Archive for the 'cheese' Category
We went to a small party tonight to say goodbye to R, who is moving to the west coast. It was warm enough for a barbecue – Italian sausages in hoagie buns, nachos with guacamole, and a baked spinach and artichoke dip I brought along. (Unbaked for transport, then popped in the oven for 20 minutes when it came time to eat it.) Tortilla chips would have gone well – typically it’s served with tortillas in restaurants – but by the time the dip was baked we had eaten all but the broken ones with the guacamole. (And by “we” I mean “me”.)
Most spinach & artichoke dips have loads of mayo, sour cream and Parmesan cheese; I trimmed this down quite a bit, so it still works without weighing you down too much.
Baked Spinach & Artichoke Dip
If you don’t like your dip chunky, put everything in the food processor and pulse it until it’s as smooth as you like.
1 14 oz. can artichoke hearts, drained and finely chopped
1 package frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1/2 cup light sour cream or plain yogurt
1/2 an 8 oz. pkg. light cream cheese (not fat free)
1/4 cup light mayonnaise
1/4 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
1 clove of garlic, finely crushed
salt & pepper
1/2 cup grated part-skim mozzarella and/or an extra 2-4 Tbsp. grated Parmesan
Preheat oven to 375F.
If you like, pulse the artichoke hearts and spinach with the sour cream or yogurt in a food processor until roughly chopped. In a bowl, mash together the cream cheese, mayo, Parmesan cheese, garlic and salt and pepper until well blended. Stir in the artichoke-spinach mixture and spread in a shallow baking dish. Sprinkle with grated mozzarella or more Parmesan cheese. (The photo above is just Parmesan.)
Bake until heated through and bubbly, about 25 minutes. Serve warm with tortilla chips or sliced soft, crusty baguette.
(The leftovers would have made a tasty omelette filling, had there been any.)
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September 13 2008 | appetizers and cheese and vegetarian | 8 Comments »
Today I wanted baked pasta. Lazy lasagna or something of that genre; tomato sauce, crispy cheese, maybe some spinach or sausage, stocky pasta you can pick up with a fork, like ziti, which is hard to find (unless you’re at the Italian market) so I usually substitute penne.
I had a container of spreadable black pepper goat cheese with a looming expiry date, and thought that instead of dropping spoonfuls of ricotta on my baked/faked lasagna, I’d drop bits of that. I went to get out the penne and remembered my vow to not buy any more pasta until I used up the collection of unusual shapes I always feel inclined to buy and then don’t know what the (H E double hockey sticks) to do with.
I was penneless. And truthfully, sick of the whole wheat rotini that has become W’s Puppy Chow. So I pulled out a bag of pennoni giganti (giant penne) and decided to just use it. They resembled mini cannelloni, so I imagined myself piping a lovely goat cheese mixture into each one (using a ziploc bag with the corner snipped off) and baking them topped with tomato sauce and cheese.
After boiling them, they were twice their dry size and sat there like big slippery tubes of calamari. You can imagine how gracefully I filled them with a runny mixture of goat cheese, egg, spinach, sautéed zucchini and garlic. It’s a good thing we have a dog.
I quickly realized that pure goat cheese would be far too intense as a filling on its own – not like ricotta – and so tried to loosen it up with an egg and add some wilted spinach. Bagged spinach, by the way, is perfect to throw into the freezer - when you need chopped spinach you just crush the bag with your hands and it shatters, saving you the chopping. The second half of my bagged spinach always ends up in the freezer. So this time it ended up in a hot skillet with a bit of oil, and cooked down to practically nothing, so I panicked, rooted through my fridge and came out with a zucchini (roasted red peppers or sun dried tomatoes would have been good too), chopped it and sautéed it with a couple cloves of garlic, and added that too. And a spoonful of pesto. I just needed to bulk it up enough to fill the $%#!%@!! giant penne.
So I filled them as best I could, laid them awkwardly in a baking dish, poured tomato sauce over top, and grated part-skim mozzarella and Parmesan over that. Then baked it at 350 until it was bubbly and golden.
It turned out to closely resemble a lasagna; I could cut it into squares, even. Mike thought it was superb. And although I took the longest route possible to get my baked pasta (high-maintenance lasagna you might say; the opposite of lazy) it was exactly what I wanted for dinner.
