President Barack Obama will host his seventh state dinner on Tuesday evening. The state dinner will be for French President Francois Hollande who is in Washington for a two-day state visit. White House chefs and staff are busy with preparations for a French-themed atmosphere with a purely American flavor. The French President arrived on Monday. President Obama accompanied him on a tour of Monticello, the home of President Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville, Virginia, who was the U.S. Minister to France in 1785. The formal welcome ceremony for the visiting French President will be on Tuesday morning, followed by formal talks and the gala dinner in the evening.
According to the released preparation details, the heated tent that is located on the South Lawn of the White House will be transformed into a Monet-inspired gala venue. The state visit, initiated by President Obama, will put the spotlight on the long-standing relationship between France and the United States. They had closely worked together on international security challenges like the issue of the nuclear program of Iran, on the attacks of insurgents in Mali and the civil war in Syria.
Plans and guest list
As guests arrive, they will be ushered into the Blue Room where the President and the First Lady will meet them. The Blue Room will have the gilded sofas that were ordered from Paris by President James Monroe in 1817.
There are 350 people in the guest list for Tuesday evening’s gala. Afterwards, the guests will be transported by an old-fashioned trolley to the heated tent. The tent will be transformed into a spring-like setting straight out of the Water Lilies series of Claude Monet. Even the special floral arrangements will have a definite Parisian touch.
The people in the guest list are still kept secret and there is a question as to who will be sitting beside the French President. The official announcement is that Mary J. Blige will be the after-dinner performer.
Menu
The gala dinner menu will feature an all-American produce maybe in keeping with the newly-signed farm bill or to showcase the availability of world-class ingredients from American seas and farms.
The first course will highlight American Osetra Caviar gathered from the streams in Illinois and quail eggs from Pennsylvania. The chefs will be using 12 varieties of potatoes harvested from farms in California, Idaho and New York. Herbs from the White House kitchen garden will be used for the salad of baby carrots and petite radishes over merlot lettuce with red wine vinaigrette. The honey will come from the beehives of the White House. The salad will be served on a terrarium-styled glass bowl. The main course will highlight dry-aged rib eye beef from a Greely, Colorado farm, together with braised chard, oyster mushroom, charred shallots and blue cheese.
For dessert, the chefs will create a chocolate malted ganache, made with chocolate from Hawaii, vanilla ice cream direct from Pennsylvania and tangerines from Florida. The sugar-based serving dish will contain fudge made of maple syrup from Vermont and the shortbread cookies will be made with lavender from the First Lady’s garden. There will also be orange zest-dusted cotton candy.
Photo credit: Taken by Jean-Marc Ayrault> under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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