Sept 21st
25 days to go
We've finally had the tasting session for our wedding breakfast. Compared to most people, I've left it quite late. I've come to realise that many brides in the UK start planning up to two years in advance, which means that they've often selected their menu six months before it's actually due to be served. For me a month before seems adequate, especially for a menu that's supposed to be seasonal. But things seem to be a little different that I'd expected when it comes to weddings in the UK, even down to calling your meal a "breakfast" regardless of the time of day it's served. According to one of the wedding web boards I’ve found myself on recently, the first meal of one’s married life is always breakfast. But then the people who’ve told me this also insist that referring to married women as Mrs John Smith is "traditional and correct," so I have to wonder if they've actually looked into it very deeply.
The chef at our venue, Coq d'Argent, is very, very French. In fact, everything about the standard menu is very French, from the terrine of foie gras heading up the starters to the tarte citron punctuating the desserts. When I first met Michel at the start of August, my request for a very seasonal menu was met with a nonplussed shrug and a firm declaration: “Madam, I would never serve anything un-seasonal.” Therefore, our conversation ended up being mainly about the foods I did NOT want to serve: chicken, salmon, and especially smoked salmon. Although I enjoy all of those foods, Barry and I are at the tail end of the “wedding wave” in our peer group, which means that over the past few years we have eaten smoked salmon followed by supreme of chicken in more formats that I’d ever dreamed possible. Not that I can really blame our hosts for choosing such fail-safe dishes - when you’re serving dinner to 60+ people, it would be a cruel host who would insist on andouillette all round – but when you can count on eating them three times every summer between the ages of 27 and 32 they lose a certain something.
So our tasting menu was comprised of three choices of three chicken & salmon-free courses, complete with wine, coffee and petit-fours.
First up, the starters:
Fish soup
Duck consumme en croute
Crab ravioli with olive oil and slow-roasted tomatoes
When we first discussed the starters a month ago, I was feeling pretty uninspired by them. The most interesting sounding one to me was the duck consumme, as its promised sprinkling of chopped truffle and puff of pastry indicated a potentially elegant and restrained first course. Second in my rankings came the crab ravioli, in spite of my inherent mistrust of pasta in French restaurants. And finally, trailing several lengths behind, came the fish soup. Well, just think about seeing it printed up on your menu: fish soup. Bo-oring.
We were told we’d be given each of the starters as they’d be plated on the day, followed by the mains to share between us. “Don’t finish everything,” warned Angela, our co-ordinator, “or you’ll never make it to dessert.”
The maligned fish soup appeared first, and it immediately confounded our low expectations. It proved to be a fine example of the southern classic. Between the fun of playing with the rouille & croutons and my lack of lunch earlier in the day, I found the unfancied fish soup difficult to leave alone.
Next up was the duck consumme en croute. As expected, it looked fantastic – golden, rounded, and begging to be broken open. Upon doing so, the anticipated gush of steamy aroma was as heady as I’d hoped. But alas, the flavour didn’t follow through on its promise. Beside me, Barry poked at soggy pastry fragments with a mournful expression. “It’s like overcooked pasta, but slipperier,” he sighed, and I knew then that the consumme had bombed dramatically.
After the visual thrill of the first two offerings, our final starter felt like a return to classic wedding breakfast territory: a plain white pasta bowl, filled with around eight large ravioli, doused with lovely green olive oil and dotted with tomatoes. Upon slicing into one of the parcels, I discovered a peachy-pale crab filling that proved too delicately flavoured to stand up to the weight of the pasta. There wasn’t anything specifically wrong with the dish, but it didn’t stand out particularly.
The mains:
Confit of duck with puy lentils and bacon
Braised lamb shank with butter beans and chorizo
Rack of lamb with fondant potato and rosemary reduction
Once again, I was all a-tingle with anticipation for the duck dish. Confit of duck is one of my great favourites, and I was also confident that I could put it in front of almost everyone without fist fights breaking out over how cooked it ought to be. But sadly, duck doesn’t appear to be one of Michel’s strong points. It had a lovely crisp skin, and it was appropriately moist, but where was my cured confit flavour? It could have been chicken in duck's clothing. On its dark bed of wine-braised lentils, the meat couldn’t hold its own. Nul points for the duck, again.
The lamb shank was a vast improvement. Sticky, rich and complimented by butter beans and chorizo, it also matched the cheaper of the red wines we’d selected to try with our mains. “I think this might be the one,” I’d started to mutter to my Intended, when suddenly the rack of lamb landed next to my right elbow and threw everything into disarray.
It wasn’t fashionable, spectacular in presentation, or even particularly unusual – but it was great nonetheless. The meat was flavourful and baby pink. The crust was crisp & mustard-y. The sauce was refined, balanced and suited to the lamb it accompanied. With a fondant potato and pile of tarragon-scented green beans on the side, it was simple and well executed. I was so pleased I utterly forgot about the possibility that a few guests might panic at the sight of meat any pinker than an oak sideboard.
We were definitely full by now, and we still had dessert to go. Both of these arrived at once.
Desserts:
Apple tart
Chocolate fondant with Tokaji ice cream
Again, I was determined to avoid cliché and therefore was against the fondant. How many miserable posts from pastry chefs have I read, bemoaning the fad for chocolate fondant at banquets? But again, my first impressions were proven wrong. The fondant was good, and the ice cream – spiked with my favourite dessert wine – was a perfect foil for it. The tart was fine, but no match for it.
So we’ve now set our menu:
Fish soup with rouille and croutons
Rack of lamb with rosemary reduction and fondant potato
Chocolate fondant with Tokaji ice-cream
Now we just need to finalise the wines. Later in the evening, a buffet of cheeses, charcuterie, hommous, nuts and crudités will be wheeled out, along with the sliced wedding cake.
Another thing off the to-do list. Thank heavens.
