An evening of French Cuisine that is….yes I googled it. I’ve had a tiny bit of experience with French food, from one of my past restaurant jobs, 610 Magnolia, in Louisville, KY. The chef had us sample truffles, and foie gras, etc…. and he incorporated different French techniques into some of his dishes. I went to the library and checked out this book, The Food of France: A journey for food lovers. http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Food_of_France.html?id=3i9KPgAACAAJ
It took me all week to decide which dishes I wanted to prepare, as everything looked so delicious! Luckily I pretty much had most of the ingredients needed for the dishes I decided on. So here was the menu! (Everything was just as awesome as they looked in the photos of the book, although mine didn’t look quite as pretty!)
Braised Witlof
This is made with fresh endive, a veggie I have never tried before. It is cooked in butter, garlic, tarragon vinegar, and brown sugar. Allow it to simmer on low until all liquid is gone, then pour heavy cream overtop. Here is the final dish:
Gratin Dauphinos
The kids helped me with this dish, and it turned out great. Thinly sliced potatoes, layered with garlic, salt, nutmeg, and gruyere cheese. Then topped off with, yet again, heavy cream, and baked in the oven at 375 until golden brown.
This dish will never scrape clean, but those potatoes were delish!
40 Cloves of Garlic Chicken
Seriously, I used 40 cloves of garlic! You do not peel the garlic cloves, after slow roasting with the whole chicken, you get more of an aromatic roasted garlic flavor rather than anything powerful.
Stuff this inside the chicken.
Tie his legs up, and throw in the garlic ( a large portion of the garlic was inside the chicken) and carrots. Roast at 375 until juices come out clear and skin is golden.
Beef en Croute
The last thing I made was Beef en Croute, which called for freshly made puff pastry, and liver pate. The puff pastry was a challenge, and I used a couple different youtube videos as guidance. It came at good enough for this recipe, but not nearly as pretty as I had wanted! It was tough work!
The beginning of the puff pastry, flour, with butter, lemon juice and water.
I had to turn this mess into a pastry dough??!
After alot of kneading, you get this ball, cut a cross into into (I’m still not sure why you do this) then refrigerate for 2 hours.
After 2 hours in the fridge, roll it out, and place 7 oz of cold butter in the middle, wrap the dough around it, roll it out, in a way I can explain quickly, and refrigerate for 30 minutes, repeat 4 times.
After finishing up the pastry, I fried the livers in butter, shallots and garlic. Chilled, then pureed into a pate.
Your suppose to use a nice thick center cut piece of beef, but I was on a tight budget, and decided to do this part my own way. I took a thick flank steak, and butterflied it.
I then rolled it tightly and tied it up.
After quickly browning all sides of the beef in butter, I smeared the pate on my ugly puff pastry, and wrapped up the beef.
Brushed it in egg.
This was what it looked like after coming out of the oven. I wanted to keep the meat medium rare, but with this thin of beef, it was hard to get the dough golden. The meat came out to a medium, but it really tasted great.
To top the meal off, we had some red and white wine (maybe a little more than some 🙂
Loved the French meal. Not sure how many calories we consumed, but it was super tasty! Highly recommend trying!
My Curious Palate 