Game day goes gourmet with crowd-pleasing finger foods

There’s quite a bit of wiggle room in this recipe — all baguettes are not created equal, and some are much larger than the ones I’ve used in this recipe — so adjust accordingly with your sauce and cheese.

• 2 baguettes, cut in 6-inch pieces and split in half
• 1 recipe pizza sauce (recipe follows)
• 2 (4.40-ounce) balls fresh mozzarella, torn into pieces
• Handful of fresh basil leaves
• About 1 cup fresh grated Parmesan

1. Heat oven to broil. Put baguette pieces on a cookie sheet and toast until they’re medium-brown.

2. Lightly sauce toasted baguette pieces and scatter mozzarella pieces on top — you want these to be nearly covered with cheese but not all the way. Put baguettes back into oven and cook until cheese melts and is bubbly. Remove and add torn basil and a generous amount of Parmesan. Slice into smallish pieces.

• Olive oil
• 1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon basil
• 2 teaspoons oregano
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon honey

Drizzle a bit of olive oil into a medium saucepan, add minced garlic, and turn heat to medium. Let cook for a couple of minutes, just until you start to smell the garlic. Add remaining ingredients, stir, and let simmer on low heat for an hour.

Cowgirl tip: Left with extra sauce? Let cool completely, pour into quart-size freezer bags, and lay them flat, for easy storage. When you’re ready for a pizza, thaw or microwave the sauce.

Nutritional analysis per serving, based on 6: 608 calories, 17 grams fat, 90 grams carbohydrates, 23 grams protein, 37 milligrams cholesterol, 1,694 milligrams sodium, 5 grams dietary fiber, 26 percent of calories from fat.

The game plan

The day before:

▪ Make the pizza sauce.

▪ Buy the best, freshest baguettes you can find.

• 4 pounds sweet potatoes (the smaller the better)
• About  1/3 cup olive oil
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• 1  1/2 cups black beans, rinsed and drained if using canned
• Turkey chorizo (recipe follows)
• 5.29 ounces goat cheese
• 8 slices bacon, cooked until crispy
• Fresh chives, for garnish
• Fresh cilantro, chopped, for garnish

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Rinse and scrub sweet potatoes well and dry them off. Prick the potatoes all over with a fork and lightly coat each with a half-teaspoon or less olive oil — these will go directly on an oven rack and you don’t want them to drip.

2. Put potatoes directly onto the middle oven rack. Baking time will vary according to the size of the potatoes. Small ones will take about 35 minutes, larger ones up to an hour. They’re ready when you can touch them and they feel pretty soft. Remove cooked potatoes from oven and place them on a rack to cool.

3. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, split them in two and remove most of the insides, leaving a shell about  1/4 inch thick. Although you won’t be using the insides for the potato skins, they make great mashed potatoes and potato pancakes, so refrigerate for later use.

4. Bake potato shells about 10 minutes more to firm them up. I brush a tiny bit of olive oil on the insides and outsides, and put them on a cookie rack to make removing them from the oven easier.

5. Set oven to broil. On half of shells, sprinkle 1 to 2 tablespoons shredded cheddar. For the rest, put 1 tablespoon black beans in the bottom, 1 heaping tablespoon turkey chorizo on top, then 1 to 2 tablespoons of goat cheese or goat cheese crumbles. Put in oven to melt cheese. Remove from oven and top cheddar cheese skins with bacon crumbles and chopped chives. Add chopped cilantro to black bean-chorizo skins. Serve right away.

Note: If you can’t find small sweet potatoes, use large ones, and when it’s time to roast the skins’ shells, slice them into smaller pieces.

Providing all of the flavor but without the oink, this is a turkey variation of the pork chorizo recipe in my book.

• 2 pounds ground turkey
• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• 2 tablespoons Spanish paprika
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
•  1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons sea salt

1. Mix everything together in a big bowl with your hands.

2. Make a small chorizo patty, cook it in a skillet and taste for seasonings. Cook remaining chorizo and freeze 1 to 2 months, or freeze uncooked chorizo for 1 to 2 months, then thaw and cook when ready to use.

