Apéro Hour.

Apéro Hour

Since moving into my house nearly two years ago, I have grown to really love entertaining (and cooking!). Selfishly I love hosting because it means I don’t have to leave the house.

On Saturday I had 4 girlfriends over for a little Apéro + Mahjong in the pool. Apéro is is a French tradition of drinking and snacking before dinner to stimulate the appetite and enhance the meal. And sometimes it is the whole meal. One of my favorite Substackers calls it “the original girl dinner.” An Apéro can be after work or on the weekend, or even lunchtime. The point is that it’s a casual social gathering, a time to sip, snack, and talk. I wanted to share the details of this little get together including a very easy frittata recipe (if we can even call it a recipe!). This is a good recipe to have in your back pocket when you have a lot of extra produce lying around!

PS – for more entertaining ideas, check out this page. A recent favorite was my tinned fish board.

Self-service setup

I have a really hard time making drinks AND greeting my friends. This is just the way I am wired. If I am making a drink, I need to focus and often wind up frazzled and can’t listen to the conversation. My solution to that is that I don’t make drinks (unless I’ve made them ahead of time which is also very fun). I let my guests serve themselves or (for a fancier party), I’ll hire a bartender.

I make sure to leave absolutely everything out on the counter to make easy self-service. Mixers, drinks, lemon and lime wedges for garnishes, ice, etc. The only thing I missed here was an ice bucket (for drinks ice, not chilling-the-bottles ice), noted for next time!

For food, just keep it simple and ask everyone to bring a snack. This is about snacking. I made a frittata but could have also just done potato chips, olives, crackers, tinned fish, meats, cheeses etc. One girlfriend brought dessert and another brought a veggie and cheese board.

I laid out enough acrylic glassware for everyone since we were going to sit outside by the pool (I don’t do glass out there, ever!). I love this pretty tray.

Drinks

We all seem to be drinking a lot less than we used to. I always make sure to have a range of alcoholic + NA beverages. I love Ghia, Little Saints… I love this orange spritz from Bardalia (it’s like an Aperol Spritz but less sweet!), and a happy medium is this vodka which has 25% less alcohol than traditional vodka. It’s super smooth and light, I like it a lot. I also served wine. Miravel’s rosé is so nice.

An Easy Frittata

I opted to serve a little frittata. I had a lot of veggies from my CSA plus a handful of fingerling potatoes I’d already cooked. Here’s what I did. This isn’t a recipe but more of a technique. Use whatever veggies you’d like. You can do cheese if you want (I didn’t, only because one friend is dairy free). The only thing you really need to worry about is the baking directions.

1. Start by sauteeing all your veggies (in an oven-safe pan) to get them nice and soft. I used 3 colors of peppers, tomatoes, kale, and a scallion (just the white parts).
2. Whisk together six eggs. Pour them over your veggies.
3. Slice up half a zucchini and add to the top.
4. Top with salt, pepper, whatever you’d like (I used Red Clay Everything Salts!)
5. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
6. Let it cool and then slice into wedges so that your guests can easily serve themselves.

Easy and it turned out so well!