For those living in Paris over the past few years, the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games may feel more like reaching the finish line than toeing it, exhausting for organizers and Parisians alike. Spiffing up the city for the Games has been like trying to complete all of Hercules’s labors at once, with so many miles of torn-up streets, capricious metro closings, bus detours to parts unknown and monuments swaddled Christo-style.
Recipe: Honey Mustard Salmon Rillettes
Having spent so much energy getting ready, it’s terrific that the best way to celebrate it is also the easiest: apéro dînatoire, the French meal that’s part living room picnic, part cocktail party — and the perfect TV dinner. It’s the least stressful meal with a French name that I can think of, and it’s fun for everyone, including the host. It’s what my Paris pals will be making as they watch the Games — and what I’ll be making 3,500 miles away in my corner of Connecticut.
Recipes: What to Cook for Your Olympics Party
Apéro dînatoire is more about shopping than cooking, about buying good things and arranging them on platters. Simply. Forget Instagram-worthy boards — you want food that’s easy to reach for when you’re marveling at Simone Biles’s moves. You don’t have to set the table, you don’t have to serve, and you don’t have to be in the kitchen for long spells because no one expects anything hot or homemade, even if I always make a few dishes. Can’t help myself.
For a medal-worthy Olympic-watch party, keep to Parisian tradition for the first round of nibbles — cherry tomatoes, olives, nuts, cold radishes in a bowl with soft butter and sea salt, deviled eggs, a nod to France’s beloved oeufs mayo. To my own, I’ll add gougères, my make-ahead house specialty. Then there should be plates of charcuterie and cheese with pickles and mustards and lots of bread and crackers. They serve as kind of the main course in a meal without real courses.
I’ll also clear a place for one of my favorite dishes: salmon rillettes, the fish version of the spread normally made by cooking pork, duck or goose in its own fat. My rillettes — so much lighter and so pretty — are a mixture of quickly cooked salmon (you can use frozen) and chopped smoked salmon. Mashed with a little mayonnaise and butter, sharpened with mustard, lemon and capers and finished with herbs — I like dill and, unusually, cilantro — they get made a day or two in advance and stowed in the fridge. The dish really only needs rounds of baguette or, to make it à la New Yorkaise, bagel chips, but I’ll also put out cucumbers and pickled beets, for color and crunch.
For dessert: cookies and ice cream — cherry, vanilla and blueberry, red, white and blue, conveniently the colors of both the French and American flags. I thought about homemade hot fudge sauce, but between the gougères and rillettes, I’ll have broken the no-cook rules of the game twice. I wonder if the judges would mind?
Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
The post How to Eat Like You’re in Paris for the Olympics appeared first on New York Times.