Ladies Who Launch: Toasting a New Business Venture Over Lunch (Recipes Included)
One of my favorite outcomes of creating The Southern Coterie is spending time with the community and lending any support I can to facilitate personal and professional growth. I recently gathered a few Summit alumnae for a luncheon to brainstorm the launch of their concept. St. Simons style mavens Catherine Slade and Callie Milligan are joining forces to empower women (a TSC mission, too) through styling and organizing their wardrobes and closets with the launch of FORGE.
Lauren Hopkins of LBH & Co PR joined us to lend her expertise. Lauren and I both have benefited from Catherine’s talents as a style architect with her dressing us for special occasions and advising us on purchases to add to our wardrobes. Lauren is a wordsmith and champion of small brands with big stories so her input was invaluable.
We kicked off the luncheon with Hogwash Rosé and Schermer’s roasted salted pecans. One of my go-to shortcuts for entertaining is to use some small-batch store-bought items mixed in with homemade. I love TSC Summit alum Big T’s Coastal Provisions crab and shrimp dips. And there is no Southern gathering worth anything without pimento cheese – TSC Summit alum Proper Pepper makes a great one.
The main dish, besides all our dishing on Catherine and Callie’s new venture, was a tomato tart created from my farmers’ market scores.
Cheri’s Tomato Tart with Southern Living Summer Sauce
Ingredients
- Pepperidge Farm puff pastry sheet, defrosted
- two large sliced and cored tomatoes, dried on paper towels for at least an hour
- vidalia onion, sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, chopped
- small garlic and herb goat cheese
- cup of grated Parmigiano–Reggiano
- Southern Living Summer Sauce (recipe below)
- tsp dried thyme
- splash of white wine
- olive oil
- balsamic vinegar, aged so thicker
- salt and pepper
- arugula
How to Make
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Place puff pastry on buttered baking dish building a crust around edges. Caramelize onion and garlic in olive oil with thyme and salt and pepper cooking down with the white wine until golden. After drying tomatoes on paper towels, toss them in few tablespoons of Southern Living Summer Sauce. Arrange onions on top of pastry then goat cheese and 3/4 of parmesan and then tomatoes. Top with remaining parmesan.Bake for 20 to 25 minutes at 425 degrees, until the pastry is golden brown. Serve hot or warm with a pile of fresh arugula on top and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
Ingredients
- 2 cups packed fresh basil leaves
- 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
- 1/4 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves
- 1 tablespoon lemon zest, plus 2 tsp. fresh lemon juice (from 1 lemon)
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 garlic clove
How to Make
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Process all ingredients in a food processor or blender until smooth. Add additional salt or lemon juice, if desired. Cover and chill until ready to use. Use within 2 days.
Just Peachy Dessert
Use Talenti Cinnamon Peach Biscuit gelato dubbed as cinnamon sugar gelato with biscuit cookie pieces and a swirl of sweet peach butter. It tastes like a lazy summer picnic in Georgia, except it’s also freezing. Add Grey Ghost’s Cinnamon Pecan cookie for crunch and a few slices of fresh Georgia peaches with a sprig of fresh mint.
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