A wedding in the family: Wedding Shower Part II – Blue Cheese Wrapped Grapes with Spicy Pistachios

As promised, here is more of the food that Yes!Chef! prepared for his daughter’s wedding shower:  Blue Cheese and Pistachio Wrapped Grapes.  If you have never made these before, this is the time of year to try these.  They are cool and refreshing, sweet, crunchy and spicy.

I am of the opinion that bright colors make everything look better, but these blue cheese wrapped grapes rolled in a spicy pistachio mixture goes particularly well with the bright colors that we used at my daughter’s wedding shower.  Her maid of honor brought roses, gerbera daisies and white flowers to decorate our home for the shower.  The bright green pistachios seemed perfect with this color scheme.

And!  Everyone seemed to like them.

The grapes go so well with blue cheese, and when you add toasted crunchy, candied pistachios with a little kick from the Chipotle Chile Pepper, you truly have an easy and tasty finger food.  When you pop it into your mouth, you get a burst of all those flavors. A great Amuse Bouche.

You can see the juiciness of the grape, creaminess of the cheese and the salty, Chipotle spicy chopped nut mixture.  Now doesn’t this make you want to try one?

Speaking of wrapped…one of the games we played at the shower was wrapping some of the attendees in toilet paper shaped as a wedding dress.  We formed teams and one girl from each team volunteered to be the “bride”.  The rest of the team came up with a high couture toilet paper fashioned dress.  The real bride gets to judge the winner.

The Winner!  Miss Chrissy.

I’m sure you can see why this wrapped bride won the contest.  Kudos to her designers!

And here is the real bride with her soon to be mother-in-law (on the left) and her mother-in-law’s sister (on the right.)  Bride to be is in the middle (also my beautiful daughter.)

Now, you do not have to throw a wedding shower (or a baby shower) in order to make these easy and tasty appetizers.  They are good for a Friday night with a great white wine or even a pinot noir (one of my favorites).  They will also hold up well for a picnic.  They are also great for a family Sunday meal, like Yes!Chef!’s Sunday Roasted chicken.

Here’s a little visual for you to see how I made them.

I would advise making all the cheese wrappings on the grapes before rolling them in the nuts.  The cheese part can be very messy and you don’t want to mix your cheesy fingers with the nuts because then the nuts will become mixed into the cheese.

I put a few of the cheese wrapped grapes in the nut mixture, sprinkled some mixture over each grapes and then rolled in the mixture ensuring that the nuts stuck to the grapes.

You can put toothpicks into them before serving, if you want.

Here’s the recipe developed by me (Mrs. Y!C!)

Yields: 40 appetizers

Ingredients

6	oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
6	oz. crumbled blue cheese, at room temperature
1	cup shelled roasted and salted pistachios
2	Tb. sugar
½	Tb. sea salt (or more to taste)
¼	tsp. ground Chipotle Chile Pepper
1	bunch large red grapes, washed and removed from stems

Directions

1. Blend cream cheese and blue cheese together until smooth and well blended.

2. Place pistachios, sugar, sea salt and ground Chipotle Chile Pepper in blender or food processor. Pulse ingredients until the pistachios are ground but not powdery.

3. Place pistachio mixture in a non-stick fry pan on medium heat. Stir until you begin to smell the pistachios toasting and the sugar begins to melt. Continue to stir until mixture is toasty. Remove from heat, if necessary while stirring so that nuts don’t burn. Cool to room temperature.

4. Place cheese mixture in one bowl and nut mixture on a plate. Take one grape at a time and cover in the cheese mixture, but not too thick. The cheese should barely cover the grape. Do this with all the grapes that you plan to serve.

5. Place the cheesy wrapped grapes in the nut mixture one at a time and roll thoroughly in the nuts. Set aside and rolls the next cheesy grape. Do this for all grapes.

6. Place the grapes on a serving plate and chill until ready to serve. It gets better as it warms to room temperature.

This recipe printed from Key Ingredient.
Direct recipe link: http://www.keyingredient.com/recipes/444662225/blue-cheese-grapes-with-spicy-toasted-pistachios/

Then, take them out to your deck with a great glass of wine and share them with someone you love.

And enjoy the day, the company, the appetizers and the little things…you know, the things that matter.

Enjoy!