Christmas Party Food Tips from Jacqui Hobbs

As the party season approaches it can be very tempting to buy in lots of ready prepared snacks to serve to guests, but with a little thought and effort anyone can produce something original with fantastic flavours to keep people talking long after they have left.

Here are my top tips:
‘Mini meals’ remain fashionable. Yorkshire pudding with rare roast beef and horseradish cream; home-made soup served in schott glasses, chicken curry served on Chinese spoons, Thai fish cakes served on cocktail sticks, mini lamb burgers served in a pitta bread.

Prepare in advance and freeze. Have a least half your items prepared this way. Puff pastry, filo, and spring roll pastry can all be used to create items such as samosas - potato, pea and fresh spices, spring rolls - ginger, butternut squash and coriander; empanadas - goats’ cheese and Chorizo.

A mini muffin tin is an essential piece of kit. With this you can make your mini Yorkshire’s and freeze (just warm through before serving), prepare warm cheddar and rosemary muffins, make croustade cases, filo cases and frittata.

Create high visual impact. What do you have at home to stylise your presentation? Trancher plates in gold or red, grey slate table mats, schott glasses all make a good backdrop. If you have an Asian theme look out for banana leaves from oriental supermarkets (just wipe over with a little vegetable oil for shine).

Use strong colours and vary texture. Good quality sourdough makes crunchy crostini. Hollowed out cucumber can be filled with tapenade. With a food processor you can quickly whizz up any number of interesting fillings for tart cases very quickly. Beetroot and pumpkin seed hummus is good (top this with sour cream and chive garnish) or cannellini beans blitzed with olive oil and fresh parsley.

For parties with a timescale, start to wind down with sweet items and switch from alcohol to tea and coffee. Individual chocolate, hazelnut and orange tarts can be made and frozen, or prepare a square cake and cut into bite size portions. Coffee and walnut looks good as does lemon drizzle with crystallised peel.

Turn to page 33 to see Jacqui’s November recipe.

To contact Jacqui please use any of the following:
Tel: 01273 422459
Mob: 07769 617664
Email: jacqui@cooking-in.com
Website: www.cooking-in.com

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