Sorry I'm so slow about posting. After the terrine near disaster the rest of the meal went well as I was cooking old favorites & comfort food.Here's the table all ready to go with the entrée in place.
Linda does this really well. Note her pretty flower arrangements. Not easy at this time of year.
Here are the main course dished ready for the oven. Tunnel boned leg of lamb with rosemary, garlic & anchovies. Roasted roots (carrot, parsnip, garlic cloves, shallots & turnip) Oven roasted potatoes with duck fat and fresh thyme.)
This all seemed to go down well. The lamb was nice & pink and the potatoes browned & crisp, the roots were their usual delicious self.
After a suitable interval we had a simple salad to cleanse our pallets ready for the cheese. The salad was just gem lettuce and a creamy vinaigrette.
Next came the cheese
We had laguiole, St Felicien, St Augur and Blue de brebis.
A nice simple selection.
I didn't take a picture of dessert which was a carrot cake because I forgot to. Suffice it to say that it was a good cheese cake and it disappeared rapidly. We drank a nice bottle of champagne that Patrick had brought with it. That went down well as well.
I did, however, remember to take a picture of the bread which is a very important part of any French meal. There were three kinds from our favorite shop in Villefranche; campagne (white), Rye and multi-grain.
We finished with coffee and a long discussion which solved all the problems of the world including our upcoming local elections, Sarkozy's marriage and the state of French & English rugby.
We slept well that night contented that we'd both improved our French and our friendship with our neighbors.
As explained in my last post I was concerned to make a good impression food wise on our French friends. Thus I thought that a pork terrine with cornichons & shallots would properly impress. Only problem was that I haven't made a terrine in years; pate yes, but terrine no. I was, however, using a recipe from 'The Cook's Book' so I should have been OK.Things went well at first. I soaked my pork hocks for 24 hours.
They came out looking fine.
Then they went into the stock pot for about 3 hours at a slow simmer.
So far so good. After the hocks cooled I shredded the meat and added chopped cornichons and shallots. I also dissolved some gelatin leaves into about a pint of the stock.
The mix looked & tasted good. At this point things looked OK.
The recipe calls for lining the terrine pan with multiple layers of cling film. I did this with no problem, but there didn't seem to be neatly as much overlap as the recipe indicated.
As I started to fill the terrine it became obvious that my terrine was far too large for the amount of mixture. The mixture should have filled the terrine to over flowing. It actually came about two thirds of the way to the top. Well I didn't have a smaller terrine so I continued on.First I filled the terrine with the gelled stock then I cut and put a piece of cardboard on top & pushed it down - hard. Then I wrapped the whole thing in more cling film.
This wasn't going to do what it was supposed to; namely to put pressure on the mixture to 'glue' it together. So off came the cling film & on went as much weight as I could find.
36 hours later the terrine came out of the fridge. As you can see it didn't look too bad, but there was no way the terrine could be cut into nice neat thin slices. It just sort of fell apart.
The solution was to place pieces of the terrine onto endive, add a few pieces of the cut up aspic and some mustard cream sauce with a bit of parsley for decoration.
It didn't look too bad, the French loved it and it tasted good.
There were, however, lessons to be learned from what could have ended up as a fiasco.
- Make sure you have the right size terrine!
- Shred your port hocks much more finely.
- Chop you cornichons & shallots more finely.
- In fact I think it would be best to pulse the whole mixture in a food processor. Not to a paste, but to a much finer mix than I had.
I'll try again.
Last Sunday we had a group of French friends over for a Sunday lunch. We were, finally, returning some great meals and getting our social scales back into a better balance. Although we always look forward to doing a meal for our French friends there are two things that make me more than a bit nervous beforehand.
The first as you might expect is language. Although far from perfect my French is mostly adequate for social conversation even though my grammar stinks. No, my problem is hearing & thus comprehension. I'm hard of hearing and even though I have the latest hearing aids I still have problems; especially in noisy situations like a lunch where everybody is talking. (an unkind ignoramus recently accused me of being too stupid to program my own phone. Any of you with hearing difficulties will know that phones are exceedingly difficult. Ah well.) So, even though I literally hear what people say many times I have difficulty understanding. This is true in English and, not being my native language, even more so in French. In any case last Sunday worked well. Our friends are understanding & tolerant and we ended up having some interesting conversations. Try explaining the American primary elections system in French for example.
The second is the food. Not all of our French friends are good cooks. (I can remember one cous-cous that was ghastly!) Still they are all knowledgeable eaters and as an American I want to give them something a bit special. Sort of national & personal pride rears up. I really need not worry as the French are far too polite to say anything negative in any case, but if I'm honest I want to show off a bit. Thus I put quite a lot of thought into what to serve.
There were seven French plus us. I decided on a menu which was a combination of some old standby dishes with a couple of new things thrown in. We had:
- Various nibbles.
- A starter of pork & parsley terrine with aspic & mustard cream sauce
- A main course of tunnel boned slow roasted leg of lamb with anchovy, garlic & rosemary.
- This was accompanied by roasted roots (potatoes, carrots, shallots, turnips, parsnips and garlic cloves) and sauteed broccoli.
- A simple salad. lettuce with creamy vinaigrette.
- Cheese. Salers, St Felicien, St Augur and Blue de Brebis
- Carrot cake with fromage blanc frosting
For wines we had a Languedoc Chardonnay and a Spanish Trebillino. I brought in the Spanish wine just to keep everybody on their toes. Its a very nice wine.
In the end a very good time was had by everyone. Our friends arrived at 12:30PM and left at 17:30 PM. Five hours is pretty typical for a French Sunday lunch.
The best compliment was when our friend Jacques said that I cooked like a Frenchman. With heart. I was touched!
I'll write up some of the cooking with pictures over the next few days.
Linda does this really well. Note her pretty flower arrangements. Not easy at this time of year.
