Rob Carson; Hi! My name is Rob Carson, I'm a radio personality, I'm also a Gourmet cook and my goal with these videos is to bring couples and families and foody friends together in the kitchen and also to demystify things you might have been afraid to try otherwise.

Today we are making a really, really simple fresh appetizer. I call it Carson's goat cheese tomato thingy on cucumber slices. Yeah, that's what it's called. So the ingredients I'm going to need for my goat cheese sun-dried tomato thingy on cucumber slices is goat cheese, okay.

Now I've got a log of goat cheese. That's generally what comes in -- it comes in smaller packets, I'm going to use a whole log of goat cheese. It's not like a traditional cheese log because it's goat cheese. Also I've got some great sun-dried tomatoes chopped very finely in olive oil, okay. I've got some rich garlic, got a Japanese cucumber, got a little salt and little pepper.

I'm going to need a nice chef's knife. I'm going to need a spoon. I'm going to use a spatula and this is going to be interesting, I'm using a freezer bag today and I'll explain what that's for coming up in a few minutes. So let's get started making my goat cheese sun-dried tomato thingy on cucumber slices.

What do I do first is take my log of goat cheese and we'll stick in the microwave and soften it up a little bit. Probably 30-45 seconds because it's a large log.

Alright, there is my goat cheese softened up very nicely, cool, not too soft though, see.

I'm going to go ahead and again with a lot of other recipes that I do exact measurements aren't necessary, like I said about a log of goat cheese, this is about 12 ounces of goat cheese. I've got my sun-dried tomatoes all chopped up, you can buy these in the grocery store, sun-dried tomatoes, you can buy them in shop, you can buy whole sun-dried tomatoes. Leave a little bit of olive oil in them and just pure them very nicely. We are going to add this. Let me use a spoon.

I'm going to say about a-third of a cup of sun-dried's, okay, actually I want to amend that. Third-to-a-half, there you go. We've got some finely chopped garlic, let's go ahead and add about a tablespoon to a tablespoon-and-a-half, sea salt or kosher salt, half of teaspoon to a teaspoon. Goat cheese is kind of salty anyway, so you don't want to over salt it. Fresh cracked pepper, half teaspoon to a teaspoon again.

Alright, I'm going to mix this up. This is going to be a really pretty color and the flavor of the tomato with the goat cheese just absolutely kicks butt.

Stir it thoroughly so the color is throughout. It's all one uniform color. Now believe it or not that's all you really need. It's pretty simple. Where you get the kudos is not only the flavor but also the presentation because I'm going to show you how to make this look like a cool little appetizer when you serve it for your guests. We'll do that next.

Instead of using a baguette or a cracker which you can do with this, you certainly can serve this as a spread with crackers, you certainly can put dollups of it on a baguette slices. I'm going to serve this on cucumber slices. I find that the cucumber adds a real freshness and a coolness to it and also doesn't add a lot of carbs and lot of extra fatness stuff in it. So I'm going to go ahead and cut these up, make it fairly thin.

So essentially you are just using a cucumber slice as the platform for your goat cheese spread.

Look I'm faster than a Ginsu knife. Here we go! I'm going to lay these out on my platter here. This is obviously a kind of labor intensive when you add the goat cheese, I'll show you it's a small slice, I'm going to replace that. You lay them out here very nicely, okay.

Now I'm going to do something very white trash, okay. Instead of using a traditional pastry bag which you can use, it's perfectly fine; I'm going to use this zip like bag, okay. It's always messy, when you're done then you can throw it away.

I'm going to put it all the way down at the end like this, then just like a pastry bag I'm going to twist it like that, okay. I'm going to take my scissors and I am just going to pop the tip off of that and we are ready to make my goat cheese sun-dried tomato cucumber thingy. Watch this, pretty simple. Seriously that was not amazing. Very, very simple, let's go ahead and add some more here.

We're serving a bunch of our friends, this is just a really nice little -- if you're going to do multiple appetizers and when you do a lot of appetizers it just takes a lot of time. It can take more time than the meal as far as prep. If you're going to do multiple appetizers this is a real easy one, real simple. It only takes a few minutes as you can plainly say. And your guests are going to love it. It's fresh, you can eat a bunch of them, you won't get overfull.

See that! If you really good you can make it look like top of a Dairy Queen ice-cream cone, but I'm not that good, I'm not a pastry chef.

There you go guys. And there is my goat cheese sun-dried tomato cucumber thingy.

Enjoy it!