Dinner party two last week was for one of Ben’s favorite professors, his wife, and our friends Brian and Liz. I’ve been on such a Suzanne Goin kick lately, but with Easter the day before I simply didn’t have time for a bunch of three day projects, so I consulted with Mom and decided to make a menu of her standbys.

To start I made a warm goat cheese salad, using a recipe from Epicurious. It uses panko instead of regular breadcrumbs, which makes the coating extra crispy. These needs to be made early in the day so they get a couple hours in the fridge; otherwise they will melt everywhere when you try to cook them. They get pretty fragile anyway, so handle them gently once they’ve been heated.

I cut up a big log of mild goat cheese and forced the pieces into nice rounds:

The rounds get dipped in egg whites, then the mixture of panko and herbs:

I made a variation on the salad dressing in the recipe (basically my usual vinaigrette, but I did microwave the oil and garlic as they suggested, which worked very well). A few minutes before we sat down to eat I cooked off the cheese, and while it was crisping up I dressed and served the salad and heated up some bread. The timing worked out really well, actually.

Unfortunately I had forgotten that the professor doesn’t eat cheese; Brian was kind enough to eat the extra round. I’m not the biggest goat cheese fan but this is really nice. Mild, creamy, and the little crispy coating is great.

For the main course I roasted red potatoes, steamed beans (dressed with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice) and made my mom’s grilled pork tenderloin. We ate this ate a lot of dinner parties when I was growing up, and it remains a favorite. I had never cooked tenderloin, and was grossed out by the process of cleaning the meat (the silverskin or whatever it’s called…well, yuck), but the marinade is easy and properly grilled tenderloin, tender and flavorful, is a real crowd pleaser.

Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Rosemary, from Kate’s Mom

2 pork tenderloins
2 T Dijon mustard
2 T honey (Note from Mom: I do a little less ‘cause honey can make marinade burn)
1 T fresh rosemary needles, diced
S & P to taste – make marinade salty
2 T olive oil

• Clean t-loins and butterfly; pat dry & lay in glass dish
• Combine mustard, honey, rosemary, s & p, and oil in glass measuring cup until it emulsifies
• Slather marinade over both sides of meat & marinate for 1 hour and up to overnight
• Grill over hot coals until just cooked – still pink – do not over cook!
• Let rest 5 minutes before slicing thinly, on the diagonal.

Note from Kate: Mom advises trimming the fat and skinny ends off the tenderloins and saving those for stir fry. That leaves a nice even tube of meat (gross), much easier to grill perfectly than if the thin and thick parts are still attached. I made 3 tenderloins for 6 people and we ate every scrap. To butterfly the tenderloins, after you’ve trimmed and cleaned them lay them out flat and put one hand on top of the meat. Using a sharp chef’s knife carefully cut into the middle of the side, cutting the tenderloin open but not all the way through. When you’re done you should have turned your tube of meat into a nice flat rectangle. Did that make any sense?

The finished plate looks a bit meager, but that’s because it’s mine and 1) I wasn’t too hungry; 2) I had just dropped most of the remaining beans on the floor due to a tongs malfunction.

Nothing about this dinner was complicated or time-consuming, but it was one of my favorites that I’ve made yet. I guess Mom really is onto something…(As if I didn’t know that already!)

For dessert I made yet another Beth Special, an apple crostata. If you aren’t familiar with them, crostatas are Italian fruit tarts. The dough is super easy and SUPER delicious—buttery, crispy and flaky—and you just pile the fruit in the middle, top it with a butter/sugar mixture, and pull the pastry up over the sides. It’s very rustic, less stressful than pie, and absolutely delicious. This is getting recipe-heavy, but you’ll thank me (and Mom) if you try this. It looks complicated but the directions are just detailed; the dough took 5 minutes to make:

Apple-Crisp Crostata – from Cucina Simpatica

Crostata Dough

.5 lb (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter
2 Cups unbleached flour
.25 Cup superfine sugar
.5 teaspoon kosher salt
.25 Cup ice water

