Tag: dip

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Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

152. Herbed Lima Bean Hummus p.15


The recipe

Hummus is a staple of my diet, and although I rarely make them, I quite like lima beans, so, I figured this lima bean hummus was a good bet. I’ve been doing some serious damage to the bean spreads in the book, and this was one of the last ones that really appealed to me. In the end it wasn’t the dip I was hoping for. It took some very nice ingredients, did some very silly things with them, and resulted in a muddy confused mess.

You start this dip by simmering frozen limas, onion, and garlic in water, then stirring in cilantro and parsley and letting the herbs steep. You then drain off the water and transfer the solids to the food processor. They then go for a spin with cumin, cayenne, lemon juice, olive oil, fresh dill, and fresh mint. The dip is then allowed to cool, seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, drizzled with olive oil, and served.

There were a lot of big flavours going into this dish, but the preparation did them a disservice. The onion and garlic are boiled along with the limas in this dish. Boiling doesn’t do much for aromatics unless you’re making a soup. I’d much prefer to sweat them to take off some of the harsh edges, in exchange for a little caramelization. As it was most of the onion and garlic flavour, and that of the cilantro and parsley, ended up in the liquid the beans simmered in. Five minutes later that liquid went down the drain, and the exhausted remnants of the aromatics went into the food processor. The beans were still very hot at this point, fresh dill and mint were added. Both of those herbs are wonderful when they’re crisp and cool, and they lose something when heated. By the time the dip had come together and cooled to room temperature is was a bland mush. I tried to overcompensate with lemon juice and salt to bring things back to life, but once the flavours are gone they’re gone. I added toasted pine nuts in a last ditch effort to save this dip, and they did moderately improve things, but no one was really thrilled and I had to plow through three days of leftovers.

Beyond the counterproductive cooking instructions, I think there was too much going on in this dip. Between onions, garlic, four different types of herbs, cumin, and cayenne, there were a lot of flavours competing for attention. Granted they were all washed out imitations of themselves, but it was still a busy dish. In fact there was so much other stuff in there, that the lima beans weren’t really a player. They were puréed, so their texture wasn’t an issue, and other than adding a little starchiness they weren’t a big flavour contributor. You probably won’t like this dish, but it won’t be because you don’t like lima beans.

Altogether this dish was entirely forgettable. It wasn’t particularly bad, just another bland mush. It’s only truly frustrating when you’re the one making it. You put fresh fragrant ingredients in, and methodically set about discarding or destroying their goodness, you then serve what’s left.

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Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

141. Roasted Red Pepper and Eggplant Dip p.10


The recipe

I served this dip along with the tapenade from the other day, and was similarly underwhelmed. This dip had a bland, mushy flavour, that didn’t really do much for anyone. I mentioned that the tapenade was overpowering, and this helped thin it out. Unfortunately, “dilutes tapenade” is one of the better things I have to say about this dip.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with the ingredient list here. You could probably make a fine dip with eggplant, red pepper, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, jalapeño, salt, and pepper. Unfortunately the cooking instructions sabotage the goodness of these ingredients. Basically you roast eggplant and red peppers, remove the skins, and purée the flesh with the rest of the ingredients. You then transfer the purée back to the stove top, and simmer it for another 20 odd minutes to get rid of excess water.

Roasting the eggplant and red peppers sounds like a good idea to me, but the recipe falls apart from there on. You end up taking all of these pungent aromatic ingredients, garlic, lemon juice, jalapeño, and extra-virgin olive oil and killing them by simmering them. Raw garlic and chiles work wonderfully in dips, and I don’t see any need to cook them at all. If you want to mellow the harsh edges, then consider building extra flavours by roasting the garlic cloves, or at least mincing and browning in oil. Garlic cooked with wet methods takes on an unpleasant kind of metallic taste, and gives up the sharp potency and fruitiness of it’s raw form. The jalapeño would similarly benefit from some dry heat to bring out the smokiness. Cooking extra-virgin olive oil and lemon juice is just insanity, uncooked they’re complex and full of layers and interest. Heat them beyond a certain point, and the lemon juice is just an acid, and your nuanced grassy, fruity, olive oil becomes indistinguishable from canola.

