New York City’s best-known steakhouse chef brings restaurant-caliber cooking to the home kitchen with his creative spin on America’s classic cuisine, featuring a wide array of seafood, chicken, steaks, and chops, plus a host of scene-stealing appetizers, side dishes, drinks, and desserts.
You won't find the phrase "cocktail food" in the dictionary, but everybody knows what it means. Cocktail food is food that's meant to be passed around a room or shared at the table during the early stages of a get-together.
It's food that goes great with beer, wine, and/or mixed drinks. It satisfies the mouth but doesn't kill the appetite. It's what my parents' generation called hors d'oeuvres, but which my generation of chefs have Americanized, inspiring me to call the category by an American name.
I've developed a huge repertoire of cocktail food in the restaurants where I've worked, from the southwestern Tapika, where I first introduced what I call "table-share appetizers" on the menu, to the many steakhouses where I'm the chef today.
I think that cocktail food is very important, not just something to have out when people arrive. To me, cocktail food sets the tone for an evening with microbites that are a little preview of things to come.
This chapter features a cross section of my favorite cocktail food, including vegetarian, fish, poultry, and meat. They all pass my checklist of musts:
* They can be made, at least partially, in advance. When entertaining, anything that can
be done ahead of time gets a gold star next to it because it makes your life easier. All of these recipes receive that extra credit.
* They pack a ton of flavor into a small space. I love cocktail food that demands to be noticed. So I try to fit more flavors in each bite, or on each plate, than you may expect.
* They're drink-friendly. If you're going to call a chapter "Cocktail Food," you better be offering up recipes that belong next to a beer, a glass of wine, or a cocktail.
* They're fun to eat. My favorite cocktail foods are the ones that you pick up with your fingers and the ultimate ones are those that get dunked in a sauce on their way to your mouth. There's a lot of dunking here.
