I don’t know how it happened, but March is almost gone and I really don’t know where it went. Okay, I was a little sick, then I had a hard drive problem (don’t ask) and some other things going on, but really, that’s no excuse for me to have let you all down like this, because you know that in spite of it all, the cravings are there, the dreaming about it, the obsessing and, of course, the eating, which I do every day. I’m giving myself a jump start and I promise to be better about sharing the food with you.

Really now, time does fly, because last year’s Easter seems like it was yesterday, and then there’s also the matter of my birthday, which had the good sense to fall on Easter this year, so we celebrated them both together with the agnus dei on the grill and my own favorite lemon cake with lemon ice cream.

Our guests seemed to appreciate the food, but the one recipe that was requested was the simplest of them all, shrimp wrapped in bacon. If you don’t already make something like this, I suggest you add it to your summer grilling repertoire, as long as you don’t mind consuming pork and seafood, this will make you very happy. It’s also easy and requires only three ingredients. Unfortunately, I only got the one very fuzzy picture, but here’s the recipe and then I’ll follow that with the rest of the Easter pictures. I’ll share the cake recipe later in the week, if I can find the time.

shrimp wrapped in bacon

• 1 lb. jumbo shrimp, uncooked, peeled
• 1 package Oscar Meyer bacon (or the brand of your choice)
• 1 bottle Stubbs original barbecue sauce (or the brand of your choice)

Cut the bacon in half so that you have strips of about 3 inches long. Wrap each piece of shrimp with bacon and thread the shrimp onto metal or bamboo skewers and place on a plate. Douse the whole mess with lost of barbecue sauce. Grill over medium high heat for about 3 minutes on each side. Remove from skewers and serve with toothpicks.

For the rest of our Easter menu, we had some simple hors d’oeuvres and Marqués Cáceres rosé.

Then lamb on the grill. Two legs!

With cannelini beans in a tomato sauce with goat’s milk feta and parsley. Lots of feta and parsley.

And potatoes roasted with oregano and lemon.

And grilled mini peppers. We also had tzatziki with mint, but it didn’t get its own photo, you can see it on the plate in the lead photo. We had all of this with Guigal côtes du Rhône

We finished the meal with a lemon cake with lemon curd filling and lemon ice cream. And lots of crémant de Bourgogne.

I spied them in the produce aisle; tiny globes, smaller than ping pong balls. I put one package in my cart. I looked back at the rest. I put another package in my cart. A third one called and I picked that up too. Three packages of baby artichokes. Not just little artichokes, but miniatures. Adorable. Why is it that small versions of things are so cute?

I peeled off all of the outer leaves, cut off the tops and sliced around the bottom. I steamed them with a half of a lemon and then marinated them all day long in a combination of balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, olive oil and the juice of the other half of a lemon. I chopped up more cloves of garlic than usual for this batch and I was happy I did. Just before serving them, I dumped the artichokes and their marinade into a smoking hot cast iron frying pan to brown them and reduce the sauce. Next time I won’t use quite so much oil. These are highly addictive.

marinated sautéed baby artichoke hearts

• 1-2 lbs baby artichokes (the smallest you can find)
• 1 lemon, halved
• 2 T olive oil
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 5 cloves garlic, smashed and roughly chopped
• salt
• garnish: chopped parsley, chervil or chives

Trim artichokes by removing touch outer leaves, cutting off the top and peeling any tough parts away from bottom. Place artichokes in a large pot of water with half of the lemon and a pinch of salt. Bring water to a boil, lower heat to simmer and cook, covered, for 6-8 minutes, until artichokes are tender when pierced with a knife. Drain. Put artichokes in a large Ziploc bag with the juice of the other half of the lemon, olive oil, soy sauce, vinegar and garlic. Let marinate at least 4 hours or overnight in the refrigerator. Just before serving, heat frying pan to high. Pour everything from the plastic bag into the pan and sauté until artichokes are browned and sauce is reduced. If artichokes are bigger than bite sized, they can be sliced in half. Serve hot or at room temperature with a sprinkle of chopped herbs. These can be served as a first course or piled in a bowl and served with toothpicks.

