Bad Food Blog

A bad blog about good food
  • About
  • Contact
  • Tag: appetizer

    • Easter Recap

      Posted at 9:54 pm by Rachel, on April 25, 2019

      Happy Easter! My holiday was filled with good food and good company; I hope that yours was too! A few days ago, I shared my Easter menu plan. I want to revisit that post to recap what I actually made, the cooking timeline, and which recipes I will make again.

      This is the list of food I shared in my previous post:

      1. Crudités and fruit
      2. Roasted eggplant dip (from How to Cook Everything and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone)
      3. Good cheese and crackers
      4. Good bread and butter
      5. Meatballs (the sauce and the meatballs)
      6. Kolokithokeftedes (zucchini fritters) with tzatziki
      7. Lamb cake
      8. Sugar cookies

      Of that list, we made or purchased everything except for the sugar cookies. It was just a bit more work than I wanted to take on – I try not to spend the whole day in the kitchen on holidays. We ended up with quite the spread and a good bit of leftovers!

      My husband did the shopping on Friday, and I started cooking mid-morning on Saturday. I didn’t have plans to be out of the house so I took my time. As I mentioned, the sauce I make simmers for 6 hours in the oven, so that is the first task I tackled. (It was an unseasonably cool and rainy day here so having the oven on all day was nice.) My kids helped measure ingredients to make the sauce – they loved seeing the peeled tomatoes and smelling the different spices and herbs. I took a little break and then made the meatballs. If you try these meatballs out, I find my food processor to be a big help. I use the standard chopping blade to mince the onion, finely chop the parsley leaves that have been removed from the stems (I chop extra for the sauce at the same time), and grate parmesan.

      I took out the butter and eggs for the lamb cake, ran the dishwasher since I used my stand mixer’s bowl to make the meatballs, and took a long break.

      Later in the afternoon, I started back up again with the tzatziki. I only did a half recipe because I was only cooking for my family, and even half the amount was more than enough to last us several days. This is an excellent make-ahead recipe that even recommends mixing and letting it set in the fridge for a while to let the flavors meld. I used Greek Gods Traditional Plan yogurt; it was nice and thick so I did not have to strain it. I used a combination of dish towels and paper towels to squeeze the water out of the cucumber, but I think for the cucumbers you could get away with using just paper towels. This was extremely easy to whip together and it ended up tasting as good as anything I have had at a restaurant. The next day I just took it out of the fridge, gave it a stir, and it was good to go.

      Next up was the roasted eggplant dip. I preheated the oven and put the eggplant in to roast while we were eating dinner. After dinner I peeled the eggplant skin off by hand (it was quick and easy), finely chopped the flesh, and added the other seasonings. All in all I think it took about 10 or 15 minutes, and then I covered it and set it in the fridge overnight.

      The last dish I prepared on Saturday was the cake for the lamb cake. As you may recall, I used Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipe for Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake from The Cake Bible (if you do not have a copy of The Cake Bible handy, you can find the cake recipe here). Once the butter is soft and the eggs are at room temperature, this cake does not take a long time to mix. I followed the directions that came with my cake mold and only put 3 cups of batter into the mold (I baked the rest in a 4-cup Pyrex container to make a small cake), and then baked the cake at 375°F for 45 minutes. I’m not sure how long I was *supposed* to leave the cake in the mold to cool, but the mold was too hot to touch for a while so I ended up leaving it overnight.

      easter spread

      So again, at a fairly relaxed pace, I prepared the meatballs, tzatziki, roasted eggplant dip, and cake on Saturday. If you are looking back at my list, there are still a bunch of things not accounted for, but most are quick and easy and do not involve cooking. When I got back to work after church on Sunday, I took out butter for the lamb cake frosting, washed and cut up the crudités vegetables (we had fruit but I forgot about it), and cut a few slices of cheese and arranged it with some crackers. My husband sliced some nice store-bought bread.

      zucchini fritters

      Then I started on the kolokithokeftedes (zucchini fritters). Now I do not say this lightly, but this is the best new recipe I have made lately! I did not expect to be this wowed by zucchini, but this with the tzatziki was phenomenal. I always worry that new recipes will take 3 times as long as they promise. Fortunately this was not the case. Squeezing the water out of the zucchini took 3 or 4 dish towels – and you’re definitely going to want dish towels and not paper towels for this one – but it did not take more than a couple of minutes. Literally the only potentially negative thing I can think to say about this recipe is that you can’t really work ahead here. It is fried, and you will lose that crispy exterior if you don’t serve it immediately. We did have leftovers which we reheated in the microwave, and they were not as crispy as the fresh fritters. Still very flavorful though!

