A food-filled December

There was a lot of eating done during the month of December in the lead up to the feast that was Christmas, so here's a little summary of things we tried! First up I prepared a Mexican feast for our roommates and a couple friends based around 'mole' (pronounced MO-lay) which is a chili and dark chocolate sauce which I poured over baked chicken breasts on a bed of rice, and which was accompanied by homemade guacamole, salsa, bean dip and corn chips. It was tasty!

Next up was a trip to the German Christmas markets in Lyon where we had mulled wine, a pretzel, a jacket potato and a Québec-style pancake with real maple syrup! There were several Canadian booths setup which I was naturally thrilled about. We also saw a giant raclette booth displaying the traditional way of allowing the cheese to melt under heat at an angle and you scrape it off over the dish below, usually meat or potatoes. Beside this booth was a vat of pre-mixed raclette and it looked pretty damn delicious! However we held off from getting it because we already had a date with raclette planned a few days later.

Our French roommates Laura and Paul organized an evening dedicated to raclette at our apartment so instead of the old fashioned apparatus we used a modern method to melt our cheese. Paul boiled a sack of potatoes and Laura pre-cut slices of cheese that would fit into these mini skillets which you slide under a portable, table-top grill. Once we'd each chosen from the selections of meat we gorged on melted cheese on potatoes and charcuterie. A world of yes.

And finally when one of our roommate's, Pennie, was leaving to travel around Europe before moving back to Australia, we went out with her and her friends Joy and Yves to eat at Le Nord, one of Paul Bocuse's restaurants. Bocuse is an internationally renowned chef and well known in the world of gastronomy. He has several restaurants in Lyon (including Le Sud, L'Ouest and L'Est) as well as a cooking school, Institut Paul Bocuse. We had heard that the restaurant is quite a tourist destination and counts a lot on its name and less on its food but we still wanted to try it out.

For our starters James chose escargot which came in tiny little white pots (which I hilariously thought were hard-boiled eggs at first) smothered in garlic and butter and topped with croutons. I went for saucisson brioche which is exactly what it sounds like - sausage in brioche. For the mains I chose a white fish dish but it was sadly lacking in horseradish, and James ordered lamb shanks which were fairly slim on the lamb. Just goes to show that not everything we eat here is the best! It's definitely got a reputation based on a name and was nothing in comparison to our anniversary dinner at Léon de Lyon. That being said it was still good food. With dessert we were all very happy: Yves got a chocolate mousse and cream dish, I had the St-Marcellin cheese, Pennie got crème brûlée, Joy got a pear tart and James (surprise of the century) got a molten chocolate cake.

It was odd to have our first "disappointment" in terms of eating out in Lyon, but maybe we're just becoming food snobs! In any case we're continuing on with our gastronomic adventure. What will we eat next?