This holiday season was so confusing. All the holidays on the weekends, and the Rose Bowl game on the 2^nd. What to make? Well, it felt like we should’ve made chili, but that didn’t happen.

Luckily, there’s almost always white flour in the house. Sorry, Atkins, South Beach, Dukan and Boulder, in general. Can’t seem to make it without gluten.

Been searching for a good Soft Pretzel recipe. I’ve tried several but don’t like butter in the dough. Started with King Arthur but thought it should be boiled like bagels. Anyway, here’s what we came up with. I was pretty happy with it.

Mary

Soft Pretzels

Inspired by King Arthur Flour’s Hot Buttered Pretzels

2 1/2 cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons regular instant yeast
1 1/4 cup warm water*
8 cups water
2 tablespoons baking soda
coarse, kosher or pretzel salt
3 tablespoons butter, melted

*Use more water in the winter (or in a dry climate like Colorado), the lesser amount in the summer, and somewhere in between in the spring and fall. Your goal is a soft dough.

Place all of the dough ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer, and beat till well-combined. Knead the dough, by hand or machine, for about 5 minutes, till it’s soft, smooth, and quite slack. Flour the dough and place it in a bag, and allow it to rest for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 500°F. Prepare two baking sheets by spraying them with vegetable oil spray, or lining them with parchment paper.

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface, and divide it into eight equal pieces (about 70g, or 2 1/2 ounces, each).

Allow the pieces to rest, uncovered, for 5 minutes. Roll each piece of dough into a long, thin rope (about 28 to 30 inches long), and twist each rope into a pretzel.

Allow them to rest, uncovered, for 10 minutes.

While the dough is resting, bring 8 cups of water plus the baking soda to a boil in a large pot. Make sure the baking soda is thoroughly dissolved; if it isn’t, it’ll make your pretzels splotchy. Gently place 1-2 pretzels at a time in the boiling water for about 1 minute per side to set the dough.

Carefully remove from the pot. A chopstick works well to turn the pretzels, but a spatula works best to remove from the water.

Brush the pretzels with the melted butter. Sprinkle them lightly with pretzel salt (you can use kosher, but the pretzel salt really does make a BIG difference.) Keep brushing the butter on until you’ve used it all up; it may seem like a lot, but that’s what gives these pretzels their ethereal taste. Bake the pretzels for 8 to 12 minutes, or until they’re golden brown, reversing the baking sheets halfway through.

Eat the pretzels warm, or reheat them in an oven or microwave. Yield: 8 pretzels.

Continuing on our earlier post, Graduation Party Family Style, we bring you the recipes. It is amazing how you find favorites that are always there and reinvent them for a new theme. We do that often in our cooking. Things do always seem to evolve and are rarely exactly the same twice. In addition, we are never afraid to try something new for a party. If it doesn’t come out, we improvise…that is half of the fun! As long as you can find a way to enjoy the party, you have succeeded. Let us know how you like these!

The “No Fork” Menu

Challah Bread

Homemade Rolls – just like the buns we made before only smaller!

Homemade BBQ Sauce: This one deserves its own post, so look out for this to come!

Lemon Aioli: Sans basil; so easy!

Cranberry Chipotle Sauce:

Start with cranberry sauce (ours was saved from Thanksgiving and canned), take one chipotle pepper and 1 tablespoon of the canning sauce and blend all ingredients together. Use as a spread for your sandwich (or on everything, it is so good!) If you wanted to get really creative, you could make it into butter or mayo to make a creamy spread. YUM.

Parmesan Croutons:

Preheat the oven to 375°. Cut stale bread into cubes as desired. Place in a bowl and toss with a sprinkle of olive oil, salt, crushed red peppers, and crushed fresh garlic cloves. Melt about a tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium high heat add the bread to lightly toast the croutons. Stir to brown on all sides. Toss with shredded parmesan cheese. Place the skillet in the oven for about 10-20 minutes until mostly dried out. Allow to cool and store in an airtight container.

Goat Cheese and Pear Appetizer:

Kelly found this recipe for Goat Cheese and Pear appetizer on Pinterest. Just slice the pears (we dipped in some lemon water to reduce browning), then spread goat cheese, and sprinkle with chopped pistachios and dried cranberries. If I was going to do this again, I would make them right before. I don’t think it saved very well, so perhaps best for a smaller group. Also, the original recipe left a bit of space for picking up, which is a great idea. That said, this was a keeper!

