With this kind of food, you definitely eat it with your eyes first, before it even reaches your mouth, so appealing presentation is key. I like to think of the combinations of shapes, colours and textures within each morsel, as well as making sure there is a pleasing variety of individual dishes on the tray or buffet table.
Because each item is only a few mouthfuls, it’s important to me that the flavours are bold and distinct, as well as achieving a good balance of sweet and salty within savoury nibbles.
I also like to be fairly playful with the format of my canapés, so my guests can enjoy a nice range of mini dishes, all easily eaten while chatting and enjoying a nice glass of wine.
Here are a few of my recent canapé experiments:
• Salmon tartare on homemade blinis
• Warm roe deer loin with horseradish on melba toast
…And on oriental china spoons:
• Pork pie with port-enriched cranberry sauce
• Tagliata – medium sirloin, sliced, with rocket, parmesan shavings and an olive oil and white balsamic drizzle
The BBC Good Food site has lots of canapé ideas for further inspiration.
Of course these delightful small dishes could be equally at home served as a precursor to your main Christmas Dinner…
Canapés are the perfect excuse to get creative and experiment with different flavour combinations and presentations – go forth and have some fun in your kitchen!
Enjoy!
Stefan
- The best Sausage Rolls in the world?
Guess what’s put a spring in our step this morning?…
…this great review of our sausage rolls from The Pursuit of Quality
Although we feel very comfortable with our butchery skills, we’re not the best at blowing our own trumpet – so it means a lot when other discerning bloggers do it for us! Because we’re somewhat geekily obsessed with striving for the best quality in our food, we feel an affinity for this blogger’s mission. We’re really chuffed with the kind words for our product – thank you The Pursuit of Quality!
One great festive meal option which unfortunately seems to get overlooked in the clamour for turkey is fish. We have a fantastic whole salmon which looks amazing when you carry it to the table, and it cooks within just 20 minutes!
Whilst many would consider smoked salmon for a starter to the main Christmas meal, a magnificent baked salmon can be a great feature dish, its rosy pink meat bringing a lovely warm splash of colour to the Christmas table.
If you don’t fancy it for your Christmas Dinner, how about taking a note from various European Christmas traditions and serve a beautiful whole fish for your Christmas Eve dinner? (I would serve the salmon with some creamy risotto gently flavoured with lemon and garlic – delicious!)
You could use the Italian tradition of the Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes as inspiration for a different take on your usual December 24th culinary activities. If I were drawing from our own larder here at Donald Russell, I’d serve five simple dishes using Langoustines, Scallops,
