Date and proscuitto appetizer

I had the good fortune to spend the weekend at Whistler at my friends place right on the ski hill. This is a little wasted on me as I do not ski, but I can provide food for the more adventurous amongst us, and I have learned that it is critical to have a cold beer and a nibble for everyone as they come down off the slopes.

We had heavy snow that day, this was the view from my window in the morning.

And this was the view when I was waiting for my hungry skiers to come in from the snow.

One of my friends had left the ingredients and instructions for these appetizers, someone in her family had made these and she had thought that they would be a great apres ski nibble. These are quite rich and so though they are small probably 2 per person would be enough.

Home made olive oil crackers

This is something that I have wanted to make for a while. I love the artisan crackers that seem to be everywhere these days, but they are very expensive and really it is just flour and olive oil so how hard could they be?  Anyway I had a Christmas party for work colleagues so I decided to give them a try, and indeed they are not difficult at all. I found the recipe on 101cookbooks.com

3 cups of all-purpose flour (or half semolina flour half regular)
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm water
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
toppings you like – sesame seeds, caraway seeds, rosemary, coarse sea salt

Whisk together the flour and salt. Add the water and olive oil and mix together

before kneading 

Knead on a floured counter-top or in a mixer for 5-7 minutes. The dough should be just a bit tacky - not too dry, not too sticky to work with.

After kneading

Turkey and cranberry balls

Tis the season of potlucks and appetizers and it always a struggle to find something vaguely healthy and tasty that can be made ahead and please a crowd.  To add to all the Christmas cheer we were also having a potluck lunch for a baby shower at work. Often these potlucks are heavy on the starch and desserts, so I thought some lean protein would be a good idea, and this close to Christmas what could be more appropriate than turkey and cranberries.

This made enough for about 35 walnut sized meatballs

2lbs of ground turkey
1 cup of fresh breadcrumbs
1 large garlic clove
1 onion
1 cup of frozen cranberries
1 sprig of fresh sage or parsley

Place the turkey and breadcrumbs in a large bowl.

Place the remaining ingredients in to a food processor.  I added the cranberries after the onion and garlic had been fairly finely chopped up as I did not want to turn them into mush.  Add this mixture to the turkey and breadcrumbs.

It looks like Christmas already

Lemon olives and rosemary almonds

One more party before the holiday season grinds to a halt, so here are a couple of ideas for New Years eve. Both these are quick and easy to make and put out when company is coming. They both take very little time, but look and taste so much better than opening up a package of pre made snack.

You could use any type of olives with the exception of those tasteless canned black olive slices that are put on pizza. This time I used large pitted green, but I have used mixed olives, black olives and even sun dried Moroccan olives.

Lemon marinated olives

2 cups of drained olives.
1 lemon
Handful of parsley finely chopped
1/4 cup of good extra virgin olive oil.

Place the drained olives in a bowl Grate the lemon zest on top and then cut the lemon in half.  Slice half the lemon in to thin slices and add to the olives.  Squeeze the juice of the remaining lemon half on top.  Add the parsley and olive oil and stir in. Sometimes I add crushed coriander seeds and finely chopped chili.

Marinate in the fridge for a couple of hours and serve at room temperature.

Quick easy and taste like you spent hours preparing.

California spring rolls

I had seen this idea on pinterest, though I did no more than think, what a good idea, I love the flavours of california rolls, but could do with out the rice.  So making spring rolls with the california roll ingredients would give you the best of both worlds.

I figure you could use prawns or crab meat, I used fake crab meat I am afraid, but actually they tasted delicious and several people said that they preferred them to the regular spring rolls.

6 spring rolls
6 rice wrappers
small romain lettuce sliced
1 avocado peeled and sliced
1 cup of shredded crab or prawn sliced
3 tablespoons of japenese mayonnaise

Gather all the ingredients and a large bowl of cold water.

Dip one rice wrapper in the cold water and wait about 15 seconds until the wrapper has started to feel a little less like plastic and is pliable.  It will continue to soak up water as you use it.  Put a little lettuce in the centre of the wrapper top with avocado a drizzle of mayonnaise and top with the crab.

