A very happy Christmas Eve to everyone!

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Christmas Eve, dinner, food, menu, postaday2013

I wish everyone a very happy Christmas Eve because without Christmas Eve, we wouldn’t have Christmas morning. Personally, I think that I prefer Christmas Eve, it is so full of potential and hope, a beautiful and exciting feeling that can’t be recaptured once Christmas morning rolls around. In terms of celebrating and food, it is just as special as Christmas Day dinner.

Tonight’s menu is simple this year, it’s just the four of us so we are starting with shrimp cocktail, pate and French bread and then we will have rack of lamb with asparagus. There is salad and cheese if we want, and for dessert there is cheesecake, but I’m fairly sure that we will wait until tomorrow to dig into the cheesecake, it always does better with an overnight set in the refrigerator. If we want dessert, there is ice cream in the freezer and my hubby bought me Nestle cookie dough, my Kryptonite. We got home from last minute shopping and I put everything away and got to work on the cheesecake, in the back of my head, there was a voice coming from the refrigerator, it was saying “this is your cookie dough calling, come and slice off a big hunk, I taste so good, you know that you want me” And what do you think I did? Just like in the cartoons when you see the hapless person following the floating tendrils through the air to the refrigerator, I succumbed to my weakness, raw cookie dough. For shame, oh well, it’s not as if I do this everyday. I still have a little bit left. It just tastes so good going down.

We are enjoying our quiet Christmas Eve, Jack is hopping back and forth between each of us, depending on who has a smackeral in their hand, the little scamp.

This is what’s for dinner tonight

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cooking, dinner, food, menu, porcini, pork, postaday2013

It never fails, around 5:00 p.m every day, if you’re watching t.v, you get a ton of commercials; all asking you the same question “what’s for dinner tonight?” and then they proceed to tell you what you should be buying for dinner tonight. As I was pondering the same old question, none of the commercials gave me inspiration. I knew what I had in the refrigerator but what to do with it? My baby boy is picky about pork; he doesn’t prefer a simple sautéed pork chop. He likes to have something more complex, something saucy. So when in doubt, I fall back on my father’s tried and true mushroom flavored cream sauce, easiest thing to make.

I make it a point to keep dried mushrooms on hand, specifically the dried porcini mushroom, they are mildly flavorful and their texture holds nicely in a sauce. All you need to do is soak them in boiling water for about twenty minutes, the mushrooms will regain their meatiness and you will get flavor from the reconstituting liquid. I sautéed the pork chops until they became a caramelized brown on both sides, by the time that happens they are more or less done, I put them aside and I sauté minced shallots until soft in the same pan that has the drippings of the pork. As the shallots are getting translucent, I add the mushroom liquid and some chicken stock and I let it simmer so that it reduces a little. Once it has simmered for a bit and reduced, I add about a quarter of a cup of heavy cream.My secret ingredient is a splash of white vinegar to offset the cream and give the sauce some oomph. Afterwards, I add the porcini mushrooms and the pork chops with whatever juices to the pan, simmer it for a few minutes and voila it is done. I had string beans left over from last night so there you go, dinner is served.

One thing about the picture showing the chicken stock, there is the small container of veal demi-glace. I chose not to add it at the last minute because I felt that it wasn’t necessary since I had the mushroom infused water and I wanted the mushroom to shine and not be over powered by the veal demi-glace. That is the great thing about cooking, it isn’t constrained at all, you can do whatever you want. It’s up to you.

Change in the menu

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audience, dinner party, menu, postaday2012

Yesterday I wrote my post speaking about the menu that I was expecting for the dinner party that my cousin Didier and his wife were throwing for us band of young cousins; I arrived at Didier’s, kissed everyone hello and Didier said that I had made a few errors in my post describing the menu. I laughed because ever since I arrived in France, my cousins have been reading my blog and they aren’t shy in their comments. I think that having my cousins reading my blog and getting interested in what I have to say is a huge compliment and makes for great conversations. Didier’s one sentence about my post was a gift for writing a new post, so here is an editorial correction of yesterday’s post.

First I have to say that Vivianne outdid herself in the kitchen, everything was faites maison, or homemade, and was delicious. For starters, at the aperitif or before dinner drinks, Vivianne served us, on several plates, these tiny little bowls, each one contained a different hor d’oeuvre, one was a tiny cubed salad of cantaloupe, cucumber and cheese, the cubes were tiny, tiny and the vinaigrette was light, it was so good and refreshing, the manual labor involved in that tiny salad was impressive. There was also a light presentation of smoked salmon over a herbed creme fraiche that was very good, there was also an Asian version of a tartare of salmon with a sauce, that was light and elegant as well.I almost forgot my favorite, I am a huge fan of the foie gras and breast of duck.Vivianne made a terrine of smoked breast of duck and homemade foie gras, she sliced the terrine very thinly and put them on small toast rounds, it was to die for, if I could have, I would have eaten much more than I did, but it isn’t good manners to hog a plate all to oneself, so I shared, begrudgingly.

After all that, we went to the table and the entrée or appetizer wasn’t the famous cantaloupe and prosciutto, it was a tomato and buffalo mozzarella salad with basil, nice and light, perfect start before the famous kebabs. Leon, he who must be mentioned as much as possible lest he pout again at being left out of the conversation, he got a plate of cantaloupe and prosciutto as a joke, it was quite funny, he complains about everything, so Vivianne teased him quite a bit last night. The desserts after the kebab, salad and cheese course, I have to mention all the food we had before the desserts to give you an idea of how stuffed I felt by the time dessert was put on the table. Now if it had been ice cream, I could have said no thank you, I am so full, there isn’t any more room in my little belly, but these were homemade by our hostess with the mostest; I could not in good conscience refuse. She had made two tarts, one a simple apple tart and the other was an apricot tart with a beautiful custard filling, how do you say no, you can’t and they were delicious. When we all said good-bye, I made sure to compliment the chef, Vivianne, profusely because she had put a lot of work and time, we were twelve for dinner so it was a lot of preparation. I know that when I spend all that time and energy cooking it really makes me happy to hear all good things afterwards.