Archive for the ‘Savory Snacks, Dips and Sauces’ Category
Peanut butter is a delicious and versatile ingredient that we can spread on sandwiches, mix into cookies and use as a base for all kinds of savory sauces. Most of the time, we buy our peanut butter and choose from one of dozens of varieties available at the supermarket. If you have a food processor, you can actually make your own peanut butter very easily at home and gain the ability to control what goes into your butter and control the texture.
You can make a huge batch of peanut butter, but I would actually recommend starting with this recipe of halving because it is easier to keep and use in the fridge. It is also easier to tweak the recipe in the future if you decide that you like a little more salt, a little more sugar or some other element. The process is simple: place roasted peanuts in the food processor and whiz with a bit of salt, a bit of sugar and a bit of oil until the mixture is smooth and creamy. You can vary the seasoning to your taste and the amount of oil to the consistency that you like best, but no matter what you’re going to end up with a very fresh tasting peanut butter.
Homemade peanut butters are almost never as smooth as store-bought peanut butters, which utilize much heavier duty equipment for crushing peanuts into a paste than a counter-top food processor. My peanut butters have a very slightly sandy texture by the time I’m done with them. I add back in chopped peanuts for “chunky” peanut butter.
Now, while I like homemade peanut butter for sandwiches and toast, I still prefer brands like JIF for baking because they give a more consistent – and sometimes better – result. You can certainly experiment with the homemade nut butter for baking, but keep in mind that most recipes are written for national brands (regular and “natural” with their creamy consistency). This means your result may be different with homemade butter, so don’t worry if you need to do a little tweaking to get the cookies with homemade peanut butter turn out like the cookies made with a national brand.
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It’s hard to resist freshly made candied or spiced nuts, especially when they’re still just a tiny bit warm from the oven. It’s even more difficult when you have a good combination of sweet and savory spices on those nuts, as it gives them a rather addictive quality. Fortunately for some of my holiday guests, this is exactly the treatment I gave to these pecans. I tossed untoasted pecans with a combination of cinnamon, cloves, allspice and a bit of vanilla extract. Then, I added in a big pinch of cayenne pepper and a generous amount of salt before roasting the nuts in the oven until crispy and fragrant.
These nuts can be prepared in advance and, after they have been completely cooled, can be stored in an airtight container until you’re ready to serve them. They’re a great everyday snack and even better snack food for a party.
You can use different nuts for this recipe, or a combination of nuts, too. It’s easy to play around with this combination of spices for different flavors. For instance, you can increase the cinnamon and add ground chipotle chilies to the mixture for a smokier flavor, or you could add a splash of orage oil to add some citrus notes into the mix. The basic recipe is good, but that is exactly what it is supposed to be: basic enough to encourage you to turn a recipe like this into your own signature snack!
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I like homemade cranberry sauce because it is so easy and usually much better tasting than anything you can buy. The most basic cranberry sauce recipe calls for whole cranberries, water and sugar. From this basic combination of ingredients, you can really flavor the sauce any way you like. You can add spices or citrus zest, apple or orange juice, and really make the cranberry sauce unique – not to mention make it match your personal flavor preferences or the overall flavors in your meal.
For this cranberry sauce, I decided to play around with the sweeteners in the sauce itself. I used maple syrup and brown sugar to give this cranberry sauce a richer, slightly darker flavor than some cranberry sauces have. The berries themselves are nice and tart, so this sauce isn’t too sweet, but because you can clearly taste the maple and brown sugar notes in the finished dish, it is a wonderful contrast to savory dishes (like turkey and stuffing at Thanksgiving!).
The sauce will thicken as it cools, but it is not as thick as many sauces that come premade from the market. I don’t mind a little extra cranberry juice because it makes the sauce more versatile, perfect for pouring on pancakes and waffles as well as for serving with dinner. If you like yours to be a little thicker, simply cut the water down by half when you’re making the sauce. This sauce can be made a week or so in advance and stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
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Candied nuts are one of the easiest snack foods to make and eat. I like them all year round, but they are especially great around the holidays because they’re an easy snack to put out when family and friends come out to visit, and they’re a fantastic homemade gift to take when you go for visit them. This year, I’m big on walnuts and while I’ve used pecans, almonds and cashews in the past, walnuts are my nut of choice at the moment. Walnuts are full of protein, fiber and Omega-3′s, and while I’ll never turn down a holiday cookie, even I have to admit that this is a slightly healthier holiday snack!
I tossed untoasted walnuts in a lightly beaten egg white, then added in vanilla sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice and salt to create a sweet and spicy coating for the nuts. The nuts are spread on a baking sheet and toasted until the sweet coating is nice and crispy. Make sure to get them in one even layer on the baking sheet and try to coat as evenly as possible. Areas with very thick coatings of the glaze may come out to be a bit chewy and not quite as crisp as more evenly covered nuts.
Vanilla sugar is easy to make with a leftover vanilla bean (although I used Rodelle Vanilla Sugar in this batch) and is a great ingredient to keep on hand for recipes like this one, that benefit from a hint of vanilla flavor. You can use regular sugar and add in about 1/4 tsp vanilla extract if you don’t have vanilla sugar, or simply omit the vanilla altogether.
The finished nuts are delicious and very addictive! There is just the right amount of salt in the mix to keep these from being overly sweet, and the buttery walnuts go very nicely with the sugar and spices. Store these in an airtight container to keep them as fresh as possible until they’re all eaten!
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I want to have a fancy name for this dish, but I just can’t bring myself to call it anything other than what it is: roasted tomatoes with olive oil. I make this all the time with fresh tomatoes in the summer and it is one of the easiest and best ways to enjoy fresh tomatoes – apart from simply slicing them and eating them as they are, of course.
All you need are a bunch of fresh tomatoes, some olive oil and some salt and pepper. Toss everything together and roast the tomatoes until they’re tender. Then scrape all of those tender tomatoes into a bowl with some more olive oil and use it as a dip for bread (or anything else you might think goes well with it). Roasting really brings out the sweetness in the tomatoes.
I use a mix of tomatoes for this, depending on what I have. Large tomatoes can be cut into medium-thick slices and place on a baking sheet for roasting, while cherry tomatoes can simply be added whole. I will admit that cherry tomatoes, or other very small tomatoes, are my favorites, but all tomatoes will work well for this recipe. Use a good quality olive oil – one that you like the flavor of – because you’re going to taste it in the finished product, just as you would taste the flavor of the olive oil when you’re simply using it with vinegar as a dip for a nice piece of bread.
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