Making Homemade Crab Salad

This is a ridiculously easy salad but it's got some great texture differences. Replace the crab with shrimp if you prefer. It's sort of like a California roll sushi salad! The fresh taste and cool colors of this salad filling lend glamour to the appetizer recipes. This recipe is quick, easy and delicious. The great thing about this crab salad is that it can be made ahead of time, and chilled for up to five days in the fridge, which makes for a healthy protein packed easy appetizers ready anytime you are!

Ingredients:

1 cup crab (fresh or imitation)

1 Avocado

1 cup creme fraiche

1 tsp wasabi

1 tsp sesame oil

to taste salt, more wasabi, or lemon juice

Preparation:

Mix the creme fraiche with the wasabi. Taste to determine your additives. Does it need salt? Acid? Add salt, lemon juice, or more wasabi as it needs. You want the sauce tangy with a bit of a kick.

Cut the crab and avocado in 1/2 inch pieces. Toss with sesame oil. Layer a glass with crab, avocado, and the cream on top. Serve!

Pickled Shrimp with Parsley Oil Recipe

Bright and tangy easy appetizers, this hors d'oeuvre from chef Dennis Marron of Poste Moderne Brasserie in Washington, D.C., has notes of coriander, mustard, ginger and lemon. Drizzling the shrimp with a citrusy parsley oil just before serving helps bring out the flavor even more. Enjoy these recipes and learn different way how to cook shrimp.

Ingredients

Shrimp: 

3 Tbsp. coriander seed 

¼ tsp. mustard seed 

1 finger length of fresh ginger 

½ cup onion, thinly sliced 

1 lemon, cut in half 

Pinch of crushed red pepper 

2 bay leaves 

1½ cups white vinegar 

½ cup water 

3 cups shrimp (approximately 16-20, peeled and deveined) 

Parsley oil: 

2 bunches fresh parsley 

2 Tbsp. walnut oil 

4 Tbsp. orange oil (see recipe below) 

1 Tbsp. grapeseed oil 

Pinch of salt 

Orange oil:

1 whole orange 

1 cup canola oil 

Directions:

Make shrimp: Toast coriander, mustard seed, ginger, onion, lemon, red pepper and bay leaves in a small saute pan. Add vinegar and water to toasted spices and bring to a boil.

Pour hot boiling liquid over shrimp in a sterile container. (Any plastic or glass container with an airtight lid will do.) Cool at room temperature before chilling overnight. Pickle for a maximum of 2 days.

Make parsley oil: Blanch, shock and drain parsley with stems intact. Puree in blender with oils and a pinch of salt until smooth. Strain through a coffee filter and refrigerate overnight.

Infuse the orange oil: Peel orange, getting as little of the pith as possible. Warm oil to 150°. Turn off heat and add orange zest. Let sit at room temperature for 3-6 hours and then strain out orange peel.

When ready to serve, place pickled shrimp on a platter of arugula or other flavorful green, add salt and pepper to taste, and finish with a drizzle of parsley oil.

Homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches

Looking for a quick dessert that your kids can help make? These homemade ice cream sandwiches are simple and tasty gourmet recipes!

An ice cream sandwich is a frozen confection composed of a layer of ice cream sandwiched between two biscuits/cookies or slices of cake. Let your kids choose their cookie dough, and ice cream recipes flavors and see how many creations they can come up with! Freeze the leftovers and have them for quick snacks when it is hot outside. Yummy!

Ingredients

Store bought cookie dough (any flavor your kids like)
Ice cream (any flavor, or try more than one!)
Sprinkles, if desired

Preparation

Let the kids spoon cookie dough onto a greased baking sheet. Make sure they make them all about the same size. Bake according to package directions. Remove from heat and cool completely.

