Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

My tart tins from the trash heap one more time – it took soaking overnight, and scrubbing with a toothbrush to clean off the results of the quiches that leaked. Last night I made a buffet light dinner/heavy apps for a group that I’ve cooked for before. They’re all Hospice Care workers, and they’re a lively bunch with a good sense of humor – and completely unflappable no matter what happens.

Scrubbed tarts tins resting on the kitchen counter

I didn’t take any pictures, but here’s the menu:

Appetizers:

• Caramelized onion dip (kinda like Heidi’s; I’ll post my adaptations presently)  with vegetables (crinkle-cut carrots, beauty heart radishes, blanched broccoli, a few Romanesco broccoli florets, and one red pepper in strips) & crackers (wheat thins & Potters)
• Nuts & olives – Crisp spiced nuts, from Gourmet, Dec. 1994, and a few cheese-stuffed green olives from the co-op, and some pitted Niçoise from Costco)

Platters of vegetables & salads:

• Pear Fennel Salad on bed of greens – this was Mark Bittman’s pear salad, on a bed of greens – including lots of arugula – dressed with Terese’s raspberry jam vinaigrette
• Harvest roasted vegetables –   white, purple, and sweet potatoes, parsnips, carrots, with garlic and herbs (Rosemary from the pots in Mark’s sun room upstairs) coulda been more of these!
• Roasted Cauliflower, walnut and and parsley salad – this was kind of my invention, based on a salad I am sure I saw in Martha’s Everyday Food, but can’t find now. Because I was searching so much for the recipe, I saw a mention of roasted cauliflower with curry spices at Ottolenghi, so I roasted my cauliflower with garam masala and olive oil, then added toasted walnuts and flat leaf parsley, and a few tablespoons of white wine vinegar. It was so good, I finished it off for a snack the next day.

mains:

• Leek tart
• Quiche Loraine – with bacon

One of the bacon and one of the leek tarts are what leaked so I had to scrub.

dessert:

• Pumpkin sticky pudding – I made two 13 x 9 x 2 pans, and dropped one in the driveway, while I was loading the car – totally shattered. I dumped most of it the garbage – didn’t have time to clean up properly, and Mark got home just in time to do it for me.
• Whipped cream and ice cream to make up for the loss

Actually all day while I’d been cooking I’d been thinking some disaster was going to strike. It was almost a relief after I dropped the sticky pudding – it meant I finally knew what was going to go wrong, and it had, and I could get over it. My neck started to un-knot. It’s high school football tournaments in Madison this weekend (we are the state capital after all) , and one of the games had just let out, so the traffic was bad on my way to school woods, and I had to stop at Jenny Market for the ice cream. Still, I arrived at the same time as Mia, the party planner, and I knew from that moment that it was going to be a good night. People were fed, they drank wine and talked, people were happy. Didn’t I say they were unflappable? And there was even pudding for Mark and I to eat at 10:00 when I got home.

With all my cooking assignments?

stuff to cook list

The potato rolls turned into a potato focaccia, mostly white but with a little rye flour. Good for toast and sandwiches.

Potato focaccia

Sunday breakfast with focaccia toast

I made the pork pies – got 12 little pies, and meant to photograph them yesterday while it was light – that went the way of all good intentions. I also had about enough filling leftover for 3 or 4 more pies, but I dumped it in the trash when no one was looking.

I made the Brussels sprout salad, with toasted pumpkin seeds instead of pine nuts – no pine nuts in the freezer when I looked – and I’ll give it, and the pork pies, and a greens pie, to the students I’m feeding tonight. So that takes care of all of the ticks on the list, and I can have Brussels sprout salad OR greens pie OR even a pork pie, for lunch at work tomorrow.

Brussels sprout red cabbage slaw

Greens pie – collards, in fact

Here’s the leftover pork pies & greens pie on Tuesday morning – I ate a half a pork for breakfast after a walk with Rach; I’m thinking greens pie and salad for dinner after yoga.

Leftover pork pies in better light

Greens Pie Leftovers Tuesday a.m.

Click the map for what I did when I got home from working the polls – we registered 516 voters at my polling place! And almost 2500 voters all day.
 

New York Time election ’12 map

I’m putting the finishing touches on this post on Halloween Wednesday, and I still am not quite recovered.

When we got back from the librarian’s conference on Thursday, I baked a giant chocolate cake for Susan’s Dad’s 90th. I decided to substitute 7-minute frosting for the whipped cream filling – that’s the kind that’s whipped up egg whites. I worked at home on Friday, and did not attempt to assemble the cake until about 11:00, after I’d had plenty of coffee and been at the computer for a few hours. It was still pretty exciting to invert that top layer onto the bottom one.

Susan’s Dad’s 90th b-day cake

Mark and I took the cake over to the home – I put it on a damp towel in the nice flat station wagon back of my Subaru, and covered it with a large Tupperware I retrieved out of the basement (I think Lea brought me dried orange bittersweet branches in it for a Thanksgiving decoration long ago; like 2001 or so).

Afterwards, Mark had had enough socializing, so I took him home and proceeded to an Obama benefit organized by the parents of a kid Al was friends with all through high school, and roomed with at college.

