Bastille Day Pot Luck

For Bastille Day the Ann Arbor Culinary Historians had a summer potluck meal. The theme was food from the French provinces. The approximately 36 attendees lived up to the challenge, bringing foods from a large number of provinces as well as from the Paris region. Each person or couple introduced the food they had prepared, and later there was a quiz about the place of origin of a long list of regional French dishes.

Len baked a Pissaladiére -- a Provençal onion tart named for a type of anchovy
preparation (pissalade) that was once popular in Nice. Black olives, anchovies,
and a great quantity of caramelized onions top a yeast-dough crust.

Simone Beck's Salade du Broc was my contribution. It contains tomato, arugula,
artichoke hearts, bell pepper, olives. and a hard-boiled egg garnish.
Simone Beck, a collaborator with Julia Child, also published two of her
own cookbooks which have very interesting recipes.

Jan Longone, one of the founding members of the Culinary Historians, brought a Salade Niçoise. In this photo,
she is adding the dressing. She and her husband Dan also supplied the table decoration: a statue of Bibendum,
the figurehead of the Michelin guides.

I was very interested in the cookbooks cited as sources for these many and varied foods. The Time-Life cookbook of provincial French foods, books by Patricia Wells, online cookbooks, Julia Child and More Company, and a number of others provided the recipes. A few more of the many dishes:

Chicken Normandy with calvados and cream. Delicious!

A superb vegetable gratin made by our friend Howard.

Provençal Roast Tomatoes and a corner of another,
different Salade Niçoise.

A liver mousse in the shape of a frog.

Champigonons à la Grecque.

Green bean salad, gougères (cheese puffs), and hand-made bread.

The desserts were really scrumptious! Here: mini-pavlovas (which under that name, actually originated in New Zealand,
but that's not important now) with a fruit topping. The recipe was in a book titled Potagers.

An apple tarte. This was gone before I arrived at the dessert table.

Coeur à la creme. There are two here: one from a French recipe, and the
other from a Betty Crocker recipe. I only tried the French one.

A fruit plate. Welcome with all the heavy food.

At the table -- including my inadvertent selfie.

I'm sending this post as a contribution to the ongoing blog event "Paris in July," hosted at the blog Thyme for Tea (link). All content and all photos are copyright by Mae at maefood dot blogspot.com. If you are reading this at another blog, it's been stolen.