Browsing articles in "Appetizers & Hors D’oeuvres"
Appetizers & Hors D'oeuvres, Recipe, Vegetarian
Dec 13, 2011
sabrinamodel
7 Comments

Light As Air Goat Cheese Mousse, An Easy Holiday Appetizer

I really need no excuse to have friends over for dinner, cocktails, and conversation. Whether it’s a planned gathering with a big sit down dinner or something more impromptu, I love to have people in my home and feed them.

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I realize that not everyone feels as comfortable in this realm, and that planning parties and festive dishes can fill people with anxiety- even a sense of dread at times. The holiday season can be doubly hard as it brings gatherings, not only in the home but potlucks, cookie exchanges, and food-centric events of every sort.

Even the most seasoned host, the most proficient kitchenista, has to have some dead simple recipes up her sleeve. The best of these seem as though they might be impossible to replicate, sound ridiculously fancy, and yet could be executed by just about anyone. Meet, my new best friend, goat cheese mousse- the simplest most elegant holiday appetizer I’ve made.

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The other night, I was rushing off to a pot luck. yet I had time to create, prepare, & photograph this recipe.  Simultaneously I made cranberry blood orange jam, and candied kumquats from Simply Recipes in just over one hour. This is not because I am some sort of super woman- it’s just that easy!  Oh, and while everything was in the icebox chilling, I was in the bath, getting pretty. Not only was this gorgeous, fluffy, and rich mousse devoured at the party, I looked gorgeous fluffy and rich. Hmmm, maybe a bad analogy. You get the picture.

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What are some of your favorites holiday appetizers? What are your holiday cooking challenges? I’d love to help.

Do you need more appetizer ideas?
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Sabrina

  • INGREDIENTS GOAT CHEESE MOUSSE

  • 1 cup + 4 tablespoons heavy cream separated
  • 10 ounces goat cheese
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • fresh chopped chives (optional- I’d leave these out if serving with the kumquats and increase black pepper)
  • INSTRUCTIONS GOAT CHEESE MOUSSE

  • Chill the bowl and the whisk attachment of a standing mixer in the freezer for at least 15 minutes. Add the cream during the last five minutes
  • Whip one cup of cream on medium speed in a standing mixer until it reaches stiff peaks. Move to another bowl and chill.
  • Add goat cheese and remaining four tablespoons cream to standing mixer and switch to paddle attachment. Beat on medium high speed until  the goat cheese loosens up some (about 5 minutes), and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Increase speed to high and mix for 4-5 minutes scraping down sides once during the process.
  • Very gently, with a wooden spoon, fold in the whipped cream in four increments.
  • Add salt and pepper (and chives if using) to taste. Do not over mix- be careful to keep light and airy, by folding, not stirring.

PS: Make those candied kumquats. Make them now! Make them before kumquats go out of season. If you have a kumquat tree, give me your kumquats and I’ll make them for you (but I get to keep half). Make them with limequats or mandarinquats or anything. Just take my word, these are soooo good. Thank you Elise Bauer for being so clever and making something so darned addictive.

Appetizers & Hors D'oeuvres, Recipe, Vegan, Vegetarian
Nov 11, 2011
sabrinamodel
12 Comments

Fig & Olive Tapenade, An Easy & Elegant Holiday Appetizer

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to entertain. If I like you, you’re invited to my house. I love to have a handful of simple elegant appetizers up my sleeve in case we end up at my place.

 Okay, that ended up sounding racier than it actually is.

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All joking aside, in the last year, I’ve hosted a wedding reception, a chocolate party, several cooking parties, a Latin-themed Thanksgiving, and recently a celebration on what would have been my father’s 68th birthday. This weekend, I am co-hosting a party for my brother’s big 2-9! I am telling you, I love parties.

But sometimes, get togethers are not so planned. Or, maybe they are, but still who doesn’t love a simple appetizer, anyway?

