir together then spoon into the center of the radishes.

Pesto Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes

Use your favorite pesto recipe if you have one then mix with the ricotta cheese. Here’s what I did:

• 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 tsp salt
• a few dashes of pepper
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
• 20 cherry tomatoes

Use a food processor to blend together the basil, parsley, Parmesan, salt, pepper, olive oil and garlic. If you don’t have a food processor you can use a blender but will need to stir often. If you don’t have either, chop it all up really really fine.

Mix the pesto with the ricotta.

Make an X in the bottom of each tomato cherry almost to the top. Gently spread it open and scoop out the seeds and pulp. Spoon the pesto-ricotta mix into each tomato.

Now, that’s what I was supposed to do!  But I somehow reversed which stuffing went into which vegetable and so ended up with some pesto-stuffed radishes and cream-cheese stuffed cherry tomatoes. Let me just say, they all taste great so feel free to intermingle as you see fit!

That’s what I get for trying two new recipes under pressure!

Okay, these were a huge hit for Thanksgiving.

Marinated olives a la Mark Bittman.

My lemons all froze last winter and I’m just now waiting for the most pale yellow ones to fully ripen, so rather than the pulp he calls for I just added a few teaspoons of bottled lemon juice. To make up for that, the rosemary was picked from my rosemary bush just before adding to the olives. This was one of two appetizers that got the most compliments.

The other was from Real Simple. It doesn’t seem to be online yet so I’ll post it here.

Olive Oil Dip with Vegetables

1/2 cup green olives, chopped
1/2 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
6 sprigs fresh thyme
1/4 tsp salt

Combine all ingredients and cook over low heat a few minutes. The recipe called for “smashed” garlic cloves but next time I’m chopping them, so you can eat them easier.

Serve them with dipping vegetables of your choice. I used sliced red peppers, jicama, carrots, green onions, and endive.

I had hummus right next to this and frankly the combination of a bit of each was to die for!