Chipotle Pepper Hummus

When we have extra cans of chickpeas in the pantry, I can't help but think: hummus. We tried our hand at baked falafel (not bad, but not great), and roasting them is on my "To-Cook" list, but hummus is always my go-to. Especially considering I had some delicious chipotle peppers left over from Shredded Beef Tacos just calling my name from the fridge. They're not exactly an easy ingredient to incorporate into other things, but hummus? Hello blank slate! They add a great smokey flavor without too much heat.

I posted a basic hummus recipe a few months ago, and of course you could just add a couple peppers to that one, but we also had tahini paste chilling in the fridge, so I altered the recipe slightly to use it.

Oh, I also did this.

I had some time so I squeezed those little peas right out of their casings (I mentioned this in my first hummus post but didn't take the time to do it). The process is really easy; just squeeze a chickpea gently between your thumb and forefinger, and the casing will slip right off. Some might even come off when you rinse them. I have to be honest though, peeling all these chickpeas took me at least 30 minutes, which is a lot of time to spend on something so simple. But the benefit is silky smooth hummus, just like you'd buy off the shelf. Plus the process gives you the same kind of reward that rubbing dry dough off your fingers does, or peeling glue off your hands.

Chipotle Pepper Hummus

Ingredients:
2 cloves garlic
24 oz canned chickpeas, drained, rinsed, and peeled
3-4 Tbsp tahini
3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
Juice from half lemon
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4- 1/2 cup water

Directions:
1. Place the garlic cloves in the bowl of a food processor and process until minced.
2. Add the remaining ingredients, except the water.
3. Process until the consistency is thick but smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.
4. Add half the water and process. Continue to add water until you reach your desired consistency.

Recipe Notes:

• I like my hummus a little thicker, so I only added about 1/4 cup hummus.
• Leaving out the chipotle peppers will give you a great classic hummus.
• Peeling the chickpeas is optional. Leave them just as they are from the can and you'll still end up with a delicious hummus. It will just have more texture.

Spanikopita

In order to understand this conversation, you have to know what Sfinge is. Sfinge (pronounced SFEENJ. It rhymes with...nothing) is something Dan's Italian family has been making for decades. It's a dense, savory bread filled with meat, usually ground beef, and provolone cheese, and topped with lots of Oregano. Don't try to google it; you'll just come up with cream puffs. No really, you will. 

Me, on the phone with Dan: How long do we have to keep the sfinge around?
Dan: Oh, yeah. It's probably not that great anymore.
Me: Question- Considering that sfinge is chocked full of meat and cheese, why doesn't it have to be refrigerated?
Dan: Well, you see, sfinge is a unique combination of special ingredients that have evolved to a point that they don't need to be refrigerated.
Me: ...OK. (Cutting myself a piece and starting to eat it)
Dan: On second thought, maybe you can throw it away.
Me: (Silent chewing.)
Dan: Or maybe you should feed it to the dogs first and see how they do.
Me: (Feeds piece to Dexter who gobbles it up and sprints away.) He seems fine. (Cuts self bigger piece.)

After a few minutes I decided week-old sfinge isn't that bad, and that my stomach felt fine, and proceeded to eat two of these.

So now if I die of food poisoning we'll never know the real cause. Just kidding. These are totally safe to eat and delicious. It would definitely be the sfinge.

Spanikopita
Yield: 2 servings (but this recipe is easily doubled)

Ingredients:
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 small onion (about 1/3 cup), small diced 
1 clove garlic, minced
9 oz box frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 Tbsp fresh dill, chopped
1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled
salt and pepper
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed overnight in the fridge
Egg wash (1 egg beaten with a little milk or water, plus a pinch of salt)

