Finger Food

The results of our class's canapé quickfire

Deep down, it's everyone's favorite way to eat. Think about it...what's the best part of any catered event? The little bites that are passed around on trays at the cocktail hour almost always surpass the sit-down meal or buffet line. In fact, last weekend I went to a wedding, and although there was lovely upscale food to be had at the main buffet, most of my table opted to hit up the kids' buffet for chicken tenders and sliders. Finger food is always more fun, whether it's fancy hors d'oeuvres or french fries.

These past two days in Advanced Garde Manger, we've worked on fancified finger food—canapés and hors d'oeuvres. Tomorrow we'll get to the amuse bouche, the one-biter that is supposed to "wake up the palate" and kick off a fine-dining meal. On Day 1, after a longer-than-usual lecture introducing us to the class, Chef S. gave us one hour to make canapés. We could use anything in the kitchen and each had to present three identical canapés to the chefs (see photo above). This little challenge was a lot of fun—like a Top Chef quickfire, but with a much more forgiving time constraint.

Canapés are one-biters described by Chef S. as tiny open-faced sandwiches. They have to have bread or some kind of base, a spread, a filling or "body", and a garnish, all assembled into one compact bite. One of the proteins available was smoked salmon and I knew right off the bat that I wanted to work with it. Kind of safe, since it allowed me not to really cook anything, but I knew that smoked salmon would work well in canapé form, especially when I saw that we also had cream cheese in the reck!

I cut thin slices from a baguette and then cut those into perfect squares and brushed them with olive oil. They went into the oven to toast so that my bases would be crisp and sturdy enough to hold the other components. With bagels and lox as the inspiration in my head, I chopped some chives and capers and added those to plain cream cheese for my spread. I sliced the smoked salmon thinly and made little spirals of it to stick to the spread, then julienned some cucumber for garnish. They turned out so cute! Admittedly these smoked salmon toasts were far from ambitious, but the chefs liked my presentation and the little bites definitely tasted good—it's kind of hard to mess up this classic combo.

"Bagel and Lox" canapés

Today we expanded upon our repertoire of finger food, going beyond canapés and into a variety of hot and cold hors d'oeuvres. I made little spanakopita triangles, the delicious Greek phyllo dough pockets filled with a spinach-and-feta mixture. I added chopped scallions, fresh parsley, a little mint, and marscarpone cheese to the traditional mixture—got some guidance from a Greek classmate. I feel like these are often bought frozen and thus have become a cocktail party staple, but they really are so much better made from scratch and so easy to make...

Just buy some packaged phyllo dough (our Baking & Pastry instructors don't even attempt to make this stuff) and layer about four of the paper-thin sheets on top of each other, brushing each layer with melted butter. Then cut the dough into strips, place a spoonful of filling on one end and fold the strip into a triangle like those paper footballs you used to flick at people in school. Once I hit my groove with the filling process, my spanakopita triangles looked better and better. You could really fill these with anything—an all-cheese pocket, a mushroom filling, even something sweet like honey and ricotta for dessert phyllo pockets.

Spinach mixture

Folded triangles ready to bake

Finished product

We also made paté a choux, an easy dough that's basically the only one ever used on the non-pastry side of the kitchen. It's the dough used for all kinds of puffs, gougeres, profiteroles, etc. Pipe this dough out so it looks like Hershey kisses and bake it, and it doubles in size to create little puffs that you can also fill with just about anything—our class did everything from a red pepper-goat cheese mixture to crawfish salad to curried chicken. So easy. Now I'm inspired to throw a dinner party with all one-bite food...how fun would that be?

More hors d'ouvres...paté a choux puffs and Scotch eggs (a pub staple—boiled, breaded and deep-fried)