      Last up was the coconut frosting for my lamb cake. It was not my first time making this frosting, and I am sad to report that it did not turn out as well as in times past. I think the root of the problem was the coconut milk I used to make the reduction, which I started after lunch. The recipe notes that the “coconut milk will boil up high in the pan,” but mine never did. The end result looked kind of wet, gelatinous, and grainy – really not appetizing. When I opened the coconut milk, I noticed that it was a lot more watery than previous times, so maybe that had something to do with it. In case you are curious, this time I used Goya coconut milk whereas I previously used Thai Kitchen organic coconut milk with excellent results. The frosting still tasted amazing, but it was a bit wetter than it should have been. Unfortunately I realized this when a big chunk of frosting fell off the back side of the cake… twice! Oh well, the cake was still a delicious pairing of rich, dark chocolate and sweet, creamy vanilla and coconut. Lessons learned! By the way, I did end up making a double batch and I used almost all of the frosting!

      OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

      So what would I make again? The meatballs were already a favorite, the lamb cake has become a family tradition, and the kolokithokeftedes with tzatziki were the star of the day. Of all the foods we had, if I had to cut one from the menu, it would be the roasted eggplant dip. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, but it was not life-changing either. It was kind of an awkward addition to the spread because I didn’t make something specifically to go with it. I thought we might dip veggies in it, but we loved the tzatziki so much that we just dipped in that instead. I could see making it again if I had an eggplant that I needed to use up, but I probably will not go out of my way to make it again.

       

      Posted in Menu Plans, Uncategorized | 2 Comments | Tagged appetizer, dessert, Easter, holiday, kid-friendly, recap
    • An Easter Menu Plan

      Posted at 8:00 am by Rachel, on April 18, 2019

      So let’s talk Easter. If you recall, I have been trying to decide between a more traditional Easter dinner à la Easter Dinner on Two Sheet Pans, or go the small plates route like we did for Christmas. And after a lot of hemming and hawing, we decided to go non-traditional again. I know that classics are classics for a reason, but there are so many more foods that we would rather be eating than ham and potatoes right now. As an added bonus, this most of this menu can be made ahead of time, and that means more family time on Easter.

      OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
      OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

      1. Crudités and fruit

      I usually do sliced cucumbers, bell peppers, cherry or grape tomatoes, and olives for my crudités. I might throw in some baby carrots or celery – we will see what they have at the store. For fruit, my kids are partial to blueberries and strawberries, so I will try to get those and maybe a melon.

      2. Roasted eggplant dip

      I still have eggplant on the brain from last month, and saw recipes for a roasted eggplant dip in a few cookbooks when I was flipping through looking for ideas. This will be a new recipe for me. Really I’m going to try a mashup of two recipes – I will use the seasonings suggested in How to Cook Everything but the cooking method from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Consensus is that this dip is good with crackers or bread, but I am kind of curious to try it with some of my veggies too.

      3. Good cheese and crackers

      It’s time to put away your Kraft singles and pick out something from the fancy cheese section! Same goes for the crackers 😀 And in that same vein…

      4. Good bread and butter

      No further explanation needed.

      broiled meatballs

      5. Meatballs

      I’ll be making the same meatballs I talked about in My Postpartum Menu Plan. Start with the sauce – this recipe takes 6 hours to cook, so I will be doing this on Saturday. Once the sauce is going, prepare the meatballs. I ignore the instructions for sauce in the meatball recipe and make all of the meat into meatballs, and add them to the 6-hour sauce after broiling. This recipe yields me about 32 meatballs and a bunch of sauce, surely more than we will eat on Easter, so some of these are going into the freezer.

      6. Kolokithokeftedes (zucchini fritters) with tzatziki

      I’ve not tried these before but they look good! Always nice to have a veggie recipe in the mix, and the tzatziki will also go well with the crudités.

       

      And now for dessert…

      lamb cake

      A lamb cake! I made this for the first time last year, and while my piping job is definitely not professional-quality, we all really enjoyed how it turned out. My kids are particularly excited to have another lamb cake this year. If you are interested, this is the cake mold I used. The mold needs 3 cups of batter. Unfortunately I do not remember the exact recipe I used last year, but this year I am going with the Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake from The Cake Bible. (As an aside, if you have an early edition of this book and measure by volume, know that you will need 16 tablespoons of butter, not 12! If you measure by weight then the recipe is fine as written.) If you don’t have a copy of The Cake Bible handy, you can find the cake recipe here.

      For the frosting I used this recipe for coconut frosting. Actually, the frosting plus that cupcake recipe is really good, but I digress… I really like the flavor of it and it was just the right color for the lamb’s wool, even if it did get a bit melty in my warm kitchen at the end of piping. And speaking of piping, applying the frosting with piping tips uses A LOT of frosting, so I’m going to go ahead and make 1.5 or 2x the original recipe. If you read the whole recipe before you begin, you’ll realize that you do NOT need to make double the amount of reduced coconut milk in order to make a double batch of frosting. Learn from my mistake!