Relishes in Jars:

Mary found this idea for the relishes on Pinterest, again! Just find some different jars or vases and fill with vegetables. It creates a great color blocked look.

Caesar Salad Spears with Green Goddess Dressing:

The idea for this salad dish was that guests could pick up the individual spears which were already dressed with Green Goddess and Croutons.

For the Green Goddess, we used about 1 cup of our lemon aioli (leave out the basil), ½ bunch of scallions, ½ cup of chopped Italian parsley, anchovy paste to taste (about 1 tsp), 2 cloves garlic, salt and pepper to taste. Place all ingredients in the blender and blend until smooth.

For the salad, place spears on a platter and dress in layers. Top with croutons and enjoy!

Elvis Style Cole Slaw

Remember this one? All we did was leave out the basil in the aioli and voila it becomes Elvis Style!

Cupcake Mania

We made homemade Sprinkles Chocolate Frosting. I will not even try to take credit for this frosting. It is AWESOME. Every single time it is great. It is rich and light at the same time. If you have been looking for a great frosting, here it is! We just used a chocolate cake recipe that we had on hand, but we are still in search of the perfect cupcake recipe…let us know if you have one!!

We thought this was a hugely successful party, but wish we had hired some help to better serve the 65 people who came. We would have had a better chance to visit with people. Parties like this are always easier in the summer because you can spread out more and make more targeted areas for food, drinks, etc. Overall, we thought this was one of our best parties. We had a great crowd and a great team effort to pull it off! One of the biggest successes of any party has to do with the people you invite and we had a great crowd! Thanks to everyone who shared this day with us.

Mary
& Kelly

I am thrilled that we have a fantastic guest post courtesy of my Aunts. Mary’s sisters, Diane and Sue, were kind enough to share their take on Ali’s graduation party which they help make happen! Thank you both for all your help and for sharing with Zest!! For the complete list of recipes head here!

Kelly

We always enjoy cooking together as a family. So, as the out-of-town aunties, (Mary’s sisters), we were so happy come to town and join Mary and Kelly in the planning, shopping, cooking and entertaining for Ali’s graduation celebration in December. And since we got the chance to pitch in, we have the honor of being the guests on ZESTblog to recap this fun party.

Friday was planning and prep day, and Saturday we got to cook all day together! We had so much fun laughing, sharing ideas and trying out new recipes, but mostly being together in the kitchen.

As hostess and chief chef for the party, Mary’s vision for the dinner was a “no fork buffet” to make it fun, interactive and to cut down on utensils. So with this in mind, the menu we came up with for the Saturday night party was all “no fork” dishes:

By the time we got started with the prep on Friday, Mary already had lots of grocery lists and to do lists written up!

We had fun posting a small, hand-written sign in front of each food item, since we had a couple of meat choices and to designate the different and delicious sauces.  Mary’s favorite sign was the “Elvis – Style Slaw for Sliders” because the guests actually followed the instructions and put the coleslaw on their sandwich. (no forks!)

So the menu was set, the each course created and the food stations decided. Every pretty platter in the house was set out with the dishes accented by sauces and signage. Mary seemed pleased at how everything came out.

We were so impressed that there were so many homemade dishes. Most of the sauces and breads were homemade, using either one of Mary’s or Kelly’s tried and true recipes, like the Green Goddess dressing, and some were created that day with last minute ingenuity, like the sauces for the smoked meats. (Also note, the signature drink, in Ali’s school colors.) But all were amazing and delicious:

Challah Bread/ Homemade Rolls

BBQ Sauce

Lemon Aioli

Cranberry Chipotle Sauce

Green Goddess Dressing

Parmesan Croutons

Cupcake Frosting

(Recipes To Come!)

