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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
No, Cookbook Roulette isn’t gone. It was just on hold because I was gifted a delightful cooking project that got preference when it came to my spare time for kitchen shenanigans. Also because holidays, which have their own way of consuming discretionary time. For the last month or so I’ve been working away on a […]
Thanksgiving season is visiting us again, with two family meals occurring in the next seven days. Which means there’s fall inspired baking to be done. It seems like we made this pumpkin roll at least once every fall during my childhood, but it’s been absent from the holiday feast for several years now. The lure […]
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 […]
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 […]