Entertaining in a Small Space

Several readers of The City Cook have written to me for ideas on how to entertain in small city apartments. For many of us the challenge isn't what to cook. Instead it's not having a large enough dining table, or places to sit, or adequate glassware, or even surfaces on which to place a glass.

Despite a lack of indoor acreage, many of us still prefer to entertain at home. It's a way to return hospitality, it's personal and welcoming, and it can be more affordable (I just saw some statistics on how much the cost of a New York restaurant meal has gone up in the last couple of years. Ouch.) Although formal dining rooms and eat-in kitchens may be rare, this doesn't have to keep us from being a host.

And there's no better time to welcome friends into our apartments than in December.

Wine and Cheese Cocktail Party

A cocktail party has several advantages. Your friends won't be surprised if they spend much of their time standing up so you don't need a seat for everyone. Folks may come late and leave early which can help you accommodate more guests. You can serve food and drink on a mix of plates and glassware and without needing a full set of china with service for 12.

A cocktail party featuring wine and cheese can be a treat for your guests -- nearly everyone loves cheese and you can make everything you serve become an opportunity to learn and something to talk about. Let your guests know in advance what you're serving (start making the party special right from the start with a fun invitation by mail or e-mail instead of just a phone call). Give care to decorations, music, flowers, votive candles, and your choice of napkins and tablecloths. Offer information to your guests about each cheese and wine you serve, as with a little written card or even a hand-out with information provided by your wine merchant and cheese monger; you may be surprised how much your guests will want to know more. And since you'll be serving red wine, if you have upholstered furniture or carpeting, consider buying a wine stain remover in case accidents happen.

There's much to know when selecting your cheeses so work with one of our best cheese mongers (there are many listed on The City Cook). To give you some help, we recently spent some time with Max Shrem, manager of Formaggio Kitchen in the Essex Market on Manhattan's Lower East Side. You can listen to his recommendation for how to put a cheese course together, with tips for working with a cheese monger, choosing your cheese, presentation, and pairing cheese with wine and food.

• Instead of trying to please everyone with cocktails, limit your beverages to wine, plus sparkling water and juice for any non-wine drinkers. Buy from a well regarded wine store -- there are many listed here on The City Cook -- and go to the store when it's less busy so you can spend some time with the store's staff to get advice on what to serve. Choose your cheeses first and have an idea of how mild or robust they are in flavor. This information will help your wine merchant make recommendations. Also give your wine merchant a budget for how much you want to spend per bottle.

• How much wine to buy? Food & Wine Magazine recently did an article about holiday entertaining and this is what they recommend:

A 2-hour party with 20 guests, at 3 glasses of wine per person (there are 5 glasses of wine per bottle) means you'll need 12 bottles of wine

A 4-hour party with 8 guests, at 5 glasses of wine per person means you'll need 8
bottles of wine

• In addition to the cheese, serve foods that are compliments and accents such as nut bread and slices of French baguette, fruit pastes like quince membrillo or mostardas, honey, dried fruit, big bunches of fresh grapes, and nuts. If you work with a better cheese monger like Essex Formaggio, Murray's, Artisanal, Blue Apron, Dean & Deluca, or another that's listed here at The City Cook, they can help you put your whole cheese board together as well as all the accent foods.

• Visit a bakery that's known for its bread, like Amy's or Balthazar, when choosing a special nut bread and baguette.

• Have lots of cocktail napkins; paper is fine (Gracious Home always has a large selection of pretty paper cocktail napkins in stock). Use a separate knife to cut each cheese and consider pre-cutting some cheeses into chunks or pieces. And use wine glasses, not plastic.

Fancy Hors d'Oeuvres Cocktail Party

If you want something more elaborate than cheese and wine, consider a full-out cocktail party. Cocktail parties are all about glamour, so make sure you have beautiful glasses, pretty decorative accessories, good music, and fancy, satisfying hors d'oeuvres that are presented in a stylish way.

Avoid trying to make individual cocktails unless you're willing to hire a bartender and fully stock all the ingredients. Otherwise you'll be making drinks all night instead of being with your guests. Instead consider making pitchers of a single, signature cocktail, for example, apple martinis, and then offer a carefully chosen selection of sparkling, red and white wines. A chilled sparkling Spanish Cava or Italian Prosecco are appealing and less expensive alternatives to Champagne. And make sure to also have bottles of mineral water, a fruit juice, and slices of lemons and limes for folks who don't want anything alcoholic.

