Obviously, the most useful resource will be recipes, so that will be a main focus. It will also take some time to get through my archives, so here's where you can get involved. Any questions you have relating to food and cooking, I challenge you to ask, and I will do my best to answer it quickly. If it's a recipe you want and I haven't entered it on the site yet, I will find it and move it to the front of the line, so you can make use of it. I won't lead you astray - any recipe I give you has worked for me. If your query is something new to me, I'll at least do my best to source out the answer among my library of cookbooks, chefs I know and work with, or other websites I refer to.
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Hi Blair!
ReplyDeleteI have a challenge! (probably not for you!!!)
In August I am having a house warming ( wish you could come, but I think there will be more important things going on in your life!)
I would like to prepare some simple but GREAT finger food (buffet) for vegetarians and meat eaters. It has to be OK sitting on a table for a couple of hours( AND our fridge is very small!)
Any suggestions would be VERY welcome.
Thank you!
P.S I will be using a couple of your cocktail and drink ideas! Love them! :0) Roberta
Hi Roberta! Yea,, I think we'll have our hands full, but I'll see what I can come up with. Right off the bat, tortilla pinwheels are simple, easy to make a lot, and with a creative filling can be really popular. A quinoa salad as a filling can work nicely, but you need to have a binding element - mayo, cream cheese, tomato sauce - or it will fall everywhere when you cut the tortilla.
DeleteIf you can find it, you can get textured soy protein in the shape of meatballs. Carla and I found that they really absorb flavour nicely. You could make a nice vegetarian broth, cook them up in it, then skewer them and either serve with a neat glaze or even give them a quick turn on a grill like shish kebabs.
Stuffed mushroom caps usually go over well, I like to get larger ones (as they'll shrink) and poach them up in a dark brew with some soy sauce, worchestershire and what have you (make sure you like the taste before you put the shrooms in). Once cooked, they are really dark, then you can skewer them vertically with toothpicks with roast peppers, cheese grilled onion and serve either hot or cold.
Meat eaters are usually a bit easier. If you have time, cook up a short rib, then shred it and bind it back together with some of the braising liquid. Then you can fill little pastry shells with it and top it off with mashed potato or a cooked puree of celeriac. These can be assembled ahead of time and heated up in batches as you need them.
Pulled pork is another great one. Same as short rib - braise, pull and mix with the sauce. Find some little slider buns (baby brioches if you can). Mix some chipotle with mayo as a spread, a little pickled onion and you're good.
Carla is saying fried taquitos. Make a mashed potato with onion cilantro and garlic, warm up and fill corn tortillas, then give them a little pan fry to make them crispy. If they are large, you can cut them.
I'll see what else I can come up with. If you have any specific foods you want to use, let me know and I'll try some ideas around those.
cheers, Blair