Hot and Cheeeeesy Spinach Dip

Who doesn't love a nice, warm, cheesy spinach dip?  Great for parties and technically can count as a vegetable because there's spinach in it!  Just kidding.  It doesn't count as a vegetable but it should!  This recipe reminds me of the time I used to be in catering at UCLA and we used to feed the football players.  They wouldn't eat vegetables so we would put cheese sauce over them and it worked!   There's no need to bribe anybody to eat this dip.  It's a crowd favorite.

Here's what you need:

Any kind of cheese

12 oz. bag frozen spinach (don't use canned)

garlic

medium onion

8 oz cream cheese

milk

dash of tabasco sauce

dash of worcestershire sauce

Ready, set, GO!

I use frozen spinach.  You can use fresh, but you would need to steam it and strain it if you use fresh.  That's just an extra step that delays me from eating this dip as fast as I can get it made so I stick with frozen.  Plus, with frozen, what you see is what you get.  You'd be surprised how much fresh spinach it takes to make the amount you'll need for this recipe.  This is a 12 oz bag of frozen spinach.

It looks like this:

I pour the spinach out into a strainer and just let it defrost in my sink.  If you're in a rush, you can heat it in the microwave or rinse it with cool water.  I'm not in any rush so I  just let it hang out in my sink while it defrosts.

Meanwhile, I take a medium sized onion and dice into small pieces.  If you cut them too large, they kind of stand out in your dip.  You can use as much onion as you want.  I like onion, not everyone does so I used half of a medium onion for this recipe.

Over medium heat in a heavy saucepan, I added about a tablespoon of olive oil.

                               

   

Add your chopped onions and sauté.

You don't really want to brown your onions here, but if that happens, that's okay too. 

I like to cook them until they are soft and translucent.

Then I add a heaping tablespoon of fresh, chopped garlic.  Mmmmmm.  Garlic.

At this point, I lower the heat to medium low.  I don't want to burn my garlic.  

Nothing tastes worse than burnt garlic.  Yuck!

Hey!  Remember our friend spinach?  I think we're ready for him.  

This is how it looks all nicely defrosted.

Give it a nice squeeze to get as much of the water out of it as you can.  

Then plop it in with the onion and garlic.

After a quick stir up, it looks like this.

I turn the heat back up to medium and add about half a cup of milk.  I always start with a little bit.  If you need more, you can add more.  But if you start off with too much then your dip will end up watery.

At this point, I add just a bit of seasoning salt.  I usually add black pepper here too.  But the cheese I happen to be using today is a white cheddar with black pepper so I didn't add any pepper today.

Now it's time to add your cream cheese.  

I just plop the entire brick into the saucepan.  

After just a few minutes, the cream cheese melts down and it looks like this.  I have a hard time at this point not eating this as is.  It tastes like creamed spinach.  You can turn it back down to medium low.  Be careful that it doesn't splatter on you.  It's HOT.

The beauty of this dish is that you can literally use any kind of cheese you want or have on hand.  I've used mozzarella, Parmesean, Romano, or any combo of cheese works too! You can't go wrong!  I happened to have some of this kind of cheese on hand:

I got it on sale and it lived in my freezer for a little bit.  The reason why I like to freeze some cheeses is that after it defrosts, it cuts into these nice crumbles like this:

Add as much or as little cheese as you'd like.  I used 2/3 of this 8 oz block.  But don't feel any guilt if you add more than that.  This is all about what makes you happy.

In fact, in lieu of salt, I opted to put in a bit of parmesan cheese, see?

If you wanted to add artichokes, now would be the time to do so.  

Just open and drain a can of artichokes, give them a rough chop and add now.

We're almost done!  I add a healthy dash of Worcestershire sauce

and a dash or two or three of tabasco hot sauce.

Why are we adding tabasco and Worcestershire?  Because this dish is so creamy, we want to add a little bit of acid into it. You don't have to add this, but it really brings this dip together.  Believe me, you won't taste the tabasco in this with all the cheese and creamy going on.

I happened to have some chopped scallions in my freezer (did you know you can chop and freeze green onions and use them when needed while cooking?  You can!) so I added a little bit.

You can eat right away, but I like to let it cool, refrigerate and re-heat up the next day.  You can just reheat it easily in the microwave.  Letting it sit over night gives the dip a bit of time to marinate and get all yummy.  Enjoy with tortilla chips, pita chips, ritz crackers, veggie sticks or spoon directly in your mouth.  Just kidding (but not really).   This dip is a win-win!

Quick Shrimp, Snow Peas and Asparagus

You know what I love?  Chinese take out.  You know who doesn't like Chinese take out?  The Indian guy I live with. So instead of dragging him out and making him watch me eat Chinese food,  I learned how to just make this dish at home.  And after a long day at work, QUICK is the name of the game.   This dish that took me 10 minutes give or take a few.  It's a quick shrimp stir fry.  After you make this, you'll see how easy it is to make and you might never get Chinese take out again!  Just kidding.  But seriously, this recipe makes double the amount you get at any reputable Chinese take out for half the price you'd pay at a restaurant.

You will need:
raw shrimp (I use frozen)
snow peas (cleaned)
asparagus
1 can of sliced water chestnuts
white wine or rice wine
soy sauce
crushed garlic
ginger
corn starch
oil
water or chicken stock

This dish cooks quickly so you'll want to have everything prepped and on deck. Like this:

I used about half this 12 oz bag of frozen shrimp.  This was a smaller sized shrimp, you can go as small or large as you want.  This bag was on sale for 5 bucks.  Works for me.  If you want more shrimp, then use the whole bag.  I wanted to save some for some kimchi shrimp pancakes that I'm making later this week so I didn't use the whole bag.  The beauty of this dish is that you can use a much or as little of the ingredients as you want.  Tonight, I was craving more veggies so I went easy on the shrimp.  You don't have to use snow peas or asparagus.  You can use onion, bell pepper and even mushrooms.  Any combo works great.

