Credit: iVillage.co.uk

Ah, all the ingredients for a perfect party: Jimmy Choos, cocktails and salacious sex talk. Grab your friends and get together for girl talk as well as the fun, fashion and footwear of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda. This list of cocktails and nibbles makes it easy.

Cosmopolitan

The drink made famous by Carrie, Samantha and the rest of the girls on Sex and the City is refreshing any time of year. Best enjoyed with high heels, slinky dresses and girl talk.

Dish Details:

INGREDIENTS:

2 measures vodka
1 measure triple sec (or Cointreau)
1 measure lime juice
1 measure cranberry juice
ice
strip of lime peel

PREPARATION:

Shake together all the ingredients except the lime. Strain into a Martini glass and garnish with the lime.

PREP/COOK
INFORMATION:

Prep time: 2 minutes

Absolut Hunk Vodka Martini

This refreshing drink, featured in an episode of Sex and the City, is a twist on a regular vodka martini. It uses Absolut Vanilia for a smooth, rich taste.

Dish Details:

INGREDIENTS:

50ml Absolut Vanilia
10ml gomme (sugar) syrup
10ml fresh lime juice
splash of pineapple juice

PREPARATION:

1. Pour Absolut Vanilia over ice in a shaker

2. Add gomme (sugar) syrup, fresh lime juice and a splash of pineapple juice

3. Shake or stir well

4. Strain and serve in a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a lime

PREP/COOK
INFORMATION:

Prep time: 5 minutes
Serves: 1

Long Island Iced Tea

The original recipe, supposedly concocted by Long Island bartender Robert 'Rosebud' Butt in the late 1970s

Dish Details:

INGREDIENTS:

1 measure gin
1 measure light rum
1 measure tequila
1 measure triple Sec
1 measure vodka
2 measures fresh lemon juice
1 tsp sugar
cola
lemon wedge

PREPARATION:

Shake together all the ingredients except the cola and lime wedge. Pour into a chilled Collins glass (any tall glass will do) with ice, pour over the coke, stir gently and top with the lime wedge.

PREP/COOK
INFORMATION:

Prep time: 2 minutes

Mojito

A favourite in the bars of Cuba, and, like the Daiquiri, forever associated with the great drinker and writer Ernest Hemingway

Dish Details:

INGREDIENTS:

1 tsp sugar
4 sprigs mint
juice of 1 lime
ice
1 measure light Havana rum
soda water or lemonade

PREPARATION:

Muddle the sugar and 3 sprigs of mint together in a tall hi-ball glass. Add the ice, squeeze in the lime juice, and pour in the rum and soda. Stir and garnish with the remaining mint.

PREP/COOK
INFORMATION:

Prep time: 2 minutes
Serves: 1

Morning-after Bloody Mary

If you're a regular heavy drinker, or live with a house of alcoholics, make a jug's worth and keep it cold for those long, painful weekends. It might seem like a lot of effort, but this mild form of exercise is part of the recovery process.

Dish Details:

INGREDIENTS:

1 tsp thick horseradish sauce (optional)
1 handful ice cubes (or frozen cherry tomatoes)
1 shot vodka
1 squeeze lemon juice
100ml tomato juice
4-5 dashes Worcestershire sauce
2-3 drops Tabasco sauce
1 slug medium sherry
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 celery stick

PREPARATION:

1. Spoon the horseradish (if desired) into a hi-ball glass and throw the ice (or frozen cherry tomatoes) on top.
2. Pour in the vodka, squeeze in some lemon juice and top up with the tomato juice.

3. Season with the Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco and stir.

4. Pour in the sherry (over the back of a spoon), grind over some black pepper, add the celery stick and serve with a couple of paracetamol.

Near the end of the drink, take care not to swallow all the horseradish sauce at the bottom of the glass (you don't want to bring the whole lot up again).

PREP/COOK
INFORMATION:

Serves: 1

8 party nibbles cocktail party
by Julia Watson

Bring a bit of old-fashioned glamour to your next soirée with these sophisticated ideas
Christmas is the time of year for the kind of cocktail party where you might be found glamorously reclining in smoky gloom on a crushed velvet chaise longue. The sort of elegantly louche event you picture in black and white where long gloves and cigarette holders wouldn't look out of place. People love to be asked to dress up – and this is the season to ask them. Beautifully dressed guests make everyone else feel they crackle with wit and sophistication and don’t need to chuck breadrolls to raise a laugh.

