Festive snack-ettes

It is canapé season. Unavoidably so.

Dec 12, 2024

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I understand why people often shy away from canapés. They can be a bit twitty, a bit time consuming. A bit meh.

There was a time when any good host felt pressured to spend hours carefully constructing tray after silver tray of dainty little bites, smoked salmon this, filo nest-ette that; everything in tedious, fidgety miniature. Vaguely sociopathic, suburban snobbery.

Fear not. They don’t need to be so. But really, who doesn’t love a snack-ette?

Snack-ette season it is.

A grazing table may seem like the easier option. Problem is, they can be surprisingly costly to put together and after a short while it will look like a war zone. And there is a tendency to stuff up on bread.

For me, as always, the key is ease and deliciousness. Canapes don’t need to be complicated or fiddly, so in the case of things like blinis and oysters, disguise laziness with generosity, and serve lovely great piles of them, with plates of various accompaniments for people to help themselves. Take note of the way I’ve styled the following recipes. It’s nothing too fussy.

A couple of winning blini combos include gravlax or smoked salmon with a big blob of sour cream or creme fraiche, capers and dill. Poached or fried prawns, finely chopped and mixed with flat leaf parsley, lemon zest, paprika and a blob of mayo. Smoked eel, hell, smoked anything really, mixed with a bit of creme fraiche or cream cheese, horseradish, and chopped chives.

The roast spud, sour cream, caviar and dill idea I’m obsessed with. You don’t need caviar caviar - salmon or lumpfish is just as delicious - a salty, fishy kick against the otherwise subtle creaminess. It’s so easy.

And few things elicit such contrasting reactions as a prawn cocktail.

There was a time when many of us would have said that even the idea of them is perfectly disgusting, the kind of sad cruise ship muck that should have stayed in it’s postwar niche forever; a hangover of suburban snobbery; a bedsit posing as the Ritz.

I say nonsense to all this. They’re fantastic. When done well.

What fascinates me is that this dish, for all the mockery, is almost universally known. And very few things are popular because they are terrible. Sure, we’ve all had a bad prawn cocktail, but a good one! Ahhh! It was enough for me to retract everything I’ve ever said about them. Even Heston Blumenthal admitted that it was his secret vice.

Fanny Cradock, that steely kitchen diva from the 60’s (look her up if you haven’t heard of her, more K Road than Alison Holst, she’s hugely entertaining), is sometimes credited with inventing it; popularising it, indeed, but I suspect the basic concept has been around for some time. It makes logical sense to point the finger in the direction of the French; some pin the ‘blame’ on Escoffier.

It is traditionally served in something called a Marie Rose, which is essentially mayo and T sauce, which I think is where we go woefully wrong. I’ve come up with a few adjustments. Paprika. Lots of tarragon. Use lovely big tiger prawns, if you can; they’re expensive, but worth it - you won’t need many as they are so rich.

When done properly, with decent ingredients, this is a very special dish, ridiculously easy to make, and something that elicits both nostalgia, a sense of occasion and, which is above all, actually absolutely bloody delicious.

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