Cocktails & Canapes for Women's World Cup 2015: Australia

I am actually rather hoping Nigeria will win against Australia tonight  as their first game against Sweden was really good, but they only came away with a draw. The Nigeria supporters are fantastic, singing and dancing through the whole game.

So despite my support for Nigeria I have gone for Australian themed food, which as I mentioned before is a lot easier to come up with than for Nigeria.

For my Australian themed cocktail I am going with the shark theme and serving a rum based 'Shark's Tooth' which in keeping with it's name is actually quite sharp, and not at all sweet!

The canape is a swordfish skewer served with a chilli dipping sauce.

For the Shark's Tooth Cocktail:

1.5 oz dark rum

0.25oz lime juice

0.25 oz lemon juice

0.25 oz grenadine syrup

soda water

Shake the rum, lime, lemon juice and grenadine over ice and pour into a short collins type glass.

Add a splash of soda water.

This is quite a 'tart' cocktail with the only sweetness coming from the grenadine.

The swordfish skewer recipe turned out to be a very good way of getting tender juicy swordfish. All too often when I cook this fish it turns out quite dry. The dipping sauce I found a little too strong in molasses flavour and I would go for a lighter thai dipping sauce next time. The recipe came from Australian Gourmet Traveller - 'Party Food'

For the Swordfish Skewers with Chilli Dipping Sauce:

600g swordfish steak

bamboo skewers

110g ground rice

sunflower oil for frying

Chilli lime dipping sauce:

1/3 cup fish sauce

1/3 cup lime juice

2 tbs kecap manis (this has quite a molasses flavour, soy sauce would be lighter)

1 clove garlic finely chopped

1 fresh red chilli deseeded and finely chopped

Make the sauce by combining all the ingredients together.

Trim any skin and dark flesh from the swordfish steak.

Cut into strips approx 1.5cm by 8cm and thread onto bamboo skewers.

Sprinkle the ground rice onto a plate and coat each strip in the rice flour.

Heat enough oil in a frying pan to shallow fry the skewers.

Cook in batches until lightly golden brown on each side.

Drain on kitchen paper and serve straight away with the dipping sauce.