use real butter

You’re probably familiar with artichoke dip. It’s a great goto appetizer for guests and especially when I used to host stitch-n-bitches. It really boils down to a lot of fat with fiber, I mean a lot of delicious fat with fiber! I’ve had it in restaurants and I can’t stand their versions because they skimp on the arties and load it with even more creamy filler. Blegh.

I made so much soup and stew and curry last week that we were working on leftovers when I remembered I had planned on roast chicken. The chicken wouldn’t wait and I didn’t want to chuck it in the freezer, so I went ahead and roasted it, then put it in the fridge. Instead of having it straight, I had a smack of inspiration.

preparing to harvest the meat

I stripped the bird of the meat and saved the carcass for chicken broth like any good cook would. I decided to make a twist on the artichoke dip and turn it into a hearty pasta dinner on the fly. I’m sure fresh artichokes would have been heavenly, but I was running short on time because I spent most of the day skiing with a bunch of tele babes - whoosh! I used trusty canned artichokes in the interest of time and less swearing.

quartered artichoke hearts

The dip recipe calls for blending everything together and baking it to heady goodness. I wanted to incorporate all of the flavors without baking anything. So I started with the minced garlic, except I used a lot more garlic than is called for in the dip recipe.

sauté garlic in olive oil

Once the sautéed garlic was fragrant, I added cooked penne and sautéed that for a few minutes before adding the chopped roast chicken and artichokes. You can add salt and pepper at this point, but since my roast chicken is typically well-seasoned, I don’t.

the hot mix

I removed the pot from the stove and grated about 2 cups of parmesan cheese over the pasta. I added 1.5 cups of mayonnaise as well as 1/2 cup of lemon juice. Most of these ingredients should be adjusted to your taste. I think I may have added a little more lemon juice - I love that stuff.

grating parmesan

mixing in the mayo, parm, and lemon juice

It’s a bit of a warm pasta salad dish. I guess I think of it as salad since it has mayo. It would have been great with a cream base sauce, but I’m trying to avoid dairy and the mayo lends more to the original artichoke dip.

artichoke dip as dinner

Roast Chicken Artichoke Pasta

1 lb roast chicken, chopped
24 oz. artichoke hearts, cooked, drained, quartered
1 lb. penne, cooked and drained
3 tbsp olive oil
8 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
2 cups Parmesan, grated (to taste)
1.5 cups, mayonnaise (to taste)
1/2 cup lemon juice (to taste)
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped

In a large sauté pan heat olive oil on high flame. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant. Add the drained penne and saut&eacute for a few minutes. When the pasta is well-coated, toss in the chicken and artichokes and stir until thoroughly heated. Remove pot from heat. Toss in the Parmesan, mayonnaise, lemon juice, and parsley. Stir well and serve hot.

I’ve had this recipe in the back of my head for well over ten years. Jeremy and I were driving from Ithaca, New York down to Virginia to visit with my parents way back in the late 90s when we stopped by my friend’s house in Washington DC along the way. I lived in northern Virginia for one year during high school and became close friends with Emily. It was nice to see her parents again (I love them, they are the sweetest people) and introduce them to Jeremy for the first time. While we chatted, Emily’s mom - the consummate hostess - presented us with a platter of hot, crispy phyllo triangles filled with… crawdads. Crawdads (crayfish) are these delicious freshwater critters that look like small lobsters and are practically religion on the Gulf. Mmmmm, mmmm, good.

crawdads, onions, celery, and spices, parsley and green onions

I never did get a recipe, but this sort of thing isn’t too hard to throw together - if you have crawdads. I found some frozen cooked crawdad meat in the store the other day. This was about as close as I was gonna get to it out here in the Rockies. I instinctively grabbed the package and chucked it into my basket. Crawdad phyllo triangles would be perfect to round out our holiday menu of maritime indulgences.

sauté onions, celery, and spices in butter

add the crawdads and greens

To be perfectly honest, I would be happy to stuff any sort of seafood (well, almost any sort - I’ve tried sea cucumber and believe that is an acquired taste) into buttery layers of phyllo dough. They are great for entertaining, except on Christmas day, we were entertaining ourselves and no others. More for us - hee hee.

brush butter and fold, brush more butter and fold again

Once you get the hang of phyllo sheets, triangles are pretty easy to master. I butter half of a sheet, fold it on the long axis, then butter half again and fold it on the long axis once more.

