Tiny Twice-Baked Potatoes

I love all potatoes. Even the ones with the creepy eyes growing out of them - they can be made as delicious as those tiny buttery fingerling potatoes or those beautiful red new potatoes. All potatoes are equal in my eyes. Equally delectable.

So I searched around for a "potato skin" type recipe and I came up with a Rachael Ray recipe with an annoying name but a perfect premise. She calls them "Sinfully Stuffed Potato Skins," but, in truth, they are nothing more than a tiny twice-baked potato. Take your own preferences and make these to your taste, but Rachael has given you a great head start with the extra-sharp cheddar, sour cream, and paprika. These were even good cold the next day. I used Tillamook extra sharp white cheddar and smoked paprika, to great results.

Potato Skins

20 small new potatoes
1 T extra-virgin olive oil
1 c shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese
1 c sour cream
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp pepper
Paprika, for garnish

Preheat the oven to 400°. Pierce the potatoes with a fork, arrange on a baking sheet in a single layer and brush with olive oil. Roast, uncovered, until tender, 40 to 45 minutes. Let stand until cool enough to handle.
Halve the potatoes; using a melon baller or a teaspoon, scoop out most of the flesh into a bowl. Return the potato skins to the baking sheet. Coarsely mash the potato flesh in the bowl and stir in the cheese, sour cream, 1 teaspoon salt and the pepper. Sprinkle the insides of the skins with the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt; stuff each with the potato-cheese mixture and sprinkle paprika on top.
Bake the stuffed potato skins until golden-brown on top, 15 to 20 minutes.

Las Gorditas & Fig Toasts

This was a day in which we explored our city from one side to the other. We started on one side of the metro, with lunch at Las Gorditas at 844 Central in Kansas City, KS. It's a spot recommended by a friend of a friend and my husband's new favorite stop for lunch. They have other items on the menu (not many), but we were there for the gorditas. (If the place is named after a particular item, it seems rather foolish to order a burrito.) You can watch the ladies making these thick corn tortillas behind the counter, and they're as delicious as they look. We ordered three - one filled with pork and potatoes, one with nopales and chile, and one with a delicious fried chile relleno. The cheese in the relleno was gooey and thick and the pork was perfectly seasoned, moist and tender. My only complaint is that I didn't start with the nopales gordita, which had too much time to sit and become dangerous to handle. It fell apart in my hands, on my table, on my shirt. The cactus, however, was delicious (and thankfully, there were napkins on my table - lots of napkins). We washed it all down with bottles of soda - Mexican Coke for him, orange soda for me. Lunch was around $12 and service, while distracted, was attentive enough. We were the only non-Spanish speakers there at lunch, which is always a good sign.

With many a stop in between, we ended our food adventure at Dean and Deluca at Town Center. Two or so times a year, we go there for nothing in particular. I quickly lose him to the samples and the cheese counter and I can just wander aimlessly, exploring the jars and bottles and boxes and candies and breads. Forget clothes and shoes and compact discs, this is my kind of shopping.

This afternoon I had figs on the brain. Blame it on my current nine-months-pregnant state if you will, but a little something we saw last night on the television made me obsessed with figs. I scoured the shelves until I found a jar of Terrabianca Caramelized Figs, grabbed a wedge of Fourme D'Ambert (a perfectly creamy and mild blue cheese) and a good baguette and got the heck out of there before I spent any more money. At home, we whipped up these delicious little things (I'm calling them fig toasts), parked our rears on the back deck with cool drinks and called it a day. Also, I did lots of bowing and patting myself on the back. These were damn good toasts. Treat yourself sometime.


Fig Toasts

a good french baguette
caramelized figs
caramelized onion
good creamy blue cheese

Crisp slices of bread in 350 degree oven for 5-6 minutes. Remove from oven and top each slice with half a caramelized fig. Spread fig out as best you can - any naked bread can be drizzled with the thick fig juices in the jar. Top with caramelized onions and crumbles of blue cheese.

