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

We had been invited to a gathering on Sunday afternoon and I roasted the last of the carrots as a base for a hearty carrot spread I took to share.

I haven’t figured out what to call it but it was delicious. Here’s how I did it: … read more

Although it has been sunny and warm, Saturday was a cold rainy day and the sea was white with rolling waves.

I got wet and cold on a short walk and wanted something to eat, something warm and comforting. Soup! I had carrots and tomatoes so I made tomato and carrot soup. Here’s how I did it: ... read more

When I was shopping in the market on Friday, I bought a chunk of flavorful, slightly aged provolone at the stall that also sells fresh mozzarella, ricotta, cannoli, ricotta salata and other cheeses that I look forward to being introduced to. Gaetano, the man behind the counter with a scruffy beard and fairly good English, saw me looking at the cauldrons in the small, utilitarian workroom behind the counter.

He explained that most mornings, he and his father Andrea Borderi, the man with the blue silk tie, the sunny smile and the big knife, made ricotta and mozzarella.

I hesitated for less than a minute before I asked if I could watch the next time they made cheese. He frowned, shook his head and said “No,” and then with a smile he said, “Ma (but), you can come and work if you come at seven on lunedi.” I said yes, of course, I would come. A quick check in the Italian/English dictionary confirmed that I had a date for Monday morning at seven.

I started the day by watching the sunrise over the sea. The colors would have inspired Maxfield Parish. Then, Charles and I had to hurry across the empty Piazza Duomo to the cheese shop. We were greeted with smiles, and with a sweep of his arm, Andre invited us into his kitchen. He quickly looped an apron over my head and tied it around my waist. Charles stepped back from the action, camera poised so as not to miss a shot. I washed my hands and was ready to work.

My first task was to help with the caldron of ricotta. We used ladles to skim the warm curds into slotted, one liter, plastic containers that were then put on trays. When full, the trays were put into the refrigerator. When ricotta is sold, the slotted container is put into a double plastic bag and the whey continues to drain from the curd making it thicker each day until it has all been eaten.

The curds for the mozzarella had been started before we arrived. Whole milk and rennet had been mixed in a huge stainless steel pot and then heated slowly until it reached 32 degrees centigrade or 88 degrees Fahrenheit. It took about 15 minutes for the curd to form. The curd was in a bucket, a dense mass covered with whey. It was large as a watermelon with texture similar to raw liver. Andrea handed me a knife with a blade that was at least two feet long. To cut the curd, I held the knife with its blunt tip resting on bottom of the pail and pulled the blade through the curd again and again. When it had been to cut it into irregular pieces that were about the size of walnuts, it was drained and put into a large basin.

Andrea asked me to knead ottocento (800) grams of sea salt into it.

When he decided that it had been sufficiently kneaded, the curds were rinsed with  water until his taste test determined that enough salt had been washed away.

The next step involved stretching and shaping. The curd was covered with very, hot water and I was given a three-foot long wooden tool. I mistakenly thought that what looked like the handle was a handle.

After Andrea turned it around, he placed my hands on it, put is hands over mine and together we stretched and squeeze the curd until “Ecco!” The curd had become stringy, tender, fresh mozzarella.

With amazing speed and skill Andrea stretched, cut and braided cheese to form ten braided loaves called treccia. It would be smoked later that morning and offered for sale as affumicata the following day.

Then he pulled a coconut-sized piece of cheese from the mass still in the basin and indicated that I should flatten it into a disc as thin as I could manage. My memory of Lucy and Ethel trying to twirl pizza dough in the air provided the restraint that kept me from trying to do the same thing with this piece of cheese.

I patted, poked and pulled it until Andrea indicated with a quick nod that it was a good size.

I followed him and the cheese to the large cutting board where he handed me two tomatoes, a handful of mixed olives, a few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley and a knife longer than my arm. He covered the cheese disc with two thin slices of ham, used signs and smiles to indicate that I should cut the tomatoes, seed and chop the olives, chop the parsley and put it all on top of the ham.

When I had finished, he splashed it with olive oil, and it took four hands, his and mine, to lift the cheese and its toppings onto a large piece of foil. The last step was for me to tightly roll the cheese into a cylinder with the ham and vegetables inside. That done, he put the cheese roll in a bag and gave it to me.

I shared it and the story of its creation with two new friends who came to our first dinner party in Sicily.

If you would like to recreate the tastes without the travel you could make a mozzarella torte by layering the freshest mozzarella you can find, with the tastiest bits of vegetable and/or cured meat you can imagine, in a straight-sided bowl. Covered, weighed down and chilled it will be perfect served with a smile and a toast to Andrea, THE premier cheese artisan of Siracusa.

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I bought 300 g, a bit more than a quarter of a pound, of fresh swordfish at the market and brought it home is an insulated lunch bag that was extra cold because I remembered to freeze the insert that came with the bag and then to take it all to the market.

Our refrigerator is tiny, and I am trying to be mindful and use every bit of food I have before it gets green and fuzzy with mold. Everything is wrapped in either paper or a white plastic bag and that means that I frequently unwrap and rewrap the same leftover more than once. I have augmented the minimun number of bowls and containers by re-cycling the blue and green plastic cups from the gelateria and four of them where filled with the remainder of a steamed potatoes aand carrots from our first dinner party and there were also bits of mushroom salad and artichoke salad.

I thought that swordfish carpaccio would  pull all of the odd bits of food together. When we had finished lunched and washed up there were fewer packages in the fridge and more empty small bowls in the cuppboard. Lunch was a culinary success, a successful use of leftovers and certainly a dietary success. We ate a small amount of swordfish seasoned with lemon and olive oil and lots of vegetables. The carpaccio was a breeze to make. Here’s how I did it: … read more

Today I bought fava beans at the market. Legend has it that fava beans saved the Sicilians from famine when all other crops had failed. There is no possibility of famine in Sicily this month but since these beans that have been eaten in the eastern Mediterranean since around 6000 BC and are in season, it seemed appropriate that I try them.

Some people believe that if one carries a fava bean, they will never be without the essentials of life. The name fava comes from the Latin fabe, the word that means bean. Fava beans may also be called broad beans, pigeon beans, horse beans, and Windsor beans.

The vegetable vendor explained with a mixture of Italian, Sicilian and sign language how to separate the beans from the pods. First, the five or six fava beans must be taken out of the pale green outer pod that looks like an overgrown green bean, and then, before it can be eaten, each bean must be stripped of the thick, tough skin that encloses it.

All of the shelling can be done by the cook, or the shelled beans can be left inside the skin, sautéed in olive oil with or without garlic, salt and pepper, and served – leaving the task of popping the beans from their skins to each diner.

I opted for the easiest preparation of all. I held each pod in the fire of the kitchen cook top until I could see steam puffing out of the pod.  When I had cooked a few pods, I poured olive oil onto a small plate, ground salt and pepper into it and proceeded to pop the beans out of the pod. I put them into the oil and ate them, using my teeth to separate each bean from its wrapper.

I don’t know if it was the fava beans, the fava bean pod or something else that made me feel unsteady on my feet and my lips tingly. It took a walk, half a liter of water and a dish of gelato to set me right.

Although the fava beans had a mild and pleasing flavor, a creamy texture and were a lovely shade of green and I think I give the rest of them away.

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