I was Ernest's helper for the starter dish. Nicole was in charge of the main dish and dessert.
They liked natural light in the house. When they switched on the artificial lights somewhere, you knew that they must be in the kitchen as they spent a lot of time there.
When the guests arrived at twelve noon, they were invited to sit on the sofas to have appetizers. Crisps and peanuts were served in bowls that we passed around. Sweet wines were poured into our glasses that we clinked with one another. The French couples had specially taken out their bottle of Porto, a famous Portuguese wine, for their Portuguese French friends. And the topics of our chatting were anything, from nonsense to something serious. That lasted at least one hour!
That reminded me of that unforgettable weekend with the Toitot, my first invitation by a French family, in Neuves-Granges. The snack session had been so long that I had assumed that French people were too stingy to serve their guests other food than crisps and peanuts for lunch. I had kept throwing those foods into my mouth to pacify my hungry stomach, before I realized that was the prelude of the real meal.
This time, knowing that heavy dishes was going to be served later, I nibbled the junk food with more moderation. And finally, we were asked to move to the dining table.
The starter dish was a combination of grated apples, carrots, onions and crab sticks. The mixture was seasoned with salt and mayonnaise, moulded into small cups and then poured upside down on the plate. Ernest and Nicole had learnt the recipe and the presentation from other friends once they had been invited. Ernest creatively put a black olive on top of it and decorated the plate with salmon, hairy leaves of fennel, slices of cucumber and salad leaves with a dark sauce.
We received a lot of compliments from the guests.
Ernest and Nicole generously shared with their guests some goat cheese that David and Edith had just brought back from their trip in Portugal. It was accompanied by olive oil, chopped garlic and anchovy.
While the guests were savouring the artistic dish, Ernest went back to the kitchen to grill some duck meat that he had bought in packets from the supermarket. Nicole took out her lasagna, one of my favorite Italian foods, from the oven. After awhile, Ernest served the succulent meat cut into slices to eat with Dijon mustard.
The dish rich in protein and carbohydrate was so delicious that I almost swallowed my own tongue! Too bad I could not then master the functions of my digital camera that I had just obtained a few days before my flight. I was not able to shoot clear images when there was not enough light. As a result, I had to delete many pictures of the dishes that I had taken.
The following items of the menu of the day were salad leaves again, and a variety of cheese. Actually my stomach was already full, but out of gluttony I still tried a little bit of every type of the cheese on the table. With red wine, the tastiness of cheese was highlighted.
My greediness did not stop there. As the French say, "A meal without the dessert is not complete, and there is always a little space in the stomach for it." When Nicole's rhubarb tart was placed in front of me three and a half hours after the snacks, I still had the strong desire of having a bite even though I could feel my jeans tightened.
Ernest brewed some Arabian coffee and cut pieces of candied ginger, offered by their Chinese friend Ke, to end the marathon lunch. To help the digestion, we drove to a tourist attraction nearby to have a walk. When we came back from the visit, Ernest and Nicole again persuaded their guests to stay for dinner.
To make my description short, part of the leftover of the lasagna was turned into a soup in a saucepan by simply adding water and cooking it and blending it with a machine. That was the secret recipe from Ernest's mother.
This "light" dish served as main dish, was accompanied by salad and cheese during the second round of tiring the stomach, chatting and showing videos from eight o'clock onwards.
When the guests said goodbye, the kitchen clock was showing ten again.
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