Holiday Entertaining Tips from Ricardo

RICARDO'S Entertaining Tips

Ricardo

I had the pleasure of spending a great couple of hours on a lovely sunny day in an office overlooking the Lake with the amazing Chef and Entrepreneur Ricardo Larivee a well known TV personality from Quebec.  A select few food bloggers, writers, food industry people were invited to chat with Ricardo about Holiday Entertaining in an informal sit down chat.  Ricardo was there to answer any questions we had and also discuss some of his tips and tricks and where he wants to go in the future.  He said he would like to be "the Celine Dion of food" meaning he wants to be a Canadian representative for food around the world.  Kind of a cool thing to aspire to.  He also wants to share the knowledge and collaborate with people like all of us bloggers to move toward the future and be ahead of the curve of where food is going and also the media industry with his magazine Ricardo, his online website and his products and any future TV or other kind of media.
Who knows what's next but he wants to know and wants to be ready for it.

We enjoyed a lovely spread of food that is featured in the Holiday edition of the Ricardo magazine. Appetizers that your guests can enjoy as the arrive at your party.  They could also be the kinds of things for drop in guests.

Some of the things we sampled were:

• Local Quebec cheese and cracker platters
• Fresh mixed crudite with from scratch mayonnaise
• A Pecan crusted cheese ball
• General Tao mini sausages
• Chocolate covered apricots and almonds
• Wine cocktail

I always struggle to with hosting parties even though my friends think it's easy for me.

I asked Ricardo what to do about guests that don't show up on time and have multiple food restrictions.  He said "I don't know I don't have friends like that".  Actually he said that he can get pretty tough on the start of his parties and how long he keeps the food out.

Some of Ricardo's tips for entertaining:

1. Have food that people can nibble on and serve themselves when they arrive at the party.
2. Only give people about a half an hour to arrive before you start serving the main dishes.
3. Don't put out all of the food at the same time.  Start with the nibbles and then remove them after an hour and put out the next course.  
4. Never leave a course out for more than an hour.  It's best for food safety and also for clean up and keeping the party moving.
5. Serve them wine or have some pre mixed drinks that they can serve themselves but limit it and make sure they have food before they start drinking.
6. If you know they are going to bring you wine ask them to bring specific wines that you want that will go with the food you are serving at the party.  
7. If they have so many restrictions you might suggest that they bring something that will be safe for them.
8. You decide on what you want to serve and you don't have to cater to everyone but he also takes notes on what people like and don't like and makes changes the following years.
9. He generally invites the same people so he knows what they like.
10. Put the food away after each course is done but let your guests know that there is some in the fridge if they would like some more.
11. Don't make too many things.  
12. Keep it simple.
13. Think about the kinds of appliances that you are going to need to make all the food.  
14. Use crockpots to keep things warm or free up on appliances.
15. Make as much stuff in advance as you can and you can freeze or make ahead a lot of the food.
16. Ricardo heats his plates in the oven to keep the food warm longer.
17. If you can't find unsalted pistachio's you can rinse salted ones and then roast in the oven to dry them out.  He recommends toasting all nights to bring out the flavours.
18. He doesn't do the dishes until after the party so that he can spend more time with guests.
19. He believes that the one job the guests have is to entertain themselves and bring the party.
20. He makes sure he has everything ready so that he can greet his guests and they can make themselves at home when he is greeting other guests.

I must say that I have tried to do a lot of these things but I am going to try a few other of his tips.  My challenge is that I have a small kitchen and no dishwasher so there is only so much space for the dishes but if I host a party this year I am going to consider some of these tips and make a few adjustments.  

I hope some of these tips help you enjoy your holiday gatherings with your friends and family.

Ricardo and I wish you a very happy holiday entertaining season.

Ricardo and me

Great Canadian Cheese Festival road trip to Picton

It was a beautiful summer weekend this past weekend with the sun shining and the skies so blue and the perfect time to take a road trip to Prince Edward County the new mecca of Artisanal food to attend the Great Canadian Cheese Festival.

I couldn't have asked for a better weekend to go for a drive to sample a whole lot of Ontario and Quebec cheeses, wines, chocolates, preserves and pickles, cider, craft beer, honey and all kinds of other treats.

The festival was located at the Picton Fair Grounds in Prince Edward County, Ontario  I have to tell you that we were kind of lucky that we found it with the directions I had.  A few more signs would have been helpful.

Admission to the Festival is $50 for the day but I had a weekend pass although I only went on the saturday. You could purchase drink tickets for 10 for $10.

We got a little distracted by the Big Apple Shop on the way to the festival so we didn't get to the festival until about 2 o'clock in the afternoon.  I thought they closed at 5pm so I kind of took my time going through the Taste Ontario Pavilion so by the time it was 4pm we jetted outside to try and breeze through the other booths outside and in another building.  I tried a whole lot of cheese and preserves and dips, spreads and other things so by the time I got to the outdoor ones I was kind of stuffed.  We managed to sample a couple more of the vendors that were still closing up shop for the day but we did miss a few that I would have liked to try including Seed to Sausage which I had once at a blogger conference and would have loved to have been able to bring some of that home.

I brought a cooler bag and had a small cheese ice pack, fitting I think.  But I didn't want to buy too much cheese so I only picked up 3 of the ones I really liked that were all different from each other.

I purchased these cheeses to take home

1.  St. Albert 5yr old Cheddar this is an award winning cheese and so smooth

2.  Best BAA Dairy Mouton Rouge - a soft washed rind cheese that melts in your mouth

3. Fromagerie Terroir Bellechasse - Fleur Saint-Michel - a garlic coated cheese that you fry

Some other things I tried that I thought tasted great or were interesting included Dehydrated cheese which will be launched in stores in August.

The lovely Phyllis Cook's Kitchen had some spicy pepper jellies that would really be great pairings with all that cheese.  Phyllis is going to send me some for a giveaway so look for that soon.

After all of that cheese I really needed a thirst quencher and picked up some Very Berry Ice Tea from Pluck Teas.

We tried the Black Garlic in jars.  It was pretty strong but the vendor showed us an appetizer he was going to make for the ticketed events that looked like it would have been a great use for it.  It does need to be mixed into something because it's intense on it's own.

There were a few vendors that were familiar to me from shows I have been to in Toronto and also from the preview I went to last month.  Vendors like Pluck Teas, Jewels under the Kilt, Whisky & Spice mustards, Best BAA Dairy, Seed to Sausage meats, the Shortbread Company and Cow's Cheese and a couple of other cheese vendors.

Can you believe that 5000 wine and cheese lovers hit this little festival in Picton each summer.  It runs all weekend and since I haven't been to this festival before I didn't know what to expect so we didn't book a room to stay over to return the next day and then we decided to stay over and we couldn't find a place to stay except for some guy that had a room in his cottagey house for $150 a night and I can tell you that it was worth more like $25 bucks for the night so we passed on that and decided to drive to Kingston instead and we stayed at the Ambassador Hotel and Conference Centre because we wanted to go on the Thousand Island cruise on the sunday.  The cruise departed at 12:30pm and it was a 3 hour cruise so by the time we finished that the cheese festival had already ended so we didn't have a chance to go back.

We tried to check out a few B&B's in Picton and did a whole lot of driving around Picton.. about 5 times.  We were looking for the Drake Devonshire Inn but for some reason we kept missing the sign but finally found it but it was fully booked and even the dining room was fully booked but we had a chance to check it out and it was beautiful.  I hope to get back there eventually.  Anyway on our stops at B&B's and Inn's we stopped at Merrill Inn and the lady there told us that 5000 people go to the festival every year and they book their rooms a year in advance to get their preferred location.  There aren't any large hotels and only small B&B's and Inns in Picton.  

We decided to wing it this year because we didn't know what to expect and as it turns out we met up with my friend's friends in Kingston for the cruise and that turned out to be a great day as well and if we didn't wing it we might not have done that.  Sometimes a plan is good and sometimes you got to just go with the flow.

I would recommend that you hit up the Cheese Festival early in the day and not dilly dally on the drive there like we did and bring empty bellies ready for lots of cheese sampling.  You have to purchase tickets for the wine but all of the cheese samples and most other samples were included in the pass price.  I did pay $2 for the Ice Tea and of course the cheeses that I purchased.

We didn't purchase the extra ticketed events because we didn't know how long the main festival would take.  Now that I know I would probably go to the festival early and then leave some time for a ticketed event.  

I hope if I return next year the weather is as great as it was this weekend and I have a chance to try a lot more vendors samples.  

I know there was a bunch of food bloggers from Toronto that also went to the festival.  I didn't see them when I was there but I know the were either there before me or after me so I know they will probably have info on some of  the things I missed.  

You know a festival has potential when a bunch of Toronto Food Bloggers drive a couple of hours to Picton to check it out.

There was a big Mac and Cheese festival in Toronto that had thousands of people attend but I am so glad I skipped that one and took in some fresh country air and fresh local products.

Check it out next year but plan ahead and bring a cooler so you can take home some yummy products.

http://cheesefestival.ca/