Hors d’Oeuvre as a First Course at Luncheon or Dinner
While I enjoy the foods of all countries, I admit to a partiality to French food at its best, especially sitting on a terrace with a splendid view or along the banks of one of those silvery, winding rivers that give the French countryside such a freshness. With some nostalgia, I recall many happy luncheons in France when trays of beautifully arranged and deliciously prepared hors d’oeuvre were brought to me.
It used to be the custom to serve cold hors d’oeuvre before luncheon and hot hors d’oeuvre before dinner. But that has changed. Hors d’oeuvre in the grand style are no longer common, but the delightful habit of serving some hors d’oeuvre, hot or cold, has become more and more universal.
I want to mention the various things which went into the service I once had at the French Pavilion restaurant, for it was probably more typical of pre-war France than any other service in America. Those at my table were offered many trays of smart oblong glass dishes attractively garnished and holding:
Vegetables cooked with olive oil and herbs and seasoned with spices and vinegar and marinades of various sorts. Some were served under a mayonnaise. There were eggplant, zucchini, and celery root, the latter shredded and served with a remoulade sauce. Cauliflower buds, cooked, marinated, and topped with mayonnaise; beet root in a tart sauce; tiny carrots cooked and marinated; cucumber cooked with herbs and olive oil and seasoned magnificently; tiny green beans in a delicious sauce of oil and freshly chopped herbs; onions cooked in a sweet-sour sauce with raisins. Then we were served a raw cucumber salad with a delicately flavored French dressing; thinly sliced tomatoes with a piquant sauce; radishes; a potato salad, a mixed vegetable salad; artichoke bottoms stuffed with a meat farce, marinated, and cooked in the marinade. There were mushrooms, too, and capers, exquisitely subtle in flavor.
The tray included tiny slivers of sausage; bits of brawn (head cheese); a variety of sardines; three different types of tuna fish; salmon mayonnaise; tiny herrings in a very pungent sauce; small pickled trout; anchovies; shrimp salad; lobster with mayonnaise, and several other delicious sea foods.
Each particular food was distinctive in its own right and each had been perfectly prepared with just the proper seasonings and the most delightfully subtle blending of herbs. It was a luxurious service and one long to remember.
On the other hand, I can recall being offered hors d’oeuvre at small inns in France and receiving perhaps simply a bowl of fresh radishes still fragrant with that pungent smell of the earth which clings to fresh vegetables, a few green onions, and perhaps a slice of home-cured, boiled ham. This in its way was as thoroughly satisfying and as delicious as the elaborate service in the big restaurant. Both performed their mission in creating a satisfying prelude to a meal.
Naturally, very few homes could possibly serve a tremendous and elaborate hors d’oeuvre service comparable to those in the great restaurants, but it is easy to prepare a tray or two of choice delicacies which will form a most satisfactory first course and create much more interest than the usual first courses served. I have not a grain of respect for the hostess who serves a fruit cup repeatedly as an hors d’oeuvre and doesn’t even make the fruit cup interesting enough to be exciting. (And I have had plenty such cups in my experience.)
In case you may want to go completely Continental in your service, I shall outline several combinations of what I term “Table Hors d’Oeuvre.” You may arrange this type of first course on a large tray and have it passed at the table, or you may arrange the various foods in attractive dishes and have them tastefully arrayed on a buffet in the dining room with plates and serving tools for the service there. The guests may help themselves and then carry their plates to the tables.
I am listing below possibilities for the home table. Choose your own combinations.
MEATS
♦ A plate of thinly sliced sausages, if the good imported ones are available; or some of the American versions of the European types.
♦ Paper-thin slices of prosciutto or Italian ham.
♦ Slices of fine boiled ham or tongue.
♦ Pâtè de foie gras or a domestic liver pâté or mousse. There are several American firms now marketing their own pâtés and some of these are excellent.
♦ Special cold meats from a fine-food shop, such as pâtè en croûte, that is, a highly spiced meat in a blanket of rich pastry.
FISH
♦ Any of the many types of sardines. (Leave them in the can if you can remove the top cleanly and completely, for they will look better this way and are easier to remove singly.) There are large and small sardines in olive oil, mustard sauce, tomato sauce, and with the addition of various herbs and spices.
♦ Anchovies in all their varied forms. (And don’t forget the recipe for Jeanne’s anchovies given in the earlier section on fish hors d’oeuvre.)
♦ There are at least a dozen different types of herring on the market, prepared for this service, some in oil, some in a marinade, some rolled with other tidbits, and some as fillets in sauce.
♦ Fine tuna fish in olive oil and the tuna fish prepared with herbs and spices.
♦ Smoked salmon and kippered salmon, if you are fortunate enough to be in a part of the country where this is available.
♦ Smoked sturgeon.
♦ Kippered codfish.
♦ Smoked oysters and pickled oysters.
♦ Fresh salmon masked with mayonnaise, with proper accompaniments such as cucumber slices, stuffed tomatoes, etc.
