Happy New Year

Well Happy New Year everyone! Yes, I've been remiss, it's been a bit of a stretch since my last post - dear me, all this leisure time is ruining me!

The reason for my slackness is of course that I was preparing for the family to join me in Paris for Christmas - it wasn't a white one for us unfortunately, but we had a grand celebration and even managed to do a little sight-seeing with the very clear and crisp weather!


Merry Christmas from Raoses and spouses

Naturellement, Christmas dinner was a feast of rich gastronomic challenges - when in France, my friends! And the shopping was half the fun ...


Au marché, with Cathryn and Anna

We tried our luck at the marché aux enfants rouges where we picked up an array of vegetables, including the best roasting potatoes for our big meal. Cathryn and I then headed across to rue Montorgueil for the last few items on the list. I'd managed to order and collect the dinde - deboned, rolled and stuffed with a traditional farce of pork, veal, chestnuts and a few exciting extras - from the boucherie fine the day prior, in my only-just-acceptable french. And I can tell you, I wished I'd had the shopping cart with me that day, as the 6-8kg of stuffed birds was quite something to carry across town on the metro!

On Christmas morning we started with a breakfast of oeufs en cocottes, although our cocottes were fashioned from deseeded tomatoes wrapped in prosciutto (an Italian twist courtesy of Tobie Puttock). After breakfast and a chat with the Chappell family at Mount Martha, the Dalrymples in Adelaide, and the Lovitts in Queensland, I got going on the roasting of the turkeys and we arranged the cheeses on our one platter to sit for a couple of hours before serving.


Our first course - terrine de lapin

To start us off for lunch, instead of the traditional O'Malley family fruit cocktail, we opted for rabbit terrine and a morsel of foie gras, much to the pleasure of the offal eaters in the Raos family who discovered a whole new taste sensation beyond chicken liver pâté!


(Raos) Kids in the Kitchen...

Then it was onto the eating proper, and thankfully my two favourite kitchen slaves were back in town, and Matt has now demonstrated his finesse with "thrice-cooked" potatoes, with the invaluable assistance of duck fat!


Ooooo - what's next on my plate?

Who's who in this gallery of Christmas gourmands? To my left you see Dom's partner Anna, and then moving clockwise around the table is Dom, Caro (Matt's wife), my very good friend Cathryn (formerly of Tassie and who now lives in London) Matt, Dad, Karin and Ned (new friends who live in Paris and who have greatly helped aid my quest to find fabulous food here), and behind the lens, Cathryn's husband Mike! Cathryn and Mike's toddler Heath was with us but sleeping off his earlier lunch at this stage.

Following the glorious richness of turkey, ham, duck fat pototoes, broccoli, peas and carrots - washed down with some generous helpings of French wine and champagne - we retired to the lounge room for a small morsel of cheese and the petits délices that Karin and Ned had brought with them from
Dalloyau - I think we decided that the petite pistache number with the quince under-layer was hands-down the MOST spectacular of the lot ... and of course they got eaten so quickly we forgot to photograph them! Quel dommage!

And it was not long after that that a few of the family members began to pass out - jet lag? No, tradition I believe.

Only the stayers made it to the final installment - Caro and Matt, and Cathryn and Mike and I managed the obligatoire last course.

Cathryn and I had each trudged over London streets to find the suet for the pudding, and can you believe this people - only one in six British butchers actually knew what we were talking about, and yet said butcher was unable to provide us with the required ingredient!! It took a very helpful staff member from the fish department at Sainsbury's to lead us in the direction of the packet suet and her store manager came with us to learn what the product was! In the land that invented the steamed pudding - exceedingly distressing!


Christmas blaze!