Caviar Dip with Crostini

When we last encountered Frankie (see Index under Frankie), he was swimming in cash and feeling flush. His had become a tragic life of extortion - putting the muscle on potential advertisers who craved a mention in Nicole Parton’s Favorite Recipes. 

Frankie’s close association with bottom feeders and his deep-sea underworld connections drew him into a life of loan-sharking. Unable to comprehend (or calculate) compound interest, he almost went belly up. He tried putting his money offshore, but had trouble accessing it because - well, what part of “off” shore did he not understand?  

Disgusted by his lifestyle, potential advertisers fell away. Frankie sank into a depression deeper than the Mariana Trench. Where was Charlie the Tuna when Frankie needed him? Why wouldn’t McDonald’s let him promote their Filet o’ Fish? How could Captain Highliner turn his back? 

Ignoring reality, Frankie developed a taste for caviar, which he consumed in copious quantities. He refused to believe he was all washed up. 

The mob circled, sensing blood. Even an angel fish couldn’t save Frankie, now. He had only one option left - to enter the Witness Protection Program and accept a job with the Anonymous Taste Testing Panel for Nicole Parton’s Favorite Recipes.

Swimming away from the fancy fish tank and the life of luxury he’d gained by extorting potential advertisers, Frankie returned to his modest bowl. A single vice remained. Frankie vowed that whenever a caviar recipe needed testing, he’d be first in line. 

When I asked if that wouldn’t be super cannibalistic and atrocious, he thanked me for the “compliment.” Later, we figured out that he thought I meant “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Oh, dear.

So that is how Frankie came to test this dip. Even if he were chomping on a distant relative, he still pronounced it a winner. 

This recipe is a simplified version of Suzy’s Caviar Pie. 

Caviar Dip with Crostini:

1/2 c. (125 mL) whipping cream, unsweetened
2-to-3 tbsp. (10-to-45 mL) caviar
1-to-2 tbsp. (15-to-30 mL) finely chopped sweet onion
3 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
Melba toast, small water cracker, or plain Crostini (Recipe, below)

Whip cream until softly mounded. Drain caviar, blotting dry on paper towel. Together with onion, fold into cream and spoon into a small bowl. To a second small bowl, add chopped hard-cooked eggs. Serve side-by-side with melba toast, small water crackers, or Crostini.

Heap a dollop of Caviar Dip onto toast, cracker, or crostini. Spoon on a sprinkle of hard-cooked egg. Eat it all, because this dip won’t keep longer than 1 day.

Plain Crostini:

1 c. (250 mL) olive oil
½ tsp. (2.5 mL) garlic salt
1 narrow-diameter French baguette 

Combine olive oil and garlic salt. Raise oven rack to highest position and preheat broiler. Slice baguette into approximately 30 thin slices. Dab each side lightly with garlic-infused oil. Broil approximately 1-½ min. per side, until pale golden. 

Nancy’s Summer Salad

                                                               My delightful friend Nancy Farran came up with this salad one or

Nancy Farran

two summers ago. Nancy calls it a “summer salad,” but I think it’s terrific any time of the year. 

Nancy’s Summer Salad:

To Prepare the Salad:

One 18-oz. (540 mL) can of black beans, rinsed and drained
One 12 fl. oz. (341 mL) can niblet corn, drained
Cilantro, stemmed and coarsely chopped, as desired
1 red bell pepper (“capsicum”), seeded and diced (see Note)
1/2-to-1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and finely diced (optional)
3 green onions (“spring” onions), chopped fine

Combine well.

Note: I substituted a ripe, medium tomato for the bell pepper.

To Prepare the Dressing:

Nancy suggests you “just make a simple dressing with olive oil, good wine vinegar and a pinch of salt. You can let the flavors sit together for a few hours if you have time.”

If you’re a straight-lines person who needs a recipe, my stand-by is two parts olive oil to one part wine vinegar, with a little salt to taste. Shake this up in a jar, pouring just enough over the salad ingredients to make them glisten. 

Serve in an interesting bowl and you’re done - 10 minutes, TOPS!

