Pick-ups and small plates for Christmas Eve

By now, you’ve been formulating your Christmas dinner plan, scribbling down shopping lists and plotting your time in the kitchen. Most of us put a lot of time and energy into the Christmas Day meal, but what about Christmas Eve? In the past, I’ve served soups and salads, a make-ahead meal that’s easy to dispense and which frees up my kitchen so I can cook for the big day. I’ve also served roast chicken with cornbread dressing and a few sides, since I deprive my guests of their Thanksgiving favorites by serving beef on Christmas Day. This year, however, I’ve got a houseful of people with disparate tastes, so I’m turning to an appetizers-only menu. Here’s some of what it will entail:

• Antipasti. It’s versatile, different every time, easy to assemble and requires no cooking.

• Char-grilled oysters with compound butter. To each oyster, add a sliver of garlic-herb butter and grill them on the half shell for a couple of minutes, no more.

• Cream cheese and farmers market pepper jelly with crackers. Yes, it’s the goofy stuff of the seventies, but I love this retro favorite, and if I’m having food snobs for dinner, all the better. The fancier alternative would be slices of Manchego served side-by-side with slivers of quince paste, which requires no bread or crackers.

• Nuts. Plain pistachios, spiced pecans and rosemary cashews.

• Shrimp or crawfish etouffee in pastry cups. Purchase mini-pastry cups and fill them with homemade shrimp etouffee, taking advantage of white shrimp season.