ice), three fifths chilled sauterne or Chablis, two six-ounce cans frozen orange or grapefruit juice, and one bottle chilled champagne. (No substitutions on this.) Then stand back and let ’em at it.
A word to the wise—if you’re planning another activity later on, pour lightly!
CHAPTER THREE
Grand Openings (Appetizers, Canapés, and Such)
When it comes to appetizers, you can be as plain or fancy as your talents and your budget allow. We are trying here, though, to keep the budget at a minimum, and in the case of appetizers that greatly simplifies things.
APPETIZERS & HORS D’OEUVRES
The simplest appetizer, served as a first course at dinner, might be nothing more than a small glass of well-chilled tomato juice served with a lemon wedge.
Another delightful opening to dinner is a shrimp or oyster cocktail, and involves no more than opening a can of shrimp or oysters (or thawing out a frozen package), and serving them in something as simple as a sherbet glass, topped with a prepared sauce.
The present tendency is to eliminate the appetizer course in favor of serving canapés or hors d’oeuvres, so that a number of delicacies that were formerly considered as appropriate appetizers are now classed as hors d’oeuvres. In the main these are rather complicated recipes. The beginning cook is going to have enough to do with the main part of the meal, so let’s keep things simple.
We must keep in mind that in general cocktails and such are a prelude to dinner—plan accordingly, so that guests are not overfed, or their appetites jaded by the time they arrive at table.
As a suggestion for something light, you might glance back at the section on vegetables and see which ones are edible as raw relishes. Two or three of these, cut to bite-sized pieces and arranged over shaved or cracked ice is a most attractive and delicious prelude. You might even arrange to have a dunk for the vegetables to be dipped in. Here’s a real simple one:
To one-half pint sour cream add one tablespoon chili sauce, one teaspoon dry mustard, one grated onion, one teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce, one tablespoon chopped chives, one-half teaspoon salt, and one-half teaspoon cracked pepper. Mix well and chill for one hour before serving as a dunk for raw vegetables.
CANAPÉS
In recent years I’ve noticed a trend away from the almost tasteless canapé that the Ladies’ Aid used to serve at their teas. I’m sure you’ve seen the kind—those little things made up of different kinds of bread arranged to form stripes, checkerboards, et cetera; and all pasted together with some tasteless variety of cream cheese. I’m sure there are few people that will regret their passing. I know I won’t hang a black wreath on my door.
Tell me I ain’t got no couth—but I like chips and dips. They’re easy, they’re cheap, they go well with almost anything, and I’ve never noticed any problem with leftovers.
With the number of crackers (mercy, have you seen the sizes, shapes, and flavors on your grocer’s shelf?), toasts, etc., available, you can have a wild time cruising the aisles for the chips part of your dish. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to consider potato and corn chips as a possibility.
And wild as you may get in your cruising (if it’s a good night), don’t get too wild on the buying. If your plan is to let your guest do their own dipping, I would recommend no more than two or three varieties. If you plan to spread crackers yourself as a sort of canapé, you may consider as many as eight (keeping in mind your storage space, your time, and your purse).
DIPS
The old standby among dips is the California or onion dip, made very simply by combining a package of dried onion soup mix with one pint sour cream and allowing it to mellow in the refrigerator for an hour or so.
This next one is easy too, but is a little too thick for dipping, so you should serve it with a small knife so your guests can spread their own crackers; or to be a little more elegant, you might spread the crackers yourself in advance, arrange on a tray, and cover until time to serve. Anyhow, all you do is mix one-half pound of liverwurst with one finely chopped onion and one finely chopped green pepper—add a dash or two of tabasco sauce and enough Burgundy wine to soften the mixture sufficiently for spreading.
If you do the spreading yourself, you might want to dress up these canapés by putting a little something on top: say, an anchovy (some people like them), a slice of stuffed olive, a shrimp or a small sprig of parsley. Can you think of anything else? Mary!!!!!!
There are many soft and flavorful cheeses on the market too that you can use in the same way as the liverwurst spread. Simply lay it on and decorate, with any of the foregoing suggestions or even a piece of tomato, a dash of paprika, or a few capers.
Another dip that will offer your guests a contrast in flavors is a minced clam dip—almost as simply made as the onion dip. In a small bowl mix one small can minced clams (well-drained), one teaspoon lemon juice, add one-half pint sour cream, one teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, one-half teaspoon salt, and a dash of pepper. Blend well and set it in the refrigerator to mellow for an hour. This is another one where you let the guests dip their own.
Mary Dugan! Look at that shopping cart. I told you not to get too carried away. We still have an entire meal to go, and we don’t want to ruin their appetites. And, besides, I’ve heard that when a person is overfed they are less inclined to have other appetites. Wouldn’t that be a shame?
There will be times when you’ll be having a cocktail party without a dinner following, or perhaps just a simple buffet and then you can go hog-wild. But then you’ll probably have a whole library of cookbooks, and lots of friendly sisters, tricks, and dolls (dirty, old lecherous ladies). There is the chance that you may want to try your hand at one before this, on a small scale, as a sort of rehearsal for the grand opening.
HORS D’OEUVRES
Many popular hors d’oeuvres are made of meat. We all know why that’s popular. Other bases are fish, cheese, eggs, and vegetables. Let’s start with a couple of the meat ones.
MEAT HORS D’OEUVRES
Here’s one that Alvin Shadow introduced to the three Furies, and even War and Konky enjoyed them. Take a pound of ground round-steak and roll it into little balls about an inch in diameter. Then, in a heavy skillet put one-fourth cup of grape jelly and the contents of an eight- to ten-ounce jar of chili sauce. Add the meat balls and simmer for about half an hour. If the sauce gets too thick, thin it out with a little water. (It’s not my recipe, or I might be tempted to add a little wine at this point.) Let it cool down, and then put it into a bowl and let it set in the refrigerator overnight. Reheat to the simmering stage preparatory to serving, and serve in a heated casserole, or if you have it, a chafing dish with a supply of toothpicks on the side, and let your guests spear their own.
At a cocktail party at Casa Gee one of the guests liked these so much, that after her first martini she filled her glass with these little goodies and seemed to enjoy them more than the booze. It’s a good thing they had made a super-abundance of them. She was a big girl.
Here’s another one of Jackie Holmes’ favorites. He takes two pounds of pork and cuts it into strips. (He’s not available for questioning now, but I imagine he uses pork steak and that the strips are about one-half inch thick and one-half inch wide.) Then he marinates them in a casserole in a mixture of one and one-half teaspoon salt, one tablespoon sugar, four to five tablespoons soy sauce, two cloves of crushed garlic, two tablespoons honey, two tablespoons sherry, and two tablespoon Hoisin sauce. (There is a note here that tells me that that last is a Chinese vegetable sauce—confidentially, I’ve never seen it, but maybe if you go to the Chinese section of your present big town, you’ll be able to find it there, maybe. I’m sure Jackie would insist that it’s a must. He lets it stand in this mixture for at least two hours, and says that overnight is better.) The whole thing is then baked in a 400-degree oven for ten minutes (Make sure your oven reaches the 400-degree mark before putting your pork in. We want to be sure that pork is thoroughly cooked.), then reduce the heat to 250 degrees and continue baking for thirty minutes