French String Beans
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Dessert: Baba au Rhum
Connor and I have arranged a delicious menu for Sunday night! Please RSVP as soon as you can (or by Saturday night). Love to you all!
Last night's dinner was smaller - just 6 of us plus Joshua - more relaxed and DELICIOUS! Apart from the cheese puffs (which unfortunately did not PUFF), everything else was just right. I have been totally and completely won over to Seafood Stew. Succulent, lucious, and not fishy or seafoody at all. In fact I think the recipe should be renamed Succulent Seafood Stew or maybe Sumptuous Seafood Stew.
Craig, Connor and Sophie represented the Clines and Amy, Sebastian, Joshua & I rounded out the table. Sebastian supplied the anise flavored liquor required for the finishing flavors of the stew, and after smelling the strong licorice aroma of the Sambuca I was reluctant to pour all 3 tbsp into my gorgeous stew. I closed my eyes and dumped all of it, and I am so glad I did. The flavor, as Craig put it was "very complex"! The chocolate orange mousse was so chocolatey, smooth and slightly orangey and EVERYONE enjoyed it. The sleeper hit of the night was a toasted sourdough baguette, rubbed with garlic and buttered. Connor was our garlic rubber and the flavor was light but apparent. Lovely!
Craig, Connor and Sophie represented the Clines and Amy, Sebastian, Joshua & I rounded out the table. Sebastian supplied the anise flavored liquor required for the finishing flavors of the stew, and after smelling the strong licorice aroma of the Sambuca I was reluctant to pour all 3 tbsp into my gorgeous stew. I closed my eyes and dumped all of it, and I am so glad I did. The flavor, as Craig put it was "very complex"! The chocolate orange mousse was so chocolatey, smooth and slightly orangey and EVERYONE enjoyed it. The sleeper hit of the night was a toasted sourdough baguette, rubbed with garlic and buttered. Connor was our garlic rubber and the flavor was light but apparent. Lovely!
I needed shrimp shells to flavor the seafood stock so yesterday Joshua and I shelled about 40 shrimp. He was a machine! He ripped the tails off of each shrimp and I removed the rest of the shell. Unbelievable and utterly fun to watch him doing it so capably. Connor and I will cook together this week! More details to come...
Amy put in a special request for dinner this week - Seafood Stew. It's supposed to be rainy and cold on Tuesday, so it might have been a stroke of genius!
Starter: Cheese Puffs
Seafood Stew
Toasted Baguette Slices buttered and rubbed with garlic
Dessert: Chocolate Orange Mousse
Tuesday, January 19
6 spaces available
Starter: Cheese Puffs
Seafood Stew
Toasted Baguette Slices buttered and rubbed with garlic
Dessert: Chocolate Orange Mousse
Tuesday, January 19
6 spaces available
Our first French feast was a wonderfully fun night with lots of family and lots of food. After cooking most of the day, what a delight to sit down with people I love and enjoy some delicious food. Amy created a beautiful, glittering, glowing table filled with lots of candles, flowers and tablecloths - gorgeous!
A Few Observations on French Cooking based on "Barefoot in Paris"
EGGS - I used more than 15 eggs, I knew French food had a lot of butter, but eggs (especially yolks!)?
EGGS Part 2 - Meringue? I have never seen so many recipes with meringue, a true love affair with the light fluff, or are the French just thrifty?
LIQUOR - Must be very useful for adding flavor. A full bottle of wine in the garlic chicken! Plus cognac!
What Ina Forgot to Include in "Barefoot in Paris'
Lemon filling is so HARD to make! It slid and seeped out of the tart after it was cut.
Don't add sugar too fast to meringue when you whip it, whip it good!
Gruyere cheese requires serious shoulder and arm muscles to grate, but also puffs up and gives a satisfyingly large pile of grated cheese when done.
Not advisable to use a box grater to zest lemons, the longest 1/4 cup of zesting in my life! (plus nicks!)
I CAN cut a bone in chicken breast in half, just whacka, whacka and voila!
Until next time...
Today I went shopping for the ingredients for tomorrow night's big dinner. There weren't a lot of things on my list, but I bought a lot of each thing including 8 cloves of garlic, 5 bunches of asparagus, 2 heads of cauliflower, 7.5 lbs of chicken and LOTS of cheese! I was kind of skeptical about whether the commissary would have gruyere cheese (I've never noticed it there!) but they had 2 different kinds and even a few substitutes. I triple checked my list, so hopefully I won't have any last minute trips to the store tomorrow.I'm starting to get nervous! Maybe 5 items was a bit ambitious for my first try? Plus I have to double most of my recipes to accomodate 10 people so I'm not sure how that will work out (will everything fit in my pots?). Thank God that Amy didn't specify that the food had to "look like the pictures in the book" or "taste like a little bit of Paris". I plan to start cooking tomorrow morning...