First Fall Feast

Saturday
10:00 AM 

It was the first day of autumn last Thursday and I have decided that this season is the best season for food. Coffee tastes that much better, opening the windows invites fresh, crisp air into my apartment, and a warm meal sounds like the perfect celebration to the day. Joe, my fiance, is on the road back to Madison from Dallas and is currently 3 hours from arrival. He's been living on Taco Bell grande burritos and McDonald's meal deals so I've decided to prepare a feast for tonight. On the menu... French cuisine!  

Sauteed Sourdough Bread

Fresh Beetroot and Goat's Cheese Salad

Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic

When I prepare a regionally-themed meal like this I enjoy pretending that I'm actually there. In this case, I'm taking Joe to France with me. I just went to the outdoor markets in the Southern Provence and picked up some fresh beets, bread and cheese and now I'm in my small apartment overlooking the bustling cobble stone streets of city with the smell of pastries and street violin notes wafting in through the window! Oh, and I'm the beautiful French cook of course... olive skin, bright lipstick, and a red floral apron. Although the bread recipe is my own creation, the salad and main course come from one of my favorite cookbooks called, "The Essential Mediterranean Cookbook." It is loaded with colorful pictures and takes you to flavors of Greece, Turkey, Italy, France, Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East. This summer I thought it would be fun to "tour" France and cook myself through that section. Needless to say I'm still there, but there are worse places to get stuck. It requires quality ingredients and found myself buying a bottle of Brandy just to splash a TB into some olive tapenade. The upfront cost is always worth the culinary lessons, however, except now instead of money being the limiting factor, it is stomach capacity.  Joe has been busy rotating around Wisconsin (and TX) so I've found myself cooking less because I've found I like sharing the end product (and leftovers!) with someone. I get lonely in France all by myself. 

Garlic Galore! 

SO! I have prepared the greens of the beet salad and am waiting for the beets to cool. When draining the juices from boiling the beets I was acting as if it were a biohazard... anything that touched the beet juice needed to be cleaned so that traces of red don't show up later. I still managed to stain our hand towel!  I'm also starting to prep the chicken recipe. Forty cloves of garlic. For future reference its about 2 1/2 garlic bulbs. I bought six thinking it wasn't going to be enough! I don't have a casserole dish with a fitted lid (as the recipe requires) so I'm going to try using my crock-pot pot. It is glass with a lid but its deep bowl shape has me wondering if I'm making a mistake. I will brown the chicken first in a pan on the stove and then transfer it to the crock-pot pot to finish off in the oven. We will see... 

11:30 AM

Fingers stained pink and new pink freckles on my lower arms from slicing beets. I think its unavoidable. 

12:15 PM 

All ingredients are measured out for easy assembly for the chicken recipe. As much as I like to spend an afternoon in the kitchen, I like seeing Joe more. Early prep allows for more maximum time together this afternoon. And evening. 

7:30 PM

Chicken nearing its last minute in the oven. I ended up using a large cooking pot instead of my crock pot for the chicken. 

Later that evening
Dinner turned out well. The garlic was creamy as the recipe promised and the salad was fantastic! I think we will have great leftovers for tomorrow as well, but for now we must rest and digest. A great feast to kick off fall weather and great company.

Finished Product
Ready for eating!