After making a fantastic tuna sandwich, we made a few variations of tuna appetizers the next day. This is one of them, and it’s great. When working with tuna, be very careful not to overpower the subtle taste. We added a very mild Saint Faron cheese as a spread almost, and topped it with a small amount of balsamic vinegar reduction. Notice how the vinegar brings out the texture of the tuna in the pictures. This is a bite of food heaven.
This is a simple to make appetizer that looks great and taste even better. We used architokelemon pesto (Trader Joe’s), but regular pesto would make an equally good sandwich. We just like to mix things up a bit… that and use the multitude of spreads we have from our over exuberant grocery shopping. The Genoa salami is from a deli in Little Italy, but could be substituted for your own local variations.
Continue reading Appetizer: Genoa Salami and Roasted Garlic on Baguette with Architoke Lemon Pesto
A simple appetizer, but not cheap due to the tuna. However, well worth the money if you like us love seared tuna. We got a few nice steaks at Costco and decided to make Tuna Sandwiches, and appetizers from the leftovers. This is one of them, and it belong in the very tasty food group 🙂
This is one of the three appetizers we plan on serving for Thanksgiving. The secret is to use freshly-made ingredients, and so we made our own pesto and used Super Sweet 100 tomatoes from our backyard garden. We used goat cheese, which blends very nicely with the tomato and pesto. For bread, we stuck to a baguette.
Continue reading Appetizer: Goat Cheese and Pesto Bruschetta with Cherry Tomatoes
For Christmas 2007, Wendie bought me a torch – one of those you use in making desserts such as creme brulee. I had seen one on TV and I wanted it desperately. When I got it, I started manically torching everything, hoping to discover new uses and develop new dishes. As it turned out, most things don’t do well being torched. Roast beef… not so good. Vegetables…nope. Cornflakes… wouldn’t recommend it. The one thing that actually has its moments is cheese.
With the torch I can melt the surface of the cheese, and when biting into it you get a a feeling of warmth on your upper lip, while the rest of the bite is cold. Not entirely unpleasant. For a cheese sandwich, this requires a huge amount of torching action, due to the surface that needs to be melted, but for appetizers it works. After two years I still haven’t made creme brulee, but I’ve managed to construct this appetizer, which in my opinion is perfect for all those torches out there collecting dust. Enjoy.
Continue reading Torched Roquefort Appetizer with Muffaletta Spread and Pecorino Romano Cheese
After a week of large, fun, great sandwiches, we thought it was time to scale back to something simple. This is a cracker, with homemade yogurt cheese, and sliced red bell pepper. It doesn’t get much simpler when it comes to food than this, plus this is a great appetizer for parties or get-togethers’. If you are making the yogurt cheese yourself, then remember to start the day before.
Continue reading Homemade Yogurt Cheese on Cracker with Red Bell Pepper (Appetizer)
When all you want is a quick snack, this is a tasty in-between meals treat. The yogurt cheese and the capers make a nice pairing for the smoked salmon, and that’s really all there is to it. Very easy to make if you are hosting a party, or have friends dropping by, as long as you have prepared the yogurt for the yogurt cheese the day before.
Continue reading Cracker Topped with Yogurt Cheese, Smoked Salmon and Capers (Appetizer)
We love lavash crackers, and I mean really love them, and we’ll typically eat them just plain. Sometimes though, it’s good to add a little extra, and since we were grilling vegetables yesterday, we thought this little appetizer would be a great way to use the lavash. In this case we didn’t score the lavash before baking so instead we broke it into large rustic pieces. That’s another great way of presenting them, and of course with bigger pieces comes the opportunity to layer other ingredients on top.
Continue reading Lavash Cracker Appetizer with Olive Tapenade, Grilled Squash and Roasted Garlic
This is a great little appetizer, very easy to make (even the tuna salad is easy), and you can put it together in 5 minutes flat. The sweetness of the Digestive biscuit and the red bell pepper matches the tuna salad very well.
Continue reading Tuna Salad on Digestive Biscuit with Chopped Red Bell Pepper
Hungry for a snack, I found some cilantro lime shrimp from Costco in the fridge, along with a bit of smoked salmon. In about 1 minute I had created this little post-lunch cracker, which would also work great as an appetizer for a party. The cracker used here is a water cracker, but I think I would prefer something a little more rustic next time.
Continue reading Cilantro Lime Shrimp and Smoked Salmon Crackers