y. Menus: Some Winning Combinations

Some Menus

As soon as you can prepare a few dishes, you will combine them naturally into menus and prepare complete meals. Most French children already know at age 5 that a meal is composed of courses, as so many compulsory steps. They learn not to splurge on appetizers so that they will give justice to the main dish and move on to the cheese course. (1) Fortunately, children always have room for dessert.

When we plan a meal or recall a memorable one, the main dish often dominates. This may have to do with our human fixation on protein and is quite unfair sometimes. A successful meal should be an arc of sensations, from whetting your appetite to the sweet conclusion. Here are a few menus of last year which come to my mind, based on the recipes we have discussed above.

Arugula and Tomato Salad

Moroccan Chicken with Vegetables

Moroccan Oranges

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Poached Oysters

Squab with Cucumbers and Spinach

Tarte Tatin

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Kuri Squash Soup

Baked Salmon and its chutneys

Arugula Salad

Crême à l’Orange

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Cabbage and Salt-Pork Bouillon

Salt-Pork and its Vegetables

A few Fresh Fruits

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Intimate Meals

Despite my inclination for good things, I am not sure I would cook just for myself or even prepare any salad if I lived alone. Fortunately, my wife Meredith is the sophisticated companion I needed in this life to share meals with (and much more).

For intimate meals, we are really considering 1-course or 2-course menus most of the time. Our meals can be quite simple and even repetitive. We look into the refrigerator and decide what seems good tonight. We tend to agree on everything, knowing that what we do not eat today must be consumed tomorrow.

This is a typical list I wrote down (after the fact) for a few consecutive meals we had last spring:

×           Tomato spaghetti and fried egg

×           Vegetable soup

×           Crab and rice in tomato butter sauce

×           Fresh ravioli (purchased)

×           Salmon with watercress

×           Mixed salad

×           Sausage and zucchini

×           Bread and cheese

×           Singapore Rice

×           Etc…

We also improvise and make a few discoveries sometimes.

Invitations

We just invited the Joneses for dinner.

That meal will be more ambitious and also different in its preparation as many questions are raised:

×           When are they expected?

×           Do they have any food restrictions?

×           Can they eat finger food?

×           Are they hardened locavores?

×           Should we start with a soup, a salad or something more sophisticated?

×           What kind of dessert would they like?

×           What did we prepare last time?

×           What is in season?

Fortunately, we do not live 80 or 90 years ago in the heart of the French countryside. We do not have to plan an eight-course meal but just a happy progression of three different courses. This is still tricky enough to require some planning and give-and-take discussion on the best ways to harmonize it and make it as festive as possible. We have to select dishes and organize ourselves so that we will be around the table with our guests most of the time. This takes planning and some practice.

Let’s have a balanced meal, not too heavy on one ingredient. A light dessert will compensate a robust main dish. A subtle theme could provide help: We could travel from France to Italy and back for example, or move to Spain and then Morocco. Some of these menus are displayed above.

Feeding a crowd

Now, it’s not only the Joneses but also the Goodmans, the Fujimotos, the DiMarcos and the Dreibands. It’s a crowd!

In this case, if you want to minimize work, it becomes impossible to rely on last-minute preparations. More planning is needed, some items must be prepared ahead of time and the main dish selection narrows down to a few manageable solutions: cook-it-yourself barbecue, one-pot dishes or baked roast with precooked veggies reheated at the last minute. Your meal can still be quite good and festive: think of pot-au-feu, baked salmon, pork roast, beef roast. You will find that only budget limitations can dampen your ambitions.

Needless to say, unless you receive crowds all the time, you also need to inventory your pots and pans, your china, your silverware and your serving dishes and utensils.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Of all American festive days, Thanksgiving is by far my favorite: no gifts, no paper wrappings around, no overdoing. You can choose to completely ignore the commercial side and the formatted Pilgrims’ origins. It is an opportunity to gather with family and good friends to share our joy to be here, specks in the Universe, alive and well.

As a metaphor for the hour of plenty, a Thanksgiving plate should be full, full of meat, stuffing, and a variety of vegetables and fruits. Fall colors would fit perfectly. Pumpkins or squash will provide beautiful orange colors, cranberry sauce a deep purple red, wild mushrooms a brown tie to the underbrush. The usual mashed sweet potatoes can turn out bright yellow if you wish, thanks to turmeric or saffron. If you need some additional green, spinach or asparagus may be the solution.

The hardest decision is about the meat you are going to have. Social pressure forces turkey on us. This bird’s size alone makes it an interesting challenge for a cook. The only question is this: Is it good? Honestly, a few years back, I was ready and eager to eat turkey, at least once a year, but today even that rare encounter seems too much, unless its taste has been enhanced by some process, marinating or brining, for example.

 

My own choice would be to use two ducks instead. They mix well with all the usual side dishes, and allow you to make two different stuffings, the way you could do with the turkey’s two openings. We have already addressed the first stuffing (see Poultry section above). My suggestion for a second stuffing would be to change to a sweeter universe, without meat. You could, for example, mix pre-cooked onion, carrots, apples, dried fruit, fennel or celery with fresh basil, bread and an egg to tie it all in. You could also use chestnuts which are in season at that time.

Remove the duck’s fat during roasting (see the Meat and Poultry section) and use water and basting to make a delicious cooking juice. Of course, “in my book,” no gravy should be attempted.   

Which Wines for Tonight’s Dinner?

No mention was ever made of food and wine pairing in this book. This subject is fraught with more pitfalls than cooking itself. The world of wine is changing rapidly under the combined effects of global warming and globalization of markets and sources. And anyway, the issue is not to have the best wine or the most expensive but the wine that fits with whatever dish you have prepared. This is another lifetime quest on which you will have to go alone, of course with all my encouragements.

“Bon courage!” as they say in French and Good luck!

(1)   In France, to this day, many families would not do without a cheese course. For our grand-son Sacha, already a cheese gourmet, it is the most exciting part of any meal and he will probe all of them.