It’s entertaining season, but even the best and most prepared home cooks can be caught out if guests stay beyond their initial cup of tea or cocktail. This is no time to slow-cook a brisket or bring out the mortar and pestle for a from-scratch curry – but there are better options than dumping a bag of chips into a bowl.
The brief is dishes that are tasty, quick and impressive – the holy trinity of cooking for guests, provided you are prepared. We talked to three Australian chefs about their go-to dishes for entertaining, and what they keep on hand in the freezer, fridge, and pantry to get the party started.
Danielle Alvarez: Pissaladière
In the freezer: pastry dough
Sydney-based chef and author Danielle Alvarez prizes simplicity and impact when she’s entertaining at the last minute.
Enter the trusty pissaladière, a classic Niçoise open-faced tart topped with sauteed onions, olives and anchovies. “It just takes a few ingredients and you can make this stunning thing to have with a cocktail,” she says.
To this end, she always has a portion of flaky pastry dough, made from scratch, in her freezer. Besides pissaladière, it makes a delicious base for myriad sweet and savoury toppings. The dough takes a bit of practice to master, but the key is the consistency of the butter (see the recipe below). “When I do a demo, people are always surprised that I leave the chunks of butter quite big,” says Alvarez.
“A lot of recipes will tell you to chop the butter in a food processor, which makes a short, crumbly pastry. For a flaky result, push the butter pieces into the flour, and use a scraper to press and fold, never kneading.”
In the fridge: olives
For a speedy snack, Alvarez’s go-to is Perelló-brand gordal pitted olives. “They’re green super-savoury Spanish olives, and they come in a big tin that you decant into a glass jar. They’re like heaven. I eat them straight out of the container.”
In the pantry: anchovies
If you can, spend a little more on anchovies. You will taste the difference. “My favourite brand is [Conservas] Angelachu Anchovies … They’re pricey but special for guests. They’re super tasty [and] meaty.” The anchovies can be crisscrossed over the baked pissaladière, but really, says Alvarez: “You can eat them by themselves.”
Tony Tan: Dumplings (and ice-cream with fish sauce)
In the freezer: dumplings
“If it’s 6pm and people are hovering, I know very well they’re expecting food,” says chef and writer Tony Tan.
Tan, who runs a cooking school in Trentham, Victoria, says: “Whenever I teach, I always put aside dumplings in the freezer for these occasions. It saves so much time. Throw them in boiling water and within seven minutes they’re ready.”
If you have the foresight to make your own and batch-freeze for food emergencies, Tan suggests a classic dumpling filling of minced pork, minced ginger, shaoxing wine, soy sauce, a beaten egg, plus “a bit of stock, so when you bite into it, it’s nice and juicy.”
The filling goes into store-bought wonton wrappers, which are thinner than gow gee wrappers, and therefore cook faster.
Freeze them in a single layer on a lined tray; when it comes time to cooking, there’s no need to defrost. Pop them straight into boiling water and cook until they float.
In the fridge: XO sauce
XO is a luxurious dipping sauce for dumplings. Recipes typically include dried scallops, dried shrimp, aged ham plus vegetable oil, chillies and garlic, resulting in a textural umami-packed sauce that is spicy and delicately sweet.
“A good XO sauce is like heaven on Earth. It gives flavour like nothing else can,” says Tan.
It can be bought at Asian grocers, but Tan makes his own. “The ingredients can be expensive – conpoy [dried scallops] costs between $300 and $600 a kilo – but you only need a small amount. If you buy a 200-gram jar of Lee Kum Kee XO sauce for $30, it’s infinitely cheaper and better to make your own.”
In the pantry: fish sauce
Tan’s favourite way of using fish sauce is not for the dumplings or XO, or any savoury dish for that matter: it’s his topping of choice for ice-cream. “The same way you add a pinch of salt to something sweet, I’d add fish sauce for umami. No one knows what it is, but they think it’s delicious because it’s so complex.”
Tan’s favourite brand is Việt Hương ‘Three Crabs’ fish sauce.
“It’s the first press, so it’s the most concentrated and almost has a soy sauce colour.”
Rosa Cienfuegos: Tortillas with a million possibilities
In the pantry: masa harina
“If you have a tortilla, you can play around with a million dishes,” says Rosa Cienfuegos, chef, author and owner of Sydney’s The Tamaleria and Mexican Deli. “You can make tacos, tlacoyos, sopes, enchiladas, tortilla chips, chilaquiles, tostadas. They’re all similar but somehow different.”
