dinner with the neighbours

My neighbours Jeanette and Louis invited me to dinner. Their
son Michel was there; their friends Francis and his son Philippe
also.

We started with fish soup with toasts coated in garlic mayonnaise
flavoured with saffron, with a crust of grated elemental. With
that we drank muscat.
There followed a large coquille St Jacques; the corals of the
scallops in a cream sauce under a pastry made largely of butter.
With this we drank a chardonnay.
Then came a salad; very simple, those green leaves with red tips,
about 2 ins wide, not the green and red wavy ones. They were
dressed in olive oil and wine vinegar with a little salt - that was all.
Perfect.
Next was the guinea-fowl. The insides - don't ask - had been
taken out after cooking and liquidized with ham and liver, spread
on toasts and baked with home-grown preserved tomatoes, done
with herbs and garlic. Naturally we drank rosé, a Tarvin - new to
me- pretty good.
Cheese next. I had a chevres from Bugarach and a Chantal, with a
good red wine which I loved but the others thought wasn't
perfumed enough.
A *light* gateau next - pear at base with a great deal of cream
and crunchy stuff and a blanquette, methode ancestral.
Coffee. Home made mandarin liquor from home grown mandarins.

Louis has a respectable bass voice and sang selections from
Carmen and Verdi.

They are off to Cuba soon to celebrate their 60th wedding
anniversary.

I'm stunned. And stuffed. No wonder the french are happy and
long-lived.