• This recipe works best with very cold butter. Cut the butter into .5” cubes; return to fridge for at least 10 minutes.
• Place flour, sugar, and salt in food processor (steel blade). Pulse a few times to combine.
• Add butter and toss quickly with your fingers to coat each cube with flour so the butter breaks apart and combines more evenly with the flour.
• Pulse 15 times; butter should be no smaller than small peas.
• With the motor running, add the ice water all at once through the feed tube. Process only 10 seconds, stopping motor before the dough becomes a solid mass.
• I divide the dough into separate small Ziploc bags and form into flat round discs, about 11 oz. each.
• Refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 2 days. Freeze for up to1 month. Thaw in fridge overnight.

Crostata Filling

11 oz. dough (.5 batch above)
.25 Cup unbleached flour
.25 Cup superfine sugar
.5 stick (4 T) cold unsalted butter
1.5 lbs (about 3 large) baking apples

• Roll dough into 11” circle, transfer to a rimmed baking sheet and return to fridge.
• Combine flour, sugar in a bowl. Blend in butter until mixture crumbles and holds together in irregular clumps.
• Peel, core, and slice apples into thin slices. Cover dough with apple slices, leaving a 1.5” border.
• Cover apples with the butter mixture and raise the dough border to enclose the sides of the tart, letting it drape gently over the fruit. Press down on the dough at the baking sheet, securing the sides and bottom. Gently pinch soft pleats that form from the draping.
• Brush dough edge with egg white and sprinkle with coarse sugar. (Note from Kate: I forgot to do this and it was fine.)
• Bake the tart at 350 for about 20 minutes, until the crust is golden and the apples are soft. Check the tart after 12 minutes; if the topping is browning too quickly, place a sheet of foil loosely over the top of the tart for the rest of the baking time.
• Cool the tart for about 10 minutes and serve warm.

Here’s the tart, right out of the oven:

And plated with some ice cream:

The best part? I have the other half of the dough in the freezer, ready for another time!

Last week we had three dinner parties, and MAN, was I tired by the end. The first was a super-traditional ham dinner for a few friends on Easter. We even ate in the late afternoon; it was very retro—so much so that I was even inspired to wear one of my 50s dresses, complete with rick-rack trim. I wasn’t clear on how many people were coming, so I ended up with MUCH too big of a ham; it was more than 9 pounds and in the end we had four meat eaters! I now have a freezer full of ham. (There are worse fates, I guess.) To go with it I made my mom’s broccoli puree, which is the one item we nearly always eat on holidays, and which I’d never made before, and Julia Child’s Scalloped Potato recipe from the cookbook that goes with her early television shows. I baked Parker House rolls and cupcakes, too.

We were in Boston on Saturday and got home (with groceries) around 10, and we were going to church in the morning so I knew I had to do some prep that night. I made the broccoli purée and put it in the fridge, all ready to go. It took a while to clean all the broccoli, then I cooked it and it took a longer while to puree because I didn’t follow the instructions. I had too much to do all at once in the cuisinart, so I was trying to purée some, remove it, purée the rest, then continue with the recipe. Hmm, it turns out you really need to add the crème fraîche for the recipe to work. The cuisinart can’t get the broccoli smooth enough unless you add it before puréeing—it needs the wetter texture to get the job done. Oh well, lesson learned, but I wish I hadn’t learned it at 11 o’clock at night, while madly spooning hot broccoli in and out of the cuisinart. I think Ben was a little scared. This is a fabulous (and EASY if you follow the directions) recipe, though, and a really nice fancy side dish.

Note holes from repeated pokes with a thermometer to see if it was hot yet:

My mom apparently got the recipe from the Silver Palate cookbook, but I will always think of it as Mom’s Broccoli Puree:

Broccoli Purée with Crème Fraîche – Silver Palate

Note from Kate’s mom: I often adapt this recipe to the amount of broccoli I have on hand and adjust other ingredients accordingly; i.e.; I often reduce the amount of crème fraiche.

