Crab Fondue

**Updated on 3/29/2013** Found the below post ready to go, but for some reason, I hadn't posted it when I wrote it up before. Maybe I was waiting on attaching a picture, but since this is now a few years since, it may be hard for me to find it. 

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This post is long overdue, but here's the recipe we followed for the crab fondue several weeks ago. It was creamy, delicious, and though the cheese portion would have been fine on its own, the crab meat really added that something extra.

Ingredients:
6 oz cream cheese
10 oz brie cheese
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp mustard (yellow or Dijon)
2 tbsps powdered sugar (or 1 tbsp corn starch)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1-2 tsps Old Bay seasoning (or paprika with a little ground ginger and cayenne)
1/4 - 1/2 cup dry white wine or dry sherry (optional)
1-2 tsps lemon juice
1 tsp lemon zest
3/4 - 1 lb lump crab meat, fresh or canned
1/4 cup chopped green onions, chives, or parsley
Day old French or Italian loaf bread, cubed

Method:
1. Slowly heat the cream cheese, mayo, powdered sugar, garlic powder, Old Bay, lemon zest, and mustard in a double boiler until the cheese is completely melted. (If you don't have a double boiler, fill a saucepan a third of the way with water and bring to a boil, place a metal bowl over the saucepan. This will work as a double boiler.)
2. Slowly stir in the wine and lemon juice (adjust quantities to taste and desired consistency). Slowly stir in the crab meat and onion greens.
To serve, transfer to a heated chafing dish or fondue pot to keep warm. Present with bread cubes and forks for dipping.
Serves 8.

Jap Chae

This was delicious! If only we hadn't gotten greedy and tried to sauce 2lbs. of noodles with the sauce intended for 12 oz. of noodles... Yeah, maybe try following the recipe to the letter on this one, and you'll have better luck. Ours tasted pretty good, just that we had to keep adding soy sauce and sugar at the end when we were running out of the regular sauce that we'd mixed beforehand. :-P

Ingredients:

12 oz dan myun (sweet potato starch noodles)

3/4 cup tamari (wheat-free sauce from refined soy)

4 tbsps Asian sesame oil

6 tbsps sugar

2 tbsps finely chopped garlic (4 cloves)

2 tbsps olive oil

1 large onion, sliced lengthwise 1/8-inch thick (3 cups)

5 medium carrots, grated into 1/8-inch thick matchsticks (2 in. long)

2 tsps toasted sesame seeds

1/2 lb fresh shitake mushrooms, trimmed and sliced 1/8-inch thick (3 cups)

6 cups baby spinach

Method:

1. Cook the sweet potato noodles in a large pot of boiling water for 4 to 5 minutes. Immediately drain and rinse thoroughly under cold water. Be sure not to overcook the noodles, or they will lose their chewy texture.

2. Whisk together tamari, sesame oil, sugar, and garlic.

3. Heat olive oil in a deep 12-inch heavy skillet over high heat until it just begins to smoke, then stir-fry onion and carrots until onion is softened, about 3 minutes. Add sesame seeds and mushrooms and stir-fry until softened, about 3 minutes. Add spinach and stir-fry 30 seconds, then add noodles and tamari mixture and toss to coat. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until most of liquid is absorbed, 3 to 5 minutes. Adjust seasoning to taste. Transfer to a shallow serving dish and sprinkle with more toasted sesame seeds. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Vietnamese Shrimp Cakes (banh khot)

This is one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes that a lot of non-Vietnamese eaters have never been exposed to. There's a special cast iron pan that you use for this (see picture below), and luckily my apartment mate Trang has one! She played around with the batter recipe, and here's the best one we got. I loved tasting the coconut milk in the shrimp cake, and the outer crust is slightly crunchy.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb. shrimp

1 lb. rice flour

1 cup corn starch

3 cups cold water

1 cup coconut milk

1 tsp salt

5 tsp turmeric

1 cup green onions, chopped

Method:

1. Peel and devein shrimps. Cut into small pieces (3-4 pieces per shrimp) and sauté with a touch of oil and minced garlic. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Set shrimp aside.

2. Mix remaining ingredients in a mixing bowl to make batter for shrimp cake.

3. Heat up pan on medium to medium-high heat. Vietnamese shrimp cakes are made in a specialty pan very similar in shape to an Ebelskiver pan.

4. In each depression, add a tiny bit of oil, pour in batter to fill the depression about ¾ way, and immediately add a piece of shrimp. Cover and cook until batter is no longer translucent (about 2-3 minutes).

5. Uncover and cook until cakes no longer stick to pan and bottoms are crispy.

6. Plate and serve with fish sauce vinaigrette (recipe can be found in previous Vietnamese dinner meet post), and fresh lettuce and mint.

