(bright music) - Every year I plan to have all my holiday shopping finished by Thanksgiving.

And every year I'm buying presents up until the last possible minute.

But the one thing I do that definitely makes the holidays a little less hectic are having appetizers prepped and in the freezer.

So if I have unexpected guests or just feel too tired to make dinner, I have something yummy to serve in no time.

Today we're making prosciutto, pesto, and Gruyère pinwheels bacon-wrapped dates, marinated olives and mulled apple cider.

So pull up a chair, turn on the Christmas tunes and let's prep some holiday appetizers.

(bright music) I have to admit that I'm actually more of a fig girl than a date girl, but the combination of sweet, salty, creamy is out of this world.

You can make these dates ahead of time and freeze them and when you're ready to serve them, make the glaze and pop them in the oven.

To get started with our date appetizer, I've got here just some thin sliced bacon and I am going to half it 'cause this is what we're gonna wrap our dates in.

So I'm just gonna put that to the side.

And then next up we need to prepare our dates.

So I have here dates that I've already pitted and sliced, but I wanted to show you how to do that in case you're interested.

All we need to do to get that pit out and you can buy dates that don't have pits, just double check and make sure, because no one wants to bite into a pit.

So I'm just slicing them not all the way through.

I can feel the pit as I'm making my little slice.

Open it up, you can see the pit and all you have to do is with your fingers just remove it and voila.

And then I just kind of put the ends, make sure the ends are back together 'cause this is where we're gonna put our yummy cream cheese.

Sometimes the dates will have still a little bit of that stem, so you wanna take that off and that's easy enough.

Just cut off the stem 'cause that's kind of hard and no one, it's not really gonna taste very good.

And then now do the same as we did before.

You're slicing into your date, not all the way through.

Open it up, there's the pit right there.

And just remove it with your fingers.

And it's as easy as that.

You have some options as to what you want to put in your dates.

You really don't have to put anything if you choose.

Some people like to put a whole almond in there.

I'm not like up for that really but if that's what you like, you like that extra crunch, go ahead and put a whole almond in there.

What we are going to do today is I'm just using plain cream cheese.

And I put this in a piping bag, you don't have to do that.

You can take your cream cheese and you can just use a spoon or even a knife and just fill a little bit.

We're not putting a whole lot in here, like maybe a half a teaspoon at the most.

Alright, now let's wrap these dates in our bacon strips.

Pretty easy, right?

Just gonna take the bacon, cover up the cheese, cover up all of the date itself and then secure it with a toothpick.

Go all the way through because you just want to make sure that you keep the bacon on the date.

And now I'm going to be placing these on a rack so that when we put them in the oven, the bacon can kind of get crispy underneath as well.

If you wanted to make these ahead of time, you totally could.

And it is at this stage that you can now stick them in the freezer and have them up until like maybe two months or so.

But right now we're gonna make the glaze.

What we need for the glaze is a fourth of a cup of maple syrup, about a tablespoon of chopped shallots.

And here we have red pepper flakes.

Just a pinch.

You can do it to taste.

If you want more, by all means put in more.

If you want less, that's cool too.

And now let me just chop up a little bit of cilantro.

And I know a lot of people have an aversion to cilantro.

You can certainly sub out parsley or for this, you can probably leave it out altogether.

But I do think, you know, the little bit of herbiness adds a nice layer of flavor along with the sweet maple syrup and then the sharpness of the shallot.

Into our bowl about a tablespoon or so.

That looks good.

And now we're gonna brush some of this glaze onto each of our dates.

If you want, you can reserve some of this in a separate bowl and then put some on, you know, when they come out of the oven.

In fact, why don't I do that?

And be generous with your glaze.

When this goes in the oven, it is gonna pick up that, that saltiness from the bacon with the sweetness from the maple syrup.

Um!

It is a great combination.

These are going into a 400 degree preheated oven for about 20 minutes.

Now that our dates are baking in the oven, we have a minute or so to talk about the difference between figs and dates.

Figs have a lighter honey-like flavor with a jammy texture and tiny crunchy seeds.

They're high in fiber, calcium and iron.

Dates have a caramel like sweetness, often with hints of molasses or butterscotch and a chewy sticky texture.

Dates are higher in calories, carbohydrates and natural sugars.

Both are good sources of potassium, magnesium, and other vitamins in minerals.

Oh my goodness!

These smell fabulous.

Ooh, yeah, taking them by the wooden toothpick.

It's not really, it's not that hot.

So let's get these on the plate.

I personally don't think these need a lot of extra glaze, but let's just put a little bit on top for the folks who might want a little extra oomph of sweetness and kick from the cilantro and hot chili flakes.

