Dîner avec des amis! c’était délicieux!
I’ve been wanting to do a Fall French dinner for friends and I wanted my southern influence to be a part of the meal. What better time than in the middle of Round Top’s Fall Antique Show. (WARNING: Long Read)
From the beginning I knew I wanted to make duck confit and my southern twist was going to be the parmesan stone ground grits.
A French 75 made with Empress Gin had to be the cocktail for the ladies and my husband came up with a Southern Manhattan cocktail for the guys. To go with those cocktails I simply used a box or two of Boursin cheese and stuffed it into two tiny pumpkins that I had removed the tops and scooped out the seeds. I drizzled the two pumpkins with some honey and inserted a couple of sage leaves in the top and served this with some sliced fresh figs, assorted crackers and some pistachio nuts and served this on my beautiful Woodlab board. I even bruleed a few fig slices to try with the cheese. “délicieux”.
I went back and forth on the appetizer (“First Taste”) which I wanted to serve as a first course. It was either going to be a mushroom tart or escargot. The escargot was not going to be your ordinary run of the mill escargot; this one had snails, lobster and shrimp. Instead of using French bread to dip into the garlicky/wine butter that melted all over the dishes I baked some puff pastry circles to put on top of each well on the dish. The escargot won over the mushroom turnover. This turned out very nice but timing that with the duck confit was a little stressful.