      Really the lamb cake should be enough dessert for our little family, but we had a lot of fun making sugar cookies with the kids at Christmas, so I might put together a batch of cookie dough too. Maybe.

      Posted in Menu Plans, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged appetizer, dessert, Easter, holiday, kid-friendly
    • Alternative Holiday Dinners (Part 2)

      Posted at 9:00 pm by Rachel, on January 8, 2019

      This is the second of a two post series on alternative holiday dinners, where I share two ways to celebrate without cooking a big, traditional dinner. For Part 1, click here.

      When it was time to plan for Christmas, I considered ordering catering from Earth Fare again. But when I checked their menu, it was exactly the same as the Thanksgiving menu. I suppose that there is a lot of overlap between Thanksgiving and Christmas meals, and I guess that is what I do not like about holiday meals: they can be kind of boring. I had already ruled out ordering from other stores because most of their meals were intended for 10-12 people, were too expensive, or just looked kind of gross.

      Some friends had mentioned that they only do appetizers and desserts for Christmas, and we really liked that idea. I think most people can agree that the sides are the best part of any holiday meal, and they generally are less time-consuming to prepare than the main course, so we decided to give it a try. The verdict? This will probably be how we do big holiday meals from now on.

      On the menu for the evening were Turkey and Stuffing Meatballs served with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, Pesto Pizza Rolls, Smoky Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower, cheese & crackers, and crudités (yes, 4/5 of those recipes are from Budget Bytes – all are amazing). It was more than enough for me, my husband, and 2 small children. We were able to have a several leftovers meals in the days following, so this spread could probably serve 6 or so people easily. I wanted a variety of foods including veggies and something that I knew the kids would eat. They love crudités and cheese and crackers, and that is mostly what they ate. We put those out first so the girls could start munching while everything else finished cooking. They also really enjoyed the cranberry sauce.

      We started prepping food a day or two ahead of Christmas. I made the cranberry sauce first. I had never attempted to make cranberry sauce from scratch before this, but I am happy to report that it was quick and easy and kept well in the fridge. Next up were the mashed potatoes. I am glad that I cooked these the night before because they were the most labor intensive item on the menu. I highly recommend this time-saving tip for peeling potatoes, by the way. I’ve peeled potatoes this way a few times now and it always works well for me.

      christmas cranberry sauce 1
      christmas cranberry sauce 2

      On Christmas Day, my husband mixed and shaped the meatballs in about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, I mixed the pizza dough in my stand mixer. I used a spoon to combine the ingredients and then let the mixer do the work of kneading for me (about 6 minutes around level 4 with the dough hook, in case you are wondering). Once that was done, I took the dough out, oiled the bowl, then returned the dough to the bowl to let it rise for a couple of hours. I also cut up the cauliflower and combined the seasonings in a separate small bowl, and sliced up and plated the veggies for the crudités.

      turkey stuffing christmas meatballs

      All in all I think that was about an hour of work. Once it was done we went over to our neighbors’ house to hang out for a couple of hours before coming home to finish up cooking. We turned the oven on right away, and I tossed the cauliflower with its seasonings and assembled the pizza rolls while it preheated (the pizza dough stretched and rolled up very easily!). Overall, it was still very low stress and the food was better than most holiday meals I’ve had.

      smoky parm christmas cauliflower
      christmas pesto pizza rolls

      For dessert, we had an array of Christmas cookies – gingerbread, chocolate spritz, sugar cookies, and snickerdoodles – that we had been baking for the last few days.

      I know that this approach will not work for everyone, but it definitely helped make our Christmas dinner feel more festive and joyous. Really that is how a holiday should feel – more joyful than stressful. If cooking up a big “traditional” meal with all the fixings does not bring you joy, then maybe you would be better suited to an alternative meal.

      Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments | Tagged appetizer, Christmas, dessert, Dinner, holiday, kid-friendly, side dish
    • Archives

    • Tags

      appetizer Augusta GA balakani beef Boston breakfast burgers cabbage cannoli chicken Christmas coffee Covid-19 dessert Dinner Earth Fare Easter Eataly eggs Finale food flops Founding Farmers freezer friendly Frog Hollow holiday hotel living inspiration juice kid-friendly kitchen tour Lent Life in Hawaii living small lunch Menu plan menu recap Mike's Pastry Navy Lodge Hawaii packing pasta pastry PCS pie pizza Prudential Center recap recipe recipe review Regina Pizzeria restaurant review salad sandwich side dish skillet meal Skywalk slow cooker soup St. Patrick's Day take out Tatte thanksgiving The Pie Hole travel turkey vegan vegetarian wok
    • Categories

      • dessert
      • Dinner
      • Food Journal
      • Menu Plans
      • Uncategorized
    • Creative Commons License
      This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Bad Food Blog
    • Join 36 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Bad Food Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...