Ladies' Brunch

In mid-May, when the Old Comrades group was at my house for dinner, some how the conversation drifted to movies, then to the movie Magic Mike. The ladies were horrified that I had never seen it, and wanted to rectify that situation. After a flurry of emails, the Ladies Only Magic Mike Viewing Party was officially a go for a Saturday in July. Venue quickly became an issue because I couldn’t host it at my house with my 1990s technology. Fortunately, one of the ladies volunteered her place, and I offered to “cater.”

Since there was overwhelming approval for a boozy brunch to accompany the movie, my challenge was to come up a menu that was portable and would keep well. After referencing some past brunch menus in my hostess diary and doing some research in my family cookbook, I came up with the following:

• Peach Bellinis
• Bacon
• Sticky Buns
• Petit Pain au Chocolat
• Spanokopita
• Florentine Frittata
• Buttermilk Biscuits
• Homemade Jams & Jellies
• Fruit Salad

My plan of attack was simple: grocery shop on Thursday night, cook all day Friday, pack the car Saturday morning, arrive an hour early, cook more food, and relax once the rest of the ladies arrived. Of course, the only thing that went according to plan was grocery shopping on Thursday night!

Evening Prep Work

Friday afternoon was unusually hot outside, so my house was hot enough that I didn’t feel like baking or canning during the day. By 8pm Friday night, I still had nothing prepared for the brunch aside from the jars of homemade jams and jellies. A good friend in Austin recommended I start with a small and manageable task to get my kitchen energy flowing. So I decided to test a boozy milkshake recipe from Butter & Scotch. The recipe was super simple: put ice cream, fruit and liquor in a blender and blend. And that gave me just enough motivation to start on the more complex time consuming tasks that couldn’t wait until the morning.

The one task that I was dreading was making the fruit salad. Cleaning and cutting the fruit can be so boring and time consuming. But I turned up the radio, started a recipe of red wine jelly in the background, and forged ahead. This fruit salad turned out to be a fairly simple one: the remainder of a can of pineapple chunks, two nectarines, one pound of strawberries, one pint of blueberries, and five kiwi fruit. I had two mangos for the salad as well, but I decided not to bother with that mess. Besides, the bowl was full and there were only going to be three or four of us.

The other task that couldn’t wait until morning was the filling for the spanokopita puff pastries. I needed to have that ready to go to fill the pastries in the morning. So first I made the rice in a separate pan. I hadn’t done this recipe in a while, so I really appreciated the recipe comment about the proportions of rice and water to use to produce the perfect quantity of rice for the recipe. I used the frozen spinach leftover from my ramen experiment, plus another block that I had bought the day before. For not having done the recipe in years, it worked without a hitch. Then again, it isn’t a complex recipe: cook and drain the frozen spinach; sauté onions and garlic; add spinach, rice, feta, and sundried tomatoes; stir well.

At around midnight I made the decision to scratch the sticky buns from the menu. One of my brothers had given me an excellent cookbook called The Food Lab for my birthday this year, and I was really looking forward to attempting the recipe for “The World’s Most Awesome Sticky Buns” from it. But the recipe required a two-hour rise before rolling and shaping the buns, then a minimum two-hour rise once the buns were cut in the pan. Although the shaped buns could be refrigerated and rise there for up to 12 hours, there really was no way that I was going to wake up at 2am to roll and shape the buns. And there really was no room in the refrigerator for a pan of sticky buns. So this recipe will have to be put on hold to try another day.

Morning Prep Work

Despite going to bed at 1am, I woke up unusually early and energized on Saturday, so I worked in the kitchen completely decaffeinated.