This one can be on the table in 25 minutes. Most of that time is just soaking the figs- so you’re just chatting away, pouring wine, and being the ebullient host or hostess that you are- because I know you’re ebullient!

Speaking of racy parties (or not) and ebullient hosts, let’s talk about figs. What is sexier than a fig? Ripe, bursting with pink flesh and seeds that go “pop”!  Unfortunately, the fig season seems to be winding down right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy them.  In this tapenade, briny kalamata olives are softened by the sweetness of dried figs made succulent again with the help of sauvignon blanc.

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Serve this tapenade with artisan bread, crisp rice crackers, salty manchego cheese, apples, walnuts, and of course a glass of crisp sauvignon blanc.

Note: this is addictive and I will totally forgive you if you skip the party and just make a giant vat of this for yourself.

PS: don’t forget the wine.

  • INGREDIENTS FIG & OLIVE TAPENADE

  •  1 cup kalamata olives- pitted
  • 1 cup dried black mission figs- quartered and stemmed
  • juice of ½ half of of an organic lemon
  • zest of one organic lemon
  • 1 cup sauvignon blanc
  • ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

 

  • INSTRUCTIONS FIG & OLIVE TAPENADE

  • Soak quartered figs in wine for at least a half hour and up to 2 hours
  • Drain figs reserving the liquid
  • Add figs, olives, lemon juice, ¾ of the lemon zest, and about 1 tablespoon of the wine to the bowl of your food processor and pulse until blended.
  • Add more wine if the mixture is too hard to blend. Do not over process. It should still have texture.
  • Finally pulse in olive oil.
  • Put into a pretty serving dish and garnish with the rest of the lemon zest.
  • This tapenade tastes great right away, but even better the next day.
Appetizers & Hors D'oeuvres, Recipe, Sides
Nov 7, 2011
sabrinamodel
18 Comments

Savory Maple Sweet Potato Pie, A Vintage Recipe Remake

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As I come to the close of an amazing weekend surrounded with food bloggers at Food Buzz Fest, I think about how much things have changed in the last year. At the end of my first Food Buzz festival, I had been blogging for only five weeks. I had met hundreds of food bloggers over the weekend, some of whom would become great friends. Some of them will be at my house in just a couple of hours for a food blogger cooking party.

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Shortly after that conference, I met another food blogger, this time on Twitter. She invited me to join a vintage recipe swap. That blogger was the amazing Christianna from Burwell General Store. Though I didn’t have time or gumption to hop on board for the fritter challenge, I joined for the second, “Company Time Lemon Cake”.

The recipe swap is now one year old and it is so very cool. If you’re not familiar with the concept, we put creative and often very modern spins on old recipes from a depression-era cookbook/hymnal that Christianna found in a junkstore. It’s called “All Day Singin’ and a Cookin’ on The Ground”. This time we’re doing maple cake.

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Since I’ve already done a butternut squash cake with maple cream cheese frosting, I thought, maybe I’d do a savory play on this. And, you know how I feel about pastry crust…

Check this out…

  • INGREDIENTS SAVORY MAPLE SWEET POTATO PIE
  • 4 sweet potatoes, baked
  • ½ cup maple syrup
  • 1 teaspoon stone ground mustard
  • 3 eggs lightly beaten
  • 2 links of good quality sausage (I used bacon and herb sausage)
  • 3 leaves of sage) ½ red onion finely chopped
  • 1 recipe pie crust (made with 2 parts unbleached white flour 1 part whole wheat flour)
  • ½ cup maple syrup
  • 2 tablespoons oats
  • 1 tablespoon pecans
  • 1 teaspoon maple sugar or brown sugar
  • 2 teaspoons of stone ground mustard
  • ½ teaspoon dry mustard
  • ½ teaspoon ground pepper
  • sea salt

 

