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.

And to drink..

• For Champagne Framboise, pour 2 tbsp framboise or raspberry liqueur into each glass, top with iced champagne and float several fresh raspberries on top.
• Shots of iced vodka can be très chic - to add a festive touch to your bottle, slide it into an empty juice carton. Fill the carton with water and gently push down into it the heads of several pansies, or holly leaves and berries, then freeze it upright. Once frozen, peel off the carton and set the bottle out, with a folded napkin nearby to hold it when pouring (have a plate or serving dish at the ready to catch the drips as the ice melts).
• Classic martinis are the height of sophistication. Whole books, novels, treatises have been written about how to make them. Here's my version: pour 4fl oz gin and ½fl oz dry vermouth into an ice-filled shaker. Shake, then strain into a glass. Garnish with a lemon twist or olive. (The lemon should just be a sliver of peel about 1½in long trimmed to ¼in in width.) Deftly crank the twist over the Martini's surface, allowing a few drops of lemon oil to dapple the surface.

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