These Mini Roast Beef canapes are a beautiful classic, with a slightly adventurous base component. Even with all the exciting and exotic things that are currently being done to vegetables, it’s hard to find a crowd (at least here in Idaho), where beef isn’t a crowd pleaser. My original plan for this appetizer was to […]
Recipes
Thai Shrimp Wontons
First off, apologies for the relapse in photo quality. I apparently did not take any process shots as I worked on these, so all I have for illustration are the phone photos that my husband snapped for me on the day of event…. This one is all about that crispy wonton base. In my first […]
Pickled Pear Canape
Let’s talk about unlikely pickles. As I child, I thought I didn’t like pickles because I detested the dilly slices of sourness that were stuffed into hamburgers and severed in spears on sandwich plates. I always liked my mother’s Bread and Butter Pickles, but I decided for some reason that they weren’t ‘real’ pickles, probably […]
Blue Cheese and Walnut Vol au Vents
Much to my husband’s dismay, I love blue cheese. There’s nothing that’s quite like that hit of creamy, salty, funky complexity that you get when biting into a chunk of it. Out of respect for his (misplaced) blue cheese hatred, I try to avoid spending too much of our weekly food budget on an item […]
Smoked Trout Gougeres
During our trip to Scotland, we found that smoked salmon was delightful as a dinner dish and smoked haddock was the perfect addition to a breakfast plate. But my initial introduction to smoked fish, and therefore my willingness to order it as a larger plate, was in canapes. Since they’re meant to be only a […]
Tomato Melts
One of the best received vegetarian appetizers I have encountered during my time in kitchens, these little bites taste a bit like pizza on toast and a bit like caprese salad. I’ve made many hundreds of them, since they were a permanent resident on the banquet menu of the Colorado restaurant where I spent three […]
Cookbook Roulette #12 – Rum, Detours, Chicken, and Quesadillas
Unlike most dishes in my repertoire, I actually remember the first time I ever made jerk chicken. I was a few months into my two year Culinary Arts Program contract. The work weeks were six days long by default, but the nearest town was forty-five minutes away by car and I didn’t have a car […]
Stubbornly Simple Banana Bread
I try not to be a picky eater. Even though my mother often admits to being choosy about her food and my father has rebelled against casserole donations from well meaning acquaintances, they enforced a fairly firm food code during my childhood. This included the “try at least one bite” policy and the “dinner is […]
Cookbook Roulette #11 – Great Greek Gravy?
I skipped ahead by an assignment last week, but it wasn’t really my fault. I blame the grocery store butcher who was trying to sell a 5 pound piece of 7-bone chuck steak in our small town and eventually had to mark it down to less than $2/pound. I had already picked my recipes for […]
Cookbook Roulette #9 – When Dialects Differ
Have you ever followed etymological click bait and read detailed paragraphs about the invisible differences between American and British usage of what is apparently the same word? I’m referring to things like ‘boot’, ‘bonnet’, ‘jumper’, and ‘biscuit.’ Every once in a while I’ll have a moment of epiphany when I track down another difference and […]