Marinated Olives with Lemon

Simple can be best.

A cup of black coffee, roasted from the perfect beans.

A stroll though the farmers' market on a Saturday morning.

Chocolate peanut butter cookies just out of the oven.

A fresh, green salad overflowing on my plate.

Homemade pillows. Lots of them. In various sizes and patterns.

And these olives, marinated for a few days (or for two or three weeks) with lemon, olive oil, garlic and pepper. The lemon lingers in the background. It's present without being overbearing.

These olives come together in a few minutes, and then get thrown in the refrigerator until you need them. They need some time to come to room temperature before you eat them so the oil melts.

They make the perfect addition to a make-ahead appetizer table.

Roasted Chickpeas

On the benefits of roasted chickpeas... 

1. They've got a perfect crunch to them, which satisfies my cravings for tortilla chips, pretzels and popcorn. 

2. They're loaded with protein. One cup of chickpeas has about 27 grams of protein in it and half of your daily fiber requirements. 

3. They're so, so cheap. For two dollars, you've got a tasty, nutritious appetizer for your next dinner party. 

4. They're incredibly easy to make. Drain and rinse chickpeas. Spin them quickly in a salad spinner to remove exces moisture. Transfer to a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil. Top generously with Spanish paprika and salt. Stir. Bake. Stir. Bake. Eat. 

5. They'll make almost any salad a bit tastier. Think of them as healthier, tastier croutons. 

6. They'll take on pretty much any flavor you sprinkle over them. My favorite is Spanish paprika.

7. They'll give you an excuse to use your salad spinner for something other than salad. 

8. You'll almost always have the ingredients on hand. 

9. Every recipe you'll find for them is different. Some call for a 300 degree oven, and others require 450. Some roast for 20 minutes, and others roast for over an hour. My favorite settings are below. 

10. They're so, so tasty. 

Smoked Salmon Dip, Updated

In some areas of my cooking, there's a ton of variety. New desserts for nearly every dinner party.  A variety of entrees served to repeat visitors. I've even been spicing up my breakfasts, pushing myself to move beyond bagels and peanut butter.

And then, there's the appetizers.

It's not that I wouldn't like to make more creative appetizers for the typical dinner. It just happens that by the time I've created my ideal dinner (centered around a dessert, of course), there's no time left to create a unique set of appetizers to start the meal.

I've got one appetizer that almost always surfaces at dinner parties: smoked salmon dip. It's fabulously creamy and can easily be made a few hours in advance and tucked away in the fridge.

The only problem? The dairy. As part of my New Year's resolution to cut dairy out of my savory cooking, I haven't been able to make my traditional version of smoked salmon dip, loaded with cream cheese and a touch of milk.

I created this dairy-free smoked salmon dip as an alternative, substituting a bit of mayonnaise for all the cream cheese I had previously used. I added a touch of lemon juice for acidity and chopped green onions for some crunch.

The end result was a delicious dip with quite prominent smoked salmon flavors. I didn't miss the dairy at all. My friends accustomed to the original version didn't either.

Polenta Rounds with Spinach Pesto and Garlic Shrimp

If you watched me while I was throwing a dinner party, you might get confused. You'd see me in the kitchen, back facing away from the crowd, while everyone else sat, drank and socialized.

You'd see me hold conversations that started these ways.

Can you dice up those onions?

Can you squeeze those last 10 lemons I didn't have time to squeeze for lemonade?

Can you slice that baguette, brush it with a bit of olive oil, run a clove of garlic across the top of each slice and then bake it for 5 or 6 minutes? Then can you take the bread off the baking sheet and put it on that cute white dish over there? Thanks.

You might get confused by my inability to hold an in-depth conversation, distracted by timers going off and pots boiling over on the stove. You'd wonder why I invited people over in the first place.

It's not that I want to be anti-social at my dinner parties. It's just that I need to have more realistic dinner party expectations. I can't, realistically, set out to make a homemade appetizer, entree, side dish and overly elaborate dessert on a weeknight.

I can't.

Please remind me of that the next time I try.

This appetizer is nowhere near as simple as the chickpea spread I gave you earlier this week. That was a less-than-five-minute, make way ahead dish.

These polenta rounds requires a bit more work, depending on how you do them. There's the much faster way to prepare them with store-bought pesto and store-bought tubed polenta.

Then there's the way I did it, which requires you to have some time the day before to make your own pesto, cook your own polenta and cut your own polenta rounds. Or if you just HAVE to make them the day of, adjust the rest of your menu accordingly.

You'll be happy whatever way you do it.

These little polenta rounds just look beautiful on the plate, and they're hard to resist. A seared polenta round forms the base. It's topped with a generous spread of spinach pesto, a single garlic shrimp, and some cherry tomato rounds.

It's a two or three bite appetizer, which is good because these fly off the plate.

