Just experimenting with a few appetizer ideas for New Year’s Eve and came up with this one. And Seriously, how can you go wrong with carbs, bacon, gravy and cheese?!
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Appetizers/Starters
Looking for a few ideas for homemade stocking stuffers? You’ve come to the right place. Here is the first of a few, my twist on your standard holiday roasted nuts. Mine have maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon and as a twist, chipotle powder and sea salt so there is a nice savory and spicy kick. Any nuts will do, but I’ve found I really like the combination of cashews, pecans and almonds. Recipe makes about 4 “stocking stuffer” appropriate sized portions. Yum!
October 19, 1999 is a date that will forever remain in my memory. Why, you say? What is so important about that very day? It is the day that I ate the most perfect Caesar Salad salad ever made in the history of Caesar salads.
Yes, I remember the date. I remember the place (it was a restaurant attached to a Holiday Inn between Sausalito and Mill Valley, CA) and I remember the salad as if I ate it yesterday and yet it is almost 17 years later. That is how good this salad was. Think that I am crazy now? Yes, I remember the date of a salad. 🙂 Ever since then, I have tried Caesar Salads often, in the hope that maybe, just maybe I could find one just as good. Either the dressing doesn’t taste quite right, or there is too much of it (nothing like dressing with a side of romaine [shudder]) or (more often than not) it is just bad.
This salad doesn’t come close to the 1999 Salad, but I have found this dressing to be pretty awesome. As you know, the base of Caesar salad is egg yolks, but dealing with raw egg yolks can be a little problematic at times, so I thought of what else I could use as a base and came up with mayonnaise, which is in essence … eggs! This dressing should stay fridge-stable for a couple of days, if you don’t end up using it all at once.
I seem to have a crazy overabundance of cherry tomatoes and basil this year. My god, the basil! More on that some other time, today I was focused with doing something with the 2 pints of cherry tomatoes that I picked in the last few days. Seemed like an excuse to make this tomato pie. No, it isn’t a pizza, though I guess it might as well be. Sort of like a caprese salad, only warm and in a pie. Lunch was awesome! 🙂
In all the years of having this year website, I can’t believe that I haven’t posted my Obatzda recipe. What is Obatzda? It’s a very Bavarian cheese spread (similar to pub cheese), served with pretzels (brezn) or bread, and accompanied often by radishes (radi), red onions, and other things like gherkins and cherry tomatoes and so on. There is no *one* recipe for obatzda and certainly no right or wrong recipe. Some people add a bit of horseradish, some people a few tablespoons of beer. If you can’t find quark, some people use cream cheese mixed with a bit of sour cream. All work well.
It’s Summertime. Biergärten. Beer, obatzda and brezn. What I miss about Munich.