Lemon-Poppy Seed Muffins

To be nakedly* honest, Lemon-Poppyseed Muffins have never been one of my faves. ’Tis true. I find them too sweet - more like a cupcake than a muffin. I say that based on years of experience haunting coffee shops and cafés all over North America. Lemon-Poppyseed Muffins are everywhere and everyone loves ’em. Except me. So, at the bottom of this recipe, I've come up with a slight variation I do love. 

Be sure to really cream the butter and sugar; this takes at least 5 min., but is well worth the effort. To produce a superior result for any baking, be sure your eggs are at room temperature.  

Seeking a second batch of muffins for last week’s Fabulous Femmes Film Fest (see my Dinner Party post of May 9, 2014), I decided to pull out everyone else’s favorite, namely these. While I’ll never be a fan, I can tell you that as Lemon-Poppyseed Muffins go, these are superb. They taste exactly like those in the big coffee chains (faint praise), so if you enjoy that sort of thing, here you go. 

* I have a photo, but let’s not scare the horses.  

Lemon-Poppy Seed Muffins:

2 tbsp. (30 mL) grated lemon rind

1 tbsp. (15 mL) lemon extract

3 c. (750 mL) all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp. (3.7 mL) baking soda

1/2 tsp. (2.5 mL) baking powder

1/2 tsp. (2.5 mL) salt

1/4 c. (60 mL) poppy seeds 

1 c. (250 mL) margarine, softened

2 c. (500 mL) granulated sugar

4 eggs, room temperature

1 c. (250 mL) buttermilk (see Buttermilk Substitute Note)

Icing sugar (“confectioners” sugar or “powdered” sugar), as needed

Preheat oven to 350 deg. F. Drop paper liners into muffin pans or spray-grease lightly. In a small bowl, combine rind and extract. Set aside. Combine dry ingredients, mixing well to disperse poppy seeds. Set aside. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, combine margarine and sugar until no graininess remains when mixture is rubbed between thumb and forefinger. Mixture should be very creamy. Add lemon zest and extract, beating further until well mixed.

Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add dry ingredients and buttermilk alternately, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Beat in rind and extract.  Spoon into ungreased paper liners in muffin pans. Bake 25-to-30 min. or until a toothpick poked into center of muffins comes out dry. Cool in pan 10 min. before transferring muffins onto cooling rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. Dust tops with sieved icing sugar, if desired. Makes 2 doz. standard-sized muffins.

Buttermilk Substitute Note: For each cup of buttermilk you need, measure 1 tbsp. (15 mL) white vinegar or lemon juice and enough whole milk to measure 1 c. (250 mL). Stir, then let stand for 5 min. Or: use 1 c. (250 mL) plain yogurt. Or: Combine 1 c. (250 mL) milk with 1-3/4 tsp. (8 mL) cream of tartar.

- From Treats to Remember, 1995, the UBC Food Group

My variation: Omit poppy seeds. When muffins are fully cool, slice about 1/3-in. (0.8 cm) from top of muffin, adding a dollop of commercially made lemon curd. Gently replace muffin top, dusting with sieved icing sugar.

Cock-a-doodle ... Do-o-o have seconds!

Mediterranean Chicken

I found this recipe in a magazine many years ago. Unfortunately, the source given was vague and impossible to trace. I’ve adapted the recipe to suit a dinner party for 10-to-12 people. If your party is larger, I recommend that you bake

this chicken in two separate roasting pans rather than in one large batch. Because this recipe requires 12 hours’ marination, all it needs is to be popped into the oven an hour before serving. When I recently prepared it as a late lunch, I marinated it longer to avoid getting up in the middle of the night. I was nervous about that, but it turned out perfectly. Although this recipe uses a big whack of vermouth, there’s no detectable flavor of alcohol.

Mediterranean Chicken:  

This recipe requires extra time 

for marination

2 c. (500 mL) dry vermouth

2 c. (500 mL) kalamata olives, pitted
2 c. (500 mL) dried apricots
1/2 c. (125 mL) drained capers
2 tsp. (10 mL) finely grated orange rind
1 c. (250 mL) orange juice
1/2 c. (125 mL) white wine vinegar
3/4 c. (175 mL) dried basil (Yes! This is correct!)
1/4 c. (60 mL) olive oil
12 garlic cloves, minced
14-to-20 boneless chicken thighs 
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
2 c. (500 mL) well-packed light brown sugar

In a large marination tub with a lid (or non-metallic casserole), combine vermouth, olives, apricots, capers, orange rind, orange juice, wine vinegar, basil, oil, and garlic. Add chicken thighs, opening flat and turning to expose all sides to marinade. Cover and marinate 12 hr. in refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 375 deg. F. In large roasting pan or baking dish, attractively array chicken thighs in a single layer with olives, apricots, capers, and some of the marinade juice. Season to taste. Sprinkle chicken with brown sugar. Bake, uncovered, 15 min. Cover loosely with foil, baking a further 45 min. or until chicken juices run clear. Serves 10-to-12.

