During the school holidays we were shopping in Pavement when some white dresses on the sale rack caught my husband, Murray’s eye. Harriet and Portia were excited to try them on and they looked stunning! Murray decided to buy them, but the next question was where to wear them? We didn’t have any special occasions coming up, so we decided to create one!
A few years ago I had been excited to read about the concept of Dîner en Blanc, which began in Paris in 1988. Francois Pasquier started the idea when he invited a group of friends to an outdoor dinner, asking them to all wear white, so they could easily recognise each other. The phenomenon has now spread to over seventy cities (including Perth) with more than 100,000 annual guests. The tradition involves guests dressing in head-to-toe white and bringing their own gourmet meals, tables, white chairs, table linen and tableware to a location kept secret until the last minute.
I would love to attend an official Dîner en Blanc one day, but logistics mean that this will most likely be sometime in the future. In the meantime we decided to put together our own version with a few more relaxed rules! We had the dinner in our outdoor lounge area complete with festoon lights bought especially for the occasion. The lights certainly added to the festive atmosphere and there may have been a few shenanigans at the table, such as phantom comic reading by the kids and tree house climbing in the boring bits!
The meal started with a prosciutto and papaya salad (papaya and prosciutto drizzled with olive oil, red wine vinegar, orange juice and topped with basil leaves) and then moved onto spring lamb with peas, feta and pine nuts, accompanied by haaselback roast potatoes. For dessert we had blackberry jelly with honey ice cream. This was a huge hit!
For drinks, I served a pomegranate grapefruit paloma from one of my favourite cooking sites, Smitten Kitchen. The kids had the same drink, except of course without the tequila!
This event was easy to plan and because I kept the menu simple, easy to prepare. Hopefully you feel inspired to plan your own Dîner en Blanc one day!
