Appetizers

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Grilled pepper and wild chanterelle salad
Appetizers Mushrooms Salads Wild Foods

Grilled Pepper & Chanterelle Mushroom Salad

  This rather unusual salad is one of those dishes that comes together quite naturally in the early fall. The first frost has not yet arrived and while nights are cool, the days are still sunny and warm. Colder weather is just around the corner though. Days are growing shorter and backyard gardens are winding down, yielding the last few sweet, sun-ripened peppers of the season. But while tame, cultivated crops are ending, wild mushrooms are exuberantly bursting forth from …

Patatas Bravas in Dish
Appetizers Potatoes

Patatas Bravas, Bold & Spicy Tapas

fo Tapas, the popular Spanish snacks or appetizers, come in many forms. Often simple, occasionally complicated, served both hot and cold, over the centuries tapas have evolved into an integral part of Spain’s sophisticated cuisine and culture. Tapas are frequently strongly seasoned with such ingredients as garlic, chili pepper and good Spanish olive oil. Patatas Bravas, meaning “bold or ferocious potatoes,” is just such a dish. The name may not refer to the potatoes themselves, but to the fact that it takes …

Wild Mushroom and Fava Crostini
Appetizers Mushrooms Wild Foods

Wild Mushroom & Fava Bean Crostini

Wild mushrooms and fava beans are the perfect combination of forest and field, robustly earthy and delicately sweet at the same time. This dish offers some of the best that the late summer harvest has to offer, flavors so good and so satisfying that it’s worth a little extra effort. These elegant crostini are equally well-suited to a casual dinner party, a light lunch or a healthy between-meal snack. While there are several steps involved in making them, they’re not difficult to prepare, and to make …

Shishito Pepper Tempura
Appetizers Asian Cheese Eggs Any Style Sauces & Condiments Vegetables

Four Things to Do with Super-cool Shishito Peppers

They’ve been popping up on appetizer menus of trendy restaurants for a while, but tiny, tasty shishito peppers have fully entered the mainstream and are now seen frequently at farmer’s markets and grocery stores around the country. Shishito peppers are a favorite snack food in Japan, where this thin-skinned mild breed of pepper was developed. While similar to the Spanish Padrone, the shishito has a distinctive flavor and appearance all its own. The slender, finger-sized peppers are bright green in …

Truffled Brie with fresh summer truffles
Appetizers Cheese Wild Foods

Truffled Brie

There is nothing more elegant than a snowy-white wedge of creamy, savory Brie, the famed soft cheese named for the French region where it originated – unless it’s brie layered with paper-thin shavings of fresh truffles. Brie’s remarkable journey from milk to plate begins with a unique process, including an inoculation with a special cheese mold, a critical step in producing brie’s distinctive flavor and signature white “bloomy” rind. The rind (yes, it IS meant to be eaten) has a mild, faintly mushroom-like …

Ramp, Goat Cheese & Pine Nut Phyllo Rolls
Appetizers Breads & Baked Goods Cheese Wild Foods

Ramp, Goat Cheese & Pine Nut Phyllo Rolls

Ramp, Goat Cheese & Pine Nut Phyllo Rolls are inspired by the Greek classic, spanakopita, a layered “pie” which is typically made with spinach and feta cheese wrapped or layered in thin, crisp phyllo pastry. It’s not uncommon for regional variations to contain other wild greens or herbs in addition to or in place of the usual spinach. It’s the sort of hearty, rustic dish that lends itself to experimentation with whatever fresh, local ingredients are readily at hand. Our version uses fresh …

Two pizzettas, just off the grill
Appetizers Breads & Baked Goods

Grilled Pizzettas with Fire-roasted Tomatoes and Barolo Salami

As the seasons move from spring towards summer, the very thought of cooking and heating up the house becomes less and less appealing. Grilling is the perfect solution, but you can’t live on hot dogs, burgers and barbecued chicken forever. The answer? Grilled pizzettas. The dough is easy to make; the pizzas are small enough so everyone can have their own, and the toppings need little preparation. Best of all, there’s practically nothing to clean up. Grilled pizzettas are different from regular …

Appetizers Salads Vegetables Wild Foods

Warm Fiddlehead Salad with Pistachios and Parmesan

While almost everyone has heard of “fiddlehead ferns,” most people think only of the Eastern fiddlehead, the ostrich fern (Matteucia struthiopteris), as edible. But there is another widely consumed wild fern, the lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina), which grows along the west coast of North America from California to Alaska. Often simply called “Western fiddleheads,” lady fern fiddleheads differ only slightly from ostrich fern fiddleheads in appearance and flavor. Both fiddleheads have a distinctly “wild” green flavor that is often compared …

All Recipes Appetizers Asian Sauces & Condiments Vegetables

Truffled Baba Ghanouj

If you like eggplant, you’ll love this fire-roasted puree of the egg-shaped glossy purple fruit. (Yes, like its cousin, the tomato, the eggplant is technically a fruit, not a vegetable.) The name, whether you spell it “baba ganouj,” “baba ganouge,” or “baba ganoush,” is pronounced the same and though there are many variations, it’s all the same dish – a Mediterranean classic with a fantastic smoky-lemony flavor. Our version of the dish replaces some of the tahini, a paste of …

Spicy Sesame Nori Chips
Appetizers Asian Vegetables

Spicy Sesame Nori (Seaweed) Chips

The urge to snack is universal. Humans must possess some primal craving for deliciously crispy, crunchy foods that are too frequently not very good for us. Here’s a terrific snack that will satisfy your inner caveman – and it’s actually good for you. With only 9 calories each, these crisp & spicy nori chips can tackle your snack attack without inflating your waistline. Nori, as dried sheets of edible seaweed are known in Japan, are made from a species of …