All right, there we have them, bacon-wrapped dates, ready for your guests.

(bright music) This is Chef Todd English's recipe for the tastiest marinated olives ever.

I keep a jar of these in the refrigerator all the time.

They are great to serve as an appetizer for my guests or in my case, just eating them right out of the jar.

So to get started with our olives, we are going to take all of these delicious herbs and zests and get them mixed up in, I've got a small little food processor here, which works perfectly, but certainly whatever you have.

If you have a blender, that would work too.

So what I'm putting in there is the zest of half of a lemon and half of an orange.

We're adding some fresh ginger that I just chopped roughly.

Next up, two cloves of garlic into the mix.

And now we have our delicious fresh herbs.

Here we have rosemary, about a tablespoon.

Here we have fresh oregano, same amount, about a tablespoon.

I'm not worried about the stems because we're gonna get them all nice and cut up when we process it.

This is flat-leaf parsley, about a tablespoon or so.

This looks about right, maybe just a little bit more.

Salt and pepper.

About a fourth of a teaspoon of chili pepper flakes.

You can put in more if you like it more spicy, less if you don't want the spice.

And here we have fennel seeds, which mm, give it just a wonderful earthy flavor to our marinade.

And they go.

All right, let's get our lid on.

And I'm just going to keep pulsing this until it becomes a little bit of a pasty herby wonderfulness.

Ooh, looking good.

Now, we are going to take two cups of olives.

I am using these green olives with the stuffed pimentos because these are my favorite.

But certainly feel free to use whatever olives you like.

Olives are really small stone fruits that come from olive trees.

And depending on when the olive is harvested, really determines the color.

So these green olives were picked unripe, they're a little bit firmer and they have a sharper flavor where the black dark brown olives, those are fully ripe olives.

They're softer and they're milder.

I think some common types that you may have already heard of are obviously green.

There are also Kalamata, Manzanilla, and Niçoise olives.

So feel free, be creative, choose whatever you like.

Sometimes it's fun just to get a colorful mix of olives, but like I said, these are my faves.

So, that's what we're using today.

So two cups of olives.

We are going to add all of our herby-fruity deliciousness.

Now it's really pretty simple.

We're just going to mix that together with our olives.

So we're just making sure that every olive has a little bit of herby deliciousness.

And then once we're happy with that, we are going to grab a jar.

Hands.

Best tools.

Just going to get these in.

And once you get as many olives that'll fit in your jar, all you're gonna do is cover it to the top with olive oil.

What I'm using for this is some extra virgin olive oil.

I like it 'cause it has a little bit of that olivey flavor, but yet it's still light and you're really not eating or tasting a whole lot of the olive oil, but you're just keeping it mixed with the olives to keep them moist.

And it's a great vehicle to kind of marinate the olives in.

A little bit more, get it to the tippy-top.

They are ready now if you like, but I love to make these ahead of time.

I just keep them in the fridge.

And they're available for whoever, mostly myself, right?

But they're available for whoever anytime.

Mm!

I just love these things.

Put the lid on.

You can eat them now, but they're even better if you let them sit for a day or so and let all of those flavors kind of meld together.

(bright music) I made these prosciutto pesto Gruyère pinwheels, oh, about a month ago, they've been in the freezer.

So I just now got them out of the freezer.

I am going to get them on a baking sheet and pop them in the oven.

Let me get them in.

They're going in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes.

And while they're baking, I'll show you how I put them together.

We start with some store-bought puff pastry.

Puff pastry is laminated dough with many thin layers of dough and butter.

It's made from flour, butter, water, and salt.

It's got this wonderful texture.

It's flaky, crisp, airy when you bake it.

And it works because the butter layers create steam in the oven that puff the dough up.

So you'll see puff pastry in tarts, in turnovers, in pot pies, and sweets like palmiers.

You wanna make sure you keep the pastry cold because the warm butter melts and then would ruin the layers.

You won't get that flakiness at all, but it is an awesome tool to have in your kitchen for baked goods.

And when you buy it from the store, you get all of the work done for you and you get all the glory from the deliciousness.

So to start, we need just, I'm just gonna lightly flour my board and spread out our puff pastry, remove our little papers and I am going to try to roll it out to about a 10 by 12 rectangle.

It doesn't have to be perfect, but you do just kind of wanna thin it out a bit.

Nice, I'm just gonna even it up here, a little bit on the sides.

Alright, perfect.

Now to this, we need to spread some basil pesto.

That's our first layer.

And we're just going to spread it as evenly and smoothly as possible.

But we want to make sure to leave about a half an inch on the far side here, because that's where we're going to connect the dough edges together.

And by the way, this is just store-bought pesto.

There are so many great varieties on the shelf, but if you feel so inclined, you can certainly make your own.

