Some of you might be quite surprised by my day job which has nothing whatsoever to do with gardening or food other than I work for one of the UK’s largest supermarkets. One of the perks of my job however is to get to see the Christmas food that is going to hit the shelves before it comes out.

In our food cascade this year the trend is going to be vegetarian and vegan party and Christmas food. This wasn’t much of a surprise but what was a surprise was that the food developers were having difficulty developing plant based party food that didn’t look generally brown. I suppose that when canapés are meat or cheese based we expect them to be brown, but are expecting a little more from a plant based canapé.

Therefore I thought I’d have a bit of fun this advent and produce a different plant based, colourful canapé every day especially for the party season!

First up is this Vietnamese salad cup recipe. It’s always useful to have some cold canapé if you are having a party and only have limited oven space. These little cups can be made a little in advance but if it is more than an hour the lime juice will start to bleach the colours so prep all the individual ingredients and then dress just before service.

Serves: 5/6 as an starter, or 20 canapé

Five a day: 2

Preparation Time: 15 minutes

Cooking Time: 0