Spending a Night In Paris at Home

The other night we had some friends over for dinner and a movie. Since both of us have really fond memories of Paris we decided t make this a French evening. It included some really amazing French wine, food and watching the movie "Midnight in Paris" on the big screen.

Last summer we found some really delicious wines from Michel Chapoutier who is a winemaker and distributor from the Rhone region of France.  But before we could embark on the dedication of my new addition to the Man Cave: a Tim McGraw autographed guitar.

I got the guitar in a silent auction for one of my clients. I was trying to bid it up a little higher.  I wasn't sure that I won anything but the name "Mark Love" showed on the screen. Not taking any chances, I discovered that I now have a stage name!

In order to dedicate the guitar in the new "Wall of Fame" location I was told that I needed to have some Tim McGraw music playing. Not being a country music fan, I don't have any country music on my iPod or Kindle. Luckily my friend Kellie found something appropriate on YouTube.

For dinner I tried to find something appropriately French but perhaps not too difficult. To do that I looked to one of my favorite TV chefs, Laura Calder.  She's not French but from the French part of Canada.  I've found her shows to be really insightful.  So the two items I selected were a goat cheese dip for crudite (cut up veggies) and mussels.

The mussels are first steamed in Pernod. I never had Pernod before but it's a licorice flavored liquor. This gives the mussels an amazing start. The mussels are then laid out on a tray on the half shell.

This is followed by creating a compound butter made with tarragon and chives. A dot of this compound butter is then put on each mussel.  This was perhaps the hardest part of the whole process.

Apparently my hands give off a lot of heat because the butter was melting before I could get a bit on the mussel.  This was followed by some panko crumbs on each and then under the broiler for a few minutes until they're completely done.

All I can say is they turned out unbelievable. This went beautifully with the goat cheese dip. This was unbelievably simple to make. You start with 12 ounces of goat cheese and cream it. Then you add some milk that was boiled with rosemary. Normally I'm not a huge fan of rosemary because it can overpower the flavors.  In this case it didn't.  Add the zest and juice of one lemon and you have a fabulous dip.

It's got the freshness of the lemon which balances the goat cheese.  This worked really well with cherry tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, orange peppers, and celery.  I thought tonight as I was having leftovers that it would work well with mushrooms, too.

Guess what? I was right.  It worked really well with fresh baby bella mushrooms.

My friend Kellie brought the French bread and a Brie en Croute with roasted onions.  Outrageously delicious. Our first wine of the evening was a Cotes-du-Rhone from M. Chapoutier. This $11 wine beats many that I've had at twice the price.

It's 60% Grenache and 40% Syrah.  We had some experience with this wine last summer when we were preparing for the picnic challenge at Ravinia.  It really is a wonderful wine at a very reasonable price.

I stopped at Binny's earlier in the day to select the wines.  I find that a little hard to understand when I have a houseful of really good wines from some dynamite wine producers mostly from various regions in California and Oregon.

Our second wine was another wine from Michel Chapoutier.  This bottle was Occultum Lapidem from Domaine de Bila-Haut. This wine was rated a 90 from Robert Parker. It comes from the Cotes-du-Roussillon Villages region of France -- just on the border of the Rhone valley.  This bottling comes from a vineyard that is planted to Grenache, Syrah and Carignan.

This was a richer wine. The addition of the Carignan changes the flavor profile significantly. It was a really rich wine and matched the food really well.

The night was finished with some macaroons from Trader Joe's. Wow. They took me back to Rue Cler in Paris with the flavors. It was about time to start the movie. In many ways "Midnight in Paris" is a typical Woody Allen movie but it was well cast with Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams.

It's a movie that plays out on many different levels. You have the character played by Owen Wilson dreaming of the magic years of the 20's and you have the character played by Marion Cotillard (one of my all time favorite actresses!) who lives int eh 20's but wants to live in the Belle Epoch.

It was during the movie that we ran out of the Bila-Haute and I opened up a bottle of wine from one of my absolute favorite wineries -- Frick Winery. This small winery in the Dry Creek Valley produces some of the best Rhone-style wines this side of the Atlantic.

The Garibaldi comes from the historic Garibaldi vineyard named for Bill Frick's mother-in-law. This is a traditional field blend where the grapes are harvested and fermented together. This particular blend includes Carignane, Grenache, Muscat Blanc, Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Valdeque, Mission, Palomino, and Burger are some of the varieties in this blend.  No one varietal makes up 15% of the blend.

This is a dandy little wine that starts with cherry, berry, vanilla and raspberry aromas. It's a full, round wine that finishes with fruit and vanilla flavors. What a wonderful way to end the evening. Perhaps it's time again to take a walk in the rain in Paris.