Jalapeno Wonton Poppers

Two weeks ago, my beloved yet disastrous New York Rangers were still in the playoffs, and our hopes were very much alive that they might actually manage to beat the #1 ranked Washington Capitals. Alas, it was not to be. Despite that letdown, we still had lots of yummy food to nosh on while we watched the game! I made a really yummy cold Asian noodle salad that I forgot to take pictures of, grilled chicken wings with my favorite marinade, and these jalapeno poppers as an appetizer.

Jalapeno Wonton Poppers (adapted from here)

What You Need

• 1 8 oz. package fat free cream cheese, softened
• 1 4 oz. can chopped green chilies
• 1 package wonton or egg roll wrappers
• 2-3 tbsp olive oil

What To Do

Let the cream cheese sit at room temperature until it is soft and no longer cold to the touch. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the green chilies and the cream cheese. Preheat the oven to 475F.

My local grocery store didn’t have wonton wrappers, so I bought egg roll wrappers and cut the entire package into quarters.

First, have a small bowl of lukewarm water handy to dip your fingers into. Next, place 1 tbsp of filling onto the center of each wrapper.

Moisten your fingers in the water, then dampen two edges of the wrapper. Fold the wonton into a triangle, then press and pinch the edges together. You can then fold them into a uniform, pretty pattern, or you can just randomly mush them together like I did.

Instead of forming these into “wontons,” they turned into little jalapeno purses. The original recipe said to deep fry these, but a) I don’t have a deep fryer, and b) I don’t tend to eat a lot of fried foods. Instead, I brushed the purses lightly with olive oil, then baked them for 5 minutes.

A few of my poppers…popped. Otherwise, these came out bubbling hot and lightly crunchy. Overall, this recipe made about 50 poppers, which was way more than 4 people could eat in one evening. Even after reheating these in the microwave, they were still crunchy and very tasty! You can eat these plain, or dip them into sweet chili sauce for a little extra kick.  It took me about a half hour to put these together, but it was very easy to do and would be a great way to involve your kids/spouse in preparing part of your meal. This has definitely entered my party menu rotation and I look forward to having an excuse to make and eat them again soon!

Zuppa!

As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, I really, really love soup. I apologize if you guys have reached soup overload, but I still haven’t reached my fill. As some friends and I were discussing over lunch (which, yes, included soup) at Panera today, soups are great because they are usually very nutritious, filling, inexpensive to make, and are a good way to get your fill of veggies even if you’re normally not a big fan. When Allison and Mohamed came over for dinner a few weeks ago (the same dinner where I made the Korean Beef), we started out with this soup I found in Eating Well Magazine. I highly recommend their daily newsletter – I’ve never had a bad suggestion from them, and they are usually very simple to make!

Garden Tortellini Soup with Italian Meatballs (adapted from here)

What You’ll Need

• 2 green zucchini, sliced and quartered
• 2 large carrots, peeled, sliced and quartered
• 1 large white onion, diced
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 plum tomatoes, diced (about ½ can)
• 32 oz low-sodium vegetable broth
• 1 package turkey sausages, Italian style, with the casings removed
• 2 cups (one small bag) frozen tortellini, preferably spinach & cheese or plain cheese
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp dried rosemary
• 2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar

What To Do

After chopping the vegetables, heat your Dutch oven or large pot plus the olive oil on medium heat. Once it’s hot, sauté the onion and carrot for 1 minute uncovered. Slightly reduce the heat, cover the pot, and cook for about 6 minutes, or until the veggies start to soften and the onion is translucent. Uncover, add the garlic and rosemary, and cook for 1 more minute.

During the 6 minute cooking period from Step 1, remove the casings from the turkey sausages by cutting a slit down the length of the sausage with a sharp knife. The casing should peel right off, leaving the slightly gooey meat. Divide each sausage into 3-4 small balls and form mini-meatballs. In a medium skillet, cook the meatballs on medium heat, turning frequently so that all sides are evenly cooked. There should be no need for oil as the meatballs will give off their own fat.

