Bring Your Appetite: 4th Of July Appetizers Perfect For The Party
The Fourth of July is one of summer’s most popular holidays, a time to gather together and enjoy America’s birthday in a fun, sun-drenched setting. People interested in culinary school programs can use the holiday as a chance to test their skills and provide some delectable dishes for everyone coming to the party. Keep these ideas in mind as the Fourth approaches:
Fruit and vegetables are fun, light and easy
Working with fruit and vegetables for a Fourth of July appetizer offers a number of advantages:
- There’s usually no cooking involved.
- You can use your knife and plating skills to create visually stunning presentations.
- There are many flavors to mix and please even the pickiest eaters.
- Fruit and vegetables are good for you!
Country Living recommended a few different fruit and vegetable trays to make the presentation of your dish match the delightful flavors of the fruits and dips involved. The basic tenets are simple: On a baking sheet or other flat serving tray, place bands of red fruits or vegetables, alternating with white ones, to simulate the flag. Just make sure the top and bottom stripe are both red.
It’s easy to find red – red pepper, tomato, radish – and white – cauliflower, turnip – vegetables, and there are many red fruits, like raspberries, cherries and strawberries. What about white fruits? Cut and peeled apples are an option, and, for appearance’s sake and flavor diversity, you can substitute things like cheese cubes or yogurt-covered pretzels for fruit.
What about the blue and white field of stars? A variety of light-colored sweet or savory dips can fill in splendidly. Consider Rachel Ray’s honey yogurt dip dotted with blueberries for the right color effect, or a dill dip in a small blue serving dish for a veggie tray.
The skillet cookie makes everyone happy
On the other end of the spectrum from fruit and vegetables is the skillet cookie, a relatively simple recipe that magnifies a single chocolate chip cookie on a grand scale. Serving it in slices, potentially with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, is a great flavor combination that suits the all-American nature of the holiday.
As long as you have a cast-iron skillet and some staple baking ingredients on hand, this dish that pleases eaters as both an appetizer and a dessert can be quickly cooked and brought out to serve. Alternatively, you can bake the cookie ahead of time and have one less thing to do in the heat of the moment.
Martha Stewart offers a very straightforward recipe that draws on classic baking techniques to produce one giant cookie. The most unusual ingredient is coarse salt, and you can substitute with regular salt in a pinch. Bon Appetit’s offering in this category is just slightly more esoteric, calling for semisweet chocolate wafers – like discs or pistoles – instead of the chips that most home bakers have on hand. No matter which version you choose, you’ll have a skillet cookie ready for your Fourth of July party, from the first step of prep to letting the cookie cool, in under two hours.
