28.3 Hors d'oeuvre, caviar and the buffet

Hors d'oeuvre and appetizers

An appetizer is the first course of a meal. An hors d'oeuvre is a small bite served before the meal, often during a cocktail hour, apart from the meal itself. Servers often carry them on trays among guests who hold a drink in the other hand.

The French words mean "outside the work". An amuse bouche is a single bite some restaurants send out when guests sit down; done well, it gives a glimpse of the chef's style or of that night's menu.

There are four kinds.

• Hot: sausages, smoked fish or meat, or a potato napoleon with caviar and sour cream.
• Cold: pâtés, oysters, cheeses, crudités (raw vegetables).
• Finger food: tea sandwiches, wontons, empanadas, deviled quail eggs.
• Canapés: one or two bites, always made of four parts.

Hors d'oeuvre are served two ways: passed, carried round on trays (butler style), or set out on a stationary buffet. At a party with "heavy hors d'oeuvre" the food may go beyond one or two bites and be served from a fixed table with plates and cutlery.

Other countries have their own names for small dishes before a meal.

• England: starters
• Spain: pinchos or tapas
• Greece: mezzes
• Italy: antipasti
• Russia: rakuski

Composed hors d'oeuvre

A composed hors d'oeuvre is built from two or more ingredients, usually made ahead for the event. Each needs something to carry it.

• Barquettes: small boat-shaped pastry shells, usually plain in flavor, often filled with a mousse. Because of the boat shape they should always hold fish or shellfish.
• Tartlets: like barquettes, but rounder and often fluted. To line the molds, roll the dough very thin, lay a mold upside down on it and cut round it with some extra dough to spare. Then press a second mold inside to shape the dough against the first.
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• Profiteroles: small, hollow balls of baked choux paste (pâte à choux), filled with something sweet or savory.
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• Bouchées: tiny puff pastry cups with straight, often fluted sides. The top can be cut off and used as garnish, and the cup filled, for example with crawfish étouffée and chives.
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• Spoons: Asian-style soup spoons let you serve a bite with a sauce that would otherwise make a mess. Edible spoons made from a cracker dough are a newer idea.

The canapé

The canapé is the most common catering hors d'oeuvre: a tiny open sandwich in four parts.

• Base: usually a toast point. A vegetable or fruit can also be a base if it is firm enough to carry the rest.
• Spread: adds flavor and moisture and glues the next layer to the base. Compound butter, flavored cream cheese or mayonnaise, or a bound salad of chicken, ham, tuna or egg all work; cut the ingredients finely at this small size.
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• Main ingredient: meat, vegetable, mousse or cheese. It may carry the main flavor or support another part. If the spread is an earthy truffle mayonnaise, choose a main ingredient that goes with it. Smoked fish or meat, sometimes made into a mousse, is common.
• Garnish: every canapé needs one. Keep garnishes the same size and in the same place on every piece. Caviar, capers, chives, salmon roe, nuts, fruit and herbs are all used.
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Small bites like these depend on finished mise en place and a strict production schedule. see chapter 5: What gets done before service Toast points should be wrapped and kept at room temperature. Spreads and main ingredients are perishable and must be kept cold, at 4°C (40°F) or less.

Caviar

Caviar is the salted roe (eggs) of a fish, and only roe from the sturgeon is legally caviar. Roe can make up 10 to 50% of the fish's weight. The Caspian Sea has traditionally been the world's largest source; Russia produces 90% of the Caspian harvest and Iran about 10%. In the United States, white sturgeon are farmed for caviar in California.

Other roes are often sold with "caviar" on the label: flying fish roe and salmon roe at a sushi bar, or jars of lumpfish caviar on a shop shelf. In South Louisiana the choupique, or bowfin, gives a shiny jet-black roe, taken in winter and salted before it is jarred. It is usually saltier than most sturgeon caviar.

Caviar is graded on several qualities.

• the size and evenness of its grain
• its color
• firmness
• smell
• flavor
• shine
• how easily the skin of each egg breaks

Grain sizes are graded 000, 00, medium and small, and lighter colors grade higher.

Salt preserves it. Most caviar carries 5 to 8% salt by weight. Caviar labeled malossol, "little salt", has only 2 to 3% and is excellent.

There are three true caviars.

Beluga eggs are soft, clear, glossy and well separated, each with a dark "eye", which is the embryo. It is the most expensive of the three and is usually served alone on toast. Sour cream, crème fraîche, minced onion or minced hard-boiled egg white may be offered beside it to clear the palate.

Osetra comes from a sturgeon of 50 to 400 pounds that can live 50 years, and only beluga costs more. Lighter osetra is the most wanted, and rare golden osetra is golden yellow and very rich. Tradition puts it on blinis, with crème fraîche.

Sevruga is the cheapest of the three. It comes from the starry (stellate) sturgeon, which overfishing has already removed from part of its range.

Cheaper caviars are served in more ways: in hollowed, cooked new potatoes, on blinis, or with sour cream, crème fraîche, onion or egg white. Lower grades go into stuffings for seafood and some meat dishes, and into salads.

