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Artichoke & Lemon Cheese Spread

12.12.2012 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

I learned something important from this recipe: No matter how simple something seems, you can screw it up royally if you’re tired.

I’ve not been sleeping well for, well, a year now, so evenings are especially challenging. Typically during the holiday season, I’d be cooking well into the evening, candying and caramelizing and so on.

This year it’s all I can do to feed the dog. I will say things improved – rather quickly, you will not be surprised to hear – when I got news that my divorce was finalized.

It’s a good thing, too, because it’s quite possible I would have killed someone – or at least their taste buds – the way things were going. I ran across this recipe on the website of a local cooking school, and thought, that sounds easy and as luck would have it, I have all the ingredients on hand. It was 9:30 pm, well past my current bedtime.

Here’s a handy tip: When a recipe says add one teaspoon of lemon juice, that is not – and I mean not –  the same thing as juice of one lemon. It may look the same to sleep-deprived eyes, but your taste buds will point out your error, post-haste.

I suppose this is a mistake that is fixable, if you had enough cream cheese, artichoke hearts, and other seasonings available, and I tried valiantly. I added an extra half package of cream cheese, which cut the lemon somewhat, but not enough to really render the final spread, you know, delicious.

It was late and since I was pretty sure any additional  efforts would result in additional mistakes, I gave up. I had a potluck brunch the next day and no time to make anything else, and so, yes, I brought it.

It will make everyone else feel better about what they brought, I reasoned.

I employed several taste testers, including The Child, who tried not to hurt my feelings when she pronounced the first sample “too lemony” and the second sample “better, but …”. A couple of friends at the potluck tried it and said it wasn’t really as bad as all that, just “a bit lemony.”

One of them, though, made this suggestion: the original recipe called for thyme, but she thought it would be better with some dill. The next time I made it – in the morning, just after my coffee, thankyouverymuch – I swapped out the thyme for some dill, and the end result was perfectly delicious: Light, creamy, and not overpoweringly lemony. The garlic adds a nice – but not overwhelming – bite.

It really isn’t a hard recipe, if you’re awake. The original can be found in Carol Dearth’s Cooking Class: A Step by Step Guide to Stress Free Dinner Parties That Are Simply Elegant. Carol Dearth is one of the chefs at the Seattle-area Sizzleworks Cooking School.

Artichoke & Lemon Cheese Spread
 
Print
Prep time
10 mins
Total time
10 mins
 
Author: adapted from Cooking Class by Carol Dearth
Ingredients
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 small jar (6.5 ounces) marinated artichoke hearts, drained
  • freshly grated zest of 1?2 lemon
  • 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • ½ teaspoon dried dill
  • 1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
  • salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Food processor method:
  1. Drop garlic through feed tube with machine running to mince. Add artichoke hearts; pulse-process to chop. Add lemon zest and juice, thyme and cream cheese. Process to blend. Correct seasonings.
By hand:
  1. Mince garlic. Chop artichoke hearts finely. Combine garlic, artichoke hearts, lemon zest and juice, thyme and cream cheese in mixing bowl. Blend well. Correct seasonings.
To serve:
  1. Spoon cheese mixture into two 6-ounce crocks or ramekins, smoothing the tops. Cover tightly and chill. Make ahead and refrigerate up to one week, or freeze for two months.
  2. Let stand at room temperature 10 to 15 minutes before serving to soften. Serve on a tray surrounded with crackers or small toasts, or with a pastry bag, pipe rosettes of the cheese spread onto crackers for a more elegant presentation. Sprinkle with freshly chopped chives.
  3. Makes two crocks, each serving four.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // appetizers, artichoke, lemons, recipes, snack

Artichoke-Lemon Hummus

11.21.2012 by J. Doe // 1 Comment

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and though the details may vary from house to house, the meal and ritual involved are largely the same from place to place, and certainly within each home, from year to year.

With the exception of a few non-critical side dishes, my Thanksgiving menu has not varied since the first year I made it. I had experimented with the annual Thanksgiving issue of Gourmet each year, before finally settling on one issue I particularly liked, which contained a recipe for Cornbread and Spiced Pecan Stuffing that is, to me, The Thing I Look Forward To every year.

That first year I made it, I served it to a boyfriend I have long since lost track of, and an assortment of coworkers I’ve also mostly lost track of. One of the side dishes I made that year was cranberries with Wild Turkey, which was a big hit with the twentysomething crowd; my cranberries have long since been Disnified for the below-21 crowd. I miss the Wild Turkey.

I’ve served the meal in an assortment of places through the years: my house in Connecticut, with The Foreigner, who thought it was “too much food”; the crappy little apartment I lived in with The Child after he left, where I shared the meal with another newly-divorced woman I’d only just met. That year, her eight-year-old-son beat my high score at Railroad Tycoon on my computer while mom and I traded divorce war stories over pumpkin pie in my cramped living room.

In recent years, the changes have been less pronounced, and Thanksgiving fell into a nice annual routine. Every year, I made the Turkey and stuffing at my house, and my friend Anne and whoever else was around came over with side dishes and desserts. For Christmas, we moved the festivities to Anne’s house, where she made a ham, and  myself, The Child, The Departed, and whoever else was around would show up with an assortment of side dishes and board games.

Every year on Thanksgiving, I say I’ll serve the meal at 2pm; Anne is always late and the turkey either takes much longer or much less time than I expected.

I try to have some food on hand for people to nibble on while they’re waiting for either the turkey or Anne or, many years, both. Ideally, I try to serve something that won’t be too filling or guilt-inducing. Neither Anne nor The Child eat meat, so I need everyone else to help out and consume that bird with me.

This year’s offering is from my new favorite cookbook, the The Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook, aka, my lucky cookbook. I am still trying to use up a supply of dried organic chickpeas my father brought on one of his visits (like, a year ago?), and I was excited to find this recipe, which is also helping me work down my supply of artichoke hearts (in case of the apocalypse, if you need artichoke hearts, let me know – I stocked up at Costco for reasons that remain mysterious even to me).

Apart from helping me resolve my over-stocked pantry issues, this recipe is delightfully simple, and the hummus it makes is light and lemony – super with some crisp sliced veggies.

Happy Thanksgiving.


Artichoke-Lemon Hummus
 
Print
Prep time
10 mins
Total time
10 mins
 
Author: Cook's Illustrated Cookbook
Ingredients
  • ¼ cup water
  • 4 tbsp lemon juice
  • 6 tbsp tahini
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 15-oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  • ¾ cup canned artichoke hearts, drained, rinsed, and patted dry
  • ¼ tsp lemon zest
  • 1 small garlic clove, minced
  • ½ tsp salt
  • pinch cayenne pepper
Instructions
  1. Combine water and lemon juice in small bowl.
  2. Whisk together tahini and olive oil in second small bowl.
  3. Process chickpeas, artichoke hearts, lemon zest, garlic, salt, and cayenne in food processor until almost fully ground. Scrape down bowl with spatula.
  4. With machine running, add lemon-water mixture in steady stream; continue to process about a minute. Then add tahini-olive oil mixture in steady stream. Process until hummus is smooth and creamy, about 15 seconds, scraping down bowl as needed.
  5. Serve with sliced vegetables. Drizzle with olive oil if you like; garnish with sliced artichoke hearts if it makes you happy.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // artichoke, lemon, recipes, snack

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