Shopping at Home for a Holiday Party

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Thanksgiving is over and the holiday season is in full swing. When I have people over this time of year, it is often done spontaneously. That means you can’t spend days preparing; what you serve needs to be as quick to put together as the plans were. This might simply mean a waltz down the grocery aisle or shopping in your own pantry to assemble a tasty spread for a few friends.

I actually prefer the shopping in my own house. By taking things you have on hand (for the most part), you can ensure an eclectic offering and save yourself a trip to the market. I realize that what I have around as staples may not be in the kitchen of the average cook, so don’t feel down if herbs de provence isn’t in your spice cabinet. This challenge is about creativity after all. Throw in some similar herbs and see what you can come up with.

A great approach to serving food for a party on the fly is to give your guests dishes that look familiar but take them off guard and into hors d’oeuvres nirvana with an unexpected deviation from the regular. Start with a cheese course, because cheese is something always worth having in the fridge. I like to take a semi-soft cheese like camembert or double cream brie, place a wedge atop a plate of toasted, spiced nuts, and drizzle the whole plate in honey. The idea is to give a beautiful presentation on a plate that is filled with mouthfuls of spicy, sweet, crunchy, salty, and creamy richness. It takes the ordinary cheese plate to new dimensions of deliciousness.

Fish and seafood are hard to just have around the house for party emergencies, with the exception of canned tuna perhaps. But it cooks so quickly and impresses so easily. Some seafoods practically are a party staple (e.g., shrimp cocktail, clam dip). Your ever-ready solution is frozen shrimp. Purists might gasp as this, but I always keep a bag of frozen shrimp in the freezer for just such emergencies. Frozen shrimp defrosts in 5-10 minutes sitting in a colander under cold running water. Does it get any easier in emergency situations?

Depending on the size of your shrimp you have different options. I recently took a half pound of large defrosted frozen shrimp, tossed them with a homemade remoulade of sorts, and served up the salad on individual endive spears. Larger shrimp can be grilled then served with a dipping sauce while smaller shrimp can be sautéed to reheat and layer with piquillo peppers on a crouton for a more Spanish tapas twist.

To add a little meat to the spread, I almost always keep some sort of pork or gourmet chicken sausage on hand. The gourmet chicken sausages that have been stuffed with combinations of cheese, nuts, herbs, and so on, are already fully cooked, which means any cooking you do to them is more of a reheating than anything.

I like to parboil the sausages, cut them into rounds, and skewer the rounds sandwiched between seasonal fruit. Since they will only be grilling for a couple of minutes, most fruits that aren’t overly ripe will work. Roll those skewers in a flavored olive oil, or flavor your own olive oil with chopped herbs. Throw them on a grill or grill pan to heat through, get some grill marks, and let all the flavors meld together. Pile those on a plate and let you friends have at ‘em.

Just because it is the holiday season, that doesn’t mean a casual gathering has to be an elaborate affair. There is enough other stress going on between shopping and stuffy social events that an instant get-together should have the same ease of preparation as the ease of conversation that flows among friends. So gather some people, go shopping in your own kitchen, and wow your friends with your natural festive spirit.

Serves/Makes: 8

• 8 bamboo skewers
• 4 gourmet chicken sausages, fully cooked
• 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 Asian pears

Serves/Makes: 8

• 1/2 pound large frozen shrimp
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon capers, rinsed and drained
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon minced tarragon
• 1 teaspoon minced parsley
• salt and pepper
• 1 large Belgian endive

Serves/Makes: 8

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3/4 cup walnuts
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon herbs de Provence
• 1/2 pound double cream Brie cheese
• 1/4 cup honey