A Holiday Business Dinner at My Farm

December 17, 2025

The holiday season is one of my favorite times to entertain.

Earlier this week, I hosted a small business dinner for seven. My Winter House was decorated with lots of beautiful trees glistening in green, silver, and gold. Chef Molly Wenk, who has worked with me on many television and video food productions, and I, collaborated on a wonderful menu that included endive and radicchio salad, celeriac soup that I made using vegetables from my garden, beef bourguignon and mashed potatoes, and for dessert, apple tarte tatin. It was a great evening and a most delicious late autumn feast.

Enjoy these photos.

: I always fill my Winter House rooms with many trees during the holidays – big, small, fresh, and charming feather trees like this one in my entrance hall, adorned with bright gold ornaments.

: In my Brown Room, my long table is also decorated with gold and umber colored bottlebrush trees down the center with deer.

: Each table setting has coordinating plates and napkins – all ready for a delicious meal.

: I served a wonderful endive and radicchio salad. Both endive and radicchio are part of the chicory family. Endive has a mild, slightly bitter flavor, while radicchio tastes more bold and peppery – they are great together. Frisée is also known as curly endive or chicory endive and adds a nice green color to this assortment.

: The dressing is a light and refreshing shallot vinaigrette.

: Beef bourguignon takes about three to four hours to complete. This duration includes preparation, searing of the meat, braising, and resting. After 90-minutes in the oven, Molly takes it out to check. She is using one of my Enamel Cast Iron Dutch Ovens – see my latest pieces at my shop on Amazon.

: It’s looking so delicious. Beef bourguignon, or beef burgundy, is a classic and rich slow-cooked French stew with chunks of fork-tender beef braised in red wine and vegetables.

: The dish will be topped with mushrooms, pearl onions, pancetta cubes and herbs when done. Here is Molly preparing the mushrooms.

: Molly also made mashed potatoes to serve with the beef bourguignon.

: This is celeriac, also known as celery root. It is the root of the celery plant and has an earthy flavor with a hint of celery. I grow celeriac every year and love to use it for soup.

: For dessert, I decided to serve apple tarte tatin. Tarte tatin is a classic French dessert with caramelized apples, baked under a flaky pastry crust and served upside down. Molly starts by melting down the butter and sugar in a skillet.