Surprisingly, ceres & bacchus has become most well-known for the fat-free microwave potato chip recipe I wrote about in March. Surprising to me, anyway. This recipe has since gained some popularity and Fer Food even won an award for photos of a salt and vinegar version. Thanks to all of you who have sent messages about it, especially Jennie of Straight from the Farm. She actually bought a mandolin just to make these chips?

For those of you who jumped on this wagon because of the chips, I’ve got another one for you: baked tortilla chips. These are also really low in fat, they’re even easier to make than the potato chips and are a great vehicle for salsa and guacamole. The only issue with these chips, besides the fact that even with virtually no fat they still have calories, is that they are not as sturdy as the deep fried kind. Just make sure you stabilize the underside of the chip with your fingertip as you dip it into the salsa (the chip, not your finger) and you’ll be fine. I’m going to try making nachos with them soon - the not so fattening chips will cancel out all the melted cheese, right?

Also in the picture up there and in the recipes below is salsa made by my older brother, Ken. I know everyone has a salsa recipe already, or you make it so much you don’t even need a recipe, but really people, try this one. I ate about half of it, dipping in my chips when I thought nobody was paying attention so I could scoop as much as possible onto each chip. I told my sister-in-law that I was going to eat it all. I asked Ken for the recipe after I stopped singing, “mi salsa, mi salsa.” He said he tried for a long time to make a salsa his kids would eat by eliminating all of the things that make salsa delicious. They still wouldn’t eat it, so he went full speed ahead in the other direction and makes a salsa with spices and heat that will make your mouth burn in an oddly addictive happy way. The day I made the chips and he brought the salsa, I also made guacamole, something I’m sure you also already have a recipe for, but since it’s in the picture, I thought I’d share mine with you, even though it wasn’t very photogenic.

Baked tortilla chips

• 1 package flour tortillas*
• Cooking spray
• Table salt (I use iodide free)
• Optional: garlic powder, onion powder, paprika (smoked or not), black pepper, etc.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut tortillas into wedges using a knife or scissors. Lightly spray baking sheet with cooking spray and arrange tortilla wedges on sheet. Lightly spray tops of tortilla wedges with cooking spray and sprinkle on seasonings (if you’re using anything other than plain salt, mix them together in a small bowl ahead of time and sprinkle them on together). Bake until they are slightly browned, being careful they don’t get too dark.

* You can use corn tortillas, but you have to use a lot more cooking spray and some of them come out chewy.

Salsa fresca

• 2 firm medium tomatoes chopped fine
• 1/2 orange (or red or yellow) bell pepper chopped fine
• 1/4 red onion chopped fine
• 2 green onions chopped fine
• 2 jalape?o peppers chopped very fine (adjust to taste)
• 1 t toasted and then ground cumin
• 1 T chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 1/2 T white wine vinegar
• Juice of 1 whole lime
• 2 pinches of kosher salt
• 2 grinds of pepper

Place ingredients in a bowl and stir to combine.

(adapted from Pam Anderson’s How to Cook Without A Book)

Guacamole

• 3 avocados, halved, seeded and peeled
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1/4 medium sweet onion, chopped fine
• 1 plum tomato, seeded and chopped fine
• 2 T chopped cilantro
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 jalape?o, seeded and chopped fine (optional)

Place avocado in a bowl just large enough for all the ingredients to fit in. Smash the avocado, but leave some large chunks (I use a brass pestle, but you can use a fork or a spoon). Add all remaining ingredients and stir to combine.

I tasted the tortilla made by my friend Ana, who is from Madrid, and blurted out, “Can you teach me how you make this?” That’s when the trouble started. You see, Erik makes tortilla. It’s one of the things he is always willing to throw together when there’s nothing else to eat. Erik’s tortilla is really good. But there was something about Ana’s version, it had that added something in flavor and texture that made me want to reach for more and more. I could’ve eaten the whole thing. What subtle differences make something go from good to great? How can eggs, potatoes, onion, salt and olive oil be this addictive? I knew going into this that I would be risking marital strife, but the culinary curiosity got the better of me. I needed to figure out how Ana’s method differed from Erik’s.

