Who doesn’t love nachos? I mean seriously, what is not to love about a big plate of chips covered with cheese, meat, beans, tomatoes, olives and jalapenos? Now, imagine with me for a moment that you remove the chips from the equation and take all of those wonderful goodies that you usually pile on top of the chips, layer everything in a casserole dish and bake until hot and bubbly. That my friends is what I like to call Hot Nacho Dip.
Its cold. Its rainy. You notice a person coughing next to you on the bus and you contemplate getting off and waiting 20 minutes for the next one. When you finally get to work the office is quieter because so many of your co-workers are out sick. The news is stressing the importance of getting your flu shot but lines for said shot stretch around the block. All of these things could only mean one thing, cold and flu season is officially upon us. While we can buy medicine to make us feel better, to me nothing quiets the sniffles and soothes the sore throat pain like a nice hot bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup.
Whether it is crab, jalapeno or pork I usually always have some frozen wontons waiting to be plucked from my freezer and tossed into the fryer on a moments notice. I say usually because to my utter dismay, when I opened my freezer to grab some for dinner last week, I realized I was out. Apparently I had been a little too busy (or was it lazy) lately to replenish my stock. But this was a problem that was quickly and quite easily remedied by these wontons filled with bay shrimp, vegetables, garlic and a little Chinese 5 spice.
Last Friday I shared my recipe for Fire Roasted Tomato Soup with you and mentioned that I like to serve my tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches. Well I may have fibbed a little. You see, I didn’t exactly serve my soup with a traditional grilled cheese sandwich. Instead I served it with this slightly grown up version of a ham and cheese. Slightly grown up in that instead of ham it has salty prosciutto, instead of cheddar it has creamy mozzarella and to top it off, some sauteed chanterelle mushrooms are thrown in too. All of this goodness sandwiched between 2 slices of crispy panini bread may not be a grilled cheese in the true sense of the word but it sure makes for one heck of a dunking sandwich.
Its been pretty dark and dreary here in Seattle the past couple of days. On days like this I just want to say in the house, curl up with a good book and eat a childhood favorite, grilled cheese and tomato soup. There is just something about that gooey cheesy sandwich being dunked into hot, steamy homemade tomato soup. To be more precise, I mean homemade tomato soup that is loaded with fire roasted tomatoes, fresh basil, white wine, garlic and a little half and half for good measure. You’ll be surprised at how easy it actually is.
Some of you may be saying to yourselves, “what on earth is she thinking? She wants me to do what? Fry what?” But I ask you to hear me out on this one. They probably do sound a little odd to those of you that have never thought of frying a pickle and I’ll admit that I was skeptical at first too. But let me tell you with their crispy, salty outside and tangy inside these little devils are down right addictive.
I just love cooking for people so when a dear friend of mine called and suggested that we do dinner, I was more than happy to have her and her boyfriend over to our apartment. This dear friend I should mention, happens to be lactose intolerant. I have found cooking without dairy to be pretty easy so the dinner part was a cinch. Where I was stuck was dessert. I just wasn’t sure how I was going to jump that hurdle. After reviewing my Pumpkin Cake recipe, I realized I could use that for a base and add a few more ingredients. After a quick call to my friend to verify that she could eat a couple of things, I headed straight for the kitchen and baked these super-moist, super chocolaty dairy free Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes.
