Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Let Them Eat Cake
Menu for State Dinner in Honor of His Excellency François Hollande, President of the French Republic, The White House, February 11, 2014:
First Course
American Osetra Caviar
Fingerling Potato Velouté, Quail Eggs, Crisped Chive Potatoes
Second Course
"The Winter Garden Salad"
Petite Mixed Radish, Baby Carrots, Merlot Lettuce
Red Wine Vinaigrette
Main Course
Dry-aged Rib Eye Beef
Jasper Hill Farm Blue Cheese, Charred Shallots, Oyster
Mushrooms, Braised Chard
Dessert
Hawaiian Chocolate-Malted Ganache
Vanilla Ice Cream and Tangerines
Wine
Morlet "La Proportion Doree" [sic, read Dorée] 2011
Napa Valley, California
Chester - Kidder Red Blend 2009
Columbia Valley, Washington
Thibaut-Jannison "Blanc de Chardonnay"
Monticello, Virginia
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove (tr. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin):
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American Osetra Caviar
Fingerling Potato Velouté, Quail Eggs, Crisped Chive Potatoes
Second Course
"The Winter Garden Salad"
Petite Mixed Radish, Baby Carrots, Merlot Lettuce
Red Wine Vinaigrette
Main Course
Dry-aged Rib Eye Beef
Jasper Hill Farm Blue Cheese, Charred Shallots, Oyster
Mushrooms, Braised Chard
Dessert
Hawaiian Chocolate-Malted Ganache
Vanilla Ice Cream and Tangerines
Wine
Morlet "La Proportion Doree" [sic, read Dorée] 2011
Napa Valley, California
Chester - Kidder Red Blend 2009
Columbia Valley, Washington
Thibaut-Jannison "Blanc de Chardonnay"
Monticello, Virginia
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove (tr. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin):
And at night they did not dine in the hotel, where, hidden springs of electricity flooding the great dining-room with light, it became as it were an immense and wonderful aquarium against whose wall of glass the working population of Balbec, the fishermen and also the tradesmen's families, clustering invisibly in the outer darkness, pressed their faces to watch, gently floating upon the golden eddies within, the luxurious life of its occupants, a thing as extraordinary to the poor as the life of strange fishes or molluscs (an important social question, this: whether the wall of glass will always protect the wonderful creatures at their feasting, whether the obscure folk who watch them hungrily out of the night will not break in some day to gather them from their aquarium and devour them).Related post: The Blessings of Plenty.