If you’ve ever been to Spain, you were undoubtedly hooked on the ubiquitous tortilla de patata, or tortilla espa?ola. It’s not at all the same thing as the soft flour and corn tortillas of Central America. This is like an omelet or what they call in Italian a frittata, though Erik hates it when I say that and he’s right, because it’s the subtle differences in preparation that make for completely different dishes, and that’s exactly where I’m going with this one. For the record, a frittata can have cheese and can go in the oven for part of its cooking, not the tortilla. Tortilla is one of the simplest dishes; it’s cheap and filling and has endless variations. You know what they call it when it’s made with just egg and nothing else, nada mas? A tortilla made with only egg is called a tortilla franc?s. The crappy version is labeled “French.” This is true of other expressions in Spanish, I’ll leave them to your imagination.

I haven’t been to a lot of people’s homes in Spain, but I’ve tasted this enough in restaurants and bars to have noticed a few things. Some are over-cooked and some are under-cooked. We’d rather have the latter. Some are too greasy and some are too bland. Differences in personal preference and quality aside, there are two major categories. First, the kind you get in a bar when you order a beer and they bring you a couple of squares of it in a little stainless steel dish with a couple of toothpicks sticking up. It’s solid, but soft. It’s about an inch to an inch and a half thick. The potato feels sticky in your mouth and you might see large pieces of onion. The color is more brown than yellow and the potatoes are sometimes tinged with a little gray, but you forgive them. Sometimes you pick up your piece with the toothpick and the top half comes apart from the bottom, but that’s ok, because you wanted two bites anyway. The other kind is a bright sunny yellow, it’s thinner, the potatoes are sliced more thinly. It’s usually cooked a little more. The onion is there, but it’s more shy, you don’t see it. This is the tortilla they make when you order it as a bocadillo, a sandwich, and it comes on thick pieces of sliced rustic white bread or baguette. I realized that Erik makes the second version, while Ana’s is more like the first. How exactly do you use the same ingredients and come up with two different things?

Finally, the other night, when we were invited to Ana and Hamilton’s house for the best take-out ever, we were also treated to a tortilla demonstration. Ana cut the potatoes and onions up just like Erik. She fried them in bubbling oil, just like Erik. She poured the fried potatoes and onions into a colander to drain the oil. Whoa, wait a second, she just poured all that olive oil right down the drain? Erik does the straining thing, but he does it over a bowl and saves the oil for another batch or for cooking something else - onion flavored olive oil is great for a spaghetti sauce and the tomatoes don’t care that they’re getting not so extra virgin anymore olive oil. So, we saw the first difference, but this wasn’t going to affect flavor at all. Next, she put a little olive oil in the skillet. Check. A non-stick eight inch skillet with high sides. She mixed five eggs with about 1 and 1/2 cups potato and onion mixture and poured it into the hot pan and turned down the heat. Bingo. Three things different. Erik uses a much bigger pan and a slightly lower ratio of potato to egg and he might cook it at a slightly higher temperature. Wow, that was it? The only thing we need to do is buy a smaller pan, use fewer eggs and turn the heat down a little? An added bonus? This will likely lead to less spilled egg. And no more strife?

Tortilla de patata or tortilla espa?ola

• 2 small Yukon gold potatoes, peeled, cut in half and sliced about 1/8″ thick into half moons
• 1 small onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 5 eggs, cracked into a bowl and stirred with a fork or whisked to combine
• 1 pinch salt