I didn't remember to defrost it so I just added it into bowl with enough water to cover it and let it sit while I prepped my veggies.  You can add a little bit of salt to the water if you want.  You don't have to, but I do.  If your shrimp is already defrosted, just put it into a bowl and set aside.

I used half a pound of snow peas.  I like to prep them by peeling off the stem and the spine.  See that brown tip, it's hard to eat so I just pinch it off and pull down the straight side of the snow pea.

You end up with this:

It takes me a few minutes to do the entire batch. You don't have to do this, but it makes eating easier.  Throw away your stems and spines.

Give your snow peas a nice rinse and set aside.

You don't have to use any other veggie besides snow peas, but I do.  It's completely up to you.

I like to also use asparagus.  I used about half this bag so about a pound of asparagus works.  Use more or less depending on how much veggie you want in this stir fry.

I wash my asparagus spears and cut about 1 and a half inches off the bottom.  I chop into one inch pieces.  If you had time, you could cut these pieces on an angle, but tonight I'm more interested in cooking quickly so I can eat!  Straight pieces it is then.

Remember your bowl of shrimp?  If you had it sitting in water, drain off the water.  Into the bowl of shrimp, add about 3/4 a cup of white wine.  If you have rice wine, that works but if you don't, regular white wine works too.  

I added about 3 tablespoons of soy sauce to my shrimp and wine.

Then a heaping tablespoon of corn starch.

Mix it all up and set aside.

If you have a wok, heat to medium high.  I didn't feel like dragging mine out so I used a large non-stick frying pan.  It works well too.  I added about 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

When the oil is nice and heated and swirls around easily in the pan, I add my chopped asparagus.  Basically, you want to add the veggies that take the longest to cook first.  So had I used bell peppers of large chopped onion, I would have added them in first.

A lot of recipes will have you add the garlic and ginger in first, and you can.  It's really not going to ruin the dish.  I just know that sometimes, I tend to burn the garlic if it goes into the hot pan so I'll drop the temp of the pan by adding some veggies in first.  Not rocket science. 

Stir fry your asparagus for a minute or so, then add 1 heaping tablespoon of fresh chopped garlic.

I didn't have any fresh ginger, but I had this chopped ginger paste on hand so I squeezed in about 1/2 of a tablespoon.  If using fresh, I would have added 1-2 teaspoons of finely minced ginger.  

Fresh = More flavor, so use less when using fresh.

After a quick saute, I added my shrimp, wine, soy and corn starch mix.

I also add my can of sliced water chestnuts now.

If the sauce thicken too much, you can add a few tablespoons of chicken stock or water.  I like to add the snow peas last, because I like them to crunchy and crisp.  Snow peas tend to cook quickly so I add them at the end so they spend the least amount of time in the stir fry.

I also like to add in a tablespoon of chili sauce, but this is optional.  When your shrimp is pink, you're done!  

That's it.  You're done.  Eat with rice or with noodles.  Serves four people.

Super easy to make and satisfying with it's ginger, garlic deliciousness.

Ham and Cheese Buttermilk Waffles

If you have been following me  my Instagram account shabangskitchen, then you'll know I've taken this waffle maker that I got for the Indian on our last anniversary, and pretty much gone outer limits with it.  I'm not even halfway through all my crazy ideas for the things I'd like to make in it.

One of the my favorite things to make are kicked up Buttermilk Waffles!  Like this one:

Green onion, ham and bleu cheese waffle

I make up my own waffle batter.  You can use the pre-made ones where you just add water and egg, but just keep in mind you're also eating a lot of other preservatives and stuff.  I would urge you to try and make your own waffle batter.  It's really not that hard.

All you needs to make your own batter is:

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups flour

2 tsp Baking powder

1 tsp Baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 3/4 cups buttermilk

4 tbsp melted butter

That's it!  Just blend all your dry ingredients in one bowl and your wet in another.  Then you just marry them together and mix it all up.  Done.  The beauty of this recipe is that you can also refrigerate any unused portion and cook later...But I never have any leftover batter.  Probably because I make a mix of regular and kick up savory ones.  They toast up nicely in the toaster oven after refrigerating if you don't eat them all in one sitting. 

For the kicked up waffles, you can use anything you want really.  I really like the combo of chopped honey ham, scallions (green onions) and cheese.  You can use shredded chicken, sliced turkey or no meat if you prefer.  Leeks also work really well in kicked up waffles.  I get all my toppings ready and on the side.

After the waffle iron is heated and ready to go, I add the batter as usual.  

Then I sprinkle in as much or little of the chopped green onions as I want.

Then add chopped ham and top with cheese.

Cheeeeeeeeeeese.  Sharp cheddar cheese to be specific.

Close it up and after about 2 minutes...Viola.  Done.  A good tip is to watch for when there is no more steam coming off of it.  You might need to gently pry your waffle off the iron, but it should come off pretty easily. 

I also do a version with bleu cheese.  Not everyone likes it, but I do.  

In place of cheddar, I sprinkle blue cheese...

aaaaand we have another successful savory waffle.

Feel free to experiment with different things.  Just be careful not to add any veggies that would prevent your waffle from crisping up.  Like tomatoes and mushrooms give a lot of liquid when cooking so your waffle would be mushy.

The beauty of this is that you can also make plain buttermilk waffles at the same time so everyone can get something they like.  And yes, I do eat with a little bit of syrup because I'm a big fan of the salty/sweet combo.

Remember, you can cook them all at one time and refrigerate if you don't finish them.  I use a toaster oven to re-heat and re-crisp.  Happy Brunching!