Around the Kitchen Table: OUR MEMORABLE MEALS Plus 6-Book #Giveaway

 

PEG COCHRAN/MARGARET LOUDON: What are your most memorable meals?

I’m sure we all have many memorable meals but do one or two immediately come to mind? For me, the first was a meal at a bistro in Paris where models, actors and ordinary people all went to dine and many sat at long, family style tables. We had a tiny table next to the window—so tiny that the waiter had to put the bread plate on the windowsill! We both had the lamb dish with potatoes and it was heavenly. It was terribly romantic—tucked into a corner where the window was slowly fogging up and the Paris streetlights winked outside. Here is a lamb dish for you to try.

The second was lunch in Praia dos Tres Irmaos in Portugal. The restaurant was hardly more than a shack on the beach where we sat outside on the balcony in our bathing suits and ate the crispiest French fries, grilled sardines and cataplana, a Portuguese seafood stew cooked in a copper pot. Here is a Portuguese soup for you to try.

Oh, and then there’s the lunch at a restaurant in Hong Kong where we were the only westerners and a group of school girls tried to teach us some words in Cantonese.

I could go on, but I’ll stop here. How about you? What meal stands out in your mind?

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MADDIE DAY: OMG, so many memorable meals! Peg, all yours sound fabulous and inspire me to also mention a few meals in other countries. I'll start with a churrasco when I was a 17 year-old exchange student in southern Brazil, with tons of grilled meats, nicely seasoned, eaten outdoors with toasted manioc meal and a caipirinha. 

A fresh-air seaside restaurant in Thessaloniki, Greece, lingering for hours with Greek friend Marios and a pal of his over grilled seafood and my favorite version of Greek salad, washed down with Retsina and Metaxa, hashing through politics and everything else. The salad recipe, which I learned from Marios, is here. 

Sitting on a low stool eating with my right hand out of a huge communal bowl of millet topped with vegetables in a sauce that included a few bits of chicken. My company was a group of traditional midwives way out in the bush in Mali, West Africa, and a white-haired Peace Corps volunteer who translated for me. 

I could also mention an elegant inn (ryokan) in-room breakfast in Japan, with delicate miso soup, a piece of grilled fish, rice, and pickles (trust me, it was delicious). An epic cheese-and-bread tasting in our apartment in Grenoble, France, with sulfite-free wine from a giant barrel in the wine store around the corner. Street tacos with just-caught fish in Baja California fifty years ago, washed down with a warm Tecate. A yummy traditional poutine in a Quebec village forty years ago when every village had their own poutine stand.

But I'll stop! 

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LESLIE BUDEWITZ: Peg, one of mine is in Paris, too! Don and I were there for the first time. We'd been to Pere Lachaise Cemetery, and were walking back to our hotel near the Place de la Bastille. I'd researched some restaurants and realized we were unexpectedly close to one, Bistro Paul Bert on Rue Paul Bert. So we found it, were seated at a tiny table on the sidewalk, and found ourselves rather rushed by our waiter to order. Turns out the kitchen was about to close and he had to get our orders in right way -- he didn't have time to tell us until after we'd ordered! Our Beouf Bourgignon came in a copper tureen, and was absolutely heavenly. We went back a couple of weeks later, after we returned from Provence, and I still remember the langoustines, and the flourless chocolate cake served with basil creme Anglaise. That trip turned us into cooks, and those meals were a big part of the reason.

But another meal I remember? The one where I met Mr. Right! Honestly, I have no idea what we ate -- it was a Chinese restaurant in the town where I worked, 30 miles from where the village where he (and now we) live, and a good meeting point for a blind date. As a friend of mine says about blind dates, "hey, it's only dinner -- and you never know." But I will tell you, at the end of that evening, we knew. :) 

Don and Leslie in front of the Louvre,
on a later trip -- January 2020

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MOLLY MACRAE: This is hard, Peg! But, after sifting through seven decades of good food memories, here are three I like an awful lot. First – all our lunch and supper picnics on Washington Island in Lake Michigan. That’s cheating, I know, but we spent our summers on the island and most of our days outside. More often than not we packed the big picnic basket with sandwiches and fruit and ate lunch and supper on the rocky beach. Everything tastes good on a rocky beach.

Beach picnic, July 1968

Next is Easter Sunday 1975. I was with a group of friends in the south of France, in the hills above Menton. We found a little restaurant open for lunch with outdoor seating. The weather was glorious, the view of the Mediterranean amazing. The meal was simple—bread and cheese, ham, mustard—but at the end of the meal we each had a blood orange. That piece of fruit was a revelation. It was gorgeous and completely delicious. Like eating the most beautiful sunset.  

There’s a theme here, because the third meal was also outside. My friend Eldrie and I walked a bit of Hadrian’s Wall one summer day in 1975. The remains of that ancient wall bisecting England could easily make you believe in time travel. As we ate our lunch, we imagined ourselves as Roman soldiers watching for raiders from the north. We ate hardboiled eggs, cheese, and Cox’s orange pippin apples. What a treat. What a great memory.   

