Skip to main content

Sunday Supper

Tonight marked the first evening in over a month that my husband and I were both in town for Sunday dinner. We held our usual open house dinner party and I decided to take a culinary risk betting on recipes out of a cookbook I’d not used before. It’s a minor gamble to rely on a recipe you’ve never made out of a cookbook you are well familiar with and have used for other recipes to success. It’s a major gamble to source recipes from a book you’ve never worked with before. Luckily the risk resulted in reward as each of the dishes were met with enthusiasm and praise after tasting. We had three guests join us for dinner so with Jonathan and I that made five around the table.

All recipes excluding dessert are from Holiday Fare : Favorite Williamsburg Recipes. This is the souvenir cookbook Jonathan chose for me from our visit to Colonial Williamsburg – he presented it to me as a Christmas gift a few years back. 

We opened dinner with Candied Pecans and Leek-y Brie. I am not a leek fan (neither cleaning the sand laden vegetable nor eating it appeal it me much) so I substituted scallions for the leeks. We used St. Andre triple crème brie as our cheese of choice (thank you Costco sale) and it was fabulously creamy. I was worried that the abrupt sharpness of scallions would not harmonize well with the caramelized pecans but it all works together beautifully.

Our main course was a composed trio: Sugar and Spice Pork Tenderloin with Cabbage Pear Compote; Black-Eyed Peas (smoked ham hock stewed with 2 cans black-eyed peas, 1 onion diced, 2 cloves garlic minced, 1 can diced tomatoes, handful of fresh rosemary, handful of fresh thyme, 1 T butter, and enough water to cover the ham hock – cook until most of the water evaporates (about 35-40 minutes); and Skillet-Baked Cornbread. I was really leery of the whole presentation as I’m not a mustard fan (the pork is slathered with mustard before the crusting and baking), I don’t typically enjoy cabbage and I’ve never been a fan of black-eyed peas. So glad I was open minded enough to give it a try because every element of the composition was delicious.

We rounded out the meal with a Streusel Topped Pumpkin Pie that Jonathan made and chocolate cake brought by one of our guests, Natalie.

Next time I chronicle a meal I’ll employ the good sense to take pictures so that you don’t just have to imagine what everything looked like (you’ll still have to imagine what everything tastes like unless you take the time to download the recipes and try them for yourself, which of course, I recommend highly).

I’d love to read about what you’ve been cooking up in your kitchens this week.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Board Game Review: Hues and Cues

Last week we received Hues and Cues from The Op Games. We recently finished playing through Scooby-Doo Escape from the Haunted Mansion (a fantastic game in The Op Games catalogue designed by Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim, and Kami Mandell that you should absolutely pick up to play with your family) and wanted to give another game from the same publisher a go. I picked Hues and Cues because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by other “test whether our minds think the same way” games such as The Mind   and Wavelength. In Hues and Cues , players gather around a large central board comprised of 480 graduating colors of the rainbow surrounded by an x-y axis and scoring table. White and black (which are technically not colors) are conspicuously absent as are shades (mixtures of color + black; e.g., grey) and tints (mixtures of color + white; e.g., cream).  On each player’s turn, they draw a card with four colors and the x-y axis codes of those colors depicted and they select one. They are in the

Board Game Review: Obsessed with Obsession

I'm completely obsessed with Obsession! I received a review copy of the updated second edition along with all the expansions (Wessex, Useful Man, Upstairs Downstairs) and from the moment I took everything out of the boxes, my excitement was over the top. Actually, that's not even the half of it - I remember I was already quite excited before the game even arrived. I'd wanted to get my hands on a copy as soon as I learned there was a game that brought the lifestyle that we all fell in love with watching Downton Abbey to the gaming table. Back in 2021, I was having a great time at the Dice Tower Summer Retreat and a new friend Bonnie sang the praises of Obsession. She had seen me eyeing the box on the shelf and gave me a summary of the game mechanics as she owned the first edition. She explained that the theme is centered on running an estate in Derbyshire and competing against others to have the best home, reputation, gentry guests, etc. Based on her enthusiasm and descripti

Board Game Review: Anno 1800

Whenever Martin Wallace designs a new game, I am all over it. This is because I absolutely love Brass Birmingham (another MW designed game); in fact Brass Birmingham is my #1 board game of all time. Over the years, his other games I've tried have been pretty good, but not necessarily amazing must-buys. Still, I keep trying each new release of his, searching for that next star performer. That's why I'm excited to report that Anno 1800 is, in fact, a star performer, and an amazing must-buy board game. Anno 1800 was adapted by the publisher (Kosmos) from a Ubisoft video game of the same name. In the board game, players take on the role of industrialists, charged with developing their island economies and exploring other islands. Each player begins the game with a personal industry board with trade & exploration ships, a shipyard, and industrial goods tiles printed on the board. A starting collection of workers (wooden cubes) of various types to produce the goods is a