French Night At The Nook On The Square

It's that time of year again when love is in the air!
It did make me smile as I walked into Tesco last Saturday morning and watched several men frantically buying bunches of roses and flowers at the entrance. It's totally commercial and thousands are spent by the public each February 14th.
With this in mind, our supper club this month at The Nook had a French theme and was moved from the beginning of the month to February 13th, Valentine's Eve!
Once again hard work, a sell out AND a great success with several compliments on the food.
So here's a few photos from the evening.

 The back room in The Nook looked very romantic with soft lighting and roses on the tables.

 

 

A little look at the front room. 

 

Here's the menu  

 

 

Starters 

 

French onion pate served with gruyere pastry biscuits.

I was really impressed with the pate. I caramelised the onions for over an hour to get a beautiful sweet flavour before blending with cream cheese and beef stock. I also made a vegetarian version with vegetable stock

 

 

Mixed salad with pancetta, croutons and poached egg.

 

 

 

 

French Lavender, Red Onion, Goats Cheese Tart.  

 

 

 

Mains

 

Beef Cheek Bourguignon

Beautiful melt in the mouth beef that was marinated and treated for 3 days prior to the event and tasted out of this world.

 

                   Chicken Supreme served in Wholegrain Mustard and    Tarragon Cream Sauce

 

 

Ratatouille Tart Tartin

 

 

 

                                                                      Desserts

                                                                  Apple Roses

Great tutorial for this very easy puff pastry and apple dish can be found HERE on Cooking With Manuela.

Mixed Berry Clafoutis

This is a traditional baked French dessert with fruit, usually cherries but I used mixed berries, covered with a thick, flan like batter. I used a Julia Childs recipe and boy what a lovely dessert.

Baked French Chocolate Tart

 

We're popping to Mexico in March and already fully booked !!

 

Linking up this week at:

 

Foodie Fridays and Everything Else

Sweet and Simple Fridays