Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Spinach Balls

Granted, these days, anything with "balls" in the name is inherently funny. Get your chuckles in now.

We were going over to our friends', Drake and Mary's, for chili and, for my contribution, I thought I should bring something green that would compliment the chili. Think about that and all of the green veggie sides you know. It's kind of hard, isn't it? So I remembered these.

I've been making these for a while for parties and they're a personal favorite. I found the recipe in the Treebeard's Cookbook and picked them because I figure you can't go wrong with spinach and cheese. What I hadn't counted on was the kick the cayenne pepper gives them. Damn. It's really a great addition.

The spice and (minimal) cheese work pretty well, I think. They're more of an appetizer, but at least it's part of the meal somewhere. I think you could probably make them larger, like a crab cake or something, and serve them as sides.

I'd been chopping the onion and grating the cheese with a food processor the last few times. this is fast, but the long strings of each aren't as nice texture-wise as they could be. Counting clean-up, I'm just as fast now with a fine dice and hand grating, so I went all manual this time.

I was a bit shy on the cayenne. Don't be. The kick is good. Also, serve them warm and keep them on a warming plate if in a party situation. They lose some flavor when they get cold.

P.S. I was very impressed with Mary's chili, especially for a Yankee :-)

No comments: