Inspiration for easy peasy party food... with a Cork flavour!
Will this year see the return of the house party? Picture: Stock
Could it be the Christmas House Party is making a comeback this year? A festive gathering of friends and neighbours has been absent from the social calendar for far too long, and I’d quite like to welcome it back home.
I conjure up an image as the effortless unharried hostess festively adorned with sequins; Bing Crosby crooning softly over the speakers, Christmas lights twinkle in the background, chilled bubbles in clinking glasses, and a few tastefully selected nibbles.
This is an admittedly Nigellafied version of the Christmas House Party, and so I’m not interested in an array of brown and beige overpriced oven-baked things from the freezer aisle. I’m thinking colour, freshness, aroma, flavour, enticement.
The best party food is casual but delicious. The best way to achieve this is to know that adding one great product with another results in perfection. Here are some of my favourite no-hassle but gorgeous party foods achieved from a good aul rummage through the larder of Great Irish Ingredients.
I’m rarely without this Kilkenny-made pate any time of year. Silky, addictive, and fabulous, spread on a Seymour’s of Cork cheese sable biscuit and top with some Goatsbridge Trout Caviar for a classy bite.
A slice of Tom Durcan’s Spiced Beef is a perfect foil for wrapping around award-winning pickled beetroot from Andrea’s Kitchen in Ballycotton. Like a little one-bite festive gift to your mouth!
I’m obsessed with Joe’s Farm Crisps Potato Medley with their purple, pink and white potatoes. Set them out with a limited-edition jar of Ballymaloe Food’s seasonal Truffle Mayo, and everyone will be winning at life!
Pairing salty, buttery Macroom Buffalo Greek-style salad cheese with Olives West Cork’s oak smoked sun blushed tomatoes and a fresh leaf of basil is an oh-so contemporary version of cheddar and pineapple on sticks.
This classic tapa has been all the rage this year, and at Toons Bridge Dairy’s stall in The English Market pick up everything you need to recreate it at home: salty green olives, pickled guindilla peppers and slaking anchovies. Simply load onto a toothpick and serve.
All supermarkets stock packs of nori seaweed sheets. Cut them in half and stuff them with thin strips of crispy, fresh veggies (carrots, cucumber, scallions and radish work well), add a little protein (tofu, prawn, chicken), and wrap into a cone shape – hey presto, a maki roll! A little dab of water will seal the roll and hold the filling in place. Serve it with a pot of Sage (Midleton) Peanut Rayu for dipping.
Take a packet of Macroom Buffalo Buffalloumi, cut in half then cut each half into four strips. Coat with panko breadcrumbs and fry in oil until golden and crunchy. Serve with Cork Chilli Company Totally Tropical hot sauce, flavoured with pineapple, jalapenos, lime juice and coriander.
Select your favourite focaccia, (from Alternative Bread Co in The English Market, Pike Deli in Clonakilty, The Grumpy Bakers in Midleton, or Wild Flour in Innishannon), layer on your favourite blue cheese (Cashel Blue, Dart Mountain, Stilton), and leave it beside a pot of Terra Ignis’s lacto-fermented Hot Sauce from The English Market for drizzling. Perfect combination, every time.
Not as simple, but your guests will love you for making them! Straight out of the 1980’s party food playbook but one that’s worth re-embracing for its sheer tastiness, devilled eggs require you to hard boil some eggs (say 12), cool, shell, cut in half and scoop out the yolk into a bowl. Add to that:
4tbsp of Ballymaloe Mayonnaise
2 tsp English mustard
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp hot sauce
A generous pinch of paprika
Sea salt and pepper
Purchase ready to use vol-au-vent cases in the freezer aisle. Simply bake according to instructions, whip up some Mary Rose sauce and add a generous amount of fresh Glenmar Shellfish prawns. When the cases have cooked and cooled, load up with the prawn filling and serve.
A cheese board always goes down well. If you have plenty of other tasty bites to keep your guests entertained with, three well-chosen cheeses with crackers and a chutney will see you right. But if you’re looking for a bit more interest, showcase the variety of milks used in contemporary cheese making in Ireland today.
My suggestions are:
Classic Gubbeen natural washed-rind cow’s milk cheese (pasteurised)
The Lost Valley’s Carrignamuc raw cow’s milk cheese
Cratloe Hills mature sheep’s milk cheese
Ardsallagh hard goat’s milk smoked cheese
Young Buck blue cow’s milk cheese (raw)
Nothing screams Christmas like an abundance of colourful sweet confections. Create a sweet smorgasbord of Made in Cork delights, including Hadji Bey Turkish Delight, Mella’s all-butter fudge, chocolate slabs from Exploding Tree, Milsean or Ó Conaill, and Toffee Brittle from Second Street Bakeshop. Add extra indulgence with handmade truffles from The Hungry Crow, Jude’s Chocolates, Praline Patisserie, or Cocoa in Winthrop Street Arcade, and for little fingers, add a selection of handmade sweets from Lenihan’s of Shandon.
Take a delicious Medjool date, slice it open, remove the stone and fill with crunchy peanut butter and a dab of redcurrant jelly. You can thank me later.
West Cork Biscuit Co make a square Ginger Spice biscuit that’s closer to gingerbread than biscuit. Studded with pieces of candied ginger, take two biscuits and nestle a scoop of the best quality vanilla ice cream you can lay your hands on between them. (Psst, excellent with a dram of whiskey…)
Make the most of Ballymaloe Food’s seasonal Vodka Cranberry Sauce by shaking it into this festive take on an (usually stirred) Negroni.
Ingredients (makes one cocktail)
25 ml Minke Irish Vodka
25ml Valentia Island Vermouth
25 ml Campari
2 tsp Ballymaloe & i-Stil 38 Vodka Cranberry Sauce
Ice
Slice of fresh orange and two fresh cranberries to garnish
Method :
1. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and pour in the vodka, vermouth and Campari. Add in the cranberry sauce, close the cocktail shaker, and shake for 30 seconds or until an icy coating appears on the outside of the shaker.
2. Get a tumbler and add some more ice. Open the cocktail shaker and pass the liquid through the strainer. Garnish with the orange segment and fresh cranberries.
App?
