EnjoyYourCooking

My Homemade Food Recipes & Tips

Tag: appetizer (Page 2 of 4)

Boiled Shrimps

June 14th, 2014 in Fish, Main Dishes, Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Boiled Shrimps

Store sold ready to use cooked shrimps can be used for recipes which call for boiled shrimps (salads, soups, stir fries, etc). Or you can boil raw shrimps and get more tender, tasty and less expensive version of store sold cooked shrimps.

Shrimps cooked this way also work great as a meal on its own, snack for beer or an appetizer.

Use fresh or frozen shrimps, shell-on or fully cleaned ones, or even whole shrimps (these will require more cleaning after though). You can also use this recipe to “unfreeze” cooked shrimps and infuse them with spices (just reduce cooking time to not overcook them).

Usually package instructions say to thaw frozen shrimps before cooking, but I don’t do it. Cooking frozen raw shrimps this way works for me just as good not frozen ones and it also saves time.

Cooking time will depend on size of shrimps: the smaller shrimps are, the less time for cooking they require – turn heat off as soon as shrimps float to the surface (this means they are cooked enough).

Tortilla Rolls with Crab Sticks and Cheese

May 24th, 2014 in Appetizers & Snacks by Julia Volhina
Tortilla Rolls with Crab Sticks and Cheese

I had some tortillas left from the pack I used on recipe earlier this month. So I decided to post another recipe for tortilla rolls, this time with crab stick, cheese, garlic and greens stuffing.

The same as the first one, these rolls will work perfectly as a snack or an appetizer, and they go great together with beer.

So if you are looking for some unusual snack recipe, here it is.

Eggplant Roast with Vegetables

May 17th, 2014 in Appetizers & Snacks, Main Dishes, No-meat, Sides by Julia Volhina
Eggplant Roast with Vegetables

This is nice looking dish which can be served as either a main entree, a side dish, or an appetizer.

It contains no meat, just eggplant, bell pepper, tomatoes, sour cream and cheese.

Eggplant roasted this way looks festive (and will for sure fit nicely on a holiday table), and it is also pretty easy to do.

One medium size eggplant will produce 2-3 servings.

Tortilla Rolls with Fresh Cheese and Garlic

May 3rd, 2014 in Appetizers & Snacks by Julia Volhina
Tortilla Rolls with Fresh Cheese and Garlic

Flour tortilla rolls with fresh cheese, dill and garlic will pair perfectly with beer as a snack. Or an appetizer, or both.

You can prepare them in advance and slice right before serving, just allow them to sit in fridge for at least 30 mins before serving, so tortillas can soak moisture a bit.

At home we made these with lavash bread, but it is a bit hard to find here, so I used ready to go flour tortillas and it worked good too.

As for the cheese you can use any fresh cheese which can be easily crumbled to your taste: fresh white cheese (quark), feta or queso fresco.

Quick Crescent Rolls with Meat and Cheese

July 20th, 2013 in Appetizers & Snacks by Julia Volhina
Quick Crescent Rolls with Meat and Cheese

I was short on time this couple of weeks having visitors at home and at work. So I didn’t have much time to prepare a recipe in time for today.

It is a bit unusual of me to use “ready-to-use” ingredients in my food, but they save time if you need it to attend to other things.

Crescent dough sold in store makes decent rolls, which are good when you need to cook something to bite fast. So here is one of recipes for these.

I used ham as meat for this recipe, because that is what I had in my fridge. But you can be creative and use cooked bacon, or canadian bacon, or hot dogs, or another sausage, or a combination of these to your taste.

Jellied Meat (Kholodets)

November 10th, 2012 in Appetizers & Snacks, Beef, Chicken, Main Dishes, Pork by Julia Volhina
Jellied Meat (Kholodets)

Another traditional dish of various east and west european cuisines (russian, ukrainian, polish, and many others): jellied meat, also knows as kholodets, studen, dragli, aspic, and many other names.

Main ingredient to successful preparation of jellied meat is using meat with cartilages (hocks, years, tails, etc), without these broth will not jelly (pig or chicken skin helps too).

If broth doesn’t jelly (too less cartilages used) you can dissolve a bit of gelatin in the broth before pouring it to the dish. I don’t like using gelatin, but it can be a fail-safe mechanism if you want to make the dish is ready in time for an important event.

Chicken and Feta Stuffed Mushroom Caps

July 21st, 2012 in Appetizers & Snacks, Chicken by Julia Volhina
Chicken and Feta Stuffed Mushroom Caps

I saw these gorgeous fresh mushrooms in the store, and it seemed they were asking to be stuffed – clean, big and even sized.

I decided to stuff them with creamy chicken and feta cheese mix dressed with sour cream and a bit of fresh parsley. If this sounds like a good idea to you, try this recipe.

And by the way, it can be served as an appetizer (especially if you use bite size mushroom caps), snack or even main course.