Rustic French Christmas dining

How do you top the awesome Christmas Eve meal from last night? Wash rinse repeat.

Centerpiece of seasonal flowers.

We started lunch with fresh shellfish and champagne. Starting with seafood seems to be the common trend here. While we only had oysters the previous night, this day we also had clams. Personally, I like fresh clams over oysters as they are a little sweeter.

Foie gras, pistachios and champagne as well.

Cheese and bread.

The main course for lunch was roast chicken. Sounds boring and dry? No, it wasn't.

MTB has a penchant for making cooking look so simple. Well, actually, it was pretty darn simple. Throw the whole chicken in the oven, top it with a couple pads of butter, season and bake.
I bet if I did this at home, it'd be the driest thing since jerky, but somehow the chicken was moist and juicy. We drizzle chicken jus and butter sauce on the plain rice and chicken. This is the epitome of casual, rustic French cooking. It's simple yet the flavors were there and the cooking was on point. And I liked how it was merely served with white rice as the chicken didn't need any other sides.

For Christmas dinner, we had boudin blanc.

The boudin blanc was a veal and truffle sausage, served with white rice. The sausage was lean and light, which was a nice change from the heavy meal we had the night before. Once again, it was so simple and the saltiness from the sausage was sufficient to flavor the white rice

And with the meal, we had.. did I say more wine? And cheese? And foie? Dejavu? Oui Oui.