Happy holidays everyone! I hope you all had a nice and relaxing Christmas and a very happy start to 2011. I spent my holidays in France; first in Strasbourg, then in Le Havre and Paris with my parents and my sister.
After getting back from Strasbourg, I headed straight to Le Havre to start preparing for Christmas dinner with my family, which I was going to be cooking. I had to make sure to get all shopping and chopping done ahead of time, since things tend to shut down around here at the first possible moment where it might be considered legitimate. As in the afternoon of the 24th. To be fair, Christmas Eve is the big celebration here, not the 25th. But still. It shouldn’t be this hard to find food on a Sunday. By some good fortune, I was invited to a real French Christmas Eve, which was incredibly fun, and a pretty crazy culinary experience. Disclaimer: the rest of this post will be about food.
I got to the house in the late afternoon and helped set the table (for 18! Unheard of in the Mullman residence) and milled around awkwardly while the family argued and fought. I probably should have expected this, since it’s pretty normal behavior for anyone who is about to entertain his or her family, but I still felt super out of place. Luckily, things calmed down when people actually started showing up and cocktails were poured and hors d’oeuvres served. They had prepared various canapés with tomatoes, smoked salmon, crème fraiche, etc. on them. Then we sat down and were served 2 different types of foie gras with a special type of wine. I think it may have been ice wine? I only just learned what this is (thanks, Mom and Dad!), so I can’t be sure. After the foie gras was cleared, smoked salmon was brought out, followed by a course of three different types of local oysters, which the host had cleaned and opened himself. So fresh! Every course lasted an extremely long time, as plates were not cleared until after a long digestion period to socialize. Or, in my case, to get convinced to dance to island music from Réunion with an uncle in front of the whole room. Normally, I probably would have said no, since I barely knew most of the people there, but I’m trying to rep America, so I went for it. Score one point for Team USA?
Moving onto the main courses: the first was a salmon tartare with a cucumber mango salad and an avocado relish-y thing. Very fresh and full of flavors you don’t expect to find on a French dinner table. After the customary digestion period, skewers of scallops were brought out. They were served with more cucumber/mango-y goodness. Apparently, eating seafood on Christmas is very in style in Normandy since there is such easy access to it.
Next was, of course, CHEESE. Lots of odors ensued, some good and some...different. The hosts busted out a 20 year old Bordeaux for this part of the meal, officially making this a completely unique and French experience. Dessert was just ice cream, and I can’t really say that I blame them for buying this course. What a delicious and ridiculous night.
I would be lying if I said that experiencing things like this were not part of the reason I decided to come to France this year.
A la prochaine, with tales from the rest of the break!
No comments:
Post a Comment