Harvest Feast

My apologies if that last blog post left you feeling sad. It certainly made me feel sad. So I will now offer you an antidote: an epic win of a French Provincial feast.

THE PLAN
The idea for this party grew from a diet that the Cowboy had recently started. Which is ironic given that the whole meal ended up requiring over two kilos of butter, but that's a different story. While musing on the theme of 'healthy', I came up with the idea of using locally sourced, organic foods from local farmers' markets. The Cowboy thought this was fantastic and we hit on the idea of a 'harvest feast' - perfect for early Autumn, we would celebrate the way peasants used to once upon a time. With better cooking equipment, of course. Peasants led (naturally) to France and at once we hit upon a unifying theme for our food - French Provincial cuisine (hence the butter). Save-the-dates were sent immediately and we raided our French cookbooks to come up with a feast-to-end-all-feasts.

THE MENU
Appetisers (not very French, but very yummy)
Chilli Garlic Bread
Hand-made Olive Tapenade
Toasted Brie with Brown Sugar and Hazelnuts
all served with fresh baguette

Entree
Wild Barramundi with Vanilla Sauce
Cabbage Galette

Mains
Coq a Vin (definitely the standout dish of the evening!)
Pork with Blackcurrant
The Cowboy's Veggie Stacks

Sides
Garlic Pommes Puree
Basil and Rocket salad with Melting Tomatoes

Dessert
Luke Mangan's Chocolate Tart
Miss Jess's Almond Cake with Custard Frosting and Strawberries

I was thinking of you, dear readers, as we prepared this feast and took some photos to share. Unfortunately once we got up to the party I forgot to take photos of the finished dishes. Next time, if you are attending one of these dinner extravaganzas, please remind me!

PREPARATIONS
The Cowboy and I sat down at the start of the day and carefully planned what needed to be done when so that we would have minimal getting in each other's way, which was fortunate as multiple dishes coming out at the same time did cause some problems. We have defintely learned that lists and timetables are the key to successful dinner parties - and fortunately we are both list and timetable sort of people. Husband (who was responsible for the coq a vin - credit where credit is due!) is not so much a list-and-timetable sort of person and found this slightly frustrating. Fortunately his flexible approach came in handy for the Wiggle's timetable, which she declined to share with us but followed determinedly all by herself. Lesson two: next time we host a dinner party, we need to invite one of the guests to come from the start of the day as a dedicated babysitter.

THE DECOR
A very popular item at our Seven Deadly Sins dinner was a printed menu at each place so that people could keep track of what they were eating without having to ask again and again. This time I decided in the spirit of our French Feast (and out of contrariness) that I would translate the name of each dish into French (through a dodgy online translator, unfortunately my French is limited to one phrase) and let our guests figure out what they were. I was going to try and find some wildflowers for the table, but ran out of time - fortunately the Cowboy came to the rescue with some lovely multi-coloured bunches of roses with greenery. The plan this time was to serve dishes on plates in the centre of the table (for SDS we plated up in the kitchen), which meant lots of room in the middle of the table and also plates already set at each place. We had a mix of plain white and floral plates which we decided to use to our advantage. A few natural-coloured and beeswax candles from Dusk finished off the setting beautifully.

THE NIGHT
Food: amazing. Guests: eloquent and in high spirits. Atmosphere: perfect. Bedtime: about 5am. Says it all, really!

Stay tuned for some more cupcakey goodness coming your way! Husband has set me the challenge of making the best mississippi mud cake he's ever tasted, so I'll be sharing that adventure with you, and I have a few 'Kitchen 101' posts planned so there's loads to look forward to. In the meantime, share your cooking adventures with me - have you tried any of my recipes? Have you developed any of your own? Are you still waiting for Lachie to find that damn Lizard? Let me know!