The Purcell sisters have a fabulous book, Cocktail Parties, Straight Up! and e-newsletter, Sisters' Secrets to Confident Entertaining filled with tons of great recipes for food and drinks, and tips for fun entertaining. One of my favorite recipes is their Sweet Potato Spread. You’d never believe something so tasty could be so healthy! I recently served it at a Veggie Demo for the New You 2010 Healthy Lifestyle of Newburyport contestants. It was a huge hit! My kids just think it’s orange hommus. Serve it with wedges of foccacia bread, as the Purcell sisters recommend, or with pita chips, or — ultra-healthy — with cut up veggies.
Sweet Potato Spread
Makes 3 cups of spread

3 large sweet potatoes (about 2 lb), peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes (I baked the sweet potatoes whole, then scooped out the tender flesh (less hands-on work)
2 medium carrots, peeled and finely chopped
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
2 T tahini (sesame paste)
¾ t salt
¼ t curry powder
¼ t ground cumin

Preheat oven to 400°. Place the sweet potatoes in a shallow roasting pan and cover with foil. Roast for 15 minutes. Uncover and continue roasting until soft, about another 30 minutes.

While potatoes are roasting, combine the carrots and onion with ½ cup water in a medium nonstick skillet. Bring to a boil; reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Uncover and cook until water evaporates and vegetables are tender, about 3 minutes.

In a food processor, combine the sweet potatoes, tahini, salt, curry powder, and cumin. Process until smooth. If necessary, add water to make a spreadable puree. Add carrot-onion mixture and pulse until blended.

Serve at room temperature or chilled, with wedges of focaccia.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! We were early on the celebrating this year. We attended a neighborhood bash on Saturday, because we just couldn’t get it together for tonight (too many darn kids running in too many darn directions). Delicious empanadas, fajitas, and frijoles a la charra.

Then, in our household, yesterday I needed a meal I could throw together quickly and early and with what I had on hand, so that everyone could feed themselves when they came in from baseball practice, before the baseball game, and from the baseball game, respectively. It ended up being a great, family-pleasing meal — I love when that happens!

I have a divided crockpot. In half, I put 4 chicken breasts, a can of enchilada sauce, and a can of diced green chiles. In the other half, I put 2 cans of red kidney beans, a large can of diced tomatoes, a cup of white rice, uncooked, a teaspoon of garlic, some salt, pepper, and cumin, and about ¼ cup of diced red peppers that I had on hand. I turned the crockpot on High at 2:30; I cut up some avocados, tomatoes, lettuce, black olives, green onions, and put them and shredded cheese, salsa, and sour cream in Tupperwares together in the fridge, defrosted some tortillas, and by 5:30, the chicken was cooked and ready to be shredded and returned to the sauce, and the rice and beans were cooked (but I might add about ½ cup of water next time) — soft chicken tacos with red beans and rice, from where there was no original meal plan, I love it! (And, as it turned out, thunder and lightning ended the first game early and canceled the second game altogether, so we got to sit down and eat as a family, even better.)

Tonight, we’ll grill, but my nod to Cinco de Mayo will be this Black Bean Salad that my family has lovingly turned into a dip (or filling for burritos and tacos). It’s one of the healthiest dips you’ll find. (Oh, and we’ll have a glass of sangria.) Enjoy!

Black Bean Salad

2 16 oz can black beans, drained, rinsed
1 tomato, diced
2 green onions, chopped
1 bunch cilantro, minced
½ t cumin
2 dashes Tabasco pepper sauce
2 small garlic cloves, minced
4 T balsamic vinegar
8 T olive oil
salt and pepper
2 avocados, diced

Combine all ingredients except avocado in a bowl and let stand for 30 minutes to combine flavors. (Can be prepared up to 2 days in advanced and refrigerated.)

Just before serving, add diced avocado, correct seasonings, and serve on a leaf of Boston lettuce as a salad, or as a dip with tortilla chips.

A great way to add more vegetables to your diet is to snack on them when you need a little something. I love this caponata because it is flavor-filled and loaded with healthy veggies. The original recipe came from my sister, Bridget. I modified it because I employ the chop-as-you-go method, it makes life so much easier. Enjoy it with crostini, crackers, pita chips, or baby carrots and other firm veggies you like to crunch on. It’s also excellent tossed with pasta or couscous—hot or cold!

Eggplant caponata

¼ c olive oil
1 medium onion
1 celery stalk
1 medium eggplant
1 red bell pepper
¼ c kalamata olives
3 T golden raisins
¼ c red wine vinegar
4 t sugar
1 T drained capers
½ t salt
½ t freshly ground black pepper
1 8-oz can tomato sauce

Add olive oil to medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Dice onion, celery, eggplant, red pepper, and add to saucepan as you go. Once vegetables are soft and translucent, cut kalamata olives in half and add to saucepan. Add raisins, vinegar, sugar, capers, salt, pepper, and tomato sauce. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, for at least 30 minutes. Flavors benefit from additional simmering, and are better if you allow them to sit before serving. Even better the next day.

Eileen's Reuben Dip

Eileen: Can you share the recipe?

NYE appetizer: Crab Cocktail Spread

One of may go to appetizers is this recipe my sister Regina passed on to me. I lost the original, but was able to find it on Cooks.com, I believe it's the original (correct me if I'm wrong, Reg:)

Crab Cocktail Spread

12 oz. cream cheese, softened

1 tbsp. lemon juice

1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

1/2 tbsp. chopped onion

Garlic salt to taste

6 oz. bottled cocktail sauce

1 (7 1/2 oz.) can lump crab meat

2 tbsp. dried parsley flakes

Assorted crackers

Combine the first 5 ingredients. Spread mixture in a deep 10-inch glass pie plate. Pour cocktail sauce over mixture. Layer the crab on the sauce. Sprinkle parsley over all.

