This Month
December 2009
Finishing off the Hamper
Yesterday we worked on the hamper and got most things
into it. We were, however, still a few things we wanted to add and some
bits & pieces we needed so off to Villefranche this afternoon to do a bit
of shopping.
Here's what we added:

Picked some jumpier berries this morning & packed
them into an old spice jar.
These are wonderful with roast meats, especially
beef.

Corn nuts. A recent discovery here in France.
Hadn't had these for a long time until recently.
Grew up eating them in California.


A couple of favorite cheeses which will rest in the
cave until we're ready to go.


A couple of dry sausages. One fancy from the Ardeche
and one good old saucisson sec.



I was lucky enough to find these neat tins for my
biscotti. Ideal & after packing there were only a few left that wouldn't
fit in. Well, somebody had to eat them didn't they?
We were ready to pack. The walnuts & hazelnuts went
into the bottom of the hamper.

This seemed to work pretty well. Then with some
careful arranging everything else just fit in.

There's not a lot of spare room, but believe me
that's more by luck than judgment.
Hopefully the family will enjoy the contents of this
hamper as much as we enjoyed putting it together.
May your Christmas be as nice and as much fun as we
expect ours to be.
Filling up
THE
Christmas Hamper
As I think I've said before we are going to England
to celebrate Christmas with Louise (Linda's step-daughter), the two
Richards (young & oldish), Bean (AKA Elizabeth), Martin and Margret
(Aunt). It really will be a celebration as we haven't seen them for quite
a while. As an added bonus we'll get to see Dominic (Linda's step-son),
Helen, Jaz & Lily (grand daughters) We're really looking forward to it and
we we've agreed no presents this year we decided to put together a
Christmas hamper to take with us.
The idea being that the hamper should be filled with
edible goodies either from here in France or, better yet, thing that we
have made or grown ourselves. It has been a bit of a challenge, but great
fun. I'd highly recommend making one up for yourself especially if you
have child labor available. Here's what's going to be in ours: (so far
that is, we may just add to it.)
The hamper itself:

I was using it to store old computer stuff, but this
is a better use I think.

The first small item for the hamper is this bag of
chocolate covered walnuts. Not made by us, but made by Julie who lives
just up the road. She sells these and donates the proceeds to a charitable
cattery.
Not pictured will be a can of comfit de canard, nor
will the bottle of sherry.
Likewise no picture of the dozens of biscotti that
I've made. There are three kinds; traditional lemon & fennel and fennel &
flaked almonds plus a Christmas type with candied fruit, ginger, allspice
and nutmeg. These last seem to be my taste tester's favorites. They'll
make it to England if I can keep them hidden well enough. No picture
because we haven't decided how to package them yet. We're going to
Villefranche tomorrow & will look for something suitable.

A couple of bought items. Capes are very popular
around our area and there are lots of them if you know where to look. (I
don't! Unfortunately) They're wonderful in soups when mixed with
commercial white mushrooms. I don't think I could cook without Herbs de
Province. Its my absolute favorite herb mix.

Linda's plum sauce. Wow! This sauce is delicious.
Its an oriental style sauce, fabulous with duck.
I picked the plums for her from a neighbor's tree;
we're not sure exactly what variety the plums are, but they're great.
I also helped out with the stirring as the recipe
called for two hours of constant stirring. Stirred with one hand & held my
book with the other.
It was worth it.

My lemon marmalade.
The story behind this is that for THE wedding this
summer Denise, our decorator par excellence, bought dozens of lemons to
use as decorations in a bowl under the wedding cake. Very clever and very
beautiful. They worked a treat.
Frugal soul that I am I couldn't bear the see the
lemons go to waste. So, I made lemon marmalade. (I made lemon juice ice
cubes as well which worked very well.) Normally, I'm not all that good at
making jams, jerry's and the like, but this turned out pretty well.

Dried rubbed sage.
This is from our garden. Our wonderful sage bush
resides in a bed just outside our bedroom window. It seems to love being
there and we love it being there as it's aroma is wonderful.
Linda keeps it in check as it has a tendency to grow
like made. She cut off a bunch of stems a while ago & we hung them in the
cave to dry.
Today I striped & rubbed some & put them in a jar
for the hamper. They're great with pork especially!

