I made a “bespoke” brunch this morning – that is, some friends wanted me to cook for their friends, so I worked with them to come up with a menu, and they did the invites. I like doing this kind of pre-ordered event – I get to work with the people to come up with a menu they like, instead of me guessing on what’s a good date, and what’s a good menu, that will entice diners to come to a meal I’ve planned.
Anyways, they had upside down rhubarb muffins, cimmy buns – that came out really good – I will write the recipe down Real Soon Now™ and I made two loaves of the long rise, no knead bread – one plain wheat, and the other with walnuts & raisons. There were two mains: a sausage strata – Cowboy Christmas Breakfast, which I made pretty much as written, except I upped the amounts by half for everything except the green onions, and baked it in two casserole dishes. Which seemed to work perfectly, for a puffy tender egg bake. The other main dish was eggs baked in piperade, a dish I had made for the New Year’s brunch in 2011, eggs baked atop a red pepper and tomato sauce. There were also roasted potatoes, that I made with garlic and rosemary, using some little red potatoes from the co-op, from CA; I think all the WI potatoes must be done til the new ones come in. These’re good, though, nice and sweet. I made an asparagus salad – I wanted a salad with goat cheese and bread crumbs, and I got the idea from this Oprah salad, 1st thing to come up in a Google search – but I tried it yesterday and didn’t like it. I think the asparagus doesn’t have enough natural sweetness to balance the lemon and goat cheese, so I used balsamic. The spears were also hard to eat, so I cut the asparagus diagonally into into lengths, roasted it, then added the balsamic. When I got to School Woods, I arranged it on a platter and sprinkled on the goat cheese & crumbs. I made a green salad – but I way overbought on lettuce at the farmers’ market – I have a 2-gallon ziploc 2/3 full of washed greens, plus 2 smallish heads of un-washed. I went to the Hilldale market early, and one of the vendors couldn’t break my $20 bill, so I bought extra lettuce to make it easier. Yesterday was cows on the concourse, and Mark had an 8:00 haircut, so I thought I’d shop early at the little market, and then I could enjoy being a tourist at the big market more. The dressing was a variant of one of Terese’s – shallot, grainy mustard, white wine vinegar (that’s the variant part – she uses garlic, Dijon, balsamic) with raspberry jam, and olive oil. At least I have enough to go with the rest of the lettuce. I also made a fruit salad, and I have tons of fruit, in part because I went to Costco for grapes & strawberries, but then the organic cantaloups from the co-op didn’t get ripe fast enough, so I bought a backup from Sentry. And I bought a clamshell box of 21 apricots at Costco, not for the fruit salad; just because they were pretty.
I didn’t take any pictures – except the muffin ones – until the food had been picked over. One of the guests asked, “Isn’t that usually done [picture taking] when the bowls are full?”
Clean up took a little too long – I missed Ride the Drive. I didn’t get the last tray washed until 5:00 PM, but I got the leftover champagne, so it was a 2 Mimosa cleanup. I think I like the raison walnut bread the best of all the dishes.
Now I’m making an apricot tart with pistachio frangipane, that I realize is very much like a tart that I made for our first AFS student’s first dinner – that came out appallingly ugly. Now you can compare: 2013 tart vs. 2011 tart. I vote they’re both equally ugly but if my taste memory can be trusted – and I’m pretty good there – this year’s tastes better.