ready to roll, er - fold

You fold triangles up like a flag or like those paper footballs that 8th graders invariably made in the classroom. It’s a forgiving fold too - because any bits that squish or ooze out can be tucked in and folded over and covered up. I usually drop a tablespoon of filling on the corner.

fold up the precious goodness

all set to go into the oven

This batch yields approximately 26 triangles. While we both enjoyed the triangles, there was a part of me that felt the filling was wanting for… for more heat or tang or umph. I based the filling on a crawdad turnover filling from Emeril’s Louisiana Real & Rustic. Having grown up on the Chesapeake Bay, I suspect that what I wanted was Old Bay Seasoning, something that blesses all good steamed Chesapeake blues (crabs). Perhaps next time I’ll put a Chesapeake spin on it.

serve hot and crispy

Crawfish Phyllo Triangles
modified from Crawfish Turnovers in Louisiana Real & Rustic by Emeril Lagasse

1 lb. crawfish tails, peeled and cooked
1 cup onions, diced
1/2 cup celery, chopped
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne
3/4 tsp paprika
1/2 stick butter
3 tbsp parsley, chopped
3 tbsp green onions, chopped
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 lb. phyllo dough sheets, thawed
1 cup butter, melted

Mix the onions, celery, salt, cayenne, and paprika in a bowl. Melt the butter in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Sauté the seasoned vegetables until soft and brown. Add the crawfish and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Add the parsley, green onions, and Worcestershire sauce and stir well. Let cool. To make each triangle, set one sheet of phyllo on a clean work surface and brush melted butter on half of the sheet lengthwise. Fold the phyllo on its long axis in half. Brush melted butter on half of the phyllo lengthwise again, and fold on the long axis once more. You should have a long narrow strip of phyllo with 4 layers. Place a heaping tablespoon of filling on one corner of the strip and begin folding the dough over the filling like a flag. Continue folding until the dough is completely wrapped around the filling. Brush a little butter on the end to seal it down. Place triangles on a baking sheet so they are not touching one another. Bake at 375F for 18-20 minutes. Serve hot.

When Kell asked me what I would want for a last meal, sushi was my immediate answer. I love sushi - California style. That is, not in the traditional Japanese sense only because I haven’t been exposed to the traditional except in New Zealand (go figure). The Chinese are notorious for bastardizing sushi by dousing it with Sriracha and then dunking it in wasabi with a dash of soy sauce. *raises hand - guilty*

Jeremy and I had it good for almost a decade. We had a favorite sushi bar Ai, in South Pasadena. Fumito is the head chef there and he not only treated us to the best sushi, but he became our friend - teaching us to distinguish Good from Bad, sushi. When we moved to Colorado we discovered a handful of decent sushi joints in Boulder, but… price and quality just couldn’t compare to So Cal. They just can’t. We’ll dine out for sushi on occasion in town, but we will more likely make our own at home.

I have a favorite roll from Ai, the Not-So-Special Roll. Fumito has a Special Roll on the menu which is spicy tuna and spicy scallop with avocado, masago, and sometimes cucumber or daikon sprouts all crammed into a cut roll wrapped in halibut… or maybe snapper? I can’t recall because the Not-So-Special Roll omitted the outside fish (just because it got to be incredibly filling). That was my brain child and Fumito was happy to oblige. And that is what we create at home when we start to miss Fumito and all of the regulars at the sushi bar - except Hector and Eddie, those two made me laugh so hard I almost snorted my drink out my nose.

After spending the morning prepping our doors for the winter onslaught and then noodling around the hardware store for Things That Don’t Exist, we swung by Whole Foods to pick up some sea critters. We started with scallop carpaccio, something akin to a small plate I enjoyed with Kell and Jerad at Fish Face in Sydney (awesome place to eat if you’re ever there). I am a sucker for ponzu.

scallop carpaccio with ponzu

I prepped the sashimi, spicy tuna, and spicy scallop while Jeremy mixed the sushi rice. In a tribute to Fumito, Jeremy made a couple of Not-So-Special rolls. I wrapped a few handrolls and before we knew it, we could barely move from the table for the state of food coma we were falling into.

sake and maguro

temaki-zushi

not-so-special #1

not-so-special #2