Last night's dinner featured recipes from Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook. The book is named after Thomas' Bouchon restaurant, located next door to his other famous restaurant, French Laundry, in Yountville California.
First up we served a winter soup of Puy lentils and herbs, garnished with crumbled goat's cheese. Puy lentils are considered by many to be the best lentil because of their unique peppery flavour and the fact they hold their shape during cooking. They are the only lentil to be identified by area of cultivation – grown in the Le Puy region of France.
For the main course, we served Thomas' grilled chicken with courgettes, tomatoes, yellow zuchinni and olivade (a spread of fromage blanc mixed with capers, onions and herbs).
Vegetarians were served mozzarella empanadas with rice and vegetables. An empanada is a Spanish and Portuguese stuffed bread or pastry. The name comes from the verb empanar, meaning to wrap or coat in bread. Empanada is made by folding a dough or bread patty around the stuffing. The stuffing can consist of many things such as meat or vegetables. In Spain, empanadas are usually large and circular in shape and are cut into smaller portions for consumption, whereas in Portugal and South America empanadas are normally small and semi-circular (this type of empanada is commonly known as empanadilla in Spain). Empanadas are also known by a wide variety of regional names (see the entries for the individual countries below).
For dessert we served chocolate bouchons (small, circular brownies which resemble a cork) with chocolate sauce and coffee bean ice cream.
Bon Appetite!
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