Tag: appetizer

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Baked Arancini

baked arancini
baked arancini
Tasty, easy, crispy, and creamy.

We’re not sure about you, but we don’t deep-fry anything. Too messy, and too much trouble. We do pan-fry foods occasionally (Fried Okra, for example), but to fill up a Dutch oven with a gallon of oil, fry enough for two, then do something with the oil afterwards, nope. That’s not for us. Fortunately, you can almost always bake some of those things you’d deep-fry, instead. Yes, we know, they really aren’t the same, and we agree, but, if the choice is between baked or nothing, we’ll, we don’t scratch our heads thinking about that one.

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Fromage en Croûte

fromage en croute
fromage en croute
Rich enough for an entire meal.

Sure, this is similar to the Baked Camembert we posted a little while ago, but it’s more upscale, using a puff pastry crust instead of bread. Since the winter here is rather short, we like to make at least one large batch of puff pastry to freeze and use in the upcoming months (during the summer, it’s just too warm to make puff pastry without the butter melting). Now, we don’t expect everyone will be up for a batch of puff pastry, so if you use a frozen, pre-made, version, we’ll understand.

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Potstickers

whole wheat potstickers
whole wheat potstickers
A tasty appetizer!

Today’s post shows exactly why we head  over to the public library several times a week. We look up books on-line, reserve them, then stop and pick them up when they’re available. Because it’s so easy to get the books, we select books that we might never even have looked at or considered if we were planning to buy books. And, by doing so, we’ve often been pleasantly surprised, and found recipes and ideas that we would never have known of otherwise.

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Whipped Brie Cones with a Balsamic Vinegar Reduction

whipped brie cones
whipped brie cones
Nope, not ice cream!

Sounds fancy, right? Well, you’ve seen how to make the reduction (easy-peasy, right?) and the whipped brie (even easier than the reduction), so now let’s tackle the one part of this appetizer that’s difficult — but not too difficult; it just takes some careful work. Nothing that you can’t handle, though. After all, you’re used to scratchin’ out your food.

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Whipped Brie

whipped brie cones
whipped brie cones
Oh, all right, this is what we’re making.

This is another part of our appetizer that we’re making. Nope, we’re not saying what it is just yet — that’s tomorrow’s post. But, we will say that this is an integral part. And we’ll tell you that the idea of the whipped Brie comes from Thomas Keller. We think it was in The French Laundry Cookbook, but to be honest, we’re not sure; it may have been another of his books. (Part of tomorrow’s recipe uses something from The French Laundry Cookbook, too, so you might want to watch for that).

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Parmesan Cheese Crisps with Goat Cheese Mousse

crisps with goat cheese mousse
crisps with goat cheese mousse
Yummy!

Since this is the first week that we picked up fresh goat cheese from the CSA, we knew we had to do something special with it. We had several weeks to think about it (we generally know about the coming of the cheese three to four weeks in advance), and, during that time, we checked out of the library The French Laundry Cookbook, by Thomas Keller. Naturally, once we saw this recipe, we knew what we’d be making with the first goat cheese of 2014.

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