Serve hors d'oeuvres that are easy to eat in one bite and that are not messy or likely to dribble. Offer ones made with meat, chicken, vegetables, nuts, cheese and bread so that you have something for everyone. Try to have each food already prepared or cut into portion size so that your guests don't have to cut their own slices or spoon their own servings. Keep color, texture and temperature in mind and mix it up.

Here are a few suggestions:

• Fried olives stuffed with a flavorful filling of sausage, veal and wine. See our recipe.
• Marcona almonds. Warm these special toasted Spanish almonds just before putting out; place them in a pretty dish right on the bar for people to nibble on while waiting for their drink to be poured. Marcona almonds are available at most fine food stores including Murray's Cheese, Fairway and Blue Apron.
• Wedges of soft, fresh pita bread spread with humus and dusted with cumin and paprika.
• A tablespoon of fresh crab salad (lump crabmeat mixed with good mayonnaise and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice) on an endive leaf.
• Small slices of beef filet on equally small slices of bread with a touch of horseradish sauce.
• Chicken sates with a dipping sauce.
• American caviar or salmon roe on a slice of seedless English cucumber.
• Paper thin slices of prosciutto wrapped around breadsticks.
• Savory cheese sticks made from puff pastry. See our recipe.
• A vegetable crudite platter.
• Homemade potato chips made with olive oil. See our recipe.
• Dates stuffed with cheese and wrapped with smoky bacon. See our recipe.
• Bruschetta with chicken liver paté or tiny diced tomato or a puree of cannellini beans and roasted garlic.
• Dishes of olives (remember a nearby plate for pits).
• Something sweet. This can be a tray of brownies cut into tiny squares, a plate of chocolates, a bowl of perfect strawberries to be eaten with your fingers, or small cups of a pudding or pot de crème.

Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook is the best cookbook on this subject that I've ever seen. The hundreds of recipes range from very simple to impressively ornate. And what I love best? There is a photo of every single hors d'oeuvre in the book which really helps with presentation.

If you have a small apartment you may also have a small freezer, so don't forget to put some bags of ice on your shopping list. If you have outdoor space, store them outside. Otherwise a bucket in your bathtub will be a good short-term place to park the bags.

Soup and Dessert Dinner

If you want a more homey way to entertain but don't have the room for a full sit-down dinner, consider having a soup supper with dessert. Guests can eat their soup from a mug with big cotton or linen napkins on their laps and sit anywhere in your living room.

You can make four soups -- most can be prepared in advance. Then before your guests arrive, put a pot on each of the four burners of your stove and reheat them. Invest in 4 soup ladles so that there's no double-dipping between soups.

Have at least one of the soups be 100% vegetarian; see our recipes for "Cream of Carrot and Lemon Soup" and "Genovese Minestrone With Spinach Pesto" .

Other popular soups are hearty ones with pasta, stew-like soups with chunks of chicken or beef or little mealballs, cream soups, ones that are sweet and sour, or something spicy like a Moroccan tomato soup or a Thai-spiced crab soup. If any of the soups are served with an accent like grated cheese or sour cream, or add-ins like popcorn or tiny crackers, have a row of little bowls near the stove to make it easy for your guests to add everything before leaving the kitchen, including salt, pepper, a bottle of olive oil for drizzling and some Tabasco for added spice.

If you kitchen is really small, just set up a line like a school cafeteria and your friends will be glad to help themselves. Have a generous basket of breads and include a variety: rye, multi-grain, sourdough, baguettes, and a crusty Pugliese. Maybe a sinful French butter or a round of ripe Camembert to spread on a piece of bread. Pass glasses of wine and refill them often.

For dessert offer several choices: a plate of cookies, small panna cottas, a bowl of grapes, or maybe a platter of mini cupcakes. Offer a glass of port or a dessert wine. The idea is to have things that are easy to eat when not at a table but still feed your guests well while conveying hospitality.

Finally, we small apartment dwellers always have the option of pushing all our furniture against the walls, buying a folding table and length of fabric to cover it, renting some folding chairs and turning our entire apartment into a dining room. For most city cooks, that would be a totally normal thing to do.

Have fun with your holiday entertaining.

Advertise on TheCityCook.com