A Dinner to Remember

I turn 30 this week.

A year ago, I knew that this day would come (as long as the world didn't end on 12/21/12), and I knew I didn't want a big party. I don't have a large circle of friends that I could invite anyway. I wanted something small and intimate, something special that I would remember for the rest of my life. And I figured out what that would be: a formal French dinner.

This story actually has roots older than last year. My mother once (and only once--it was a LOT of work) cooked this elaborate traditional French dinner as part of a church charity (someone won a silent auction item that included a French dinner). I'm not a member of my parents' Church community, but I do know how to cook, so my help was enlisted. That dinner--the food, the wine, the ambiance--looked so wonderful. And although I was in the kitchen and didn't get to enjoy the dinner the way the guests did, I knew one day I would want a dinner like that.

So last year, I decided that for my 30th, I would like a traditional formal French dinner. When I made mention of this to the family last fall, my older brother, who not only teaches French but has many ties to the country and the culture, offered to help plan and cook it. (As a side note, my older brother had a tradition for several years that he would host a French dinner for his senior French class at the end of the school year as a celebration.) I feel compelled to note that my older brother is such a francophile that he is assumed to be French when he travels in France. He has so completely embraced the language and the culture; and so he was very well-suited to planning the menu, knowing where to look for ingredients, and cooking the food.

So fast forward to last weekend. My brother and my mother planned for me an exquisite 12-course dinner in true traditional French style. Wine accompanied nearly every course and paired with the food in such a way that my mouth is watering just thinking of it. My mother pulled out all the good dishes that almost never get used, the silver, the crystal--basically all the stuff that she hides away that we maybe get to see some of at Christmas. My older brother was a magician in the kitchen, creating flavors I wish I could copy but fear I won't taste again. He was a general too, keeping things organized and synchronized (with some help from two friends of his), sending out each dish with a flair. One of his friends was our sommelier and did a presentation for each wine, explaining a bit about its history, the strain of grape that goes into it, and its flavor (I had no idea he knew that much about them!). We would take a bite of food and a sip of wine and exclaim over it--it was almost too good to be reality. We made a kind of chorus with our praises of "The food!" "The wine!" "The flavor!" "It's so good!" "I can't believe it!" It was like a movie dinner. You know, one of those lavish course-after-course dinners you might see in a scene in a movie and dismiss with a thought because that's Hollywood and would never actually happen. Except it did.

You know what? Better than keep talking about it, I will show you:

This is only one place setting for one person -- and we reused silverware for multiple courses!

Champagne with black current syrup was the cocktail that started us off.

Pureed butternut squash soup -- this had an especially amazing and delicate flavor.

Foie gras -- very much a French food, and not illegal to consume in California, although it is now illegal to produce or sell in the state.

These prawns and scallops were cooked perfectly and served with a white champagne sauce.

This lemon sorbet was served right before the "Intermetzo" or intermission -- at this point, we certainly needed it! Incidentally, I was getting in some serious baby time at this point of the meal.

The highlight of the meal: a beef tenderloin with a reduced sauce made of ruby port, black trumpet mushrooms, and foie gras (no, of course we weren't gilding the lily).

Anyone familiar with French cuisine would recognize the cheese course. All but one of the cheeses we had were from various regions of France.

A cream puff for each of us was the dessert -- and my mom makes excellent cream puffs!

If we were sticking to true tradition, the coffee would have had its own course. Here it was served with some local candies (aka See's chocolates).

By the time we got to the coffee and candies, I could not eat another bite. I ended up passing on the cognac as it made its way around at the very end. There was actually another course in this line-up after the champagne cocktail at the beginning, but in my moment of tasting food ecstasy, I forgot to take a picture. This was certainly a very special dinner--the most incredible I've had to date--and one I'll remember for the rest of my life. I'm so lucky that Mom and Brother were willing to do this for me. I don't think this post and the pictures do it justice.

And I couldn't believe that I was actually hungry the morning after.