Meanwhile, set out ice cream and allow to melt a little bit to become more pliable. Once the cookies have cooled have the kids spoon a decent amount of ice cream onto one cookie and top with another. Smooth sides so that ice cream is not falling out. They can cover sides with sprinkles as well, if desired. Serve them as is, or wrap with plastic wrap and freeze for a few hours for a harder version.

Strawberry Ice Cream

Strawberry is one of the most colorful and common ice cream recipes in the world. As a summer time fruit, strawberries make good ice cream, a frozen confection that is popular in the summertime as well. Such likely marriage makes a creamy ice cream that vibrates with the color of rosé or tinted with the finest of pinks.

When made with fresh strawberries soaked and simmered with sugar, chunks of the fruit are present in the ice cream, along with chips of its seeds. Some strawberry ice cream versions use strawberry syrup, which gives the ice cream a bright pink ripple (brightened no less with pink food color) that runs through the smooth ice cream. The sweetness tames the innate zest of fresh strawberries and the ice cream profits fully from this delicateness in flavor.

Strawberry has long been part of history. According to the Food Timeline, “Most period iced creams were flavored with fruit,” most of which were utilized when in season. Strawberry ice cream is an important component of the Neapolitan ice cream, as one of the three ice creams in the confection. It is also one of the three ice creams scoops that make up the all American banana split, a favorite in soda fountains and ice cream houses.

To make strawberry ice cream, fresh strawberries are crushed in the blender with sugar before it’s added to a separately prepared custard base. The former is the strawberry purée. Another way of readying the strawberry portion is to hull and roughly chop (or mash) it up, sprinkled with sugar in a bowl and allowed to steep until both infuse each other with flavor. And then you create this special strawberry ice cream easy desserts.

Ingredients

500 grams strawberries
175 grams caster sugar (plus 2 tablespoons)
500 ml full fat milk
500 ml double cream
1 vanilla pod
10 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Method:

Hull and roughly chop the strawberries, put them into a bowl and sprinkle over the 2 tablespoons ofcaster sugar and leave them to steep and infuse with flavour.

Pour the milk and cream into a heavy-based saucepan, and add the vanilla pod, split down the middle lengthways. Bring the pan nearly to the boil and then take it off the heat and leave to infuse for 20 minutes.

In a large bowl whisk the egg yolks and the 175g / ¾ cup sugar until thick and pale yellow. Take thevanilla pod out of the milk and cream and pour, whisking the while, the warm liquid over the yolks. Put the cleaned-out pan back on the heat with the cream, milk, egg and sugar mixture and stir the custard until it thickens, then take it off the heat and pour it into a bowl to cool.

Puree the strawberries in a processor, and when the custard is cool fold in the lemon juice and strawberry puree.

At this point you can either freeze the ice cream in an ice-cream maker, or in a plastic tub in the freezer. If you do the latter you should whip it out every hour for 3 hours as it freezes and give it a good beating, either with an electric whisk, by hand or in the processer. That gets rid of any ice crystals that form and that make the ice cream crunchy rather than smooth.

Cauliflower Blue Cheese Soup

This fabulously French creamy cauliflower soup will blow you away from a cold, wet day. Thick and warming, tasty soup, great for lunch with friends or as an easy appetizer for a dinner party.

Your cauliflower soup can be frozen from the puree stage, and then when required, just defrost, add milk, cheeses and cream then heat.  

Ingredients:
500gm Cauliflower
250gm potatoes peeled & cubed
1 large onion
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
3 cups of chicken stock
1 cup of milk
1 – 1 1/2 cups of desired grated cheese (parmesan, cheddar, stilton, blue)
Blue cheese to taste
1/2 cup of cream
Fresh fennel, parsley or coriander to stir though or garnish

Preparation:

Melt butter in large pot. Add cauliflower, potatoes and onion.

Gently stir fry the veges for approximately 5 mins without browning.

Stir in mustard, cayenne pepper and add chicken stock.

Cover with lid and let simmer for 25 to 30 mins.

Puree with a masher or food processor.

