Food You Can Eat: Holiday Party Food

Well, it looks like no one is throwing parties this year, at least not the sane among us. Like elegant First Lady Melania Trump I “do not give a fuck about Christmas” (I think you have to print this in full, under the loose guidelines of “official White House communiqué”) but I care madly, deeply about our annual Holiday Open House. We’ve done this 12 years in a row, save one because of an unexpected death in the family, and then this year. 

But what if I did? What I would provide, along with enough alcohol to refloat “the Titanic,” is an array of all sorts of food. To be honest we have enough experience, through trial and error, to heat up a lot of our wholesale club frozen-food favorites and put those out. We also usually get a big roast beef and a roast ham so people can make mini-sandwiches, and two big cheese platters, and Christmas cookies and baked goods, one year I made a chocolate babka—

That’s enough. We can’t live in the past. But, if you’re interested in making somewhat of a holiday party here are some things you can do. I’ve approximated these recipe ingredient amounts so they should feed two adults as a party appetizer. You can scale up as necessary, lucky you if you need to.

Pretend You Are a Bachelor Circa 1950

I used to have this really wonderful “Bachelor’s Guide to Entertaining” that came out around 1950. It assumes that the Bachelor is living in an apartment and the housekeeper has the night off. It was at least 75% how to stock a bar and how to make drinks to serve. Then there was what to do if you lure a young lovely back to your place and how to wow her with a home-cooked meal. But there was a (very brief) section about what to serve for food while you were doling out the drinks. The usual, bowls of salted nuts and olives, but one thing that always stuck with me: One hard cheese, one medium cheese, and one soft cheese, and a variety of crackers. Very common examples would be, in order, a cheddar, a Swiss, and a Brie. That only barely scratches the surface of what we have available now, and I provide variants of that trio to this day. Start from there.

Go Online to Find Ways to Use Up Stuff You Have Too Much Of

This is an old trick and your guests will never know. If, for example, you have a bunch of celery that will still be viable the day of your party but not long thereafter, slice them and make the stalks into mini-“canoes” that you can fill with all kinds of things. Plum or even cherry tomatoes running riot in your vegetable crisper? Slice off the tops, disembowel, and fill with anything you find online that looks tasty. If you have leftover rotisserie chicken very close to the day of your party there are tons of really simple pastry-related hors d’oeuvres; for this I would go to the Pillsbury website to collect ideas. I once made mini-chicken vol au vents, which is not difficult but not exactly simple.

Make Deviled Eggs

Food You Can Eat: Deviled Eggs

Bake a Brie

Food You Can Eat: Baked Brie en Croute (Wrapped in Dough)

Make Crab Dip

Food You Can Eat: Avocados with Crab Filling

But that filling isn’t nearly good enough, it’s a quick something to fill an avocado with to make a dinner when you’ve given up on life you are in the mood for it. No, what you want to do is use artichokes and cheese and put it in a bread bowl and bake.

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees. Get a small round loaf of a dark bread, like rye or pumpernickel, something hearty. Slice off the top about 1/2 inch or maybe an inch from the top. Scoop out the bread and make finger-food-size chunks or cubes out of it. Put the loaf, its top, and the cubes on a baking sheet.

In a small bowl combine an 8-oz package of softened cream cheese, 2 tbsp. of sour cream,  and 1 tbsp. mayonnaise (do not use yogurt and I don’t know why). Then stir in 1 can of lump crab meat, drained (should be about 6.5 oz., not a jumbo can), an equivalent amount of diced artichoke hearts (you can get these in cans too; you’ll have to dice and drain them yourself), a very small onion, diced, a little Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper, and a clove or two of minced garlic. Then, stir in maybe 8 oz. of very sharp, shredded cheddar cheese. I use white cheddar. 

Stuff this into your hollow bread bowl. Top with more shredded cheddar cheese so it makes a thin, spotty layer. Squeeze in the bread top somewhere on the baking sheet and arrange the hollowed-out bread around the bowl. Bake for about 20 minutes, making sure the bread doesn’t burn. The bowl shouldn’t but the top and the bread cubes might. Take them out if you see they’re on the verge. You just want to warm them. For that matter the bowl doesn’t exactly cook, you just want to heat it through so that the cheese melts inside and forms a browned crust on top.

Make a Cheese Ball

I cannot recommend cheese balls highly enough. I’ve made 100 different versions. Here’s one I got from Martha Stewart, who knows quite a bit about entertaining.

In a bowl combine 1/3 stick of softened butter, 1 8-oz. package of softened cream cheese, 2 tsp. lemon juice, a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, same amount of hot sauce (I often skip this), salt and pepper. Then add 6 oz. Roquefort cheese and 1 small shallot, finely diced. I’ve found that this can sometimes be a little too soft to form into a ball, so refrigerate for 10 or 15 minutes, and see if that helps. Form that into a ball and roll in chopped toasted walnuts. I chop up pecans and roll them in that instead. Wrap your ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a couple of hours. Martha tells us to serve this with Terra chips but surely that’s only because whatever issue of whichever of her magazines this first appeared in had a huge ad for Terra chips somewhere within. Absolutely not. Slice a baguette into disks, maybe 1/2” thick, and toast in an oven for a few minutes right before you’re ready to serve. Spread the cheese generously. The warm baguette disks will make this nice and gooey. Or good old-fashioned Ritz crackers.