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  • INSTRUCTIONS SAVORY MAPLE SWEET POTATO PIE
  • Bake sweet potatoes in skin for about 35 minutes at 375º on a baking sheet (you can do this the night before)
  • Prepare your pie crust at least one hour before rolling out. (you can do this the night before) Cut into 3.5 inch rounds. You should get about four rounds from each “chubby disc” (8 in all).
  • Press the rounds into muffin tins. Pierce pie crust with a fork on the bottom and sides for venting.
  • Put these in the freezer for 15 minutes. Grease a piece of parchment paper and press into the crust, fill with pie weights to the very top. Parbake the crusts for 12 minutes in a preheated 375º oven. Allow to cool for a bit, and remove the weights from the pies.
  • Scoop flesh from skin of sweet potatoes and mash in a large mixing bowl- discarding skin
  • Beat three eggs lightly and set aside about two tablespoons of the egg for an egg wash.
  • Add the three eggs, the maple syrup, sage, ground mustard, and ½ teaspoon of salt to the sweet potatoes and blend with an immersion blender until very light and fluffy.
  • Remove sausage from casings and sauté with onions. Drain grease.
  • In a small food processor, mix oatmeal, pecans some pepper, dry mustard, sugar, and a pinch of salt.
  • Assemble pies for baking: fill three quarters of the way to the top with sweet potato puree, then top with a bit of sausage, then top with oatmeal crumble.
  • Brush the crust with with egg wash and bake for 15 minutes. Add another coat of the egg wash and go for another 5 minutes. Check for doneness in the form of beautiful golden brown crust. You can add more sage and some chopped chives to serve.

 


Appetizers & Hors D'oeuvres, Recipe, Vegan, Vegetarian
Oct 4, 2011
sabrinamodel
22 Comments

A Life #unprocessed… Coconut Curry Popcorn

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When I started the journey of October #unprocessed, I knew that there would be certain challenges. I mentioned the biggies in my guest post on Eating Rules.

  1. Breakfast and lunch had to be prepped the night before since my husband and I eat both meals out of the house on most days
  2. Avoiding eating out and ordering in by having some easy to make meals in the fridge just in case I was too tired or too hungry to make a full blown dinner

The things I thought less about were the little things. Life, is made up of all those moments in between. Sunday morning, some friends invited us out to brunch. That was easily avoided when they accepted an invitation to our house. I made challah French toast and baked eggs. We drank fresh squeeze OJ and laughed and I almost screwed up the French press YET again.

One thing I couldn’t (and didn’t want to) avoid was an afternoon trip to the movies with my brother. Oh no, I thought, popcorn! I don’t generally eat processed junk food, and anything partially hydrogenated was exorcized from our house about seven years ago, but movie popcorn is my rare exception. I decided I would one up the movie popcorn. I called up my rebel spirit and made some amazing coconut curry popcorn to sneak into the theater with two apples and a few squares of dark chocolate. I did buy a bottled water there- not to assuage any guilty concience, just because I couldn’t fit my Klean Kanteen in my bag with all that awesome haul!

  • INGREDIENTS
  • 4 cups fresh popped popcorn (I did mine on the stove with avocado oil)
  • 2 tablespoons coconut sugar
  • 2 tablespoons garam masala spice
  • ground hot chilies to taste (I used a tablespoon of paper lantern chilies, it was way hot)
  • 2 tablespoons coconut oil
  • Sea salt to taste
  • INSTRUCTIONS
  • Toast coconut sugar, garam masala, and chili powder in a dry skillet for about 2 minutes on medium high heat
  • Add coconut oil and melt over spices, whisking together as it melts, to incorporate. Cook for another couple of minutes to integrate flavor.
  • Toss with fresh popcorn, salt to taste, and sneak into the theater or just eat as a savory/sweet snack any time, any place.

 

Appetizers & Hors D'oeuvres, Main Course, Recipe
Jul 14, 2011
sabrinamodel
37 Comments

A BLT Tart For Bastille Day + a Giveaway For My 101st Post

This post is the second in a series on pies, tarts, and galettes in all their many forms.