Directions:
1. Place a medium saute pan over medium heat. Add the oil, enough to mostly coat the bottom of the pan.
2. Add the onions and cook until translucent, 4-5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another minute, or until fragrant. Add the spinach and dill, mixing just to combine.
3. Transfer the filling to a bowl and add feta cheese. Taste and add salt and pepper to your liking. Add the egg and mix to combine. Allow the filling to cool at least to room temperature.
4. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. On a lightly floured board, roll out the puff pastry into a larger rectangle, until it is about 1/4'' thick. Cut the dough in half lengthwise. Cut each long piece into 3 equally-sized squares.
5. Place about 2 heaping tablespoons of filling into the center of each square. Brush the edges of each square lightly with egg wash. Fold the dough over, corner to corner, creating a triangle. Press down firmly to seal the edges with your fingers or a fork.
6. Place all the squares on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Brush with egg wash. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown. Allow to cool slightly, and serve warm.

Recipe Notes:

• Spanikopita is traditionally made using phyllo dough instead of puff pastry, but puff is what I had in my freezer and can be a little easier to work with.
• I like to taste the filling before adding any salt because feta can be very salty and usually I find I don't need to add any. Just remember to taste it before adding the raw egg!
• You can make these squares as large or as small as you want. Serve smaller ones as an appetizer or larger ones for lunch or a vegetarian dinner.
• I had a little filling leftover so I added the extra egg wash to it and baked it in greased mini muffin cups for about 10 minutes. 

 

Ta-da! Mini crust-less quiches!

Pate a choux: Gougeres

Sometimes things don't go exactly as planned.

For example, an hour before your mother and her friends are set to arrive at your house for cocktails, your boyfriend's dog tries to eat your brand new coasters. Although you're able to save them, you are not as successful when 30 minutes later, at a crucial moment in the pate a choux process, he eats all your pretty new cocktail napkins.

Thankfully, you get the gougeres in the oven only to find out, 15 minutes later, that a convection oven is in fact, not the same as a regular oven, and you never should have turned it off because it's cooled down way, way too much, and they're still raw. By now, your mother should be arriving any minute. You crank the oven back up and pray. And decide to open wine. Of course, the cork gets stuck halfway out of the bottle, so you yank it and break it in half just as you peer your guests parking outside.

In a last ditch effort to save the only bottle of merlot you have, you hurriedly screw the corkscrew into the bottom half of the cork and pull with all your might, hoping and praying it doesn't fall into the bottle. Seconds pass and finally the cork pops out just as the doorbell rings... and your smoke alarm goes off. Using parchment paper on that second sheet pan was clearly a mistake.

Thankfully, even with this comedy of errors, my gougeres did finally finish baking just a few minutes after everyone arrived, and got rave reviews. Making pate a choux can definitely be tricky (remember the first time I tried it?), but this is the best technique I've ever used. I get great results every time. I included a lot of pictures throughout the recipe to hopefully help you understand how your dough should look at each step. Pate a choux is incredibly versatile but once you master the basic technique, you'll be jonesing to try eclairs, profiteroles, and cream puffs.

Gougeres
Yield: 40-45 gougeres

Ingredients
3/4 cup water
6 Tbsp butter, cubed
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp gran sugar
3/4 cup bread flour, sifted
5 oz or 1 1/4 cups grated cheese, divided (gruyere, pecorino romano, parmesan, etc.)
1/4 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp cayenne Pepper
2-4 eggs
Sea salt

For the egg wash, whisk the following ingredients in a small bowl:
1 egg
1 yolk
1 tsp water
1/2 tsp salt

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Line 2 sheet pans with silpats and set aside.
2. Combine water, butter, salt, and sugar in a medium pot. Place over medium to med-low heat. The butter should melt just as the water starts to boil.

 I cut my butter into about 12 pieces 

3. Add the flour all at once to the pot and increase the heat to med-high. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon for about one minute, or until a thin film forms on the bottom of the pot and you have a thick paste.

 This is how it looked still in the pot, but ready to be....

