Hi,
let’s enter the new year in big style with – New Year Cocktail Party. We will make our favourite appetizers and sandwiches for finger food and citrus salad for dessert. The appetizers and sandwiches go great with the sparkling wine cocktail of our choice. We decided this year to add that citrus sparkle to our party with both Citrus sparkle cocktails  for drinks and Citrus salad as a dessert. Try them, they are awesome.

Appetizers

While it is hard to speak about appetizers on this menu, we will call the deviled eggs the appetizer. I made them in two versions – one being a simple deviled egg and the other one with young peas. You will need:

6 eggs
3 Tbsp frozen young peas
salt, pepper, turmeric
3 Tbsp mayonnaise
1 Tbsp cooking cream

The start of both of them is the same. First you need to hard boil the eggs. Peel them and half them. Remove the egg yolks and put them to separate bowl. Boil the young peas in a bit of salted water.

Crush the egg yolks with fork. Add the mayonnaise and mix thoroughly. If you want to have smooth mixture then press it through the sieve.

When the peas are finished, drain them and transfer them to the blender (you can also add a spring of mint here, but my grumpy does not like mint, so I avoid it). Add the cooking cream and blend until smooth enough. Then add 1 Tbsp of the egg yolk mixture to the peas and season with salt and pepper. Fill the half of the egg white sells with this mixture.

For the other half of the egg white shells add the salt, pepper and a pinch to turmeric to the egg yolk mixture. You should not taste the turmeric a lot. it should just provide a bit deeper yellow colour to the egg yolks. Mix it thoroughly and fill the egg whites. Garnish with a small celery leaf.

Rolled Pancake Sandwiches

These sandwiches are really easy to make, and are delicious. They had a role of main dish in this menu, but can also be server as appetizers. The biggest issue with them is that you need to make the pancakes. Pancake batter is a usual pancake batter with addition of one Tbsp grated parmesan and pepper. Make sure to not add any sugar to the batter, it should be salty. Then make the pancakes like you usually do.

When the pancakes are done, smear the fresh cheese with herbs on them. Put the thin slice of ham and a slice of favourite cheese and roll them up. They should be left a couple of minutes to rest, so don’t cut them immediately. Finish rolling up all of them then cut them into bite size pieces. Arrange them cut side up on the platter and garnish with a sprig of basil.

Desserts

For dessert I opted to make my favourite citrus salad. I stumbled upon the recipe some 10 years ago. It was featured in a magazine, I don’t remember which one. Except few modifications it is the same recipe and you can make it one day ahead. 

All you need is

oranges (usual ones or/and blood oranges)
at least one orange with eatable skin
mandarins or clementines
sugar
orange liqueur (optional)
keffir lime leaves (optional)
pomegranate seeds (optional)

Before skinning the fruit, us a knife or an orange zester to make thin strips of orange skin, without the white stuff. And put the in the bottom of the bowl where you will put the skinned oranges. Then skin the oranges as described below.

Here is the main difference between the original recipe and my version – the way fruits are cut. In the original you peel the oranges and them cut them to rounds. But I find this hard to eat. The rounds are big, you cannot eat them in one to two bites and it is a bit messy. I fillet the oranges instead. Skin the oranges with the knife. In a way that will remove all of the thin white skin. Then use the knife to also remove the slices, so that there is no white skin on them. Do that for clementines or mandarins as well.

When fruit is filleted, add one Tbsp of orange liqueur (if using) to the fruit and 2 Tbsp of sugar and mix the fruit. Add any juice that ran out of fruit while you were filleting it. Leave the fruit in the fridge until you need it.

For serving this fruit salad you can use a big shallow dish or an individual bowls or glasses. To serve, remove the fruit from the juice and skin strips and put it into the serving dish. Drain the juice to remove orange skins. Add the juice to the oranges. No need to add the entire juice, just add how much you see fit. Then garnish with keffir lime leaves cut to strips or pomegranate seeds, depends what you are using. And you are done!

Citrus Sparkle Cocktails

Citrus sparkle cocktails are easy and don’t require a lot of ingredients. If you are making the citrus salad then you have almost everything you need. Just make sure that for the sparkling wine you use some wine that you like to drink. Don’t expect the orange simple syrup and liqueur to enhance the taste of wine greatly. They will add a little orange flavour and zing. But if wine is sour and not nice, there is nothing these additions can improve. I made this cocktail as one cocktail per glass, but you can make it as a batch cocktail, then just pour it into the glasses, or serve it in a pitcher beside the glasses. Add The orange strips to the pitcher, so they infuse the cocktail with their aroma.

Needed things

orange liqueur
white sparkling wine (I prefer Cava or Chamapaigne) semi dry or dry
orange simple syrup (or just simple syrup)
orange peel strips

This cocktail we serve in champagne flutes. First to the champagne flute you add one tsp of orange simple syrup and 1 1/2 tsp orange liqueur. Mix them until combined. Fill the rest of the glass with sparkling wine and give one more mix. Garnish with orange peel strips. Curl the orange peel by curling it around the barbecue skewer or a long tooth pick. Add the orange strip curls to the cocktails and enjoy.