I originally made a version of this recipe from my beloved Beat This cookbook, and while I really liked it there were some issues. For one thing, dear Ann Hodgman, the author, has you make your own pesto and then drain it in a sieve to get as much of the oil out as you can–so you put the oil in, and then you take the oil out. You can certainly buy pre-made pesto, as I do, but be sure you buy it from Costco or some such. Regular grocery stores sell it, but it comes in small jars with big prices. She called for sun-dried tomatoes for the tomato layer, but she specified that they be dry-packed, not oil-packed, which are hard to find. The tomatoes were to be diced and scattered across the cream-cheese layer, which meant that you wouldn’t necessarily get any tomato in a small dab on a cracker. It never occurred to me that I could make it any differently, so I made it Ann’s way and people really liked it. Later on I ran into the version I’m posting here. and because the layers all have some cream cheese in them and are mixed in a food processor they’re pretty smooth. Then, I realized that the sun-dried tomatoes aren’t really necessary because they’re going to get pureed anyway; you can just use tomato paste. What you really want is the color and the taste.
Appetizers
Debi’s Great Green Stuff
I got the original recipe for this dip/sauce/dressing from a monster cooking blog called Pinch of Yum, where it was called “5-Minute Magic Green Sauce.” It is totally great, but let me say that this isn’t really a 5-minute recipe, with all due respect where respect is due. It takes more time than that just to strip the leaves off enough cilantro/parsley to make a packed cup. (You can pack an almost infinite amount of small leaves into a cup.) However, it is well worth making. People scarfed this down at a reception like you wouldn’t believe, and then stood around the bowl forlornly scraping out the last molecules with pita chips. I should have made at least a double recipe. It’s really a combination of a type of pesto (the herb/oil/nut component) and guacamole (the avocado/jalapeno/lime component). Lindsay Ostrom, the author, says it can be used as a dip, spread or salad dressing depending on how thin you make it. It could work on a very sturdy salad with lots of crunchy ingredients and would be good on any kind of meat or fish as a sauce (my son tasted it and said, “This would be really good with beef”), with any raw vegetable as a dip, or with some type of neutral-flavored chip or cracker.
Spicy Cheddar Cookies
These are always a great hit when I serve them at parties, as they’re rich and crumbly like shortbread cookies but they aren’t sweet, so they’re nice for people who don’t like sweets or are staying away from them, but they’re still, well, cookies. And there are rarely more than a few left at the end of the evening. They’re no more labor-intensive than regular cookies, especially if you do what I tell you and roll them into balls instead of rolling them out.
Easy and Versatile Goat Cheese Spread
I made this for a women’s tea at my church and it was quite popular. It was also the easiest item on the menu. You can throw it together at the last minute and still get rave reviews.
Two Savory Cheesecakes
You know what they say: The reward for working hard is to be asked to do more work. In this case, though, the work was a pleasure and being asked to do it was a great compliment. A couple from the Chorale, Barb and John Wollan, asked me if I would be willing to do the reception for the small (ha!) recital that they were planning to give. They’d pay me. Oh no, I said. Being paid makes things very complicated. I’m happy to do it. So above you can see the results. I had been assured that the number attending would be 100 at the very most. Well, there were at least 150, so I’m afraid that I spent much of the performance worrying that there wouldn’t be enough food. It ended up fine, though. We even ended up with a whole gallon of leftover cider.