Creative Mother's Day Lunch Menu Ideas
While Mother's Day is not the only day of the year you should do something nice for your mother, it's a convenient reminder of all of the sacrifices she has made for you. Celebrate her life by preparing a delicious meal for her to enjoy. This article has some suggestions for your menu. Use it as a guide when you prepare your Mother's Day lunch.
Appetizer
Prepare an appetizer—such as melon and prosciutto—to tease your mother's tongue and to abate her hunger until lunch is ready. Cut a small cantaloupe into large chunks. Put those chunks in a food processor with about a teaspoon of salt and puree them until you have a smooth mixture.
Refrigerate this pureed mixture for about an hour, during which time you can crisp some prosciutto. Take eight slices of prosciutto and put them onto a nonstick pan. Cook the slices over medium-high heat until they are browned on one side; flip them and continue cooking them until they're crispy. Drain the cooked prosciutto.
Take your pureed cantaloupe from the fridge and transfer it into seven or eight chilled martini glasses. Add a garnish of a piece of crispy prosciutto and a sprig of mint. This melon-and-prosciutto taste combination is sure to pique her palate in preparation for lunch.
Entree
A Mother's Day lunch is not your typical lunch because it's usually the main meal of that day. So you'd better make it good. Your savory entree should either be her favorite meal or something that she's never tried but would love. Try a seared pork tenderloin rubbed with a cocoa spice rub.
To complete this recipe, you'll need:
- 1 tablespoon of whole white peppercorns
- 1 tablespoon of whole coriander
- 4-1/2 tablespoons of ground cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons of ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon of ground cloves
- 3-1/2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa
- 4 tablespoons of sea salt
- 2 two-pound pork tenderloins
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
This recipe is for eight servings, so plan accordingly.
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Toast your white peppercorns and coriander in a saucepan over medium heat until they start to pop. Remove the pan from the heat and grind the spices to a fine powder, which you will mix in with the cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cocoa, and salt.
Trim the tenderloins--that is, remove the fat and silver skin from them. Rub each tenderloin with a generous amount of the spice rub. In a large saute pan over medium-high heat, warm the olive oil: it should be hot, but not smoking. Sear each rubbed tenderloin on all sides until the whole of the tenderloin has a rich brown color. It should take about two minutes for each side of each tenderloin. Once they're browned on all sides, remove the tenderloins from the heat and finish cooking them in the oven. Use a meat thermometer to determine when they're finished. It should take about ten minutes.
Let the tenderloins rest for about ten minutes before you carve them and serve them.