Summer Dip

In my childhood, I don't think I attended a single summer gathering with my Mom's side of the family where this dip wasn't served. I loved it and still love it, and crave it when the weather gets warmer and my arms start getting just a touch brown from the sun. It is, of course, best when the meatiest tomatoes are in season, but you can make do with even kind of scraggly tomatoes because you're just dousing the whole damn mix in vinegar anyhow. Because of the vinegar thing, the dip gets better as all the flavors meld together.

I'm not going to give you proportions because this is a fly by the seat of your pants kind of thing.

Antipasto Dip

Tomatoes, seeded & small diced

Green onions, finely chopped

Jar(s) of Banana Peppers (hot or mild, to taste), small diced

Can(s) of large Black Olives, sliced

Red Wine Vinegar

Mix first four ingredients together in large bowl and douse with lots of good red wine vinegar. Stir to coat all ingredients. I typically make this dip at least a day in advance of serving it and stir it two to three times while it marinates in the refrigerator. Transfer to a serving bowl with a slotted spoon. Serve with your favorite tortilla chips.

Olive Crostini

When I'm feeling particularly uninspired and needing some beautiful food photos and perfectly crafted recipes to choose from, I go to Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes. I can nearly always find something to get my creative juices flowing again. (Warning: some of the photography will make your mouth water and your stomach rumble.) And since last night I hosted BookClub at my house, I needed a little creative inspiration. A bite-sized somethingorother that, hopefully, would feature an ingredient in them that my husband doesn't like, since I was kicking him out of the house anyway. He's not a big olive guy, so olives are a popular choice. And when skimming through the appetizer recipe archives on Simply Recipes, I re-discovered this amazing recipe for Olive Crostini. I've made olivada several times before, to great success, but this was something really special.

Olive Crostini

1/2 c black olives
1/2 c green olives (w/ pimientos)
2 cloves garlic
1/2 c fresh grated Parmesan cheese
4 T butter
2 T olive oil
1/2 c grated Monterey jack cheese
1/4 c chopped fresh parsley
1 baguette

Chop olives in a food processor. Transfer to medium bowl. With machine
running, drop garlic through the feed tube of the food processor and mince. Add
Parmesan, butter, and olive oil, and process into a paste. Add butter mixture to
bowl with olives. Fold in jack cheese and parsley. Cut baguette into thin slices
and spread each slice generously with olive mixture. Cook under broiler until
bubbly and lightly browned - about 2-4 minutes.
Serve right out of oven.
Helps to make olive mixture in advance and spread right before you put in
the oven.
Makes approximately 24 toasts.

(I tweaked the recipe just a hair by browning the baguette slices in a 375 degree oven beforehand (about 5-8 minutes) to keep them crispy.)

Mustard Dip

First off, my apologies for the sporadic posting. I was working on my article for the October issue of Present and I had no creative juice left for you, my lovely little blog. Let me make it up to you with an appetizer!

Wait! Don't look at me like that. It's a multitasking appetizer. Trust me.

On Sunday we had people over to watch the Air Show from our back yard, because our back yard is truly awesome. From it, you can see the Blue Angels without having to pay anyone anything, or without having to brave the throngs of humanity at the downtown airport. I woke up knowing that I'd need to make a little something to feed the people that we'd invited over - and, strangely, I was craving pretzels and dip. Mustard dip, specifically. I googled "mustard dip," and came up with something that looked like a winner.

Mustard Dip

1 pkg ranch dressing mix
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. dried onions
1 T. garlic powder
2 T. prepared horseradish (to taste)
8 oz prepared yellow mustard
8 oz sour cream
8 oz mayonnaise

Mix all ingredients & chill for at least an hour.

The beauty of this dip is, not only is it awesomely tasty, but as you're eating it, you're thinking of all the other things it can do! Sandwiches! Chicken strips! Pork chops! Turkey tenderloins! See???

