A fabulous home cooked lunch party…..Parisian food with Parisian
guests. We firstly indulged in some “truly named” champagne from the Champagne
region with a few cheesy bikkies for starters, then a fabulous terrine (duck breast
and liver), an oven roasted veggie lasagna, a baked risotto, washed down with a
French pinot noir. Now having spent many
years in wineries in Tassie, my opinion has always been that the pinot from
there is unbeatable. Well…. cuz David
and Jean Marc knocked that on the head.
They say the French is the best. In France around mid afternoon the
cheeses come forth…Jodie had sourced the cheeses from the expert at her local
deli…and they must be for her unpasteurized.
Unpasteurized cheese is fuller in flavour and sought after in France,
even though the Govt prefers it not to be sold.
Cuz says that Australia is not allowed to sell it at all, so I’ve checked
this out and have found that there’s only one exception down under. On Bruny Is, Tas they sell a really nice
unpasteurized cheese which is a bit like a gruyere. The French cheese platter must also have a
good comte which is from the Franche Comte region. We remember tasting it at a cheese farm last
year and are quite excited that in June we’ll have about 20 days in the region
to do a little more (gastronomic) research on this. The unpasteurized camembert
was excellent, as was the rich blue vein.
Next – dessert….Their teenage girls can hardly wait for the cheeses to
finish so they can get into the dessert which usually appears late in the
afternoon. Today it was apple cake with
big, yummy, flavoursome strawberries and an almond ice cream polished off with
a sauterne from the Bordeaux region.
This completed our degustation.
One could now indulge in a cognac with coffee to follow…couldn’t one?