Heat oil in a large skillet and put in potatoes and onion once the oil is hot. Let potatoes and onion fry over medium high heat for about 7-9 minutes, turning and moving them about so that they get some brown spots, but don’t burn. Turn heat down if they get dark too quickly. Strain potatoes and onions in a colander set over a bowl to catch the oil. Heat an 8 inch non-stick skillet over high heat and add one tablespoon of the oil from frying to the pan. Place about 1 and 1/2 cups potatoes and onions (a little more or less won’t hurt) and a pinch of salt into the bowl with the eggs, stir them around to coat them with egg and pour the mixture into the skillet. Use a wooden spoon or spatula to move the eggs about a little and make sure none of the potatoes are sticking to the bottom. After one minute, turn heat down to medium low and cook for about 7-8 minutes, or until the eggs are set around the edges and the whole thing slips around easily in the pan. If they aren’t unstuck from the bottom at this point, nudge a spatula or knife underneath it. Place a plate larger than the pan over top and invert the skillet so the tortilla slides onto the plate. Slip the tortilla back into the skillet upside down, so the cooked part is on top and the uncooked part is on the bottom. Use your knife or spatula to neaten up the sides and push any uncooked egg underneath towards the middle. Cook for another 5 minutes or so, just until the eggs are mostly set but still soft in the middle. Don’t overcook it. Sprinkle with a little salt. Slice into wedges and serve with salad as a meal, or cut into squares and serve with toothpicks and cocktails.

A tip from Ana: If you undercook your tortilla, you can put the whole thing in the microwave for just a few seconds to firm up the middle. This works because the microwave cooks from the inside out. Also you can undercook the tortilla a little if you want to serve it later and then use the microwave to reheat and finish cooking at the same time. I won’t tell if you won’t tell.

I received a message a week or so ago from our French club president, Katie, who is graduating this year and moving to France. She wanted to organize a party and invite all the students and faculty in the French program to celebrate the end of the year and the end of this phase of life for her and her classmates. She decided on a potluck. In her message she asked if we would make something French inspired and then she wrote:

“If you are planning on coming, just e-mail me and tell me what you are bringing.”

I replied:

“I’m bringing the other professor E. with me, I hope that’s alright. I’m also bringing pissaladi?re. I’ve been telling you in our literature class all semester to look at a word and figure out what verb it is related to. This one is an exception ;). Pissaladi?re is made in the south of France. It’s like pizza but without the cheese; I thought that it would be good for the non-animal eating people. I’m going to try and make some sort of dessert as well, but I’m not sure what yet. Clafoutis, g?teau au yaourt, tarte aux pommes, tarte au citron?”

Like I said, pissaladi?re is like pizza without the cheese. The word comes from pissalat or pissala - originally peis salat or peis sala - meaning salted fish in proven?al. Traditionally, the dough was spread with a pur?e of anchovies or a combination of anchovies and sardines. If you buy it in Nice nowadays, it doesn’t have the pissalat layer, but instead will most often have a layer of caramelized onions and a harlequin pattern of anchovies dotted at intervals with black olives. There is sometimes a little cheese, but only a sprinkling. Some versions are cooked more like a pie and can even be made with pie dough or puff pastry, but these are sacrilege. The toppings and variations are endless. Because some of my students are vegan, I made one with caramelized onions and swapped the anchovies for roasted red pepper strips and I used the wrinkly oil cured olives. For the other, I used thinly sliced tomato, chopped garlic, the same olives and bits of anchovy. I finished them both with a generous dusting of herbes de Provence and a slather of olive oil.

The other professor E. (aka the husband) had decided to stay home, too much work to do he said, but as he saw me packing up the food I was bringing, he hopped in the car and came along. So predictable.

Pissaladi?re

For dough

• 1 t active dry yeast
• 1 t sugar
• 1 cup warm water
• 3 cups flour
• 2 t olive oil, divided
• 1 t salt

For toppings

• 2 lbs onions
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 3 red peppers, roasted, seeded, skin removed
• OR
• 2 cans anchovies
• 16 oil cured olives, pitted and halved
• 1 T herbes de Provence
• Olive oil

One day ahead of time, put yeast, sugar and water in a bowl large enough to hold all of the dough ingredients (or in the bowl of a stand mixer). Let sit for about ten minutes until the mixture is foamy. Add in flour, 1 teaspoon oil and salt and stir until dough forms a ball (if using stand mixer, mix with dough hook). Turn dough out onto a clean dry surface dusted with flour and knead for about 5 minutes. Place dough in a bowl with remaining teaspoon olive oil and turn dough to coat. Cover bowl with a kitchen towel or plastic wrap. Wait for an hour or until dough is about doubled in size. Punch down the dough, reform it into a ball and place it in the towel or plastic covered bowl in the refrigerator overnight. The dough may be kept in the refrigerator for up to 2 days or frozen and defrosted before proceeding to the next steps.

