What’s the easiest thing you make that really impresses people?
Experimenting a few months ago, my mom and I came up with a very easy way to make chocolate covered cashews. There’s almost no work involved, but people love them. (and I still want someone to make salted chocolate due to this)
Here’s all you do:
buy cashew halves or pieces (not whole unless you plan to halve them yourself) and two large milk chocolate bars - dove, cadbury or hershey’s symphony. You also need a double boiler.
While the water heats in the bottom of the double boiler, break up the chocolate into many small pieces. Also, line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or wax paper, whichever you have on hand. Once the water is boiling, dump the chocolate in. Wait a a couple of minutes for it to soften, then stir it a bit. Once it’s all melted, drop in a handful of cashews. stir until nuts are well coated with chocolate. Spoon them out onto the paper so they’re in clumps of about 3-5 nut pieces each, if they’re a bit drippy with melted chocolate that’s a good thing. Add more nuts to the double boiler in the same manner until all your chocolate is used up. Refrigerate the nut clusters until they harden.
The whole process takes less than 20 minutes, and most of that time is taken up by waiting for the water to boil.
Great soup recipe that looks and tastes like you spent all day making it:
Take one large can of tomato soup (the kind you do NOT dilute with water).
Take one large can of split pea soup (again, the kind you do NOT dilute with water).
Put both cans of soup in one saucepan and heat thoroughly, stirring slowly.
Then sprinkle some curry on top and stir a few times.
It turns to a nice golden color.
Total prep time is about 5 minutes, tops.
Tastes great and almost nobody can tell exactly what is in the soup, but all agree it has an “exotic”, rich thick flavor and taste.
Call it something like “Ming Dynasty Soup” or whatever.
My gai pad grapow (Thai holy basil chicken) takes about 20 minutes to make (including the rice), and everyone seems to like that. My favorite simple dish, and I make it at least once a week (although I usually substitute Thai sweet basil, which I have growing in the backyard, for Thai holy basil).
Mix a tub Cool Whip and a block of softened cream cheese in a stand mixer until it’s smooth. It’ll take a while, but you can go about doing other things while it’s mixing. Serve it with fruit. I’ve become the fruit tray person at family events because one of my sisters is addicted to the stuff.
Vodka sauce- an onion cut in half, some good quality tomato sauce, some cream, a bit of chopped parsley and some grated parm. Add a splash of vodka at the end. It takes little more time and effort than opening a jar of canned pasta sauce, but it tastes eight times better.
At the bottom of a saucepan, sautee 1/2 onion or 3 scallions in butter. Add chicken thighs and brown. Add a whole bottle of riesling wine, 1 chopped leek, and mushrooms. (If you have any bacon – already cooked – you can add some of that, too.) Cook for 40 minutes. Serve over noodles or potatoes.
I stole this recipe from someone here but it is always a crowd pleaser…
Take 4 salmon filets, marinate them in soy sauce for 10 minutes (make sure both sides are coated) , pat dry and rub Zesty Italian dressing mix into them. Grill for 5-6 minutes per side. YUM!
We recently took this recipe camping with a large group, while people were eating tough “foil packet” meat and crying about lack of good coals, I whipped out my little grill pan and made some fantastic salmon that was inhaled.
Chickpea curry. Empty two cans of chickpeas, a jar of hot curry paste, a can of Strongbow, a pint of pre-cut pineapple, some chopped apples, green peppers, cinnamon to taste, and brown sugar to taste. Bring to a boil to cook off the alcohol and let the curry permeate everything, let it simmer for fifteen minutes or so, and serve with basmati rice. Feeds a lot of people, all of whom will think you’re badass.
Cook a chocolate cake however you prefer. Mix a jar of carmel together with a can of sweetened condensed milk. Use a wooden spoon handle to poke holes all over the cake, then pour the carmel mixture all over the cake. Ice the cake with Cool Whip, top off with crushed Heath bars.
There’s a couple recipes of mine in the Mumper Food Blog. Except for the potato omelette, they’re all so easy it ought’a be illegal.
Oh, and those ham omelettes and the spinach and shrimp omelette and the oven-roasted chorizo (cut chorizo into thumb-size pieces, cut them again lengthwise, put in an oven pan, add a teeeeeny weeeeny amount of cider or white wine, put in preheated oven, wait about 5’) we had at my coworkers’ birthday party last Tuesday were all yummy and very, very easy to make.
"Fancy" cheese
Put a block of cream cheese or neufchatal (“lowfat cream cheese”) on a plate. Pour a jar of mango chutney over it. Serve with crackers. Everyone thinks it’s some sort of fancy French soft cheese! (Also try it with jalapeno jelly.)
Honey Sausages
Take a package of bite sized sausages, like Lil’ Smokies or, better yet, Old Wisconsin Snack Bites. Toss in a bowl with some honey, and then stab each one onto a toothpick and arrange pretty on a plate. Sprinkle the whole shebang with toasted sesame seeds and serve. This can be done on a cookie sheet and heated in the oven to be served warm as well, but I recommend using Reynold’s Release Foil if you do that, so it all comes off again.
Wonton Cups
Place one wonton wrapper in each compartment of a muffin tin. Use a small glass to press it in place if it’s fighting you. Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes. Use these cups to hold chicken salad, Waldorf salad, pea salad, tuna salad, crabmeat salad, grilled chicken and vegetables (cut small) or anything else you can dream up. For my next party, I’m toying with the idea of brushing them with butter and sprinkling with cinnamon and sugar before baking for sweet desert cups!
1 can small artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
1 cup mayo
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
Mix all 3 together and heat in oven or microwave untill warm (keep an eye on it – if you over heat it the mayo will break and the oil will separate out).
Serve with thinly sliced French bread.
Not as fancy as that spinach dip in a bread bowl, but it takes all of 5 minutes and tastes great.
As a side note, if you grill and slice some chicken breast and wrap it in a warm tortilla with this artichoke dip it makes an awesome sandwich.
Cover bottom of deep skillet with slices of orange. Place piece of salmon on oranges. Grate fresh nutmeg onto salmon. Cover salmon with slices of fresh oranges (and some zest if one can be bothered). Pour on 50-50 mix of a light red wine and orange juice. Cover skillet. Simmer for 15-20 minutes.
My stir-fry sauce is real easy, and has way more fans than it deserves. Recipe:
1 1/3 cups soy sauce
1/3 cup corn syrup
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon ground red (cayenne) pepper (although I like it, so I usually add more).
That’s it. Mix it up, pour it over your stir-fried veggies and meat (goes great with chicken and shrimp), heat to a boil so it thickens, and serve over rice.
I’ve posted this one before, it’s my girlfriends though. They’re the world’s best cucumber sandwiches. Get a loaf of cocktail rye (the soft kind) a packet of dry Italian salad dressing mix, cream cheese, and of course some cukes. Generally one of those long loaves of cocktail rye will need two blocks of cream cheese, and two cukes. Blend the cream cheese with a good sprinkling of the Italian dressing mix, smear on the slices of rye, top with a slice of cucumber and sprinkle a smidge of the dressing mix on top. I’ve seen people bite their fingers while eating these.
This gets rave reviews around here and is very easy to make:
1 box rigatoni
1 pkg sliced mushrooms
fresh or leftover italian sausage (1 per person)
1 can cooked artichoke hearts
1 diced tomato
garlic & basil pesto, black pepper
Sautee the mushrooms and sliced sausage, toss in the diced tomato and cooked artichoke hearts, mix it up with the pesto and pasta and wah-la…awesomeness on a plate.