The best meal I've ever eaten was in a teeny restaurant on a cobbled street of Montmarte, Paris. This highly esteemed dish was provencal style chicken casserole with Dauphinoise potatoes and green beans. Gorgeous, garlicy, creamy deliciousness so good that five years later I still remember how it tasted. Last Saturday I decided to treat the boy to an epic home made meal inspired by this French classic, with my interpretation of this dish.
After a quick google I decided I was feeling confident enough to pretty much make up this recipe as I went along! Some suggested I added olives but as I can't stand them I decided to leave them out.
In the end the ingredients I decided on for the casserole were:
- 4 de-boned chicken thighs
- 3 sausages (the variety I had were mysteriously labelled 'herb' flavour. An Aldi special)
- 1 onion
- 1 red pepper
- a shed load of garlic (I lost count after a while. May have been a whole bulb...)
- splash of white wine (I used whatever was left in the fridge but think any dry variety would work)
- tin of chopped tomatoes
- handful of green beans
I loosely stuck to a BBC food recipe for the Dauphinoise as I'd never made them before so for these I used:
- 3 baking potatoes
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 300ml double cream
(Serves one hungry Francophile and one greedy rugby player.)
Carnations optional
I started off by pre-heating the oven to 160C and heating some oil in a large pan. I popped the sausages and chicken thighs in to brown while I chopped the pepper and onion.
Once the beans were looking a bit neater I transferred all the ingredients from the pan into a casserole dish, then topped it up with a bit of water and dropped the beans on top. Lid on and into the oven it went.
After an hour of trying not to spy in the oven I opened the door to the amazing site of a perfectly golden, bubbling dish of potatoes and the smell of garlic heaven that took me all the way back to that Montmartre restaurant.
Needless to say that when I dished this up to the boy he was hugely impressed. The potatoes were amazing but the casserole, while it was delicious, wasn't a patch on my 'best meal ever'. Guess there's only one thing for it. I'll have to go straight back to Paris for recipe research!
What's your best ever food memory? Let me know in the comments or on twitter!
I'm gone to convey my little brother, that he should also pay a visit this weblog on regular basis to take updated from hottest news. all of craigslist
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