Sliced Apples and Satay Sauce

A handy little appetizer that makes the most of fall apples and pantry items.

One apple, cored, halved and then sliced into "chips"
1½ tbsp peanut butter
Soy sauce
Lemon juice
Sugar
Water
Sriracha sauce (optional)

1. Add the peanut butter to a bowl.
2. Add about 2 tsp of soy sauce, 1 of lemon juice, 1 of water, and a pinch of sugar.
3. Using a fork, mash the liquid into the peanut butter. This takes time, and it's tedious.
4. Depending on your texture, continue adding water and soy sauce until you mash into a smooth sauce.
5. Taste and adjust, adding either lemon juice, sugar, Sriracha, or water.
6. Serve as a dipping sauce for sliced apples.

Fast Food: Insalata Caprese and English Muffins

In spite of our desire—nay, preference—to whip up something to feed the hoards of relatives visiting our new daughter, our visitors continually insist:

"Don't go to any trouble for us. Just get some antipasto at the store."

Sure, spending 20 active minutes throwing together pasta is "going to trouble." But going out to a store and selecting a pile of cheese, salamis, breads, crackers, olives, vegetables, and marinated stuff, not to mention bringing it home, slicing it up, washing the veg, and finding forks, knives, spoons, napkins, miniplates, bread baskets, and little cups for olive pits—that's nothing.

Then we were left with piles of leftover antipasto, an overstimulated baby, and dishes strewn across our apartment. We were exhausted and rebellious. Not sure why, but we soothed ourselves some quick plays on that old college favorite, English muffin pizza. And it was really good.

Insalata Caprese

Sliced mozzarella
Quartered grape tomatoes
Shredded basil leaves
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Salt
Sea Salt
Pepper

1. Place tomatoes in a colander and lightly salt.
2. Allow to drain for at least ten minutes (this brightens the tomatoes and concentrates the flavor)
3. Toss with basil and mozzarella (we do splurge a bit and get a delicious local variety)
4. Add sea salt, pepper, a small amount of lemon juice and a good amount of the very best olive oil you have.
5. Serve with toasted English muffins drizzled with more olive oil.

Quick Sopressata Pizza

2 tbsp sopressata, slivered
More quartered and drained tomatoes
More mozzarella
Oregano or pasta sprinkle
2 English muffins

1. In a toaster oven, pretoast the English muffins until just slightly browned.
2. Top with other ingredients to taste
3. Return to toaster oven (or regular oven) and cook until cheese is melted.
4. Drizzle with olive oil and serve.

Leftover Roast Chicken Fritters (for lack of a better name)

Our next, delicious, and completely uncreative application for our leftover chicken was club sandwiches. Chicken, toasted Italian bread, lettuce, mayonnaise, and some bacon. It's very hard to start out with those ingredients and end up with something that's not good. Of course, we once would have said the same about bagels, cream cheese, and butter. Then the creative cook at an unnamed English restaurant toasted our bagels in the same oil he was using to make fish and chips. It was an ingenious—if entirely unsuccessful—example of cross-product usage.

But you don't need us to tell you how to make a club sandwich. Instead, we'll take the leftover roast chicken in a slightly different direction. This tasty little appetizer is very hard to write a recipe for, since we don't know the state of your roast chicken (done to a turn, underdone in some places, or massacred). We also don't know your spice rub (though we're betting you didn't slather it in Thai spices, like our sister's boyfriend). And we don't know how much you have. But the principles are what counts.

Chicken Fritters

1 ½ cup leftover roast chicken, shredded, chopped, and shredded again
2 stalk celery, peeled and diced
1 tsp lemon juice
Bread, several slices, soaked in milk
Bread crumbs or crumbled crackers
1 tbsp sweet paprika
½ tbsp garlic powder
½ tbsp sumac
½ tbsp oregano or Italian seasoning
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 large egg
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil

1. Combine the chicken, celery, lemon juice, parsley, and spices, along with a pinch of salt and several grindings of pepper.
2. Squeeze the bread to remove most of the milk, and add to mixture.
3. Add one egg and mash together with your hands.
4. See where you're at. You want the mixture to have the consistency of a meatball. Likely it will be too wet at this stage, so you'll want to add bread crumbs or crumbled crackers. Eventually, it should hold together well enough to make a small ball that doesn't stick to your hands.
5. Heat a pan and make a tiny patty. Fry it quickly and taste. Then make adjustments to mix for seasoning.
6. Make patties by first rolling into a ball slightly larger than a walnut, and then flattening.
7. Fry in olive oil until golden on both sides.
8. Serve with a sauce of your choosing (our favorite simple sauce these days is equal parts water and sour cream, with a nice bit of chopped dill, some sumac, and a little lemon juice).