Bruschetta

What's one of the best combinations in the world? Tomato and basil. Love that stuff. Especially love it in the form of a caprese salad with fresh mozzarella, balsamic vinegar, and fine olive oil... But that's another recipe altogether. Tonight, we made bruschetta. Rather, Trang made bruschetta the night before, and we simply toasted bread and spooned her prepared mixture onto the baguette slices. Deliciousness. Give it a try and you'll see how simple it is. I think having it sit overnight really allows the flavors to mingle and develop into something addictively good. Yum!

Ingredients:

2 tomatoes, cubed

½ cup fresh basil, julienned

4 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

2 tbsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

Salt, to taste

Ground black pepper, to taste

Method:

1. In a medium bowl, mix oil, garlic, and basil, to help infuse the oil with the garlic and basil flavors. Set aside while preparing tomatoes or other dishes.

2. Mix in tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, seasoning salt, and ground black pepper. Cover and chill in the refrigerator 8 hours, or overnight, before serving.

3. Serve mixture on top of toasted French baguette slices.

**If time constrained, all ingredients can be mixed in all at once before chilling.

Blue Cheese Deviled Eggs

Creamy, smooth, and slightly addictive with the distinctive blue cheese taste. I was afraid the blue cheese would overpower the egg, but instead it was the perfect complement to the yolk. This was a fairly simple recipe to follow. You can just boil the eggs straight without any fancy business, but I was reading this deviled eggs recipe book the other day; did you know that there are things you can do to make sure the yolk is perfectly centered in the egg?? Crazy. Things like putting your egg carton on its side the night before so that the eggs are lying on their sides. Anyway, I won't go into a dissertation on deviled eggs, but if you follow this recipe, you'll get some fine tasting ones. We decided to play around with "decorations" and added some seaweed sprinkles to some for a more Asian taste, and we added Cajun seasoning to others. To be honest, the decorations didn't really do much in terms of enhancing the taste, but they were fun. :)

Ingredients:

12 eggs

½ cup blue cheese (crumbled)

4 tablespoons mayonnaise

Tabasco sauce, to taste

Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

Paprika (optional)

Method:

1. Boil the eggs. We basically laid the eggs on their sides in a large pot, filled it up with water, and turned on the stove. Let the water boil, wait about 10-15 minutes, and you should have boiled eggs from that. If the eggs are floating on the surface, then they are boiled.

2. Remove the eggs and immediately rinse them with cold water. (This keeps the yolk from turning green.) Peel the eggs and slice them in half, length-wise.

3. Scoop the yolks into a mixing bowl and set the whites aside. Mash the yolks with the blue cheese, mayonnaise, Tabasco sauce, salt, pepper, and paprika. Make sure the mixture is smooth before moving to the next step.

4. Spoon (or pipe) the filling back into the egg whites. Optionally sprinkle with paprika for a bit of color. Cover and refrigerate before serving. (We didn't refrigerate though; we were too hungry to wait!)

Spinach and Artichoke Dip

I don't know if we were super hungry or it were just too darn tasty (or perhaps both!), but this dip lasted maybe 10 minutes once it came out of the oven. I've always been a huge fan of a good spinach-artichoke dip, and this recipe makes it easy for me to have it everyday if I wanted! (That is probably not a good idea if I were keeping an eye on my girlish figure.) Give this one a try. Too bad my picture of it is so poor - it really is quite marvelous!

Ingredients:

1 bunch of spinach (make sure to rinse before steaming)

1 ½ cups of frozen or canned artichoke hearts (make sure to rinse before steaming)

6 oz. cream cheese (reduced fat is fine)

¼ cup sour cream (lite is fine)

¼ cup mayonnaise (lite is fine)

1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

½ tablespoon red pepper flakes (it really does need this to add flavor; you can't really taste the spiciness)

4 cloves of garlic, minced

Tabasco sauce (optional)

Salt, to taste

Method:

1. Steam spinach and artichokes until cooked (drain any water). Once the spinach leaves are limp, remove both, and cut them up. You can leave them chunky or chop them up finely.

2. Sauté garlic with red pepper flakes and a bit of oil over medium heat. Don’t allow the garlic to brown; you’re just trying to take out the raw bite of the garlic.

3. Preheat the oven to 350°.

4. Soften the cream cheese by heating it in the microwave. Once heated, stir in the spinach, artichoke hearts, the sautéed garlic and red pepper flakes, the sour cream, mayonnaise, about 8/10 of the Parmesan cheese, and Tabasco sauce, in an oven-safe dish. The Tabasco sauce doesn’t make it spicy as much as it adds an interesting tang to the dip. At this time, you’ll also want to taste test and see if the dip requires some salt. Add salt to taste. Once the taste has been adjusted, sprinkle the remaining Parmesan cheese on top.

5. Bake the dish for about 10 minutes to warm the dip. We didn’t do this next step, but I would recommend turning the oven setting to broil for another 2-3 minutes while leaving the oven door open a crack. I think that would brown the Parmesan cheese on top and add a nice crust to it.

