First of all – don’t panic! There are lots of delicious last minute recipes and you need less time then you usually think. Take a deep breath, hope that there’s something in your fridge, because if you have to run to the store you might as well forget about it, and make one of these.
1. Pasta
Making pasta takes 15 minutes. Literary! I know most of you don’t believe me right now and you’re thinking something like “yeah right, it takes 15 minutes if you’re a master chef”, but honestly – that’s just an excuse not to try it.
Now to do the math. Pasta needs 6 to 8 minutes to cook. Water needs something like 5 minutes to boil if you’re doing it on the stove. If you have one of those electric water boilers – it takes a couple of seconds. While the water is boiling and the pasta is cooking you can make the sauce.
Ok, you won’t have time to make spaghetti and meatballs, but pasta alla carbonara is possible. While your pasta is cooking, slice up a few strips of bacon and fry them on oil. Whisk two eggs, 1 cup of sour cream and 100gr of cheese together. Once the bacon is done, pour the egg-sour cream-cheese mixture and add cooked pasta. Leave for one to two minutes and taste it. Done and done! And it took 13 minutes.
2. Canapes
Canapes are small, delicious finger food. I personally love them. They are very decorative, even fancy if you will, super tasty and incredibly easy to make.
The ingredients you need are: bread, butter and leftovers from the fridge. My favorite combination is a small piece of bread, a thin layer of butter, a piece of prosciutto a piece of mozzarella and 1 green olive. Everything should be secured with a toothpick and sprinkled with freshly chopped parsley leaves or chives.
The best thing about canapes is that you can do whatever you like with them. You can even mix fruit with meat if that’s your cup of tea. If you’ve got some chicken left from lunch, just slice it into thin pieces, add a couple of other ingredients and make chicken canapés. Let your imagination flow and your guests will surely love it.
3. Puff Pastry Bites
Almost every home has some puff pastry in the freezer. If yours doesn’t – well make sure you buy it ASAP. With a couple of other things, puff pastry becomes a delicious last minute snack.
Having a muffin pan will be of a great help here. Roll your puff pastry and cut it into squares big enough to fit the muffin pan. If you don’t have the muffin pan, just cut the puff pastry into bite size squares and arrange them on a baking sheet.
Put whatever you like on the puff pastry. You can make it pizza style – with some tomato sauce, ham and cheese; you can fill it with mushrooms, or you can fill it with fruit. Basically, anything you find in the fridge will do the trick.
Puff pastry needs about 15 minutes to be done. It depends a bit on the size (small pieces work better if you’re really in a hurry) and its previous temperature, but that’s about it. You can sprinkle it with sesame seeds and give your last minute snack a glimpse of glamour.
You see? It’s not that hard, right? Delicious recipes don’t always need insane amount of time. Sometimes, 15 minutes is all you need to make something really good.
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