Tirokafteri - Spicy Feta Dip

When D & I went to visit my grandma (Meema!) for the weekend back in July, she took us to this little Greek/pizza place (I believe it was called Papas Pizza) that she had heard about but had never been to. We didn't get pizza, but I did get a calzone to share with Meema & it was off the hook! We also got a sort of appetizer platter that came with tzatziki sauce, hummus, and "tyrokafteri."

None of us had ever heard of the last one, which the menu described as a spicy feta dip, but we were willing to try it out. It was so tasty, especially combined with one or both of the other dips. D especially loved it and asked the waitress for a take-out menu just so we could look it up and make it when we got home.

Ingredients

8 oz package cream cheese

1 lb feta, crumbled

1 cup lemon juice

1/4 tsp ground White pepper

1/2 cup olive oil

1 cup half & half

4 roasted red peppers, diced (optional)

2 tsp. Tabasco sauce (optional)

This recipe is easy to make but be warned - it makes a LOT of dip!

Soften the cream cheese in large bowl with a mixer, then add the feta, lemon juice, and white pepper. Slowly add olive oil until it's evenly blended. Mix in half & half until the mixture is smooth and soft. Add the Tabasco sauce last - recipe says 2 tsp. but I could have used a little more.

Now add roasted peppers if you'd like to. Sadly this recipe doesn't tell you how to prepare roasted red peppers, but I will!

Heat up the oven to 450 degrees. Put the peppers in whole and turn every ten minutes until all the sides are slightly blackened. When it's time to remove the pepper, either place them in a brown paper bag and close up the end, or place them into a large bowl and cover the top. The steam released will help loosen the skin and make it easier to remove. Leave them to steam for 15 minutes or so.

Now it's time to pull the skin off & it should be incredibly easy. The next part is harder - removing the top and seeds. Actually, the top is easy to pull off, its just separating the rest of the pepper that is difficult. The website I used to help me with this process said to "pull or cut off the top of the pepper and squeeze gently to remove the seeds." It was really hard for me because the pepper gets so slippery after you take the skin off. I ended up tearing the pepper into strips and removing any seeds that might be on that particular tiny piece. It was somewhat time-consuming but, oh well!

The peppers are done once you've done all of the above. You could mix them in with the bulk of the dip or just save them to put in individual servings.

Anywho, here it is! It should be noted that this picture contains Naan which I did not make myself! I just put it in the toaster. :) Also the peppers are not in this picture.

If you're ever in the Virginia Beach area, make sure to check out Papas Pizza and get the dip platter with the Tirokafteri!

Here is the original recipe from Greek-Recipe.com.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Dennis found this recipe in a Southern Living Crockpot cookbook. No use of the actual crockpot, not that you would know it - it may well have been seeing how long it took. 3 hours cook time, plus the prep time. Ugh! Still, it looks amazing and tastes even better.

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups gingersnap crumbs (25 to 30 cookies)

3  tablespoons butter or margarine, melted

3  (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

1 1/4 cups sugar, divided

1  tablespoon vanilla extract

6  large eggs, separated

32 oz cans pumpkin puree

2  large eggs

1  cup whipping cream

1  tablespoon powdered sugar

Combine crumbs and butter - easier than it sounds! What I mean is, I wasn't sure how to go about turning the hard cookies into crumbs until I remember seeing Rachael Ray put croutons in the food processor to make breadcrumbs. So I followed suit and put the cookies in the food processor and that worked very well!

Press the mixture into bottom of a pan. The recipe tells you to use a 12-inch springform pan. I do not own a springform pan so I just decided to use a 9x9 Pyrex pan. As it turned out, there was way too much batter left over so if you don't have the right pan you should probably halve the recipe. Set this mixture aside.

Beat the cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth, then add 1 cup sugar and vanilla, beating until creamy. Stir in the 6 egg yolks, then pour 2 1/2 cups mixture into prepared crust and set aside.

Add the pumpkin puree and 2 eggs to remaining cream cheese mixture. I used the electric mixer for this step.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites at high speed until foamy. Add remaining 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until stiff peaks form and sugar dissolves. Pour into pumpkin mixture and mix with a spoon. Pour the resulting mixture over the first cream cheese mixture in the crust.

Bake at 300° for 1 1/2 hours. Then turn the oven off, and run a knife around edge of cheesecake to loosen (I didn't need to do this since I wasn't using the springform pan & so didn't need to remove the cheesecake from the pan). Let stand in oven with door partially open for 1 1/2 hours. Remove sides of pan (if you have the springform pan), then cover and chill.

