(All ideas are stolen from my host mother and the absolutely lovely soirée she had last saturday night with a few members of her family.)
The beginning: Champagne. I advise you to choose a champagne "brute", as opposed to "sec" or "demi-sec". This is heartily confusing because "sec" in French means dry, but a champagne sec is much sweeter than a champagne brute. Go figure. In any case, buy a good bottle of champagne, pour everyone a flute, and do a "cliquer", a toast, to whatever you would like to toast. If you can't think of anything, "santé!" is always a good choice. To health.
Appetizers: NO guacamole please. In fact, it is very important that your appetizers be extremely light and small. A small pan of bite size cocktail treats and a glass of thin breadsticks should do the trick.
First course: Soup. Make enough so that everyone gets two nice spoonfuls, but not enough to fill them up. A nice creamy soup is a good choice, like a squash soup or something similar. Serve with a sliced baguette -- if you want to be really authentic, break it with your hands. To drink, red wine. (Make sure you've put it in a decanter beforehand so it's nice and smooth).
Main course: Everyone should be absolutely finished with the soup before you bring out the main dish. The dish I'm suggesting comes from the South of France and is a very traditional meal. It is comprised of three things: cooked apples, a fresh eggy pasta, and a duck confit (fairly rare in the middle, more well done on the edges). The duck is eaten with a kind of creamy sauce -- if I had to guess I would say it somehow involves dijon mustard. The three are mixed or not, according to your preference. The wine glasses are kept half full (generally speaking they are never filled entirely).Another basket of bread is usually appreciated.
Cheese course: No French meal is complete with a cheese course. You don't want to buy too many different types of cheese, so go for a nice good camembert (President brand is usually good) and a chevre (goat cheese). Pair it with a somewhat more firm bread, sliced this time.
Dessert: Before you bring out dessert, ask if anyone wants coffee, "un petit café". This is usually served AFTER the dessert. For this, why not a "fruits rouges" crumble -- literally means "red fruits", but usually refers to berries. Blackberries, rhubarb, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries -- you can buy them frozen. They are probably cooked with some sort of gelatin and a lot of sugar, and then sprinkled with a crumble and baked until the crumble is crunchy and slightly brown, and the fruits are warm.
Coffee: By which I mean ESPRESSO. The French do NOT drink regular coffee after dinner. They don't usually have decaf, either, but fortunately the caffeine of the café is counteracted by the wine. Drink slowly.
The evening is finished off by finishing the wine and having a bit of mineral water. Of course I shouldn't have to mention that conversation is the key to any dinner party. Don't have too many guests -- 7 is a good number -- so everyone can feel included and participate in the conversation. In a cross culture setting, you can easily talk about the culture differences and gently poke fun at the others.
(As you can see, it was a wonderful evening. I apologize for my lack of posting. I would bore you with the details, but suffice to say, I just don't have a lot of free time and this epidemic is about to get worse in the coming weeks. Apologies in advance. I'll do my best)>
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