Stir in milk, grated cheese(s), crumbled blue cheese and bring to a simmer.

Add cream just before serving but do not allow to boil. Serve garnished or stirred through with whichever herbs you prefer. Add homemade croutons or parmesan. Or even an extra wee knob of blue cheese, butter, olive oil or cream swirled through.

For a healther option, don’t add cream or use greek yoghurt/ However, if you go for this option cut the cayenne pepper down by half.

Great-Grandmothers Recipe for Soft Cake with Walnuts

Soft cake is a sponge cake made from flour, sugar, baking powder and eggs and is lighter than the traditional cake. The only fat used in making sponge cake is egg yolk; however the egg white and egg yolks are added separately to the batter. Sponge cake is many times used as a base for other types of cakes and easy desserts.

Cakes began in ancient Egypt as round, flat, unleavened breads that were cooked on a hot stone. Their evolution from crude cakes to what we enjoy today was possible, over many centuries, through the introduction of new ingredients and technology. The Egyptian's discovery and subsequent skill at using natural yeast helped leaven those once flat cakes. When butter and eggs made their way into the cake dough, their consistency became the precursor for today's cakes. Cake making continued to improve especially with the new ingredients such as chocolate and vanilla, and eventually sugar that came to Europe with the discovery of the New World. Soft cakes were the cakes made by our mothers, our grandmothers, and our great-grandmothers. While these cakes we make today often have different proportions from the original, they are still wonderfully rich, moist, and buttery with a lovely golden brown crust. Whether you enjoy a slice of this cake plain with just a dusting of powdered sugar or with whipped cream or ice cream, it is truly a king among cakes. You might also like to try toasting a slice or, an even better gourmet recipes ideas, to make grilled pound cake. Serve for dessert along with fresh berries and whipped cream. Absolutely delicious!

Ingredients

3 ½ tablespoons flour, 

6 tablespoons butter, 

6 tablespoons sugar, 

3 egg yolks, 

5 ¼ oz. (about 2/3 cup) chopped walnuts, 

15 egg whites, 

1.76 oz. dark chocolate,

0.7 oz. (about 1 ½ tablespoons) cream

Preparation Instructions

Mix the egg yolk with sugar and molten butter. Add flour and chopped walnuts. Beat the egg whites and add them to the sugar mixture. Place the mixture in a buttered and floured sponge cake mold. Bake in a 338 degree F. oven for 40 minutes. Cool. Boil the cream. Add chocolate and simmer.

Spicy Avocado-Cucumber Soup

Avocados can do so much more. With their creamy texture, subtle flavor, and robust nutritional benefits, avocados can take the lead role in soups, sauces, salads, and more. You need to get creative to use them up quickly for gourmet recipes.

This tangy, luscious vegetable soup recipe is an excellent make-ahead dish: Simply puree everything except the garnish, then chill. For a milder version, scale back on the serrano.

Ingredients
12 ounce(s) (2) cucumbers, peeled, seed and chopped
2 Hass avocados, coarsely chopped
2 teaspoon(s) Thai green curry paste
2 teaspoon(s) sugar
2 teaspoon(s) finely grated lime zest
1 serrano chile, seeded and chopped
13 ounce(s) (1 can) unsweetened coconut milk
3 tablespoon(s) fresh lime juice
Salt
1/2 cup(s) unsweetened coconut flakes, for garnish
10 cilantro sprigs, for garnish

Directions
In a food processor, puree the cucumbers until smooth. Add the avocados, curry paste, sugar, lime zest, and chile. Process until blended. Add 3 1/2 cups of water, the coconut milk and lime juice and process until smooth. Transfer the soup to a large bowl and season with salt. Cover and refrigerate until chilled, 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a skillet, toast the coconut over low heat, stirring a few times, until lightly browned and crisp, 3 minutes. Let cool.
Ladle the soup into small bowls or cups, garnish with the toasted coconut flakes and cilantro sprigs and serve.