Tonight, we continued to enjoy all of the great things we purchased on our long-awaited trip to Long Island–especially our favorite fresh goat cheese from Catapano Dairy Farm. We paired it with heirloom tomatoes and used it in Ina Garten’s Savory Palmiers, all which we enjoyed with a 2008 Cuvée from The Lenz Winery in Peconic,  NY. Kim describes how she created a fun, casual dinner.

Making dinner got off to an easy start because my wonderful husband made the pesto for me while I was out having lunch with my friend Cathy and running some errands. Assembling the palmiers is easy, especially when you are only making half the recipe and have such tasty goat cheese to sprinkle in! I used dried sun dried tomatoes that I reconstituted with boiling water and then let soak for a few minutes in olive oil.

Rolling out the puff pastry to the desired size of 9 1/2 by 11 1/2-inches goes very quickly because I keep a small tape measure in the kitchen to ensure accuracy.

I got a little overzealous folding and accidentally folded the pastry dough all the way to the middle first instead of only halfway—so I had to refold, which admittedly was sort of tricky. The result was my palmiers looked a little more squished than I would have liked but my hope was that they would still be delicious (they were).

Just before putting the palmiers in the oven, I sliced the heirloom tomatoes from Long Season Farms, drizzled them with a little olive oil, and sprinkled on some fleur de sel and freshly ground pepper. In the middle of the platter, I placed a wheel of the Catapano Dairy Farm three-herb goat cheese. Keeping with the savory theme, I also got out a variety of olives (Cerignola, Gaeta, and Kalamata) as an accompaniment.

The palmiers filled the apartment with a wonderful aroma and we sat down to a delicious dinner with local favorites from Long Island paired with the aforementioned 2008 Cuvée sparkling wine from The Lenz Winery purchased on our trip in April.

We finished our delightful dinner with a slice of Briermere Farms peach cherry pie with a dollop of fresh made whipped cream sweetened with little sugar and flavored with a touch Madagascar bourbon vanilla extract.

A Note about the Goat

The last time we visited Catapano, Kim got to hold a two-day-old baby goat, which you can see in the picture above. The goat had been abandoned by her mother, so the staff at Catapano was giving her lots of extra love and attention. We’re happy to report that the little goat is doing fine. She’s a little smaller than the other goats born this spring, but she is happy and healthy and as cute as ever!