SUPER BOWL
The snacks I have in mind are easy to make and one of them is ridiculously easy. Each can be eaten with your fingers, which is perhaps the most important aspect of party food. They don’t cost much, they aren’t annoyingly good for you (though they aren’t notably awful for you, either) and, most important of all, they go well with beer and football.
One of the easiest ones is a dish I am calling Deconstructed Guacamole. Essentially, it’s guacamole without the effort of smashing the avocado. You cut a baguette into thin slices, toast it and rub the toast with a clove of garlic to get a warm hint of garlic flavor.
Then you simply add a thin slice of avocado, a small mound of minced sweet onion and half of a grape or cherry tomato. What you get when you bite it is the pure taste of avocado with a few complementary flavors mixed in.
Since I was playing with traditional snacks, I thought I would up take deviled eggs and up the ante a little by adding sriracha.
I know I am not the first to have this idea; at this point, I believe that everything that could possibly have sriracha mixed into it already has had it mixed, along with some things that couldn’t.
I decided to keep the non-sriracha part very simple, so as not to have too many flavors compete. I mixed the hard-boiled yolks with just mayonnaise and a splash of lemon juice, and then I added a very small amount of sriracha, one teaspoon for six eggs.
I didn’t want the sriracha to dominate the flavor, I wanted it to blend in and be a subtle part of the whole. I also know that some people cannot eat food that is hot, and the minimal amount of sriracha made it enjoyable for all. If you want yours hotter and spicier, by all means add more sriracha.
Next up was one of my favorite vegetable dips, though it can also be used on sandwiches or salads or as a dressing for cold pasta.
Tapenade mayonnaise comes from the indispensable “Frog/Commissary Cookbook,” and I love it for crudites because it is so startlingly full of harmoniously bold flavors. You begin with mayonnaise — ordinarily I make my own mayonnaise for this recipe but here I just went ahead with the stuff in the jar — and blend in garlic, anchovies, capers and olives.
It’s salty, but it’s just the right amount of salty. Serve it as a dip and your vegetables have never tasted so good.
I also made a favorite recipe from a 1967 Betty Crocker cookbook; we serve it at almost every party. It’s called Mushrooms Royale — of course it’s called Mushrooms Royale, it’s from a 1967 Betty Crocker cookbook — and it is stuffed mushrooms that are simply wonderful.
You stuff the mushroom caps with chopped up mushroom stems, bread crumbs and spices, plus butter. It’s a lot of butter, admittedly, which may be why these snacks are always the first to go at any party.
The last snack I made was probably the favorite with all of my testers. It’s homemade caramel popcorn, and it required the most effort to make. First you have to pop the popcorn, then you make the caramel sauce, which is surprisingly easy. But then you have to bake the caramel-covered popcorn for an hour, stirring it every 15 minutes.
It is well worth the time and effort. It is so astoundingly delicious, if you set it down at kickoff your guests may gobble it down before the first series is over.