If perchance you listen to the little podcast I cohost called The Table Set, you might know just how much Greg, Nathan and I all love brunch. As much as we like to talk about brunch, you’d think we’d host brunch more often.
It’s true: it’s been far too many months since I’ve hosted a real, proper brunch at my apartment. A brunch that boasts the three essential components of proper brunch: the sweet, the savory and the boozy. Of course, putting on a brunch trifecta takes a lot of effort. What I needed was an excuse to put on such an event. What better excuse than celebrating new friends?
It was another classic example of the internet bringing people together. I started listening to our new sister Homefries podcast The Because Show and quickly became a fan of the adventures of Jerilyn, Susan and Amy.
Meanwhile Jerilyn had been tweeting up The Table Set, so I thought, why not invite these three lovely ladies over for brunch.
So I did, via a voicemail that they played on their podcast. A date was set and The Table Set started planning a menu that went something like this:
Greg volunteered to make homemade lamb sausages. Perfectly tender, juicy and a little bit spicy. Clearly a highlight to the meal, so I centered the rest of the menu around that flavor profile.
Frittata with rosemary, feta and potatoes. Shaved fennel salad with Chilean olive oil, sherry vinegar, ricotta salata, blood orange and shaved red onion.
Nathan made from scratch bloody mary’s. We had a number of options from the liquor cabinet, but we all decided on gin as our booze of choice. We also had blood orange mimosas, because apparently it’s OK to have both mimosas and bloodies at the same brunch. Blood and blood, it totally works.
We had our savory, and our boozy, all that’s left for a complete brunch is something sweet. A centerpiece of the meal and literally a centerpiece on the table, was my meyer lemon rosemary olive oil polenta cake topped with homemade meyer lemon curd.
Yes, that cake has way too many words in its name. Let me make it more complicated by adding that each slice of cake was then topped with sheep’s milk olive oil tasmanian leatherwood honey frozen yogurt. Let me simplify all of this for you by just calling it delicious. The froyo melted into the cake and made everything delightful. Susan exclaimed that the cake was a perfect pairing with the lamb sausage and that you could dip the sausage in the lemon curd.
Now a note on media pairings: what was on my record player that morning? We started the food prep period listening to the timeless classic Rumours, by Fleetwood Mac. This was followed up by a “Best of” Elton John compilation and finished off with Belle & Sebastian’s Boy with the Arab Strap. I’ve always been partial to its iconically monochromatic album art.
More so than the delicious food, good music and beautiful table setting, this brunch was about the people involved. Two close sets of three, brought together by the common hobby of podcasting. Two very different sets of three who could realize that they all really had a lot in common.
Two sets of three that both know how to have goofy fun. Case in point, the ladies brought us all “high brow/low brow” gifts. I am now the proud owner of a jar of marshmallow fluff. And we each got a grapefruit illustrated with a “personality cat.” I don’t really know what that signifies, but I love it.
Well, it probably just signifies the start of a goofy good friendship. And like all of my best parties, this one ended with a goofy photo shoot.
I want more cake. And sausages.