Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook

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Party Foods: Pimento Cheese and more Ramen Rice Krispies -- back to top

Somehow I forgot to take photos, but we were going to two different parties so we made more food.

Pimento Cheese:

We made this for our first party. We followed the same recipe as the first time with the addition of green onions.

I do not know what is with that recipe but it really needs 2-3x the mayo.

The flavored seemed a bit off this time but adding more tabasco helped. I still don't think it was our best showing...

Ramen Rice Krispies...again

We again made Ramen Rice Krispies like last night except we made a few changes.

We actually made two half batches but for both, the biggest change was that we doubled the butter (well, halved everything but the butter). I read on this site that butter makes it softer since they were very crunchy the day before. They essentially have the same amount of dry stuff and marshmallows but double butter. That worked well!

We also experimented. We made one batch with 1 Tbsp tahini to up the sesame flavor. That was a bit strange. I think it added too much toasted flavors and was a bit too rich.

The other batch was with wasabi. We started with about 1/4 tsp wasabi powder and kept going up since we couldn't taste it. We ended with around 1 tsp but still was too weak. So this batch was better but mostly because it tastes regular.

Sadly, this was not a hit at the party. I think in the future, I won't tell people it has seaweed. That got some strange reactions.

Falafel (with experimentation) -- back to top

(Forgot to take a final picture)

We decided to make falafel for a super bowl party but also wanted to experiment. I tried to place another tray on top (with the non-stick foil) to brown both sides. However, as you can see from the picture, they basically just spread. And it was essentially steamed. So this didn't work.

But I let them cook until they were sufficiently done and it came out ok.

Meredith made a large batch of tzatziki. We served it (for a party) with cut up pita bread.

Figs in a Blanket (with home-made dough, goat cheese, and a rosemary balsamic reduction) -- back to top

I was invited to a Mad Science Party where the goal is to make (or bring) something you've never made before (See also: 2015-09-18 and 2016-04-16). I was going back and forth with different ideas but I actually had "Figs in a Blanket" at a tailgate and I decided to do something like this and jazz it up.

Also, Meredith is out of town so I use goat cheese since I could. I vacillated on whether or not to buy dough or make it and if I were to make it, did I want I want to make it with a yeast base or a different lavender.

I went with this one from Maya's Kitchen (Local Copy ¹). I kept it pretty much as they say (including the boiling water, but with all white flour) and added a bit of salt. I was a bit worried that it would be kind of boring and not have the butteriness, but I guess the (copious) oil helped. Like I said, I added some salt, but it could have used a lot more.

I didn't really follow any recipe for the balsamic reduction, but the general idea was that I took about 3/4 cup of Kirkland balsamic vinegar with a bit of sugar and a bit of rosemary. I let it reduce to just about half.

Anyway, I rolled it out as seen in the photos. It was a super oily dough but I got it to work well enough. I certainly had some variation with the sizes but it worked fine. I put a small dab of goat cheese down, then half of a dried fig and a bit of the balsamic.

Like I said, I was a bit worried about the flavor of the dough but it was pretty good, though needed more salt. The other flavors were good, but you couldn't really taste the goat cheese and/or balsamic vinegar in some. I served it with some extra vinegar as dip and that worked well.