My friends, I am sad to say that I am now fatter than ever. Because I consumed too much good food over Christmas.
Originally I planned a real simple meal. Like chicken curry and noodles. Then I saw Wai Fun make confit de canard at home and it looked quite easy so we bought two ducks and threw in a few legs for good measure. We would fry that up, shred it and roll it in pancakes like the best of Chinese restaurants in London. I had already procured a can of foie gras at the market but remembered that we had invited husband's colleague, and reasoned that the small jar could not feed us, C and my two cousins. So I bought another jar, a bigger one. Passing by the patisseries I was seduced by the buche de noels (French for log cakes) and bought two because I couldn't decide on just one. And then I was thinking how V loves ham and all sorts of processed meats and rationalised myself to a Bellota Bellota outlet to buy 200g of pata negra, the seductive ham from the black-footed pigs of Iberico.
Christmas eve, I decided the table needs some decoration so we took out the el cheapo paper napkins we bought on promotion at Tang Freres and looked up ways to fold napkins. We now know how to make 'birds of paradise', and it may not be crisp Frette squares but the end result looked festive enough.
The lunch started with pata negra and Charles Heidsick 1996 vintage, then we moved on to foie gras with toast and a Domaine Cauhape 2003 Jurançon and then crispy duck pancakes accompanied by a Lagrezette 1996 Cahor. The lunch proper was pork ribs braised with wine lees that my friend J kindly sent over from Singapore by way of her visiting friend- the jar was not able to come to us because of the November strikes and the poor girl fell down the stairs so in the end we had to drive over to her campus to take said jar home. J, if you are reading this, thanks very much!! Coloured a vivid scarlet and not as sweet as Andrew's version, the lees married just as well with pork ribs and the dish went great with some vegetables and rice.
By then, everyone was near comatose with so we took time out to watch Shaolin Soccer on DVD. Me, I played Scrabulous on Facebook, there were surprisingly many people online on that festive day too. After tackling the cheeses and the three log cakes- cousins had brought along a beautiful showstopper from Ladurée- we dragged ourselves out to watch the lights along Avenue Montaigne and Champs Elysée and again bumped into hordes of people who had the same idea.
Thus marks our first Christmas in Parisland. Cheers!