So far the only non-food item in the hamper are
these lavender bags from Linda.
Lavender grows well here and we have a large border
of iy behind the house by our back patio. This year Linda harvested quite
a lot of it and dried it to make up these small bags. They're pretty and
of course smell good.


We'll fill in the spaces in the hamper with a
mixture of walnut and hazelnuts.
Both come from trees in our garden. We've been
getting a good crop of walnuts for a number of years, but the hazelnut
trees have just become mature enough to produce fruit and we got our first
really good crop this year.
Our only problem is that we have be quick to get the
nuts before Rupert gets them. He adores walnuts and eats them very
carefully, but gets a bit fat each fall. Fortunately, he eats them one at
a time so while he's eating one I can gather quite a few and put them out
of his reach.
And, yes, he's now discovered hazelnuts as well. I
don't think he likes them as much as he does walnuts (harder shell & more
work for less nut), but if there aren't any walnuts available then
hazelnuts will do.
So far that's it for the hamper. We think its pretty
good and we've had great fun putting it together. I'll post more when its
packed and we've figured out how to package the biscotti.
More later. Have fun over the holidays!
Yet another walk in the woods
Another beautiful morning in rural France. Bright
sun, temperature around 40 degrees F, dogs eager what else could we do but
take a walk. Yes, you heard me correctly; I did say dogs. Plural. As in
more than one.
We have a visitor. Her name is Bee and she's a 15
year old Jack Russel terrier. Here's her picture.

She belongs to our good friends Jean & Rob who have
hived off to New Zealand for about 6 weeks. She's a little delight, smart,
willing and no trouble. Of course Rupert's nose is out of joint a bit as
he's used to being only dog. They're slowly sorting themselves out.
Bee's used to being able to get up on furniture in
her house, but that's not allowed here, but she very quickly got the idea.
In any case she loves the morning walks. We were afraid that at her age
she might not be able to keep up or would get tired, but not a bit of it;
she loves the walks.
Bee is slimming down with the extra exercise and
Rupert is getting a bit fat as he steals Bee's food at every opportunity.
We're on to him now so that will stop.
Back to the walk. We decided to try Causvielle this
morning as its a beautiful walk and wouldn't be too muddy as we've had
several days of nice dry weather. Also, they don't hunt over there too
often. Off we went.
There's this little cross by the side of the road
where we park. Someday I'm going to have to explore the origin of these
crosses. There are a lot of them scattered around the countryside. They're
not that old. Most of them dating from the later half of the 19th century.
Anyway, off we went.

This is the beginning of the farm track we start on.
It goes off across the countryside with nice views on either side. Further
down it there's a large 'potager' in the summer where some local ladies
grow vegetables for market. They have a terrific crop of tomatoes with
lots of varieties. Talk about heritage tomatoes? Get them here.
At the end of this bit of track you can go left on
PR2 a local path. ( The PR stands for Petit Randonee or little walk. These
are local and you can go into the town hall of almost any village in
France and get a description of the ones in that commune. This is as
opposed to the GR's or Grand Randonees which are national and go all over
the country. I just knew you were dying to know that!)
Anyway, we don't take PR2 instead we go right and
follow another farm track like this.
There goes Linda.
Rupert's undecided. He hates it when we (the pack)
separate and can't decide who to be close to. In this case I was hanging
back so I could take this picture.
Don't know where Bee is.

We go up the track for about 1/2 mile then turn
right onto the path shown on the right.
This normally a nice track, but it can get pretty
muddy in parts so many times we walk through the wood parallel to the
track to avoid the mud.
This morning Linda went a bit further off along an
animal track which was interesting. (these woods are full of deer who make
lots of tracks.)

Also there are some nice views across the fields.
Here's
part of a little barn left over from when they put up the hay in small
shelters near the fields, these were the days before baling machines &
tractors.
From this field you can look across to see the
hamlet's of Neuvialle and Pech Bernu.

Anyway. onward ever onward.
We have cows, but don't ask me why they're in the bush instead of the nice
grassy fields.


By now we've turned right again so are on the third
leg of our rectangular walk.
Here's Linda again with Bee on the side.
Just before we took our final turn to the right
there was an actual icy patch. We'd seen a bit of frost, but this was the
first ice.
Over the top of the little hill and down the track
we went until we reached the paved road again.
This had taken nearly an hour so was just a nice
length for a morning walk. We enjoyed it and, of course, the dogs were
delighted.
As we reached the paved road both dogs started
looking off to the right.
Bee looking.
Rupert looking

Here's why. In our absence the hunt had arrived.

