This was an easy appetizer we made towards the end of the summer, when delicious, ripe heirloom tomatoes were still available at our local farmers market. Why am I posting this now, when there are still snow showers in the air? Well, because I am tired of this dark and gloomy weather – it is March already, shouldn’t we be looking forward to some brightness?! This eatlovecook take on the classic Italian combination of tomatoes and mozzarella is sure to brighten up your mood and your palate instantly.

This is such a quick snack to make, and it’s one of those dishes where the taste comes purely from the ingredients, so make sure you have the best ones available. Thick slices of the sweet, succulent tomatoes get covered with a slab of fresh, soft mozzarella (buffalo would be best) and gets broiled in the toaster oven. A little salt, pepper and a quick drizzle of olive oil is all the additional flavor you’ll need – we also like a tiny piece of red pepper for texture and color on top. That’s it – throw it in the oven for a couple of mins – no fuss, no effort – just what a lazy summer day calls for!

THE RECIPE: Heirloom Tomatoes with Mozzarella

YOU’LL NEED:

• Few thick slices of fresh heirloom tomatoes of different colors (or regular beefsteak tomatoes if making in winter)
• 2×2 inch slice of fresh buffalo mozzarella (or whatever mozzarella you have on hand)
• drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
• few small pieces of red pepper to top, if desired
• salt and pepper to season

THE METHOD:

• Top each slice of tomato with the mozzarella slice and pepper piece
• sprinkle salt and pepper on each slice, and place slices on the toaster oven pan
• drizzle the oil on top of the slices, and broil till cheese melts

Just a slab of Mozza will do ya!

To avoid getting bored on Veggie Thursday’s, the one day in the week where I eat no meat (and to be honest, crave for on occasion), I’ve taken to experimenting with new vegetables and techniques. My endeavor for tonight was to finally use up the container of baby-corns the wifey and I had picked up on a whim a week or so ago, but had been too lazy make a Chinese dish out of as we’d originally intended. I was still not feeling like putting too much effort in to preparing them, so the answer simply was to go a little more East and prepare an easy, simple, Japanese-style tempura batter and deep fry them.

Ok, so this was a bit of an easy way out -  who doesn’t enjoy vegetables battered (the good kind involving flour and water) and deep-fried into an appetizers? But tempura-style deep frying involves no fussy seasonings and a very thin crust of batter, allowing the natural flavors of the vegetables to take the foreground. Deep frying them at a high temperature for very little time ensures a crispy exterior while keeping the amount of absorbed oil to a minimum. Just a few cracks of sea salt over the hot tempura is all the additional flavoring you need – like I said, not very fussy at all, and perfectly easy and appetizing for a tiring Thursday evening!

Babycorn has such a delicate flavor and an amazing texture – biting into the tempura add a little crunch to the rough and chewy vegetable. Corn is also a healthy, light vegetable which is available pretty much all year round around where I live, and now that I know an easy way to use up any babycorn we forget to use, it may just become a new staple around our house!

THE RECIPE: BABYCORN TEMPURA

YOU’LL NEED:

• 1 small container of Babycorns
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup ice-cold water
• salt to taste (preferably sea salt)
• Vegetable oil to fry

THE RECIPE:

• Pre-heat oil to 375degress
• Whisk together the water and flour to make a light batter
• Do NOT overmix; it is ok to leave some lumps in the batter
• Toss in babycorn pieces and mix to coat each piece fully with the batter
• Working in batches, immerse the babycorn into the oil and fry for 2-3 mins; remove when crispy and light brown
• Check the first batch in about 2mins; you don’t want the tempura to become dark brown

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

• Ensure the water is really ice-cold. I leave a few ice cubes in the batter to ensure it remains cold through the various batches; cold batter = crispy tempura.
• It bears repeating – do not overmix the batter. It is ok, in fact preferable if you want to be really authentic, to have some lumps in the batter. These lumps will lead to air-pockets that will blow up into nice crunchy holes in your tempura.
• This recipe works well for carrots and green peppers also. I usually throw in whatever other veggies I have on hand to the remaining batter – might as well use them up when the oil is hot!
• I first started using this batter to make Shrimp Tempura, one of my favorite dishes of all time, and will post a step-by-step of it at some point. Just be careful when using raw seafood – you may want to cook it a bit longer than the veggies.