Peel and thinly slice onions into half rounds. Cook them with 1 teaspoon olive oil over medium low heat for about two hours. Stir occasionally and add water if they start to stick or get too brown. Add the garlic during the last 20 minutes or so. Let cool before using (may be done 1-3 days ahead and can also be frozen). Preheat oven to highest temperature possible (mine claims to go to 550 degrees). Put about 1 tablespoon olive oil in a rimmed baking sheet and stretch pizza dough to fit (if it’s fighting with you, cover it, let it rest and try a second time). Spread a thin layer of caramelized onion over dough, decorate with pepper strips or anchovies and dot with halved olives. Sprinkle on herbes de Provence and drizzle a little olive oil over everything, brushing some on the exposed edges. Cover with a towel and let rise about 20 minutes. Cook in pre-heated oven for about 10 minutes, or just until the edges start to brown. Let rest at least 10 minutes before cutting. May be served hot or at room temperature.

I don’t know how to tell you about this recipe because it’s so astonishing. Sort of like free money, high-temperature superconductors or perpetual motion, fat free potato chips sound like some sort of scam or pie in the sky. I tried the fat free variety of chips made with olestra that were so popular when they were first introduced. Maybe you did, too. I don’t know how you feel about them, but they didn’t really agree with me. At least I didn’t overdo it like this guy. I hope you didn’t either.

I’m not a potato chip addict, even though I love potatoes. You would never find me creating a whole blog about chips, which I wouldn’t do anyway because someone already has one; it’s called the chippie. I must be spending too much time reading other people’s food blogs, because I keep finding all sorts of posts that make me run to the kitchen and try new recipes. I was fearing that I’d be like Jennifer the Domestic Goddess or Mimi of French Kitchen in America and you’d soon be reading about my new diet. Those fears have been squelched though now that I found a recipe for fat free potato chips made in the microwave.

You know that I love you, dear mother, because as soon as we finished eating the first batch, I called you first to tell you about them. I don’t think you believed me, though, because you obviously haven’t made them yet. If you had, you would have called me back to rave about them. I also called my best friend, my sister, my younger brother and told everyone at work who wanted to listen. This is easy, it works and you have crispy chips with no fat in about 10 minutes.

I want to make sure I give proper attribution, so I’ll tell you that I first read about this recipe at Slashfood. As far as I know, the original is Uncle Bill’s Microwave Potato Chips. If you want to make these yourself, you could run out right now and buy a
micro chip maker at the As Seen on TV store or get one on-line. The Japanese version comes with a mini slicer, but I can’t seem to find a place to buy one on-line. Or you can just do like I do, and use parchment paper. The only thing is, this leads to flat chips, and more than any other kind of chip, I love the ones that are folded. I’m going to work on it, maybe by folding some of my potato slices in half? In any case, I can’t keep this one to myself any longer, so I’ll fiddle with the recipe and you can, too.

Fat free microwave potato chips

• 2 potatoes (Russet or Yukon gold), scrubbed and dried but not peeled
• Salt to taste
• Parchment paper
• Optional flavorings: paprika, Cajun spices, garlic powder, black pepper, use your imagination

Cut the potatoes into slices about 1/16 of an inch thick using a mandoline, a food processor or a sharp knife. Line a microwave oven with parchment paper and place potato slices evenly over the paper. Top the slices with another layer of parchment paper. Microwave on high for about 6 minutes. Check on them after about 5 minutes. If they aren’t done, keep on cooking them and check on them at 30 second intervals. Be very careful, because they can burn very quickly and stink up your house, don’t ask me how I know this.

Repeat with remaining potato slices using the same pieces of parchment paper. I’m sure you could also rig up something so that you could stack them several layers high and cook the chips all at one time, but like I said, I’ve not worked out the details yet. These were so startlingly good, I had to get the recipe posted right away.

Erik gobbled these up, but said he missed the fat. If you miss the taste of the fat like he did, you can spray them with a little cooking spray and not add many calories. I did try this, and they were great, but I think I’ll keep on cooking them without the fat.

