Devil Eggs

We are always a fan of the classic deviled egg; it is a great go to appetizer, and in this case an awesome thing to dress up!

Enjoy our Devil Eggs!

Ingredients: makes 2 dozen –make sure you have a ziplock  bag      

A dozen eggs
½ cup roasted red peppers
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
¼ cup canola oil
1 fresh red pepper
Cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons kosher salt

Place all 12 eggs in warm water and set to high heat. Once the water comes to a boil, let boil for 12 minutes. Remove from water, and set eggs in an ice bath.

Once all eggs are cool, peel, and slice in half. Remove yolk and set aside.

Now we can make the filling, in a blender combine oil, salt, mustard, yolk, and roasted red pepper and blend until smooth. If you want it smoother add more oil.

To pipe the filling, place into a ziplock bag and cut the corner off fill in a circular motion.

To finish them off, cut pepper into thin slices, and then into little triangles to create the horns, and then sprinkle with cayenne pepper.

Let chill in refrigerator and then serve!

Cheddar Filled Pretzel Bites

Alas we are in October, the month of my birth, the month of one of my favorite holidays, and an awesome month to celebrate the soft pretzel! According to the tales, pretzels were invented in Italy by monks in 600s from leftover breads. Pretzels have since been linked to Christianity, and featured in many Catholic holidays and traditions. The Germans really grabbed onto these traditions, and it is the Germans we have to thank for immigrating to America and introducing the US to pretzels!! There is some history with your food.

To honor the Oktober tradition of enjoying a good soft pretzel and some beer, we have made cheddar stuffed pretzels balls. This dish is really easy and is great with an Oktoberfest beer.

Ingredients: makes about 2 dozen

11 cup warm water + 1 Tablespoon
1 envelope active dry yeast
3 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour plus more for work surface
1 tablespoon coarse kosher salt
2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, well softened
Vegetable oil for bowl
Medium cheddar cheese
2/3 cup baking soda
One egg

 



Stir together 1 cup warm water and yeast in a large bowl and let stand until foam forms. If it doesn’t, start over.

In a smaller bowl, stir together flour, salt, and light brown sugar.

Add flour mixture and butter to yeast mixture, and stir together completely and then knead with your hands. Take dough out of bowl and wipe with oil, put dough back in, cover, and let stand in refrigerator for an hour.

Once an hour is up preheat oven to 450 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper and rub a little oil on it.

Cube cheese into small inch pieces.

Cut dough into three pieces and one at a time roll out onto a flour dusted surface. Cut into 8 pieces. Place a cube of cheddar into the middle of the dough, and roll, making sure the dough seals around it. Set aside, and continue until you have made all of your pretzel bites.

Boil 10 cups of water and 2/3 cup baking soda. Place 4 pretzels at a time in the water to boil for 30
seconds, and then place on baking sheet. Once you have boiled all of them, mix together 1 egg yolk and one tablespoon of water, and brush all of the pretzels. Sprinkle with salt, and bake for 14 minutes.

Enjoy! These are so addicting.

 

Halloween Dinner Party

Last Friday we had an Edgar Allan Poe dinner party with a few close friends and family, and it was a blast! Because my birthday is October 21^st, birthday things tend to have a bit of a macabre twist to it. Edgar Allan Poe was a great writer and poet who is one of the pioneers of the detective novel and is loved by science fiction enthusiasts as well. His writing invokes a dark cloudy dream which could turn to a nightmare or wake you up to solve a murder.

With that being the theme we had to make food to fit the part!

We served:

The Devil’s Eggs

Crisp Tip Tarts

Baked Brie aka Gobbly Gook

Carrot Curry Soup

Black Rice aka squid ink paella

Carne Asada

Roasted Fall Vegetables

And more delicious little sides!

My three favorite things that we photographed for you and have the recipe for are a dessert we call Pink Fluff, and two appetizers; Crisp Tip Tarts, The Devil’s Eggs!

Enjoy and make these easy and quick treats for your Halloween Dinner!

 

 

Ingredients: makes 12 serves 6 if everyone eats 2

*get a sandwich bag if you want to pipe the filling nicely!

