Dear Friends,
During the time that we have been coming to Villefranche, we have met many wonderful people whom we are lucky to call our friends. Even though we have a healthy fear of COVID, we try to meet with these friends outside or in small groups. The other day, we had a dinner party to which we invited 4 friends. We had a wonderful time.
One of the fun parts of having a dinner party is planning, buying the food for and cooking the dinner. Readers of this blog may remember an ill-fated dinner party a couple of years ago that is now universally referred to as the flying chicken dinner party when I let the chicken provençal fly out of the oven and onto the floor. That history is recorded here. Since this was our first dinner party since the fly chicken dinner party, we wanted it to be successful.
After planning the meal, we headed to Nice to do the shopping. Our first stop was the Cours Saleya. It is a wonderful market in Nice, known for its produce as well as flowers.
The only problem is which of the many stands, you should buy from. They are all fantastic. If you try to figure out which one has the best tomatoes that day at the best price and then who has the best artichokes at the best price and then who has the best raspberries at the best price, you will go crazy. Unlike the much smaller Saturday market in Villefranche where we go every Saturday and have our favorite vendors, we are just occasional visitors to Cours Saleya, so we have no favorite vendors. You really cannot go wrong.
After we got all the produce we needed, we headed off to find cheeses for the cheese course. We came upon a fromagerie that we think was fairly new because we had not seen it before.
The owner was very welcoming and professional. He took time with us, both by speaking French all the time and by explaining our different choices. We told him we wanted three cheeses for a cheese course. He suggested a creaming cow cheese (Saint Félicien fermier lait cru), a less creamy chèvre (Rouelle) and a hard cheese (comté). We also got some roquefort too because you can't really stop in a cheese shop and not get some roquefort. Here is a photo of the owner explaining our choices to us.
Our next stop was a wine shop. There is plenty of wine for sale in Villefranche but no real wine shop. So we stopped at a Nicolas shop in Nice. It is a chain wine shop in France, but very good.
I know something about French wines, but I have no idea about which vineyard, etc. The person who helped us was perfect, he understood what we wanted, didn't try to sell us anything grossly expensive and spoke french too. We got some champagne that was bottled under the Nicolas name. It was great. We then got some Chablis and some red Burgundy. Both were on sale which put them in our price range. All of them were great. It is so nice when the people helping you are trying to get you what you want and can afford.
That concluded our shopping for Nice. We were hungry, and it was close to lunch time, so we decided to have a quick lunch at Chez Papa, one of our favorites for lunch in Nice. Unfortunately, it was closed; but as is often the case there is a suitable alternative nearby. We saw Posto 17 just down the block and thought we would give it a try.
They weren't quite open yet, but the owner welcomed us. The only menu for food was on the blackboard. You can see the prices are quite reasonable.
Jane and I each ordered the rigatoni sauce tomate maison - burrata. It was perfect for a quick lunch. When Jane asked him what was in the homemade tomato sauce, he almost gave her the entire recipe.
There was a separate menu for drinks. I only include it here because from time to time we come across translations or the use of English words that are not quite right. If you look under Cocktails, the next to the last drink is "Sex on the Beatch". We thought that was a unique spelling.
Jane finished with a noisette (espresso with a small amount (a nut) of milk). At this restaurant it came with a small cookie which served to keep the drink warm - another cute touch.
We felt a little like pack horses as we made our way home. When we arrived we were faced with the issue of where to put everything that we had acquired.
We found room for everything although the refrigerator was overflowing.
All of that shopping was on a Sunday. The party was Monday night. On Monday morning, we headed to Beaulieu to get the chicken. Yes, we were trying chicken again, but this time it was chicken Lucia on the grill with less chance of flying chicken. The final stop on for our shopping was at our favorite boulangerie, Chez Marie-Claire. Chez Marie-Claire is not far from our apartment. She has of course bread, baguettes and pastries. But she also has wine, eggs, butter and sandwiches. Here is a picture of Marie-Claire as she was packaging the cake we had bought for the party.
The cake was absolutely beautiful, but we forgot to take a picture of it. The taste of the cake was even better than its beautiful presentation. This picture of the last piece shows what a perfect cake it was.
The crust is a light chocolate graham cracker. The light brown filling is a chocolate pots de creme (only lighter than what we usually make), the next comes a thin layer of something like blueberry syrup that is the consistency of jam, followed by a layer of a light, fluffy layer of blueberry pots de creme and a top layer of blueberry icing. The great thing was that all the calories had been removed.
We finished the meal with a small glass of "menthe". The best way to describe what we refer to as menthe is to think of limoncello only made with mint. Our favorite local restaurant here, Le Serre, offers limoncello after dinner, but sometimes if Marie has had a good crop of mint, Sylvie will turn it into menthe. Fortunately for us Marie had a good crop of mint, so we were able to buy a bottle of menthe from her to serve at the dinner party. While we made a pretty good dent in it we did not finish it off so we can have some for ourselves from time to time.
In the end a good time was had by all, and thankfully our French lesson for Tuesday morning was cancelled.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
For the chicken we went to our favorite butcher in Beaulieu. He is a young man and takes his time with us and is a true butcher. Unfortunately, I did not get a photo.
The last thing on our list was bread and dessert. For that we had to go to our favorite baker in Villefranche. We got a couple of baguettes for the cheese course and a beautiful chocolate and blueberry cake.
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