I found these at the market….

Anybody know their name?  Do you have an idea what to do with them?  Other thoughts?

Take a look at the comments and you will see that Apu left a comment with the right name. I xx’ed it out but I’m sending her a small prize. There are more prizes for more correct guesses.

Conversation and music make a party fun but sharing favorite foods, new recipes, foreign flavors and comfort food can make a party memorable.

Although traditionally served before a meal, an assortment of sweet and savory hors d’oeuvres that includes vegetables and fruit, meat, fish and cheeses can be dinner. Whether there are waiters passing trays, platters strategically placed around the room, or a buffet brimming with savory finger food, an hors d’oeuvre party makes it possible to entertain more friends that I can seat at my dining room table.

Was the apple that Eve offered to Adam the first appetizer? Perhaps not, but translating the names gives culinary insight. Hors d’oeuvre means “apart from the main work” it is less important than what is to come.

Canape in both French and Spanish means couch or settee, maybe a nod to the cracker or piece of bread that the caviar or foie gras is sitting on. French chefs offer a selection of amuse-bouche, morsels to “amuse the mouth”, while diners await the main course.

Antipasto means “before the meal” and like a platter of cold cuts, consists of cured meats, pickled vegetables, olives, and cheeses. Crudités, French for crude, used to mean an artfully arranged platter of carefully carved raw vegetables for dipping. Unfortunately, now it usually means a bowl of “baby” carrots with or without a container of ranch dressing beside it.

In Istanbul, my favorite dinner was an assortment of seven meze. There was no menu. I choose small plates of prepared vegetables, meat and fish from a large tray that a waiter brought to the table. Even though I was unable to identify all of the dishes, the small portions made me more willing to try unfamiliar things and I was rarely disappointed.

There are endless combinations possible when creating hors d’oeuvres. Maybe it was the excitement of creating new dishes in the 1950’s, after the hardship of rationing, that led to hors d’oeuvres with names like: Hollywood Dunk, Apple and Salami Porcupines, Pineapple Fingers, Fisherman’s Find, Herb Ring-a-Round, Ruby Red Franks, Pearl of the Sea Mousse and Sardine SURPRISE!

Was it peace or Yankee ingenuity that lead to the creation of combo’s like Potato Chip Snappies – bleu cheese and minced onion thinly spread onto potato chips, watermelon pickles wrapped in bacon, or Cocktail Kabobs – button mushrooms and cocktail franks cut in half and marinated in French dressing? Perhaps it was battle fatigue.

The minimum structural requirement for an hors d’oeuvre is that it must be able to be moved a minimum of 40 cm, from platter to mouth, without exploding, dripping or collapsing. With so much history, it comes as no surprise that there are a few rules to consider: 1 Don’t chase a waiter who is carrying a tray. 2 Never put anything back on the tray. 3 No double dipping. 4 If “Surprise” is in the name, walk away. 5 If you don’t know what it is, don’t eat it. 6 If the waiter doesn’t know what it is, don’t eat anything.

There were ten guests at my most recent hors d’oeuvres party. Charles served wine, sparkling water and fruit spritzers. I served olives, roasted peppers and artichokes from the market, and a cheese platter. I made three hors d’oeuvres as well. Here’s how I did it: … read more

It was a snail that introduced me to garlic. My mother was from England and my father was from Slovakia so spice and punch came in the form of mustard, black pepper or sauerkraut. Olives, capers and anchovies never appeared on our table.

When I was nineteen, I moved to an apartment on the second floor of a converted town house in Washington, DC. The French Market, a boutique grocery store, was on the ground floor. It had become a successful business when John Kennedy was president and all things French became fashionable. By my third visit, I realized that my gastronomic education had begun.

The owner, Georges, was from Nice, in the south of France. He always had time to answer questions, share recipes or offer tastes. He never looked at his twelve-inch chef’s knife as he minced garlic, parsley and almonds to make snail butter and gossiped with market regulars. After he put a cooked snail into each shell he sealed the opening with a knob of the seasoned butter. When he suggested that I try the snails for dinner, I bought a dozen, a baguette and two sets of snail-eating equipment. He explained how to heat the snails in dimpled metal plates and how to use the tool that looked an eyelash curler to hold the hot shell while fishing them out with a small snail fork.

The snails were interesting, a bit chewy, but the apartment smelled wonderful! The chunks of bread soaked in the hot garlic butter were divine. It was the beginning of a new friendship, “Bonjour Garlic!”

Since that introduction, garlic has been a permanent resident in my pantry. It appears so frequently in my recipes that I use garlic scapes, the immature flower stalks of hard neck garlic, as my logo. The best way to store garlic is at room temperature, in a porous container. I have a ceramic garlic pot with a lid that keeps out the light and holes in the sides that allow air to circulate, preventing garlic from becoming moldy.

Georges showed me how to add zip to salads by rubbing the inside of a wooden salad bowl with a clove of garlic and a pinch of kosher salt. Occasionally, he had cooked artichokes next to mushroom, fennel and green bean salads. A small container of mayonnaise mixed with mince garlic, lemon juice, a pinch of cayenne pepper and an artichoke made a lunch that was tres chic.

The pate Georges made was perfumed with garlic and it inspired me to use garlic to season meatloaf. When Georges prepared chickens for roasting, he pushed a mixture of butter, garlic and thyme under the skin of the bird.

He seasoned legs of lamb with garlic, rosemary, sage and thyme before deftly forming each roast into the shape of a duck with the end of a bone as the duck’s head. I’ve never tried the fancy butchering but I do use the same herb and garlic mixture to season lamb.

I don’t remember who introduced me to the complex, sweet and earthy flavors of roasted garlic. I make it often by cutting off the top of plump garlic bulbs, drizzling them with olive oil, wrapping the bottoms of the bulbs in aluminum foil and roasting them. After half an hour in a 350-degree oven, the golden paste can be spread onto crusty bread to make appetizers that I serve with red wine.

Fifteen years later, my friend Gwen served a salad made with blanched garlic. She said that it was easier to digest and that it added flavor with less bite. She claimed that blanching eliminated volatile sulfur compounds that cause garlic breath and indigestion. Gwen simmered garlic in boiling water for a minute before peeling it and blending into salad dressing. Blanching garlic in the microwave by zapping unpeeled garlic cloves in a half-cup of water in a partially covered container for 30 seconds seems simpler to me. I use blanched garlic in barley or bean salads that will not be served within and hour.

Garlic is called the stinky rose and blamed for causing bad breath but its presence is recognized in cuisines around the world as the promise of a tasty meal. The pan of garlic roasted root vegetables I served on Saturday delivered on that promise when Jim and Anne joined us for dinner.

Along with the roasted turnips, carrots and potatoes roasted, a can of cranberry sauce mixed with a couple of tablespoons of horseradish and a roasted chicken from the market were all I needed for our impromptu dinner party. The scent of the roasting vegetables made it seem as if I had spent the entire day, rather than half an hour, cooking. I started the vegetables in the microwave and they finished roasting while I set the table, and cut up the chicken. Here’s how I did it. … read more