The most important thing to get done were the Buttermilk Biscuits, which was a recipe from Home Cooked, an earlier NetGalley cookbook. That cookbook wasn’t one of my favorites, for a variety of reasons, but the Buttermilk Biscuit recipe was amazing. And simple! Basically, the recipe requires whisking together all-purpose flour with some leavening agents, and then cutting in a stick of butter until the mixture looks like rough sand. Working in the stick of butter isn’t difficult; it is just time consuming, especially when you are on a deadline. Then add the buttermilk, stir to combine, and drop tablespoonfuls on a baking tin. All you need to do from there is just bake it and let the biscuits cool on a cooling rack. They are super light and fluffy. I could barely restrain myself from eating one warm with butter, but I stuck to my plan and had yogurt instead.

Once the Buttermilk Biscuits were baking, I could turn my attention to the pastry. Both the pain au chocolat and the spanokopita required essentially the same work: divide a sheet of puff pastry into twelve pieces, put a little filling on each piece, wrap the puff pastry around the filling, place the package seam down on a baking tin, and bake. I got the idea for these puff pastries several years ago from a Bon Appetit recipe for Pain Au Chocolat, which required rolling out homemade croissant dough into a rectangle, dividing the rectangle into pieces, and so forth. I figured I’d try it with thawed puff pastry sheets (they are found in the freezer section of the supermarket) and it worked perfectly. This time was no exception: the recipes went off without a hitch. Except I decided that I would bake them at my friend’s house so that they would be hot and fresh. And I would have enough time for one more recipe…

The last recipe I attempted at my house on Saturday morning was a late addition to the menu: Teaches of Peaches Jell-Ohh Shots from Butter & Scotch. I was intrigued by the recipe when I read the book, so I bought the ingredients at the supermarket on Thursday. The deciding factor as to whether I would do this recipe was how difficult it would be to remove the pits from the peaches. Since those came out easily, I decided to move forward with the recipe. Cleaning out the peach halves with a melon baller (yes, I have one!) was easier than anticipated. The peach guts were more than enough for the two ounces of peach puree required by the recipe, so it really was unnecessary to buy the fifth peach to make the puree. But now I have additional puree left over to make something else. Otherwise, the ingredients were all very straightforward. I had exactly enough rum leftover from Friday night’s boozy milkshake for the recipe. Instead of the fancy peach liqueur recommended in the book, I used my homemade peach liqueur, which probably was a little rougher and stronger. Although the coconut cream recipe calls for equal parts of both Coco Lopez and coconut milk, I just used one standard sized can of each. I had made a few ounce of honey syrup from my bottle of hot honey earlier in the week, so that was no problem. I did measure the gelatin, but it turned out to be a standard packet of Knox.

I got creative and arranged the peach halves in a muffin tin to keep them level, and it worked beautifully. I think the hardest part of the recipe was telling whether the gelatin had completely dissolved. The second hardest part was fitting the muffin tin in the refrigerator in a spot so that it would be nice and level. Of course, because I was working on a digital advance reader copy and had to keep going back into the living room to check the recipe on my computer, I forgot to add one ounce of water to the mixture because it was written in the recipe steps rather than the ingredient list.

Once the peaches were in the refrigerator, I texted the hostess that I would be leaving in 30 minutes because that is how long the recipe said it would take for the gelatin to jell in the peaches. So I got cleaned up, packed the bags for transport, and came back in 30 minutes to check on the peaches. The filling had thickened but not jelled. But I figured I could refrigerate them longer at the hostess’s house, so I was out the door with them as they were.

Transport

Aside from not knowing what kind of kitchen I’ll be working in, transporting everything to the site is the second worst part of “catering” a meal at someone else’s house. I checked the recipe for the Florentine frittata and made a list of all the ingredients that had to come out of the refrigerator for it. I checked the peach bellini recipe and made a list of all those ingredients. I wrapped the baking tins of pain au chocolat and spanokopita in Saran wrap so that I could stack them to carry out to the car. I placed the muffin tin of peaches on a baking tin so that it would be more stable in the back seat. I even brought a caterer’s box of wine glasses, in case the hostess didn’t have enough.

Of course, despite my lists and double checks, I inevitably forget something. This time it was my beautiful fruit salad.