We have a winner on the giveaway! Sherry LeBow will win a box of my favorite cooking essentials and kitchen gadgets. Some of the yummies will include my essential kitchen spices!


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Vive la France! Vive la de Tarte à la tomate. It’s an exciting day for two reasons. It’s my 101st post, so I’m going to do a giveway of some of my favorite things- what those are, you’ll just have to wait and find out but they’ll involve edibles and kitchen tools! It’s also Bastille Day, and while I’m sure the French side of my family would very much approve of my newfound pastry making skills, I am not sure how well my latest interpretation of a tomato tart would be received. You see, in France, a tomato tart is just that, a tart with tomatoes perhaps a bit of cheese and some herbs not much beyond that.

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It should be quite obvious that I adore tomato tarts considering the name of this blog (it’s The Tomato Tart in case you were wondering). Why I don’t even correct people anymore when they say, “Oh, hey, you’re The Tomato Tart”. If you ask my, the perfect tomato tart begins with oven roasted tomatoes, which you sprinkle with just a little bit of sea salt. The oven roasting does two things.
it brings out the sweetness of the tart releases some of the tomato’s natural moisture- lessening the chances of a soggy bottom (ew).

My tomato tart took a rather revolutionary turn for the All-American on June day, when I looked at my husband, out of the blue and said “BLT tarts!” and then I whispered oh so gently “with a farm egg on top”. I knew I was making some serious sexy talk right there, and he practically threw me out of the living room and down the hall to the kitchen.

So, has this replaced a traditional tomato tart? No. Are my French ancestors rolling in their graves? Perhaps, the stodgier ones are. My French mother would have loved this, but then BLTs were her favorite sandwich. I’m not sure what my grandmother would have thought, but I suspect she would have adored it. Of course she would have, I made it, and so to her, it would be pefect.

Vive la France! Viva la revolution de Tarte à la tomate.

Makes four tarts

  • INGREDIENTS
  • 1 recipe flaky pastry dough
  • 4 ripe but still firm heirloom tomatoes- try choosing some of different colors and flavors.
  • 8 slices very good quality thick cut bacon
  • a few thin very thin slices of red onion (optional)
  • mixed salad greens chopped very finely- try arugula, mizuna, cress, and lettuces with a lot of flavor
  • 1.5 tsp dried mustard
  • 1.5 tsp maple sugar or brown sugar (muscavado is best)
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • 4 very nice farm eggs at room temp
  • a sprinkling of oats
  • sea salt
  • 1 egg for egg wash + a bit of water

 

  • INSTRUCTIONS
  • Slice tomatoes into thick slices and sprinkle on both sides with sea salt, place on paper towels- flip once after 10 minutes.
  • Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper then place a rack on top of that.
  • Lay the bacon out so that it is not touching, and sprinkle evenly with mustard, sugar, and pepper, then pat it into the bacon.
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"Bacon"

  • Place pan in a cold oven then turn heat to 350º and cook for about 20 minutes or until just under done- about 20 minutes.
  • Turn oven up to 400º
  • Blot on paper towels, and allow to cool before cutting into bite-sized pieces. It is, now, okay to steal a piece.
  • Blot tomatoes to remove excess moisture.
  • Roast tomatoes on the same cookie sheet set up with the rack for 10 minutes. They should be roasted, but not mushy.
  • Allow to cool, and lower oven temp back to 350º. Line a clean cool cookie sheet with parchment paper.
  • Split each disc of chilled pie crust into 2 pieces and form those into rounds. Roll out until about 8 inches round. Sprinkle with some oats an brush with an light egg wash and bit of black pepper. (for complete crust making and rolling instructions go here)

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  • Layer tomatoes slightly overlapping, then onions, and top with bacon, leaving about two inches of dough overlapping. Place on the fresh lined cookie sheet and place in the freezer. Repeat the process with the rest of the dough.
  • When all of the tarts are made, chill for at least 10 minutes, and then brush the crusts with egg wash and sprinkle with black pepper.

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  • Ba
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