Smoked salmon, filo dough, cream cheese, chives, lemon juice, and salt. That’s it - and about 10 minutes- and you have a plate of sophisticated and delicious appetizers. These go perfectly for gatherings of all kinds as they’re easy to do assembly-wise, can be made a few hours ahead (not too much more or the cups won’t be as crispy) and even thsoe who are culinarly-challenged can easily be of help. Even the boyfriend could assemble these.

Smoked Salmon Filo Cup Appetizers

Ingredients:

• 1 package wild (please, do make sure it’s wild) smoked salmon (NOT atlantic) (the redder the better (but not if food colouring made it so))
• 1/2 package (4 oz) cream cheese (reduced fat works fine, plain, softened)
• 2 packages (usually about 12-15 cups in a package) frozen filo dough cups
• the juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 5 or strands of fresh chives
• pinch of salt

Process:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place all filo cups on a large baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes until lightly golden. Remove from oven and let sit for 5 minutes to rest.
2. Place approx. 1 tsp (or just a chunk, really) of cream cheese in the center of each cup.
3. Place a small piece of the salmon over the cream cheese.
4. Cut the chives into inch-long pieces and place 3 or so pieces on each filo cup.
5. Sprinkle lightly with a tiny bit of salt and place two drops or so of lemon on each filo cup (feel free to omit this)

And you’re done! Assembled in mere minutes after baking! And yet for some odd reason, people will be quite impressed by these. Little do they know how simple they are to put together :). Try them out for yourself, they’ll be a hit!

I was on a mission to make some amuse-bouche items for dinner last night, and settled on two recipes, one of which was this strudel. My mother makes a very yummy apple strudel, but savoury (particularly sweet-and-savoury) strudel is something I’ve been experimenting with for some time. The recipe I followed in my book (Antipasti, by Simon and Schuster- yes, that makes me think of Glee (great book, by the way, I highly reccommend it for sophisticated appetizers)) called for pancetta… but as I don’t eat red meat and I did plan on having some of this one, I substituted for turkey in half of the strudels and no meat in the other half.

The process is quite simple: Prepare your ingredients before you deal with the phyllo dough (the ingredients could be just about anything) because it will dry quickly and tear and make you cry because it’s ripping and- you get the idea. I went with the following for this iteration (and did not use exact quantites, I apologize): chopped pear pieces, crushed cashews, mesquite deli turkey, shredded mozzarella, grated domestic parmesan, salt, pepper, olive oil, and freshly-grated gruyere. The original recipe suggested fennel seeds and butter for the top, both of which I decided to forgo. Once you’ve assembled your ingredients (aka tossed them haphazardly onto the phyllo (just pretend you’re Italian, making pizza, and know what you’d doing (gesticulating wildly and muttering melodically about your cousin Mario should do the trick))), roll your phyllo, and place it on a cookie sheet.

You can, at this point, do a number of things. Brush it with olive oil, butter (choose soy butter!), or egg (as I did for this strudel, then top with cheese and salt if savoury (I sprinkled on parm, grated on some gruyere, added large sea salt, cracked pepper, and some honey (that’s what burned/caramelized, but it tastes great, worry not)) or, if sweet, sugar. Bake them at 365 degrees for about 15 minutes and then eat them hot out of the oven or refrigerate overnight for a more dense, consistent strudel. If sweet, eat it hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream- you can never go wrong with that combination.

It’s a yummy thing to make for dinner parties as you could make these even smaller than I did- I was too lethargic to attempt cutting the phyllo, but you can easily cut it to make tiny strudel rolls or square for strudel packages! A pizza cutter is the easiest way to cut the phyllo, but be careful- depending on the brand (or if you’re brave and made it yourself), you’ll have to be quick and efficient to avoid drying and tears.

Try it and see what ingredients you like filling your strudels with! Sweet, savoury, or a bit of both, these delectable treats can be eaten as a small appetizer or sliced thickly for a main course.

They’re bite-sized! These little filo cups are mouth-watering, portable, quick, and simple. You can eat them in one bite and experience all the textures at once, or nibble at it slowly.

Last night Chrissie of Chrissie’s Cookies (they’re incredibly delicious, you should get some (warning: I’m biased!)) and her room-mate Christine came to join us for a night of dinner and boardgames. Naturally, the boyfriend was present as well (games + food = boyfriend is there), which meant I was cooking for 5, which meant that pasta was an obvious choice for dinner. I wanted to make a dessert as well and had some leftovers from recent desserts, thus these came about!

Filo cups can be found in the frozen section of your local grocery! You can get a box of 16 cups for about $2. They’re incredibly easy to use, delicious, and work as well for savoury as they do sweet (or you can mix the two- I like to fill them with pear slices, dried apricot chunks, honey, salt/pepper, mozarella, and feta for an appetizer). I had some leftover pastry cream from the strawberry tartelettes and a bit of leftover strawberry-mascarpone filling from the strawberry-filled cupcakes, as well as lots of fresh strawberries…. thus I simply did the following:

Strawberries & Cream Filo Cups

Ingredients:

• 1 package frozen filo dough cups (found in freezer section of grocery store)
• Approx. 1/2 cup strawberry mascarpone cream (mascarpone cheese, strawberries, 1/4 cup sugar, and lemon juice)
• Approx. 1/2 cup pastry cream (2 large egg yolks, 1 cup skim milk, 3 tablespoons sugar, 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, pinch of salt, 2 tablespoons low-fat vanilla yogurt, 1 tablespoon potato starch)
• A half-dozen or so strawberries (1 strawberry can top 2 or 3 cups depending on strawberry size- cut as chunkily as desired!)
• Approx. 2-3 tablespoons strawberry jam/jelly

Process:

1. Bake the filo cups (totally empty, so that the creams wouldn’t make them mushy) for 8 minutes at 350 degrees, as directed on their package
2. Let cool 10 minutes
3. Fill each with a dollop of the strawberry-mascarpone filling
4. Add on a heavier dollop of pastry cream (goodness, I still didn’t even use it all, either! So much cream!)
5. Slice a thick chunk of strawberry onto the top of each filo cup
6. Brush a thin layer of strawberry jam over each strawberry chunk

Though that may seem like a number of steps, it’s insanely quick… and they’re delicious, and can be easily made in bulk. I think I’ll add these to my party/potluck list. You could make a similar type of cup with a great number of fruits, as well! Peach or mango would probably be quite yummy. Or any other berry, of course!