Steve’s Smokin’ Smoked Meats:

The entrée was home smoked pork shoulder and beef roast, which we turned into sliders. The meat was prepared by Steve, a very generous family friend and great cook on his home smoker, and Mary asked him to do the honor of opening the buffet. (This is a tradition that our Mom, Del, used to do – pick someone special to “open the buffet”). The meats were served with a variety of homemade rolls and Mary’s beautiful Challah bread, with the various homemade sauces. We added BBQ sauce to half of the pork to make BBQ pulled pork, and we sliced the other half of the pork along with the smoked beef roast for sliders. So tender and tasty, a variety of sliders!

Goat Cheese and Pear Appetizer:

Kelly found this recipe for Goat Cheese and Pear appetizer on Pinterest. Just slice the pears (we dipped in some lemon water to reduce browning), then spread goat cheese, and sprinkle with chopped pistachios and dried cranberries.

Relishes in Jars:

Mary found this idea for the relishes on Pinterest, again! Just find some different jars or vases and fill with vegetables. It creates a great color blocked look.

Caesar Salad Spears with Green Goddess Dressing:

The idea for this salad dish was that guests could pick up the individual spears which were already dressed with Green Goddess and Croutons. (no forks!)

Elvis Style Cole Slaw:

Remember this one? All we did was leave out the basil in the aioli and voila it becomes Elvis Style!

Cupcake Mania:

We made homemade Sprinkles Chocolate Frosting and had fun decorating regular size and mini cupcakes with Christmas theme sprinkles on top. Specialty theme was Hostess Cupcake swirls on a plain chocolate cupcake, which Ali had requested.

~Guest Bloggers: Diane and SUE

After getting back from a week away, a friend we hadn’t seen in a long time came into town. That developed into a small dinner party for six. I had to work all day, so here’s how it evolved. Dad went to the store and got some chicken and lettuce. When I got home from work, I took a look at it and sighed. Then got in gear. Took a look in the cupboard. Orzo. That doesn’t take too long.

We had some leftover Jerk sauce and some herbs, so half the chicken went jerk and half went in garlic, olive oil, herb puree to marinade. Set some of the herb mixture aside for the orzo.

Put our guest to work chopping salad (with a glass of wine of course). Kelly made some dressing.

Dessert? Chopped some strawberries, and while we were eating, Kelly put in some of our famous frozen cookie dough. There you have it.

Except for the cookies this all took about 40 minutes to prepare. It went well and I think our guests felt taken care of…anyway we tried.

Mary

As promised, here are some of the recipes from the Mediterranean Party from last weekend. Here is a quick overview:

I am not a huge fan of sangria in general, because I like wine and prefer other sweet drinks. This one however is so fun! How can you go wrong with champagne? I will absolutely use this again, especially on a hot summer day…or for a bridal shower perhaps? I have to say, the favorite had to be the dates. They are rich and sweet and salty and a little spicy and just perfect. The gazpacho tastes like a garden in a glass. Such a great way to add a healthy element and would also be a wonderful first course, especially in the summer. Paella is something you can find a basic recipe for and add your own flare. Use the seafood and veggies you like and it will be lovely.

The one thing I do recommend is to use something as your focal point if you are looking to impress. We used a fan of asparagus and scallops in ours, but muscles or lobster on top create a lovely effect as well. The ice cream is like nothing else you have had. It has a wonderful texture and the nuts give it a toasty richness. With the ginger cookies (my staple), a few berries, and a sprinkling of toasted nuts, it was a lovely finish. I can’t wait to hear what you think!

Kelly

Citrus Champagne Sangria

Combine grapefruit juice, ginger ale, simple syrup (if you like sweetness) with thinly sliced blood oranges, tangerines, and apples overnight. Add half a glass of champagne or white wine to fancy glassware and top with the citrus mixture for fabulous presentation. Make sure some of the fruit makes it to the glass.

Gazpacho Shooters – Adapted from
Marge Cirinelli’s Twisted Gazpacho

2 cans (11.5 ounces each) tomato juice

Juice from 1 lemon

1 cup fennel, fine dice

1 cup cucumber (1 medium), seeded and peeled, fine dice

2 large carrots, fine dice

1/2 cup red onion (1 small), fine dice

1/2 cup celery (2 stalks), fine dice

1/2 orange bell pepper, fine dice

1 pint sweet 100 or other small cherry tomatoes, stemmed and quartered

2 tablespoons italian parsley, fine chop

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon garlic, minced

2-3 tablespoons jalapeño pepper, seeded, fine mince

1/2 cup dry white wine

salt and pepper to taste

splash of tequila

In a bowl, combine tomato juice, lemon juice, fennel, cucumber, red onion, celery, tomatoes, parsley, basil and sherry vinegar. Add olive oil to a small sauté pan along with minced garlic over medium heat, stirring until lightly browned. Add minced jalapeño and cook, stirring for 15 seconds. Add wine and cook until reduced by half. Stir mixture into the gazpacho and chill for 1-2 hours or overnight. Add a splash of tequila. Spoon mixture into shot glasses or small martini glasses.

