Posts Tagged “appetizers”
You can do an awful lot with very few ingredients, Fellow FoodBeest. This recipe is basically flour and water with a little olive oil, cheese and seasoning. It is a two-step cooking process. First you bake the flatbread – it’s a cracker, really. Then you top it and bake it a second time.
It’s summer! And the fresh produce is out. Hooray!
The day before friends came to visit from out-of-town, I spent the morning making caponata, a sweet and sour Sicilian version of ratatouille. ICaponata is one of those foods that is best after resting overnight in the fridge when all the flavors have come together.
Professional chefs know that cooking an egg – properly cooking an egg – is one of the most difficult tests in the kitchen. And the results are shockingly worth the trouble. At my advanced stage in life, I have only just learned how to boil an egg. It’s a very specific technique. And it requires way more attention than mom gave them. But so worth it for great eggs and even better deviled eggs.
The FoodBeest wants you to have a festive holiday season with yummy foods. Here are two good new party foods for you. The first is a seasonal Pear and Cheese Flatbread. The second is a Siracha Mary Shrimp: a cross between a Siracha blood mary and a 21st Century shrimp cocktail. Both are fast and easy. Both are forgiving if you do something “wrong.” Both are finger foods. Both are yummy.
When I started thinking about party food in general and finger party food, in particular, I went combing through cookbooks and the Internet for recipes. I found recipes that were old and new; some were good and others maybe not so good.
Each couple was to prepare and bring one course for the meal: starter, salad, entrée and dessert. To keep things interesting, each couple was be required to include in their dish a “Surprise Required Ingredient” (SRI) selected for them a week before the dinner by another couple attending the dinner.
What if fresh produce could provide food almost as fast – and definitely as good — as the stuff we grab in a bag or a box? It can! Check out this eggplant waffle panini lunch and these blistered Shishito peppers as a snack or hors d’oerve.
Fresh figs show up only for a short time during the summer growing season and they are not cheap. But grilled or caramelized or fresh or wrapped with salty prosciutto, they are a revelation. Figs make gorgeous desserts, sides to grilled meats and even appetizers.
They were so good that I thought about them all the next day. If onion rings were that good, what about all the other stuff that’s good fried? Whole mushrooms came to mind. And zucchini slices. Like regular bar food. And then I started to think about shrimp. And oysters! I love fried oysters!