After the meatballs are cooked, remove them from the pan and set aside. Into the pot with the veggies, add your vegetable broth and zucchini; increase the heat slightly and bring the soup to a boil. Once it boils, reduce the heat to medium low and simmer for about 3 minutes.  Add the cooked meatballs, frozen tortellini, and plum tomatoes. Let this cook for about 10 minutes, or until the tortellini plump up and are fully cooked.

Just before serving the soup, stir the red wine vinegar into the pot and mix well. Serve with crusty bread while piping hot.

The ratio of tortellini to other ingredients was way off in this bowl of soup, primarily because I was also spazzing and trying to get the other parts of our dinner ready at the same time. This soup was a huge hit – we all had full bowls before dinner and would have kept on eating it if not for the other dishes waiting for us. I’ve experimented with this recipe since my first time trying it, and I think I even improved it a little bit. The second time I made it, I used dried tortellini with a pesto filling, skipped the turkey meatballs, and added an entire bag of baby spinach with the stems removed. I also added the entire can of plum tomatoes, half a bag of frozen peas that I found in the back of my freezer, and 2 heaping tablespoons of Spike Seasoning on top of the spices already listed in this recipe. I suggest playing with the spices to fit your taste – this would obviously be best with fresh herbs, but I tend not to buy them in the winter as I always have leftovers that go bad before I can use them up. I brought this every day for lunch the week after I made it, and all of my coworkers kept asking what I was eating because it smelled so great!

I’m baaaack!

Yes, it actually has been over a month since I last put up a post.  I’m sorry, faithful minions. Between Christmas, New Years, a mini-vacation with my hubby, and, oh yeah, TWO major family medical emergencies, I’ve been a bit, shall we say, distracted. Gobsmacked. Cray-cray.  Insert favorite synonym for OHMYGODI’MLOSINGMYMIND here.

But yay, life is finally getting back to a semblance of normalcy! And since I know you’ve missed me so much, I figured I’d put up a quickie (don’t be a perv) to tide you over until my next mammoth post – Thanksgiving stuffing.  And yes, I do realize that was in November, but in my mind there is never a wrong time to make stuffing.

This recipe is one that I found on Allrecipes.com a long time ago when I was searching for a quick and easy appetizer to make for a holiday dinner.  Since then, I make it for most potlucks, church group meetings, dinner parties, etc.  The recipe makes one large casserole dish, and there’s rarely leftovers (even in small groups).

Vidalia Onion Dip

What You’ll Need

• 2 cups chopped Vidalia onion (about one medium/large onion)
• 1 cup fat free mayonnaise
• 2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
• ½ grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
• ¼ cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs

**Optional: Hot sauce to taste

What To Do:

Preheat your oven to 350F. Evenly chop your onion into 1/4 inch cubes. I tend to be impatient and just end up roughly hacking the onion into irregularly shaped pieces, and it still turns out fine.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the mayonnaise with the onion.  Add the cheese, pepper, and hot sauce (if desired) and mix well (it will be very thick and gloppy).

Transfer the contents of the bowl into an oven-safe casserole dish.  Smooth out with a spoon so that the dip is evenly distributed.  Lightly cover the entire surface with bread crumbs.  Bake for 35 minutes, or until the bread crumbs are golden brown and the dip is visibly bubbling. Serve with your favorite crackers or flatbreads for dipping.

I used a grated Parmesan & Romano mixture for the dip in this picture, and I think the additional cheese really brought this to a whole new level.  I think it would be interesting to try using an Italian 4-cheese blend to give it that much more flavor.  I like serving this with the giant Wheat Thins because even after the onions are cooked the dip is chunky and it’s easier to scoop it out with a bigger surface area. The original recipe does not call for bread crumbs, but I like the crunch they give to a dish that would otherwise be fairly mushy.  However, if you want to save the calories, or can’t have the gluten, feel free to omit them. You could also easily adapt this dip by adding some diced scallions, chipotle pepper sauce, etc. Have fun experimenting!

Holy Guacamole!

