A French Dinner Party

Last night, we had some dear friends over, one of my pastors and his wife, actually. So, I wanted to cook up a special dinner for them. Han and I are still in our francophile stage (having just come back from our European trip), so I put together a French inspired menu: Green leaf lettuce, Pomegranate and Almond Salad, French Onion Soup, Braised Chicken with Tomatoes & Olives and Apple Galette. We had a wonderful time, chatting about Europe and travel; everyone seemed to love the food. By the way, our guests brought a Pinot Grigio that worked well with the meal.

Since we had them over on a Friday, I needed to start cooking on Tues! Tuesday night, I put beef bones, celery, carrot, onion, thyme and peppercorns into my crockpot and cooked it for 10 hours, then I put it on overnight, basically cooking it for about 24 hours. The result was a deep rich beef broth. Wednesday night, I started on the French Onion soup, cooking the onions til a deep golden brown, about 1.5 hours, adding garlic, thyme, shiitake mushrooms, then sherry (per a epicurious reviewer's suggestion). I added the beef froth and simmered it for another 1.5 hours. The flavor was still not there, as most of my soups tend to go. On friday, I simmered it for another 2 hours and added a bit of salt and pepper. My guests loved the soup, served in my Apilco lion's head soup bowls topped with croutes, emmental cheese and parmagianno.

On Thursday night, I prepped the chicken and veggies for the Braised chicken. Basically cutting the veggies (tomatoes, olives, onions) including red potatoes and a fennel bulb, adding fennel seeds, herbes of provence, salt and olive oil. I also prepped the chicken with the herb and garlic mixture, placing a lemon and fennel frond in the body cavity. On Friday, all I did was throw everything into our roasting pan. The chicken was tasty and juicy, the veggies rich in flavor.

Ever since I saw the Apple Galette recipe and accompanying video on Cook's Illustrated.com, I have been wanting to try this recipe. It's not a hard recipe, especially with the video that spells everything out.





























I just received two cookbooks from Amazon that I hope to write about soon. I've cooked a bunch of recipes from Washoku by Elizabeth Andoh and they were great, so I had to buy the book! I ordered the beautiful green book, Fast, Easy, Fresh from Bon Appetit Magazine, so I'll be trying some of those recipes soon.