Here's everybody looking.
Ours is the blue car in the far distance.

Notice that all the cars are white. It seems to be
de rigueur for hunters to have a white car preferably a small van.
In any case our timing was good as we hadn't seen
the hunters or their dogs.
Next came clean up time which Rupert hates.

He's not really snarling, it only looks that way.

Finally, here's Bee getting here belly cleaned. She
seems resigned to it.

That's it! Our walk this morning.
I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as we
enjoyed the walk and I enjoyed writing about it.
As I've often said life is tough here in rural
France, but we somehow put up with it.
Lucky us!
A simple Sunday Lunch
We had some friends over for Sunday lunch yesterday.
Everyone had a nice time; conversation flowed, wine flowed and everyone
left feeling relaxed and satisfied. Just how a Sunday lunch should be.
The preparation was a joint effort this time. Linda
prep'd the vegetables and made the dessert. I did the starter & the main
course.
The main course was leg of lamb. First I boned it as
you can see below.

I hated to throw away that beautiful bone, but
Rupert can't have it and I didn't have time for stock making; so out it
went.
Next I filled the cavity with anchovy filets and
fresh rosemary.

You can just see the anchovy filets. I
then tied the leg up to keep in the fillings.
This is important for flavor and it, like the
boning, makes caving much easier later on.
To finish I cut some slits into the top where I
placed a few more anchovy filets, freshly ground pepper and more fresh
rosemary.
Here's the leg tied and then ready for the oven
where it will be roasted at a low (130 C) temperature until the internal
temperature at the thickest part reaches 140 degrees F. This will take
roughly 3 hours if the lamb is at room temperature to start with.

Next I made some courgette tarts ( Zucchini to my
American countrymen) This is a recipe from Gary Rhoades who is a well
known English chef. I like his style. Anyway you start by cutting the
squash into thin rounds.

As you can see I used my posh mandolin (a
birthday gift from Linda) to cut the squash. You could use a food
processor with the right blade or do them by hand. The important thing is
to make sure they're thin and as even as possible. Here's an illustration
of the thickness.

Next you parboil the courgettes very briefly in
water. Just a few seconds. In this case just long enough for me to take a
picture.

Pour them out into a colander and put them under
cold running water. This stops the cooking and keeps their color vivid.
Next you need to dry them which I do on paper
towels as below:

Now you need to cut out your pastry. I'm using
store bought flaky pastry as what you can buy in France is better than I
can make.
Today I'm doing individual tarts. At other times
I may do one large tart. It just depends upon how I feel and how many
people I'm serving.

In this case I used a bowl as a template for my pastry rounds. It was the
right size and allowed me, just, to get four rounds out of one sheet of
pastry.

Next slice up some onion thinly and gently fry it
in butter until its soft, but not browned. The best onions are any mild
variety; white onions here, Vidalia, Maui or Walla Walla's in he states.
Or, as today, I just used plain old yellow onions.
I'm now ready to assemble the tarts. This is very
easy. Just place a small mound of the onions in the center of the pastry
round. Then start laying squash slices around the perimeter leaving a
small gap along the edge. Overlap the slices and start a second round
inside the first once the first is finished. Continue until the onions are
covered. Easy and pretty.
Sprinkle the tops with fresh thyme and a generous
grind of pepper.

Bake then in a hot (230C) oven until the crust is
browned and the courgettes are soft. Serve hot!
So, that was our starter.
Meanwhile the vegetables had been prepared ready
to cook to accompany the main course of roast lamb.



We had Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, braised
leeks and boiled potatoes with butter & chives.
All very nice with the lamb. To accompany all
this I made a gravy from the lamb juices having deglazed the roasting pan
with some red wine and added some full cream.
We skipped cheese and went onto Linda's cranberry
& apple crumble. The crumble is a very popular dessert in England and can
be made from a whole variety of fruits.

The apples sautéed in butter with some sugar and
cinnamon.

The cranberries boiled up with a bit of water and
sugar; just until they burst.
Next Linda made the crumble top which is two
kinds of flour plus oatmeal plus butter.

