Notes from a Food Diva: Plan Your Wedding Reception

In this week's Notes from a Food Diva, cooking maven Carol Brock offers suggestions on delectables (and a venue) for a wedding after-party, based on her experience at a reception she attended last weekend in Manhattan.

Venue

The Americas Society, 680 Park Ave. in Manhattan.

Once the mansion of a New York financier, this house offers a fireplace ceremony beneath a medallionned ceiling.

The home, which was designated as a city landmark in 1970, includes oil paintings and French silk fabric walls.

Flowers

At last weekend's reception, there were two beautiful arrangements of white, deep purple and lavender flowers in front of a fireplace and a spectacular arrangement on each table. 

The stems were cut short and thrust into a glass bowl with one green leaf apiece. There was an array of roses, tulips, peonies and hydrangeas. 

Quaffables

Prosecco and wine were served in the library, but there was also a bar at which people could order whatever they liked.

Try Something Different

In this day and age, we trend toward the tossed salad. But [at the wedding], individual salads were served as well as sliced papaya on escarole sprinkled with Italian dressing and a few black seeds.

They used cold sliced beets (hadn’t had them in ages) with lots of vinegar, a little oil, black pepper and a few pomegranate seeds.

I also tried sliced cucumber tossed with thinly-sliced onion -- white and red -- and fennel -- white and green, lots of vinegar and some oil.

The cucumbers were arranged on a mat of bamboo picks, which were set side by side. 

Alla Francaise

For one dish, sliced onions, carrots and potatoes were placed in a roasting pan. This was topped with a rack of lamb sections, which can be roasted in a toaster or oven.

Another option was bread fillets of talipia and cornmeal that were tossed with snipped parsley or coriander and chives before being sautéed in butter.

For your reception, you can prepare cooked spinach and season it with soy sauce. You’ll be hooked on soy and spinach!

After a trip to a farmers market, you can also serve a platter of corn on the cob as a separate course.

Also, offer a lemon sherbet topped with blackberries or spoonfuls layered with blackberries in a tall glass. Top it off with mint. Cool ‘n’ perky.

Nibbles

For snacks, they served coin-sized (the smaller, the chicer) cucumbers and grilled strawberry-encased prosciutto and sliders with bowls of salted nuts. 

Supper

The setup was semi-buffet. A server stood before each station displaying one dish, one station after the other.

Dessert

The cake was charming and very simple. Servers strolled around with trays of assorted fruit sorbets, including lemon, strawberry and mango.

Guests could also serve themselves from a blueberry- raspberry bowl as well as pick items from a mini patisserie. 

Final Thoughts

I was very impressed by the ceremony and the entire reception because the service was slightly different than usual. I knew the bride and groom - a couple from Larchmont. It was very elegant.