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Caviar is a culinary extravaganza. One can have fun without breaking the bank, maybe just cracking it a little. Fresh caviar is not something to go bargain shopping for. Stick with a reputable gourmet shop or grocer if your town is big enough or order from a reputable place that will ship it direct to your door. It's highly perishable so make sure someone will be home to receive it. Though it will keep for up to 10 days in a sealed container it is best to shop the day before or day you plan to use it. Buy it on the way home and if you have a ways to go purchase a cooler bag from the shop to help maintain the proper temperature. Keep refrigerated until about 10 minutes before serving. Open just before service. Any that is left over store in its own container, cover well, turn a couple of times a day to keep moist no just grab a blini or cracker and munch it down.

Serving the caviar is the next best thing to eating it. Take a large serving bowl and fill with crushed ice. Leave the caviar in the tin or jar nestle it down in the ice. Don't put the caviar in a silver serving dish or use a silver spoon as it will pick up a metal taste and tarnish the silver. There are a wide variety of caviar spoons available from the very folks that sold you the caviar. Mother-of pearl is the traditional. A china or ceramic dish will do fine for the caviar itself if you'd like to take it out of the tin.

Serve it straight with bilinis or on a nice cracker that is not flavored. A platter of little bites are nice in a sort of build your own canap setting. Finely chopped hard boiled quail egg, smoked salmon in paper thin slices, diced red onion and crme fresh work nicely. Each should have their own serving spoon. Surround the iced caviar with the accompaniments and separate with bilinis, crackers and toast points. While serving the caviar have dry white wine, champagne, ice cold vodka or chilled white cranberry juice for beverages.

Making individual canaps may be the way to go for your purposes. Tiny crme puff shells filled with a dab of crme fresh and a spoon of caviar are quick and easy. Toast points of challah spread with crme fresh, topped with soft scrambled egg graced with a dab of caviar. Paper thin slices of red potato soaked in ice water then fried, punch down in the middle and they form little bowls to line with slivered smoked salmon then top with caviar.

Caviar comes in a price range of about ten dollars an ounce for American whitefish, or salmon, expect fifty to a hundred for American Sturgeon and about one hundred and eighty for Iranian. Caspian Beluga has been on a ban since 2005 so any tins will be at least that old.

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