Finger Lakes/Finger Food

Since we brought back a number of wines from the Finger Lakes (mainly Seneca) as booty from our raid on Ithaca (see Odyssey Book XXV), we thought we'd have a finger foods party. So besides fingerling potatoes and lady fingers for dessert (get it?!) we had just appetizers, which after all (or before all) are often the best part of a meal anyway.

We invited Kathy and Russel, and William and Shirley and their daughter, Benita.

Our dish washer is still broken, so Barbara made a virtue of necessity: plastic plates, but with a sprig or two of fresh herbs between two transparent ones for each person.

We had two "flights" of three hors d'oeuvres each. Not in fact hors d'oeuvre at all, being rather a lot of oeuvre, but an oeuvre of love. Most of the recipes are from Martha ("She was framed") Stewart.


1. Cute prosciutto and provolone tea sandwiches.
Dedicated to Dr. Christian Barnard, the plucky little springbok. Used the commercial thin-sliced party breads (I can make a pain de mie, but I can't slice it that thin or that perfectly). Set up an assembly line. Barbara punched out a heart in half the white and pumpernickel slices, swapped the hearts, buttered each slice, then filled the little sandwiches with prosciutto (scissors worked best) and provolone.

2. Croustades filled with caponata.
We had already made a huge batch of caponata the last time we had a mess o' eggplant. The bread baskets were not as successful as I'd hoped. You start with squishy white bread, which we refer to as duck bread because the ducks in Burnet Woods pond are the usual recipients of the Wonder Bread (you wonder how they dare call this stuff bread) that comes with the barbecue from Mr. Pig. Slather with melted butter, cut into squares and bake 10 min. in a mini-muffin pan. OK, but not as crisp or golden as in the book. Made them the day before and maybe should have recrisped them in the oven. Or used more butter? Nice buttery taste though. (Had a similar difficulty with Martha's corn tortilla cups, which just got kind of chewy.)


3. Crab Puffs.
Made lots and lots of little choux paste puffs. The ones on the top baking sheet were perfect (thanks to Silpat and my sisters Jo Linn and Becky who gave me the Silpat). The ones on the lower sheets were naturally a bit paler, but a few of them didn't stay as puffy after they left the oven. I've decided it's worth the extra time to bake them one sheet at a time. Since there's no leavening the choux paste can wait for a second round in any case.
At first I didn't think the filling tasted crabby enough (8 oz. crab, 2 oz. goat cheese, 6 oz. cream cheese, minced red onion, dash of Tabasco--Mr. McIlhenny's best), but it improved considerably after a few hours to let the flavors ripen. Maybe a zot of lemon juice next time. Whipped it into a frenzy in the Robot Coupe (thanks, Brian and Catherine!) so it was easy to pipe in.


FLIGHT TWO (after a quick tour of our garden, especially the roses, which Shirley helped choose and plant)



4. Mussels with a red onion confit.
Probably the simplest and maybe the most satisfying. The nice guy at the Findlay Market fish shop hand-picked the mussels, so there wasn't a bad or broken one in the bunch. Did basic mussels mariniere but with red onion instead of garlic and no parsley. Strained the broth back over it to keep the mussels moist while they cooled. Then just served each on the half-shell with the confit, which I like to have around for roasts, etc. (red onion semi-caramelized in red wine and sugar, and finished with sherry vinegar--I think the recipe is in New Joy). Just a snip of thyme leaves for garnish.

5. Shrimp and cucumber sandwiches.
Round, round, round. Probably should have tried for a more Malevich/Suprematist look. Tiny whole wheat bread slices cut with a round cookie cutter, smeared with a great coriander-parsley-shallot butter (cook the shallots in a little butter, deglaze with a little white wine, let cool, beat in butter at room temperature). Then top with a decorative cuke slice run through the Benriner (thanks, Barbara!), top with half a shrimp (flat side down) and some tiny coriander tops.

6. Empanaditas.
A new favorite. The dough is very soft, so it gets refrigerated after being stamped in rounds. The beef filling is sweetened with ginger, cinnamon, cumin, coriander (ground seed this time) and a little sugar. Used a gorgeous tomato from the garden, red stripes on yellow flesh. Too pretty to go into a sauce, but it was ripe. The em-pan-ad-itas (little em-breaded objects, I realized in my other role as Mr. Language Person) are baked, so I did them the day before. That way I wasn't on my pins the entire day.

The wines were:

Lamoureaux Landing Chardonnay

Lamoureaux Landing Pinot Noir (reserve 2002). The Cabernet Franc, which was their best red varietal the last time we were up in Ithaca (we gave a case to Maggie and Michael for their wedding as the most cellarable of the New York State wines we had tasted) was a little lackluster this year.

Arcadian Wineries Starry Night Riesling (I'm not a big fan of Rieslings, but it is the Finger Lakes grape and this one was pleasantly dry).

Red Newt Cellars Caberet Franc.

Bon Appetit! is what we had.