Cocktail Eats

Spanish Albondigas

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This recipe for Spanish-style meatballs packs a lot of flavor into a very small package. They’re perfect for cocktail parties. Tapas, small plates, hors d’oeuvres… whatever you want to call them, appetizers are my favorite kind of food! You can use the ground meat of your choice, but I recommend mixing lamb and beef for a rich, exotic flavor.

Ingredients

    ¼ lb ground lamb
    ½ lb ground beef
    ¾ cup dry bread crumbs
    1 egg

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Vietnamese-Style Spring Rolls with Dipping Sauce

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Vietnamese-style spring rolls are like a delicious shrimp salad wrapped up into the perfect warm-weather finger food! Sometimes called summer rolls, this appetizer tastes fresh and light.

While there are a lot of ingredients, most of the work is just chopping and assembling. So don’t let the long recipe fool you into thinking these are difficult to make!

I’ve chosen my favorite fillings, but feel free to substitute. Cilantro is a great addition, as are … Read more

St. Patrick’s Day Party Food: Corned Beef Cabbage Rolls

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St. Patrick’s Day may be about drinking, but you still have to eat! Here’s a fun way to turn the classic corned beef and cabbage meal into a finger-food appetizer for your Irish festivities this year.

Erin go Bragh!

Ingredients

6 Savoy cabbage leaves
½ cup stone-ground mustard
2 slices dark rye bread
½ lb corned beef

Instructions

Trim off the white core at the bottom. Steam cabbage leaves for no more than 2 minutes. … Read more

Shrimp Cocktail Recipe

Shrimp cocktail is a classic cocktail party appetizer … and for good reason. It’s finger food that tastes fancy without a ton of work. Also, it goes great with cocktails and beer!

You can serve it in individual sauce-and-shrimp glasses or lay the shrimp out on a large platter and provide a bowl of cocktail sauce. It all depends on the type of party. You want these to remain cold—so it may be advisable to … Read more

Easy Deviled Eggs – Cocktail Eats

Deviled eggs are a tasty cocktail party finger food that you cannot go wrong serving!

They look fancy, but take less than 15 minutes to make.  Here’s my favorite, super-simple recipe:

Ingredients

12 eggs
½ cup safflower mayonnaise
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tbs chopped fresh parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Paprika (garnish)

Instructions

Put eggs in a sauce pan, cover with water and add a splash of vinegar. Bring eggs to … Read more

2010 NASFT Winter Fancy Food Show – San Francisco

San Francisco was host to the NASFT Winter Fancy Foods Show this past weekend and, wow, what a spread! There was miles of cheese, chocolate, oils, dips, coffee, liqueurs, ice cream, sauces, dips, salts (lots of salts) and a ton of other fancy food products from all over the world.

My favorite Irish Cheddar, spiked with whiskey or ale is pictured below:

Among the thousands of products on hand, there were plenty for the bar.

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Oatmeal Stout And Heath Bar Ice Cream

What an amazing idea! “A Good Appetite” came up with this tasty-sounding recipe for Oatmeal Stout and Heath Bar Ice Cream.

I’ll have to try to make this one myself.

The ice cream base has a slight bitter flavor but also a bit of a toffee flavor from the stout. The sweetness of the Heath bar is a good foil to that bitterness while the toffee in it helps bring out more of that toffee

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Beer Chips

It was inevitable that someone would combine potato chips and beer into one über-snack.

With all the exotic flavors of potato chips out there, it was only matter of time before the simple pleasure of beer and chips was combined into one product.

These babies are thick-cut kettle style chips with a serious coating of sugar and salt and to top it off, covered with a major dose of the world’s most perfect beverage beer.

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Scientifically-Proven Hangover Cure: Bacon Sandwich

Research is finally supporting what many of us already knew: Bacon helps relieve a hangover.

Despite all the hangover cures in a box, can or bottle, most people I know head for the tried-and-true greasy diner meal for relief.

Apparently, there are scientific reasons for this, according to the Newcastle University Centre for Life:

“Bread is high in carbohydrates and bacon is full of protein, which breaks down into amino acids. Your body needs these

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Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Even though St. Patrick’s Day is over, it’s time again to whip out the Guinness, Baileys and Jameson’s whiskey and turn them into delicious cupcakes!

The Irish Car Bomb is a well-known (although not very tactfully named) drink consisting of a layered shot of Jameson’s and Bailey’s dropped in a ¾ full glass of Guinness and chugged like crazy. (Don’t let it sit; curdled Bailey’s in your beer is not an appetizing sight.)

Well, here … Read more