A Château Celebration Part 2: The Party
Our original plan for the celebration was to host a glamorous garden party outdoors, underneath the shade of the Linden trees. However, after waking up Saturday morning to discover misty gray clouds had rolled in, we thought better of it. As a nice compromise we opted for cocktail hour in the garden followed by dinner inside the candle-lit dining room of the château. Before all this could commence, we pressed our best dress shirts and shined our shoes in anticipation of the arrival of all the guests.
After greeting the guests and giving them the grand tour, we made our way towards the garden for the first of many champagne toasts. We nibbled on chef Linda Granebring's savory sablés and the gorgeous summer figs she topped with dollops of goat cheese, shiso leaf, and crushed pistachio. It didn't take long for the rain to start threatening our good time so everybody made a dash for the chateau to finish up aperitifs inside. There was a pretty pile of two of my favorite macarons from Pierre Hermé awaiting us inside. The signature Ispahan macaron with a combination of rose, raspberry and litchi, and the Céleste filled with rhubarb, passionfruit and strawberries.
While we hob-nobbed upstairs, our chef was hard at work in the kitchens downstairs prepping all the lovely ingredients for the celebration dinner. Menus were designed by my friend Emily Sell of Paris based stationary studio, Ever After Press. We started with bowls of chilled sweet pea and sorrel gazpacho before moving onto grilled summer vegetables served with a red pepper almond tapenade. Guests were delighted when plates of Linda's signature salmon mi-cuit were brought out, served with herbaceous potatoes, fennel and light lemon aioli. In keeping with the summer garden theme we ended with a plate of grilled peaches, heirloom tomatoes and labneh. For dessert we started with a very pretty pavlova of wild berries in greek yogurt cream and finished with a midnight slice of that passionfruit curd cake.
One of our favorite moments from dinner had to be each time chef Linda Granebring came out to tell us about the next course...
*All photography by the very talented Katie Mitchell
