France Revisited

Tonight we had dinner guests, our friends Joe and Ryan. We decided early on in the evening that we would have a theme to the dinner (other than our farm share vegetables): our trip to France.



We started out with some bread from a local bakery and the picholine olives and artichoke spread we got at the market in Nyons. The olives did not hold up too well from the trip back. We shipped them home from France and I suspect that there may have been some temperature issues on the plane to the United States.

Joe suffered through a slideshow of pictures from France while we enjoyed some of the wine we purchased at Domaine du Moulin.



Our salad tonight was a repeat, using the leftover pecan, mustard vinaigrette from the other night with the lettuce, turnip greens, and a little of the Satur Farms mixed greens.



The entree didn't turn out exactly how I'd planned. The duck breast was delicious but I'd intended to serve it on top of a puree of turnip. Unfortunately my puree came out a little thin so I reclassified it as soup and served it in a demi tasse cup with some chopped chives from the share. I roasted the duck top of some potatoes, celery and garlic from the farm share as well as some carrot and onion. I also steamed some of the green beans from the share and wilted the Swiss chard.



After dinner we showed off some of out Aperitruffe liqueur that we'd picked up in France at Dieulefit. I'm not convinced that the Aperitruffe was the best intermezzo in the world but it is incredibly interesting.

After a small tasting we moved on to Maraschino liqueur that I don't think I've touched in nearly ten years. That was a little more popular than the Aperitruffe. It turns out cherries are more beverage-friendly than truffles.



We concluded our dinner with some Ciao Bella gelato and sorbet. I intended to have each scoop in front of its respective container but instead this turned out like a movie poster where the actor's names are over the wrong actors.

For the purposes of this picture let's pretend that this is a movie based on a John Grisham novel and that the mango sorbet is a lawyer who has gotten in over his head and the maple gingersnap gelato is a congressman who will do anything to get re-elected.