Adding a custom “Recent Posts” section to static home page

I’m trying to create a “Recent Blog Posts” section on my site’s home page that pulls the 2-3 latest entries from my WordPress blog. I’m hoping to essentially pull a couple simple variables from the most recent entries – post name, date, and a short description of the post. Basically, I want to create my own custom widget on my home page with full control over its appearance and positioning.

I know I could easily accomplish this with a plugin if my home page were WordPress-based, but unfortunately it’s not. My home page is a standard XHTML page that lives in my site’s root directory (separate from the blog), and the blog will be installed into a directory called “/blog”. Given that wrinkle, can I still accomplish this with some custom PHP? Is there anyone who can help with this?

Thank you!