Easy, Inexpensive Party Nibbles

Over the holidays I was looking for some easy and relatively inexpensive ideas for nibbles for an informal evening get-together. I only had half an afternoon to prepare for the party, so speed was important. I also wanted to use somewhat local or seasonal ingredients. Here are a few of the things I settled on.

Homemade French Pâté
Although I regularly make my own veggie pâtés, I hadn't thought of making my own liver pâté until Mark Bittman included his recipe on his blog just before Christmas. Local or organic pâtés can be hard to come by or expensive, and Bittman claimed the recipe would be easy and delicious, so I gave it a try. It was! It also made about three cups of pâté, which was enough for the party with some left over to freeze. (I'll let you know how that turns out in another post!) I served the pâté alongside some crackers, crusty bread and a selection of cheeses. The organic livers were purchased from Boucherie Les Fermes St-Vincent, an organic butcher at Atwater market. For the non-liver-pâté eaters, I made my vegetable walnut pate.

Stuffed mushroom caps
These are always a hit and are really easy to prepare. I don't really have a fixed recipe for these. Basically, I chop up the stems of the mushrooms with about a teaspoon of marjoram, a good scoop of cream cheese, about 1/4 cup of dry bread crumbs, about 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese, and some ground pepper. I mix everything together, stuff the mixture back into the caps, and then bake at 425F for about 10-12 minutes. If you're pressed for time, you can prepare them in advance and just pop them in the oven.

Horseradish sour cream dip
This dip is great for doing double duty for both chips and veggies. Again, I don't have an exact recipe, but here is the formula: Basically combine a 250 mL container of sour cream with about 5 teaspoons of horseradish (adjust the amount based on the strength of the horseradish), 2 or 3 cloves of minced garlic, a handful of chopped chives, and about a teaspoon of freshly ground pepper. Mix everything together and chill for a few hours before serving.

Top Five in Five #1: Recipe Books

With only five weeks left until Christmas and other holiday gift giving days, I thought it was time to offer up some gift suggestions for the amateurs chefs, entertainers and foodies on our lists.

Over the next five weeks, I plan to offer a weekly post with five ideas along a specific theme. To kick-off my new series, here are my top five recipe book gift ideas. In the spirit of buying local, if one of these books looks interesting, please consider buying it from an independent book-seller (like Appetite for Books in Montreal) close to home before ordering it on-line.

1. Farmers in Chef Hats by Linda Arsenault is a bilingual book featuring recipes and products from Île d’Orléans near Quebec City, where most of the farms are still family run. This book won the Gourmand World Cookbook for best local cookery book in 2007, and is a wonderful showcase for Quebec local foods.
   
2. Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm by slow-food pioneer Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann is a stunning collection of recipes and articles organized by season. Many of the recipes come from the Ancaster Old Mill restaurant near Toronto, where Crump is executive chef and Schormann is the pastry chef. This book is equally at home on the cofee table as it is on the cookbook shelf.
   
3. Along a similar vein, Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables by Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics, is also divided by season, but then it is also divided by vegetable. The goal here is to help folks cook with the produce from their CSA (or farm-share) baskets. Although Angelic Organics is near Chicago, almost all of the veggies have appeared in my local CSA basket. The book is also peppered with anecdotes and offers insight into biodynamic farming.
   
4. In Fish, UK's Michelin-starred restauranteur and 'green chippie' pioneer Tom Aikens teaches us how to cook-up great seafood while keeping our impact on the oceans to a minimum. It contains over 200 recipes, as well as cooking and buying tips. Since this is a British book, a drawback for cooks on this side of the pond is that some species common to and sustainable in the U.K., may not be over here. It's nothing that a local seafood guide can't overcome though.
   
5. Finally, for the baker or health-conscious foodie on your list, consider the Whole Grain Baking book by the folk at the King Arthur Flour company. Based in Vermont, King Arthur Flour is 'America's oldest flour company." It is also an employee-owned company that eschews GMO wheat and advocates sustainability.

Do you have a gift suggestion or did I miss one of your favourite books? Drop me a comment or a tweet and let me know!

Transforming Green Beans into Pâté

I've been debating with myself about whether I should include recipes on this blog. It wasn't part of my initial vision for this space, but I'm beginning to think that recipes with some of my favorite seasonal foods would be a nice fit. So on that vein...

It's the season for green beans. This recipe for a walnut and green bean pâté is one of my favorites. It's adapted from The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen. I was skeptical when I first saw it. Green beans and walnuts aren't the most obvious of combinations for a pâté, but once I whipped up a batch I was quickly won over. Katzen says it tastes like chopped liver. I tend to agree! It's excellent on crusty bread on in a sandwich. It is also a great on crackers or accompanying a cheese plate.

Vegetable Walnut Pâté
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 cup minced onion
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups green beans, chopped
2 hard boiled eggs
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
1 Tbs fresh lemon juice
1 Tbs mayonnaise
1 Tbs nutritional yeast
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
black pepper to taste

Heat the oil in skillet over medium heat and sauté the onions until they begin to brown (about 10 minutes). Add the chopped green beans and saute until tender and very slightly browned(another 10 minutes or so). Remove from heat.

When the beans and onions are cooled, combine them in a food processor with the rest of the ingredients and grind them into a paste. Chill and serve.

When I serve this as a pâté, I like to top it with fresh fried onions. Basically, slice up half an onion and fry the slices over medium-high heat until they're brown and crispy.

If you don't ahve nutritional yeast, you can skip it. It's harder to skip the parsley. Also don't overdo the mayonnaise or lemon juice.

Enjoy!

Stretching Out the Meat

There is no denying it. Organic or small farm, local meat is not cheap. I order mine in bulk once or twice per year directly from the farm. This helps keep the costs down, but the price per kilogram is still much higher than what I'd pay at the grocery store for the conventionally-farmed variety. To stay in budget, preparing meat in the quantities common in many North American recipes is simply not an option for me. Neither is buying conventionally-farmed meat. So what to do?

One of the simplest solutions is to stretch out the meat. The trick is to make the recipe still feel meaty. This is easier in some recipes than others.

Stews are simple. For example, over the weekend I made a crock-pot stew for six using about 500g of stewing beef. To stretch out the beef, I added 2 cups of pre-cooked red kidney beans and 500g of mushrooms. The stew was served along-side baked potatoes and green beans. We all left the table full from a hearty meal. None of us missed the smaller portions of meat in the stew. We even had leftovers!

The addition of beans and mushrooms is one of my favourite ways of stretching out meat. They both tend to have a hearty flavour and texture, and are a good source of B-vitamins, folate, and some minerals. Beans are also relatively high in protein and add valuable fibre to our diets.

Meat loaf is another favourite in our household. Here I tend to do one of two things (or sometime both): mashed black beans or 'ground' TVP (textured vegetable protein) soaked in a Marmite broth. My preference is for the black beans since these are less processed. I use canned or pre-cooked beans, and mash them with a potato masher before adding them into the recipe.

Mashed black beans, TVP or crumbled tempeh are great additions to bulk up chili, spaghetti sauces or hearty stews and soups. I tend to avoid prepared vegetarian ground-beef substitutes because of the high sodium content and the high processing factor.

If you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.