Cookaholics Bulletin Board

One of the dinners I'm doing this weekend will be left for the host to serve on their own. (Film Fest has a very funky schedule, so it's unclear whether they'll actually have this dinner on Sunday night, or Monday night.) She's not requested a dessert, but she also just upped the count for this dinner, so I'd like to make something for dessert on my dime. She's very health conscious, and since I'm paying for it, I'd like it to be cheap.

It needs to be able to be held for up to three days, and should be a no-brainer for her to prep and serve.

Ideas?

Oh, I should add I'm already making individual wild blueberry pies for the dinner on Saturday night.

Amy

I once made a grapefruit/Campari sorbet and served it on an orange salad topped with pistachio. Fruit compotes also keep well and are good with Greek yogurt. Some biscotti might be good with that too.
Cooking Light has some very good banana bread recipes, I like their marble one and also a tropical one with lime and coconut.
You could also do some walnuts in the shell, a nice hunk of cheddar and some grapes or mandarin oranges.
Or you could make some hand pies and freeze them so she could just pop the in the oven.
Your dessert problem is more more fascinating than that pile of laundry I have waiting for me.

Mary

I have been waiting to try is this berry and champagne terrine from Fine Cooking:
http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/stra ... 2412,50226

Otherwise, lightly macerated fruit with honey and rum and homemade stabilized whipped cream will make fantastic easy to scoop out parfaits.

--Lisa

Great ideas!

I love the look of that terrine, and I happen to have a bottle of Prosecco someone brought as a hostess gift a while back. I also have a terrine. Maybe I could do a lemon crème fraîche sauce to go with it. I had already planned on making these incredibly decadent bite-sized chocolate cookies. That could all be a great combo!

Amy

Something I have been doing all summer.....individual Pavlova's. they hold in an airtight container for a week and I've been using them topped with macerated fruit and whipped cream

Ilene,

Unfortunately, we're running at about 80-95% humidity every day. (Which I'm thankful for...we need all the rain we've been getting recently.) So I think pavlovas aren't going to hold up right now.

Amy

Silver Palate has a black fruit salad which is delicious and I think all the fruits are in season now.

Black cherries, black grapes, blackberries sprinkled with brown sugar and lemon juice. Refrigerate. Lift the fruit out of the bowl and combine sour cream with collected juices. Spoon a dollop over the fruit,

fitzie

So, as I usually do, I googled the terrine recipe, as I wanted to see if there was another version. FC's recipe is basically a lift of Thomas Keller's from The French Laundry.

There's so little original left in this world...as least when it comes to cooking publications.

I think I'm going to do Keller's version. Nice to know I can channel him occasionally...we both had the same instinct about crème fraîche.

That, and his uses sheets of gelatin, which is all I have. I can never seem to convert sheets to powdered correctly...

Amy

Sadly, I am not surprised that it wasn't original to FC. Let us know how it turns out! Lemon crème fraîche sounds decadent.

--Lisa

Lisa,

Keller's recipe is also more fussy about the strawberry layer (big surprise), and he adds crème fraîche into that layer to make it a little more mousse-like, which I really like, along with some mint to brighten the flavors all around.

Thanks for all of the ideas. I think the terrine will go exceedingly well with the rest of the meal, and will also have that "wow" factor.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Amy