I have canapes on my mind at the moment because next week I am catering a small cocktail reception for 40 people. Anyway, I had this thought about raclette potatoes. If you aren’t familiar with raclette potatoes, they are golden, buttery and totally delicious. Boiled, they taste like they have been soaked in melted butter. They also keep their shape really well when cooked, which makes them lousy for irish stew but excellent for samosas and, I theorise, for cocktail food.
My thought was to do a sort of deconstructed potato salad… potatoes sliced skewered and layered with mustard mayonnaise. But this alone, while tasty, would be texturally dull as dishwater, and equally boring to the eye.
So what to do? How about a sliver of cucumber, to add some colour and texture… not bad, not bad at all.
I alluded to his crafty crouton abilities in the previous post, but since I’m a sucker for Grace and don’t want to keep her waiting, I’ll go ahead and tell you what he does that solves the cracking crouton conundrum. You should know that he makes his own croutons, but you could do this with store-bought croutons, too.
Lightly crush the croutons, however you wish to do it. In a ziplock bag with a mallet. Between wax paper with a bowling pin. In the library with a wrench. I don’t care. You don’t want to crush them too much; you want to maintain all the crunch, all the texture, all the taste. So just bang them around a little. Then put them in a bowl and cover them with very good olive oil, which you can season further, if you want. Crushed garlic is good, red pepper flakes rock, I’m a fan of crushed black pepper. Just don’t put any other liquid in the bowl!