Then she assembled the whole thing ready for the
oven.
Below is the crumble ready for cooking.

The jar of cinnamon on top is just a reminder and
an indicator of size.
The crumble was delicious and in the English
fashion was served with hot custard sauce.
All in all a very satisfying Sunday lunch which
we thoroughly enjoyed. I hope you enjoyed reading about it.
Do try making the little courgette tarts. They're
easy to do and are always a great hit.
Next, I have to start working on the Christmas
hamper to take to England
Its a tough life!
Last Month
November 2009
Thanksgiving Prep & 'The' Dinner
Here we go , into the full preparations for
Thanksgiving. Fortunately, we're in good shape as as much as possible of
the prep work has been done.
I went and got the turkey on Friday. A monster, 24
lbs dressed! Absolutely beautiful.

He really is big. First thing I cut out his
backbone. I then removed the leg/thighs, chopped off the wing ends and the
lower legs. The main body was now ready.
Below you can see him without the leg/thighs or
wing tips.

Next I boned out the leg/thighs. This is easier
to do than you would think. It just takes a very sharp paring knife and
some patience.
You can see the result below. This will make
carving so much easier.Believe me. It will also allow me to cook both the
white meat on the breasts and the dark meat to perfection.
Below are all four thighs trussed, stuffed and
ready for the oven. You may recall that I bought two extra thighs from the
supermarket as normally there's never enough dark meat to go around. Also,
I stuffed the leg/thighs with the same forcemeat stuffing as went into the
main bird.

Here's the turkey all ready for the oven.
You can't see all of the stuffing underneath, but
it there.
The turkey will roast in a 180 degree C oven for
roughly two hours or until a meat thermometer reads 160 degrees F. The
leg/thighs will be cooked to the same temperature, but it will take less
time by quite a bit.
In this case I'm cooking them in a separate oven
as I don't have space in my big over for the turkey, the ham, and some
extra stuffing .
Next I got the ham ready. This was fairly easy as my
friend ROB (ex-butcher shop owner) has come down and tied up the ham
shoulder for me. All I had to do was put it into a baking pan and smear on
it's coating of Dijon mustard, dark brown sugar and cloves.

Looks nice doesn't it.
Since it had been brined then boiled it didn't
need a lot of cooking. About the same time as the turkey as it turns out.
Nice coincidence that.
Here's a couple of more pictures of the bird &
the ham in the oven.




We started with Linda's delicious curried pumpkin
soup. This recipe is always a hit. The Brussels sprouts were ready for
steaming.
Here are some more food pictures; bread,
stuffing, sweet potato puree and home made cranberry sauce.





That's it for the food pictures. At this point we
got too busy to take any more.
At the left you can see the two tables all set up
and ready to go. The chairs are a real mishmash of our own, some borrowed
and some plastic from the patio. Still its a nice looking set up if I do
say so myself.

Here's just one of Linda's table decorations.
Foliage from the garden plus a few Clementine's.
I haven't forgotten the wine. A number of our
guests brought bottles so we had a bit of a mélange, a very nice mélange
actually. In addition we had red & white from our source up the road. The
white was chardonnay and the res was a Minervois.
We also had three pumpkin pies from friends as
well as two carrot cakes that I'd made. Given all of this food we skipped
a cheese course.
I can't end this without a comment on our Serving
wenches/ scullery maids. They were all friends from England who's flow in
for the weekend. (One was Linda's sister Olivia) They did a superb job of
bother serving and cleaning up. They can come down any time.