What kills me about this recipe is that the murder of all those flavours is totally unnecessary. You could easily make a purée of just the eggplant and red peppers, simmer that, and then add the rest of the ingredients. The texture was one of the highlights of the dip though, smooth, silky, and nicely emulsified, so it’s probably worth getting rid of at least some excess water.

The recipe says that the dip needs to come together in the refrigerator for at least a day. I served it about 6 hours after making it, and was disappointed by it’s blandness and lack of personality. I figured it just needed to rest longer, but it was still going nowhere and doing nothing for me by the second day. I eventually got rid of the leftovers by integrating them into a pizza sauce.

I should say that my dining companion liked this dip, and enjoyed that it mostly tasted like eggplant and red pepper, with a mild background of other flavours. I’m definitely biased towards big bold flavours in a dip, and I missed them. Subtle dips can stray too easily over into baby-food territory, which is not for me. The Epicurious reviews suggest that this is a love it or hate it recipe, so our disagreement isn’t unusual. This recipe has the makings of a nice dip, but at least to my palate it was a failure.

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Sauces and Salsas The Book

140. Tapenade p.890


No recipe is online for this one.

I’m never sure what to do with tapenade. I like it, but it’s far too salty to eat all on its own. I’ve used it as an accompaniment to grilled meats and fish, served it with cheese, spread it on sandwiches, or used it as an accent to hummus, but I’m never quite satisfied. It’s been OK the couple of times dishes have called for it, but it’s rarely something I would seek out. That’s kind of odd because I love olives and eat them often. Most of the time, I’d rather just eat an olive than spread tapenade on something. Way back in the beginning of the project I wrote about the Olive and Eggplant Spread, which is like a tapenade, but cut with roasted eggplant. That was thoroughly enjoyable, and mild enough to eat without any accompaniment.

Although I’m not sure what to use it for, this tapenade was pretty good. The recipe is short and sweet, blend Kalamata olives, garlic, and capers, then add olive oil in a slow stream ’till it’s smooth. The recipe calls for pitted olives, but I’m biased against them. Maybe it’s just me being superstitious, but I feel like pitted olives are often of lower quality than the whole ones. Whether or not there’s any basis to that, but I almost always buy whole olives and pit them myself.

This tapenade was all about bold flavours working together. The olives, garlic, and capers have very strong and distinctive flavours, but they’re tied together by the fruity floral undertones they share. If any one of those flavours had been missing the dish would have fallen apart. Unfortunately this tapenade was insanely salty, all tapenades are salty, but this went further. It could have been my olives, but more than likely it was the capers. I really enjoyed the extra flavour the capers brought to the tapenade, but it would have been nice if they’d come without the salt. It’s one of the things that bothers me about tapenade in general. The things is tastes best with, often tend to be salty themselves, and that can push the salt quotient past pleasure into revulsion.

On the day I made this I served it with hummus, cheese, and a few other dips. It was fine, and people ate a fair amount of it, but it wasn’t the star of the show by any means. I used a bit of the leftovers with some grilled chicken, but left most of it on my plate. The rest mouldered in the fridge ’till we had to throw it out. Other than the salt there was absolutely nothing wrong with this tapenade, and a lot of things right about it. But, it just didn’t appeal to me all that much.

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Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

46. Eggplant Caviar p.11

No recipe this time, but honestly you’re not missing all that much.

I think this came out to be less than the sum of it’s parts. Essentially it’s broiled eggplant, sweated onions, garlic, and green pepper mixed with fresh tomatoes, lemon juice, sugar, salt, and pepper. All good stuff up to this point, but it all went for a spin in the food processor, and came out a mushy unappealing terra cotta.

