Cocktails and canapes.

As you can probably tell by now I always enjoy finding new recipes on the internet and loads of great ideas often appear on my Facebook news feed. I do love a cocktail and the other day there was a link to "10 easy prosecco cocktails that everyone should master" and when I had my cousin round for a girly night last Friday we gave a couple of them a try. There were some quite spectacular recipes including a "Paddington" with marmalade, honey and whisky which I didn't try - more because I don't like honey than anything else!  One of the ones I DID try was the "Green Ginger Fizz", 25ml ginger syrup from a jar of stem ginger, 25ml freshly squeezed lime juice, topped up with prosecco and topped with a slice of lime. You could also use the Kings Ginger, the ginger liqueur I've mentioned in some of my previous posts, instead of the syrup.

The other one was my favourite, the English Garden. 20ml elderflower cordial, 20ml gin and topped up with prosecco, and a mint sprig to finish. Very girly and sophisticated, and most refreshing.  You might remember the cranberry gin fizz from my Christmas post, this was a variation on that. I had a sloesecco once too, when I went out for dinner and decided on a cocktail rather than a pudding, as I was rather full. Sloe gin with prosecco. Here it is:

And here is my English Garden:

I did love the mint, and speaking of which you've got to love a Mojito, there was another post recently that gave a recipe for lots of summer cocktails including a blackberry Mojito which I really want to try, watch this space. I like to run a bit of lemon or lime around the edge of the glass too, for a little bit of extra zing, like I do with my gin and tonics. Of course a classic margarita has salt around the rim, to cut down on the bite of the alcohol, and tequila drinkers (especially when it was cheap tequila) licked salt off the back of their hand before drinking it and then sucked on a lime afterwards - to stop the burning!  I used to drink tequila slammers in days gone by with my sister - we'd do the salt licking, then mix tequila and cava, bash it on the table three times before downing it! My tastes are a bit more refined now and boringly sensible drinking has taken over...

Of course if you're really pushing the boat out, you can use champagne instead of prosecco or cava, or if you don't drink alcohol you can use sparkling grape juice.  I've been to a bar that does the most amazing non-alcoholic "mocktails" such as the beautiful "summer sunset".  

I also love the creamy cocktails such as the Brandy Alexander: brandy and creme de cacao with cream.  It has an interesting Wikipedia entry if you're curious.

Anyway, this talk of cocktails is all very well, but what about some nibbles to go with?

One of my favourite and more unusual nibbles is frozen soya beans (or fresh if you can get them) roasted in olive oil and sprinkled with salt; also chorizo fried in red wine, and garlic prawns; but I do love a canape!

Here is an example - I had a leftover lobster in the freezer to use up and some reduced price smoked salmon.  You might be forgiven for thinking "what kind of a woman has leftover lobster in her freezer?" but hey, they were on special offer at Christmas and I had bought two but hadn't got round to using the second one.  So I cheated with some ryvita thins spread with cream cheese, added the lobster meat and smoked salmon, some salmon caviar and a grind of pepper and served on a bed of leaves with a squeeze of lemon. You can use bread toasted in the oven instead of bought crackers, also rye bread and once I even made parmesan shortbread for the bases.

Another good idea is to use those bags of mini poppadoms as they make great edible bite size plates - fill with prawns either marinated with chilli or in a yogurt, lemon and coriander dressing.  

Examples of other canapes I've tried are: dates filled with a slice of jarlsberg cheese and wrapped  in parma ham - mini Caesar salads consisting of a blob of yogurt flavoured with lemon zest and black pepper, with an anchovy fillet, parmesan cheese shavings and a deluxe crouton served in a lettuce leaf. Also parma ham wrapped goats cheese and rocket things that were meant to look like trees but were a complete disaster presentation wise though they did taste lovely!  A favourite recipe that my sister used to make that I've adopted is small thin slices of lamb steak spread with English mustard and sprinkled with brown sugar and served warm from the oven with cocktail sticks.  Sounds strange but tastes wonderful.

Time to find something to celebrate then.  Happy Bank holiday Monday! Please drink responsibly.

Thank you for reading, Caroline x