Festive Foods for Your Cocktail Soirée!

Don’t worry about being high-falutin’ either. Be authentic! Use old-fashioned ingredients! Don’t be afraid of Spam. Don’t run screaming from creamed corn—that stuff makes the best and easiest fritters. Or take Cool Whip. Once I put a drop of red food coloring into a vat of Cool Whip and slid it onto a chic tapioca caviar bar. A tall, Hollywood blonde literally stood at the bar and shoveled in tapioca on blinis—covered, no SWATHED in pink, fluffy Cool Whip—babbling all the while about her secret obsession with it. You never know.

Think about the drink you want to feature. What food perfectly complements a Cosmo? The drink is sweet, limey and elegant. Go for hors d’oeuvres with some substance (to soak up that alcohol a bit) and flavors that pair well with lime. A spicy-ish bite of something in a tartlet would be lovely! Other citrus flavors would be great, too—orange-zested Ahi tuna on a wonton crisp is easy and delicious.

If you are serving international beers, go for food that will compliment their taste and mood; but take brewpub fare up a notch. Try prosciutto-wrapped superslim breadsticks with a favorite dipping sauce, multitudes of various spiced and herbed nuts, grilled mini burgers, Cubans, Ruebens, three cheeses with sundried tomatoes, sweet potato frites with garlicky sour cream—all are great choices.

Wine and cheese are practically fraternal twins. Pick cheeses from the same region as the wine if you can—and make interesting and unusual choices. There are a ton of amazing boutique cheeses out there; for God’s sake, if you serve a cheddar, it better not be from Wisconsin (and I am a native!) or California. Instead, get it sharp, aged, and from an exotic country. By the way, there is no written law that says you have to put cheeses on a big cheese plate, though I often do it because it looks so gorgeous. You can also slice them up in interesting ways and pass them around. Why not crumble some bleu on shortbread disk and present it in a bon-bon wrapper? Cube your cheeses and skewer them with a basil leaf and grape tomato—or a beautiful berry.