Like nibblies, the concept of bringing a plate to a social event or a host’s home can be deeply confusing across cultures and generations. Are you carting canapes? Are you slinging salad? Are you delivering dessert? If we’ve learned anything from the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, it’s that communication is key. So if you’re unsure about what your host expects, just ask.
Below are nine summer-friendly recipes to suit various bring-a-plate scenarios: one-bite snacks that go with cocktails, salads to bring to barbecues and make-ahead dessert for dinner parties, arranged in each category from easiest to most ambitious.
And if time is seriously short, you could throw together a pleasingly arranged antipasto-ish plate comprised of Guardian Australia’s top supermarket taste test products: crackers, feta, salami and pickles.
One-bite snacks
(Pictured above)
Olives! Anchovies! Focaccia! Three of the starters-world’s greatest hits come together in a single bite. Rukmini Iyer’s recipe uses store-bought focaccia to make this extremely achievable pre-dinner snack, and she specifies Ortiz-brand anchovies – which happened to earn a top ranking in Guardian Australia’s taste test of supermarket brand anchovies too. She also recommends Perelló olives, which can be hard to find in Australia – luckily this year we also did an olives taste test, where Sandhurst Sicilian green olives came first in their category.
Felicity Cloake calls this retro dish the “queen of hors d’oeuvres” and there is something pleasing about food-stuffed-with-that-same-food, like guacamole served in an avocado half, or lemon sorbet served in hollowed out lemons. Cloake has an excellent tip: before cooking, store the eggs on their sides to centre the yolks. These devilled eggs can be made up to a day ahead, though it might be a good idea to reserve some chopped chives to scatter over the eggs before serving.
There is little that can go wrong when you combine seasoned meat in pastry and things only get better when warm spices are added to the mix. Thomasina Miers’ recipe calls for 450g sausage meat, which is less readily available in Australia. Instead, buy the equivalent weight in pork sausages, remove the casings and gently break up the filling. The uncooked sausage rolls can be made ahead of time and frozen; the recipe makes about 30 mini sausage rolls, so it’s a good option for a large do.
Summery salads
Like mistaking a bowl of fish sauce for a cup of jasmine tea, chasing a slippery leaf of cos lettuce around a plate with a fork is a culinary humiliation all its (my) own. For that reason, chopped salads are a gamechanger – they’re scoopable and texturally interesting. Broccolini prices are sky-high this December, so instead of “tenderstem” as per Meera Sodha’s recipe, substitute chopped broccoli florets – making sure you choose a head that’s firm and tightly compacted, a sign of a good broccoli. Meanwhile “frozen petit pois” can be substituted with frozen baby peas.
Another fine chopped salad. Melissa Hemsley’s recipe is inspired by Filipino ensaladang talong, a vinegary mashed-eggplant salad, but here the combination of grilled eggplant and mangoes, tomatoes and herbs makes it an excellent accompaniment for barbecues and fish. It makes sense to capitalise on Australia’s mango season too – sweet and tangy kensington prides would work well here and, for ease of chopping, refrigerate your mango first.
Adjapsandal, the Georgian vegetable and herb stew, is a year-round favourite for Alice Zaslavsky, but for barbecue season she’s adapted the dish as a grilled-veg salad complete with adjika (a spiced red-pepper paste). The ingredients list might look long but the method essentially consists of two main acts: grilling the vegetables and whizzing the adjika in a blender.
Make-ahead desserts
Ice-cream churners are a luxury few kitchen benches are large enough to accommodate. Enter: no-churn granitas. You need a watermelon (they’re good value in December), you need a blender and a freezer, you need a fork. But once it’s done you have a refreshing dessert that only needs to be scooped into chilled glasses, topped with mint and – if you like – sploshed with vodka. It’s party season, after all.
A make-ahead dessert for confident bakers. Angela Hartnett’s recipe involves making, blind-baking and cooling the sweet pastry base, pouring in a dark chocolate filling and allowing it to set for up to three hours. Importantly, you’ll need a set of scales to precisely measure the 64g of glucose syrup and butter.
These Christmas cookies are good for guests and for gifting – the recipe makes 36 biscuits. You’ll likely find oat flour – which adds a delicateness to the biscuit – in the health food section of major supermarkets, though you’ll need to find a specialty store that stocks amarena cherries, which are lighter in sweetness and colour to maraschinos.
