Crab Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes
Miniature Vegetarian Pizza with Roasted Pepper Tapenade
Hors d’oeuvre.
The word alone just sounds intimidating, doesn’t it? And try spelling it. After years of preparing the “hors d’oeuvre” I usually end up misspelling it. Okay, I always misspell it. Sometimes I switch the “o” with the “u” and inadvertently insert one of these: ☂ and occasionally one of these: ☞. The damn word confuses me.
Then I just Google it. And voilà!
Hors d’oeuvre.
But the hors d’oeuvre doesn’t have to be intimidating or complicated. I’m a sucker for a good hor d’oeuvre, and I’ve been known to make a light meal out of them, so if you invite me to your party just make sure you have plenty. Have some champagne too, I love champagne.
Here I’ll show you two easy, make-ahead hors d’oeuvres that will be a hit at your next cocktail party.
Ingredients
- 50 large red or yellow cherry tomatoes
- 8 oz. fresh lump crab meat, picked over and drained in a sieve to remove excess water
- Zest and juice from 1/2 of a large lemon
- 1/2 tsp Kosher salt
- 1/8 tsp white pepper
- 1/8 tsp Old bay seasoning
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1/4 cup mayonnaise
- 2 tbs sour cream
- 1 tbs fresh chives, finely minced
- 1 tbs fresh dill, finely chopped
- 3 tbs red bell pepper, finely minced
To Make
- Slice 1/4" off the top of each tomato at stem end, then make a small slice on the bottom so tomato can stand without toppling over.
- With either a small melon scoop or a demitasse spoon gently scoop out seeds. Invert onto a paper towel to drain excess moisture
- To prepare filling, mix crab and other ingredients until just combined, making sure not to smash up your expensive crab meat
- Fill each tomato with 1 tsp of crab
- Top each tomato with a sprig of dill
- Tomatoes can filled, covered and refrigerated a day prior to serving
For the miniature pizzas, you can go ahead and use a freshly made store-bought dough or make your own, which will yield a much tastier hors d’oeuvre.
There’s no real trick to making these delicious pizzas – whatever topping you use will taste pretty amazing. Unless of course you’re one of the few who enjoy the peanut butter/pork rind combo.
My preparation of choice was the indoor grill pan. Roll out pizza dough on floured board and cut with a 2 1/2″ round cookie cutter. Cook on lightly oiled grill over medium heat for about 1 minute per side. Easy, quick and flavorful. If your kitchen is sans grill pan, just place the pizzas on a greased cookie sheet and bake in a 400° oven for roughly 8 minutes, or until cooked through.
The pizzas dough can be cooked, topped, covered tightly in plastic wrap and kept in the fridge for a day or two before reheating in a 350° oven for 6-8 minutes. One 16 oz. ball of dough, will yield about 25-30 pizzas.
I made two variations of the mini pizza:
Pizza no. 1: Red pepper tapenade, caramelized onion with Gruyère cheese. When pizzas were removed from the oven I topped each one with a tiny bit of micro-greens. You can sub watercress.
Pizza no. 2: Basil pesto, oven roasted balsamic & garlic tomatoes with honeyed goat cheese.
Try them. Yum.
at 7:13 am
These look delicious. Think I’m going to try the pizzas!
at 10:45 am
The tomatoes are splendid looking but the baby pizzas put me over the edge. You would have to bind me in retraints to prevent the total inihilation of everthing on that plate. I’m not very popular at parties with limited quantities.
at 12:32 pm
Hello,
We bumped into your blog and we really liked it – great recipes YUM YUM.
We would like to add it to the Petitchef.com.
We would be delighted if you could add your blog to Petitchef so that our users can, as us,
enjoy your recipes.
Petitchef is a french based Cooking recipes Portal. Several hundred Blogs are already members
and benefit from their exposure on Petitchef.com.
To add your site to the Petitchef family you can use http://en.petitchef.com/?obj=front&action=site_ajout_form or just go to Petitchef.com and click on “Add your site”
Best regards,
petitchef.com