LACKING the icy gloss of a dry martini or the urbanity of a perfect manhattan, aperitifs have always played the spinster aunt to the cocktail's gin-soaked good-time girl. And unlike a cocktail party, which looms large in our cultural consciousness, an aperitif party doesn't even register.
So I can't say I was very surprised that when I invited friends over for aperitifs, they didn't exactly flood my voice mail with jubilant R.S.V.P.'s.
"Come over for what? A pair of teeth?" one friend said incredulously.
"How very continental of you," another intoned in a faux British accent.
A third hedged. "I only own cocktail dresses," she said. "I don't own any aperitif dresses."
And most tellingly, my friend Dave Wondrich said, "Will there be anything to drink, or should I bring a hip flask of bourbon?"
Dave, a writer specializing in cocktails, was only partly kidding. Most aperitifs (vermouth, Lillet, Campari, Cynar and the like) have an alcohol content closer to wine than to spirits, about 18 percent. But this is a problem only for those seeking immediate inebriation. At my party, held in the garden of my Brooklyn row house on a hot summer night, I figured that the aperitifs would merely soothe my guests before their dinners, forming a happy bridge between the alertness of the day and the tipsy haze of the night.
An aperitif party is easier on the hostess than a cocktail party is. It would certainly be easier on Dave, who always allows himself to be roped into playing bartender at my gatherings. At this party, we could both relax. Aperitifs come ready to imbibe, no mix-meistering required. All I would have to do is set out the bottles on a table and let my friends loose.
Since aperitifs are meant to stimulate and open up the appetite (the word comes from the Latin, aperire, to open), the next question was about what nibbles to serve. Although most of my guests would continue on to dinner elsewhere, they would still need plenty of food. Not having much time and not wanting to heat the kitchen by turning on the stove, I came up with an assortment of instant, no-cook canaps that could be viewed as the culinary analogues to the no-mix convenience of the beverages.
A quick trip to the farmers' market yielded enough veggies to make a platter of crudits, which I served with a dip of store-bought pesto doctored with a little lime juice and a drop of Vietnamese fish sauce. The market also offered ripe July peaches, which were nearly as fragrant and juicy as melon but easier to wrap with prosciutto and to eat in one bite. Cucumbers sliced into coins make edible platforms for dollops of anything: herbed crme frache, salmon mousse, or Cheez Whiz, if one is so inclined.
I heaped on taramosalata, brought by a friend from Astoria, Queens. I adorned the tops with shiny orbs of salmon roe, purchased relatively inexpensively from a sushi takeout place off Flatbush Avenue.
From Blue Apron Foods, in Park Slope, I gathered sopressata, marinated olives, crunchy pickled garlic (the sleeper hit of the party, especially among the 8-year-old contingent) and rich, savory little crackers flavored with walnuts, rosemary and fig. I figured if I wasn't cooking, I should go one better than water crackers.
The shop also supplied me with cheese. Now, if this was a cocktail party, or even one of those dull wine-and-cheese soirees, I might have just put the cheese on a platter with a knife and my fancy crackers, and that would have been that. But an aperitif party seemed to call for an extra layer of refinement.
I cut the cheeses into cubes and anointed them; an aged Emmenthaler got a drizzle of walnut oil and a sprinkling of toasted walnuts, and the young pecorino, barely three months old and with the springy texture of smoked mozzarella, got a gloss of good aged balsamic vinegar. I also picked up an oozing, ripe Epoisses, scraped off the top, and used the gooey insides as a dip for romaine lettuce hearts. It was like baked Brie without the baking.
The highlight was the shrimp, which I ordered cooked from Fresh Direct. I mixed in chopped Indian lime pickle from the back of the fridge and fresh mint from the garden. The pungent condiment and herb infused the sweet shrimp in about 10 minutes, making it taste like an Indian-inspired ceviche. I thought it went particularly well with the vermouth, which I garnished with celery leaves to bring out its herbaceous character.
Here's another advantage to serving aperitifs: You can sample several different kinds over the course of an evening and still be self-possessed enough to take the subway. I served five, and everyone tried them all.
