Tapas Experiment #2

I decided on Manchego-Stuffed Dates for my third, previously undecided, tapa.  But how to specifically make them?  We had a taste test of the following:

1.  Manchego + Date + Olive Oil + Sea Salt -- Room Temperature

2.  Manchego + Date + Olive Oil + Sea Salt -- Warm

3.  Manchego + Date + Surryano Ham --Room Temperature (pictured above)

4.  Manchego + Date + Surryano Ham -- Warm

We decided the best were #2 and #3, with #2 just edging out the ham version because you could taste more of the cheese and dates.  Plus, there will be a couple of tapas  that evening that will contain chorizo, so that is probably enough cured meat for one party (although some people might argue that you can never have too much cured meat!).

Manchego-Stuffed Dates

Makes as many as you have the patience to stuff

Pitted Dates

Sheep-Milk Manchego Cheese

Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

Sea Salt

Cut the cheese into ~1/4"x1/4" sticks, about the same length as your dates.  Cut a slit in each date and insert a piece of cheese.  Bake stuffed dates, cut side up, at 350 degrees for ~10 minutes until the cheese starts to melt.  Remove the dates from the oven, let cool 5 minutes, drizzle with a bit of olive oil and sprinkle lightly with sea salt.  Serve warm.

(You can hold the stuffed dates in the refrigerator for a day or two before baking and serving.)

Cheese Marbles?

In Little Foods of the Mediterranean by Clifford A. Wright, I saw an intriguing recipe for Cheese Marbles. Yeah, it was one of those recipes I read and thought to myself that is too easy, too obvious, it will never work.  And, you know what?  It didn't.

It is basically cheese mixed with flour, rolled in breadcrumbs and baked.  I used the cream cheese that was first choice in the recipe, added a bit of smoked paprika for flavor, baked them up and they tasted like raw pie crust.  Not that I have anything against raw pie crust, but I suspect it is a bit of an acquired taste.  So I baked them so more...  still tasted of raw flour, they were just not a soft as before.

Ah well, I can't expect them all to be good new recipes. 

Tapas Experiment #1

I made Spanish-Style Meatballs for dinner last night and they came out really well.  In fact, so well that I will use the recipe as I made it for the gourmet club dinner.  Yeah, not much experimentation was required for this one.

But that is not saying I did not make some changes to the recipe I used as a starting point (click on the "Printable Version" link to get a fun surprise!).  I tweaked the spice levels (I did not want the nutmeg and cinnamon to be too prevalent), used a bit more meat (because it came in 1-pound packages).  I also used the milk-soaked bread method rather than dry breadcrumbs.  And, for the sauce, be sure to chop the onions finely and substitute red pepper flakes for cayenne (feel free to use more -- I was aiming for a gentle heat since it will be served to a varied group of people).

The next experiment will be Manchego-Stuffed Dates. Warm or room temperature?  Ham-wrapped or not? Sprinkled with sea salt or truffle honey or ???  Hmmm...

Spanish-Style Meatballs in Spicy Tomato Sauce

Spanish-Style Meatballs in Spicy Tomato Sauce
Serves 4-6 as main course, 8-10 as appetizer

Meatballs:

8 ounces ground pork

8 ounces ground veal

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1-1/2 teaspoons salt

1 egg

1 cup fresh bread crumbs + 3 tablespoons milk, stirred together

2 tablespoons olive oil

Tomato Sauce:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 cup dry white wine

16-ounce can crushed tomatoes

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1/2 cup chicken stock

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
salt

Directions:

Combine the pork, veal, garlic, spices, salt, bread/milk mixture and egg in a bowl. Mix by hand until fairly smooth and leaving the side of the bowl. Refrigerate, covered, for 30 minutes.

Roll tablespoons of the mixture into balls and dredge in flour. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a skillet and toss half the meatballs over medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes, or until browned. Drain on paper towels. Add the remaining oil if necessary and brown the rest of the meatballs. Drain on paper towels.

For the spicy tomato sauce, heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat and add the onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes, or until transparent. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Increase the heat to high, add the wine and boil for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste and stock and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the pepper flakes and meatballs. Simmer for 5-10 minutes, or until thick and the meatballs are coated in sauce. Add salt to taste.  Serve hot.

Duck Eggs

No, not to eat...

On the left is a Hooded Merganser egg and on the right is a Wood Duck egg.  Both from the same nest box at Huntley Meadows Park.