Transferred to my mixing bowl

4. Transfer dough to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and turn to medium speed. Add 1 cup of cheese while the dough is still warm. Continue to paddle the dough until the steam rising from the bowl has almost dissipated (there should still be some wisps).
5. Add the paprika and cayenne pepper. Begin adding the eggs, one at a time. Allow the egg to completely incorporate before adding the next. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary. After adding 2 eggs, begin to test the batter. Remove the bowl from the mixer and run your index finger through the batter creating about an inch-deep trench. The trench should fill in slowly. If it does not fill in at all, return the bowl to the mixer and add an additional egg. Repeat this process until the dough passes the "trench" test.

 My trench had just started to close

 And a few seconds later, it looked like this

6. When your dough is the right consistency, transfer it to a piping bag fitted with a medium-sized plain tip. Hold the bag about an inch from the silpat-lined pans and pipe mounds of dough. They should be about an inch tall with a diameter about the size of a quarter.

7. Brush each mound very lightly with egg wash. I also use the brush to dab down any dough that has a point at the top. Sprinkle the tops with the remaining cheese, a few flakes of sea salt, and a dash of paprika, if desired.

7. Bake the dough for 15 minutes at 500 degrees. Lower the oven to 350 and bake until the choux is puffed and golden, another 10-15 minutes. To make sure the puffs are cooked through, remove one from the pan. The bottom should be a nice golden brown and the cracks in the dough should no longer be white. Serve immediately or cool and freeze.

Recipe Notes:

• It's important to use a silpat instead of parchment paper because the paper will burn at such a high oven temperature. But you'll use the silpat again and again; it's worth the investment!
• As you're adding eggs and testing the batter, keep in mind that you can always add half an egg instead of a whole one. For example, if your trench begins to fill in or is filling very, very slowly, scramble an egg and just add half of it at a time, testing in between.
• If using a convection oven, turn the oven off once you've put the dough in to bake. Leave the dough for 15 minutes, turn the oven back on, reduce the heat to 350, and continue to bake as directed.
• To clean the film from the bottom of the pot, return it to the stove over medium-high heat. Once warm, use a wooden spoon to scrape the film away before washing.
• To reheat the gougeres from frozen, place them in a preheated 350 degree oven for 5-7 minutes or until just warm.

Smokey Spiced Cashews

My mom and her friends are taking a mini roadtrip this weekend, driving from Virginia Beach to Charlottesville on Friday, and then to Richmond on Saturday. My mother not-so-subtly suggested I have them over for drinks Saturday night before we all go out to dinner. I think it went something like this-
Her: "We should come to your house for drinks on Saturday night."
Me: "Oh...Ok."

It's not that I don't want to host them here for pre-dinner cocktails; on the contrary, I'm really looking forward to it. But the way my mother phrased it was less of a suggestion and more of a commandment. I think it's making her a little anxious that I've been living in this house for five months and she's yet to see the inside. Up until now she's only gotten a glimpse of the outside when she visited for Mother's Day and my whole family insisted we do a drive-by, which included driving down the alley that's behind our back yard. Of course the home owners (and my landlords) who were still here at the time, out on the back deck, but thankfully they didn't notice the suspicious SUV moving at a glacial pace past their property.

Of course, she may have insisted because I had thoughtlessly forgotten to invite them, even though they're generously including me in their Saturday dinner and Sunday brunch plans. I honestly can't remember how much time had passed between her telling me about the trip and us firming up plans for the weekend, but in case it was my faux pas, I've been busily preparing my house for their visit. This means scrubbing it from top to bottom (quite a feat since I hardly ever clean. Quick tangent: I hate to clean but love, love, love having a clean house. The answer to this would be to hire someone else to clean my house, but Dan doesn't think it's "appropriate" for people in their twenties to have maids. Damn him and his upper-middle class guilt.), and cooking up some yummy hors d'oeuvres for our own personal happy hour. First up- these jazzed up sassy nuts.