Make Another Cheese Ball

This is a very niche one but if you like oysters and want to imagine what New Yorkers in the 1950s imagined rich folks nibbled on during the Gilded Age…This is a handwritten recipe so I can’t imagine where I got this from. I didn’t make this up but it’s really good, trust me.

In a bowl, combine 1 8-oz. package of softened cream cheese (is there nothing cream cheese can’t do?) with 2 tbsp. mayonnaise and 2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce. Add in two minced cloves of garlic and one very small diced onion. Finally, add in about 4 oz. of smoked oysters, drained and diced. Taste this first. If you think it’s too bland and cream cheesy, add more smoked oysters. This is definitely too soft so refrigerate for some minutes, make into a ball and roll it around in walnuts (I don’t know why I prefer walnuts here, especially), wrap in plastic wrap, and put it back in the fridge. It looks like you haven’t made a lot but it’s very rich. I serve this on slices of small square cocktail bread, like pumpernickel.

Stuff a Few Mushrooms

These recipes assume you are making a dozen. Cut the caps off one dozen large white mushrooms, they should be at least 2” across, preferably closer to 3.

1. What you might have had many times: In a bowl add 4 oz. grated parmesan or Romano cheese, or a mixture of both, 4 oz. of herbed panko breadcrumbs, a clove or two of minced garlic, and 1 or 2 tbsp. softened butter. You want just enough butter to form a paste. Preheat an oven to 350 or 375 degrees. Add a little olive oil to a baking sheet but don’t make a puddle or a lake. Put the caps on the baking sheet and fill with the cheese/breadcrumb mixture. Put in the oven for about 20 minutes until the mushrooms are glistening but not burned and the tops are a nice toasty brown. Leave these out for a bit because they’re way too hot to eat.

2. Sausages, did someone say? In a very small skillet (this recipe is really meant for a much larger crowd but it makes for excellent leftovers, so make double of my pared-down version if you want) heat 1 tbsp. butter. Add one clove of garlic and cook for a minute. Add two or three spicy Italian sausages with their casings removed. For this you want 8 oz. maximum. Cook them for 5 minutes or so, breaking them up so you get something that looks like ground beef. With a slotted spoon, get as much of the sausage out of the pan as you can and put on a paper towel to absorb grease. Preheat an oven to 350 or 375 degrees. After a minute or two, put it in a bowl and add about 4 oz. of an herbed spreadable cheese. Maybe Boursin (right eye starts twitching remembering the potatoes au gratin recipe). Chop a little parsley. Mix this all together. Olive oil a baking sheet, as above, arrange your mushrooms, fill with mixture, and top with breadcrumbs. Put in the oven for 20 minutes or so. Again, this is so easy I recommend making much more of it while you’re at it. 

3. For the seafood lover in you: Don’t even try. I’ve tried filling mushroom caps with tuna, salmon, crab, shrimp, smoked trout, nothing works. I’m not really sure why.

Cocktail Bread is Your Best Friend

I don’t know how ubiquitous this is but do you know cocktail bread? It’s small slices of pumpernickel or rye sold in sleeves. It has 1,000 uses.

1. From the deli or supermarket where you got the cocktail bread buy a tub of smoked herring in a cream sauce. Using a slotted spoon, scoop some out and put on a slice of the bread, cold, open-faced. Do not try to make sandwiches out of this. That’s it.

2. On each slice of cocktail bread spread a small amount of PLAIN cream cheese, a very thin quarter-slice of a whole slice of tomato if you can manage this, it’s really not worth it to my mind, and top with a small piece of smoked salmon. If you are married to me you will demand not only the the sliver of tomato but a caper or two on top. 

3. On each slice of bread spread a good layer of herbed cheese, maybe the B-word, and top with a cucumber slice. 

4. On each slice of bread place a size-appropriate slice of a good sharp cheddar, sliced fairly thick, and top with something. At our annual holiday party I once got a collection of jars of various chutneys, I’m sure it was a regift, maybe from Williams Sonoma, or Harry & David, something like that. It was almost insulting how obviously it was a regift, I said to the guest, “Oh really, you didn’t need to bring anything at all, but thank you, this is very thoughtful.” He was an acquaintance of The Better Half. He was husband-hunting but only about 1/3 of the people who showed up at these Open House free-for-alls were gay men and, sadly for him, most were coupled off and no one took his bait. Where was I? Oh yes, the toppings. I used up all the chutneys because we had a ton of leftover cocktail bread and I’d replenish the cheddar supply and they all worked. We snacked on that for like two months, off and on. I’ve also topped this with cranberry sauce, and of course if you add a slice of green apple that’s very good.

I’m going to end here and I haven’t even gotten to bruschetta or mini-quiches or lots of other stuff. 

Happy holidays to all and here’s wishing for a far more hopeful 2021. Thank you all for supporting Deadsplinter.