You can buy good quality masa harina tortillas, but there is a joy to making your own. “The trickiest part is getting the tortilla out of the press because it’s sticky and the masa can break. If you put plastic wrap on the press, you can transfer the tortilla on to your hand and then to the frying pan.”
Tortillas can be served fresh straight away, or frozen and reheated later.
In the freezer: refried beans
A tortilla’s purpose is to deliver toppings, such as refried beans. Cienfuegos buys kilo-bags of dried black beans that she cooks in a single batch and portions for the freezer.
“Soak the beans overnight, then boil them with bay leaves, a bit of salt and half an onion for about 45 minutes to one hour. Once they’re soft, mash and sauté them with onion until you get the consistency you want. I prefer it chunky.”
In the fridge: salsa
“As a Mexican, you add salsa to everything,” says Cienfuegos. But she find the Australian supermarket versions are “too cumin-y, which I think is more of an Indian flavour, and it’s just not right”.
She makes her own salsa from scratch: salsa roja (red) or salsa verde (green). She makes the roja with fresh tomatoes, onion, dried chillies, garlic, salt, and coriander (see the recipe below); while her salsa verde includes green chillies, and swaps the tomatoes for tinned tomatillos. “You can’t even find tinned tomatillos in Mexico, but in Australia I prefer them because the fresh ones here are too sour.”
Rosa Cienfuegos’ salsa roja (red salsa) – recipe
Salsa roja can be served fresh or cooked. I prefer the fresh version, but I recommend eating it on the day it’s made, as the tomatoes are delicate and start to collapse into a liquidy mess after a few hours. Chillies de árbol and pequin chillies are very hot, but you can add more if you prefer an even spicier salsa.
Makes: About 250ml
4 large tomatoes, chopped
½ white onion, roughly chopped
3 dried chillies de árbol or pequin chillies
½ garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tsp table salt
50g coriander leaves, chopped
3 tbsp vegetable oil (if making cooked salsa)
Heat a comal or heavy-based frying pan over high heat. Add the tomato and onion and cook, stirring frequently, for about seven minutes until slightly charred.
Place the dried chillies in a small saucepan. Cover with 250ml (one cup) water and bring to the boil over high heat. Cook for five to eight minutes, until the chillies are soft. Set aside to cool for five minutes, then remove any stalks. Reserve the soaking water.
Place the charred tomato and onion in a mortar or blender and add the garlic, chillies and their soaking water and the salt. Pound with a pestle or blend the ingredients to a chunky salsa. Stir through the coriander and transfer to a serving bowl.
To make cooked salsa, heat the oil in a small saucepan over medium–high heat. Add the salsa and cook, stirring, for seven minutes or until heated through and slightly reduced. The salsa is ready when the colour changes to a dark orange. Set aside to cool before serving.
Danielle Alvarez’s pissaladière – recipe
“A classic pastry-based pissaladière was one of the very first things I learned to make at Chez Panisse in California. The dish made several appearances throughout my time there – a rarity, as the menu changed every day.
My most recent revelation, regarding the humble yet ubiquitous onion, followed a trip to Nice. Rather than being caramelised before baking, these onions were stewed much more gently. The caramelisation, instead, happened only while the tart baked, resulting in a more unctuous, savoury and juicy layer of onions, rather than a thin, dried-out layer of sweetness. Another reminder why the details and technique matter.
As an apéro snack, I like to cut thin slices so people can eat this standing up with their hands. If you want to serve it as a simple lunch or dinner, I suggest a slice of pissaladière with a green salad with lots of raw, thinly sliced radish and dressed with a simple vinaigrette.”
Makes: 1 galette, enough for 8–10 slices
Active time: 1 hour
Inactive time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Equipment: 30cm round pizza tray, and a pastry brush
Before you begin: Make your flaky pastry a day ahead; not necessary, but helpful. If you’re making the dough on the day, prepare it an hour before starting this galette so it has time to rest in the fridge.
1 round flaky pastry (see recipe below), rolled out to a thickness of 3–4mm
60ml extra virgin olive oil (¼ cup)
3 brown onions, thinly sliced
1 tbsp plain flour
1 egg, beaten with 1 tsp water (egg wash)
8–12 good quality anchovy fillets, cut lengthways down the middle
35g pitted black olives (¼ cup), preferably niçoise, alternatively kalamata
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
Fine sea salt
Prepare your round of flaky pastry (recipe below) and leave it, rolled out, on a baking tray lined with baking paper in the fridge.
