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Last updated: April 04. 2007 1:26PM
Food
The Wild Brunch
Breakfast is coffee. Lunch is quick. And dinner's so organized. But brunsh is a smorgasbord of abundance. So go ahead, sleep in.
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Brunch is the easy-going, spontaneous little sister to the more rigid and ambitious dinner party. Planning and executing brunch can be a fun and less expensive alternative for entertaining in your home, and oftentimes, an impromptu brunch can hit just the right note for a lazy Sunday afternoon with friends or family.
Someone who has planned her fair share of brunches is Beth Flaherty, owner of Coriander’s Catering in Hampstead. Flaherty has served brunches for smaller, more intimate groups to upward of 250 people in her eight years in business.
For someone who has truly felt the heat of the kitchen during dinnertime, Flaherty’s favorite aspect of brunch is the amount of preparation you can do before your guests arrive. Quiches and frittatas (basically crust-less quiches) are some of her favorite brunch items as you can make them well ahead of time and freeze them.
These items also allow a great deal of versatility because they can incorporate so many different flavors. You can stuff them with anything from potatoes, sausage and ham to spinach, goat cheese and smoked salmon. Flaherty favors crepes as well, which can also be prepared ahead of time then baked before guests arrive.
Strata is another dish Flaherty says is perfect for brunch entertaining. Stratas are casseroles made with layers of old bread, cheese, eggs and anything else you want to put in them. They need to be prepared the night before, so they sit overnight in the refrigerator. Then bake for about an hour before they’re served.
One dish that involves a bit more of a challenge is Eggs Benedict. Some people are intimidated by the mention of it, but Flaherty offers some tips on the sometimes precarious act of poaching eggs. “You definitely need to put some vinegar in the water,” she advises. “The vinegar will make the egg clot and hold together. The other thing is not to break the egg directly into the water. You break it into a ramekin or small bowl, then get a little whirlpool going in the water and slide the egg right in. The motion of the water and the vinegar makes the egg come together.”
While Eggs Benedict is a poached egg served with ham or pancetta and Hollandaise sauce atop an English muffin, Flaherty suggests a modification:Eggs Florentine tops the egg with sautéed onions and spinach, and the more forgiving Mornay sauce – made with Parmesan and cheddar cheeses. Either dish adds a little more pressure in preparation but pays off in personality.
Flaherty also has one authoritative rule about what differentiates a brunch from other meals. “You have to have a fruit salad,” she says with a laugh, “that’s just a staple.” She recommends the use of melons, pineapples and grapes as solid standbys. During colder months dried fruits like craisins, cherries and blueberries come in handy as accents, and pomegranates work well for color and flavor. She also says that apples, peaches and pears will not work in fruit salad as they will oxidize and turn brown.
If hosting a brunch in your home seems overwhelming, then consider treating a group of friends to a Sunday brunch in which someone else has done the work. Deluxe Restaurant in downtown Wilmington offers one of the most formidable brunch menus in the area.
When it opened in 1996, executive chef Keith Rhodes says, brunch choices were extremely limited. Today, Deluxe has certainly found its niche, and serves about 120 people every Sunday. Rhodes says the preparation involved with the extensive menu is much more time-consuming than that of an ordinary dinner.
Workers start preparing a day ahead of time – prepping trays of meat and making batters – and always have four or five chefs in the kitchen on Sunday morning, more than you’d find there at dinner. The results are delectable treats such as Japanese Kobe beef burgers, red corn tacos, Eggs Benedict and Florentine, lobster and crab omelets, Pecan Swirl French toast and buttermilk battered crispy flounder fingers.
Another option for brunch is The Bridge Tender at Wrightsville Beach. While the restaurant doesn’t offer a brunch-only menu, people hungry for light, brunch-themed meals have a varied selection from which to choose, including the mouth-watering Gorgonzola Walnut Salad (featured on our cover). The Bridge Tender offers a casual, laid-back atmosphere, and with the slower pace comes menu items like shrimp and grits, crepes, fried green tomatoes and salads.
Another brunch haven is the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort at Wrightsville Beach, where the sight of a massive brunch buffet gives serious competition to the great view you’ll have of northern Wrightsville Beach. The buffet includes seafood, prime rib and omelet and dessert stations.
So whether you go out or stay in, relax and explore the delicious simplicity of one meal you might have been overlooking.
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