This last week has been filled with bird-stuff and garden-stuff, so no new recipes.  In fact, RWT was lucky he got any dinner on a few nights.  

But I'll do better this week since I will be testing out the recipes for the next gourmet club get-together.  I think I've finally decided on my third tapa -- Manchego-Stuffed Dates.  I might try to work some Surryano ham into it also.  Stay tuned...

Tapas!

For my OSC Gourmet group, I'll be making tapas for next month's get-together.  I will need to bring three different kinds.  The first will be meatballs with an allioli sauce (exact recipe TBD).  The second with be puff pastry turnovers filled with almond/saffron chicken (recipe from Clifford Wright's Little Foods of the Mediterranean).  And I still need to decide on the third. 

One of the other members of the club is bringing three veggie-centric tapas. (marinated carrots, tomato/avocado and eggplant)  And another is making two tapas that are based on chorizo and  also garlic shrimp.  So I was thinking of possibly doing one with cheese or potatoes or both.  Just nothing fried because I don't want to mess up the host's kitchen more than I have to.  Recipe suggestions are most definitely welcome and watch this space the results of my tapas experiments.

Fried Chickpea Patties With Sesame Seed Sauce (Revithokeftedes me Tahini Saltsa)

I ran across this recipe for Fried Chickpea Patties With Sesame Seed Sauce and it sounded too good not to try.  However, it ended up being a bit of a disappointment.  But I think it was more my fault than any issues with the recipe.  

I suspect I whirred the garbanzos too long in the food processor because the texture of the patties was somewhat pasty.  I also had a difficult time keeping the oil at a temperature that  was hot enough to keep the patties from absorbing oil, but not so hot that they got too brown.

The best part of the dish was the accompanying tahini sauce.  While uber-garlicky, it was totally delicious.  So I'll probably keep looking for a recipe for better patties, but I'll definitely use that sauce again.  Maybe with my favorite eggplant patties.

Flax Muffins

Yeah, flax.  No, I'm not turning into a bird.  However, the recommendation of this recipe did come from a birder via another birder (Thank you, PS & MP!).

The recipe can be found on the back of a Bob's Red Mill Flax Meal package.  A similar recipe is here, but the recipe on the package calls for unbleached flour rather than whole wheat pastry flour (which can be a bit of a pain to find) and oat bran instead of "oat bran cereal" (whatever that is!).  

A substitution I made was to swap chopped dates for the raisins since I find it disconcerting how raisins can sometime "pop" when you chew them, especially in baked goods.   I also used heavy cream in place of the milk since there was so little fat in the recipe and I wanted the muffins not to stale too quickly.  And I used pecans as the nuts.

With all the goodies in these muffins, of course they are moist and tasty.  My only quibble with the recipe is that it says it makes 15 "medium" muffins.  I don't know what they mean by "medium", but with my standard-sized muffin pans, I ended up with 28 muffins.   Not that having more muffins is a bad thing...

White Bean and Bread Soup

Sorry for the delay with the postings of (mostly beige) newly-tried recipes.  It is not that I've been slacking on the making of new recipes... I've just not had a lot of time to write about them.

The biggest surprise recipe in the last week was when I made one from the Washington Post for a White Bean and Bread Soup.  The recipe calls for Bellota ham which, and this probably comes as no surprise, I did not have on hand.  But what was lurking in the back of the refrigerator was some Surryano ham -- a Virginia-made Serrano-style ham -- which was certainly an adequate substitute as far as I'm concerned.

I also used some Virginia country ham instead of the Bellota ham scraps that were called for in the recipe.  So, even with the more pedestrian substitutions, the soup was very tasty.  And easy.  And quick to make.  And RWT really liked it.   Definitely a recipe to keep.

Prothonotary Nest Boxes

[For those non-birders who read my blog mainly for the food-centric posts, you  just might want to stop reading right here.  Yeah, you know who you are.  Proceed at your own risk and absolutely no eye rolling if you do!]

I put on my waders and joined the very helpful staff at Huntley Meadows Park in installing some Prothonotary Warbler nest boxes today. 

When I was helping to monitor the duck nest boxes last spring, I saw a pair of Prothonotary Warblers looking for a nice abode in the vicinity and that got me started on the path to resurrect the Prothonotary Warbler nest box program at Huntley Meadows.  I coerced RWT into building some nest boxes, hit up the local Prothonotary Warbler expert, Mr. LC, for a ton of guidance and the folks at Huntley were kind enough to allow the nest boxes to be mounted at the southern end of the main wetland area.  I will be checking these boxes every week from now until mid-July and, if we're very lucky, we'll be able to entice some Prothonotary Warblers into nesting in that area.