Last weekend, guest blogger Molly came for a long overdue visit.  On Saturday, we went to NYC and ate ourselves into a food coma: we had the world’s best falafel at Taim in the West Village, then trekked our way over to The Doughnut Plant in the Lower East Side for Peanut-Butter-Glazed-and-Blackberry-Jam Filled doughnuts.  SO. GOOD.
We had big plans for Sunday – we were going to make a variation on the macaroni & cheese recipe I posted earlier this month. Before we went food shopping on Friday night for the necessary ingredients, Molly happened to find a recipe in her purse for bacon guacamole that she had torn out of the newspaper several months back.  This was clearly fate, since a) it was a recipe by Top Chef Master Rick Bayless, one of my favorite chefs, b) it has bacon in it, and c) it has avocado in it.  This is, quite clearly, a trinity of awesomeness. 
Bacon and Tomato Guacamole
What You’ll Need:

• 5 strips medium-thick bacon OR 8 strips regular-cut bacon
  
• 3 medium/large ripe avocados (see note)
  
• ½ medium white onion, chopped into ¼-inch pieces
  
• 2 or 3 canned chipotle chiles en adobo, removed from the sauce, stemmed, slit open, seeds removed, and finely chopped
  
• 1 medium-large ripe tomato, cored and chopped into ¼-inch pieces
  
• ¼ cup (loosely packed) cilantro, roughly chopped, plus extra for garnish
  
• 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
  
• Salt to taste

**Note: When selecting avocados, you can test for ripeness by pressing your thumb down into the fruit.  If your thumbprint remains, it is ripe.  However, as we soon learned, this level of ripeness means they should be used immediately.  If you aren’t planning on using the avocados that day, choose ones that are slightly firmer.
What To Do:
First, Master Rick instructed us that we should cook the bacon strips in a skillet over medium heat for about 10 minutes, or until they were crispy and browned.

We ended up cooking the entire package of bacon, because we didn’t have the thick-cut type and thought we’d need to add a few extra slices to compensate.  Also, we had to taste-test it several times just to make sure it wasn’t poisoned.
While I was cooking the bacon, Molly got to work preparing the avocados.  Using a sharp knife, slice carefully through the fruit around the pit, then twist the two halves so they separate.  We had purchased the avocados at their perfect ripeness on Friday night, and had originally planned to make this dish on Saturday night after getting home from NYC. However, we were both too tired and WAY too full to make this when we got back, so it waited until Sunday.  This was a big mistake – the avocados had over-ripened, and instead of being a lovely green, they were starting to turn brown and get stringy.  Not appealing.  Molly scraped out the parts that were usable then mashed them in a bowl until they were smooth. We then had to cheat by adding one tub of Trader Joe’s guacamole so that we’d have about the right amount of avocado in proportion to our other ingredients.

As the second batch of bacon was cooking, I got to work chopping the tomato and onion, while Molly prepared the chipotle chiles.  You can find these in the international section of your supermarket for about $2 per can.

As the instructions mentioned, you need to open these chiles up and remove the seeds (they are the hottest part).  We used 3 peppers and there was plenty of heat in our guacamole; since we both like spicy foods, this suited us just fine, but if you prefer a milder taste then I would suggest using only 2 peppers.
After the peppers were sliced and diced, the bacon was drained on paper towels and chopped into large crumbles.

The onion, tomato, chile peppers, and about ⅔ of the bacon were tossed into the bowl with the avocado. This was topped with a generous helping of the fresh chopped cilantro.

We gently mixed all of the ingredients together so as not to pulverize the tomato until they reached a uniform mixture.

Season the guacamole with salt and lime juice to taste (I hand squeezed a half of a lime into it without measuring and it was just right). Right before eating, top with the rest of the bacon and more cilantro, if desired.

Besides each other, there are few things that Molly and I love more in this world than bacon and avocados (particularly in the form of guacamole), so it was no surprise that this was pretty freaking amazing.  The chipotle peppers gave a smoky heat that helps cut the creamy nature of the avocado, while the fresh onion and crispy bacon helped liven up the texture.  Our only complaint, if you could call it one, was that there wasn’t quite enough bacon (really, is there such a thing as too much bacon?!). I think this might be because we used regular-cut bacon instead of the thick-cut that Master Chef Rick advised. Regardless, this was extremely tasty, very easy to make, and a perfect munchy dish for a lazy Sunday afternoon. You can find the original recipe for this, and many other sure-to-be-delicious meals, in Rick’s new book, Fiesta at Rick's.