Note: If you are serving them as shooters, you can use a hand held blender to smooth out the texture a bit, but if you use a fine enough dice, it will work anyway.

Chorizo-Filled Dates

Yield: Makes 12 dates

4 ounces fresh Mexican chorizo, coarsely crumbled

Salt and Pepper

1 tablespoon chopped Italian parsley

12 large Medjool dates

6 slices applewood-smoked bacon, cut crosswise in half

Cook chorizo in heavy small skillet over medium heat until browned and cooked through, stirring frequently and breaking up lumps with spoon, about 5 minutes. Drain off fat; transfer sausage to small bowl. Add parsley; stir to combine. Cool.

Working with one date at a time, cut slit along top of date. Gently pry open date and remove pit, leaving pocket. Stuff pocket with 1 scant tablespoon chorizo mixture. Wrap 1 bacon piece around each date, overlapping ends slightly; fasten ends with toothpick. Place wrapped dates on a baking sheet and place in a preheated 375° oven. Bake the dates for about 20 minutes or until bacon is brown. Remove toothpicks. Serve warm.

Note: I have also made these stuffed with a chunk of parmesan cheese in place of the chorizo and they were also amazing. A combination of the two might be gracing my next party.
J

Dulce de Leche Ice Cream – Gourmet, May 2007

Yield: Makes about 1 1/2 quarts

2 cups whole milk

1 cup heavy cream

1 pound dulce de leche (about 1 2/3 cups; preferably La Salamandra brand)

1/8 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (2 1/2 to 3 oz), toasted

Bring milk and cream just to a boil in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, then remove from heat and whisk in dulce de leche until dissolved. Whisk in vanilla and transfer to a metal bowl. Quick-chill by putting bowl in a larger bowl of ice and cold water and stirring occasionally until cold, 15 to 20 minutes. Freeze mixture in ice cream maker until almost firm, then fold in pecans. Transfer ice cream to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden, at least 1 hour.

Note: We found that it works best if all the ingredients are cold when you add them, so freeze the nuts for a while before adding them.

Ginger Cookies

Courtesy of ‘The SONO Baking Company Cookbook’ by John Barricelli

**Makes about 60 cookies

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 t. baking soda

¼ t. coarse salt

1 t. ground cinnamon

1 t. ground cloves

1 t. ground ginger

1 cup sugar, plus ¾ cup for rolling

¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 large egg, at room temperature

¼ cup unsulfured molasses

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger; set aside. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the sugar and butter on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl halfway through. Beat in the egg and molasses until combined. Reduce the mixer speed to low and gradually add the flour mixture beating until combined. Transfer the dough to a clean bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until well chilled, about an hour (and up to 24 hours).

Arrange the oven rack in the middle position. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or nonstick silicone baking mats; set aside. Place the extra sugar for rolling on a plate; set aside. Use a 1 ½-inch ice cream scoop to scoop out the dough, and roll balls in the sugar to coat, and place about 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake one sheet at a time, rotating the sheet two-thirds of the way through the baking time, until the cookies are deep golden brown and the centers are firm, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer the sheet to a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes. Use a spatula to transfer the cookies to the rack and let cool completely. Continue to roll and bake the remaining cookies in the same way.

Note: I like to keep these in the freezer. To do so, scoop into balls and roll in sugar then place on a baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap and freeze for several hours. Once the dough is frozen, place the dough in a freezer bag. Bake as usual using the frozen dough, no need to defrost. These will keep for several months in the freezer and are a great thing to have on hand for unexpected guests or late night cravings! Also, if you want to get really fancy make them into ice cream sandwiches…yum!