Simple recipes that wow people?

[MissTake]

Easy fruit dip: Mix whipped strawberry cream cheese and marshmallow fluff. Nom nom.

My nephew has started bringing appetizers to gatherings. My favorite:
A package of crescent rolls, rolled out. Cut the triangles in half. Put a dollop of Alouette or another flavored soft cheese and bacon crumbles. Fold the edges of the dough over to seal, then back according to package instructions.

Gooey butter cookies:
A package of butter cake mix
8oz cream cheese
1 egg
1 stick softened butter
1t vanilla.
Oven 350F. Cream the cream cheese and butter. Add the egg and vanilla. Stir in cake mix. Roll into 1" balls, roll in powdered sugar, bake for 10-12 minutes (until tops are golden brown). I dust again with powdered sugar. I never have any left over

Oreo Fluff: Smash one package of Oreos. Make one box of vanilla pudding per instructions. Fold in a tub of Cool Whip. Fold in smashed Oreos. Nom nom nom.

[carnivorousplant]

[QUOTE=Lute Skywatcher]
I’d like to but our food processor isn’t suited for this sort of thing. It’s a blender attachment but works more like a hand-held.
[/QUOTE]

Mrs. PLant has a food processor that blends things well. I add garlic, camino, curry and use sesame oil instead in tahina, however you spell it,

Chicken cooked with 40 cloves of garlic.
A bunch of chicken legs, a lot of parsley, water, the mtntioned 40 cloves, Grand Mariner, although I can’t afford it and use white wine. Cover and cook until the chicken is falling off the bone.

[elfkin477]

[QUOTE=MissTake]

Gooey butter cookies:
A package of butter cake mix
8oz cream cheese
1 egg
1 stick softened butter
1t vanilla.
Oven 350F. Cream the cream cheese and butter. Add the egg and vanilla. Stir in cake mix. Roll into 1" balls, roll in powdered sugar, bake for 10-12 minutes (until tops are golden brown). I dust again with powdered sugar. I never have any left over.
[/QUOTE]
This sounds good, but I’ve never heard of butter cake mix.

[Saint_Cad]

Throw a chuck roast into a pot
Top with boxed beef broth, Cambell’s golden mushroom soup, and a little allspice
Cook 2-3 hours
Eighthsify some white potatoes. Lift up the roast and put potatoes underneath.
Cook another 2-3 hours

[MissTake]

[QUOTE=elfkin477]
This sounds good, but I’ve never heard of butter cake mix.
[/QUOTE]

Or yellow cake mix. Betty Crocker has Golden Butter Cake mix. Either or.

[USCDiver]

Cheesy Sausage dip

1lb ground sausage browned
1 reg brick of Velveeta
1 can Rotel drained

Mix all ingredients in a crockpot, stirring occasionally. Serve with tortilla chips.

[Valgard]

Coq au vin. You saute some simple veggies (carrot, diced shallots), add chicken breasts and brown, cover in red wine and simmer. Towards the end add sliced mushrooms. I keep some Trader Joe’s pre-cooked wild rice and brown rice handy to serve it over. The Joy Of Cooking has a great recipe.

It’s not fast but it’s very simple. You have a bottle of red wine open and you don’t need it all for cooking (for two) so you get to sip wine while things are heating. Kitchen fills with an incredible aroma. Smells gooood.

This is a great date dinner. Past experience shows 100% correlation between “I cook that for her” and “We’re having breakfast together next morning”

[Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake]

This takes like 5 minutes, but it seems very exotic.

-2/3 C Peanut Butter (the real stuff you need to stir, of course)
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-1 cup water

Combine above in pan. Cook on medium, stir until it thickens (maybe 3 minutes)

Then stir in below and eat with fried tofu, or whatever grilled meat you like.

-2 Tbsp brown sugar
-2 Tbsp lemon juice
-2 Tbsp soy sauce
-1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

Most of the cooking time is dicing the garlic and juicing the lemon!

[Queen_Tonya]

[QUOTE=MissTake]
Or yellow cake mix. Betty Crocker has Golden Butter Cake mix. Either or.
[/QUOTE]

That recipe was why I finally consented to buying a KitchenAid mixer. I kept burning out hand mixers but didn’t want to stop making it!

Any flavor cake mix works, we like lemon supreme and devil’s food chocolate the best. I can sell them at work for outrageous prices, too.

[OpalCat]

[QUOTE=Shayna]
Sinfully easy homemade doughnuts: Separate a package of Pillsbury biscuits into individual biscuits, poke your thumbs through the center and pull apart a hole in the middle of them, then drop in a pot of hot oil. Turn after a minute or two, wait another minute or so, then remove to a paper towel and sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar or cinnamon sugar. For glazed doughnuts, add a little water to a small bowl of confectioner’s sugar, mix until smooth, then drizzle over doughnuts.
[/QUOTE]

I do this but slightly differently. For a much lighter, fluffier doughnut, separate each biscuit (they MUST be the flakey layered kind!) into 2 or 3. So a roll of “8” becomes 16-24 doughnuts. I also don’t poke a hole in the middle. After frying, I let them sit on a paper towel a few minutes to absorb the oil, then put them in big ziplock bag full of regular granulated sugar and shake. The crunchiness of the sugar gives it something extra, I think. I’ve tried with powdered sugar, with glaze, with cinnamon/sugar, with chocolate… and I think that granulated sugar is still my favorite.

[OpalCat]

Here is one of mine.

