Happy Bastille Day: Dinner (And the 150th Post!)

Yesterday's night's multi-course affair was the conclusion of a day inspired by the foods and flavors of France. I spent about 2 1/2 hours in the kitchen, preparing and cooking and plating. Mike and I also shared the meal with Jacob and Kari, increasing our table from two to four. The extra mouths were welcome as I was positive that Mike wouldn't be entirely appreciative of the haughtiness and flavors of some of the foods, but he was a good sport throughout the meal.

The meal began with an entree of parmesan and parsley gougeres. Gougeres are made with a pate a choux dough. For those of you that didn't study French (including myself), "choux" means cabbage and is meant to describe the way that the dough puffs up into little balls that are airy and light and more pop-able than pringles.

The next course was a soup course. I made leek and artichoke soup for Jacob, Kari and myself, while Mike had a tomato soup, made with ample amounts of butter and campari tomatoes.

For the palate cleanser before the main course, I juiced some limes and removed the inside, blended it with ice and a bit of agave nectar, then refilled the lime and froze them. The result was somewhat like an icier lime limonata. Everyone seemed to enjoy the presentation.

Next came the plat principal. I was originally planning on doing the pasta course followed by the main course, but I decided to combine the two. This course consisted of a lemon capellini with lemon zest and parmesan cheese, poulet saute aux herbes de provence (herbes de provence traditionally consists of savory, fennel, thyme and basil, among other herbs) atop a dijon-y, hollandaise-y sauce made from homemade yogurt, egg yolk, lemon juice, butter and the pan sauces from roasting the chicken. The side dish was a braised endive

The course is sadly missing the lemon slices that had been roasting in the toaster oven as we were enjoying our palate cleansers. My first culinary fail of the night.

But we persisted on with the salad course. I made a salad of mesclun greens with dried cranberries, chopped walnuts and gorgonzola cheese, and a balsamic vinaigrette of 3 parts oil to 1 part balsamic vinegar, a teaspoon of dijon mustard and salt and pepper. I think the salad was Kari's favorite part of the meal. The cheese course was combined with this course. We had brie cheese and butter and slices of homemade wheat bread.

The dessert course I was planning on making was crepes with chocolate and whipped cream. Unfortunately, last night our tiny kitchen was the setting for 3 separate dinner parties. So we had a simple dessert of chocolate squares and Trader Joe's gummy tummies.

Coffee was also left out because of the kitchen and it was just too hot.

All in all it was a success, and I'm looking forward to more national holidays so I can plan a day of menus.

Shoutouts to Kari and Jacob for sitting through my experiments in flavor and texture, disguised as classically-influenced courses. And a big thanks to Mike for being the most disinterestedly interested sous chef