Some other forms are on the market.

• Almas, from rare albino sturgeon 60 to 100 years old in the southern Caspian, is the most expensive caviar of all. A kilogram regularly sells for more than $30,000. It goes to market with nothing added.
• Payusnaya, Russian for "pressed", is made from broken eggs pressed into a spread that Russians like on toast.
• Kaluga is farm-raised in Siberia and China from a large sturgeon of the Amur River, also called the river beluga. Wild kaluga has been hunted almost to extinction for its roe, and fishing for it anywhere in the Amur is against the law.

Buy caviar from a supplier you trust. Keep unopened caviar at 28 to 32°F for up to four weeks, and use it within two or three days of opening. That is colder than the general cold-storage limit of 4°C (40°F) or less.

What a buffet is for

A buffet is a self-service meal. Guests help themselves from platters, chafing dishes (chafers) and action stations. A buffet has three aims: to get guests to fill their plates with foods that are cheap to produce, to keep the line moving, and to give a feeling of lavish plenty.

Two things make a buffet look right: lavishness and abundance. A table of plentiful, beautifully set food excites the appetite. These create that look:

• color
• height
• platters and bowls kept full
• good spacing
• simplicity, because the trick is not to overdesign
• order: food arranged simply and beautifully in one consistent style

Setting out the line

The order of the line matters.

• Plates go first.
• The cheaper items come before the more expensive ones.
• Hot food is best served at the end.
• Each sauce or dressing sits right next to the food it goes with.
• Desserts are best on a table of their own.

A cocktail buffet suits tasty, well-seasoned appetizer foods. Stack small plates where service begins, and make the table easy to reach from every side.

How many tables, and how much room

The number of tables depends on several things.

• how many guests are coming
• how long service lasts
• what service equipment is needed
• the menu
• the style of service
• how much décor is wanted
• the floor space available

Some rules of thumb help with the sums.

• Allow about two running feet of table for each food container or chafer. Three cold items, three hot items and a basket of condiments need a table 14 to 16 feet long.
• Two 8-foot tables take 48 square feet of floor. Add about 150 square feet for a standard 3-foot aisle around them so guests can serve themselves: some 200 square feet in total.
• One single-sided buffet serves 50 guests; one double-sided buffet serves 75. A party of 150 needs two double-sided buffets.

Centerpieces

Cut flowers, potted plants or foliage, alone or with candles, lights or an ice carving, all make good centerpieces. Avoid strongly scented flowers, which get in the way of tasting the food, and do not block the guests' view. For height, use an epergne, a stand with a slim center that hides less.

Think about how long the flowers will last on the day. Ask for "funeral roses" if you want roses fully open, and keep flowers at 38 to 45°F. An ice carving needs proper drainage, with a bucket hidden under the table skirt to catch the melt.

The load list

A load list makes sure nothing is forgotten. For each item on the menu, ask what you need to show it, serve it and eat it. Crawfish empanadas, for example, need all of these.

• the empanadas
• a pan to hold them
• a chafer to keep them hot
• a pitcher of hot water for the chafer
• fuel to burn under it
• a serving utensil
• plates and napkins

Add the tables, cloths and skirting. A buffet only works if it is planned.

Platters and boards: B.U.F.F.

Any platter, a charcuterie board included, can be checked against the B.U.F.F. principle.

• Balance: the food and garnish are balanced in size, kind of food and flavor.
• Unity: everything on the platter belongs together. Do not put sweet and savory food on one platter.
• Focal point: the arrangement has movement that leads the eye to the centerpiece of the platter.
• Flavor: the parts go with each other and bring out each other's flavor.

Holding food safely on a buffet

Buffet food sits out for the whole service, so temperature control matters more than ever. The full rules for holding, cooling and reheating come earlier in the book. see chapter 2: Heat: cooling, holding and reheating The key figures for a buffet follow.

The danger zone is 4°C to 60°C (40°F to 140°F). Most harmful bacteria grow and multiply in that range, so keep buffet food out of it: hot food hot and cold food cold. Cold food is held at 4°C (40°F) or less, and hot food at 60°C (140°F) or more.

Chafers and steam tables are hot-holding units. Use them like this.

• Preheat it before any food goes in, to a minimum of 60°C (140°F).
• Put in only food that is already hot, at 74°C (165°F).
• Never use a hot-holding unit to reheat food. It cannot heat food fast enough. Reheat on the stove, in the oven or in a microwave until the food reaches 74°C (165°F) and stays there for 15 seconds or more, then put it in the unit.
• Check every day, with a thermometer, that the unit keeps food at 60°C (140°F) or hotter. Look for burnt-out elements, low water in a steam table and a wrong thermostat setting.
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• A mistake can leave food in the super danger zone, 20°C to 49°C (70°F to 120°F), where bacteria grow very quickly.
• When service ends, do not switch the unit off and leave the food in it to cool. Take the food out at once and cool it.

Food being cooled has two hours to get down to 20°C (68°F) from 60°C (140°F), then four more hours to reach 4°C (40°F).