The idea is to chill this for a few hours and then serve it with crackers or baguette. In this regard the texture was way off, it had tiny chunks in a soupy liquid destined to slip and slide. Its texture was wrong in the same way that store bought salsa can be wrong. If it had been completely smooth and thickened it could have worked well, if it had been left chunkier with something to bite into it might have been nice. As it was all the ingredients lost their individual identities, but didn’t really meld into a flavour partnership. Bland, watery, and ugly was the take home message of this dish. I had 12 hungry people in my living room devouring anything put in front of them, but there was plenty of this left at the end of the evening.

A day or two later I cooked down some the remainder and used it as a pizza sauce. It worked remarkably well in that incarnation. Eggplant, tomato, and onions all have a lot of water in them, I think the water either had to be left in the cell structure of the vegetables, or cooked out. Food processing it just left is soupy and uninspiring.

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Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

45. Hummus with toasted pine nuts, cumin seeds, and parsely oil p.14


The recipe

I made this for one of The Boys going away parties. He’d just finished his Ph.D. and was heading off to a very fancy post doc in the states. I was throwing a party in his honor, and I wanted to make things he would like. I think I did alright in pleasing him, but I totally forgot that his girlfriend is allergic to garlic, and couldn’t eat even one of the dishes I’d prepared. I apologized at the time, but I’ll say it again. I’m sorry.

I love hummus as party food. It has all the virtues of a good crowd pleaser; it’s intensely flavored, can be dipped with anything your heart desires, it neatly avoids almost all dietary restrictions, it’s substantial, and it costs pennies to prepare. The only downside to hummus it that it’s oatmeal like appearance doesn’t make for the greatest visual impression. Here a very basic hummus recipe is given a face lift with a rather attractive topping of pine nuts, cumin seeds, and drizzled parsley oil. The nuts also add a nice texture and bursts of flavour, giving you a little something to look forward to in every bite. The vibrant green of the oil really set the dish off. That colour happens to have been attained with parsely. Maybe it’s not so useless after all? That might be going too far.

I think this dish is being added to my repertoire of party standards. It’s a way to take the ubiquitous bowl of hummus at college parties along with you into the adult world.

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Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

26. Guacamole p.9

No linked recipe this time, but this one is so simple I don’t mind retyping it.

4 ripe California avocados, halved, pitted, and peeled
1/2 cup finely chopped white onion
3-4 serrano chiles, minced including seeds
2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice, or to taste
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste

Combine ingredients in a bowl, mash with a fork until avocado is mashed but still somewhat chunky. Stir until blended.

This guacamole was absolutely minimalist, and not in a good way. No garlic, no cilantro, no tomatoes, no nothing. The avocado relish meant to accompany Tortilla Soup With Crisp Tortillas and Avocado Relish on page 96 is by far the superior guacamole (I’ll get to writing that up in a few months, I’m way way behind).

To be fair, the book does offer this version of the guacamole up as a base for several interesting variations: Guacamole with tomato, radish and cilantro guacamole, fall-winter fruit guacamole, and summer fruit guacamole. The radish and cilantro sounds particularly interesting. I’m adding radishes to the list of under appreciated vegetables, relegated to being picked around on crudité plates and otherwise ignored.

The central flaw with this recipe in all it’s variations is the omission of garlic. I don’t think I’ve ever had a guacamole without garlic, and I don’t think I care to ever again. I’m not sure if this this no garlic business is the traditional method and my readers in Oaxaca are exchanging sly glances about the stupid Canadian, but this is my stance and I’m sticking to it. Maybe if this was the first time I’d ever had guacamole I wouldn’t have missed the garlic, but theres no going back once you know the wonders of the avocado-lime-garlic trifecta.

Overall this was fine, but could have been so much more. The other variations may have worked out better than the base recipe, but as it was it was just dull.

