Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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Party! (with home made Bean Dip, Buffalo Cauliflower and Pizza Sauce) -- back to top
Meredith and I hosted a "Belated New Years" party. We originally planned for 11 people, including us, but 4 didn't make it. We would have had too much anyway, but with half the people, and many weren't hungry, we had WAY too much. Still, it ended up being a nice selection and Meredith and I enjoyed the variety. I will come back and edit this list as I remember things. I am also trying to note where we got the different things for future reference
The dinner was make your own pizza. The dough was from Trader Joes with each person getting half of a dough ball. For toppings, we had
Dessert was just cookies purchased at Target. Beer was a 24 mix pack from Costco, a mix of a few things from TJ's and a pack of Blue Moon Abbey Ale. (and there was lots and lots of leftovers)
Meredith made took charge of both the buffalo cauliflower and the bean dip. For the cauliflower we basically had to make a second batch of batter. I do not know why, but one didn't cut it. Also,unfortunately we had to let it sit out after being coated, before going back into the oven, since people hadn't arrived yet. I thought it was very good as is, but Meredith said it is even better when it doesn't sit out. I will definitely make this again for myself. I may also throw a bit of ranch dressing powder into the batter. Overall, it used a cup of flour for the whole thing so it wil have to be the main part of a meal, but it would probably be enough. Oh, and we used white flour instead of rice flour. I do not know what, if any, affect that had.
The bean dip was very good. We used low fat cheese and cream cheese to make it healthier It didn't cook fully in the time so I put it in a bit longer at a higher temp. Everything inside melted nicely but the top got a tad crispy. Meredith was the one who really made it so she may have more comments.
For the pizza sauce, I was inspired by the recipe below, but I didn't totally follow it. First of all, the recipe doesn't say what to do with the onion (though it implies that you take it out). I did approx 4x the recipe. I basically sautéd lots of garlic in a mix of butter and olive oil. I then added a #10 can of peeled San Marizono tomatoes (very cheap at Costco). I used the immersion blender to get rid of most of the chunks. I then let it cook down by a bit less than half. It was okay. Very acidic. I do not know how to fix that. Also, water definitely separated out on some pizzas. I think that means I need more oil, but I am hesitant to add that.
Cheesy Baked Black-Eyed Pea Dip (from The Kitchn)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Spicy Buffalo Cauliflower (from Day Dream Kitchen)
(2014-01-07 Note: This is now part of My Recipe Book)
New York Style Pizza Sauce (from Serious Eats)
Local Copy-- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 3101, 2013-01-25_120958
Meredith and I made pimento cheese for a party. Meredith had been holding onto this recipe for some time but never really had the chance until the party. The recipe is on this post. Meredith had taken the recipe from some book in Charleston, SC. We looked at a few recipes and this one sounded the best and also wasn't over the top.
Our changes to the recipe are as follows:
The dish was pretty good. It also seemed pretty popular at the party. We served it with bread and other crudités to dip. The bread went really fast and then people stopped eating it so we'll keep that in mind next time.
It also made an amazing meal the next night as grilled cheese.
Pimento Cheese
Local Copy -- U: guest, P: (name of my dog, all lower case)
Broiled Feta with Caramelized Cinnamon Pears -- back to top
Meredith and I were invited to a "Mad Scientist Party". The idea is that you bring (preferably make) something that you've never made/had before. And, you can go a bit out there. Well, Meredith has a whole pinterest board of ideas and we went with the broiled feta.
We based it on this recipe (local link). We followed it pretty closely except we planned to double or tripple it. However, we misread the thing and only bought 3 x 8-ounce feta blocks. We had actually also bought a lite feta for us so we decided to use that so we could double it. It is actually really interesting how much you can tell the difference in the pictures, especially the ones below.
Other than that, we stayed pretty true to the recipe. And it was both really good and really easy. It was better hot but fine room temperature too. I think it would be interesting to do with more honey in place of brown sugar and apples instead of pears to do some thing for Rosh Hashanah. Maybe in the future.
Few other notes: We used red pears since they are prettier (though you couldn't tell in the end) and we served it with Trader Joes mini pita crackers. They were fine but maybe a bit dry. Also, we didn't cut the blocks of feta.
Broiled Feta with Caramelized Cinnamon Pears (from How Sweet It Is)
Local Copy (U: guest P: name of my dog, all lower case)
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.
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...
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.
7(ish) Layer dip -- back to top
We were invited to a friend's house and Meredith decided to make 7(ish) layer dip. There were really 6 layers but one had different things. We skipped olives.
We based it very roughly on this Brown Eyed Baker (Local) recipe. Mostly just the order and the enhancement to the beans
They were, (in order)
It was really good. We would do this again
Lite Baked Potato Salad -- back to top
Meredith and I made lite baked potato salad for an Independence Day Party. We basically played it by ear, but tried to boil the potatoes roughly based on Serious Eats. That is, add some vinegar and salt (and sugar but we skipped it) to the water (cold) and bring up the heat with the potatoes.
We used a mixture of low-fat sour cream and fat-free greek yogurt for the base. We mixed in Penzeys Ranch Powder, bacos (or some other non-meat bacon bits), part-skim cheddar, and scallions. Also two fresno peppers for some heat.
It worked out pretty well. It was lighter than a lot of other options and was pretty easy to make
Smoked Paprika Deviled Eggs -- back to top
** No Photo **
We made deviled eggs for a party. We did the Smokey Deviled Eggs as we had done before except we made a few small changes. First, we actually did use mayonnaise1 since we wanted them to be dairy free. Also, since our friend at the part was on a restrictive diet, we did the frizzled onions on the side.
They worked really well. I think I actually liked them more with mayo. And we did steam them a bit longer (15 min at ABQ altitude) so we had a firmer yolk for the filling.
We used a bit of the remaining homemade mayo and then the rest was Avocado mayo ↩
Pimento Cheese (and other party stuff) -- back to top
Meredith was having a friend over and wanted to make some food. Her main dish was pimento cheese. She followed the general recipe with our changes from 2015-08-15. It ended up really good, though maybe a bit heavy on the tabasco and the smoked paprika.
She also made some boozy gummy bears by soaking grapefruit gummy bears with rosé wine.
As you can see in the photo, she also had some (store-bought) macarons.
