Another one of the essays I had waiting for my blog to start...
My mother often has to think through a compromise between my family and my brother's (my brother and his wife have 3 terrific but young kids who want to eat dinner at 5 and my husband works on the weekends and doesn't get home until 8ish) so we come up with a different solution each year. When I asked my Mom what she was doing this year for Mother's Day, I was already thinking of what dishes to use and what desserts to make. I expected her to want to do a barbecue with brother and his family and dessert with mine again, as we did last year. To my surprise she said she wasn't doing anything for the day. In my family we don't always celebrate these silly Hallmark holidays on the day-of but we usually acknowledge them somehow. But no, my sister-in-law hadn't invited my parents for any sort of celebration on any day around Mother's Day. Usually she invites her parents and then my parents to tag along (humph). I promptly invited my parents to dinner.
Now I had to search my brain and house for yellow things for a table setting to honor my mother as yellow is her favorite color. It isn't a color I naturally gravitate to but I do have a few things. Now, what to serve... My mother really likes meat and salads nor does she want to eat anything too fattening.
During a recent trip to Whole Foods I discovered, FINALLY, tiny hamburger buns (!) I could make sliders!! What fun! Tiny bison burgers! I don't really eat meat but I do like bison-so flavorful that I can get past the idea that I am putting animal flesh in my mouth (a thought that normally makes me a bit ill) and this was all mushed up on a delicious little bun so what could be bad???
My mother also loves a composed salad I often make of seasonal vegetables then drape grilled meats over it so I thought about that. I also had a bison London broil in the freezer, it seemed the right direction. I knew, however, that my father and husband would never eat the salad.
I do my best thinking while walking so on the way to work the next day, I let my mind wander along the table setting and menu routes I had started on the day before. I was thinking about a tiny meal on a plate for the bison appetizer, trés fashionable in restaurants these days... I also had to think of what wouldn't conflict or be too heavy before the main course...nor too much the same. Soup popped into my head, my mom loves my soups...butternut squash (n-a-a...wrong season), gazpacho (also wrong season), spinach soup (yuck, wrong turn there, I was trying to think of what restaurants serve with burgers). Mushroom soup-ah yes. In a shot glass on the plate with a few greens. Done!
Now for the dinner...how to get a side dish for the boys... I would serve three platters 1) grilled bison London broil, sliced. 2) composed salad 3) mashed potato rounds.
I set the table on Saturday (see the photo) and went to Whole Foods, picked up the tiny buns and a few other things. While there I couldn't resist the most gorgeous asparagus ever-they were fat (much more flavorful than those silly skinny things) and all the leaves were tinged with purple. I had to have them. (I had also invited some friends to join us that night. This friend and I had had pizza together in a new place that opened near her apartment and our pie was covered in asparagus and roasted egg, something neither of us had seen before and I have been trying to duplicate since.) Whole Foods has an egg bar so I bought a few duck eggs and a few quail eggs to roast and slide onto the asparagus. I have no idea how the pizza place did the roasted eggs but my guess is they cracked one over the pizza and put the whole thing into the 900 degree oven, a few minutes later-voila, roasted egg. I've been cracking them into a hot sauté pan, letting the white set a few seconds and then putting the frying pan into the oven. They have been delicious and they are great for a dinner as they sit and wait happily until you are ready to eat them. The white gets crispy at the edges and the yolk gels andyet somehow remains a bit runny. Pretty cool over the asparagus and some sea salt sprinkled on top to finish.
I bought a bright yellow pashmina on the street last year and pulled that out to use as a runner. White dinner plates with small white square plates for the appetizers. I have vintage damask napkins in yellow and they went next to the plates in gold napkin rings, short plaid crystal glasses for water went next and pressed glass goblets with a gold band around the top for wine after that. Finally yellow handled Bakelite silverware and an arrangement of yellow and white flowers and candles in the center along the runner and diamond shaped crystals strewn about completed the toilette.
I mashed both white potatoes and sweet potatoes. I spread the white potatoes onto a cookie sheet the spread the sweet potatoes on top. I put them in the refrigerator to set them overnight. When I took them out the next morning I pushed a cookie cutter through them, putting the scalloped rounds onto another cookie sheet to heat up when as we sat down. Is it ok to be impressed with your own work (?) because these were pretty good looking!
Also on Saturday, I marinaded the meat, put it in the fridge and made the chocolate ganache for fondue as part of dessert. I made the mushroom soup out of dried shiitakes and baby cremini cooking them in the soaking liquid and in chicken stock I make and then freeze in plastic bags.
Months ago I found a website that sells the coolest toothpicks and ended up with thousands of them so I like to garnish with skewered things now. I saved a few mushrooms and roasted them with olive oil and salt, skewered them with a parsley leaf which became the appetizer’s garnish.
Sunday morning I made bison patties, roasted the vegetables for the salad. I cooked and cleaned and the day went by quickly.
I had also invited some new, but good friends and they arrived just after my parents. I usually buy hors d'houevres because there are such fabulous choices of interesting things in a jar lately that dragging out the food processor and washing it several times in between each item is just too much trouble and so unnecessary. But this time I had some smoked trout and I thought if I whirred that around the FP in some sour cream (well fake sour cream, as I keep kosher and when serving a meat meal one cannot use sour cream as there is a prohibition to mixing meat with dairy for any reason) and cumin it would be nice. The first try came out a bit too runny and I had no more fish so I did what everyone does in a pinch like this-I called my mother. She suggested adding a potato. I boiled 2 and added 1/2 of 1 to the FP, whirred it around which was the perfect stiffener and all was lovely and quite delicious. I put out some nuts, tapenade, and crackers.
While everyone else was chatting I began to heat up the soups. Now is when I finally began to realize the trouble I was in to serve my appetizer. I would have to take the appetizer plates off the table, cook tiny burgers, toast the buns, and assemble the plate-all at the same time!!! Uh-huh! When we were ready to sit down at the table the women were in the kitchen helping me and the men were in the dining room talking. I hated this moment for so many reasons not the least of which was the 1950's connotations of the women cooking for and serving the men. When I invite guests I do not expect them to work-they are guests, I want everything to be ready to put on the table. I am content to serve everything at room temperature because I prefer to eat it that way and because I want to be with my guests not watching food (with last minute food prep it's too easy to get distracted and ruin something). But too late to worry about all that now! My mother was in charge of filling the shot glasses with soup and laying the garnish over the glass. I was flippin' burgers and toasting buns, and our friend was laying the greens and splashing the oil and vinegar over them on each plate. We got it all done and the plates looked FABULOUS and tasted wonderfully as well. But the whole experience was not one I want to repeat-and yet I really don't want to give up this appetizer. It's fun, delicious and really cool. Something will have to be given up-the food or the principles so we'll see what happens next time this appetizer is a possibility.
The rest of the meal was good looking and delicious, we had a lot of fun and I loved it!!!!!
I've invited my family over dinner on Memorial Day so I've begun to think of table settings and menus...
