Halloween Isn’t All Candy: 4 Savory Recipes for a Spooky Party Table
What do you serve at a Halloween party besides candy? These four savory recipes, from puff pastry mummies to ricotta monster meatballs with mashed potato ghosts, make the table as scary as it is tasty.
Something on the Table Is Staring Back
The candy bowl is full, the guests are on their way, and something on the buffet table is staring back at you. Mummies in golden bandages, ghosts with sesame-seed eyes, monsters floating in red sauce. Everything here is edible, even if some of it doesn’t look like it wants to be.
Mummy Sausages
Mummy Sausages wrap 12 small frankfurters in thin strips of puff pastry, spiraled like bandages, leaving the end uncovered for the face. They’re brushed with egg yolk and milk and baked until golden. Once cooled, two holes made with a skewer take a poppy seed each, and the eyes are done.
Pro tip: brush the pastry strips with a little mustard before wrapping them around the sausages.
Ghost Tartlets
Ghost Tartlets with Grana Padano start with crisp shortcrust shells that bake at 340°F for 20 minutes. A mousse of Grana Padano melted into cream, thickened with a little flour, and whipped, is piped into each shell as a little ghost. Black sesame seeds make the eyes. The recipe yields 30.
Pro tip: no tartlet molds on hand? Leave the pastry discs flat, or line the molds from the inside.
Monster Meatballs
Monster Meatballs are meatless: ricotta, Parmigiano, and soaked bread are shaped into 20 small balls and poached in vegetable broth. Each plate gets a pool of tomato sauce, three or four meatballs with a green olive slice as an eye, and a little ghost of potato cream with sesame-seed eyes.
Pro tip: split the potato cream into small bowls and tint each with spinach, pumpkin, or beet purée for colorful ghosts.
Mummy Burgers
Mummy Burgers are seasoned beef patties with thyme, seared for 7 minutes on each side and topped with crisp pancetta. Strips of puff pastry wrap each burger like bandages, with a small triangle left open for the face. Two pastry balls with sesame pupils make the eyes, and they bake at 350°F for 30 to 35 minutes.
Pro tip: no burger mold? A 4-inch round cutter about ¾ inch tall shapes the patties just as well.
Nobody Admits to the Last Mummy
By the time the doorbell rings for the last time, the table looks like a crime scene: bandages unraveled, a ghost with half a smile, a monster missing an eye. Somebody always takes the last mummy, and nobody ever admits to it.
