QUICK BITES: Unexpected guests? Don't panic. Whip up some easy dips, or serve good cheese and bread with crunchy crudités
PEOPLE COMING ROUND for drinks, wine bought, but no time for cooking? Buy a few big chunks of really good cheese - go the whole hog and go to Sheridan's - and present them with lots of crusty bread. You will need a decent range: perhaps a creamy, ripe cheese such as Délice de Bourgogne or Saint-André. Then a good, intense, hard one such as Desmond or Gabriel; a properly tangy blue cheese such as Crozier; and finally something very fresh and zingy, ideally made from goat's cheese (which can also be used to stuff those little hot, sweetish peppers that come in jars from Lidl and Aldi). If you want just one cheese, my choice would be the stunning organic gouda-like Mossfield from Co Offaly.
All you have to add, apart from the bread and maybe some water biscuits, is some organic celery, trimmed and sliced into strips. Put them in a Waterford Crystal vase and you have instant retro-chic.
Olives are an even easier option than cheese, needing nothing more than a receptacle for all those stones (pitted olives are rarely good). If you feel that your olives are a bit flat in taste, and a lot of them are, pep them up with finely chopped garlic, lemon zest, fresh thyme, cracked black pepper plus a glug of peppery olive oil. This works wonders, especially if done 48 hours ahead.
Finding really good pâtés and terrines is not easy (I notice that the ingredients of one supermarket premium version includes "connective tissue"). But On The Pig's Back in Cork's English Market does some of the best pâtés and terrines available in Ireland.
Dips may be rather old-fashioned (I certainly remember my mother dipping like mad in the late 1960s) but they go like smoke. They run out before the cheese.
Making proper hummus is easy. Take a can of chickpeas, at least two cloves of chopped garlic, two teaspoons of roasted ground cumin seeds, a tablespoon of tahini paste, the juice of a lemon, salt and pepper, and blitz like crazy in a food processor. If it still looks a bit like porridge, gradually add water or lemon juice or both, until you get a smooth consistency, not too liquid but not too thick either. Put in a bowl, level the surface and drizzle lots of good olive oil on top.
Baba ganoush is just as easy to make and a bit more unusual. Roast a big, fat aubergine until it collapses and goes squishy. Scoop the soft flesh into a food processor, discarding the skin. Add the juice of one and a half lemons, two teaspoons of ground roast cumin seeds and two of ground roast coriander seeds, salt and pepper, and blitz until smooth. Keep the blender running and slowly drizzle in a generous couple of tablespoons of good olive oil. Initially, the texture will resemble runny mayonnaise, but within an hour it firms up. Top it with finely chopped coriander leaves, if you have some. Like hummus, this goes well with strips of toasted pitta.
If you're short of time, consider what you can do with a jar of mayonnaise. Just add finely chopped garlic and lemon juice and you have one of the great dips of the world. Be adventurous and blend in a few teaspoons of Patak's Hot Lime Pickle and don't be surprised if your guests end up dipping their fingers in it when everything else has run out. (Aldi has frozen tempura prawns, €1.99 for eight. The batter is far from tempura-like, but they are addictive with this spicy, limey concoction.)
If you keep a jar of mayonnaise in the fridge and a few organic vegetables (celery, peppers, carrots) to hand, you will never be short of something to serve with drinks. A few bags of good crisps (Tesco Finest Handcooked, Lightly Salted are excellent) will satisfy the craving for crunchiness.
A favourite canapé of ours throughout the year is a blend of the best Ortiz tuna (a tiny tin costs €3, but it's worth it) with mayonnaise, a squeeze of lemon, lemon zest and black pepper. Dollops of this go on top of slices of crisp cucumber and can be given a little colour with a dash of paprika (ideally the smoked, Spanish kind).
Finally, bear in mind that sweet things make table wines taste terrible. If you want to get rid of your guests, offer some pretty little truffles or petits fours and before you know it, you will be stacking the dishwasher.