Cooking Across 4 Generations

Our final wine dinner for 2013 was also our first international  one. Well, if you don’t count New Zealand as international that is.

Our first job was to narrow down a selection of wines for the evening. We managed to cover five French regions, Bordeaux, Rhone, Provence, Loire and Burgundy.

To get the night started the first drink of the night was a Louis Bouillot cremant de Bourgogne, Perle d’ivoire blanc de blanc, from Burgundy.

Canapes consisted of garlic snails, chilled vichyssoise soup and gougeres(cheese choux puffs).

Entree was a shared plate of pressed chicken and mushroom terrine, Duck liver pate, and salmon rillettes served with slices of batard loaf, pickled grapes and pickled cherries. The pickled cherries went really well with the pate and terrine and the pickled grapes were a great match with the rillette. The entree was served with a rose wine, Domain de Triennes 2012, from Provence.

Main was a decontructed beouf Bourguignon. We slow roasted beef eye fillet at 80C to medium rare. We cooked the sauce again at 70C for about 3 hours,  which left us with a fabulously rich sauce. This was served with a garlic mash, chunks of carrot and some fresh peas. The wine here was a great Perrin et Fils Cotes du Rhone Rouge Reserve 2012, from the Rhone Valley.

Our mystery wine for the evenin was a Marc Bredif Vouvray 2011, from the Loire region. Usually we have a red for the mystery wine but this time we changed it up a bit and gave our diners something a little different.

Dessert was also a mixed plate of delicious French fare. We baked and decorated Buche De Noel, Raspberry and Champagne macarons, Madeleines and petite coffee brulee tarts. A lot of work but well worth it. I was very happy with my first ever Buche De Noel as I have been wanting to make one since Mum bought the Women’s Weekly French cookbook back in the 1980’s. On the night, ours was filled with a chocolate and raspberry butter cream. I also managed to get some traditional sugar mushrooms to decorate the cake with. Dessert was Chateau du Pavillon 2008, which was a nice little Sauternes from Bordeaux.

In all a lively night as we had some entertainment this time, a singer and cancan dancers entertained our diners.

Thanks for dropping by!!