An Unusual Chicken Salad (Leftover barbecued chicken)

We tried to leave early from a barbecue, and got a hunk of roasted chicken breast for our trouble. The next day, we found it rather dry and tough, and decided a wet application would be best. Surprisingly enough, the east-meets-west-meets-American-condiment-rack combination worked really well.

Please note, the ingredients are really for starting out. We normally adjust some/all of them to suit the chicken best.

1 ½ cup leftover roast chicken, shredded
3 tbsp cashews, chopped
1-2 tbsp mayonnaise (homemade is nice)
1 tbsp Madras curry powder
1 ½ tbsp sweet pickle relish
Maggi seasoning
Sriracha sauce

1. Combine the first five ingredients.
2. Add small amounts of the last two.
3. Mix.
4. Adjust, using the Maggi as you would salt.

Rarebit to the Rescue (Welsh Rarebit)

Last night, in the middle of baking a loaf of all-wheat bread, our baby daughter decided to interrupt. We remembered the bread 20 minutes too late.

What to do with dry, overcooked bread? If it was white bread, it would have joined our pile of bread crumbs. But all wheat's a different problem.

Our thoughts soon turned to something forbidden during pregnancy: a beer and cheese sauce. By toasting the bread crisp and drenching it in yummy Welsh rarebit, we saved our loaf. This recipe, by the way, is no different from any other you'll find. If you're looking for a way to save cash, don't go crazy on the beer. You can make a perfectly acceptable rarebit with a can of Budweiser.

Welsh Rarebit

2 tbsp butter
2 cups cheddar cheese
½ bottle dark beer
½ cup milk or cream
1 tsp dry mustard (more to taste)
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp flour
Four slices thick wheat bread
Parsley and chives to garnish

1. Heat broiler. (this step is optional)
2. Melt 1 ½ tbsp butter in saucepan, stir in flour, mustard, and cayenne.
3. Allow to cook about 1 minute, or until the flour smell is gone.
4. Whisk in milk and continue whisking until lumps are gone and sauce is thick.
5. Whisk in beer, and allow to cook for a few minutes to remove excess alcohol.
6. Stir in most of the cheese to make a thick sauce.
7. Add Worcestershire sauce to taste.
8. Stir in remaining butter.
9. Toast bread until fairly hard.
10. Top bread with some sauce.
11. Optional: Take this sauced bread, top with cheese and place under broiler.
12. Check at 30 second intervals until the cheese is browned.
13. Serve garnished with herbs, sprinkled with Worcestershire sauce, accompanied by a bowl of the remaining sauce.

Spinach Flatbread

When we finished making our papas rellenas, we found we had a half cup or so of stuffing left. The next day, we decided to turn it into a quick appetizer using some pizza dough we had in the refrigerator. If you've never done it before, it may seem strange to cook dough in a bath of water and oil, but it produces a crispy crust that's hard to beat.

We did have one problem making this: The spinach filling was wet and it made the middle of our dough soggy after cooking. We solved the problem by sliding the flatbread into a non-stick pan and turning up the heat for a few minutes. That made it almost cracker-crisp. We don't really care how we get there, so long as the results are good.

Spinach Flatbread

½ cup spinach stuffing, walnuts reserved (see this recipe)
¼ cup mozzarella or other melting cheese
1 small ball of pizza dough
Olive oil

1. Heat oven to 450.
2. Flatten dough into a small square, either with your fingers or a rolling pin.
3. Transfer to a lightly greased sheet pan.
4. Top with shredded cheese.
1. Mix 1/3 cup oil with1/2 cup water. Then pour into sheet pan around the dough.
2. Place dough in oven and bake for about 12 minutes, until sides are crispy. During the last minute of cooking, add reserved walnuts.
3. Remove to a hot, nonstick frying pan and continue to toast until bottom is crisp (optional).
4. Serve garnished with sea salt.

Spinach and Pine Nut Crackers

You can find a big bag pine nuts at Trader Joes for $7, but at the local supermarket, a miniature jar of "Pignoli Nuts" goes for the same amount. The reason is that—unlike Americans—not all pine nuts are created equal. The ones in TJ's are likely from China, raised under a thick cloud of industrial smog; while the others are an organic varietal from Italy prized for their nuttiness.

Let's hear it for China. We usually keep a bag of them in the back of our fridge, along with bags of walnuts and almonds. They keep forever so long as they're tightly sealed.