**Spanish paprika and normal paprika are a bit different, Spanish paprika is really smoky and has great deep flavor.

***A few of the ingredients were bought at Surfas in Culver City, for example the premade stuff, and the amazing strawberry fizz chocolate candy we bought! Either go there or go online to www.culinarydistrict.com. This place is amazing and great for any lover of cooking.

6 eggs
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon plus 1/2 teaspoon white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons Siracha
Pinch of salt
Spanish smoked paprika for taste
Red food coloring

To make the perfect hard boiled egg for this, fill a pot with water to cover the eggs 1-2 inches, and then pour in the 1 tablespoon of vinegar (this keeps the whites from running if the eggs crack). Place all the eggs in and turn the heat on high. When the water starts boiling, let it boil one minute, then remove from heat, cover, and let sit for 12 minutes.

To get the beautiful marbling effect on the eggs, once the eggs cool a bit, crack them all around by rolling them on a hard surface. Don’t be afraid to get them in deep, because you want that color to seep in. Next fill a large bowl with water and about 10 drops of food coloring, and let the cracked eggs sit for about 1 hour if you really want some good coloring. (Our eggs are a little pink because I added some drops of blue!)

Peel the eggs and cut in half lengthwise, placing the yolks in a medium size bowl. Combine the rest of all the ingredients, and mash together until smooth. You can add more Siracha if you want more of a kick.

Put filling in a sandwich bag and cut the tip off, using this to pip the filling into the half egg. Sprinkle the paprika for decoration and for taste.

Ingredients: Makes 12

12 prebaked savory tart shells
4 eggs
¼ cup goat cheese
2 teaspoons thyme
12 pieces of asparagus
1 teaspoon salt plus a pinch
1 Tablespoon olive oil
½ lemon

Start by preheating oven to 350 degrees and heating a skillet.

Chop the tips off of the asparagus. Heat oil in your skillet, and place asparagus tips in. Squeeze half the lemon on and add a tiny pinch of salt. Let cook until the tips start to brown a bit and crisp up, about 5 minutes. Remove from skillet and put on a paper towel to absorb oil.

In a medium bowl, mix together the eggs, goat cheese, thyme, and salt. Mix together until the goat cheese is evenly dispersed in small pieces.

Spoon mix into shells, top with tips, and bake for 10 minutes. Make sure the egg is cooked all the way.

Ingredients: makes 12

12 chocolate cups
Box of candy strawberry fizz
4 cups frozen strawberries
½ cup sugar
1 oz vanilla pudding mix
8 oz cool whip

This recipe is super easy and looks amazing. To make strawberry mousse, puree strawberries and sugar until completely smooth. Add pudding mix and keep mixing. Remove from mixer and fold in cool whip. Cover in bowl and let set for 15 minutes.

Spoon mousse in chocolate cup and top with the candy fizz! The mix of smooth mousse, biting chocolate, and a pop of the candy fizz is spooktacular!

Happy Halloween!

 

 

 

 

Oscar Party Pizzette, Stuffed Mushroom, and Blood Orange Mimosa!

Oscar season is upon us. We have received all of the screeners in the mail, and have our personal favorites. It is a fun time of year, when you can cuddle up with your loved one and watch a good movie. This year to celebrate the Oscars we are going over to our very good friends’ Jackson and Yasmine to eat some wonderful food, drink some dranks, and watch some glorious fashion and award giving. Mikey and I were thinking what do we enjoy the most with movie watching, and we thought pizza! So we have made you a really simply pizza crostini, or a pizzette you could say. Though the first thing to our mind isn’t stuffed mushrooms, to Hell with that, it should be! So we have also made a fabulous tarragon goat cheesed stuffed mushrooms.

Predict those awards, critique the fashion, and stuff your face with pizza on the couch!! Not to mention the wonderful blood orange champagne cocktail.

*Chiffonade= cutting herbs or greens in to long thin strips by either layering or rolling up the greens.

