Sunday dinner

On Sunday night we made dinner for our friends Phil and Anthony. I love summer cooking, especially its unfussiness and the abundance of fresh flavors. We kicked off the evening with cheese straws, Marcona almonds with rosemary (A new-to-me Trader Joe's find --wow!) and raspberry royales -- the recipe was from Barefoot Contessa's Barefoot in Paris, which I had checked out of the library after our France trip.

The inspiration for our main dish came from this beautiful photo in Food & Wine's summer grilling guide. I love serving different types of food on large platters, and I just liked the idea of pairing grilled beef tenderloin with roasted cherry tomatoes. (Though we opted for ribeyes instead of tenderloin.) My companion grilled the steaks along with the cherry tomatoes I had bought that morning at the North Market. I sliced a log of herbed goat cheese to go with it and we served it in a little bowl on the side. Juicy steaks, ripe tomatoes and creamy goat cheese. It tasted like summer.


In lieu of the grilled bread shown in F & W, I made one of my all-time favorite summer recipes: this summer-garden tart from Cooking Light. (I have to credit my mom with finding it.) It's become one of our summer staples. I stopped making it for a while because I wasn't able to find the cornmeal crusts, but then I read about these scrumptious crusts from Vicolo on Not Martha, whihc I found at our Whole Foods. Perfect!

Phil and Anthony provided us with an excellent dessert: a raspberry-blueberry tart made with Julia Child's pastry cream recipe. I was especially excited to try it, given that I recently re-read Julia's exquisite memoir My Life in France.

If only we could eat like this every Sunday night!