Finally, here's Rupert in his party clothes. A
very appropriate bandana given the holiday.
We had a great time doing this meal. It was
wonderful to see so many of our friends and to share Thanksgiving.
We do have a lot to be thankful for; we have our
health, we live in a beautiful place, we are blessed with good and
numerous friends and most of all Linda & I have each other.
We sincerely hope that your Thanksgiving is a
wonderful as was ours.
Getting ready!
We're very busy getting ready for our early
Thanksgiving lunch this coming Sunday. Things were hectic enough even
before my beloved little reliable Opel Agila crapped out this week. Its
been perfectly reliable for nearly nine years so I can't complain, but it
could have picked a better time. The mechanics can't get to it until next
week so we're down to one car.
This afternoon Linda is off the Rodez to pick up
three lady friends from England who are staying for the weekend. One of
them is here sister who will be put to work as a saus chef. The others
will pitch in as well I'm sure. As soon as they get back its over to the
vineyard (see links for details)
to pick up the turkey. Sara has promised me a big
one. The bigger the better with 25 people coming on Sunday.
When I get back I'll deconstruct the turkey.
(think there's a recipe somewhere in the bowel of this blog.)
and then make the turkey stock. A friend will be dropping off some
cranberries she bought in Paris for me this week and I'll go ahead & make
my cranberry sauce ready for Sunday. So, not too much to do; of course I
went to market this morning for bread, cheese and Brussels sprouts, hang a
new painting, moved the TV, washed the car windows and so forth. Tonight
we're all going up to our friends Ruve & Michael's for dinner. Nice!
Tomorrow gets very busy. Linda & the ladies are
off the Albi for sightseeing and shopping. I'll let you guess as to which
has the higher priority. I'll get on with cooking chores. I'm making two
big carrot cakes (friends are bringing pumpkin pie & chocolate mousse for other desserts.) I'll get the
ham out of its brine and start soaking it in fresh water, changing the
water every so often. I need to get my already deboned extra turkey legs
out of the freezer. Later when the ladies are back we'll prep vegetables,
make stuffing and get ready in general.
I have to bring down extra tables and chairs from
the abri. I think we just barely have 25 chairs, mostly plastic, as well
as two great folding tables we bought years ago from Sam's Club and
brought over with us.
Sunday morning gets really busy what with turkey
roasting, ham boiling then roasting, veggie cooking, etc, etc. I'll try to
take pictures as I go but no promises as once I get to concentrating on
the cooking I tend to forget the pictures. I'll do a write up and full
menu in any case.
Keep your fingers crossed and wish us well.
I always think of carrot cake as an American
thing. I may be wrong as most 'American' things have origins elsewhere,
but I haven't seen it anywhere else other than in America. In any case I
served it too a group of friends a week ago. These were my golfing buddies
and their wives. Since they put up with my abysmal efforts at golf and the
wives put up with 'we boys' wasting a day giving everyone a lunch was the
least I could do.
I won't bore you with the details of the rest of the meal, but I made a
Carrot cake for dessert. This went down well and today as we were playing
yet another round of golf one of the guys asked me for the recipe. Now,
contrary to many cooks I know, I'm always flattered when anyone asks me
for a recipe. I take it as a compliment. I said yes. Having done so I
realized that I've never shared this recipe with everybody who reads this
blog. So. like or not here it comes. ( Note: The original version comes
from a lady by the name of Pamela Reisse in Winnipeg, Canada. I've
modified it a bit.)
CARROT CAKE
Ingredients:
- 2 cups plain flour
- 1 tsp baking powder (here in France one packet
of 'leveur chemic'
- 1 tsp baking soda (yes, you can find it here)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg. (NOTE: Use your judgment here.
I use more of this holy trinity of spices then normal because I like my
cake to have a spicier taste. Its your choice.)
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup crushed pineapple, well drained ( here I
buy canned or fresh pineapple the mince it up into a rough mash)
- 2 1/2 cups carrots, finely grated.
- 1/2 + cups raisins. (again, to taste.
Method:
- Place all of the dry ingredients into a bowl
and mix well.
- In a separate bowl beat the eggs and the oil,
add the vanilla and sugar. Mix well.
- Pour the wet mixture & the pineapple into the
dry mixture and mix well.
- Add the carrots and raisins and mix until well
combined.
- Butter two 8" ( 20 cm) cake tins and pour the
cake mixture into them dividing it as equally as possible. (NOTE: As an
alternative I use an Angle food cake tin; that one with a hole in the
middle, and make one whole cake. I then either leave it whole or cut it
into two pieces)
- Bake in a 350 degree F. oven for 30 minutes or
until a straw come out clean.
- Let cool.
Icing recipe:
- 1 cup softened butter
- 1 1/2 cups cream cheese (Note: In the USA you
would use Philadelphia cream cheese. Here in France I use Fromage blanc
or better yet a very young Chevres. We have a local lady at our Friday
market in Parisot who sells a wonderful Chevres.)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups icing sugar. ( Sucre Glace her in
France)
Method:
- Mix the softened butter & cheese in a large
deep bowl and mix well. You can do this with a whisk or being lazy like
me a motor driven whisk or a food processor.
- Add the icing sugar a bit at a time beating
constantly until you have it all in.
- If your cake has cooled enough you can now
proceed to ice it.
- Decoration is up to you, buy walnuts are nice
or coconut or whatever you like.
That's it! The cake keeps well in the fridge for
a couple of days and it freezes well for later use.
Try it you will enjoy it. I'm making two for
Thanksgiving when we have some ungodly number od people coming (I think
Linda's invited 25)
PS: The ham is still brining away quite nicely.
PPS: I've done this post in a dark color for ease
of printing.
Sugar & Spice and all things ....