Cashews are one of the only kinds of nuts I actually love. Other kinds I can tolerate- peanuts, almonds, hazelnuts, sometimes pecans, but never walnuts. I really hate walnuts, especially when I unexpectedly find one lurking in the middle of a chocolatey fudgy brownie. Talk about a buzz kill. Roasted salted cashews are perfectly delicious on their own, but when I came across this idea months ago, I bookmarked it thinking it would be perfect for the holidays.

Whether you're hosting a holiday dinner party, invited to a cocktail party, or want to include something savory in your annual cookie baskets, these are it. Easy and quick to make, pack them up in a simple mason jar or pour them into a pretty bowl for pre-Thanksgiving cocktail hour.

And don't worry, these may look like spicy enough to singe your eyebrows off, but they're very mild. Remember they're spiced not spicy.

Smokey Spiced Cashews
Yield: Approx. 4 cups

Ingredients:
3/4 tsp chili powder
3/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, or to taste
20 oz salted whole cashews
1 Tbsp olive oil

Directions:
1. In a small bowl, combine all spices and mix together with a fork or small whisk.
2. Heat a large pan over medium heat. Add the cashews and reduce heat to low.
3. Drizzle olive oil over nuts and toss to coat. Add spice mixture and toss to coat nuts evenly.
4. Continue to heat nuts just until warm. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. Remove from heat and serve or store in an airtight container at room temperature.

Recipe Notes:

• If you buy unsalted nuts, be sure to add at least 1/2 tsp salt to the spice mixture.
• Yes, it's important to use smoked paprika instead of regular. It's what gives these nuts their great smokey flavor.
• You can definitely sub in different nuts- I think peanuts or almonds would be great, or you can do a mixture of different kinds.
• Be sure to taste as you go. Older spices won't have as much flavor, so you might need to compensate by adding a few more dashes of this or that.

Adapted from Ina Garten via How Sweet it Is

How to Cook (and eat) an Artichoke

We all love spinach artichoke dip, yes?

But have you ever eaten a real, live artichoke?

Ok, maybe it's not alive. But it's fresh! And all in one piece and not smothered in cheese. Wait, why are we doing this again?

source

Oh right, the butter.

I grew up eating artichokes. My mom would serve them from every time she found good ones at the store and my sister and I always thought of them as special treats. Picking off the leaves one by one, dipping them in delicious, salty butter, and then shoving the mangled mess at my mom to clean the creepy hairy heart. It was like the seafood-hating, child-friendly version of picking crabs or lobsters (which totally creeps me out. They have eyes! And yes, I know cows and chickens have eyes at some point too, but I'm not the one tearing apart their bodies with my own two hands, and if I was, I would probably be a vegetarian).

You're probably aware that artichokes have hearts. You can buy them already nicely prepared canned, frozen, or jarred. But did you know that they're hairy. Don't panic. I'm here to help.

How to Cook (and eat) an Artichoke

Step 1: Pick a good one.
Look for medium- to large-sized artichokes. They should be a nice green color, on the lighter side, with few brown spots. The leaves should be nice and tightly closed. Pick up one artichoke for each person.

Step 2: Clean and Prep.
Rinse the artichokes in cool water. Cut the bottom inch off the stem. Using a serrated knife, cut the top inch or so off the artichoke. This will take off the sharp points on the very top leaves. Using a sharp pair of kitchen scissors, snip off the pointy tips from the rest of the outer leaves (Check out the picture at the top of this post for what they should look like when they're prepped).

Step 3: Cook 'em up.
Place a metal steamer basket in the bottom of a large pot. Add enough cold water to fill the bottom of the pot, but not enough to come through the holes of the steaming basket. Add artichokes and cover. Bring water to a boil, and reduce heat to medium or medium-low (basically you want the water to continue to produce steam but not completely boil away before the artichokes are cooked. If you find that that is happening, just add more water). Steam for about 25 minutes for medium artichokes, or until you can easily pierce the stem with a sharp knife.

