Salut! This is Baquet Team #3 checking in: Emily, Cate, Macalah, and Charlton. We are here to fill you in on our time cooking and enjoying un repas de Pâques traditionnel in Bordeaux!

We knew we wanted to serve a traditional Easter meal for Banquet #3, which meant doing a little bit of research beforehand! We gathered ideas and then finalized our menu with Professor Caldwell over an inspiring lunch at a local restaurant. There, we made our game plan: make a grocery list and getting to it! We spent the rest of that day wandering the aisles of Auchan and picking out most of our ingredients.

We got an early start on Saturday morning. While Charlton and Macalah ran around town picking up cheese, bread, wine, and dessert from the Marché des Capucins, Emily and Cate got to work in the kitchen prepping veggies and working on their knife skills.

Our first challenge of the day: fighting off the pungency of some small, yet powerful onions. After a few shed tears and a sack of onions, the knife work of our French Onion Soup was complete. But, we weren’t in the clear yet as we quickly discovered that the French do not believe in boxed stocks! Luckily, we were able to use bouillon cubes that we found in the depths of Caldwell’s pantry to create our stock and get our soup underway.

Served alongside the French Onion Soup were bundles of prosciutto wrapped asparagus. This was the easiest thing we cooked all day long so we were thankful for a little break in chef-ing! We were also thankful that, at this time, we were rewarded with a refreshing drink made by Charlton- Punch aux canneberges de Palatium inspired by a drink we had tried the day prior at lunch with Professor Caldwell. However, those who had finished the apéritif paired their soup with a red wine called Château la Croix-Davids (Bourg).

Next, we prepared a casserole dish of scalloped potatoes to serve alongside our lamb roast and veggies. This led to our next challenge of the day: discovering that Professor Caldwell’s oven was indeed “French” sized and not “American” in the slightest. Because the oven was so much smaller than we were expecting, we had to cook components of our meal at different times since not all dishes would fit in the oven at once. But, as usual, on s’adapte and we made the potatoes ahead of time and planned to heat them up later on!

With a little help from Emily’s dad, we got the lamb roast underway. Emily prepared a marinade to cover the meat, which included dijon mustard, garlic, and some herbs which she showed no fear in covering the meat sans gants (without gloves). We placed the roast on top of a bed of carrots, onions, and brussel sprouts, and managed to squeeze her into the oven.

Waiting on the meat to cook, we had to shift things up a little bit. We decided to serve our salade and cheese course before the main plat. This is not a traditional format for a French people, however our guests were getting a little bit hungry and the cheese and salad were too good to resist! So, once again, on s’adapte, and we served 4 different cheeses with dried fruit, jams, and fresh strawberries and we opened our second bottle of red wine, a Sablet (Rhône).

As the cheese course finished, the meat was ready to be carved and served with the roasted veggies along with it. Charlton stepped up to the plate and carved the two legs of lamb and Macalah assisted in plating the meal! The potatoes never totally finished cooking, but the group appreciated the taste nonetheless. This course was served with a red wine from Graves called Pierre Saint-Maxime.

Next on the menu was everyone’s favorite course- dessert! We served a traditional Easter cake that was layered with raspberries, sponge cake, and cream. This was accompanied with a sweeter, white wine Domaine Chiroulet (Gascogne).                      

To finish the night and celebrate our hard work, we decided to serve a digestif, an after-dinner drink that we had studied, but had yet to try. We poured small glasses of Cognac for each guest and put on some brave faces as we sipped the brandy from Cognac, France. We got some mixed reviews, however we all agreed that we preferred Charlton’s Punch aux canneberges de Palatium far better than the strong liquor.

Please find below our final dinner menu. We worked together to create names for each one of our dishes. Some of the courses were named after people, some after different places, and some in light of the holiday season. While we all had a great time cooking and dining together, we can all agree that we are now that much more appreciative of our own parents for all of the hard work that they put into making great meals for us when we are home!!  

