Be Unafraid - Very Unafraid

Gathering around a table and having a meal together with friends and family is one of the most convivial times we can have. Yet a lot of people stress about issuing a dinner invitation: You may not feel proficient in the kitchen, don't know how to put together a menu, don't have enough matching dishes, don't have enough time, your friends are better cooks than you, etc. etc. Meanwhile, you are missing out on gratifyingly good times.

 Here's my take - Make it easy. Make it fun. Cook what you know. Cook what's in season and what's on sale. You don't have to create an elaborate 5-course feast. A roasted chicken stuffed with lemon and herbs, oven roasted baby potatoes, a fresh green salad - that's a lovely meal! Open a bottle of wine and have a loaf of crusty bread, and you're in business.

Your guests will remember you, your warmth, the good times they had, the atmosphere you created. Therefore, relax and enjoy.

 For starters - literally - here's an appetizer idea. At other people's parties, I had had raspberry-chipotle sauce poured over cream cheese, served with crackers. Delish! However, the sauce was always bottled. Not that there's anything wrong with that... But  - making your own food from fresh ingredients is always preferable. Therefore, I came up with my own version of...

  Raspberry-Chipotle Sauce

In Phoenix, canned chipotle peppers are easy to find at the grocery store. Not so in Florida. So good luck with this, depending on where you live. A chipotle pepper is a ripe (red) jalapeno that has been smoked and then preserved in adobo sauce. Adobo is a tomato-based chile sauce. The result involves peppers that are quite hot and a deeply flavorful sauce. For this recipe you will use both components - peppers and sauce.


If you have easy access to affordable raspberries (don't laugh), use those. Otherwise:

1 12 oz bag of frozen raspberries

1/2 cup light brown or raw sugar (you can use white if you must)

1/2 cup water

 Combine all of this in a pot, bring to a careful simmer and let it bubble until the raspberries have fallen apart and you basically have a jam - about 15 minutes. Taste for sweetness - it should not be cloying, but also not particularly tart. Your berries will vary.

 When the raspberry mixture has cooled somewhat, place in a blender and add 1-2 chipotle peppers and about 1 tbs adobo sauce from the can. ( Put the rest of the chipotles and sauce into a baggie. Press it flat and seal. Pop in freezer. Next time  you want a pepper, you can break one off and thaw.)

Blend the raspberries and peppers until smooth. Add a little water if it is too thick. Season lightly with salt. Check for heat, salt, sweetness and adjust your ingredients accordingly.

This keeps for quite some time in the fridge and can be made 1 or 2 days ahead of your dinner.

To serve, let sauce come to room temperature. Place a block (or 1/2 of a block) of good cream cheese on a pretty plate and drool a bunch of the sauce over it. Serve with neutral crackers - such as whole grain water crackers. Your guests can determine their own heat level by helping themselves to more or less cream cheese with the sauce.

This is pretty, delicious, and generally very popular. Sweet/savory is always a fun combination. Give it a try!