Elena Ho of the blog Experiments is hosting a new event, Muffin Mondays. Anyone interested in participating is invited to make a batch of muffins and write about it by March 2, 2007. I agree with Elena that muffins make the best breakfast. I’ve been making this recipe for yogurt bran muffins with golden raisins a lot in the last couple of months. After I make the muffins, we eat some for breakfast for a couple of days and freeze about half the batch to have later when we don’t want the fuss of actually making breakfast. Alright, I’ll fess up, it’s for when Erik doesn’t want the fuss of actually making breakfast. He just heats them up in the oven while he’s making coffee.

Elena has a basic recipe for muffins on her site, but I’ve chosen not to use it. I prefer real butter to oil for most baked goods and I like the addition of an acidic dairy product. I use some of my homemade non-fat yogurt, but you can use any plain yogurt, buttermilk or sour cream. In a pinch, you can use a combination of milk and a teaspoon of lemon juice (mix the milk and lemon juice together before adding it to the batter; it will curdle, but don’t worry, it comes out of the oven just fine). In baked goods in general, yogurt, buttermilk or sour cream give a moister final product and also allow you to use just baking soda and not baking powder or a combination of baking powder and baking soda like you find in so many recipes. Baking powder, especially if the recipe calls for too much of it, can give a metallic taste. Elena gives some tips on getting muffins to come out well
here and here. If you read a little about the basic recipe, additions and variations are really easy.

Many people fall for blueberry muffins or muffins with fancy ingredients. I especially love bran muffins with golden raisins. I used to get a muffin like this for my breakfast at the Espresso Royale Caf? in Ann Arbor when I was in graduate school, so this muffin is a bit of a Proustien Madeleine for me; it opens up a whole world of memories of a specific time and place. I usually use a mini muffin tin to make muffins. I’ve calculated that if you make 24 mini muffins with this recipe it comes out to about 75 calories each. Two of these and my skim milk latte (8 oz. of skim milk) give me a breakfast of 235 calories. I’ll add a piece of fruit and a yogurt if I’m going to the gym, or I’ll eat them as a snack afterwards. Obviously, if you use a regular muffin tin and make 12 muffins, that’s the same.

Bran muffins

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup wheat bran
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup yogurt
• 1/4 cup dark molasses
• 1/2 cup golden raisins

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Butter a muffin tin (use a regular 12 muffin pan or a 24 mini muffin pan). Whisk flour, baking soda, salt and wheat bran together in a small bowl and set aside.

Cream together butter and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer or with an electric mixer until the mixture light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, yogurt or sour cream. Add the flour mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until just combined. Add the raisins. The batter will be quite thick and a little lumpy. Divide the batter evenly into the cups of the muffin tin and bake in the middle of the preheated oven for 15-25 minutes (longer for bigger muffins, shorter for smaller ones) until they are browned and firm. Turn the muffins out onto a rack to cool.

Hors d’oeuvre is one of those funny words that give French a bad reputation. It’s hard to spell. If you are one of those people who can spell it, you might find it hard to pronounce - that’s one of the problems with French, right? If you look the words up separately in the dictionary, you would come up with “out of work.” That’s what you get if you try one of the online translation programs, like this one. (Try it, really.) In actual usage, this expression means outside of the main work, it’s something that is not considered part of the meal. In proper French, the word is hors d’oeuvre in both the singular and the plural, because oeuvre is the meal, and you’re probably only going to have one of those. In English, we generally do add an ’s’ if we are talking about more than one of them and pronounce it ‘or-derve’ in the singular and ‘or-derves’ in the plural.

Hors d’oeuvres can cause some people to get a little loopy. There’s a person who wrote a short story called “A floating platter of hors d’oeuvres” in dialogue form. Reminds me of the president’s party at the university where I work. The American Association of Artificial Intelligence sponsors a contest for making robots and one year the challenge was to make a robot that could serve hors d’oeuvres. (I hope this gets into production soon. I want one.) There are also the people who make hors d’oeuvres in funny shapes. I’ve seen fruit or vegetables shaped into bouquets, but it doesn’t get any better than the guy who made some little canap?s and a deep fried version of pikachu, the pok?mon character. Have a look at cheese pikachu and fried potato pikachu. I think that people have fun with hors d’oeuvres precisely because they aren’t the main attraction; they don’t have to be taken seriously.