4 big stalks broccoli (3 lbs), trimmed and chopped, including stems
1 Cup crème fraîche
4 T sour cream
2/3 Cup freshly grated parmesan
1?2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1?2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Salt to taste
2 T sweet butter

1. Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil; salt.
2. Chop broccoli, leaving several flowerets whole to decorate top of dish. Drop broccoli into boiling water.
3. Cook just until tender, about 8 minutes, but test earlier.
4. Transfer broccoli, reserving flowerets, to a food processor. Add crème fraîche and puree thoroughly.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
6. Scrape puree into a large bowl. Stir in sour cream, parmesan, nutmeg, pepper and salt to taste. Mix well.
7. Mound in ovenproof serving dish, dot with butter and bake in preheated oven for 35 minutes or until puree is steaming hot.
8. Garnish with reserved flowerets and serve immediately.

Note from Kate: Since I made this ahead it was very cold when it went into the oven, instead of being lukewarm from the cooked broccoli. As a result it took forever to get hot; good to keep in mind for next time.

The scalloped potatoes were much simpler than I expected, though you definitely want to use a mandolin to slice them super-thin. It would have taken forever to do with a knife, and I doubt I could have gotten them thin enough. I ignored Julia’s instructions to use a flameproof gratin pan, since I have no such thing. Instead I heated the milk (whole milk with a crushed garlic clove or two, plus salt and pepper) on the stove and poured it over a few layers at a time of the potatoes. I am paranoid about undercooking this sort of thing, having eaten some very crunchy scalloped potatoes in my day, so I peeled back the top layer and pulled out a sample from inside once or twice to check that everything was cooked enough. The finished dish was subtly garlicky and very refined. It held together well and I didn’t miss cheese or cream.

The ham was from Vermont and was pre-cooked, so I just had to heat it in the oven. It was good but not great… It sure looked impressive though! Here’s the whole spread:

The Parker House rolls were a fiasco. I gambled that the bulk yeast I have is instant, and….it’s not. The rolls were very small. Heh. I also made my first ever batch of cupcakes, yellow cake with confectioner’s sugar frosting, and though they spread out on top of the pan, once I trimmed the errant tops to size and frosted them (sloppily) they looked ok. They tasted quite good, too!

I told Ben while I was hacking the crispy overhanging edges off the cupcakes that I feel like I have two cooking/entertaining fairy godmothers, one on each shoulder. In one ear Martha was telling me to bake another batch; in the other Julia was saying to just add more frosting and cover the cut edges. Obviously I listened to Julia.

Oh man, this involves a LOT of cauliflower. We were going to a potluck at the home of one of Ben’s professors, and the guest list looked like there would be 16 people there. I was to bring a “cooked vegetable,” so I bought four heads of cauliflower (8 pounds in all) and made Cauliflower with Lemon-Mustard Butter from epicurious.com.

This involved a much longer period spent slicing cauliflower than I expected. Cauliflower doesn’t want to be sliced, it wants to be florets. Slicing means you get some nice cross-sections and a LOT of crumbs. Oh well. I ended up doing four half sheet pans (regular cookie sheet size) and four quarter sheets, rotating them all in and out of the oven. Maybe more, it got a little hairy there at the end, and I was in some sort of Cauli-Trance.

You bake the slices (and crumbs) for about 15 minutes, then baste them with the sauce—a lot of butter, lemon juice and mustard, with some zest for good measure) and bake for another 10 minute. I’m a sucker for roasted cauliflower, so I’m not the best judge because I’m not picky, but Ben kept eating the finished batches off the serving tray, so I’m pretty sure it’s a hit for people who don’t LOVE cauliflower, as well. It’s very tangy and buttery, and the leftovers (only 12 people ended up being at the party) have been tasty straight out of the fridge.

The other day for lunch I used up the tail end of a bag of pasta, cooking it absorption-style, and at the end I threw in a bunch of the leftover cauliflower and heated it through. That was great: The sauce melted and coated the pasta and the textures were a good match. Yum.