The French way of six courses on a weeknight dinner at the Carriage House:
- Finger foods and champagne.
- Pumpkin soup, baked in the pumpkin, with creme fraiche and mushrooms.
- Lauren’s deer tenderloin with duck foie gras, served in a sharptail grouse broth and grape compote, accompanied by potatoes, sweet potatoes, and celeriac.
- Celeriac : 1 root for 2/3, cut into 1 inch pieces, boil for 15 minutes, then butter fried in a pan, masher, and you add butter or/and cream until you are happy with the taste. Salt and pepper. You could mix with same quantity of potatoes if the meal is not game.
- Potatoes : Mash as usual. Add butter and crème fraiche (better than milk), Sour cream good alternative I used. Then for us 5 I added 4 yolks and whisked the whites to “blancs en neige” and add with a spoon, little by little 3/4 of it until the texture was okay, not too liquid. Season with salt and pepper. (Note-some potatoes are more dense than others, hence no proportions.)
- Salade with herb vinaigrette
- Cheese course
- Lemon meringue pie with tart white wine
The .22 Hornet at the ready.
For the deer sauce/compote: Just shallots and grape in butter. Slow cooking they have to melt. 1 hour to 1.30. Then add the stock ( I made do with grouse but better use the trimmed meats and bones of the beast cooked) let it evaporate and add the final touch to thicken if you wish ( I had foie gras but corn flour ( maïzena ) + butter fine.
