Family Culinary Challenge – 1. Stacked Canapes

Our family has been doing this thing over the past few years where each person is responsible for cooking a different course. It is a lot of fun and takes the stress out of one person/couple having to cook the whole meal.

Yesterday we went to visit my sister at their beach house to partake in a family culinary challenge. We had decided in advance that Scotty would make the starter, I would do the entree, sis would cook the main and my brother-in-law would prepare dessert.

Scotty had decided during the week that his starter would be a stacked canape of complimentary ingredients all cut into perfect circles and layered on top of each other. I received via MMS on Friday a diagram of how he envisaged the canape being put together (I have mentioned he is an Art Director haven’t I?).

On Friday night he had a trial run where canapes were prepared, cooked, layered in different ways, eaten, analysed and assessed. We agreed on the perfect preparation of each layer and order of the layers for the following night.

We arrived the following afternoon at the beach house. It has recently been renovated and fitted with the most wonderful kitchen. A giant granite bench now adorns the kitchen and allows enough room for four people to stand around it and prepare multiple dishes.

As Scotty was preparing the starter I became sous chef by default. This basically meant I was getting things from the fridge and cupboard when he needed it, and cleaning up after him.

He prepared all of the elements (using a small chef’s ring) and then went about piecing the canape stacks together.

The final canape stacks Scotty made were as follows:
1. Rye sour dough bread cut into rounds and lightly fried.
2. Avocado slice cut into round
3. Crispy fried wonton skin (for a little surprise crunch)
4. Smoked salmon layer
5. Prawn and sour cream mix (recipe below)
6. Rye sour dough bread cut into rounds and lightly fried.

To make the prawn and sour cream mixture just combine all the following ingredients in a bowl: 5 cooked prawns (peeled and finely chopped), 4 tablespoons sour cream, juice of 1/4 lime, small handful of coriander (finely chopped), 1/2 teaspoon Japanese chili powder, 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper.

As a starter to our four course meal these canapes were great! Scotty had allowed for 4 canapes per person and they all got eaten quickly (which meant they were tasty) yet still allowed plenty of space for the next few courses.