A Tale of Two Clubs

I.
Behind its back, my Book Club is referred to, disparagingly, as "Wine Club."
It's true, there is wine...but there is also food and lovely ladies and excellent conversation and most importantly, there is the book - the book we devotedly read and discuss for hours. (Or minutes, depending on the book.) We started meeting for our book club over three and a half years ago, and in that time we've read over forty books together, eaten more than our fair share of crackers and cheeses and tried out countless recipes with each other as guinea pigs.
Food for book club ranges from pre-made to homemade, with a few freshly opened bags of candy and soy crisps thrown in for good measure. I take a ridiculously serious approach to it, thinking about what I'll bring nearly a week ahead of time. The pressure is always self-imposed, however, as the ladies don't care who brings what, as long as there is enough food and, of course, bottles (or boxes) of wine. I've made cheese puffs stuffed with olives, cheese balls, meatballs, more dips than I can count on all my fingers and toes, focaccia, flat bread pizzas, and tapenades.
This month we read The Sea by John Banville and munched on an impressive spread of fruit, vegetables, dips, cookies, and salty things. E baked wonton cups and scooped black bean salsa and a little sour cream into each one. J threw together a yummy crab dip. My offering was like a pimento cheese, but spicy - served with blue corn chips. It was another awesome evening.

Cold Cheese Dip

1 lb sharp cheddar cheese
2 c. light mayo
2 T. chopped chipotles in adobo
1/3 c. fresh jalapenos, seeded & diced
1/2 c. pickled jalapenos or banana peppers, diced
1 8 oz jar pimentos, drained
1/2 cup scallions or red onion, diced

Mix together cheese and mayo until creamy. Fold in remaining ingredients. When well-combined, cover & refrigerate for at least two hours. Overnight is best. Serve chilled with tortilla chips.

II.
Awesome would be one way to describe Bacon Club. Artery-clogging would be another.
After discussing it for close to a year, the men in our group decided that it was about time they started a club of their own. The focus was clear from the beginning: bacon. They split the cost of membership to the Bacon of the Month Club, which makes them the proud recipients, each month, of two pounds of artisan bacon - with varieties like garlic (ten cloves!), dry cured, honey smoked, honey sea-salt cured, and more to come. Being the true bacon devotees that they all are - the two pounds of bacon is not nearly enough. They buy more bacon, regular old grocery store bacon, and throw together bacon-inspired entrees and appetizers. Pasta carbonara. Smoked bacon-wrapped goat cheese jalapeno poppers. Candied bacon. The favorite to date, however, has to be Paula Deen's Bacon Crisps. Club crackers, topped with cheese , and wrapped with bacon? Oh, yes. Most definitely.

Paula Deen's Bacon Crisps
1/2 c. freshly grated Parmesan
1 sleeve Club crackers
1 lb. sliced bacon, cut in half

Place 1 tsp of the cheese on each cracker and wrap tightly with a strip of bacon. Place the wrapped crackers on a broiler rack on a baking sheet and put the baking sheets on the oven rack. Bake for 2 hours at 250 degrees. Do not turn. Drain on paper towels.

If you're in a hurry, you can bake them at 350 degrees for 40 min.

Chipotle Dip

This is an extremely adaptable dip - spicy, creamy, and terrifically easy.

Chipotle Dip
makes 1 1/2 cups dip

2 scallions
3-4 canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
1/4 tsp adobo sauce
1 c mayonnaise
1/2 c sour cream
1 tsp fresh lime juice
pinch of kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper

Finely chop scallions. Wear protective gloves & mince chipotles to a paste. Whisk together all ingredients in a bowl w/ kosher salt to taste.

(For this dip I sometimes substitute chives or parsley for the scallions, or lemon juice for lime juice depending on what I have on hand. You can make the dip a little more spread-able for crackers or whatever by adding a package of cream cheese. Serve with fresh veggies or really crispy potato chips - Art's & Mary's are my favorite.)