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LIBBY KLEIN: Clearly there is a connection for each of us being foodies and our love of Paris. My most memorable meal was on the top of the Eiffel Tower for my 20th wedding anniversary. My husband surprised me with the trip and I was over the moon with excitement. He'd booked the Jules Verne restaurant, and it was the first time in my life I'd been asked how I wanted my duck cooked. I answered wrong apparently - do not say well done. It's not like chicken. The waiter asked me in his snootiest tone, "So, you want it dry and tough, eh?" I asked him what he would recommend and apparently that was the key to his approval. After that we became fast friends-ish. The meal was amazing. Duck à l’Orange and Crème Brûlée. I think it could have been peanut butter and jelly I would still have loved it.

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KORINA MOSS: I've had lots of memorable meals in lots of amazing places, most of which I didn't take (or can't find) photos of. But a meal I do have photos of is memorable to me for it's simplicity, deliciousness, and for the great time we had. It was at The 50s Primetime Café in Hollywood Studios at Disney World. Its decor and menu is kitchy1950s, and the servers will playfully yell at you if you're on your cell phones -- you have to play the part! My son loved the old fashioned decor. 

The 50s decor

We had the dining plan for our trip, which meant every meal we got entrees, desserts, and drinks. At this place, the drinks included milkshakes, so of course, we ordered milkshakes -- one was a peanut butter and jelly milkshake. Interesting and surprisingly good. Then he got fried chicken and I had a pot pie, which was spectacular. I LOVE a good pot pie. I usually like it with a regular pie crust, but the pot pie filling was so perfect, I didn't mind that it was more of a popover crust. And even though we were stuffed to the gills, we ordered the included dessert, which was the best pineapple upside down cake I've ever had. (Possibly the best dessert I've ever had.) It was made the old fashioned way -- in a can-shaped mold. (I guess housewives used to make them in tin cans in the 50s?) You get the delicious brown sugar caramelization around the entire piece of cake. I wish I'd started with dessert! Luckily, we'd gone for lunch and had a lot of walking to do afterward. I doubt we ate for the rest of the day. 

milkshakes, potpie, and
pineapple upside down cake

 

 

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MAYA CORRIGAN: We had several memorable meals while visiting our daughter in Valencia, Spain, where she was studying for a semester. Paella, a dish that originated in Valencia, was what we ate most often. The classic paella valenciana combines rice with meat (chicken, rabbit, and sometimes snails) and vegetables (butterbeans, flat green beans, and artichokes when in season). We also enjoyed paella de mariscos, which combines different shellfish, sometimes with other fish and usually without vegetables. Making the meals more memorable was sharing them with three generations of our family: our daughter, our teenage son, and my husband's recently widowed mother, then 80 years old. 

Though not the classic paella, I posted a recipe for a quick and easy shrimp paella. 

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CLEO COYLE:  Because our beloved parents and grandparents are gone now, both Marc and I are sentimental about our most memorable meals. Both took place during our childhoods. Mine was a Thanksgiving feast with my big Italian-American family, where homemade Italian foods (from wedding soup and gnocchi to pizzelle and biscotti) were served right along with traditional American Turkey and pumpkin pie. Marc’s most memorable meal took place one Christmas eve, when his family served him the traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes. "As the oldest grandson," Marc told me, "I sat at the adult’s table for the first time, beside my cousin Loretta. We listened to their conversation—some of it in Italian—and shared a wee bit of wine and a drop of after-dinner anisette." 

As for the menu, Marc’s grandmother was a poor orphan from Naples, but (as he put it) "she could have been a master chef." The seven seafood dishes she served that night were: (1) shrimp cocktails with white garlic sauce, (2) savory fritters with anchovies; (3) smelts; (4) baccàla (dried and salted cod) in red sauce; (5) calamari, coated with seasoned flour and fried "to perfection." (Marc remembered the tentacles resembling "dried flower blossoms" though his cousin Loretta was "thoroughly grossed out by them!") The main course included (6) a whole fresh cod, stuffed with crabmeat, and finally (7) fried shrimp coated with a breading that included Italian herbs and parmesan cheese. Marc and I still make and enjoy that wonderful “Italian-fried shrimp.” We love it so much that we shared our recipe and tips with our readers via one of our most popular Coffeehouse Mystery characters (see link above or below). Here's wishing you all many memorably delicious meals! ~ Cleo 

Click here (or on photo above) for Cleo's recipe.

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LESLIE KARST: My most memorable meal would absolutely be the dinner I finagled my way into hosting for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her charming husband Marty, my parents, my wife, and five US Marshals (who camped out in my parents' den during the meal). You can read all about it in my memoir, Justice is Served: A Tale of Scallops, the Law, and Cooking for RBG. But I will tell you that the dishes included scallops (of course), roasted butternut squash soup, and seared ahi with wasabi mashed potatoes. (Ruth didn't eat red meat, hence all the seafood). 
 

The dinner--and the months of angsting and fretting beforehand--were both stressful and supremely exciting, but I could never have imagined just what an impact it would have on my later life. Read the book to learn just why. 😁

 

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GIVEAWAY!

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✨ Giveaway Prize Package ✨

SCONE COLD DEAD Maddie Day 

BULLETPROOF BARISTA by Cleo Coyle 

A DEADLY DEDICATION by
Margaret Loudon (Peg Cochran) 

THERE'LL BE SHELL TO PAY 
(advance reading copy) by Molly MacRae 

JUSTICE IS SERVED: A TALE OF SCALLOPS, THE LAW, AND COOKING FOR RBG by Leslie Karst 

HOUNDING A KILLER
by Kallie E. Benjamin (V.M. Burns)

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