Graduation
My brother graduated from Colorado State on Saturday, so Todd and I flew in to help him celebrate. It gave me the opportunity to prepare a spread for a group of family and friends, which was fun. (My mom is firmly of the "get a six foot hero and a veggie platter from Sam's" camp, so I think I stressed her out by wanting to prepare the sandwiches myself.)
I have this problem with sleeping on vacation. I am not one of those people who go on vacation to sleep: I tend to be up at the crack of dawn (or at least 7:30 EST, which in Colorado translated to 5:30). But it was lovely to be in my mother's kitchen at 5:30, staring the coffee for the sleeping family, popping an apple braid in the oven (from the freezer) and assembling sandwiches and platters. I love cooking in my mom's kitchen (it being quite a bit larger than the standard NYC kitchen I usually have to work with).
The menu: mini chicken salad sandwiches, meat and cheese sandwiches with roasted red peppers and spinach on sourdough, and marinated artichoke heart sandwiches with spinach and provolone; pasta salad with ham and peas; crudite; fruit; and an antipasto platter, with mozzarella, roasted red peppers, pickled green beans, endive with chive cream cheese, and olives. There was a giant chocolate sheet cake, which I did not make, and nuts, butter mints (both requisite for any occasion with a cake for my family), fizzy lemonade and sun tea.
It was a typical chicken salad, with mayonnaise, red onion, celery, salt and pepper, but my mom had some tarragon vinegar that I added. I had made it Friday and by Saturday all the flavors had developed beautifully. Then I assembled the sanwiches on small, soft rolls, some with provolone and spinach and some with tomato and romaine.
The meat and cheese sandwich was made on a large round of sourdough. I scooped out the inside of the loaf and layered mustard, salami, provolone, ham, swiss, turkey, roasted red peppers and baby spinach, then wrapped it up in plastic and chilled it so the flavors could marry. To serve, I sliced it in wedges.
The artichoke heart sandwich was made on a long, crusty whole-wheat loaf that I hollowed out and filled with marinated artichoke hearts, provolone and baby spinach.
The pasta salad wasn't pretty, since I made it with balsamic vinegar dressing that made the cheese tortellini brown, but it was pretty good, with peas and strips of ham.