On to the pictures...

 The boxes -- 4"x4"x8" with a 1.25" entrance hole

Box #1 (snag-mounted)

Box #1 (snag-mounted) & Box #2 (post-mounted)

Box #3 (snag-mounted) & Box #4 (snag-mounted)

Box #5 (post-mounted), Box #6 (post-mounted) & Box #7 (snag-mounted)

All of the boxes can be viewed (please don't touch!) by taking the informal trail just past the end of the boardwalk at Huntley Meadows Park.  Boxes #1 and #2 are on the far side of the wetlands, behind duck box #61 and across from boxes #3 and #4 (which are near duck box #68).  Boxes #5, #6 and #7 are closer to the tower and near duck box #62.  These three boxes are located in what appears to be the most suitable Prothonotary Warbler habitat in the main wetland and have the best chance of being utilized by Prothonotary Warblers.  Time will tell...

Whole-Wheat Blueberry Bars

 

Friends PS and PK (plus BSB chiming in on occasion) have been having a lengthy email discussion regarding blueberries and I decided to try out a recipe for Whole-Wheat Blueberry Bars that was passed along by PS in one of her messages.

Of course, I had to change a few things...  with the mindset of "if you are going to go healthy go all the way", I skipped the butter entirely and used 1/4 cup of a rather mild extra-virgin olive oil.  And I subbed King Arthur White Whole Wheat (which is made from a different variety of wheat) for regular whole wheat.  Also, I baked the bars in a 9x13" pan (who has an 8x12" pan?!?).  I had no problems with texture or thickness and they sure look pretty.  However, they were a little bland. 

I'll either add some cardamom (one of my favorite baking spices) or nutmeg (not one of my favorite baking spices) next time.  The cardamom would add a nice brightness and sparkle, but the nutmeg would give some warmth to the taste.  Hmmm, I guess it comes down to the time of year and your preferences.  

Good recipe, thank you PS. 

Moroccan-Style Carrots

After looking at all the recent beige recipes, here is one with a little color...  

 Moroccan-Style Carrots  

These were easy and tasty.  I was not sure about the cinnamon, but it was good (I used Ceylon cinnamon rather than Vietnamese cinnamon).  The spices are a bit gritty, but neither RWT nor I found that it detracted from the dish.  The only thing I'd change would be to cut down the cayenne to 1/8 teaspoon.  While not overly hot, that much heat was a bit distracting from the other flavors.

Cabbage-Caraway Quiche

As he usually does when he flees the country, EES relocated the veggies from his refrigerator/pantry to mine.  This trip, it was a cabbage, a couple of small butternut squash and a fancy-schmancy pumpkin (but no heavy cream!).  I'm planning on turning the squash and pumpkin into a soup for his homecoming, but what to do with the cabbage...  

I eventually decided on a recipe for Cabbage-Caraway Quiche from epicurious.com that sounded really good (plus I'm a sucker for alliteration).  The verdict: I liked it, but RWT thought it too "caraway-y".  After nearly 19 years of marriage, I had no idea that RWT does not like caraway.  I guess that also explains why he does not like my caraway rye bread. 

Anyway, it was a good quiche although not great.  The reviews said it was too much filling for the crust, so I made it in my largest deep-dish pie plate (no store-bought pie crust for us!) and it was too little filling.   Also, I found it lacking in bacon flavor, but I did not use a very good bacon (accidentally bought the wrong type at TJ's) so that could have been the cause.  Not sure I'll make this one again as written.  At least not when RWT is home.

Potato Pizza

Yes, yet another pizza recipe.  What can I say?  I like bread and cheese.  However, this recipe has no cheese...  but don't worry, the creme fraiche makes up for it.  

After a few spicy meals in a row, RWT and I decided we wanted something a little calmer for dinner, so I decided on this recipe for Potato Pizza.  I made it as written with the exception of adding about a half cup more water to the dough.  Not only is a softer dough easier to spread out in the pan, it also has better crumb.  

Although not spicy, this pizza was very flavorful.  It was one of those things that you just want to keep eating because it tastes so good.  And it is actually light enough that it could be  cut into small pieces and served as an appetizer.  It's another keeper!