This is not a party for handfuls of nuts and crisps. You need little slivers of delectable food that look as polished as they taste.

Allow six to eight bites per person and mix hot with cold. Make the canapés in advance – after all, there’s no point having a party you can’t enjoy.

Toss thin slices of crisp pear in a little lemon juice to keep them from browning, then top each with a small scoop of Stilton pressed into a walnut half.
Chill some butter in the fridge or freezer. Clean and trim firm radishes, slicing off the root, but leaving an inch of leaf stalks. Make a slit in the radish with a knife and push into each a sliver of cold butter. Pass with a bowl of rock salt to dip into.
Boil some small unpeeled potatoes. When done, leave them to cool, take a small slice off the bottom of each so the potato can stand then scoop out a hollow. Fill with sour cream and add a dollop of lumpfish roe on top – or caviar, if you can afford it. These are best served at room temperature, but it’s fine to serve them cold as well. You could substitute the caviar with tiny pieces of sun-dried tomato.
Tiny Scotch eggs, made with quails’ eggs and sausagemeat given an extra grind to reduce to a fine pulp, are witty and easily reheated to serve warm.
Marinate cubes of chicken breast in lemon juice, olive oil and a very generous quantity of herbes de Provence. Spread out on tinfoil and grill until cooked through and turning brown at the edges, then serve with cocktail sticks and a bowl of garlicky mayonnaise.
Bake small rounds of French ficelle baguette until golden, then spread with various crostini toppings – a chicken liver mousse or rough country pâté with a spear of cornichon, or cooked white cannellini beans coarsely mashed and topped with torn strips of basil and a trickle of olive oil.
Make guacamole boats: halve cherry tomatoes, scoop out the seeds and discard. Fill the hollows with guacamole. Just before the guests arrive, snap the corners off triangular nachos and stick them into the tomatoes to make sails.
Make parmesan wafers: pile teaspoons of grated parmesan cheese on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper and flatten gently into rounds. Bake at 190C/375F/gas mark 5 for 5 minutes until golden. Remove the wafers from the sheet with the paper still attached and leave to cool on a wire rack. When cool, remove and store in an airtight container until needed.

Brunch

by Julia Watson

Celebrate breakfast food with a brunch-style drinks party
If a proper cooked breakfast is one of the best British meals, then brunch is certainly among the most seductive American ones. Waffles with crispy bacon and maple syrup (yes, it works wonderfully), pancakes and whipped cream and more maple syrup, muffins studded with berries, Eggs Benedict, smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels with onion rings and capers on the side – they’re all just an excuse for a mammoth pig-out of favourite things all in one sitting. Washed down with a spicy Bloody Mary, there’s no more splendid way to spend a Sunday morning with the papers.

Take a brunch menu and shrink it, and you have the makings of a drinks party that would be tantalising at any time of day. Tiny food is always fun, especially if you can use your fingers to eat it. Chinese dim sum and Spanish tapas prove that little bites of lots of things are far more seductive than a large main course and two veg on a plate.

Caterers estimate six to eight canapés per person leaves your guests satisfied but not too full. But give your guests half a chance, and they’ll scarf down however much you offer them. Think small, if not miniscule. And think witty.

Mini bacon and eggs. Try a Lilliputian take on bacon, eggs and fried bread: buy a loaf of white sliced bread. Lightly butter slices on both sides with softened butter, then take a round biscuit cutter, about 5cm across, or a small wine glass, and press down to make circles. Fry them until golden on both sides. Cook 5cm strips of bacon in the oven until almost crisp. Carefully fry quail’s eggs in butter till the whites - not the yolks - are set. Keep everything warm until you are ready to put a piece or two of bacon on the bread, a fried egg on top, and top with a dot of HP sauce.
Petite potato latkes. Grate peeled potatoes and onion, bind with flour and eggs and fry until golden, drain on paper, then serve with a dip of sour cream and chives. These can be made and fried ahead, then warmed up in the oven at the last minute.
Miniature cheese scones. Bake them small, cut them open while warm and smear with a little unsalted butter.
Piglets in blankets. Wrap cocktail sausages in bacon, roast, and serve on sticks with an English mustard dip.
Tiny tomatoes on toast. Top little squares of buttered toast with half a cherry tomato roasted in the oven, or a small fried button mushroom, dusting both with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

 

P.S.: for more Sex And The City party hints and curiosities, click here to iVillage.co.uk

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