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Savoury delights at Christmas
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| A warm moment for getting together with the family, Christmas is the right occasion to get carried away with trying out tempting gastronomic delights. Here is a quick overview of snacks and light savouries to get Christmas dinner underway with an imaginative touch. |
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CANAPÉS, VOL-AU-VENT AND SAVOURY PANETTONE |
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These are perhaps the most traditional Christmas appetisers. Canapés with and without gelatine, vol-au-vents of all kinds and colours and delicious panettone with a savoury filing. Delicacies that are good to look at as well as to eat.
It is easy to prepare them. Each canapé is made with sliced bread which can be cut to different shapes: imaginative hearts, stars and teddy bears or more traditional circles, triangles and squares. The sauces then are essential: from mayonnaise to fruit pickle, cocktail and capricciosa sauces. Once has decided on the ingredients, one proceeds with setting them out with imaginative colour combinations.
Once garnished and left to cool in the fridge, they can be enhanced with gelatine. They should be put on a pastry rack and, using a brush or a ladle, allow the gelatine to trickle over them delicately until a uniform layer has formed. They are ready to serve after a few hours in the fridge. The vol-au-vents, on the other hand, are small baskets of puff pastry which "puff up" when warmed in the oven. They can be stuffed according to taste, with vegetable fillings (ham and pea filling mixed with cream is a good one to try), cheeses (the filling made with fresh goat's cheese and mushrooms is excellent) or fish (fillings with prawns and seafood are a must).
Last of all, serving a savoury panettone as an appetiser before Christmas dinner or a cocktail party with friends is an appealing idea. It consists of a cylinder of bread for slicing (this can be ordered in advance from the baker) which is cut into layers and stuffed with ham, tuna, salmon and hard boiled eggs.
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NIBBLES ON A SPOON, REFINED DELICACIES |
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A tempting idea for giving a new touch to the usual appetiser is to serve nibbles on a spoon. Also perfect for a party appetiser, their originality lies in the elegant single-portion presentation and the possibility to serve them both cold or dipped in warm sauces. Here are a few ideas. Prepare meatballs of beef mixed with sausage, or veal softened with breadcrumbs. Once fried, put each one on a spoon and place on a bed of fruit pickle or a fine mixture of hardboiled egg mixed with thyme and parsley and mixed with a little olive oil and a sprinkling of balsamic vinegar. Those who prefer more delicate flavours can opt for a ham mousse, blended together with butter, melon and mango. After forming into small balls, roll in chives and present well chilled on a spoon. For a more exotic flavour, try boiled prawn's tails. Perfect for serving on a warm curry sauce, prepare it by adding blended crab's meat to butter and a tomato sauce with a pinch of curry powder.
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PÂTÉ, MARBRÉ, TERRINES AND GALANTINE |
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Eye-catching and very elegant, pâtés are a classic at Christmas time. The most sophisticated ones are those that use duck's liver, though there are many other recipes that consent imaginative variations. The only condition is that one must be a particularly able cook as it takes time and experience to get a good result. An alternative to classic pâté is to prepare one with chicken liver, typical in Tuscany. This should be served on croutons, or for an unusual touch on thin slices of currant bread. Rabbit pâté is also excellent, prepared by blending butter and roast rabbit together after flavouring with cognac, whisky and port over a flame.
The different specialities similar to pâté are also exquisite, such as marbré and terrines, prepared by arranging different types of meat cut into pieces in an ovenproof dish. Both are served cold and sliced. The result is a kind of compact mosaic, which is both attractive and delicious. Galantine also creates a mosaic effect, although it is distinguished by the fact that the stuffing is wrapped inside a slice of meat which holds it in.The effect is fun and colourful (the stuffing can also contain chopped vegetables) and the flavour, enhanced by the combination of different ingredients, is mouth-watering.
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SALMON, OYSTERS AND CAVIAR |
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Christmas dinner is also an opportunity to try out new flavours such as salmon, oysters and caviar. Smoked salmon, for example, is the favourite fish at Christmas time, served on a board and accompanied with bread croutons or used for preparing buttered and gelatine coated canapés. Prawns are also used for this purpose: one can choose from the type already boiled and sold in glass jars or frozen ones which should first be scalded in boiling water.
If you want to astonish guests with an appetiser fit for a king, oyster and caviar are ideal. It is recommendable though to cook the oysters before serving them, even though they are more commonly consumed raw on a tray of ice and dressed with a few drops of lemon. In any case, choose only the freshest live oysters of guaranteed origins with their valve still closed.
As far as caviar is concerned, the best is the Russian type made with salted sturgeon eggs. It is actually the salt that preserves them. The caviar can be bought in grains, formed with whole eggs, or in blocks where the single eggs cannot be distinguished. The latter is less expensive and of inferior quality. Caviar too is an excellent ingredient for making snacks on slices of bread, to be alternated with light, buttery nibbles to create colour contrasts on the tray.
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