Red Fruit Salad with Lemon-honey-vanilla Dressing

I get asked a lot on social media over DM if I cook private events or birthday parties or anniversaries or what have you. Honestly, I don’t typically. I would absolutely love to say yes to every inquiry. But if I did, I don’t even think I could last a month without burning out. The juice typically doesn’t feel worth the squeeze since it is so much work — rewarding, without a doubt, but undeniably exhausting, especially solo.

But this past month, one of my longtime fans asked if I would cook her birthday brunch for 15 of her friends in Westchester. Her daughter Emma and I met years ago in college, and Emma actually became a fashion influencer (her substack: Notes from the studio), so our paths have been slightly interwoven ever since. Emma’s mom has been following my account for 6 years, right when I first created my Instagram during the pandemic, when I was still a junior in college. The opportunity to cook a beautiful brunch and showcase all that I’ve learned and honed and developed over those 6 years felt like too full circle of a moment to pass up. I said absolutely yes and got started crafting…

The nice thing about this menu is that almost all of it could be prepared ahead of time. A double-edged sword because it meant that my prep for this meal was quite … laborious. But I’m always up for a challenge, especially one that will stress my abilities and see what I’m really made of. I bought a large Hulken bag, ordered some catering parfait cups for the acai bowls, some menu tags, and got to cooking.

My menu throughline was basically: “What would my mom want to eat for her ideal brunch menu?” Keep the food light but exciting, fresh and addictive, slightly sweet and of course celebratory. Since this is a true private cheffing gig, all of the dishes are tried and true, cooked many many times before. The quiches were a feature of my “pie picnic” apartment cafe last fall. Whenever my piecrust turns out exceptionally well, as it did for this brunch, it really makes my heart sing, possibly more than any other single cooking feat. The salmon is a mainstay and based on Alison Roman’s famous recipe.

The highlights, for me at least, were the salads. Both served cold (especially nice on a weirdly hot spring day that reached 92F). The red fruit salad I dressed in what I can only describe as a nectar, basically just citrus juice, honey, sea salt, and vanilla. It makes fruit really POP! and ZING! I love that the whole bowl was resplendently red. The blanched green salad brought even more vibrant color to the buffet. It’s slightly annoying to make given you have to blanch each vegetable to its respective exact doneness. But I always find it a labor worth taking.

The main prep day was a series of cooking, filming, cleaning, cooking, filming, cleaning, cooking, filming, cleaning, cooking, filming, cleaning. So by the time I finished up the day it was already 8pm. I then fully embodied my mother and started cleaning every square inch of my apartment, until it looked just as clean as when I had started. I headed out for a birthday party on the Lower East Side and returned to my place at 11:30pm. Then woke up at 5:15am, went for a dawn-lit walk, showered, packed everything up, and was out of my place by 8am.

Because I prepped so much, I had plenty of time at the client’s house to unpack, talk to the family, get a tour of their home, and spend time with them. It made the day much lovelier on my part and theirs. For actual cooking, all I had to do was roast the salmon. And then the rest was plating and presenting. It all went off without a hitch THANKFULLY.

It was a special Sunday birthday morning, and I would happily do it again and again.

Ryan