Wonton wrapper appetizer

It was our annual Christmas caroling party on Saturday, so I spent Saturday morning looking for inspiration and ideas for new appetizer recipes.  There are some tried and true,items that I make over and over but it always good to try something new.  I found this recipe  for Wonton Wrapper Appetizers

I thought it looked good, easy and most of it can be made ahead just thrown in the oven for a few minutes before serving, these are all important criteria for appetizer recipes. I do not want to be a slave to the kitchen when everyone else is having fun, anyway the kitchen is always so full of people.

16 pieces


1/2 pound of sausage meat (I used Italian)
1/2 onion chopped or equivalent of green onion
16 won ton wrappers
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded cheese


In a frying pan, cook sausage over medium heat until no longer pink; drain if necessary. Stir in onions, cook for a couple more minutes and set aside.

Lightly brush the won ton wrappers with olive oil and press them into miniature muffin cups.

Winter bruschetta

One of my favourite appetizers is bruschetta, but the tomatoes in the winter, though better than they used to be, are just not as flavourful as the tomatoes in August.  So I thought if I slow roasted them first it would help.  I was correct this mixture had a very intense flavour and made a wonderful bruschetta.

2 cups of cherry tomatoes sliced in half
1 small sweet onion or red onion finely chopped
small bunch of basil chopped
2 tablespoons of olive oil

Lay the tomatoes on a parchment lined cookie sheet.

Cook in a 250 oven for around 2 hours, or the length of time it takes you to go grocery shopping for the party that night. The tomatoes will look shrivelled slightly caramelized  but still have some juice in them.

Mini mushroom tatin

Saturday night was our first entertaining of the holiday seas and I was looking for new ideas for appetizers. I saw the idea for these on Martha Stewart's website, I find that there are often some good ideas there, but I do not follow the recipes, lets be honest I hardly ever follow a recipe. I have called them mushroom tatin as they are made using the same method as the classic french tarte tatin.

Enough for 24 appetizers


2 cloves of garlic sliced
1 onion chopped

2 tablespoons of olive oil
6 cups of sliced mushrooms
sprig of fresh thyme
1/4 cup of sherry or wine
11/2 packages of puff pastry

Saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil a large frying pan until the onion is transparent, then add the mushrooms

Saute stirring frequently until the mushrooms have given off their liquid, then add the sherry or wine and thyme.  Continue to cook stirring occasionally until the liquid has all been absorbed. taste for seasoning and add salt and a good amount of pepper.

Generously butter 24 muffin tins then spoon the mushroom mixture in dividing it evenly amongst them.

Now cut rounds of puff pastry that exactly fit the top of the muffin tin.

Baked cassava chips

I am taking a little break from my Ecuadorian trip to post a couple of recipes that might be useful over the holiday season.  This first one is related to Ecuador, as cassava is a staple of the Ecuadorian diet and we had it in many forms on our trip.  But one of my favourites was cassava chips.

Obviously these would normally be deep fried, but as I usually try to avoid deep frying in my kitchen, for so many reasons, I decided to bake them. This did work, but it requires vigilance as they can burn in an instant. So you do need to be hovering around the oven while they are cooking, and not get distracted by the Internet or a phone call, as so often happens in my kitchen.

The cassava is a little intimidating when you buy it, but I had seen them cook cassava in the Amazon and so it had been a little demystified for me.

This cassava was not nearly as fresh as the one in the Amazon which we saw dug up and cooked with in an hour, but it is what is available in Canada in December.  There was a wax coating on it which I have read is for preserving it.  So obviously the first thing to do was peel it, which I did with a sharp knife as the peel seemed to be too thick for my potato peeler.

Then I cut it in to 2 large chunks and placed it in a bowl of cold water. This is what I saw the woman do in Ecuador, so I imagine it would discolour quickly if not covered in water.

