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Pottery Barn Party Planner: Brunch Ideas With Mary Corpening Barber & Sara Corpening Whiteford
Hi my name's Sara Corpening Whiteford, and this is my twin sister - Mary Corpening Barber,
and together we wrote The Bride and Groom First and Forever Cookbook,
and we're gonna introduce you to a heartier, more savory section of the menu,
with an orzo salad. It's chock full of olives and raisins and
zesty lemon juice, and feta, and it's just fantastic and full of Mediterranean flare.
So we're gonna start with the prepared orzo, we've cooked this in salted, boiling water,
and that's really important, if you don't salt your water, you just won't get the same results, really,
and we've cooked this, it's al dente, which just means, it's, you don't want to, it's
undercooked, just a little bit, because it continues to cook, when you take it out of the boiling water,
and if you cook it too long, it will be mushy, and not nearly as good, so
I'm gonna go ahead and pour this lemon vinaigrette, just a little fresh lemon,
garlic, oregano, a little bit of salt,
I'm gonna stir that in,
and we're gonna add two ounces of feta, goat cheese also would be lovely in this dish,
we're gonna add also, some golden raisins here, you can use black currants,
black raisins, um, whatever you have, we also have some lovely olives here,
we also are gonna add some red onion,
vital to any pasta salad I might add, and some toasted pine nuts, we've sort of taken this
to the limit, they're good and brown, to get that wonderful nutty flavor.
So the next thing we're gonna do is just, uh, grate a little lemon zest,
I sort of lightly rub this across the microplane. If you press it too hard,
it really will make it bitter, so be careful about that.
That white part right here is, uh, the pith, and that's bitter, you just want to get
the rind here, just the yellow part.
And I'm gonna show you quickly how to chop basil.
Just stack a bunch of leaves on top of one another, give it a quick roll,
and then a chiffonade.
And you want to use, make sure your knife is sharp,
because if it's dull it will bruise the basil as opposed to cutting cleanly through the basil,
so hopefully your knife is sharp. Voila. And a little salt.
And here we go. It's such a great compliment to the roasted asparagus that we're getting ready to prepare.
Now for our roasted asparagus dish. We've got some beautiful fat asparagus, some like them thin,
some like them fat, Mary and I have a personal preference for the fat ones,
because they're sweeter,they really are, the stems are so sweet,
so the best way to deal with the asparagus is just to break it off where it naturally breaks,
you take a quick little measurement, and then, you can line five or six up at a time,
and just chop them like so, and then move right through really fast.
And then once you've done this part, then you're gonna do a quick little peel job right here,
like this, and I really think that's important if you're working with these really big, fat
asparagus because they can be a little pithy on the outside here at the base.
And so once you're done with that, then you're gonna gently lay them in a baking dish,
you're gonna drizzle them with olive oil, a little sprinkle of salt and pepper,
and in the oven, at four fifty, for about twelve to fifteen minutes,
depending on how thick your asparagus are, so really keep an eye on them.
So when you pull them out of the oven, we have these beautiful Pottery Barn
dishes here, and we're just gonna present them, we really like the contemporary starkness of this,
it just is really really simple, there's no need for a garnish here,
we're just gonna keep it super super simple.
The final touch is to add a little bit of balsamic vinegar,
and if you like lemon juice, you can use lemon juice instead.
So we've got this lovely roasted asparagus, it's oh so complimentary with
the orzo salad and the dish that we're gonna do next, a smoked salmon platter.
Smoked salmon is a terrific item for entertaining because you don't have to do any
cooking. You just gather all the ingredients from a local organic grocery store,
and do a little minimal chopping and some mixing, and we're gonna make
an exquisite platter in just minutes here.
So I've just cut some pumpernickel bread which is very customary with smoked salmon.
And we've got this beautiful tea-cured salmon, I think it has ginger in it,
there are lots of different varieties of smoked salmon out there,
get whatever suits your taste preferences. And the beauty is that it's already thinly sliced,
so we're just gonna artfully display this around these bowls,
in a snake-like pattern, around the condiments, we've got here a honey mustard,
with a little fresh dill in it, some red onion, and some capers,
so I'm just gonna artfully display the bread here.
Sliced some lemons, which is always complimentary with the salmon,
we're just gonna tuck the dill around the bread or wherever you fancy.
And I think one thing to think of when you're making a platter like this is
don't play off symmetry, use three different bowls, versus two,
and things don't have to be in straight lines, you've got this curve of the platter,
and you just go with it. We're just gonna put a few spoons in here,
with the condiments, and the idea is just to put a little mustard I think first,
a little salmon, followed by the red onions and capers.
I don't know what's better than that.
Pottery Barn
Please visit www.potterybarn.com/springcelebration for a printable copy of this recipe.