Generally, I serve a bit of something on toast rounds or crackers, some nuts, olives or sausage or maybe some crudit?s as an opening to a meal. No need to get complicated. During this time of year, however, I usually want to put out something a little more fancy, like smoked salmon on blinis or some little quiches. Here are two recipes for hors d’oeuvres that go with the season, that aren’t too expensive and aren’t too filling. They work well together and have nice bright colors.

Red and green crudit?s with ancho?ade

Crudit?s

• 1 bunch broccoli florets, cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 bunch asparagus, ends trimmed
• 2 small zucchini
• 1 small fennel
• 1 seedless cucumber
• 1 red pepper
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes
• 1 small package radishes
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Dip

• 1 can anchovies, drained
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 T red wine vinegar
• 2 T parsley, chopped
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 t dijon mustard
• 1 bunch broccoli florets, cut into bite sized pieces

Blanch broccoli florets and asparagus in a steamer. Cut cucumber, zucchini and pepper. Arrange on a platter and decorate with cherry tomatoes and radishes. To make dip: combine ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth.

Salmon cakes with chipotle lime sour cream and cilantro.

Salmon cakes

• 1 large or 2 small cans salmon
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup light mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup chopped white onion
• 1 egg
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 T butter
• 1 T vegetable oil

Mix first 7 ingredients (salmon through pepper) together in a mixing bowl. Form into bite sized patties or cubes, as I’ve done, and place on a plate. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for approximately one hour. Heat butter and olive oil in a large nonstick or cast iron skillet over medium heat. Fry the salmon patties and drain on paper towels before adding topping and decoration.

Topping

• 1/2 cup light sour cream
• 1/4 cup light mayonnaise
• 2 T lime juice
• 1 chopped chipotle in adobo along with some sauce (reserve the rest of the can of chipotles for another use, I use one chili in some mayonnaise on leftover chicken or pork sandwiches)

Mix ingredients together. This can be done ahead of time, but keep the topping cold in the refrigerator until just before serving. These taste best when the salmon cakes are warm and the topping is cold.

Place one cilantro leaf on top of each patty for decoration. To serve, line a platter with shredded lettuce and wedges of lime and place salmon patties on top of lettuce. Serve while still warm.

Our friends Hamilton and Ana called last week to invite us to a holiday party. Hamilton is a historian who works on Modern Spain. Ana is from Spain and is a pilot. You really can’t get any more modern and Spanish than that. So, when they called, they said they were having a tapas luck party. Kind of like a pot luck party, but they want people to bring tapas. I think this is a very good idea, especially since many of our friends are really good cooks and I know that they will make things that I will want to eat.

I’m one of those people who studied Spanish in college (for three years!) but never spent enough time in a Spanish-speaking country to get really good at it. Before my husband the Spanish professor and I got together, I’d had only one opportunity to practice the language out of the classroom; it was during a trip to Mexico for New Year’s one year. I ate and drank and danced quite a bit, but had almost no opportunities to speak Spanish. That experience was enough to make me realize I understand the language pretty well, but I hadn’t ever learned how to ask where the bathroom was. For a trip to Mexico, this is an important question. Since I’ve been married, I’ve had several trips to Spain and a little more practice with the language. I did learn how to ask where the bathroom is, but I don’t always understand the answer.

I’ve also learned that Spain is one of my favorite places in the world for food. I’m not talking about the El Bull? revolution. Just give me the olives, the cheese, the ham and the chorizo, thank you very much. The everyday stuff. The first time I went to Spain with Erik, we had an unexpected vacation. We were supposed to be going to the Biblioteca Nacional, the national library in Madrid, but it was closed for renovations much longer than they had announced. What do you do for three weeks in Spain when you have no money? You walk to Santiago de Compostela. This is the place where Saint James’ bones were supposedly buried. It has been a site of pilgrimage for more than a thousand years. Known in Spain as el camino, the road to Santiago was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993 and is something many people do these days more as a form of tourism than as religious ritual.