Frisée Salad with Lardons and coddled Eggs

Saturday was Bastille Day, so there was nothing else to do but throw on tablecloth from Provence and cook a french meal.  Helen from work and her husband were keen to have a traditional french meal with several courses including hors doeuvres, salad, soup, main, dessert and cheese.  So I tried to oblige, though due to the heat I nixed the soup. The first dish that we made was my favourite French salad, a warm salad with a poached egg on top.

We ended up being 13 for dinner, so poaching that many eggs all to be ready at the same time, seemed to be too hard, so we (Helen I think) came up with the idea of coddling in muffin tins instead.

This fed 13 but I will give ingredients for 4 as that seems like a more normal quantity. Traditionally this would have been done with just frisee lettuce which can stand up to the warm dressing, but we did add some other greens to stretch it out and that was fine too.


6 ounces salt pork or thick-cut bacon slices
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
Butter to line the muffin tins
4 large eggs

1 head of Frisee lettuce

Cut the salt pork into small strips (lardons) and fry slowly until they have given off most of their fat and are crispy.

Just starting to cook the lardons

I am afraid I did not get a picture of the cooked lardons, but they were crispy and brown and swimming in the fat that they had given off.

Coronation chicken

Coronation chicken is a dish that was created for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth the second in 1952, so what better dish to make for a picnic on her Diamond Jubilee. This is something my mother made, unfortunately I did not have her recipe, but after a little research I found one at http://britishfood.about.com/ which I only adapted a little.

Packed and ready to go

1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp mild curry powder

1 tbsp red wine
¼ pint chicken stock
Juice of ½ a lemon
1 cup of mayonnaise
4 tbsp apricot jam
2 tbsp cream
4 chicken breasts cooked, and diced

Cook the onion in the olive oil until it is softened and transparent, add the curry powder or paste and cook for a couple of minutes.

Salmon Wellington

We were invited to go to Goodwood races with an old school friend and we were to bring a picnic.  I felt that this had to be a high class picnic not just some sandwiches, a bag of chips and a couple of scotch eggs, so Jacky suggested we make something with salmon. Between us we came up with this idea for a salmon wellington.

2 shallots or one small bunch of green onion
1 clove of garlic chopped
1 tablespoon of olive oil
4 cups of mushrooms chopped finely
1/4 cup of chopped parsley
4 portions of salmon fillet
1 package of puff pastry

In a small saucepan sweat off the shallot and garlic in the olive oil until it is transparent, then add the mushrooms. Cook stirring fairly often until the mushrooms have collapsed down and all the liquid has been cooked out, about 10 minutes. Add a good grind of black pepper and some salt, I do think mushrooms like black pepper.

Thai Salad rolls

Thai was the theme for Sunday night poker last week, so I decided to take Thai style salad rolls. I avoided eating spring rolls for years as they just did not appeal to me for some reason. Any way I made some with a friend a couple of years ago and now I am a convert.

These are easy to make ahead and great for a take along pot luck or putting out at home for a get together.  I have made them in the past with seafood, but this was to be a Thai meal and when I researched on the Internet it appears that in Thailand they traditionally use chicken. You could also make them vegetarian replacing the chicken with tofu.

3 chicken breasts sliced into strips
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
2 tablespoons of fish sauce
Juice of one lime
1 red chili sliced or replace with hot sauce
1 package of large dried rice wrappers
1/2 package of thin dried rice noodles
1/2 cup of fresh basil roughly chopped
1/2 cup of fresh mint
1/2 cup of cilantro
1 red pepper sliced thinly
1 bunch of green onions sliced long ways
1 romaine lettuce sliced

Mix the brown sugar fish sauce and lime juice together and add the chicken and set aside. While you prepare the remaining ingredients.

Add the rice noodles to a pot of boiling water, then turn off the heat let the noodles cook in the hot water for a few minutes until they are soft and cooked through, then drain and rinse well in cold water to stop them from sticking.

This is what the noodles look like before cooking

Stir fry the marinaded chicken strips in a tablespoon of oil.

