One of my favorite cooking "adventures" involves selecting a recipe as inspiration and tweaking it based on what ingredients I have in my pantry.
For instance, I made Texas Caviar for our annual fourth of July recipe. My experience with Texas Caviar began with a recipe I found online that I wanted to make as an appetizer for a pot luck. It is now my signature dish and is never the same each time I make it. For those of you who don't know, Texas Caviar is a vegetable based appetizer made with peppers, onions, spices and some kind of acid. The recipe I started with called for green bell peppers, jalapenos, onions, black beans and black eyed peas with a ton of italian dressing.
My rendition involves whatever vegetables and spices are readily available, I still use the italian dressing but just a few squirts to help bind the vegetables. You can also used citrus juices. This week I used green, red and orange bell peppers (we love bell peppers in my house and they are always on hand), jalapenos, tomatoes, green onions, black beans and black eyed peas. I also added garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper and cayenne pepper. In the past, I've been known to throw in some white onions, corn or even shelled edamame. Avocado would be great as well. The recipe does involve a lot of chopping because the vegetables need to be in bite size pieces so they can be served with pita chips, crackers or even celery sticks.
But, there are a few "shortcuts" that you can. I use canned tomatoes and black beans and frozen corn and black eyed peas to speed up my preparation time.
Here's the finished product and it was a big hit!
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