On Saturday, we went to the farmers market, and then John and I met up with Anna and her kids and went out to Molly & David’s farm, to meet the pigs, Mazel and Tov. Anna and I and another friend are going in together on a half hog. I’ll put together a gallery of pigs and kids shots, real soon now. ™

Pigs and kids on the farm

Then back home again, and spent the rest of the day and into the night – with the exception of a quick bike ride to Whole Foods to get alfalfa sprouts and skim milk – prepping for brunch on Sunday, and Matt Smith’s hippie 60s party. For the brunch the main thing I had to do in advance was make granola, for the yogurt parfaits – and apple sauce. The jar of raspberry sauce in the basement fridge that I’d thought to offer as a layer tasted OK, but smelled fermented, so I replaced it with the applesauce. I thawed out some rhubarb puree, too, but it was way too thick so I refroze it for future coffee cakes, and put out grapes and a few figs, instead. The eats for Matt’s party were hot appetizers – bacon dates, spanakopita, and pigs in blankets, wrapped with my good homemade dough, not poppin’ dough. And cold ones – devilled eggs (on a bed of alfalfa sprouts), and crostini with pesto cheese – mascarpone & goat cheese mixed with pesto – and topped with slivers of pickled peppers.

Crostini with pesto cheese

I wrapped up the last of the appetizers by 11:30, and headed to bed.

In the morning, I laid out the deviled egg halves on their bed of sprouts, and made the filling, to be scooped into the eggs onsite at the party. I mixed up the pancake batter, and headed over to E. Wash. I had a larger than normal group, because the invite had gone out to the Madison Epicureans Meet Up. I thought it was a little ironic that I was serving pancakes to the Epicureans, but I guess – there were yeasted overnight buckwheat pancakes, and real maple syrup, and all homemade. I had a few hectic moments when everyone arrived at once and I was trying to get the pancakes out to them. In the end I think everyone was well satisfied, and I even sat down to eat with Mark, as the last few guests took their leave. Mark pointed out that just about everyone was a member of the clean plate club – I think that’s because I was cooking the pancakes and eggs basically to order – so instead of taking a stack of three and not finishing, people got their cakes more like one at time, hot off the griddle. I know everyone got enough, because there were leftovers – One woman on her way out the door said “I can’t believe there’s still bacon left”. Mark and I ate it.

Home with the empties, and I had about an hour’s lull till it was time to head out to Mount Horeb for Matt’s. I got the car loaded while the packers played, and we were off. The party was at a motel, and I had a little apartment size stove in one of the units for cooking the apps. Susan had preheated it. The main party was in the back yard – there was tent with the band and a firepit. Mark & Susan butlered trays of hot appetizers up the hill. There were 80 – 100 pieces of everything and it all got eaten. I had one beer while I was cooking, and then still time for another while listening to the band.

We got home around 7:30, and put stuff away. I had egg salad sandwich on toast, made by chopping the broken whites into the container of deviled egg filling, and scraping the sides, and we settled in to watch the cable shows. I didn’t get too sleepy until Homeland, so I just watched that one again on Monday.

Egg salad with a thin layer of peanut butter on toast

October 22 is School Woods official birthday – at least it’s the date of the very first dinner I put on there in 2006. For School Woods 6th, I put on a Sunday Supper. Fifteen diners, and a lovely time had by all. I think I liked the chicken filo rolls better than the veg – the broccoli ones seemed a little mushy – but I only had a few bites of each – really only an edge of the crusty, seeped filling of the chicken, and I ate about 1/4 of a leftover broccoli while I was cleaning up. The corn tomato soup suffered a bit of scope creep – the parsnips insisted on asserting their personalities as much as the tomatoes & corn. The focaccia was one of the best I’ve ever made, thank you Carol Field. I make the focaccia from Liguria, with white wine & olive oil, and weighed the flour using one of my favorite kitchen appliances, my nifty scale, that was an Xmas gift in 2010; 2011 was immersion blender that I have been putting to good use on apple-cranberry sauce, recently. Also thanks last minute inspiration to top the focaccia with the fresh rosemary from the market. To go with, for appetizers, I roasted the 3 giant red peppers I got in my Tipi box, and sliced them into strips and tossed with lime juice and garlic, and thawed out a carton of caponata. Another good last minute idea was making the goat cheese & mascarpone & pesto into a little torta. I was sure I shot it on Sunday evening, when it was new and pretty with olive oil drizzled over and pepper ground on top, but no, only got the 2-day old leftovers. I switched the dessert from baked apples with créme Anglaise to trifle – with brandied pear sauce, the above-mentioned cranberry-apple sauce, & créme, and whipped cream. I made one trifle in my footed trifle bowl, and another in a new fluted glass square baking dish I bought at the co-op on Saturday (missing my board discount …) I took a picture of the round trifle layers, but didn’t really get it to pose for its closeup until it was leftovers, too.

Speaking of leftovers, pretty manageable – Stephen & Belinda showed up to eat at just the right moment. I gave Max a container of kale salad, and ate it for lunch myself on Monday, and finally tossed the last bit that was mostly soggy breadcrumbs and raisins last night. I am going to make the soup into stock with the chicken bones. The leftover squash will become a filo-wrapped appetizer, squash cigars, for the next party. I’m arranging the last of the chicken & broccoli rolls I hope attractively in the fridge, on the chance that Al will eat them next time he stops by.

I took the day off today for mental health, so I’m writing still in pajamas past 10:00 a.m., hair unbrushed. My plan is to catch up here, then go grocery shopping for this weekend’s cooking – brunch on Sunday and apps for a party that I can’t talk about yet. It’s raining, so I don’t have to rake leaves – happy, tho guilty about that – we have the most leaves in our yard of anyone on the block. And in the afternoon, call on my book accounts for Local Foods Journal.

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