An Eastern Shore Supper

My cousins are here from the UK for a couple of weeks, and I am entertaining them for the evening meal. Since I am working all day and then having 10 people at night, I decided to make things simple and have supper instead of dinner. I think that dinner is what you call the largest meal of the day, regardless of when it’s eaten. My distinction between the two is that dinner is a more formal meal, which supper is more casual. And casual is going to be the word of the day for this event. Since my cousins and my sister’s family have been in South Carolina for the past week, most likely eating lots of seafood and other southern delights, I thought I’d serve a traditional meal from the bounty of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The Shore is well-known for its numerous chicken farms, and its gorgeous tomatoes, Silver Queen corn and peaches. So this is going to be the basis for the meal.

Fried Chicken will be a la my friend Stiles. If he can serve it to the Trustees of the Baltimore Museum of Art, I can serve it to family! Then insalata caprese with fresh tomatoes, basil and mozzarella. I will do a balsamic reduction to drizzle over it. Artistically, no doubt!

For the corn, I will shuck each piece, pull off the silk, dab each ear with a bit of butter and then roast it in the oven. Pre-heat the oven to 350* and then roast the corn for about 25 minutes.  It sort of steams the corn, but also gives it a roasted flavour.

For dessert, I am going to do a peach cobbler. Cobblers are pretty simple. We were at a dinner a few weeks ago and the host whipped one up in minutes. I will have to peel the peaches, but if you blanch them in boiling water, the skin comes right off.

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In a strange series of coincidences, I received two e-mails over the weekend asking if I had any information on my second cousin, the painter, Marie Tiffany. You might remember that I bought two of her paintings at an auction last year, and someone’s recently offered me two more in a downsizing move.  One of the people had found their painting at an antiques shop in Hawaii! I’d love to know the story of how it made it out there. Maybe I’ll be the expert on her catalogue raisonné.

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Again, thank you for all of the thoughts and prayers for our friend Larry. He’s really making a lot of progress, which given the circumstances and damages, is way more than any of us had expected. Friends go sit with him at all hours of the day and talk to him about everything under the sun, because physicians know that people who are in a coma like Larry’s, can hear. A friend’s wife is now his attending physician, and she’s a rising star in emergency medicine, so that’s wonderful news.

How was your weekend?