Cooking Chez Elle

My friend who volunteered to host the brunch doesn’t like to cook, so I wasn’t sure what kind of equipment to expect in her kitchen. When I asked if she had a blender, her first response was “I think so.” Then she texted me that she did have one; then she texted me again that she actually had two, if I counted her Ninja. But she had a great kitchen, full of tools, so I would definitely cook there again.

After unloading my car and getting the peaches back into the refrigerator, the first order of business in her kitchen was to use the blender to make the base for the peach bellinis. I hadn’t done that in a while, so I followed the recipe in my family cookbook that was invented by my cousin’s bridesmaid from NYC during one of her visits to my house. Although it requires a blender and several different ingredients, her recipe is the best! It’s basically two cans of drained peaches, half a can of peach schnapps, a quarter can of triple sec, and a quarter can of peach nectar zapped into a puree. This time, I used my homemade peach liqueur instead of peach schnapps and my homemade orange liqueur instead of triple sec. Once I had all that blended, I left it to the hostess to make the peach bellinis: basically pour half a glass of base, top with sparkling wine, and stir well.

My next order of business was to start the Florentine Frittata by mixing five eggs with ricotta cheese and melted butter. That needed to chill for a while before being used in the frittata. While that was chilling, we popped the baking tins of pain au chocolat and spanokopita into the oven to bake for fifteen minutes.

I had brought with me the pan I use for paella in order to make the frittata. Rather than use vegetable oil or butter to sauté the vegetables, I decided to cook the bacon first and use the bacon grease. Of course, I forgot to turn on the exhaust fan and underestimated the heat of her electric stove (mine is gas) so the kitchen gradually filled with smoke as I waited for the bacon to fry. Our other guest arrived just as we were turning on the fans to prevent the fire alarms from going off.

The frittata recipe came together very quickly once the bacon fat was rendered. The first step was to sauté the mushrooms and shredded carrot. Once the mushrooms were soft, then I added some diced red bell pepper and a bag of baby spinach. I sautéed that with the mushrooms and carrots until the spinach was wilted. Then I spread the vegetables evenly across the bottom of the pan and poured over the chilled egg-ricotta mixture. Once I had the egg mixture fairly evenly distributed, I topped that with about half a bag of shredded sharp cheddar. As I was doing that, I pressed the hostess into service to break and scramble another five eggs into the empty bowl. By the time she had finished, the eggs in the pan had almost set, so I poured over the second round of eggs and shook the pan to evenly distribute them. Once those were almost set, I topped it with the remaining cheese because, according to the hostess, you can never have enough cheese. The whole thing went into the oven for ten minutes to finish cooking. It was still a little jiggly when I pulled it out, so I gave it another two minutes, and it was perfect.

The Verdict

The hostess did a lovely job of plating the pain au chocolat, the spanokopita, and the bacon, and arranging it on her sideboard. I put the tin of biscuits on the table with the offerings of homemade jams and jellies that I had brought: strawberry basil jam, a blueberry-Meyer lemon jam, a Cabernet Shiraz jelly and a Merlot jelly.

Overall, the ladies enjoyed their brunch. Pretty much everything was a hit! The odd homemade strawberry basil jam was the only jar opened, so I left the others for the hostess to enjoy at a later date. The frittata was much loved, especially because the carrots gave it an extra little something. Since I don’t enjoy eggs, the hostess was thrilled to keep the rest of it to have as easily reheatable meals during the week.

Of course, after I repacked my car and was walking out the door to head home, I realized that we had forgotten about the peaches! So I never learned if they finally jelled, or remained a thick liquid because of the overproof rum. I reminded the hostess about them, and she said she would definitely enjoy them with friends and return my muffin tin. Fortunately, I had a small jar of leftover gelatin filling in my refrigerator, so that would be a nice treat for after lunch the next day.

The Recipes

Most of the recipes mentioned in this post are from the family cookbook, so I'm okay with sharing those that are. However, this post has gone on long enough! If you let me know which recipes you are interested in, I'll either edit this post to include it, or I'll create a new separate post with them for you.