The above is just a partial view of the
herb & spice stand that appears at our local markets. I call her the 'Herb
Lady' and her knowledge seems to be encyclopedic in both French and
English. She is in Caussade on Monday's, Villefranche on Thursday's
and St Antonin on Sunday's. She seems to stock any herb or spice that you
can think of.
When we first moved to France I couldn't
understand why the big Supermarkets had such a poor selection of herbs &
spices in a country renowned for it's cuisine. A few trips to market told
me why. They just can't compete with the market stalls. Our Herb Lady
,great though she is, is not unique. You will find her equivalent at most
of the larger markets in France,
In any case Linda needed Garam masala for a
curried pumpkin soup she is doing for Thanksgiving. (We're having our
Thanksgiving meal next Sunday for reasons too complicated to explain)
So we decided to go to St Antonin market today. Now
normally we don't go to that market because for much of the Spring, Summer
and Fall its inundated with tourists. You can't find a place to park and
the crowds make shopping difficult. This time of year, however, its fine.
Filled with only locals and the prices have returned to normality. We knew
the 'Herb Lady' would be there so we could get the Garam masala plus I
wanted some bay leaves and we needed some coriander seeds.
Off we went, the market was pleasantly busy and
our Herb Lady was there. She was doing good business as the French
housewives stocked up so we waited our turn. Turns out that she was out of
Garam masala. Not to worry! She would make some up for us.
Our came a good sized plastic container. In
went a variety of spices; I spotted ground coriander, cumin, fenugreek,
mustard & ground cloves. I'm not sure what else went in as she was too
quick for me. She was doing this by the scoop full. So much of one then so
much of another. She had a quick look at a very full and very
tattered notebook then fetched an electric coffee grinder from under the
counter and filled it with mace leaves. She then gave it to a helper to
plug it in and grind up the leaves (she has no electricity on the stand)
He was given very detailed instruction as how how to do the grinding.
While he did that she packaged up our other herbs. When he came back the
now ground mace got added to the container and everything got a good stir.
Then the lid went on & everything got a very good and long shake. Voila!
Instant Garam masala. It smelled wonderful.
Our 100 grams cost 5.50 Euro.
We got the rest of our shopping, mainly fresh
vegetables, including a 5 kilo squash for the soup had a coffee and headed
home.
As I write this the squash is in the oven
baking before being added to the soup. This truly is a wonderful soup and
well worth the effort to get the Garam masala.
Besides who can not enjoy buying food this way?
Its a pleasure to buy from someone who knows what they're doing and enjoys
doing it. Long live the Herb Ladies of this world!
How do they do it ?
We went to lunch today at one of our favorite
local restaurants, Seglar. I've written about them before , I think,
somewhere on this blog. You always
get a good meal there, cheerfully served, in decent surroundings. The
fixed price daily menu is 12 Euros. That's about $18.00 at current
exchange rates. Not a fair comparison as the dollar is way too weak and
the Euro way over valued. A fairer value would be around $14-15.
In any case here's what we had. Linda started with a
delicious soup & I had homemade dry sausage (salami like) We then had a
very nice seafood mélange ( other choices were a salad or pate) We both
choose steak as our main course (choices were Merguez or Toulouse
sausage) the steaks came with braised endive and french fries. Next came
cheese, a small cheese board with a choice of three cheeses, serve
yourself. Finally dessert, Linda had apple pie & I had lemon pie. (there
were other choices, but I can't remember what they were. Included was
bread and 1/4 liter of wine each. All of this food was good, well
prepared, hot and fresh.
How do they do
this kind of meal at this price? And make money? We can't quite figure it
out. Seglar are not exceptional. There are a number of other restaurants
in our immediate area who do similar meals at similar prices. We find it
amazing.
We tried to price out the lunch we
had done for friends earlier in the week. There were seven of us. We had
mushroom soup followed by roast pork with potatoes, baked squash and green
beans, followed by a simple cheese course followed by carrot cake. So, no
expensive ingredients. Leave out the wine as I'm sure the restaurants can
buy more cheaply than we can. By our accounting we spent 7 Euros per
person on the meal. That doesn't count our labor, gas & electricity,
insurance, the cost of the premises or any other overheads.
At best our home made meal cost at least 10 Euros
per person. So....
How do they do it for a
mere 12 Euros. And seem to prosper. We don't know, but we certainly do
enjoy the results. Maybe we should just give up cooking and go to there
restaurants every day.
If you think you
have an answer please let me know.
Hamming it up!
No, I'm not becoming an actor. What I am doing is
attempting to do a ham the English way. My wife loves what she calls
gammon which is a particularly English way of preparing ham. We were
talking about how nice it would be to have ham to go with our turkey this
Thanksgiving. We discussed various possibilities of how to get an
'English' ham, but hadn't really come up with an answer. I was about to
call Sara, our wonderful turkey supplier and ace winemaker, to order a
second turkey seeing as how we now have 24 people coming for Thanksgiving
on the 22ond of November. (We do Thanksgiving a bit early since it isn't a
holiday at all in France)
I'm particularly eager to make the meal nice this year as we actually have
five Americans in addition to myself coming. That's a record! Everyone
else is either French or British. The French enjoy a good meal anytime and
the British sort of think of it as a Harvest Festival meal. We always have
a good time, but having a few more Yanks around will be nice.
Anyway, we went to the supermarket and low & behold
they were having a pork sale. I bought a whole shoulder for a ridiculously
low price and we decided to have a go at doing the 'English Ham'. First
thing I called my friend Rob who used to own a butcher shop. He came up
and dismembered the ham shoulder. We ended up with one 6 kilo piece and a
smaller 3 kilo piece plus Rob cut the skin off for making crackling.
Having done that we needed to find a recipe on how to do the ham.


