Cat and Sue Cook Together for Once, Volume 6: Caramelized Onion Dip, or How Sue Owes Cat an Apology

Sue and I cooked a LOT the weekend I was in Denver.  We spent most of Sunday in the kitchen, and all of Monday as well.  This dip was one of the things we planned for her birthday party/Labor day BBQ , and it came together pretty quickly and spontaneously, by which I mean: “it was 3:30 and people were starting to arrive, and we kind of forgot about this dip and Sue still needed to shower and get dressed, so I looked at the caramelized onions as though they had personally offended me, drank half a glass of wine, and threw a bunch of ingredients into a bowl while shouting at Sue to wear the pink dress”.

There are two reasons Sue owes me an apology for this dip: A, she didn’t trust me to just throw ingredients together and have it turn out well, and B, because I wanted to put mustard in the dip and she didn’t like that either, but it was delicious, so there.

Caramelized Onion Dip (I think, because it was awhile ago when I made it, and I didn’t use a recipe, and, well, the wine…)

2-3 big sweet or yellow onions, chopped

1 stick of butter (yeah, a whole stick, butter is what makes things taste good)

1 cup Greek yogurt

1 cup low-fat sour cream

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup Miracle Whip

1 tsp dry mustard

2 tbsp brown mustard/sweet mustard/garlic mustard/whatever fancy mustard you have in your fridge

1 tsp worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

salt and pepper

Put the onion and butter in a dutch oven or deep saucepan.  Saute on medium heat until the onions are golden brown, probably 45 minutes or so.  When the onions cool, put them in a bowl with all the other ingredients and mix well.

it would have looked like this, if we would have remembered to take pictures.

- Cat

Chipotle Pasta Salad

I would like to start by saying, that I love bbq season. Every little thing about it, love it. We have this fantastic roof top deck that is perfect for summer get togethers. We set up bags, and grill out, and it’s wonderful. I hate you winter, please stay away for a long time this year.

So yesterday we were having one of those rooftop bbq’s and I was trying to decide what to make, when I came up with this. It’s deeeelicious, I’m eating some leftovers of it right now…and it’s still delicious. As you know from bbq week, Cat and I collectively have lots of bbq recipes, but I wanted something new. So here we have it.

Ingredients:

1 box rotini (any shape will work)

3 links of sweet sausage (the big hotdog size links)

1 cup corn (I used frozen)

¾ cup mayo

1 chipotle pepper

2 tsp of adobo sauce (from the can of chipotle peppers)

Juice from ½ of a lemon

2 Tbs brown sugar

Salt and pepper

Handful of cilantro, chopped

Method:

Grill and slice the sausages, or slice and Pan fry them. Cook the pasta according to the box, while you prep the sauce and the corn. In a food processor, or blender, combine the mayo, chipotle pepper, adobo sauce, brown sugar and lemon juice.

Taste it and then add salt and pepper to taste. Steam and drain the corn (or cook the corn however you would like depending on the type…grilled corn would be great in this!). Chop the cilantro. Drain the pasta, throw it all in a bowl, and mix it up.

Simple, easy, and SO tasty.

Now for a few notes:

Do you know what these things are?

They are little bundles of chipotle peppers and adobo sauce. Cat taught me this little trick last summer. It’s pretty rare that you ever use an entire can of chipotle peppers, so this is a great way to save the leftovers. Place one pepper, and a spoonful of sauce onto a square of plastic wrap, twist it up, and freeze it. When my super market was out of chipotle peppers yesterday, I was happy when I remembered I had these little gems in my freezer.

Speaking of my grocery store being out of things…I usually buy raw sausage made by boulder sausage company if I can, but all they had yesterday was chorizo, and hot Italian. Not going to work for me. So I got one of those links of hillshire farm sausage (the ones that look like a U). It was smoked sausage, and it was precooked. I’ve got to say, I was fairly impressed. But in general, I prefer fresh sausage. My point is, use whatever you want, but i think a sweeter smoked style, compliments the flavor the best.

-Sue