That's looking good.

Next up, we're gonna layer our prosciutto.

You just kind of an even layer of the yummy, salty goodness.

Perfect.

And now on top of our prosciutto, we are going to cover that with this shredded Gruyère cheese.

You can use whatever cheese you prefer.

I like kind of the nuttiness of the Gruyère with the combination of the salty of the prosciutto and then the the garlicy, wonderful herby basil pesto.

The Gruyère is a good choice, but if you like Swiss cheese, if you like any sort of a hard cheese, better than Gruyère by all means.

All right, so now let's just beat up our egg a bit.

And we're gonna just take our brush, our pastry brush, and spread a little bit of the egg on our border here.

So that's gonna serve as the glue to hold our puff pastry together.

All right, starting from the end closest to you, we're just gonna start doing a little rolling action here to get it started and then try to bring it together as tightly as possible and just kind of keep going back and forth as you roll.

And then when you get to the end, press down so that that egg kind of serves as the glue.

I've got a piece of plastic wrap here and I'm just gonna wrap this roll in the plastic wrap and let it firm up in the fridge.

And once it firms up, I'm just gonna take it out, I'm gonna slice it up, put it into a freezer bag, and pop it in the freezer for the next time that I either have company or just want a little snack for myself.

The other thing that you could do is make two of these, some of the puff pastry that you buy in the store have two different puff pastry logs in there.

So you can make two of them, just as easy to do two at once and make one maybe for dinner and freeze the other one.

I think our pinwheels are ready to come out of the oven.

Oh yes.

Look at how yummy these look.

Can you see how, ooh, the cheese is all nice and melty?

You can see the pesto and you can even see some of that prosciutto hanging out.

Yummy!

The only other thing we need to do is chop up some fresh basil for us to sprinkle on top.

Prosciutto, basil pesto and Gruyère pinwheels.

Voila, here they are.

(bright music) There is something so warm and welcoming about a warm cup of mulled apple cider.

It's almost like drinking a warm apple pie.

You can double or triple this recipe to have mulling spices all season long.

They would also make great hostess gifts packaged with some apple cider and maybe a cup of mugs.

So for our recipe today, we're going to use these spices, and I've measured these out already.

For the most part, where we need one-fourth cup of spices.

So like our star anise, this is one-fourth cup.

So I'm just gonna dump it into a bowl.

I'm not going to use a full one-fourth or even one-third cup of these allspice berries, which I think is in your recipe because ugh, they are really strong and I'm not the biggest fan.

But if you love allspice, by all means, add as many as you like.

And now we're gonna do all of the crystallized ginger, all of the cardamon pods.

And then we're gonna hold off for this until we, you know, just get this nicely mashed up.

So I'm gonna wait a second before I put that in the bowl.

But then I'm also going to put, I think maybe eight.

Oops.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 cinnamon sticks.

And if you like cinnamon, you can certainly use a few more.

What we need to do next is put these in a plastic bag 'cause we're gonna mash them up with our rolling pin or if you have a mallet or whatever you like to get your stress out with.

What this does is it helps to release some of those oils in the spices.

We can't forget our orange peel.

Give it a good mix.

You can put this in some cheesecloth, a little square of cheesecloth and tie it up.

Or I have these awesome little muslin bags that I just got online.

They've got a little drawstring.

So all you need to do is put about an eighth to a fourth of a cup of our spice mix into the bags.

Now you can bag the rest of these up.

These will store for a good three to four months.

Keep them in something that's kind of an airtight jar, I think I would recommend.

And honestly, I love to give these as gifts.

So, I do double, I triple sometimes this recipe and just make lots of little bags for everyone.

But now let's actually get our apple cider going.

I'm putting it on a burner because I'm just gonna keep this going all day long and it's gonna make the house smell wonderful and it will stay nice and warm.

So all we're gonna do to get this started is just pour this deliciousness into our teapot.

Turn the burner on to medium heat.

This will need to steep into the apple cider for about 20 minutes.

So just get your little muslin bag of spices into the liquid, cover it up and let it go.

After that time, we're gonna come, we're gonna remove our spice bag and just keep it warm until we're ready to enjoy our appetizers.

(bright music) Our mulled apple cider is smelling wonderful.

I removed the spice bag after about 20 minutes and I've just kind of let it stay simmering on the stove top.

I am going to pour some now.

Ooh, look at that deliciousness.

And before my guests arrive, I'll have myself some little snacks.

So there you have it, three delicious appetizers and some warm mulled apple cider.

You never know, this year might be the year I get all my shopping finished early.

Mm, probably not.

But you can't blame a girl for dreaming.

Thanks for stopping by.

See you next time!

(bright music)