The French love their food, and having catered for French guests for the past twenty years as a resident in France, it is very simple to come up with recipes to cater for that perfect authentic French dinner party, which is simpler than one may imagine. The French love fresh food, and will rarely use ingredients which are packeted. This is part of French culture, and the dinner party suggestions below suit a wide variety of people, dependent upon the style of dinner party the host wishes to create. I have broken the article into two types of dinner, so that the article gives an overall idea of the types of food acceptable in different circumstances.

*Formal dinner party.

Part and parcel of the formal dinner party is the arrangement, layout of the dinner table and of course the food. For this authentic formal dinner party, the food is arranged into four courses, and these are as follows :

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Starter : Coquilles St Jacques
Main course: Steak
Vegetables: New potatoes in butter, haricot beans, broccoli
Desert: Creme Brulee
Cheeses: Brie, Camembert, Roquefort,

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Recipe: Coquilles St Jacques.

The benefit of this recipe is that it can be prepared in advance, being ideal for a formal function, leaving time for more pressing attention to perfect cooking of the other courses. Here, the ingredients needed are :

*4 tablespoons of shallot, which have been minced.
*1 and a half tablespoons of dry white wine.
*Sprig of Parsley, Bay Leaf,
*Salt and pepper to individual taste.
*1 and a half pounds of Scallops
*3 quarters of a pound of mushrooms, cleaned and minced.
*4 tablespoons of butter.
*5 tablespoons of flour.
*Heavy cream to taste.
*2 egg yolks, beaten in advance.
*Soft white breadcrumbs
*Melted butter
*Handful of Gruyere cheese which has been grated.

The cooking stages are pretty simple, though you can vary the ingredients to create your own authentic taste to suit your taste buds, though the order of preparation is similar in all cases.

The wine is placed in a pan, and heated to simmering with the shallots, parsley, bay leaf, salt, pepper and mushrooms. The aroma at this stage is rather strong, and tasting a little will help to decide whether more of any of the ingredients are needed. The shallots should be just transparent rather than overcooked. Lower the heat to create a mixture which is cooked though not overly cooked, and add the mushrooms, simmering the mixture until the required texture of shallots is achieved.

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