Nutritional analysis per serving: 355 calories, 19 grams fat, 25 grams carbohydrates, 20 grams protein, 72 milligrams cholesterol, 554 milligrams sodium, 4 grams dietary fiber, 49 percent of calories from fat.

The game plan

The day before, do the following prep:

▪ Bake the sweet potatoes.

▪ Make and cook the chorizo.

▪ Fry the bacon.

Dressing:

• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 anchovy fillets (or 1 tablespoon of paste)
• 1 heaping teaspoon Dijon mustard
• Sea salt and pepper
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1 or 2 splashes Tabasco sauce
• 1 egg
• About  2/3 cup olive oil

Chipotle chicken:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 chipotle chiles in adobo, finely chopped
• 4 cups cooked chicken, shredded
• Sea salt
• 1 large head of romaine lettuce
• 1 cup shredded Romano cheese
• 10 tostada shells
• 1 avocado, chopped

1. Make the dressing: Whisk together garlic, anchovy, Dijon, salt and pepper. Add lemon juice, vinegar and Tabasco. Whisk in egg and as much olive oil as needed to pull it all together. Taste-as-you-go is the rule here. When you’ve got the dressing as you like it, keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to assemble the tostadas.

2. Make chicken: Put 2 tablespoons olive oil, onion and garlic in a large skillet. Cook over medium-low heat until you can smell the onion and garlic and the onion becomes translucent, about 5 minutes. Add chipotles and chicken and stir until everything’s incorporated and warmed through. Season as needed. Set aside.

3. Rinse, dry and chop romaine into 1-inch strips and put in a large salad bowl. When ready to assemble, add as much dressing as needed and toss with some of the cheese. Serve on tostada shells with  1/2 cup of chicken on top, some chopped avocado and additional cheese.

Nutritional analysis per serving, based on 8: 605 calories, 41 grams fat, 29 grams carbohydrates, 32 grams protein, 101 milligrams cholesterol, 393 milligrams sodium, 5 grams dietary fiber, 60 percent of calories from fat.

The game plan

▪ Make the chipotle chicken the day before.

▪ Make the dressing the morning of.

Brownies:

• 1 tablespoon butter, for greasing the pan
•  3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3.5 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate (recommended: 70 percent)
• 1/3 cup butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs

Peanut butter swirl:

•  2/3 cup smooth peanut butter (I like Skippy.)
• 2/3 cup powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons cream

Caramelized peanuts:

•  1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 cup salted and roasted peanuts

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees and line a 9-by-12-inch pan with foil. Generously butter the foil-lined pan.

2. Whisk or sift together flour, baking powder and salt.

3. Melt cocoa powder, chocolate and butter over a double boiler. This won’t take long — about 5 minutes. When it melts, whisk it all together, then add sugar, eggs and flour mixture all at once and stir with a wooden spoon. Don’t overdo; this just takes a few stirs. Spread batter in pan.

4. Make peanut butter swirl: Whisk together peanut butter, powdered sugar and cream until it’s smooth. Drop on the top of the brownie batter in spoonfuls. If you want to be fancy, take a knife and run it through the peanut butter blobs to make swirls. Bake 30 minutes or until the top is crackly and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let brownies cool in pan.

5. Make caramelized peanuts: Put sugar and water in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Stir to combine, then leave it alone. No need to overwork this; the heat will do the magic. When the sugar starts to darken, add peanuts and stir. When you see the sugar seize up, keep stirring until it becomes peanuts in caramel. Pour hot mix onto a sheet of foil and use a heatproof spatula or wooden spoon to spread it out. Let cool completely, then chop candy into small pieces.

6. While the brownies are cooling, add candied peanuts to the top and press down slightly so some of them sink in. These are best when they’ve had a chance to completely cool off — and even better the next day.

Nutritional analysis per brownie: 407 calories, 24 grams fat, 45 grams carbohydrates, 9 grams protein, 54 milligrams cholesterol, 302 milligrams sodium, 3 grams dietary fiber, 49 percent of calories from fat.