PS. Blogger wants me to correct the spelling on polenta to tadpole. Really?

Chickpea Spread

My doctor told me I should wear heels.

Or wedges, he quickly said, perhaps trying to wipe the frightened look of my face. It was the first time he had met me.

Heels? Really?

I own one pair of wedges that I've worn to nearly every wedding I've gone to. I wore them to work for half a day. It was all I could handle.

Heels are not exactly conducive to my lifestyle. I've got a mile walk to work every day, dozens of trips up to my third floor classroom, and I spend a good part of my day kneeling and squatting on the floor next to my students.

But unfortunately, I recently dropped a table on my ankle. Yes, it's a little hard to imagine, but I had disassembled my table to tighten the screws, and I decided to mop at the same time. The table smacked down on my ankle hard, and I sat on the floor in tears, gripping my ankle and putting a call through to a dear friend who advised I ice my ankle for as long as I could take it.

So I propped my foot up on my bed, covered it with ice, and leaned back in my chair to relax and watch an episode of Master Chef.

Little did I know, but I had unfortunately chosen the one broken chair in my apartment. Moments later, I was on the floor.

Needless to say, it was not my night, though the doctor did reassure me I was lucky that my ACL hadn't been split right in half. I walked away with a tiny tear in the outer edges of my tendon.

Three weeks later, my ankle still hurts, but I still see no room in my life for heels. I'm making a concession and wearing sneakers around the apartment (they have some lift in them, right?).

Luckily, there is a place in my life for appetizers so easy you can't make a mistake.

To make this chickpea spread throw some ingredients in a bowl, mash and serve. If you want to get fancy (and create too much work for yourself), you can make your own crackers. It's much healthier than my go-to favorite appetizer: smoked salmon dip. It's easily made vegan (just use your favorite mayonnaise substitute).

It's the kind of spread you enjoy while wearing your Birkenstocks. 

A Much Cleaner Stove and an Amuse Bouche

Imagine showing up to your new apartment and finding a kitchen stove that looked like this:

You can just imagine my reaction.

Luckily (perhaps), I had a week without cooking gas to determine the best way to clean thoroughly caked-on grime off a stove. It was Pinterest to the rescue! Weeks back, when I was less than optimistic about what my new apartment would look like, I had noticed a "clean stove/dirty stove" pin and saved it to my apartment board.

It was a simple fix, really. I combined baking soda and peroxide to make a paste, put the paste on an abrasive cooking sponge, and scrubbed. Most of the grime came off quickly. Some required a little more elbow grease.

I've never really considered myself a clean person, but I'm desperate to make myself one. I could submit as evidence the list of "must-have supplies" my friend Megan compiled for me, my multiple Target bills for cleaning supplies that I didn't know existed a few weeks ago and the fact that I googled "what cleaning product do you use to mop floors?" while I was at the store today.

I also think I've swept my new floors more times than I swept my old apartment last year, and I've only been here a bit more than week. 

Here's a little amuse bouche that tastes as clean and refreshing as my apartment feels to me: a one-bite summer salad.

It amused our palates at the start of the dinner party I threw a few weeks back with the help of McCormick Gourmet. It's a light summer salad with cubed, skinless cucumber, halved cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced sugar snap peas, a tiny lemon basil leaf, olive oil, salt and just a sprinkling of McCormick Gourmet Collection Tuscan Seasoning Blend.

I served the salad in Chinese soup spoons, of which I now have ten.

It's not fancy, but sometimes it doesn't need to be.

Smoked Salmon Dip

This smoked salmon dip is a treat.

Yes. This specific one you're looking at.

It's because my dad, an avid fisherman, caught this salmon himself.

Then he cleaned it, rubbed it with just a touch of maple syrup, and smoked it for me in his smoker. That was all done in Michigan. That's not where I live.

So, my dad sealed the smoked fish up for me (eight packages worth), bought a freezer bag and surrounded the fish with ice packs so it could survive the long flight and subway ride home.

I got the salmon home, unpacked it proudly and tucked it into my freezer. Whenever I want a pack, I pull it out in the morning to defrost and enjoy it when I get it home from work.

Best of all, that process repeats itself anytime I go home.

I use the salmon in all kinds of ways, but this is definitely one of my favorites. It couldn't be simpler to prepare.

A package of cream cheese, mixed with chopped capers and shallots and loaded with hot-smoked salmon. Spread on slices of baguette, it's a perfect start to a dinner party.

Happy Father's Day to you, Dad! Can't wait to go fishing with you soon!

Smashed Chickpea and Roasted Red Pepper Sandwich

Delicious, cold vegetarian sandwiches are hard to come by. Delicious, cold vegan sandwiches are even harder to find.