Step 4: Eat!
Eating artichokes is a bit of a process but a fun one. I think they're best served as an appetizer. And with lots of napkins.

First, remove the lowest, outer leaves and discard them.

Then, starting with the bottom layer, pick off a leaf.

See that little meaty section at the bottom? That's the good stuff. I like to dip that bottom portion in salted butter or sprinkle it with just a flake or two of sea salt (or you can just eat it plain).

Use your top front teeth to scrape off the "meat."

Be careful not to bite too far up the leaf; you just want that little 1/2 inch lump at the bottom.

Toss the leaf in your throw away pile.

Keep working until you get to about here.

These leaves will be thin and wimpy. Pull off all the small thin leaves until you reach the heart.

Step 5: Cleaning the heart.
First, cut off any of the stem that's remaining at this point. Then, starting from the outer edge, using a spoon or a small paring knife, scrape out the tiny leaves that form that pyramid on the top, until you've exposed the "hair."

Continue to scrape from the outer edge, removing the hair as you go. If you're using a knife, I like to run it through a folded napkin as I go, to catch all the discarded hairs 

Keep on going. When I was little, I always had my mom do this for me. I had an irrational fear that these little hairs were sharp and would stab my little fingers. Plus, I was lazy.

Finally, (and you'll get faster the more times you do it) you get a nice clean heart.

I like to trim away some of this green stem on the side too.

Now dip this whole little lovely in moooore butter and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Hummus

I created this recipe sort of on a whim. We had cans of chickpeas that were just taking up space in the pantry and I wasn't sure what to do with them. I don't like them in salads and, well, that was pretty much the only thing I could think of. That, and hummus. So I threw some stuff in my food processor and started pulsing.

There was one little hiccup. Since I hadn't planned on making hummus, I didn't have any tahini, which is essentially a sesame paste and is usually a staple ingredient in hummus. I did, however, have sesame seeds and sesame oil, so I tossed those in the food processor first to make my own paste.

I know, Martha Stewart, watch out.

Of course, if you're planning ahead and have the opportunity to buy tahini, be my guest. Since I created the recipe without it, I've continued to make mine with just the sesame seeds and oil, so I can't really advise how much or how little tahini to use, but I would say, start with a little and add more gradually depending on how much sesame flavor you like.

You should know ahead of time that this won't give you the super smooth hummus like you buy in the grocery store. It has to do with the little casings that are on the outside of chickpeas, which I'm pretty sure you can remove. A long time ago I read about removing them but I think the process was kind of long and tedious, so I opted out. But if you're really interested, I'm sure you can do some googling and figure it out, although for me, the texture of this hummus is just fine. It's just got a little more body, feels a little more "natural," if you will. (UPDATED: I made chipotle pepper hummus and went to the trouble of taking the skins off. Click over to check out the differences.)

Plus, one of the biggest perks of making your own hummus is the same thing that Fro-Yo retailers nationwide have seriously capitalized on: the mix-ins.

You can add...
Roasted garlic
Pesto and pine nuts
Fresh herbs
Lots of crushed red pepper flakes
Roasted red peppers
More lemon juice, etc. etc.

I'm providing you with just the basic recipe for now, but I expect a full report of any great flavors you dream up.

Hummus

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp sesame seeds
1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
15.5 oz canned chickpeas, drained, liquid reserved
1 Tbsp olive oil
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp lemon juice

Directions:

1. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade, combine sesame seeds and sesame oil. Process 1 minute.
2. To food processor, add chickpeas and process until you get a paste.
3. With processor still running, add olive oil and 1/4 cup of reserved chickpea liquid through feed tube.
4. Stop food processor and scrape down sides. Add spices and lemon juice. Process to incorporate. For a smoother consistency add more reserved liquid a teaspoon at a time until you reach your desired consistency.
5. Serve alongside toasted pita chips and sliced raw veggies. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Tomato and Goat Cheese Tarts

When I look back and think of these, one thing comes to mind: cheese.

