Clifford Bowles' Designs for Entertaining - A September Supper

In which our hero of Friendship Fog, Mr. Bowles, suggests a mindful menu deliciously designed to delight, from his new, best-selling book on entertaining!

Clifford Bowles’ Designs for Entertaining

A September Supper

Serves four

Raspberry Lambic

Endive with roasted chestnuts, gorgonzola, and fig jam with drizzled balsamic honey

Salad of cubed golden beets, corn, and basil with red vinegar dressing

Chicken pot pie in buttercup squash

Latticed McIntosh apple strudel swirl

Spiked cinnamon coffee

As our sunburns fade and summer slips away, we say goodbye to our seasonal friends and leave our vacation vista behind—whether it be a rental cottage by the lake, campground, or family summer place—and prepare to face the fall. Autumn is when seeds are planted like secrets in the ground not yet frozen, where they grow, mature, and develop just beneath the surface, waiting patiently until spring to deliver wondrous surprises. Now that we’ve returned from the shore, so to speak, redolent of salt air, cookouts, and clambakes, I suggest getting back to your roots (and tubers) and setting down to your hometown favorites. For me, it’s the splendors of an autumn in New Hampshire. I’ve created an intimate fall menu perfect to share among four dear old friends. Based on fruits of the season, I’ve incorporated the chestnuts we used to pluck off the trees and roast as children, buttercup squash, and included my Nana’s recipe for latticed McIntosh apple strudel. Trips to the nearby McIntosh orchard when I was a child shine in my memory like the apples. If you are lucky enough to have the weather for it, plan your gathering out of doors with the changing leaves as a backdrop. Perhaps you may just want to clink a glass to the change of the seasons and drink up the last of summer as you and your closest close up your summer home.

Yours,

Clifford Bowles