Meatless Hors d'Oeuvres

A few friends came around tonight, and we munched on some vegetarian appetizers while we talked about literature and life.

I sought the recipe for "Hot Cheese Olives" with exactly one goal in mind: a bite-sized appetizer to be served with a toothpick, so that I could use my adorable, tiny, octopus serving tray (purchased locally at Kitchen a la Mode).

Ideally, I'd have taken a photo of this when it was full of fresh-from-the-oven appetizers. But I forgot, which is a good sign that I was having fun.

As suggested by one of the people who reviewed this recipe on the NYT Cooking website (subscription required), I rolled the dough into a long log and then cut off disks, flattened them in my hands (again, I offer you an oddly intimate view of my thumbs), and then molded them around the olives. I guess I made the disks slightly too thick, because I only got enough to cover 41 olives, not 50.

As always, I screwed something up in this recipe: I added the dry ingredients to the butter before I remembered to add the cheese. I imagine this did not make much difference to the outcome.

Dough log

Fun fact: I took this picture with the tip of my nose!

The dough-wrapped olives before baking

I can't say this was a great recipe, unfortunately. After 15 minutes in the oven, they did not seem done, so I increased the temp to 400 and gave them another 5 min, and then they were a little dry. The taste was fine; nothing special. *Shrugs*

My guests also dipped pita chips and pretzels into NYT Cooking's "5-Minute Hummus," and I have much more positive things to say about that: it really is fast, and while you will want to cut the salt by at least half, it's orders of magnitude better than pre-packaged hummus. It's really excellent.

Life is short. You should host frequent gatherings of people you like. A book discussion, a ping-pong tournament, a pirates-and-mermaids-themed party.....choose your excuse, and just do it.