Finger food

Forget the knife and fork
Enjoy the view!

In the warmer parts of Europe, socialising with friends outdoors is an integral part of life and the little dishes, which we share over a glass of wine or beer, are ideal picnic finger food – the cold ones anyway.

You will need to use a few little bowls or storage containers with lids or pop filled dishes into plastic bags and tie them. Then they are ready to serve at the picnic site.

If you are short of time, you can still put together a tempting spread using ready-prepared products.

Simple choices would be a bowl of olives, some salted almonds or peanuts, ready-made falafel, cubes of feta or Manchego cheese, caperberries and slices of chorizo, Serrano ham or other charcuterie.

Short of little dishes? Serve big bowls of popcorn!

A selection of dips or purees can be served with pitta bread and olives or a range of crudités such as celery sticks, carrot batons, pepper strips, Little Gem lettuce quarters, radishes and sugar-snap peas.

Even if you have very little time, it’s always worth baking a tray or two of cocktail sausages. They always seem to disappear very fast at my picnics. I make them for the kids but in the end the grown-ups eat most of them! Try cooking them in a mixture of oil, mustard and honey, just enough to coat. Use four times as much honey as oil and mustard. Sticky but nice!

Or you could make or buy little sausage rolls – or try squares of cold sausage turnover.

Scotch eggs are also easy to eat without a knife and fork, as long as you half or quarter them first – or use quail eggs.

If you have time for a little more cooking, a popular dish to add to these would be some squares of tortilla either simple potato and onion or a combination of ham and broad bean or chorizo and red or green pepper.

In August we watched an airshow (our British Red Arrows are just awesome and I fell in love with the Typhoon fighter plane – its just like Superman!) We were sitting on the road on the cliff-top in Bournemouth and a finger food picnic was essential.

I was off duty that week-end and really enjoyed blinis with cream cheese and smoked salmon as well as coronation chicken wraps provided by my friends Jan and Pat. That was followed by Jan’s lovely fruitcake, which I don’t yet have the recipe for but this pineapple fruit cake is one I have made.

It goes without saying that a sandwich is one of the best picnic finger foods and you’ll find lots of ideas for fillings at the easy picnic food ideas page too.

Pasties are lovely picnic food, easily eaten with the fingers but can be a bit greasy so I advise transporting them in greaseproof paper, ideally in a lidded container. I’ve been making mini pasties recently with a pre-cooked mixture of smoked fish, red onion and sultanas or cooked chicken and apricots, all in filo pastry.

And think beyond finger food – have cold drinks and tea or coffee with you too. And pop in those napkins or wipes for sticky hands.

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