Puff pastry is one of the most delicious things in this world – crispy, flaky, buttery, and filled with goodness. At times when we crave the puffs but are too lazy to pull out the pastry sheets and roll them out, etc., we turn to the Pepperidge Farm puff pastry shells. And at times when we are too lazy to even whip up a quick filling for the shells, be it savory or sweet, we stick a hunk of whatever soft cheese we have on hand and end up with a deliciously decadent, ridiculously easy-to-make appetizer.

This is a simple, straightforward recipe for days when you want to just pop a couple of these in the toaster oven for a quick snack, or for when you have the oven cranked up for a day of baking and want a bonus appetizer without any extra effort. This can also stand in as a deceptively sophisticated-looking Hors d’oeuvre, and you could easily kick it up a notch by just mixing a few spices, herbs or veggies in with the cheese. Over the weekend, the wife and I just wanted to snuggle in and not do too much cooking, so we kept it simple and used up a dollop of some flavored goat-cheese that we had on hand to enjoy a hot snack on a cold Sunday night.

THE RECIPE: Ridiculously easy Goat Cheese Pastry Shells

YOU’LL NEED:

• 1 packet frozen Puff Pastry Shells, usually has 6 shells in it (Pepperidge Farms’ are the only ones we get around here)
• 6  rounds of Flavored Goat-cheese (or whatever cheese you have on hand), sized to fit neatly into the hollow of the shells

THE METHOD:

• Pre-heat oven to 350deg (or as mentioned on the shells packet)
• Remove shells from freezer once oven is at the desired temperature (DO NOT thaw)’ remove from packet and place on baking sheet with atleast 3inches space between each
• Bake for 15 mins or as directed on packet; do not bake till fully browned
• Remove from the oven and CAREFULLY remove the top (using the tines of a fork works for us)
• Put in the goat cheese rounds, one per shells, and replace the tops
• Pop back in the oven for another 5 mins or so, till the shells are fully browned and cheese is bubbling slightly.
• Let cool for a few mins and enjoy!

Now that I have recovered fully from two nights of gorging myself on dishes as varied as green chili fritters and sweet pumpkin pie, with only the traditional turkey being left out from the Thanksgiving celebration, I finally figured I would get back to writing about food rather than just eating it.

Even though there was no Turkey for us this year (replaced by my aunt’s wonderful Indian food, so we didn’t feel too badly) I wanted to have atleast a little hint of the traditional Turkey Day cuisine while watching football, so I made a Cheddar Dill Cornbread as one of the dishes we took to the dinner.

This has become one of wifey’s favorite dishes – and it all started with a random episode of Barefoot Contessa we watched one Saturday afternoon. The steps to put this together were so simple that once we realized that we had all the necessary ingredients needed for the bread, it took us under an hour to get the hot, crumbly, cheesy bread out of the over to warm us on a chilly Saturday evening. Perfect as a pot-luck dish, this bread works as a wonderful sponge to soak up everything from turkey gravy to the bean sauces in mexican dishes.

Some folks may not like the sharp, pungent taste of dill – you can replace it with some chopped up sun-dried tomatores or jalapeno’s if you prefer. The bread is just fine with just some cheese in it also, though it can get a bit one-dimensional without an additional flavor in it. We prefer using some sharp cheddar in this dish; freshly grated at home rather than the dry pre-shredded yellow stuff.

Another wonderful quality of this bread is how well it heats up even in a microwave – a perfect little snack along with a bowl of soup which you can always have ready in the fridge. We cut the original BC recipe in half – serves plenty for two, but you want may to double all the ingredients up if you’re serving more.

THE RECIPE

YOU”LL NEED:

• 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup skim milk (use full-fat for a richer bread)
• 2 medium eggs (or 1 extra-large, 1.5 large if you must) – beaten
• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted (pop it in the microwave for 20-30 secs, and keep nuking it a few seconds at a time till it melts)
• 4 ounces aged extra-sharp Cheddar – grated. Keep 1.5 cups of this separate.
• 1/4 cup fresh dill – minced

THE METHOD:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

• Combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt into a large mixing bowl.
• In separate bowl combine the milk, eggs, and melted butter.
• Stir the wet mixture into the dry until most of the lumps are dissolved. Some lumps will remain – don’t worry and whatever you do, don’t overmix or you’ll end up with tough bread. I use a whisk to mix but you can just use a wooden spoon instead per BC.
• Add in the 1.5 cups of the grated Cheddar and the dill, stir slightly, and allow the mixture to sit at room temperature for 20 minutes.