There was Campari and soda, garnished with orange slices. Cynar (an inky Italian libation somehow made from artichokes, but with a cola flavor stained with a medicinal sting) was served on the rocks with a twist. Ricard pastis got a splash of water to soften its licorice bite. Lillet, a fortified, aromatized wine similar to vermouth but imbued with different aromatics, was delightful just chilled and poured into pretty little glasses. And then the classic, vermouth, with its celery leaf garnish, which tickled everyone's nose, mint julep style.
Although each aperitif tasted different, all of them shared one characteristic: an underlying bitterness that kept them from being too sweet and stoked the appetite as well.
Of all the aperitifs, vermouths vary the most in quality. Before subjecting a garden full of friends to any one brand, taste it first and make sure it's good enough to serve on its own. Noilly Prat is dependable. It can even be sublime if you've picked up a bottle while visiting France. It is made differently there, and flaunts a more assertive and complex personality than its blander American counterpart.
So, did any of my friends pine for martinis and other cocktails, or hard liquor in general?
They didn't seem to.
Although I know Dave packed his hip flask, he never did bring it out. All of the guests stayed late into the night, skipping their dinner in favor of more shrimp and sipping their way down to the bottoms of the aperitif bottles, all the while maintaining that happy glow just on the other side of sober.
By then they had even stopped making fun of me for giving an aperitif party in the first place, which just goes to show how civilizing a nice aperitif can be.
SHRIMP WITH LIME PICKLE AND MINT
Time: 5 minutes plus 20 minutes' resting
1 pound cooked, shelled shrimp
3 tablespoons chopped lime pickle (available in Indian markets)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
Combine all ingredients in a bowl and toss well to combine. Let rest for 20 minutes. Serve with toothpicks and cocktail napkins.
Yield: 8 servings
MARINATED WHITE ANCHOVIES WITH BASIL AND LEMON ZEST
Time: 5 minutes plus 10 minutes' resting
1/2 pound marinated white anchovies
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon good extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
Freshly ground black pepper
Combine all ingredients in a bowl and toss well. Let rest for 10 minutes. Serve with toothpicks and cocktail napkins.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
TARAMOSALATA CANAPES
Time: 10 minutes
1 seedless hothouse cucumber
1 cup taramosalata (Greek fish roe dip)
2 ounces salmon roe
Dill sprigs, for garnish
Slice cucumber into 1/4-inch-thick rounds. Spoon some taramosalata on top of each round and top with salmon roe. Garnish with dill.
Yield: 8 servings
ROMAINE HEARTS AND RIPE EPOISSES
Time: 5 minutes
2 romaine lettuce hearts
1 box ripe, runny Epoisses or Camembert cheese (8.8 ounces)
Separate washed lettuce leaves, discarding core and bottom Leaving cheese in its wooden box, use a spoon to scoop off top orange crust. Instruct guests to dip lettuce leaves into cheese.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
CHEESE BOARD OF AGED CANTAL AND YOUNG PECORINO
Time: 5 minutes
1 pound aged Cantal or other firm, nutty cheese
1 pound semisoft pecorino cheese under 6 months old
Walnut oil or hazelnut oil, for drizzling
1/4 cup chopped toasted walnuts
Aged balsamic vinegar, for drizzling
Cut rind off Cantal if necessary. Cut both cheese into bite-size chunks. Arrange them on a platter or board, keeping different cheeses on opposite sides of platter. Drizzle Cantal with walnut oil or hazelnut oil, and sprinkle with walnuts. Drizzle pecorino with balsamic vinegar. Serve with toothpicks.
Yield: 8 servings
PROSCIUTTO-WRAPPED PEACHES
Time: 10 minutes
4 ripe peaches
1/4 pound prosciutto
Halve and pit peaches. Cut halves lengthwise into thirds. You should have 24 wedges. Tear prosciutto into 24 pieces (lengthwise is best) and wrap each slice around a peach wedge.
Yield: 8 servings
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