6. Serve with chips or crusty baguette bread. Delicious!

Chaat

This was a suprisingly easy appetizer packed with a lot of flavor. Beware - those little balls are quite spicy, but paired with the cool yogurt on the side, the taste has your mouth coming back for more. Yummy yummy in my tummy. I think I might have filled up my tummy with a lot of this before I even got to the entrees!

Here's Bhumi's recipe below (with my own comments in parentheses):

Ingredients:

1 large Potato, boiled and diced

1 small red onion, chopped

1 tomato, chopped

1 cup yogurt

Chaat Masala to taste, optional (this comes in a package in powder form)

Chaat (the little ball things; I thought they looked like mini-Kix)

Instructions:

1. Mix all the ingredients together except yogurt and chaat masala.

2. Blend yogurt with ½ cup of water and add some chaat masala. Serve the chaat with yogurt sauce as a dressing on top.

Lemon Chicken Skewers

This was one tasty appetizer, though we almost messed it up by putting in two tbsp of salt instead of sugar into the marinade. Oops. We tried to fix it by putting in FOUR tbsp of sugar, but I think it still came out a bit over-salted. Ah well. Now we know - don't replace sugar with salt! ;) Trang's recipe for the skewers as follows... We used a George Foreman grill, and the skewers came out great! (5 min. on one side, flip to other side for 3 min.)

Ingredients:

1 ½ lb chicken (thinly sliced)
2 TBSP oyster sauce
1 ½ TBSP granulated sugar
1 TBSP soy sauce
3 TBSP lemon juice
½T

BSP garlic (minced)
¼ tsp five spice
2 TBSP olive oil

Instructions:
1. Combine all ingredients for marinade, then thoroughly mix in the chicken. Let sit for approximately 15 minutes before grilling. DO NOT marinate over night as the meat will lose its sweetness and flavor.

2. String marinated meat onto bamboo skewers and grill over high heat until cooked.
Top chicken with fried shallots and/or ground peanuts and lemon slices. Serve with rice or noodles, or by itself as an appetizer.

Laab with Ground Pork

This dish was amazing! The tanginess of the lime juice, the fresh crunch of the shallots/herbs, and the slight sweetness from the fish sauce all combined perfectly into this simple recipe. Enjoy. :)

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of toasted rice

1-2 shallots, thinly sliced (to taste)

1-2 limes, to taste

½ pound of ground pork (we used closer to 1 lb. of ground pork)

¼ tsp of ground dried chili pepper (we used red pepper flakes)

1 tbsp fish sauce

5 sprigs of cilantro, chopped

3 sprigs of mint (optional – we omitted this)

1 green onion, chopped/minced (optional – we added this)

Salt and pepper, to taste (we didn’t add pepper, but Trang thinks pepper would be a nice add)

Lettuce leaves, to eat with the laab

Instructions (for close to a pound of ground pork):

1. Squeeze lime juice onto the ground pork. Mix well and let it marinade for a few minutes until you are ready to cook it. For ½ pound of meat, you can probably do with the juice you get from moderate squeezing of one lime, but for a pound of meat, you probably want to squeeze the life out of it.

2. Make toasted rice! Here’s how: Heat up a pan/wok and add 2 tbsp of uncooked rice. Lower the heat and keep stirring to prevent burning. Some of the rice will pop, so don’t be surprised/alarmed. The rice is done when the grains turn a golden brown color. Remove the toasted rice from the pan, and pour it into a mortar. Twist the pestle against the rice to crush the grains into smaller pieces. Alternatively, you can do what Trang did and Magic Bullet it. :-)

3. Wash some lettuce leaves, and use either a salad spinner or some paper towels to dry the leaves. Set aside til you’re ready to serve the laab. (You can spoon the laab into the lettuce to munch together. Delish! But I’m getting ahead of myself…)

4. Heat up a pan on high heat until it is very hot. (The primary recipe that I am adapting this recipe from suggests using cast iron pans because they can heat up super hot, retain heat well, and heat evenly.) Add four tablespoons (or splashes, really) of water, and immediately add the marinated pork. Stir the pork around, breaking up the meat as it cooks. Keep stirring until the pork is well done.

5. Transfer the ground pork to a large mixing bowl. Add the fish sauce, green onion, shallot, cilantro, the rest of the lime juice, red pepper flakes and almost all of the toasted rice into the bowl. (Save the rest of the toasted rice for garnish.) Mix well and taste. This is where you can adjust ingredient quantities if it’s not to your liking. You should be able to taste the tartness from the lime juice and the fish sauce. You can add a bit of salt and pepper, to taste.

6. Put the mixed ingredients in a serving bowl, garnish with the optional ingredients and the rest of the toasted rice. Serve with the lettuce.