Preheat your oven to 200C.
Place a sauté pan (or a pot) with a tight-fitting lid on the stove over a medium heat. Add the olive oil, onions and a good pinch of salt.
Cover the pan with the lid and allow the onions to sweat and steam until fully cooked, about 20 minutes; open the lid and give them a stir every couple of minutes. You are not looking for caramelised onions here, just sweet, juicy soft onions. Remove them from the pan and allow to cool.
Take the pastry round from the fridge and spread the flour over the pastry (this will absorb the moisture from the onions). Top with the onions, leaving a 4cm clean edge all the way around. Fold the clean edges up and over the onions to create a crust.
Use a pastry brush to brush the crust with the egg wash, then transfer it to the oven. Immediately turn the heat down to 180C and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until the crust is deeply golden, and the onions have started to caramelise.
Remove the tart from the oven. Carefully lay the anchovy fillets in a lovely lattice pattern across the onions and place one olive in the centre of each lattice diamond. Return the tart to the oven for a further five minutes to allow everything to become perfumed with anchovy and olive.
Remove the pissaladière from the oven and slide it on to a cooling rack without the baking paper underneath. Sprinkle with thyme leaves and allow to cool slightly before serving. This is best served warm or at room temperature, but after no more than a few hours out of the oven.
Danielle Alvarez’s flaky pastry – recipe
This is the only flaky or shortcrust pastry recipe that I use: tarts, quiches, pies, flans – it does them all.
To make a great flaky pastry, you want to see pieces of butter in the dough when you roll it out. If the butter is diced too small, the pastry becomes short and crumbly, rather than flaky. Layered pieces of butter become the pockets where steam expands and pushes the sheets upward, creating a puff-pastry-like quality, and lending the pastry a rich flavour.
It’s important to keep everything – ingredients, bowl and your hands – as cold as possible while you work. This is much easier in winter; in summer, you’ll need to work faster and move the ingredients and bowl in and out of the fridge or freezer throughout the process, right up until the pastry goes in the oven.
Makes: Enough dough for 1 large galette
Active time: 20 minutes
Inactive time: 2 hours
Equipment: 30cm round pizza tray or baking tray, rolling pin
340g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tbsp white sugar
1 tsp fine sea salt
250g cold unsalted butter, diced
120–160ml ice-cold water
Place the flour, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl and stir to combine. If it’s a hot day, put the bowl in the fridge or freezer to chill for five to 10 minutes.
If your hands are very warm, dip them in ice water before proceeding. Add the cold, diced butter and use your fingertips to break it up. You’re not looking for an even consistency here, you want some large chunks of butter as well as some little pieces. Flatten the chunks of butter by crushing and smearing them between the palms of your hands to create little sheets. (Alternatively, you can dump everything on to your bench and press the butter down into the bench.)
Make a well in the centre of the mixture. Pour 120ml cold water into the well and use your hands to mix the water into the flour, bringing the dough together to form a ball. If it still has some dry, floury spots, add another 20ml (one tablespoon) water, and work the dough until it feels like it will stick together without feeling sticky and wet.
Cut the dough in half, stack one piece over the other and press down – this creates layers in your pastry. Repeat this once more, then press the dough into a disc. Wrap the disc in baking paper followed by aluminium foil (to ensure the dough doesn’t dry out) and leave it in your fridge for at least two hours, but up to 48 hours. If you’re not using the dough straight away, pop it into the freezer instead (you will need to thaw it in the fridge overnight before using).
Pull the dough out of the fridge and place it on a well-floured bench. When it has warmed enough to be slightly pliable, use a rolling pin to roll it from the centre, turning as you go, to create a rough circle. Use a liberal amount of flour to prevent the dough from sticking to your bench. Continue rolling and rotating until the dough is about 3 mm thick. Trim the dough and leave it on a baking paper-lined baking tray (ideally a round pizza tray), rolled out, in your fridge until you’re ready to assemble and bake, or use it straight away.
The recipes are edited extracts from Recipes for a Lifetime of Beautiful Cooking by Danielle Alvarez with Libby Travers, available now through Murdoch Books (RRP $49.99); and Comida Mexicana by Rosa Cienfuegos, available now through Smith Street Books (RRP $45).