This was an easy appetizer that also got rid of some crackers we had lying around.

Spinach and Pine Nut Crackers

10 flavored crackers
About 2 cups spinach, chopped and divided between stems and leaves
2 tsp chopped garlic
2-3 tbsp pine nuts (3 tbsp if you're going to snack on them while cooking, 2 if you're not)
Sea salt
Balsamic vinegar (or sherry vinegar)
Olive oil (the stuff you hide when people you don't like come over)
Cream cheese

1. Toast pine nuts in a dry pan until lightly browned and remove.
2. Add oil to a hot frying pan.
3. Add garlic and spinach stems and stir fry for about a minute until stems are tender.
4. Add the leaves and stir until they are partially broken down.
5. Sprinkle with balsamic vinegar to taste.
6. Finish cooking.
7. Remove from pan to a cutting board.
8. Chop spinach with pine nuts together.
9. Add sea salt to taste.
10. Spread crackers with cream cheese and top with spinach mixture.

Leftover Hash Brown Latkes

If you live in an area where hash browns are cooked on a grill, you're probably used to getting a pound of them every time you order a couple of eggs over easy. Unfortunately nothing is worse cold or heated up (except the eggs over easy). Next time, take 'em home and try this recipe for an appetizer. The salmon, etc. in the image are pretentious and unnecessary, but we were having fun. Potato pancakes are just great with sour cream or apple sauce.

Leftover Hash Brown Latkes

1-2 cups leftover hash browns
1 tbsp flour
1 egg
Oil for frying.

1. First step is for health. Spread the hash browns out on a few paper towels placed end to end. Roll them up and squeeze. Your arteries will thank you, and you may never eat hash browns again.
2. Add the hash browns to a bowl.
3. Add flour and egg and toss. You may need a little more flour if the mixure is super wet, but the egg will hold it together in frying, regardless.
4. Heat a nonstick pan and add a thin layer of oil.
5. Scoop out about 1/3 cup of the mixture and add it to the pan. Then flatten the pancake out with a spatula.
6. Cook over medium heat until browned on each side. Transfer to a plate. Add sour cream, apple sauce, etc.
7. If you're making a bunch, simply heat the oven to about 225 before hand, and place a thin sheet ban inside. As the pancakes finish cooking, place them in pan in one layer. They'll stay crispy.

Spain On the Road Again: Beet Puree and Shrimp Pancakes

Anyone seen an episode of Spain On the Road Again? Probably not. In spite of having Mark Bittman, Gweneth Paltrow, and Mario Batali in Spain, it's a snooze fest. Four people eating and talking with very little editing. There may be four people who are witty and intelligent enough to make that work, but those guys should know their limitations.

Still, Mario's a great cook and Bittman a terrific recipe writer, so there's good stuff on the website. So far we've tried two recipes, one for a beetroot and walnut puree and another for chickpea pancakes. Here's our thoughts.

Beet Puree

The recipe is here, and it's good as is. The idea is to take some beets and walnuts and mix 'em with tahini and oil. Our tweaks include the following:

1. Roast the walnuts first and place them in the processor warm.
2. Add more tahini and less oil.
3. Withhold some of the salt and add some parmesan cheese (sounds weird, but it's good).
4. Add or garnish with fresh dill.


Shrimp Pancakes

This recipe is also great. You can find it and a useful video here.

We're old hands at making pancakes with besan, or chickpea flour, which you can find at any Indian grocery. (You can also find it at a Spanish grocery or gourmet store, but you will pay an absurd price for it.) We normally mix it with a lot of water, add cumin seeds, coriander, peppers, onions, or whatever we have lying around. And if you're fat conscious, you can cook them in a dry nonstick pan, believe it or not. They will separate from the pan.

The Spanish version involves cut up shrimp, herbs and lots of pepper. That said, we like ours a little crisper, so we use twice as much besan as white flour (something Bittman mentions). If you want it really crispy, eliminate the white flour and baking powder altogether.

Octopus Ceviche

Our last hurrah with our octopus was a simple ceviche served with popcorn. Why popcorn? Ask the Ecuadorans, we're merely following orders.

When it comes to ceviche, many people are hung up on the fact that South American limes are different from North American limes. This is entirely true. And it would have a big impact on you if you wanted your ceviche exactly how mom made it—provided that mom happened to come from South America. Luckily, our remaining mom wouldn't eat octopus ceviche if it could restore her 401K to its former glory. So, we gave it a whirl with lemon juice and liked it quite a bit.

