Weekend Cooking: Bonne Annee!

Normally on the first Saturday of each month I wow you all with the goodies that I baked the previous month. However, that is not possible this week as I did not actually bake anything. The closest I came is putting together a trifle for Christmas dessert, which was interesting, as I had to use different cake, custard and jelly - whatever I could find in Dutch shops. We also sprinkled it with hagelslag which are fruit flavoured sprinkles. Normally you would have these on toast but they looked quite festive on the trifle

So if I don't have baking to talk about what else is there? Well, luckily I am currently on holiday in France and we had an amazing New Year's Eve dinner so I am going to share about that instead!

We spent the day of New Years Eve wandering around the town of St Malo, and then from there we went to Mont Saint Michel. Before we arrived in Mont Saint Michel we had reeived an email saying that there was a New Years Eve option available, but it wasn't until we arrived there that I gave that option some serious thought. However, I wanted to make sure we did something memorable in a memorable place so we decided to go to the event. Normally on New Years Eve we are at my sisters house or something like that. Or asleep well before midnight!

In order to book I had to go to the restaurant as it was so late in the day, and the guy in the restaurant wanted to be very sure that we understood what we were getting. He repeated several times that it was a French night with French music and locals. The other thing was that he didn't have enough lobster for us given we were only booking on the day so they would be coming up with something else.

Here is the menu from the event:

And here's what we ate

Miso en bouche - This was a trio of bit size treats. One was a fish mousse on a biscuit, one was foie grass and the other was oyster on a savoury custard type thing.

This was the course where most other people had lobster, but we had smoked salmon on a crab base. The crab was so good!

This was scallops in a seafood bisque - so delicious.

On the menu this is listed as  Le Feu Normand - which translates as The Fire Normand. I really wasn't sure what to expect. What it is is an apple granita to which a generous slug of calvados is added. It was quite strong. The idea is that it helps make room for the upcoming courses

This was two cuts of lamb. The racks were so tender and delicious.

By this point in the evening it was about 11.30 and we were absolutely stuffed! It felt as though I couldn't do this baked camembert justice. In the background you can see the little fruit toast biscuits which went so well with the cheese

And finally, well past midnight we got to the dessert - a mango mousse on a roasted pineapple ring with a passionfruit sauce hidden in the centre of the pineapple ring!

We had so much fun observing the people around us, and joining in when we knew the songs.  The huband even got up and had a dance with me!

I'm not sure where we will be on New Year's Eve this year, but there's every chance it won't be as memorable a this one was!

Did you have a memorable New Years Eve?

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