N.B. I’ll do my best to push that nasty picture of the fajitas off the main page as quickly as possible. Sorry.

Categories
Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

22. Pita Toasts p. 7


the recipe

A recipe for toast. A recipe… for toast. Well, super simple basics like this will sure help me get through the book faster. Or at least compensate for some of the marathon recipes yet to come. These were the recommended accompaniment for Olive and Eggplant Spread. They worked perfectly well, nice crisp pitas able to support the dip, with a good flavour of their own. They’re dried and crisped slowly in a 375 oven to avoid browning too much or heating the olive oil above its smoke point, and kosher salt also adds a nice texture. The Book did everything right, but I don’t think I’ve ever been moved by a pita toast (a baguette is another matter).

Don’t get me wrong, pitas, toasted or not, are an indispensable workhorse in my kitchen. I don’t think I’ve ever put out appetizers without pita appearing in some way. It’s the unsung hero of the cocktail party world! but I’m content to leave it seen but not heard. Make these, use them, but don’t love them.

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Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

21. Olive and Eggplant Spread p.11


the recipe

This was a great appetizer, it’s basically a tapenade cut with roasted eggplant. I love eggplant, and I love olives, together they’re even better. Eggplant dips naturally tend to turn out a kind of grey-brown that’s not the most inviting. The olives helped it turn a delightful shade of purple with a nice lustre. Also, a straight ahead tapenade can be a bit too much olive, even for olive lovers. Using eggplant cut the intensity and made this very affordable. I’d say this was the best of both worlds. I like that all the saltiness of the dip came from the olives and capers, no need to add more.

The result here had loads of olive flavour, with the almost meaty background of the eggplant. It worked well as a dip, which I find nicer than having to spread a thin layer as you would with a more potent tapenade. This was a really solid recipe that I’d happily make again.

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Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

18. Brandied Chicken Liver Pâté p.22


the recipe

This worked out surprisingly well. My dining companion was a bit skeptical when I said I’d be making a pâté, but I think we were both suitably pleased with it. It was very smooth with a mild flavour, and the aromas of the cognac really coming through. I’d never had fruit in a pâté before, and the sweetness of the currants (I cheated and used small raisins) was a really nice addition.

Actually making this was a bit offputting. I didn’t much enjoy watching the livers swirl into a paste in the food processor, and tasting for seasoning while it was still hot was an experience I wouldn’t rush to repeat. Once it had cooled and had a bit of time to come together it was absolutely delicious. That said, this is not a pâté for those who are at all squeamish about liver. This is more like a smooth liverwurst than the more terrine like pâtés you often run into.

I had a good time gathering mildly grossed out looks from friends when I told them about this one, it would seem that liver isn’t too popular amongst my social set. Mes amis végétarien, I devote this post to you.

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Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

13. Toasted Walnut, Roasted Red Pepper, and Cumin Spread p.12

the recipe

This was an absolute winner. Easy, cheap, packed with flavour, unusual, brightly coloured, exploding with garlic, what’s not to love? I’ve made this twice and I’m sure a third time is not too far away. There are flavours pulling in all sorts of directions here, sweet roasted red peppers and molasses, earthy cumin and walnuts, sharp garlic and red pepper flakes, an acidic bite of lemon juice, but everything plays very well together. It also changes a bit as you eat it. At first the sweet and spicy flavours are prominent, but after a few bites the nuts start to take centre stage.

I was complaining that the lamb tagine’s flavours were too scattered and working against each other. The flavours here are similar in some ways, but they’re pulling in concert. The result is my new favourite spread. The book suggests adding this sauce to meat, and while I haven’t tried it on a roast, I did put it on a turkey sandwich. I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch.

The only downside here is that I think I might be slightly allergic to walnuts. It’s nothing much, just a slight numbing of my mouth and lips and a tickle at the back of my throat; particularly if they’re raw. I’d probably do well to limit my exposure to avoid kindling or sensitization though. Too bad.