Ingredients: serves 12-15

Pizzette:
1 Baguette
½ cup tomato puree
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
1 pinch garlic salt
2 balls buffalo mozzarella
5 basil leaves

Stuffed Mushrooms:
15 cremini mushrooms
¼ cup goat cheese
2 sprigs tarragon
1 Tablespoon olive oil

Blood Orange Mimosa:
Champagne
Blood orange

Maybe you should make this cocktail while you prepare the food, because it is very refreshing and a simple twist on a mimosa. Simply squeeze the juice of a blood orange into a glass and top off with champagne, and then garnish with a blood orange slice. So sleek!

The first thing you should do is prep all of your ingredients and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice the baguette on a diagonal slice so the bread is about a ¼” thick, set aside. Next slice all the mozzarella about the same thickness, set aside. Next roll up your basil leaves tightly, and using a sharp knife chiffonade all the basil, set aside.

To make the sauce simply mix the past, puree, and garlic salt together.

Now we assemble the pizzettes. Cover the bread in the tomato sauce, then lay down some mozzarella, and top it off with basil. Lay the pizzettes out on a baking sheet leaving room for the mushrooms.

In order to make the mushrooms, pull the stems out, and if need be use a paring knife to cut the rest of the stem out. Put the mushrooms in a bowl, and coat them with the olive oil. Chop up the tarragon and in a separate small bowl mix together the tarragon and goat cheese. Fill the mushrooms with the cheese mix until overflowing a bit. Place on the baking sheet.

Put the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 10 minutes, pull out and remove the pizzettes, and then put the baking sheet back in the oven and bake for another 5 minutes.

Now enjoy your delicious Oscar food! Hurray!

Mardi Gras Cornbread Fritters with a Sazerac Cocktail!!

Mardi Gras is the last day of rich eating, the day before Ash Wednesday when lent begins. Literally translated Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday. This is the last day in which people celebrate and eat all of the rich things that they love, before repenting their sins and fasting for religious obligations. This has become a great time of religious celebrations throughout the world. Families join together, eat great food, drink great beverages, and in many cases attend grand festivals. Living in Venice I feel that every day is a Mardi Gras festival; the amount of colorful people that live in the area, all the fur covered bikes, random beads, and all around kookooness that occurs. This is one of the many reasons that we love living here.

When we think of Mardi Gras, Mikey and I think of New Orleans and all of the great Southern food that there is. We think delicious flavors, a little spice, some gooiness, and maybe something a little fried. To mix all this goodness together we created a jalapeno cheddar corn bread fritters! Not to mention the traditional southern drink of Sazerac to accompany it! Nothing says Mardi Gras like a fritter with some booze!

*We used an ice cream scooper to make perfect dollops of fritter.

* The best way to tell if oil is ready to fry things in is to put a little water on your fingers and flick it in the oil, (from far away as to not burn yourself), and if it sizzles you are ready.

Ingredients:
 Fritters: makes about a dozen

1 ½ cups plus 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 jalapeno
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups cornmeal
2 teaspoons sugar
½ cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
1 cup milk

Sazerac: makes 1 drink

3 oz rye whiskey
¾ oz simple syrup
Splash of peychaud bitters
Lemon twist
½ a tangerine

Make this lovely cocktail by measuring out your whiskey, add your simple syrup and stir it in. Splash it off with the bitters, and take half of a tangerine and squeeze it in to add a new tangy twist to this classic. To make a lemon twist, using a peeler, peel a 3 inch long strip of rind, take a knife to cut as a straight line, and twist around your finger to curl it.

For the fritters start by shredding one cup of cheddar cheese, and seeding and dicing one jalapeno. In a large and deep sauce pan heat the 1 ½ cups oil on a medium high heat.

In a medium size bowl mix all the dry ingredients together. In a small bowl whisk the egg and 2 Tablespoons of oil together. Pour in to the dry ingredients, followed by the milk, mix until most clumps are gone. Mix in the jalapeno and cheddar cheese.

Take whatever you are using to scoop your mix out, and dollop about 2 Tablespoons out into the hot oil. Fit as many as you can in the oil at once. Take a large plate and lay paper towels out so that as you are making your fritters you can place on towel to soak as much extra oil out as possible.

Cook on one side until golden brown, then flip, until golden brown all over. Lay on paper towel, wait to cool, and serve with the delectable cocktail you created! Now go collect as many beads as you can! Hoorah!