Culinary exploration has always been a pillar of our relationship, and we wanted our wedding dinner to be a chance to share that with our guests. To make that possible, we found a caterer willing to cook our recipes.
(We think the homemade versions are still better—if you visit us some time, you might be able to judge for yourself!)
Pork and peaches, Tex-Mex corn, arugula
After Yorkville restaurant East End Kitchen took their best entrée off their menu, we had no choice but to recreate it ourselves. We put together our best guess at a recipe, taking the opportunity to use our recently-acquired sous vide cooker, and were thrilled with the results. The sous-vide technique kept the pork tenderloin moist and flavorful inside, and the glaze complemented it perfectly. The corn, however, stole the show with its perfect blend of creamy, sweet, salty, and spicy.
This has since become our go-to meal to serve guests, making it a natural inclusion on tonight’s menu. Believe it or not, it’s also one of our regular weeknight dinners!
Fried fish, Zeytinyağlı Ispanak (Turkish dill spinach), cauliflower gratin
In one of Snack’s first attempts at cooking for Christine—or at all—he took inspiration from his Southern heritage and decided to fry up some catfish. The result was an apartment full of smoke, hush puppies that completely disintegrated in the frying oil, some lessons learned, and despite everything, some pretty tasty fish. Since then, it’s only gotten better.
The second item comes from the NYC Turkish restaurant Beyoğlu, one of our all-time favorites. Simple though it may sound, the zeytinyağlı ıspanak always stood out from among their many delicious mezze, so we resolved to replicate it at home. Our efforts were sadly vindicated when the restaurant closed during the pandemic.
The cauliflower gratin was our last addition to round out the meal. After many iterations, we arrived at a recipe that takes the flavor of the cheese but comes out creamy rather than gooey.
Coconut Milk, Walnut and corn arancini with romesco sauce
To complete our wedding menu, we wanted to offer a fully vegan option. Though we had several good vegetarian recipes, the best ones all relied on dairy, so we had to start from scratch. We started with the idea of a coconut milk risotto. As we expected, the rice came out deliciously rich and creamy, and mushrooms provided a nice umami, but the rest of the dish took more work. An early experiment with adding peanuts didn’t really work out; walnuts were much better. The mild sweetness and fresh pop of green peas was welcome but not quite right; corn kernels turned out to be what we needed.
But still, the dish was missing something, and mixing in another ingredient didn’t seem like the answer. Christine had the inspiration of frying the risotto into arancini, which we loved to order from Italian restaurants but hadn’t yet made at home. We realized we’d need a sauce, and the traditional marinara didn’t sound right; we opted for romesco. As for the “breading”, we wanted to keep the dish gluten free, so we decided to try Brazilian farofa (toasted cassava flour), which we had read about before and had been meaning to try at some point. The results thrilled us, and we hope you enjoyed them too!