“For starters, I have a great weakness for little bites that don’t leave me stuffed before the main event. The idea is to serve something provocative, to coax the appetite, to develop a tantalizing unrequited hunger, not to satiate it.” – Frank Stitt’s Southern Table
“Have some wine,’ the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. ‘I don’t see any wine,’ she remarked.
‘There isn’t any,’ said the March Hare.” – from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
Amboise and the Loire River
“At my dinner parties, I like to serve cheese after the main course because you still have red wine in the glass, and it goes very well with the cheese. And that is what they do in France, and I think they set a good example.” – Mary Berry, British food writer and judge on The Great British Bake Off
London in December
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on, our troubles will be out of sight” – written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane (listen to the original Judy Garland version HERE)
The Chateau d’Amboise overlooking the Loire River.
“In France, we have a saying, ‘Joie de vivre,’ which actually doesn’t exist in the English language. It means looking at your life as something that is to be taken with great pleasure and enjoy it.” – Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women Don’t Get Fat
“What do you mean you cooked the turkey, Charlie? You put our national bird in the oven. We had our mouths all set for roast eagle with all the trimmings.
It’s kinda scrawny isn’t it?
Yeah well, I thought I would stuff some old bread in it and make it look a little fatter….” – excerpts from Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America Volume One: The Early Years, recorded by Capitol Records in 1961.
“I would take them all to my home and cook them a grand Perigord meal. We’d start with a soup made from a duck’s carcass. We’d then go on to an omelette au touffe with eggs from my own chickens and truffles from the hillside near our home. I would cook Aiguillette de canard, using a thin strip of meat just below the breast. I would cook it with mustard seeds and honey. I would add to that, pommes sarladaise, which are potatoes thinly sliced and cooked in duck fat, with garlic, parsley, and truffles. It would all be done in the Perigord style.
And the wines?
The white wine would be a Bergerac sec from Chateau Jaubertie. Then I would offer everyone a deeply robust 2005 Chateau de Tiregand. It’s made by a friend of mine in the village. Oh, and I’d also serve some foie gras. I would serve it with a glass of chilled sweet wine, Monbazillac from Chateau de Tirecul. It’s something akin to Sauternes. I would finish it off with some cheese, of course.” – from The Resistance Man by Martin Walker
“Cassoulet is the God of the Occitan cuisine. The Castelnaudary version is God the Father, the Carcassonne recipe is God the Son, and the Toulousain is the Holy Spirit.” – Prosper Montagné, Le Festin Occitan. 1929
“For dedicated gastronomes, northern Italy’s promise of Slow Food, long lunches, and bold red wines is too good to pass up.” – Travel & Leisure Magazine
The Cathedral of San Lorenzo
“The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you’re hungry again.” – George Miller, Director