1 package of Pepperidge Farm puff pastry sheets or a can or two of Pillsbury croissant dough (though then you have to make sure you don’t tear apart the diagonals, and just keep it as rectangles)
buncha spinach
buncha shredded cheese
diced onions (not a lot)

Put the spinach, cheese, and onions in a strip down the middle of the pastry and fold the sides up and pinch the ends to seal. You should now have sort of burrito-ish logs. Bake that at about 350 until it’s golden.

While that’s baking, make a simple mushroom cream sauce of whatever type you like. If you don’t want to do much more work, you can just cook some fresh sliced mushrooms into a can of cream of mushroom soup and add a little milk to thin it out into a sauce.

Pour the sauce over the pastry once you’ve sliced it onto the plate. It looks fancy and tastes very delicate and wonderful, but it’s easy as crap to make. If you sprinkle a little freshly chopped parsley over the top it looks fancier.

[Nava]

[QUOTE=pulykamell]
It’s a fresh sausage, very fatty, would be rather difficult, if not completely impossible, to cut and cook it in the manner described, hence my warning. Your chorizo is fermented, cured, sliceable, and edible without cooking. Mexican choizo is most assuredly not.

Here’s a typical Mexican chorizo recipe. It is stuffed into casings and sold fresh, or just crumbled up as is as an ingredient to many Mexican and Mexican-influenced dishes.
[/QUOTE]

And that’s pretty much the same as the homemade chorizo we roasted last Tuesday which, as you point, was too “new,” had large gobs of fat and liked to crumble when cut.

Chorizos aren’t fermented, they’re dried.

[phil417]

You have the doper answer. Might I ask? Who are you trying to “wow”

Phil

[pulykamell]

[QUOTE=Nava]
And that’s pretty much the same as the homemade chorizo we roasted last Tuesday which, as you point, was too “new,” had large gobs of fat and liked to crumble when cut.

Chorizos aren’t fermented, they’re dried.
[/QUOTE]

Sometimes mispronounced as “choritso”, it can be a fresh sausage, in which case it must be cooked, but in Europe it is more frequently a fermented cured smoked sausage, in which case it is usually sliced and eaten without cooking. Spanish chorizo and Portuguese chouriço get their distinctive smokiness and deep red colour from dried smoked red peppers (pimentón/pimentão or colorau).

From here.

Or here.

Mexican chorizo is made with fresh pork while Spanish chorizo uses smoked pork.

Chorizo can be eaten raw or cooked. If raw it must be cooked but it is usually a fermented cured sausage which can be sliced and eaten without cooking.

Have you ever had Mexican chorizo? Do you know what a fermented sausage is? Pepperoni, many salamis, and the Spanish chorizos I’ve had would be examples of fermented sausages.

[Kalhoun]

[QUOTE=zoid]
Artichoke dip:

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.
[/QUOTE]

This is YUMMY. I put slivered almonds on it to doll it up a bit when I’m entertaining.

[pulykamell]

Nava, my clarification was originally posted so our dear readers would understand there’s a crucial difference between the chorizos commonly known on these two continents. If you tried splitting and cutting most Mexican chorizos in the manner you described, you would get a big, crumbly mess. These sausages do not hold together well at all. Please, trust me on this one. I’ve tried grilling chorizos, and it doesn’t work, at least not mine. They pretty much have to be crumbled into the dish. Here’s what Mexican chorizo in a dish commonly looks like.

[Captain_C]

Put about 3 lb of meatballs in a slow-cooker. Add one can of chili sauce and one jar of grape jelly. Cook for about 2 hours.

They turn out amazing, as weird as that sounds.

[Drain_Bead]

Skyline Dip

1 8oz package of cream cheese
1 can of Skyline chili (may be tough to find in some areas of the country)
Shredded cheddar cheese

Spread cream cheese in an even layer on the bottom of a dish. Spread chili on top of cream cheese layer, and top with shredded cheddar. Microwave or bake until heated through. Serve with tortilla chips. Die of a heart attack, but die happy.

[Drain_Bead]

[QUOTE=elfkin477]
This sounds good, but I’ve never heard of butter cake mix.
[/QUOTE]

Yellow cake mix works fine. Just DO NOT use the pudding in the mix kind. The cheapest kinds generally work the best.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

[QUOTE=Lute Skywatcher]
Hummus is really easy, the trick is getting the right consistency.

My hummus starts out with a can or two of chickpeas, water drained and reserved, pureed in a blender. Then blend in a bit of lemon juice, olive oil, and tahini. I do this by eye instead of measuring and sample the results until I’m satisfied with the taste and consistency. If the mix is too thick, add some of the reserved water; too thin, add more tahini.
[/QUOTE]

No garlic?

I do hummus in the food processor, and it’s pretty easy, although a little more complicated than this, since I like my hummus green.

Start with a couple handfuls of parsley, one or two cloves garlic, and a scallion or two, all thrown in whole (edit: trim the end and dead leaves off the scallion, natch). Process.

Add a can or two of drained garbanzos, the juice from half a lemon, a splash of tamari, and a pinch of cumin (optional). Process.

Add a couple globs of tahini. Process.

Taste and adjust. You might want to add some cayenne, some olive oil, some more acid (lemon juice or vinegar), or whatever else you want, as long as it’s not chunky, since chunky things like garlic cloves or garbanzo beans won’t be pureed at this point unless your processor is a lot better than my crappy $30 Target processor.

It takes 5-10 minutes. With a couple pitas sliced into wedges and toasted, some toasted walnuts, a chunk of feta cheese, and some more parsley, it’s a delicious summery meal.

Daniel