Meat recipes good cold?

[steorra]

Hi, I've been watching this community for a few months, but just joined. I'm looking for good recipes (preferably fairly simple, though I might be able to handle a more complex one) that contain meat and are good eaten room temperature/cold. I have a feast coming up that will be sort of picnic-style, without much chance to reheat food. (There is a microwave, but it may be pretty busy with other people trying to reheat things, and I'd rather not get into that competition.)

A few restrictions:
-No nuts or peanuts (pine nuts are okay, though)
-No hot pepper or black pepper

(In my inquiries elsewhere, the best candidate recipe so far is salami rolled around cream cheese, which has been suggested by two different people.)

Comments

[mommy]

My family enjoys a pasta salad made from shredded cooked chicken, cooked pasta, and pesto sauce. Veggies can be added to taste.

[azurelunatic]

Bagels with lox?

[lassarina]

Well, if kosher's not a restriction, there's always this:

Take some prosciutto. Lightly toast it in your oven--well, not so much toast as "throw some warm air at until it's a bit drier and less greasy." Wrap around small chunks of goat cheese and pear. Serve.

Chicken in a pasta salad, as suggested above, is a good option.

Alternately, bake up some chicken. Cut it into small (half bite-sized?) pieces. Your options at this point diverge:

* put it in a pita with some tzatziki (you can buy decent premade at the grocery store; if you have a heavy Greek population where you live, it'll be better quality), onions, and tomatoes--but I am a freak and eat gyros and chicken-equivalents-thereof cold, so.
* toss it with some BBQ sauce and wrap it up in tortillas with some shredded cheddar for snack wrap things
* as above, but with honey-mustard dressing, some lettuce and diced tomato. Sliced avocado, lightly sauteed mushrooms, and/or provolone can make tasty additions.

[rydra_wong]

Grilled chicken, maybe? A few weeks back, I bought a bag of drumsticks and wings, grilled them all, and lived off them cold for a number of meals. Especially good if it's an occasion where people are okay eating with their fingers.

[syderia]

Something like quiche usually works well for these occasions.

[zero_pixel_count]

It sort of depends what kind of atmosphere you're aiming at, and also what sort of proportion of meat to not-meat you're thinking of.

On the one hand, you've got the very "rustic" meat-heavy things like cold ham, chicken pieces, ribs, or salami; we used to do a lot of this when we were aiming for a vaguely pseudo-medieval feel.

On the other hand, meat-light options like pasta or grain salads with chicken or crispy crumbled bacon, that kind of thing. Tasty, and you can ensure no-one walks away hungry without breaking the bank.

On the third hand (assume I have enlisted another person to donate hands to the analogy, ok? :P) there's your fancy-looking, fiddly but not actually difficult stuff like the salami rolls you mentioned (any cured meat would work, of course) or, I don't know, something with brie, bacon and cranberries(cocktail skewers? bite-sized piece of brie, blob of cranberry sauce on top, wrap up in a bit of streaky bacon?). Little crackers or something with a smear of pate and a dot of chutney or jam.

Aaaand on my lovely assistant's other hand, we have the things that, you know, really require a recipe and contain the potential to actually get it wrong - the things, really, that a lot of people buy from the shop because they're a fiddle: sausage rolls, scotch eggs, pork pies, pasties, terrine of insert-meat-here...

[yarngeek]

I've had good luck with recipies stolen from inspired by Au Bon Pain's portions menu (URL below). I'm fond of the apples, blue cheese and cranberries dish myself.

The nice thing about these dishes is that they're designed to 1) taste good cold 2) taste good after sitting around for a couple of hours.

URL for the portions menu: http://www.aubonpain.com/menu/food.aspx?s=cafe_portions

[brigid]

What about chicken salad? You can make it a little fancier with chopped up apple, raisins, and pecans or walnuts. People can eat it with a fork, on crackers, or on bread.