Beat the whipping cream and powdered sugar at high speed until soft peaks form; spread on top of the cheesecake when you are ready to eat it. Since I knew Dennis & I were just going to eat the cheesecake one piece at a time, I kept the whipped cream in a separate container and put it on the side of the plate. If you are planning on making this for some kind of party where presentation is important, spreading the whipped cream on top would make it look lovely!

Here is the finished product. Looks kind of marbled with the pumpkin part on top. Voila! This cheesecake is DA BOMB, but make sure you set aside at least 3 hours to cook it, and a few more hours afterward to chill it. This dessert would be great for any holiday party. Bon appetit!

Here is the recipe from Southern Living. I tweaked the ingredient list slightly.

Pineapple Salsa

Another fruity summer salsa - supposed to be a bit spicier due to the serrano pepper. 

Ingredients

2 cups diced fresh pineapple

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

1 serrano pepper, stemmed, seeded and finely chopped

juice and zest of 1 lime

1/8 teaspoon sea salt

Now I love me some spicy peppers. If you do too, you might be interested in this website featuring a pepper scale. It tells you how hot different types of peppers are on a scale of 0-550,000. Jalapenos are at about 4,000 while the serrano peppers can be anywhere from 7,000 to 25,000. I wasn't sure how to pick a pepper (haha!) because some were orange and some were green, so I just got one of each and put them both in the salsa. I hoped it wouldn't be unbearably hot and I was right. It was just fine.

I didn't put any lime zest in because I don't have a zester and I really didn't feel like it would add anything more than the lime juice would. Also, I happen to have sea salt on my spice rack, but I wouldn't stress about not having any. Plain old salt would do just fine.

I altered the pineapple & onion amounts slightly because the package of pineapple I bought had more than 2 cups. It said 25 oz. I didn't feel like doing the math so I just used all of it and doubled the onion. It tasted great. I feel it is easy to manipulate the ingredients in salsa without ruining the end product. I'm sure you could add some mango or peach in there and it would still taste great.

Here's the recipe from WholeFoodsMarket.com.

Mango and Peach Salsa

After trying the Mango Avocado Salsa recipe 4 or 5 times, Dennis decided he wanted me to find another salsa recipe. I found this Mango & Peach Salsa recipe and it looked pretty easy so I gave it a whirl. It was even easier than the first one.

Ingredients

2 mangos, peeled and chopped

2 fresh peaches, peeled and chopped

1 sweet onion, diced

1 medium tomato, diced (optional)

2 cloves garlic

2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

juice of one lime

dash salt and pepper

Toss them all together in a bowl. Easy peezy lemon squeezy.

Here is the original recipe from About.com.

Quick and Yummy Hummus

I stole that name from the actual page where I got the recipe, but it is a really good title because well... it is quick and it is yummy!

Ingredients

1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained

1/2 cup plain yogurt

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 tablespoon water

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

First of all, I felt really dumb when I read this recipe because I was like, "What the hell are garbanzo beans? Where's the recipe with chickpeas??" So for those of you who are challenged like I am, garbanzo beans = chickpeas. Oops.

So anywho, drain and rinse the garbanzo beans. I found a couple little stray pieces that didn't belong in there so it's worth sorting through the beans before you go to the next step.

Now, the next step! The recipe basically says to dump all of the ingredients into a food processor or a blender and mix them up. My food processor is a little small for my recipes lately, especially when it tells me to blend all the ingredients together (rather than just one ingredient at a time). Also, it doesn't really break them down as much as I'd like, so after my first attempt with the food processor, I poured the somewhat chunky chickpea paste into the blender and used that for the rest of the recipe.

So next I add the yogurt to the mixture. I got a single serving (6 oz) container of Dannon plain yogurt and it yielded just over 1/2 cup so go me! (I was eyeballing the amount and wasn't positive it was going to be enough).

Lemon juice, oh lemon juice. I love it but I never know how much one lemon will give me. I'll say have 1 lemon handy to get the 2 tbsp. The rest of the ingredients are easy enough & self explanatory. Just put them all in the blender and well... blend.

It should be smooth, creamy, and kind of beige colored when it's ready. Then just grab some carrot sticks, pita bread, or whatever else you want to dip and go nuts!!