[Food] Relax, It’s Summer

by Jesse Yancy
Graphic Illustration by Jakob Clark
June 28, 2006

Entertaining shouldn’t be stressful. There’s no reason whatsoever for anyone who hosts a party not to have as good a time as their guests, which means providing simple, plentiful foods that (along with set-ups) are easily available and accessible.

A good place to start planning a buffet, especially at this time of year, is with fresh fruits and vegetables. A hubcap platter heaped with fresh fruit is my favorite centerpiece for any sort of occasion, and fresh vegetables on a tray are a manda-tory accompaniment.

Choose fruits that are at the peak of their ripeness, and offer them whole. (The exceptions here are melons, which should be sliced as you see fit and served separately.) Wash the fruit in cold water, and drain it well.

When arranging the fruit, you should follow your own eye, especially if you consider yourself the artistic type. But speaking for those of us who do not, I recommend as a general rule that you relegate and contrast colors in groups. If you’re color-blind, rely on texture: As an artistic objective, it’s just as reliable. Keep a spray bottle of water nearby and mist occasionally.

Fruit can be garnished most effectively with grape leaves (especially if you include grapes in the arrangement) but scope out what you have available around the house in the way of nonpoisonous vegetation to use. Flowers can be a plus, but wash everything first. Trust me; bugs are much better on Melba toast. The arrangement should be informal, not geometric.

Vegetable trays, on the other hand, lend themselves to symmetry. Radial arrangements are nice because the dip you must have fits nicely in the center in a scooped-out vegetable (I do not recommend red cabbage, which bleeds in a most unattractive manner).

You can include almost any vegetable you like, but I wouldn’t use too much onion; raw onion, as exciting as it can be as a fresh accent to so many dishes, is still an acquired taste and tends to be unpopular in social settings. Do not use broccoli or cauliflower now; save those for another season. And radish roses or celery fans are nice, but why go to the trouble? Call me lazy, but you’re not going to eat them anyway.

The simplest fruit dip is yogurt with a few drops of lemon or lime juice; fresh fruit should be enjoyed primarily for its own sake. But raw veggies need a little help; otherwise you might end up with enough ingredients to make soup for 20 the next day.

Try this recipe:

8 oz. cream cheese
1/4 cup mayonnaise
4 oz. feta cheese
Buttermilk (as needed)
2 cucumbers, peeled, cored and grated
1 T. grated onion
1 T. lemon juice
2 tsp. fresh dill
3 or 4 black olives, finely chopped
Chopped sweet red pepper, pimentos, cayenne pepper and garlic salt to taste.

Add the cream cheese to the mayonnaise and feta cheese, then thin with buttermilk. Mix well and blend in the cucumber, onion, lemon juice, dill and olives. Add a teaspoon or so of sweet pepper or pimentos to taste, and a dash or so of cayenne. Season with garlic salt.

This is like ketchup for vegetables. Trust me: It even makes eating a carrot stick worthwhile.

 
posted by on 07/01/06 at 04:13 PM. [printer-friendly version]