Red Shoe Martinis, Hot Mushroom Turnovers, and This Week's Episode of Dishin It!

It's funny how the world has gone back to cocktails.



For years in all of my social circles the only thing people drank was wine and beer.

And usually that occurred among gender lines with the men prediominantly drinking beer and the women, wine.

But over the last few years, I've noticed a shift.

And certainly at last night's wedding (pictures to follow later in the week) I noticed far more people people sipping mixed drinks.

My first venture into the world away from wine occured about two years ago while on a trip with the Poolboy.

We went out to dinner to a steakhouse, got to feeling adventurous, and ordered dirty martinis.

For those of you who don't know, a dirty martini is full on alcohol with a splash of olive juice thrown in for good measure.

I know.

It doesn't sound all that good.

But if you love olives like we do - and these martinis came with not one, not two, but three - you can kind of understand.

And we got to the steakhouse hungry, so that the olives mixed with all that vodka, just seemed to go down good.

By the time our steaks arrived, the two of us were in euphoric moods.

Since that day, I have sampled martinis in many different places - with probably the best martini of all time coming from a bar at the O'Hare airport in Chicago.

The next time any of you is there - I highly recommend it ;)

But now I've kind of moved on from those and have recently begun to experiment with other types of libation starting with...

The Red Shoe Martini



An ounce and a half vodka
1/2 ounce blackberry liquer
1/2 cup cranberry juice
Juice of one lime

Shake shake shake with ice and serve very cold.

To go with, here's a favourite appetizer of mine. I make them and freeze them. They are soooo good and they never last for longer than about ten minutes.

Hot Mushroom Turnovers


Ingredients:
Dough:
1 - 8 oz.(250 g) cream cheese
1 1/2 cups (375 mL) flour
1/2 cup (125 mL) margarine

Filling:
1 lb. (500 g) mushrooms, minced
1 large onion, minced
3 Tbsp. (45 mL) margarine
1/4 cup (60 mL) sour cream
1/4 tsp. (1 mL) thyme
1/2 tsp. (2 mL) salt
1 egg, beaten

Instructions:
To prepare dough, blend all ingredients in a mixer, then form into a ball. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
To prepare filling, saute mushrooms and onion in margarine. When cooked add sour cream, thyme and salt. Roll dough out to 1/4 ' (1 cm) thickness. Cut in 3' (7cm) circles. Fill with 1 tsp. (6 mL) filling, drained slightly. Brush edges with egg. Fold and seal by pressing edge with a fork. Pierce top in 2 or 3 places. Brush top with egg. Bake at 400F (200C) for 10-20 minutes or until lightly browned. Yields 24.

In the meantime, be sure to tune into the latest episode of Dishin It where I'll be sipping one of these fabulous concoctions, cooking spaghetti with chunky meat and vegetable sauce, and talking about relationships.

All that and more on Dishin It! Live Saturdays at 6 PM Pacific. But you can listen at any time...