So, there's the ham now the recipe. We eventually
found it in a cookbook called the "River Cottage Cookbook". We knew that
to make a baked ham in the English style you first had to brine it; the
question was in what? How much salt? Well we found a recipe in this book
after much fruitless searching on the Internet. Turns out that it an
apples cider cure. Here's the recipe:
Cider
Brine Mix
- 2 Kg salt
- 50 g saltpeter (optional for color)
- 4 liters fresh apple cider (not from
concentrate)
- 1 liter strong cider (alcoholic)
- 2 liters water
- 1 Kg sugar
- 1 Kg dark brown sugar
- 20-30 juniper berries
- 30 g black pepper corns
- 10 large bay leaves
All you do is mix all these ingredients
together then bring them to a boil stirring occasionally. Let them cool
fully before adding the pork.
As you can see that's a lot of liquid AND it
has to be kept at near freezing. Here's our answer to that problem:
Here are the pots full of brine cooling ourside. THis took a while.

The plastic bucket. We had to make sure first
of all that it would fit into the little fridge and that the ham would
fit into it.
Fortunately both did fit; the bucket into the
fridge and the ham into the bucket.

Note that we've weighed the ham down with a pot
lid to keep it submerged. We'll give it a stir or two every day. The
fridge is turned to it's coldest so should be OK.
Now we have to wait until November 20th. This
is just on the minimum time recommended for bring pork of this size. We
should be OK on that.
I'll try to do a couple of progress reports in
the mean time, but there won't be much action other than stirring until
the pork comes out of the brine.
Local Market
We went to one of our favorite markets the
other day. This one is in Limogne where they have food market on one day
of the week and a truffle market on another day during the season. The
truffle market is small, nothing like the famous Lalbenque one, but at
least in Limogne you have a chance to buy a truffle even though you're not
one of the pro's. In any case we were after food not truffles.

Here are a couple of views of one end of the market.
In the left picture you can see Linda buying. She's the lady with a red
coat & a basket over her shoulder. Here's a better picture.


Lots of
chrysanthemums as they are the traditional flower to put on the graves of
loved ones.


