Foodie Corner

Last night Mike, Barbara and Pete did us the honour of being our guests and had a meal that was sadly inferior to the night before - but they weren't there the night before so maybe I got away with it.
They got a melange of chopped tuna and avocado with a little spring onion in a smoked salmon mound with a salad - our own lettuce and tomatoes, BTW. Then sausage and lentils with carrots and celery, served with rice and blet (dunno how thats spelt. Big green stuff, I think it is chard in english) (delicious and also from the garden) Fruit salad - a handful of our apricots, market bought melon and yellow peaches.
Pete had to drive to Quillan and wasn't drinking; Bob doesn't and Barbara is naturally abstemious; which left me and Mike. After a couple of glasses of the normally healing blanquette I thought I might die and stopped.

This is because of the previous night, at Jeanette and Louis, see entry below.

There we started with home made wild boar pate, served with those red mushrooms that had been preserved in oil and vinegar, plus fresh radishes. A Rosé came with that course. The fish cake - ha! - was next, see photo below. Made with rillettes of lotte and egg and butter - no flour- and generally stuffed with prawns and moules. It was served with a mayonnaise with tongue numbing garlic, saffron and pimento. And white wine, a local one that I would like to remember the name of and can't - began with a V -
Jeanette, whom I have long regarded as a genius, had marinaded the next course of wild boar for several days and then cooked the civets - lumps- for several hours. It was tender and rich and delicious. The information that Louis had shot the boar, 86 Kilos of him, didn't detract. Though the fact that his teeth, the upwardly pointing pair, have been set in cement by the fire to be used as hooks to hold the bellows was strangely disturbing.
Good red wine with that of course. Also with the roquefort, pungent and tangy and texturally velvet. Chevre from Bugarch. Brebis from here.
Pud was a meringue type cake with cream, shop bought but artfully chosen, with a sweet wine. Then they brought out the home made liqueurs - they live full time on the cote d'azurs and have lemons and mandarins that they cover with pure alchohol and keep in the freezer.
After that we sang selections from opera.