Easy ‘Auderves’ (Hors d’Oeuvres)

A lot of people, apparently, come to my site looking for information about auderves. Auderves are food dishes served at cocktail parties or sometimes before dinner at a dinner party. This page contains recipes, links to some of my favorites and other information about them. Appetizers are served at sit-down meals when there’s an entree forthcoming, and that’s the main distinction between the two. ‘Auderves’ is actually a French-derived word, and is correctly spelled “Hors D’oeuvres.” There’s a similar Italian word — antipasto — which literally means the same thing ‘before the meal.’
I thought that since this is actually a fairly common reason for people to come to the site, I’d put up a page for people telling them about the correct spelling, and pointing them to some of my preferred recipes when I have folks over.

Crudite is a bunch of raw vegetables with some form of dip. I’m not actually sure whether crudite is a singular or plural noun. In my experience, it’s typically celery, radishes, and carrots; that may be because I spent my childhood where celery, radishes, and carrots were fairly common. Cherry tomatoes and other such things are also common in the real world outside of the idealized memories of my childhood.

Cheese. Another common plate for hors d’ouevres is a cheese plate, possibly with a bunch of sliced meat. If you then add pepperoncini and black olives, you’ve moved into a having an antipasto plate, but there are better lists of stuff around for inclusion in that.

I’m also inordinately fond of grilled or pickled asparagus. Here’s a sauteed asparagus recipe that’s more or less what I use, although I’m also prone to just grilling them after marinating in red wine.

Another thing that works really well is baked polenta squares with something on top of them. For ‘something,’ I recommend something small and flavorful, like some blue cheese, chevre (cheese), strong-flavored olives (kalamata, nicoise), or bits of chopped roasted vegetables.
Typically, I put out those things and then one or two more depending on what I feel like making. brie en croute (brie cheese baked in a bread crust) is very popular among my friends, for example. If I want to go higher-end than this, or if I’m just bored, I usually search Epicurious’ recipe engine for ‘cocktail party recipes.’ This tends to produce some really interesting things, because it indexes a lot of cooking magazines and other professional sources.