What I liked best about walking road to Saint James was the rhythm of the day. Wake up early, eat a sweet pastry and drink some coffee. Walk until eleven and stop for a little sandwich and something to drink. Walk again until two in the afternoon. Find a refugio, one of the hostels that dot the route, check in and drop off your pack. Have lunch. Eat anything and everything that you want. Have a nap. At about seven, go out to explore the town and have some tapas and beers. Sleep. We did this for three whole weeks. It was the best vacation I’ve ever had.

You know how everything tastes amazing when you’re really hungry? That must be why I’m still dreaming about some of the tapas I ate during that trip. I wish I could say that I never ate tapas I didn’t like. One day on the camino, we stopped for elevensies in a bar in a small village. It was the kind of place where old men play checkers and little kids run around. It was clean and cool and hadn’t been redecorated since the seventies. The waiter had a big mustache. We each ordered a ca?a, a small glass of beer. When the drinks arrived, the waiter put them on the table along with some toothpicks, some of those funny paper napkins they have only in Spain that are a lot more papery than napkin-y and a little stainless steel dish of something covered in red sauce. It was a hot day, we had been walking, we were thirsty and hungry. I sipped my beer. It was cold and light. I took a toothpick and stabbed at one of the pieces of whatever was in the red sauce. So did Erik. We put the bites into our mouths and started to eat. It was softish at first. Crunch. What was that? We both looked at each other as we chewed. Erik had a funny look on his face. “I know what this is,” I offered. “I don’t want to know,” he stated. It was pig ear. Fried and smothered in a spicy red sauce. I didn’t spit it out. Neither did he. I’m more careful now, though, when I stab at the tapas covered in red sauce.

I’ve decided to make some empanaditas to take to the party. These are the bite sized version of empanada, literally “breaded” in Spanish. They are very simple and quite versatile. I’m using a modified version of my pie crust recipe that I’ll roll out and cut into rounds. For the filling, I’m going to caramelize onions and shitake mushrooms with just enough butter to give it wonderful flavor, but not so much that it will ooze down someone’s wrist when they bite into it. The filling isn’t very Spanish, but I’m sure nobody will mind. You can fill them with other things like cheese, roasted red peppers or a spicy ground lamb mixture come to my mind.

Empanaditas

The crust

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 t salt
• 12 T butter, chilled, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 10 T lard, chilled, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1/4 cup ice water (or more if needed)

Place flour and salt in a food processor and pulse briefly. Add butter and lard and pulse again until mixture forms pea-size bits. Add water a little at a time and pulse until the whole thing comes together in a mass. Wrap dough with plastic and refrigerate for at least one hour and up to 3 days before rolling out.

For filling

• 1 large onion
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 8 oz. fresh shitake mushrooms
• 3 T butter
• 1/2 t salt, or more to taste
• Freshly ground black pepper

Melt butter in skillet over medium heat. Add onions, salt and pepper and cook until just beginning to brown. Add garlic and mushrooms. Turn heat to low, place lid on skillet and cook, stirring occasionally until mushrooms has given off all their liquid and everything caramelizes.

Assembly and baking

• 2 egg yolks
• 1/8 cup cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously flour the area where you will be rolling out the dough. Take dough from the refrigerator and place in the middle of your floured work surface. Roll dough out to about 1/8 inch, turning it over from time to time to prevent sticking. Turn dough over one more time and add more flour to the surface and the top of the dough. Cut out rounds of dough using a circular cookie cutter, or a glass, fancy equipment is not necessary here. Remove surrounding dough, roll it up into a tight ball and refrigerate it. Place about a teaspoon of filling in the middle and join the seams of the dough together, pinching with your fingers to seal and place it on a baking sheet. Repeat until you’ve used up all the dough. If you still have filling, you can get the leftover bit from the refrigerator and roll it out and proceed as above. Whisk together egg yolks and cream and brush it generously on all of the empanaditas using a pastry brush. Bake for 35-45 minutes. When they are golden brown, remove them from the oven and place on a baking rack until they are cool.

Makes approximately 36.