♦ Any of the fish mousses.
♦ Shrimp with mayonnaise.
♦ Lobster with mayonnaise.
♦ Crab legs well arranged on a bed of lettuce or parsley and served with any type of sauce you may prefer.
♦ Individual aspics of fish or shellfish.
♦ Small fish salads.
VEGETABLES
Here I shall mention two sauces repeatedly—“vinaigrette” is one of them. It is made of two or three parts olive oil to one part tarragon or wine vinegar and is combined with as many herbs and seasonings as you may care to use (any of the green herbs, chopped fine, quantities of chopped parsley). Chopped onion, green pepper, celery, and fennel are all good additions to this sauce.
If I say à la grecque I mean that the vegetable, which has been parboiled, or not, is cooked very slowly in a sauce made from one pint of water, one third of a pint of olive oil, one teaspoon of salt, with pepper, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, thyme, parsley, chives, and tarragon. Cook these together for five minutes, adding the juice of one lemon about two minutes before removing from the heat. Poach vegetables in this sauce for varying lengths of time, according to the vegetable, but usually from ten to eighteen minutes.
♦ Tiny artichokes parboiled ten minutes, then cooked in the sauce grecque for about fifteen minutes, then chilled.
♦ Stuffed artichokes, parboiled ten minutes, then cooked in the sauce grecque for about fifteen minutes. Chilled.
♦ Peeled cucumbers sliced thin in a vinaigrette sauce.
♦ Celery hearts, parboiled for ten minutes, and poached in sauce grecque for ten minutes.
♦ Celery root, poached in white wine for thirty to forty minutes, depending on the size, and cubed, in a vinaigrette sauce.
♦ Finocchio, or fennel, parboiled for ten minutes and quartered, poached in a sauce grecque for fifteen minutes.
♦ Cole slaw made from both red and green cabbage.
♦ Tiny carrots or matchlike strips of carrot, boiled till tender and covered with vinaigrette sauce.
♦ Cauliflower buds prepared à la grecque; cooking time about twenty minutes.
♦ Cold cauliflower buds with mayonnaise.
♦ Tiny onions parboiled five minutes and poached in sauce grecque for ten minutes.
♦ Leeks done the same way.
♦ Green onions prepared the same way.
♦ Mushrooms parboiled three minutes and cooked in a sauce grecque for ten minutes.
♦ Beets pickled according to your own favorite recipe.
♦ Any of the raw vegetables described in the cold hors d’oeuvre chapter.
♦ Small green peas cooked for about twenty minutes and covered with sauce vinaigrette.
♦ Mixed cooked vegetables with a very tart mayonnaise.
♦ Potato salad.
CHEESE
A cheese tray as described in the section on cheese is acceptable as cold hors d’oeuvre, but not usual, because of the intensity of the flavor and the substantial qualities of cheese.
SALADS
Salads of all types of seafood or vegetables may be served with other hors d’oeuvre; and tiny tomatoes and cucumber boats may be stuffed with a salad for this course.
Stuffed eggs of all sorts are most popular for this use.
♦ Eggs in a vinaigrette sauce.
♦ Cold, hard-poached eggs with lobster or shrimp and mayonnaise. (Place the egg on a slice of tomato, top with the shellfish of your choice, and then top with mayonnaise.)
♦ Halves of hard-boiled eggs in a spicy herb mayonnaise.
Condiments of all sorts, pickles, olives, and other accessories of your own invention are good company for the cold hors d’oeuvre tray or table.
It is wise to have not more than six or eight main dishes for the cold hors d’oeuvre service at home, accompanied by several accessories. Here are three suggested combinations to guide you:
♦ Stuffed artichoke bottoms à la grecque
♦ Asparagus vinaigrette
♦ Shrimps in mayonnaise
♦ Chive balls
♦ Sliced salami
♦ Raw radishes, celery, onions
♦ Sardines in oil
♦ Anchovy fillets
♦ Cauliflower à la grecque
♦ Soused herrings
♦ Brioche en surprise
♦ Raw fennel, radishes, carrots
♦ Lobster mayonnaise
♦ Stuffed eggs
♦ Parma ham
♦ Olives, pickles, melon rind
♦ Pâté de foie gras
♦ Leeks à la grecque
♦ Crab legs, mayonnaise
♦ Kippered salmon
♦ Radishes
♦ Potato salad
♦ Pickled beets
♦ Cauliflower vinaigrette
♦ Sardines in mustard sauce
♦ Head cheese
♦ Olives, celery
Have thinly sliced, dark breads, two or three varieties, crusty French or Italian bread, crackers and biscuits, or hot toast to serve with these and plenty of sweet butter.
If you wish, you may make a more elaborate selection and include several cold meats and use one of these groups with a wine, and coffee later, as the entire luncheon.
Hot hors d’oeuvre service is attractive to many people. In preceding chapters you have many appropriate recipes to choose from. Make your combinations to suit your own taste, either as first courses for luncheon or dinner, or as an entire luncheon.