Octopus Ceviche

½ cup cooked octopus
½ jalapeno, sliced very thin
½ medium onion, sliced
1 tbsp cilantro
1 tbsp oil (neutral)
Lemon juice
Salt

1. Toss the first four ingredients together, cover with the fifth and sixth, and add the seventh to taste.
2. Wait 20 minutes and serve with popcorn.

Leftover aioli: Artichokes

We know that this isn't the season for artichokes, and we were expecting to do something else with our leftover aioli. But at a local farm store, we were surprised to find a pile of them, absolutely fresh and not terrible expensive.

We snatched up two and a fresh lemon. Back at home we steamed the artichokes for 20 minutes. Meanwhile we added fresh lemon zest to our old aioli and let it sit for a bit. The results? Short lived.

Steamed Artichokes

1. Cut off the top ¼ of the artichoke
2. Cut off the stem and peel
3. Peel off the outer leaves.
4. Cut in half.
5. Sprinkle cut side with lemon juice or it will discolor. (Or don't bother. Brown artichokes taste just as good as green ones)
6. Remove the fibrous choke with a spoon.
7. Steam for 20 minutes or until ready (20 mins works for a medium-sized choke. To test your choke, peel off a leaf with a tongs, bite off the edible part, and see if it's ready.)
8. Dip in mayonnaise and enjoy.
9. Go work out. You'll need it after eating all that mayonnaise .

Real Hummus and Homemade Pita

In the past few years, hummus has become an industry. Factories now crank out more flavors of hydrogenated chickpea fluff than you can count. Confession: we haven't found any we like. If we have come over to your house and raved about the one you served us, we were simply showing our good breeding.

Real hummus is a simple and delicious thing that asks for almost no adornment. To make it is easy but it takes a while. The key is to flavor it exactly how you like.

Hummus

2 cups dried Indian chickpeas (accept no substitute)
Garlic cloves (we use one)
Tahini (we start with about 3 tbsp)
Olive oil (no more than half the amount of tahini)
Lemon juice
Salt

1. Soak the chickpeas overnight or for 24 hours.
2. Place them in a large sauce pan with two quarts of water.
3. Cook for about 45 minutes, until chickpeas are coming apart. Drain.
4. Chop the garlic and put into a food processor.
5. Put the chickpeas into food processor and process until smooth. (Hold off on the rest of the ingredients. Otherwise it won't be as smooth).
6. Add tahini, oil, salt, and lemon juice. Pulse and taste until you like the flavor.
7. Then blitz the processor on, and drizzle water in until you get the fluffiness you desire.
8. Serve with a nice splash of your most pretentious olive oil.

Pitas

Homemade pitas are also delicious and easy to make—the recipe we use comes from King Arthur Flour. One note on that: they suggest dough improver, which makes the dough easier to roll out. You don't need that. Follow these steps instead.

1. Simply roll it out the best you can.
2. If it's not thin enough and keep snapping back, don't fight it. The dough will win every time.
3. Instead, use guile.
4. Cover the partially flattened disk with plastic wrap.
5. Walk away.
6. Enjoy half of a glass of wine.
7. Return to your dough. You will now find it cooperative.
8. Roll it out to the desired size.


You'll see we also enjoyed ours with some of the extra harissa and cooked cauliflower from the other night.

Split Pea Pancakes

We're continuing to attack our legume drawer. Yes, you read the title right. These are pancakes (dosas) made almost entirely from split yellow peas. The idea comes from South India, where people have been turning nothing into tasty food for eons. We found the recipe at Manjula's Kitchen. She also has a video, so visit her to find out how to do it (fair warning, it's informative but not gripping television.)

Here's some thoughts. If you balk at the high oil content, you can make the pancake with less oil than she does, but it will be a little less crunchy and not spread as easily in the pan.

Don't be a slave to the recipe. You may use any spicing you like. We put in salt, cumin seeds, cayenne, and some finely diced green pepper we happened to have lying around.

To serve it, we used some leftover Indian food. One thing to note is that you do not need much leftovers for this. Typically, Americans like to eat a big bowl of curry with a small amount of rice and bread. Indians do the reverse: the bread is the centerpiece, the rest of the food is a condiment. If you strongly flavor your dosa, you don't need a lot of (or any) curry.

Secret: For breakfast, Nicole likes plain salted dosas with maple syrup.

Broccoli Cream Soup to Broccoli Ranch Dip

(With Crispy Flour Tortillas)

We have been using the contents of the refrigerator so efficiently that we were forced to dig deep for our evening chip & dip. Last week we had knocked up the base for a cream of broccoli soup (broccoli, onions, milk). We made half of it into soup by adding milk and blue cheese. That left us some broccoli "starter" in the fridge. It was to this container that we turned our attention.