 Apéritif: Punch aux canneberges de Palatium

Entrée: Soupe à l’oignon de grand Pierre et Asperges à la Périgourdine

Plat: L’agneau à la famille Sully avec ses légumes pascaux et les pommes de terres de Maman Mac

Salade: Salade et sa sauce Quai Riche’

Assiette de Fromage: Persillé’ de chèvre, Roquefort, Reblochon, Morbier

Dessert: Le gâteau de Pâques traditionnel

Vin de Mac et Charles: Château la Croix-Davids (Bourg), Sablet (Rhône), Pierre Saint-Maxime (Graves), Domaine Chiroulet (Gascogne)

Digestif: Cognac

Hoppy Easter everyone!! On s’adapte,

-Emily, Cate, Macalah, and Charlton!

Bonjour à tous !  This is Banquet Team 2 checking in: Alena, Lessi, Zach, and Tanner (and Julie!). Here is our experience preparing and enjoying the second banquet of the semester in Bordeaux.

We were definitely intimidated after hearing about Banquet Team 1’s success with Jules Mulhern’s Boeuf Bourguignon, and we were not sure how we were going to top it. Finally we came up with the brilliant idea to prepare ratatouille as the plat principal, which certainly knocked the first team’s efforts out of the park.

Sunday morning began with a shopping excursion to the Marché des Capucins to buy fresh vegetables and a gâteau (cake) for dessert. The market was a great place for us to practice our French. The best part was getting to pick from a wide variety of cheeses for the cheese plate. Picking out the cake was also a highlight of the morning.

After the market, it was time to choose the wines and to buy the Kir Royal. Half of us went for the wine, while the others brought the groceries over to the apartment to get started on cooking.  Zach, Tanner, and Lessi  washed the vegetables and cut them up to prep them for the ratatouille.  Meanwhile, Alena and Julie cooked the crust for the quiche.  The quiche (our entrée) went into the oven just before the guests arrived.

The menu, handcrafted by Lessi

Aperitif: Kir Royal

Yes, perhaps this is not the most original aperitif, but we know what’s in style concerning aperitifs, and we went ahead with serving Kir Royal. It was a great way to start a long, long meal.

Entrée: Quiche à la pâte d’Alena

After Tanner gave a presentation on Quiche lorraine in Dr. Caldwell’s class the week before, we decided to prepare a quiche for the entrée. The quiche was vegetarian, baked with sautéed vegetables and surrounded by a crust made by Alena.  All agreed that the quiche was a huge hit.

Alena and Julie forming the crust for the quiche

Tanner the master frying the vegetables prior to the stewing fiasco

Plat Principal: Ratatouille à l’auroch

There seemed to be no dish more fitting than ratatouille. We carefully prepared ratatouille with and without meat in order to please our meat-eaters and our vegetarians that night. The ratatouille had to be cooked for a bit longer due to a near disaster on the cooks’ part. We missed the part in the recipe that said we should stew the vegetables and the meat separately. Also, it took a bit longer than expected to get the couscous to the typical consistency.  In the end we pulled it together, and the rave reviews made us forget our earlier panic.

Salade: Salade verte à la sauce Tanner & Assiette de Fromages

One can never go wrong with a salad after a main course. We served a salad with a simple but chic bowl of greens drizzled with a mustard sauce. The salad was then followed by an assortment of cheeses: camembert, roquefort, comté, and chèvre. While the salad was delicious, the cheese platter was the true highlight. Our group does not agree on which cheeses are the best, but we all think that comté, a hard cheese with mild flavor, is delicious. Many members of the group love chèvre, a soft goat cheese, while others thoroughly dislike it. This split has caused an ongoing and spirited debate within the group over chèvre’s ranking amongst the cheeses.

Dessert: Moelleux au chocolat du marché capucins

The French says it all folks: a chocolate cake, paired with two bottles of sauternes, a very sweet white “dessert wine.” The cake bought fresh from the market that morning was rich, moist, and unquestionably delicious.

Vins: Château Pontet Fumet (Saint-Émilion), Château Potensac (Médoc), Château Haut Bommes (Sauternes).

Chef Zach makes an appearance at the guest table: with Macalah, Gracie, Emily, and Cate 

After an evening filled with laughter, storytelling, great food and conversation, and a bit of on s’adapte-ing, it is safe to say that Banquet 2 was a total success.

We are Banquet Team 2, we are classy and we are sassy!