Cover with plastic wrap sealing edges of pie plate and refrigerate overnight. Serve chilled with assorted crackers. Yield 12 to 15 servings.

Tonight for a smaller gathering, I'm going to put them in the fillo dough shells I have!

Friday night cocktails and appetizers

Part deux. I have some homemade amaretto on the hutch staring me down. My friend Tammy has seasonal cocktails, and my husband usually loves them. I can’t remember what her summer cocktail is right now, but her winter cocktail is amaretto and ginger, and Fred loves it. I’m not a ginger ale person, but you can only drink so many amaretto on the rocks before you’re lying flat on your back, so I came up with amaretto and orange juice. Whether you prefer ginger ale or OJ, serve it in a highball glass, on the rocks.

This evening, we’ll be having our amaretto cocktails with black bean “hummus”. This is a recipe that originally came from my friend Eileen. It isn’t a Mediterranean inspired hummus, it’s more of a Mexican black bean dip, but because of it’s consistency and color, we had trouble coming up with a name for it [that didn’t sound like the punchline of a 5th grader’s off-color joke]. Thus, I’ve taken to calling it “hummus”. Again, one of my favorite things about it is that I usually have all the ingredients on hand, and if I don’t, they’re simple enough that I can remember what they are without writing them down.

Black bean hummus

1 can black beans, drain and reserve liquid
½ jar Mrs. Renfro’s Roasted Garlic Salsa, more if you like
1 clove garlic
juice of 1 lemon
½ bunch cilantro, more if you like

Put garlic in a blender and blend until garlic is chopped fine. Add beans, salsa, lemon, and cilantro to blender. Blend until smooth (a hummus-like consistency). Add as much reserved liquid as you like to reach your desired consistency.

Entertaining 911, continued

31 Days of Blog: Day 3. There is a certain wisdom to getting the necessities out of the way first thing in the day to make sure they get done. I always apply this to the dreaded cleaning of the house, if it doesn’t get done by noon, it seldom gets done, I either run out of steam or I lose focus. The same is true for blogging once a day during this National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) of July/Food, yesterday is a great example, I only wrote an 80-word post, half of which was done before 7 am, when I got distracted (toilet-training a two-year-old is a wonderful thing), and I didn’t actually post until the rest of my family was breathing down my back looking for dinner. Today, I’m trying to get it done early again.

I’m still in the 4th of July mode, and I want appetizers galore this weekend (we actually had nachos for dinner last night, and we had so much fun making them as a family — that almost never happens in my house, cooking as a family). At a recent dinner party, I made an upscale version of Chile con Queso. It was a nice change. The goat cheese adds tang, and the green salsa adds heat, a really nice complement. You can serve the dip with your favorite bagged chips, or you can make your own adobo chips from the recipe below, it’s easy and tasty, uses up leftover corn tortillas (you know me and my using up leftovers), and doesn’t have a lot of extra sodium.

Warm goat cheese and cilantro salsa

1 jar Mrs. Renfro’s green salsa
½ c cilantro
½ c low-fat cream cheese, softened (½ block)
¼ c goat cheese

Preheat oven to 350°. To prepare salsa, combine salsa and cilantro, cover and set aside.

To prepare cheese, combine cream cheese and goat cheese in a small bowl; stir until blended. Spread cheese mixture into a shallow ramekin or baking dish; cover with foil. Bake at 350° for 10 minutes or just until warm. Remove from oven, top with salsa, and serve with chips.

Adobo Chips

½ t paprika
¼ t cumin
2½ t fresh lime juice
8 6-inch white corn tortillas
1 t canola oil
1 t adobo sauce

Preheat oven to 375°. Combine 2½ teaspoons lime juice, canola oil, adobo sauce, paprika, and cumin in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk. Brush 1 tortilla with about ¼ teaspoon juice mixture, spreading to edge. Top with another tortilla; repeat procedure with juice mixture. Repeat procedure 6 more times (you will have 1 stack of 8 tortillas). Using a sharp knife, cut tortilla stack into 6 wedges. Place wedges in a single layer on baking sheets. Bake at 375° for 15 minutes; turn wedges. Bake an additional 10 minutes.

We’ll be sharing this new Con Queso tonight with friends while we watch fireworks at Salisbury Beach. Enjoy!

Entertaining 911

With summer here, I'm always looking for something I can pull out at the last minute, whether it's for dinner for the family, or when friends drop in, since schedules are looser in the summer.

My friend, Lisa, has made this little dip for years, and I love it! I had tried it several times and never got it quite right. The trick really is using the already minced garlic you can find in a jar in the produce section of the supermarket, freshly minced garlic just is not the same. Unlike so many spreads and dips that need to sit to allow the flavors to mingle or mellow, this dip benefits from being made at the last minute.

Garlic-feta spread

Equal parts jarred, minced garlic and crumbled Feta cheese
Balsamic vinegar
Wheat thins

Place garlic and Feta in a small, shallow bowl or ramekin. Add just enough Balsamic vinegar to moisten, too much will give it too much bite, so go slowly, you can always add more, but you can't take it out. Serve with wheat thins.

This is my first blog as a member of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), the July theme is Food blogging. I'm making an effort to post every day in July, so keep checking me out, and send me your ideas for Emergency summer entertaining, getting dinner on the table for your family, and other topics and recipes you'd like to see.