• Prepare a 9 by 13 by 2-inch baking pan by spraying with some nonstick spray (if using nonstick baking dishes) or by greasing with some butter.

• Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.
• Sprinkle with the remaining grated cheese.
• Bake for 30 to 35 minutes; you’ll know its done when a toothpick pierced in the center of the cake comes out clean.
• Let cool and then cut as desired.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

• We serve them as little rectangles warm; the bread is nice at room temperature also/
• Store in a covered container in the fridge; usually lasts us a week.
• The bread can be heated up in the toaster over or the microwave (10-15 secs should suffice – u dont want it piping hot)

Like most young couples who grew up in India, wifey and I count Desi Chinese food amongst our favorite cuisines. Despite our tastes being polar opposites in most other foods, we both share a love for most of the common desi-chinese dishes like vegetable manchurian, chicken drums of heaven, hakka noodles, and the new favorite at our weekend dinner table: vegetable springrolls.

These golden-brown crispy rolls of delicious goodness live on the delicate balance of healthy and unhealthy food – they are packed with the fibrous goodness of cabbage, carrot and onion, but are deep fried and absorb quite a bit of the oil. They work well as an appetizer for a weekend family dinner or an impressive pot-luck dish , but I warn you – they are so delicious that you will be tempted to make a bunch at a time and keep munching on them through the week.

I adapted this recipe from the generic one printed behind the packet of frozen springroll skins we buy at the local Indian grocery store. I am sure such springroll wrappers are available at regular large chain grocery stores as well – look in the so-called ‘ethnic’ section. The recipe does call for a bit of MSG – if you are squeamish about using it, feel free to skip it – it won’t affect the taste much I find it does add a bit of the lip-smacking flavor (‘umami’ being the new marketing buzzword).

THE RECIPE

YOU’LL NEED:

For the spring rolls:

• 1 packet of frozen spring roll sheets
• 2tbsp water
• 2tsp c0rnstartch

For the stuffing:

• Half a medium sized green cabbage (shredded or cut small)
• 4 big carrots (grated)
• 2 onions (sliced thin)
• 4 cloves garlic (chopped small)
• 1 tblsp fresh ginger (grated)
• 2 tbsp canola oil

• 1.5tbsp white pepper
• 2 tbsp salt
• 1tsp cayenne pepper

• 1tbsp water
• 2tsp c0rnstartch
• 1tbsp MSG
• 1tsp sugar

METHOD:

Step 1: Prepare the stuffing

• Heat up wok and oil till oil is hot
• Add onions and fry for a couple of minutes till onions get tender
• Add the ginger and garlic; stir fry for a minute till aromatic
• Add the cabbage and carrots, mix and fry for 5 mins till tender
• Add the cayenne pepper, white pepper and salt, and mix
• Mix water, cornstarch, MSG and sugar in a separate bowl; add the liquid mixture to the stuffing in the wok and mix.
• Let cook for another couple of mins and remove from heat.
• Allow to cool completely before using in the springrolls.

Step 2: Making the Springrolls

• Thaw the springroll sheets per package directions. (Usually says to leave the package out for 30 mins, and keep the sheets covered with a moist cloth while using).
• Mix the cornstarch and water in a separate bowl: you will use this to wet the edges of the springroll sheet to seal.
• Add about 1 to 2 tbslp of the cooled stuffing to each sheet (depending on how stuffed you want your rolls), and wrap up the sheet as instructed on the package.
• Make sure you wet the edges with the cornstarch mix and press down on the seam when fully wrapped, to ensure the roll doesnt come apart during the frying.
• Deep fry in 350 degree oil for about 2 mins on each side till golder brown. Place the springrolls seam-side down in the beginning.
• Remove to a plate lined with paper towels to absorb the excess oil.
• Resist temptation to bite into the delicious little parcels immediately – they will be HOT inside! Cool for a couple of mins and dig in.

OTHER NOTES:

• Ground meat like chicken or pork can be added to the stuffing; pre-cook the meat and then add along with the carrots and cabbage.
• Extra stuffing makes a great layer for sandwiches or burgers.
• Pre-packaged cole-slaw mix can help cut down the time in chopping up the cabbage and carrots.