So many of the sandwiches I found lacked inspiration. The directions went something like this: Slice vegetables. Place on sandwich. Add slices of cheese. Top with hummus/mayonnaise. Eat.

Eh. I think this is the reason I never wanted sandwiches in my lunch box as a kid.

Last weekend we drove up to Portland, Maine, which meant we had about 7 hours in the car both ways. In an attempt to save money, and avoid rest stop food, I brought the sandwiches.

This was one of my favorites. Smashed chickpeas mixed with olives, red onions, lemon juice and zest, and parsley. Some hearty multigrain bread, a heavy smear of garlic hummus and a big slice of roasted red pepper finished the sandwich off.

Not only did it travel well, surviving a few days in our cooler before we ate it, but it was also cheap. Probably less than $2.50 of ingredients went in to the chickpea salad, which easily served four for lunch.

And, the leftovers were delicious on a toasted baguette rubbed with olive oil and garlic.

Homemade Ricotta Cheese

It's been a while. Since I posted, not since I cooked. I'm still cooking regularly, but the pressures of the beginning of the school year, graduate school and the deadlines of all the baking groups I had signed up for caught up with me. So, for the past month I haven't so much as commented on a food blog.

Tonight I'm attempting to get back into the swing of things, and I'm sharing with you a recipe I hinted at a few months ago but never got around to sharing.

Creamy, homemade ricotta cheese.

It was my first attempt at making cheese. The process disproved all of my assumptions. Making cheese is not expensive, and it doesn't require a lot of special equipment (other than cheese cloth, which couldn't be cheaper). It's the kind of recipe you can be happy with the first time you make it.

The process was simple. Boil some milk, cream and salt. Add lemon juice. Stir twice. Let sit undisturbed, and then drain to the desired consistency. Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat.

I served the ricotta atop broiled crostini, and I added a layer of roasted tomato confit to top it all of. The combination was perfect (thank you Thomas for the inspiration). My ricotta was a little on the lemony side (I'd use a bit less next time), but the lemon taste paired perfectly with the tomato confit.

Simple Bruschetta with Artichoke Hearts and Parmesan

Bruschetta can so easily go wrong. Sometimes it's soggy and flavorless (particularly if tomatoes are not in season). Other times, the large bits of topping fall off easily, making the bruschetta hard to eat, particularly when you don't have plates.

These bruschetta solve those problems.

They've got a base of pureed artichoke hearts, basil, lemon juice and garlic. It's thick enough to anchor firmly onto the bread, and the mixture stays together so the bread doesn't get soggy. A piece of shaved parmesan cheese on top and a sprinkle of black pepper seal the deal.

They also provide a great way for those earlier-to-arrive guests to help out in the kitchen. Prepare the artichoke puree and the strips of parmesan cheese in advance and refrigerate them. Throw the bread under the broiler a few minutes before the guests are due. Those first brave kitchen volunteers (or recruits!) can spread the artichoke mixture over the toasts and top them with pieces of parmesan. The bruschetta get made, and you get to snack on them along the way!

Lentil Sambusas

For my Ethiopian birthday feast, I knew I wanted to start with appetizers. However, in all the food blogs and restaurant menus I scoured, I had a hard time finding Ethiopian appetizers that weren't just toasted injera with spices. Then, I stumbled across these lentil sambusas on the menu of an Ethiopian restaurant in New Jersey.

These are the lentil sambusas with puff pastry dough. The lentil sambusas with phyllo dough were cooked and eaten before I remembered to take out my camera. 

I hadn't cooked much with phyllo dough, so I did some research to find out how to best work with phyllo dough and how to fold those perfect little triangles. Here are the highlights from what I learned:

Defrosting the phyllo dough: Once you buy phyllo dough, place it in the fridge for two days to defrost it. This allows it to defrost slowly and completely. The dough can stay in the fridge defrosted for up to a month. Avoid refreezing the dough.

Butter, Butter, Butter: Have plenty of melted butter and a pastry brush or paper towel on hand. Each sheet benefits from a generous application of butter. Butter helps the phyllo dough stick together, and it adds a little flavor to the finished project.

Folding perfect phyllo triangles: Sydney's Kitchen TV had a great guide to folding the triangles that I found helpful.

Freezing the unbacked triangles: Lay the unbacked triangles out on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Place in the freezer for about an hour. Once triangles are frozen, place into ziplock bags to store. I stored them for a few days this way, but you could certainly store them frozen for longer.

Somehow, despite all this research about phyllo dough, I ended up buying puff pastry. Big disappointment in terms of quantity. I was only able to make about 12 little triangles out of the puff pastry. I bought phyllo dough the next day, let it defrost for the requisite time, and was delighted with the results. Both batches tasted delicious, though, so it would definitely be up to you which you wanted to use.

The make-ahead nature of these sambusas made them the perfect start to a complicated dinner.