Dinner Party Series: Fabulous Femmes Film Fest (Third Annual)

This week marked the Third Annual Fabulous Femmes Film Fest - an occasion I’ve written about before. The FFFF is an informal gathering of female friends who (a) like to eat and (b) like to watch Oscar-nominated films and (c) like to eat some more. Food and films are a winning combination in this Dinner Party Series. The FFFF has sinced morphed into an annual get-away - less cooking, more traveling. Whatever you choose to do, I hope you’ll try hosting an FFFF party, too - perhaps as a potluck. 

The first year I gave this party, I was so disorganized (Translation: Blitzed) to take photos. Too bad, because that first FFFF was lots and lots of fun. You’ll find other FFFFs posted in the Index under Dinner Party Series. 

Through the magic of technology, have a peek at the second Fabulous Femmes Film Fest here. That second party was a buffet. The combination of flavors and foods was delicious! (Also through the magic of technology, here’s how next year’s Fourth Annual Fabulous Film Fest rolled out, too.) After that, I stopped taking photos.

This year, I was in the mood to cook! As usual, one thing led to another, and things got wonderfully, happily out of hand. This year’s FFFF Dinner Party began as brunch, became lunch, and morphed into dinner, with two top-rated movies in separate rooms in the morning and two more in separate rooms in the afternoon. I enjoy table-scaping, so this year’s Film Fest centered around color - and plenty of it! 

My theme used a colorful table ... Click to enlarge the images.

With glints of candlelight ...

And a rooster standing guard over our brunch muffins.

There was plenty of cutlery wrapped in paper napkins ...

As well as plenty of colorful plates ...

And plenty of food! My fridge isn’t overly large, so I often rely on an electric cooler in which to stack salads and other chilled foods. The menu? I’m happy to say that most of the recipes at this party already appear on this blog. Make-aheads worked beautifully for the brunch and lunch I planned for 14 guests. There was no last-minute panic, no staying up late the night before, and no getting up at dawn. Dinner? We raided the fridge for leftovers. 

Brunch started with iced bottles of bubbly in a colorful bucket.

Be sure you have (or can borrow) plenty of freshly

washed glasses - no dusty ones, please!

A “fun” champagne bucket always comes in handy!

I like to prepare one or two “show stoppers” while keeping most other dishes ultra-easy. Suzy’s Caviar Pie wowed everyone at brunch!  

Suzy’s Caviar Pie: Tastes as good as it looks!

We enjoyed tomato and orange juices, Blender Date-and-Orange Muffins, and Lemon-Poppy Seed Muffins. These muffins would make a great breakfast or brunch for an occasion such as Mother’s Day.

Lunch was a scrumptious, make-ahead Mediterranean Chicken. 

Rosalie’s Caesar Salad

I served Rosalie’s Caesar Salad made with Nicole’s Special Croutons, Avocado Jellied Salad, and Marinated Carrot Salad (Version 1).

Marinated Carrot Salad (Version 1)

I also served Nancy’s Summer Salad and a delicious Potato Salad from Costco. You don’t have to make it all! And I didn’t. Ron made a Blackberry Pie from scratch.

Nancy’s Summer Salad and Costco’s Potato Salad

I previously blogged the recipe for this great pie, quizzically named Kenneth’s Slam-Bam-Thank-You-Ma’am Blackberry Pie. Ron’s pie was the the hit of the day!

Ron rolled out the crust ...

Added the blackberries we froze last summer ...

And out popped a pie!

Ron vanished before my guests arrived, but of everything I served, the guests liked “my” Potato Salad and “my” Blackberry Pie best! When it was all over, Ron and I put our feet up to relax with ... 

Can you see it? Can you see it?

But of course! The Perfect Loutini!