A French Dinner

Today, I made a dinner for some of my good friends here in York, to celebrate the end of the term, and because I've always wanted to make one on a French theme. The dinner tonight was completely French--or so I hope. The dishes have nice French names, anyway.

My menu for tonight was:

Hors d'oeuvres: Camembert Bonbons (that barely visible white plate in front of Sharon in black)

Entree: Tartiflette (Savoyard baked potato with meat)(circular pan in foreground)

Main courses: Chicken chasseur (hunter-style chicken)(the wok on the right), Confit Byaldi (the ratatouille that Remy made in the movie Ratatouille)(the central pan), Poisson provencal (Provence-style fish)(the tray on the left), Teurgoule (Normandy rice pudding)(the tub beside the tartiflette)

Dessert: Delice aux chocolat et bananes (Chocolate and banana flan)(at that time it was lounging in the freezer)

All accompanied by a sweet white dessert wine whose name I have forgotten, but which was sweet indeed, and which combined well especially with the poisson provencal, according to comments.

I'm not going to put my recipes up for them here, but suffice it to say that they are all somewhat complex, and take from an hour (poisson Provencal) to three (Teurgoule) to prepare and cook.

Here are some (not so nice) photographs that I took after I completed each dish...

Above, you can see the poisson Provencal... There wasn't time to touch up its makeup for the camera, I'm afraid... The sauce is particularly difficult to make and was my sous-chef Clara's effort and mine combined! It involved passing a stirfry of mushrooms, onions and tomatoes through a sieve to form a smooth sauce--which I assure you is FAR, FAR more tiring and tedious than it sounds, involving a small sieve, a repetitious arm motion, and an oyster sauce bottle.





This tartiflette looks gorgeous, and was gorgeous. The taste of creme fraiche and bacon had diffused into the tartiflette after baking--just that slicing the potatoes finer would have created a far nicer taste. This dish has the dubious honour of being the first and only potato dish I have cooked here, and which also made me buy potatoes for the first time since coming to the UK. :D I now have a working potato dish!


This confit byaldi (since it isn't strictly a ratatouille--the name's just for publicity purposes) came out nicely, as it always has. The only grouse I have about it is that it's SO HARD to remove the skins of the peppers! Even after I've grilled the living daylights out of them. It came out really nicely though, with a sour taste from the vinaigrette that was imparted tastefully by my trusty bottle of balsamic vinegar from Italy (which my Italian friend Matteo assures me is NOT true Aceto Balsamico di Modena). It would look far better with aubergines that were actually the same diameter as the rest of the vegetables, though. And also would've been much better if I had a slicer...which I don't. Slicing the vegetables thinly is a touch and go business. At least I've a good knife sharpener to make it easier.

This is chicken chasseur. It tastes far better than it looks. Like my Jaegersauce schnitzel, this is a dish of sauteed/fried chicken simmered in a wine sauce with onion and mushrooms. It makes good use of tomato to impart a slightly tangy taste to the whole, and its taste was simply heavenly... It has an even more intense taste, both as a sauce and in terms of the wine, than the German version, which is creamier.

The teurgoule was made with Chinese glutinous rice--and it came out perfectly well, surprisingly. As I had absolutely no way of measuring weights, I just guessed at how much rice went into the ensemble and it turned out to be JUST RIGHT.

Well, needless to say the dinner went extremely well, and I am most pleased. I shall try to do individualised photoshoots of the dishes in future, and spruce them up more...