Some Enchanted Evening

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Recently Gwyneth Paltrow cooked an intimate dinner for 60 people (yes, she ACTUALLY did the cooking).  The guest list included Mario Batali, Ruth Reichl, Blythe Danner (Gwyneth's mom) Michael Stipe, Martha Stewart, Tina White (the editor of Epicurious), Alex Rodriguez, Cameron Diaz, Ed Burns and his wife Christy Turlington, April Bloomfield (the chef from the acclaimed Spotted Pig), Gabrielle Hamilton (the chef from Prune), and…Brent and Josh.

How crazy is that?!?! Yeah, we were shocked too. How on earth did we get invited?

Gwyneth writes a popular blog called GOOP and she has featured The Bucolic Plague as well as the Blaak Onion Jam on the list of her 'finds".   She's also growing the Beekman 1802 Heirloom Vegetable as part of our World's Largest 'Community' Garden Project with Williams-Sonoma.  Yes…she is one of the 10,000 gardeners just like you!

This is just another one of those weird things that happens to us that we're really grateful for. Pardon our excitement, but we like to share the strange things that happen to us with you. Hope you don't mind.

Here are some of the (kinda surreal) conversations we had:

the Art of Farming auction with Ruth.

goat milk cheese with Mario.

the merits of the banjo with Michael Stipe.

sheep sheering with Martha.

and gardening with Gwyneth

We really didn't have much to say to Cameran Diaz or A-Rod, but they sure looked pretty.

The menu included  roasted peppers with anchovies (seen in the picture below with Martha), duck ragout, spicy raab, berry sabayon brulee, and Italian wedding cookies (made with pecans, not almonds.)  Because the dinner was served by candlelight, we couldn't get any great shots of the dishes. But trust us, they were delicious.

Here are some photos from the evening.

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We're pretty picky when it comes to cookbooks.  We devote one shelf in the pantry to cookbooks, and adding one means that another must come out.  When we got home and looked through Gwyneth's book, My Father's Daughter, we weren't sure what we would find. But we already have three recipes we're trying out over Easter. The book is a beautiful homage to her father, Bruce.  In the book Paltrow shares her favorite family recipes along with personal stories of growing up with her father.  She discusses how he influenced her in the food she loves, how she involves her kids in cooking, and how she balances healthy food with homemade treats. It's an interesting look into Paltrow's personal life…and it was interesting to discover that she shares a lot of the same communal values that we (and you) do here at Beekman 1802.

There are over 100 recipes and our three favorites, the  lemon pasta, layered potato cake & bitter greens salad alone are worth adding the book to your collection.

We hope she likes our first cook book (Heirloom Recipes from Beekman 1802) just as much when it comes out in October. We're a little shy about inviting her to dinner to celebrate when it launches, though. What do you think? Who should our guest list be?