The broccoli mixture was almost thick enough to be a dip, but it didn't hurt when we added some mayonnaise, ranch dip powder, cayenne, and scraps of cheese. We also discovered we didn't have any sort of cracker or chip in the house. But we did have flour tortillas – which toasted up with nonstick cooking spray and kosher salt to make fluffy and crunchy dipping chips.

This type of dip could be made with any leftover soup, even thin ones. In that case, you'd want to add a bit more mayonnaise or even some sour cream (which we also didn't have) to get something that would stick to a chip.

Broccoli Ranch Dip

½ cup thick broccoli soup
3 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tsp powdered ranch-flavored dip mix
½ tsp cayenne pepper (or more, to taste)
1 tbsp mozzarella cheese, torn into tiny bits
3 tbsp goat cheese (or about 1 inch of the log they they are often shaped in)

1. Combine the soup, mayonnaise, ranch powder, and cayenne pepper. Stir well.

2. Add the mozzarella and goat cheeses. Stir vigorously, then microwave on high for thirty seconds. Stir vigorously again, incorporating the melting cheese into the dip. Repeat the microwaving and stirring one more time, or until the cheese has melted and the dip is smooth.

3. Microwave the dip one more time for 30 seconds, and stir. Serve with the tortilla chips.

Crispy Flour Tortilla Chips

2 flour tortillas
non-stick cooking spray
kosher salt

1. Spray both sides of each tortilla with nonstick cooking spray. Cut each into eighths, then cut each eighth into triangles by cutting from one corner on the curved side to the opposite straight side.

2. Spread the triangles over a foil-lined baking sheet and sprinkle with kosher salt.

3. Bake at 400 degrees until golden brown. Note: watch them closely as they can burn very quickly.

Onion and Zuke Lavash Pie

In Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Ted Allen once used lavash as a quick pizza crust. We've been doing it ever since. Lavash pizzas are particularly good for using up little bits of this and that languishing in the fridge. Over time, we've discovered that using two pieces of it ensures crispiness. Lavash also freezes well, and can be defrosted as needed.

For this one, we slowly cooked a chopped onion in a little bit of olive oil for about an hour, then added shredded zucchini and plenty of salt. After almost another hour, the onion and zucchini had cooked down into a salty, gloppy, perfect mixture that was oozing olive oil.

We had cooked a strip of bacon to use as a topping, and couldn't resist spreading the bacon grease in between and on top of the pieces of lavash. The onion and zucchini went down first, and we reserved the extra cooking oil. It was followed by some raw garlic, bacon, chopped thyme, and slices of roasted red pepper. We topped the pizza with hunks of goat cheese and a layer of shredded mozzarella.

The pizza baked in the over at 450 degrees for five minutes, until the cheese was bubbling. We then dribbled the abovementioned oozing onion-and-zucchini-scented olive oil over the pizza when it came out of the oven. We really liked it.

Peruvian Tequeños

Peruvian tequeños are one of those things that you eat for the first time and then scratch your head wondering why you've never thought of doing that yourself. They're simplified version of a Venezuelan delicacy that we first tried at the El Truco restaurant in Cusco.

They are also stupidly easy to make. All you do is take a wonton wrapper and put some cheese in the middle. Then wet the outer edge of the wrapper, and fold it in half to make a sealed pocket. Fry the result in oil on each side until brown.

The Peruvians do this with a semi-soft queso Andino and then serve it with a smash of avocado. Last time I checked, no one has bothered to import queso Andino (probably because it tastes kind of like Munster). We like to use something with a little more bite, but you don't want to go nuts. For the avocado, try a simple guacamole. Still, it's hard to imagine anything, with the exception of mint jelly and raspberry coulis, that wouldn't go well with them. I'd even put peanut butter on them, if no one was looking.

The more celebrated Venezuelan version involves frying bread dough with cheese instead of wontons. We'll get to that someday.

Peruvian Tequeños

10 wonton wrappers
2/3 cup cheese (cheddar or gruyere)

Set up a cutting board with a cup of water, the cheese, and the wrappers. Place a wrapper flat, put a small amount (1tsp or so) of cheese in the center. Wet your finger and trace it along the outer edge of the wrapper. Fold it over, removing as much air as possible, and press to seal.

Fill a heavy frying pan with about ½ inch of oil. Heat on high until it reaches 350 degrees. Fry the tequeños quickly on each side until lightly brown. Note: you may need to lower the heat if the oil starts smoking. Serve with a sauce or topping of your choice.