My name’s Charles Hearth and I run Jalapeno London Ltd.
I think the vast majority of brides that we tend to cater for and work with will have canapés. It’s very rare that they won’t. The only time and exception really to the fact that the bride not having canapés is if they’re having something fairly unique, which is like an Edwardian afternoon tea or something like that. But it’s pretty unusual that a bride weren’t offer something in a form of a canapé after ceremony, during the reception, and it’s really just to soak up the alcohol as much as get the taste buds going in anticipation of what they’re going to hopefully enjoy for their three course meal, two course meal, whatever, after the reception.
So, here are some canapés we’re preparing for this particular weekend for a wedding. We’re going through them one by one. The first one, we have a black pepper balini, which we place some marinated spinach leaves on the top, over that we got some little rounds of mozzarella which we’ve diced and placed over the top, and then on top of that we’ve got some red pepper which we’re just placing over the top, and then we have our first canapé.
Canapés have to be small. There’s no two ways about it. There is no point in having anything larger than one bite size, if it’s larger that one bite size, you’re in trouble. First of all, the base is in variably collapse. Secondly, the toppings will fall off goes over to somebody’s outfit, ruined for the day. So, really, really important that the canapés have to be bite size, you can just pop it in. They have to be imaginative, and have to be creative. In a way, they should not be reflective of the meal. I don’t think that the client is going to offer their guests; it should be something completely different. It can be regional, it could be international. You could have a very quintessential English menu. But you could Thai, or Far Eastern, or Indian canapés selection just to take people off the track of potentially what they’re going to have. But also to introduce some other flavors.
So our second canapé is a little Asian wild rice cake and we’ve placed some orange crème fresh on the top. We then taken some little marinated vegetables and we’ve placed it inside some duck which we marinated in star anise, and just assembled the two together.
What one bride may serve which is bang as a mash couple of months ago is not going to be necessarily what another bride wants or another groom wants. So it is very, very much about the look, the style, and the feel of the food. It’s getting the creativity correct; it’s getting the presentation correct. Even down to the plates that we use, the cutlery that we use. It’s all about the image and the structure for the whole day.
For our third canapé, very simple, we’re going to take a little crispy papador, these can be bought and just simply deep fried, and on top of that we’ve made a little salsa wrap which has got nectarine, some coriander, some onion, and we’re just going to take a teaspoon of that and place it onto the crispy papador, and that’s our third canapé.
Ladies I know are slightly less adventurous, and slightly more hesitant in the way that maybe things are necessarily presented. So if you got an amazing some of this espresso, mousse spoon or something like the actual Sampan China spoon, they would possible think twice about popping it into their mouth. The easiest way to describe it is basically eating an oyster as would chuck an oyster. I think ladies are a little bit more hesitant also because of the outfits they’re wearing. Gentlemen tend to come along and just sort of gorge themselves and just eat. I think the fun thing about what we do is that we’re always, always trying to create new things. So I might go through a season for four months loving a canapé after I’ve seen it, I actually do get fed up with it and I want to go on to the next thing, and that’s what it’s all about, it’s recreating your ideas. So, I have my favorite season by season. But I tire of them very quickly because I’m always wanting the challenge of doing something new.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services