What French hostesses will be serving this Christmas

Open any French food magazine and you’ll find pages devoted to them. There are whole books on the subject. And no surprise, really - they’re easy, they’re pretty and they make you look like a great cook!

They are France’s seemingly unstoppable craze ‘verrines’, little glass tumblers layered with different ingredients to provide a contrast of flavours, colours and textures. You can make them savoury or sweet. You can prepare them beforehand. No wonder they’re so popular!

I had them earlier this year at the fashionable Paris restaurant Les Cocottes where we enjoyed a classic crab cocktail on a layer of shredded iceberg lettuce and a triple-layered jar of chopped tuna, caviar of aubergines and tomato jelly.

Desserts which can be given the verrine treatment include tiramisu, cheesecake and trifle (perfect for Christmas entertaining)

Dishes that seem dated or cliched such as prawn and avocado cocktail or sweet or savoury mousses seem fresh and chic served as a verrine.

You can also make mini-verrines for parties in shot glasses served with a coffee spoon.

If you read a bit of French, take a look at the French websites Goosto and Les Foodies for other ideas. Or, if you don’t, there’s an English-language book called Terrine & Verrines

Once you get the verrine habit it’s clearly addictive . . .

Last minute tips for Hallowe'en

There are already some useful tips for Hallowe'en on the site but as the word Hallowe'en fails to come up with anything in the search engine for some unfathomable reason I thought I would draw your attention to them plus some fun ideas for a Hallowe'en cheeseboard I've posted on my blog The Cheeselover today.

First there are some useful suggestions of what to drink at Hallowe'en including some suitably spookily named wines and beers and various black and orange drinks. (Hallowe'en is nothing if not kitsch!) There's also a menu for a Hallowe'en supper for 4-6 which includes a Hot Chilli Butternut Squash Soup, a Beef, Fig and Chestnut Casserole and a Roast Pumpkin and Pecan Pie.

And just in case you've never tackled a squash or a pumpkin before visit my student cookery website www.beyondbakedbeans.com for instructions! And here are some ideas for what to do with the leftovers!

Have a happy Hallowe'en!

Entertaining on a budget: surviving the credit crunch

The last 24 hours' headlines have made gloomy reading. The most obvious casualties are those who have lost their jobs but the economic uncertainty affects us all.

The most likely outcome in food and wine terms, and there is already evidence of this, is that people will both cut down on eating out and spend rather less when they entertain at home. But I’m sure that they - and we - won’t stop having friends round.

There are many ways of cutting back on the cost of entertaining which I’ve outlined in my forthcoming book The Frugal Cook. Inviting friends round for supper or for drinks rather than dinner, for example, and serving a cheese plate rather than a full cheese board. But the one thing that doesn’t have to be sacrificed is matching food and wine - or other drinks.

Using your imagination - or ingenuity - costs nothing and can make for an experience just as memorable for your guests as plying them with an expensive food and drink. A delicious chicken casserole, made and served with cider, followed by a Camembert cheese (a great match with cider) is not an expensive meal.

Nor is an impromptu Oktoberfest party with assorted cold meats or grilled bratwurst and potato salad and helles or Mrzen beer. (This year's Oktoberfest, starts this weekend)

Sherry is still one of the wine world’s great bargains and you could simply invite people round for some chilled fino or manzanilla and tapas which could be as modest as nuts, olives and chunks of home-made tortilla.

Or have a sausage and mash bash with a choice of either beer or inexpensive red wine such as the wonderfully quaffable Sainsbury’s Old Vines Tempranillo I tasted the other day for just £3.79

You can make an impact with sweet things too. Invite friends to drop in after supper and treat them to a home-made cake or tart with a matching sweet wine. Or coffee and a wicked creamy after-dinner cocktail.

Hospitality, remember, is about the warmth of your welcome not the depth of your purse.

Which wine to choose for a barbecue

If you’re planning a July 4th barbecue this weekend - or barbecuing any other weekend this summer - you may well be wondering which wine to choose. After all the average barbie with its multiple marinades, sauces and salsas is an assault course for any wine. Which is why a lot of people give up and drink beer or pitcher cocktails.

Here are the factors to take account of.

A lot of barbecue marinades are sweet which tends to make lighter wines taste thin and sharp. But they may also be spicy so you don’t want a wine that’s too tannic or oaky.

The temperature may well also be high so you don’t want your wine to taste too ‘hot’ or alcoholic. I’d therefore avoid wines of over 14% ABV.

The ideal choice is a medium bodied wine with enough personality to stand up to the myriad different flavours and possibly a fruitier, less dry one than you might normally drink.

Good examples of white wines are Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and Australian Riesling while Beaujolais, inexpensive Pinot Noir, Merlot, Shiraz and Zinfandel make good red wine choices (but watch the alcohol on the latter two)

Rosé is also an ideal barbecue wine especially the new generation of stronger, darker, more intensely fruity rosés you find from countries such as Chile and Argentina as are the increasingly popular sparkling rosés (Cava rosado is a particularly good bargain)

Almost more critical than the colour of the wine, however, is how you serve it. Any wine - even red wine - benefits from being chilled in hot weather which is why it’s not worth opening a wine of any great age or complexity for the average barbecue.

Of course now barbecuing is so easy many people grill several times a week and here slightly different guidelines apply.

If the meal is not what most people would regard as a barbecue but merely a conventional meal with the main course cooked over the grill you can serve a similar type of wine to the one you would normally serve though with a greater level of intensity to allow for the heightened flavours.

With a simply grilled fish served with herb butter, for example, you might drink a crisp dry white like a Sancerre. If it was seasoned with a spicy rub and cooked over coals you might prefer a zesty New Zealand, Chilean or South African Sauvignon Blanc.