San Antonio guacamole

On our recent visit to San Antonio Texas we went to a restaurant called boudros on the river walk and the waiter made a guacamole table side that was the best guacamole that I can ever remember having. So I decided to try and replicate it for the New Years party.

Included in this recipe is what the waiter described as "fire roasted tomatoes and pepper" I don't remember what pepper it was, though I do know that it was not jalapeno, but up on the sunshine coast in December that was all we could get so that is what I used. Also I did not have a fire in which roast them so I had use a hot oven.  Even with these changes actually it turned out very similarly to the original and well worth the little effort.

10 campari tomatoes
2 jalapeno pepper
1/4 red onion chopped
3 ripe avocado's
Juice of two limes
juice of one orange
bunch of cilantro
salt and pepper

Up to a couple of days ahead "fire roast" the tomatoes and jalapeno pepper by placing in a foil lined roasting tin and roasting in a 450 oven.

Cook until the skins of the tomatoes and peppers are starting to blacken about 1/2 hour to 3/4 of an hour.

Bacon and onion marmalade appetizers

I saw this on Patio Daddio's blog, and I could not resist giving it a go, I mean how can you go wrong with caramelized onions and bacon together?

So while we up at Pender Harbour I made the marmalade and the crostini, so that on New years day I just had to put them together to come up with a delicious appetizer.

Ingredients for the onion and bacon marmalade
4 Yellow onions, halved and sliced
4 slices Thick bacon
1/4 cup Sherry vinegar (white wine vinegar is fine)
2 sprigs Thyme, stripped from the stem

Fry the bacon in a large frying pan, removing it when it is crisp.

OK I know that there are more than 4 slices, we had taste the bacon to make sure it was alright and it was so we had another piece.

Add the onion to the bacon fat, I poured some of it off as there was a lot left in the pan.

Oat cakes

The first time I took my husband back to the old country I introduced him to oat cakes with cheese, he loved them.  Back then you really could not buy them in British Columbia except perhaps a speciality store, so whenever I came back from England I bought him a package or two of Oat cakes.

They are one of my favourite foils for cheese, and these days with the ever shrinking world, you can pick them up at almost any grocery store.  But when I found a recipe for making them in a cook book celebrating the food of London I had to have a go at making them.

11/3 cups of medium ground oatmeal (I used instant)
1 tablespoon of flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt
11/2 tablespoons of melted butter
1/2 cup of warm water, or as needed

In a bowl stir together the dry ingredients, using a wooden spoon stir in the melted butter and warm water. At first it seems impossible that this will turn in to a dough.

Valdosta Pecans

This is a recipe that I got from my good friend and fellow blogger Cottagers wife she made these and brought them over one evening when they were here for dinner.  And my husband just loved them, he loved them so much he tried making them.  Now my husband is a very good person with many talents, but cooking is not one of them.  But after two attempts and a little prodding in the right direction he made some very tasty pecans.

So now that the holiday season is here I thought they would make a great addition to the snacks and appetizers at our annual carolling party.


SAUCE
2 Tbsp orange juice
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp white sugar
2 Tbsp butter (best) or margarine
Pinch of salt

ADD IN
1 and 1/2 cups whole pecans
1 tsp finely grated orange peel aka zest
1 tsp course salt
1/2 cup dried cranberries

METHOD
Heat oven to 300 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper

In a medium sauce pan combine sauce ingredients and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly until bubbling. Cook one minute longer, then remove from heat.

Home made crackers

I am having a Christmas party this Sunday (I know it is awfully early) and so I decided rather than going out and buying crackers for my cheese and quince paste platter I would make my own.  I had seen these being made when I was lying on the couch a couple of weeks ago sick and unable to do anything but watch the Food Network.  I found the recipe from Laura Calder on the food network web page. I have of course changed it a little but not materially

2/3 cup butter
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
1 egg
2 to 3 tablespoons cold water

Put the butter, sugar, salt, water and egg in a food processor and mix until the ingredients have formed a smooth paste.

Then add the dry ingredients and pulse a few times until the mixture looks like course bread crumbs,
do not overwork. Then pour into a bowl.