The Funky Kitchen

Nuts and bolts are one of my favorite holiday snacks. In a season where sugary treats are fairly ubiquitous (think: fudge, cookies, candy canes) nuts and bolts are a nice savory refuge from the tables full of dainties. Not that I don’t have a case of dainty love to boot, but nuts and bolts are the thing to munch between butter tarts.

I like them so much that every holiday season I wonder why I don’t make nuts and bolts all year, but somehow it does not happen until you start thinking about Christmas trees again. Maybe this can be one of my New Year’s resolutions: make nuts and bolts more often!

Anyway, to make nuts and bolts you need a great big roaster. I borrowed one from Mr’s mum, because none of mine are voluminous enough to hold all of the nuts and bolts. If you don’t have a great big roaster, you could also use multiple smaller roasters, but then you’ll have to do more stirring.

Nuts and Bolts

(recipe a combination from my Mum and Mr’s Mum)

4 Cups Shreddies

4 Cups Cheerios

4 Cups Crispix

3 Cups Pretzels

3 Cups Cheezies, the crunchy kind

2 Cups salted peanuts

2 Cups Cheese Nips

2 Cups Cheese Bits

1 Cup butter

2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp onion powder

2 tsp celery salt

2 tsp paprika

Directions

• Preheat your oven to 250° F.
• Add the first 8 ingredients to your large roaster. You want enough room left in the roaster to be able to mix the nuts and bolts.
• Melt the butter. Mix into it the Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, celery salt and paprika. This is your seasoning mix.
• Drizzle the sauce over top of the dry ingredients, stirring so that an even coating is achieved.
• Put the roaster into the oven for an hour and fifteen minutes, stirring every 15 minutes.
• Allow to cool, then enjoy!

Normally I would shy away from recipes involving a lot of pre-made, open the box and use it products. But it wouldn’t be Christmas for me without these tasty munchies. Merry Christmas!

Everyone seems to have their favorite part of nuts and bolts; my favorite part is the Shreddies, Mr’s are the Crispix. Neither of us are fans of the pretzels, but we’ve got family who really love them so I couldn’t skip out. Nuts and bolts are kind of like a family in a way; you may all be slightly different, but you come from the same bowl.

When you put your cookies out for Santa, don’t forget a couple of carrots for his reindeer!

This time last year: Lemon Roasted Potatoes

“Be careful not to overfill them. When they overflow you’ll lose almost all of the filling.“ She warned, across the city, through the phone line.

I wrote it down at the bottom of the recipe; do not overfill. It’s just that after the whisking, the rolling, cookie cutting and pressing I stood with a great big bowl of filling and overfilled almost every tart shell. The debate of whether or not to risk overflowing butter tarts by maximizing the ratio of gooey delectable filling to pastry went to the side of risking overfilling.

The moral of the story? Listen to your Mum, she knows what she’s talking about. If she says to be careful not to overfill when she gives you a recipe, don’t push your luck. To my good fortune though, another batch is not too difficult to make, and an overflown butter tart is still very much worth eating.

Butter Tarts

1/2 Cup raisins or currants

1/2 C packed brown sugar

1/2 C corn syrup

1 egg

2 Tbsp softened butter

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp white vinegar

1/4 tsp salt

Not-So-Secret Pie Crust

Directions

• Put your raisins or currants in a bowl and cover with hot water from a recently boiled kettle. Allow them to sit and plump up while you prepare everything else.
• Gather a bowl and a whisk for making the filling.
• Put the brown sugar, corn syrup, egg, butter, vanilla, vinegar and salt into the bowl and whisk frantically until the filling is uniform.

Why does it seem like this is a lot of filling for what the recipe calls? I made a triple batch.

• Roll out the pie crust to 1/4-1/8″ thickness. Cut out rounds of pastry with a biscuit cutter or an inverted cup.

• Press the pastry circles into the wells of a muffin pan (or mini muffin pan for mini butter tarts).
• Drain your raisins/currants. They should be nice and plump now. Put some of the fruit into each of the tart shells. Different people like different amounts of raisins, I like enough to at least cover the bottom of the tart.
• Pour the butter tart filling into the shells, being careful not to overfill.

See the upper left corner? That is overfull.

• Bake in a 425° oven until the pastry is golden and the filling is puffed (~1o minutes).

From what I’ve read, it seems like butter tarts are kind of a Canadian thing. I cannot imagine Christmas, or trips to West Hawk Lake for that matter, without them. And these ones, my mum’s gooey butter tarts are the best. The sticky-sweet brown sugary filling is somewhat reminiscent of a pecan pie (just trying to give those of you who haven’t had them a reference point) without the pecans, or the Quebecois tarte au sucre. Neither are the same though. We’re already running out of them, so we’re going to have to make another batch in order to have some remaining at Christmas!

Mr. says: I love butter tarts during the holidays. They are a party platter staple. If you cheat and buy the tart shells it shortens the process of making butter tarts greatly.

This time last year: Cheater Labneh Tortellini

It’s a little bit strange to look back at it, but today is the hundredth post at The Funky Kitchen. Adding a triple digit feels both an accomplishment and anticlimactic. Either way, it’s been a lot of fun cooking up a storm and getting to know the blogging community, so here’s to the next hundred posts!

Because we are celebrating, I thought we should have some tasty nibble-y party food. Try some spanakopita!

Spanakopita

(a recipe adapted from Dorothy Minish’s Spanakopita)

10 oz fresh spinach

1/2 Cup fresh parsley

1/4 Cup fresh dill

1 Cup cottage cheese

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

4 eggs

1 Cup feta cheese

1- 1 lb package phyllo pastry

1 Cup butter

Directions

• Finely chop all of your greens: the spinach, parsley and dill.

• Place the cottage cheese in a strainer set over a bowl, so that some of the moisture will drip away.
• Chop the onion and garlic cloves and saute in a pan over medium heat until the onions go translucent (~5 minutes).
• To the chopped greens, add the eggs and drained cottage cheese as well as the onion mixture. Next, crumble in the feta cheese.
• Mix everything together, this will be the spanakopita filling. Set it over a strainer so that excess moisture can drain. (Note: As an alternative, you can leave the filling as is and mix into it a 1/2 Cup of uncooked rice. The rice will absorb moisture while the spanakopita is baking and cook through.)
• Remove the phyllo from it’s package, and cover it with a damp tea towel while you aren’t using it so that it will not dry out as you work.

• Melt your butter.
• Cut the stack of phyllo into 4 or 5 lengthwise strips.
• Working one strip at a time, brush butter over your piece of phyllo pastry. (Or roll it on with a small foam roller that you haven’t used for anything else.) Spoon about a half tablespoon of the filling onto one end of the phyllo strip, and bundle it up as follows:

• Repeat, repeat… and repeat some more.

The recipe made 2 pans like this

• Bake your spanakopita in a 350° oven for ~18 minutes until it is golden brown.
• Serve to your hungry guests!

Use fresh spinach, not frozen, for this recipe. For people who think it’s too much trouble to clean and sort through fresh spinach, Dorothy advises that if the spinach you have requires anything more than rinsing it isn’t of good enough quality to bother with anyway.