Galettes, continued....

We went for dinner last night at Erik's supervisor's house. One of the FOUR (my kind of dinner party!) delicious desserts was a galette.

One of the guests was French, and she gave us (the rest of us were non-French. I think Russia was the country with the highest representation last night) a bit of a lesson on serving this delicious treat. So here goes....

The host slices the tart into equal pieces. Then the youngest guest has to go under the table and direct the host in serving the slices. Give that piece to John, that piece to Mary, etc. Then young guest returns to the table after the pie has been divied up, and everyone enjoys their dessert. Whoever finds the pea (or coin, or tile) gets to wear the crown and be the king (or queen) of the meal.

Only two people chose galette last night, and neither found the coin. Everyone decided that Erik should wear the crown and be king because he ate the most dessert. One piece of every pie. The hostess had made a cherry pie with frozen cherries from their garden; a banana-rum pie (my favorite!); an apple-fig-almond tart (a close second); and then of course there was the galette. They were all delicious!

The whole meal was really a treat! For appetizers there were three cured meats, a salami type sausage from Luxembourg; a cured ham; and a sweet Catalonian sausage. Very interesting. Our entree was mussels, clams and shrimp with leeks and carrots in a butter sauce. Delicous! For a main course there was a vat of chili! Not what you'd expect, but a nice change, and it was very good. The hostess had lived in the United States while she was in high school, and one of the things she learned while living with another family there was how to make chili. Next was the cheese course. There must have been about ten different kinds, all of them fantastic. The most interesting was a Swiss one, called tete de moine (head of the monk). It was a round of cheese with a hole in the centre so it could be placed on a special serving board with a cheese knife that you turned around to shave the cheese off the top of the round. If you click on the link, there are pictures, it's a bit hard to describe.

I have to say I'm a big fan of the cheese course. It's very satisfying. I have a huge sweet tooth, and I enjoy the cheese course almost as much as dessert. The problem I have is when you have both with the same meal. I always find it is too much (the "you're going to have to roll me home" feeling). I think my perfect meal would be an entree, then skip the main and go straight to the good stuff, cheese and sweets.

Last nights meal was finished off with an apperitif, of course. The host brought out a bottle of spirits that he had made in 1988! It was made by collecting herbs, then mixing them with a sugar syrup and alcohol and allowing it to ferment for 40 days. Apparently it used to be given to pregnant mothers to help their labour (what do you think, Joan? :)). It had an interesting flavour, kind of like a minty cough syrup (I was too full for my own glass, so I just tasted Erik's). It was a very interesting end to a delightful evening.

We spent the train ride back to Paris practising our French with the French post-doc from Erik's lab, and her Italian boyfriend. Apparently he prefers tiramisu made with amaretto (I had never heard of it made with that, only rum), and thinks that the best Italian wine is Barolo. He also had some strong opinions on authentic Italian pizza, but we'll just leave it at that.

Hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend! It has been lovely and sunny here the past two days, and the patios have been full of people pretending it's summer. We also learned the hard way that many food stores in our area aren't actually open on Sunday (or at least in the afternoons). We haven't been to the market here since before we had visitors, and I think for the month of December, they were open all day on Sundays in preparation for Christmas. It was like a ghost town when we set out today at 1:00. We managed to rustle up some ingredients, and Erik is in the kitchen making risotto as I write this. It smells delicious!