The End.
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September 10 2008 | cheese and one dish and pasta and vegetarian | 12 Comments »
Sorry, quesadillas again. We narrowly averted Inglewood Pizza by a busy signal. Good thing there was a hockey game.
It still surprises me that often I still have no idea what’s for dinner at 6:20 at night. Quesadillas are a common stand-by, as you may have noticed; one step up from the grilled cheese sandwich, and assembled out of virtually anything you have around, provided some of it is cheese. I keep whole wheat flour tortillas in the freezer primarily for these, and also for peanut butter banana wraps. They have saved dinner (and lunch, and breakfast) on many a busy occasion.
Tonight, they were constructed out of black beans (there’s always a can on the shelf), finely chopped tomato and thin slices of jalapeño havarti I got at the cheese market last weekend. Bonus: I use quesadilla wedges to scoop up copious amounts of chunky salsa, thus boosting my lycopene intake.
And here’s another idea: when camping, you can make s’mores quesadillas with chocolate chips and mini marshmallows, either in a skillet on the Coleman stove, or wrapped in foil and tossed in the hot coals. A sliced banana in there is yummy, too.
Or just stick with the cheese.
Tomorrow night, I’ll be downtown at dinnertime for the June First Thursday. If anyone wants to join our group of 12 (so far!) to go restaurant and gallery-hopping, meet us on the Teatro patio at 5pm tomorrow night! (Free drinks and snacks, and deals on others!)
June 04 2008 | appetizers and cheese and sandwiches and snacks and vegetarian | 3 Comments »
OK, we didn’t actually eat it for dinner, but we made it, at around dinnertime, expending any energy reserves that might have been otherwise used to make dinner.
When I told the winners of the in-home cooking class we auctioned off for the Food Bank that we could make whatever they wanted, they said they wanted to make fresh mozzarella… did I know how to do that? Sure, of course we can do that! (I reply, hastily calling my Italian friend Emily Richards in Toronto.)
She had some advice, but hadn’t made it for awhile, so I dug around on the net for a formula, we did it, and it was simple. And fun. And took less than half an hour. To make cheese! Who would have thought it was so easy? All you need is good-quality milk, citric acid (available in the bulk section at Community Natural Foods) and rennet tablets, which are 10 for $2.99 and you can find beside the yogurt, also at Community. So when Emily (another one, my niece this time) was here for the day today and wanted to cook something, we made mozzarella to celebrate the fact that she’s apparently not lactose intolerant after all.
This site provides instructions along with a good series of photos that helped us along, but there were a few notable differences: first, we heated the milk to 100F rather than 90F, misunderstanding that it was supposed to start to curdle at that point. Then we had to wait for closer to 10 minutes after adding the rennet, and even then it was far from a solid mass you could slice with a knife, but you may see different results.
But here’s the gist (we halved the recipe):
Dissolve 1 tsp. citric acid into 2 L of cold milk (we used homo), briskly stirring it with a whisk in a largish pot. Set it over medium-low heat and warm until it reaches 100F, or just slightly warmer than body temperature. Remove from heat.
Crush 1/8 of a rennet tablet and dissolve into 2 Tbsp. cool water. Add this in a thin stream, whisking constantly, to the warmed milk. Stir for about a minute, then stop. Let it sit for 10 minutes.
Using a slotted spoon, scoop out the curds into a small microwave-safe bowl, pressing out as much of the whey as you can.
Microwave for 1 minute (this will coax out a little more whey; just pour it off) and then plop it out onto a clean countertop and start to fold and stretch it. It will be almost too hot to handle, but will cool to warm quickly.
Pull and stretch it until it’s smooth, then shape into a ball and put in a bowl of cold water until firm.
Cool, huh?
Oh right, dinner. Having had our appetites for gooey cheese all worked up, we made quesadillas – really the same as grilled cheese sandwiches – with whole wheat tortillas folded over leftover shredded chicken and strips of roasted red pepper from the freezer, and whatever bits of cheese we could gather from the fridge.
March 31 2008 | cheese and vegetarian | 10 Comments »
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