Cheese is one of those things that I could eat all day everyday. Kind of like chocolate. Of course, if I did that, I would weigh 9,000 pounds and wouldn't be able to get out of bed. So I resist.

Like my mother, I am cursed with loving most kinds of cheeses. There are very few cheeses I've met and haven't liked (except Swiss, blegh), but goat cheese and I have a fickle relationship. For example, fried goat cheese on a salad? Don't mind if I do. But spreading goat cheese on a crostini feels like I've coated my mouth in glue. So although these goat cheese tarts sounded good in theory, I was somewhat skeptical about the finished product.

They begin as so many blissful things begin, with puff pastry:

After rolling out a defrosted sheet of puff pastry to about an 11'' square, I cut out two circles, each approximately six inches in size, using the top of a blender as a guide (how thrifty am I?). I repeated with the second sheet of puff pastry so that I had four circles. I put these circles on a parchment-lined sheet pan and placed them in the refrigerator to keep cool.

Although the recipe says these should be split between two sheet pans, they all fit onto one, leading me to believe that they were a little smaller than the supposed six inches, but they looked like a good size to me, so I wasn't too concerned. Plus, it meant one less pan to wash.

At this point, I preheated the oven to 425 and heated some olive oil in a large skillet. I added the onions and garlic:

and sauteed them over a relatively low heat for probably about 25 minutes, stirring frequently, until they were limp and there was little moisture left in the pan.

At that point, I added salt, pepper, white wine, and fresh thyme to the pan and continued to cook until the onions had started to caremalize and turn light brown.

For some inexplicable reason, Ina estimates this to take 10 minutes. Silly Ina. This took me another 25 minutes, at least. And caramelizing onions is one of those things that you just can't rush. Maybe I had the heat way too low, but I've caramelized onions many times before so I'm pretty familiar with the process. Perhaps Ina's onions are just magical and cook more quickly than your everyday, average grocery store onions. You know, kind of like her baking potatoes.

In the meantime though, between stirs, I prepped the rest of the ingredients:

herbed goat cheese, basil, Parmesan cheese, tomato  

and did some work to the pastry circles. Using a paring knife, I scored a 1/4 inch border around the edge of each circle. Inside this scored border, I pricked the pastry with a fork

and sprinkled about a tablespoon of Parmesan cheese in the center:

By this point the onions had finally caramelized lightly:

I added about 1/4 of the mixture to each pastry circle, again, staying within the scored edge:

On top of the onions, I crumbled about an ounce of the herbed goat cheese:

Trying not to get goat cheese all over my camera

Since I was using smaller, plum tomatoes instead of the larger variety which aren't very flavorful this time of year, I placed two slices of tomato on each tart instead of the one the recipe calls for:

After drizzling some olive oil over the tomato, I sprinkled it with the julienned basil, salt, and pepper:

Finally, I topped off the tarts with about 5 shards of shaved Parmesan cheese each:

These baked in the oven for about 25 minutes until the crust had puffed and all the cheese had melted. I served them alongside a simple green salad:

We could hardly wait to dig into these, although we probably should have since the hot goat cheese was more like molten lava than a dairy product. But once we got the feeling back in our tongues we really enjoyed these. Although the serving suggestion allots one tart per person, I assumed Dan and I would each want two since we were having them for dinner instead of lunch or an appetizer. But these were so rich, we both could only eat about one-and-a-half. The goat cheese wasn't overpowering due to the onion base, and the freshness of the tomato really helped to balance everything out. Tomatoes are yet another thing at which I usually gawk in disgust, but they were absolutely necessary in this recipe, and lightly roasting them gave them a not unpleasant flavor. Of course the flaky puff pastry dough was divine as usual, but you already knew that, didn't you? 

Make this when: your brother brings home his vegetarian girlfriend and you need an appetizer that's somewhat hearty since you're serving Garlic and Citrus Chicken as the entree. 

Next Course: French Bistro Steaks with Provencal Butter