Classic Recipes: Appetizers & Soups

By Wendy Hobson

Appetizers and Soups provides plenty of inpiration for those all-important complements to the main course. Here you will find the tastes of the globe for every occasion - elegant canapes to go with cocktails, fun mini burger bites for kids' parties, sophisticated starters to serve before diner or at evening soirees, classic dinner-party soups, hearty soups from rural Italy, light broths from Asia, and some real American favorites.

• The perfect partner for cooks at all levels of ability with easy to follow instructions, accompanied by mouthwatering photographs.

• All recipes make four servings and use readily available ingredients that can be found at your local store.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
• Release date: Jul 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781782127383

Wendy Hobson

Wendy studied at Reading University, before moving to Macmillan Education then Oxford University Press and Purnell Books. When licensed character publishing was in its infancy, she worked on accounts such as Walt Disney, Dangermouse- Subsequently she had some of her own children's stories published: some licensed character material, others in anthologies and four books about Bertie Bassett. Two particular areas of expertise are the apparently odd pairing of mind, body, spirit and cookery. In cookery, she has worked with many major UK and international publishers such as BBC Books, Simon & Schuster and Cassell and can name drop Ken Hom, Gary Rhodes, Madhur Jaffrey, Mary Berry and Valentina Harris among the authors whose books she has edited. As well as the children's books, her writing credits include Simply Feng Shui, Silver Surfers' Colour Guide to Word Processing, Classic 1000 Recipes, Classic 1000 Cake and Bake Recipes, First Years, Starting School, Ladies' Flower Garden and The Kitchen Companion.She has a grown-up son and daughter and lives in Berkshire, currently with two cats.

Book preview

Introduction

The appetizer is many people’s favorite part of the meal because so much thought goes into choosing and presenting the right combination of ingredients, in the right quantities, to set the meal off to a great start. That means applying imagination, and when you mix that with appetite, you are bound to get great food.

Appetizers are designed to whet the appetite for the meal to come, so quantities should be half that of a main course, or less. You want to take the edge off your guests’ hunger but not fill them up. A well-chosen appetizer leaves you just wanting a little more, so try to avoid piling plates too high, and don’t offer second helpings. If your food is good, your guests will want to eat more than they should!

Enjoying food is not just about flavor, though—it’s about presentation too: the look of a dish, its colors and textures. The recipes in this book will offer you a range of opportunities to serve anything from a vibrant tomato soup to a subtle pasta dish, while the photographs will give you ideas on how to garnish and serve the dish to make it look its best. Pay particular attention to color: a white dish will show off most foods to best advantage (unless the food is also white, of course). Patterns are, more often than not, distracting and take the focus away from the food. When you serve up your first dish, your guests’ eyes should go straight to the delight in store for them.

There’s plenty of choice here to allow you to serve a dish that complements the main course. If you have chosen a pasta dish as your main course, then a grilled dish or a salad would offer a nice counterpoint to the meal to come; or a hearty soup could precede a roast dish. Think about color, texture, cooking method, and balance