We also saw about the very last of the local
strawberries.
Although you can't really see it the sign at the
right of the picture not only has the price of the strawberries, but their
origin as well. This is a sensible French law that says that you must
identify the origin of all fresh meat and vegetables.
In some of the local butcher shops they take it a
step further and actually identify the local farm where the meat was
raised.
We just wish they'd import more
British, Argentinean or American beef. They local beef is not much to our
taste. The pork, veal, chicken and duck however, are superb.
Everybody lines up at the cheese van. He has a
pretty good selection. I am particularly fond of a local cheese called
'Gaperon'. Its delicious, but only produced at certain times of the year.
He also sells superb butter, straight from the farm.
And, of course, he sells a whole variety of little Cabecou which are small
goat's milk cheeses. The older they get the stronger they are. Very young
ones are great with bread and jam for breakfast. Really old ones are very
strong and hard; you suck them instead of chewing. Just the thing as you
tend your sheep.
Here's a good look at one of the vegetable stalls.
You will note that there is no fancy layout of the produce.
That happens more in the summer to attract the tourists both foreign and
domestic. Much, but not all , of what you see will have been grown
locally.

Here's the bio shop. They have an amazing range of
products including fresh vegetables.
We get great muesli here.
Roast chicken is popular and they also do quail and ham as well as duck
leg/thighs.
There
are also a few live plants to buy should you wish.

What would market be without an olive stall? Here's
one of the two that come to Limogne every week.
As you can see there is not only a variety of olives on offer, but also
nuts and a few herbs.
AND, we're just getting into oyster season. Not many
yet, but as there was a holiday coming up we saw these on the market.

I'll finish off with some nice looking squash.
Pretty aren't they? And very good to eat.
Linda makes a wonderful squash soup with cumin.
Its about time she did one, but today's mission was fresh vegetables for a
big batch of veggie soup.
We stopped for coffee at the cafe then made our
way home for soup making.
I hope you've enjoyed this tour of an ordinary
market in a small French town. This is the normality of shopping here.
There are much bigger markets than Limogne, but we can get everything we
need here. I like going to Caussade as well (I've written it up on this
blog as well), but Limogne is actually more convenient. We sort of flip
between the two. Villefranche is very big, but parking is difficult. As we
have friends coming we're going down to Albi in a couple of weeks to try
their newly refurbished indoor market and (the real reason) for the ladies
to have a look at the boutiques.
October
2009
A Walk in the woods
Rupert and I go for a walk almost every morning. The
other day it was particularly beautiful so I decided to take the camera
and try to show you a walk through our favorite woods. Its about a 5
minute drive from home along a dead end road and through the hamlet of La
Badie. (I used to work with a chap named Brian Labadie, this was in
Silicon valley many years ago, but I've always wondered if his ancestors
came from here.)

Here we've just parked and are starting down
this woodland track. As you can see the farmer uses it to get to some of
his field in the woods.
Further down the track and Rupert is on the
alert for deer. Every so often he gets a hot scent and is off. The deer
are in no danger as he's the noisiest hunter I've ever heard. Yips & more
yips plus some barking. The deer are long gone, but he enjoys the chase.

On we go. The trees are gorgeous.

The sun is warm and its utterly peaceful. I'm
enjoying my walk and so is Rupert.

The woods truly are beautiful.

We even get a view of our village through the trees.
If you know what to look for you can just see our house on the left.
On we go along our track.

Our little road now turns into a walking path and we
see the no hunting signs.
This is good as I now don't have to worry about Rupert being mistaken for
a wild boar. Despite his International Orange collar I do worry a bit.
Hunting is a great local sport and one that is
necessary as otherwise the deer and the wild pigs would get way over
populated. Last year they culled over 500 wild pigs about ten miles away
from us. Still, they can get a bit trigger happy at times especially after
lunch!

Here Roop's checking out the water trough. Its amazing how the farmers
manage to run water through the woods in the most unlikely places. You can
just see the black PVC pipe in the lower foreground.
Even though it seems wild little land is wasted in this area. The little
clearings will be grazed by the cows. The woods will be harvested for fire
wood every few years. And, of course, the woods provide habitat for the
deer and the wild pigs which in turn supplement the winter larder of the
local farmers. It been this way for a long time and who is to say it
should change? Certainly not me.


I have a seat and the rocks that the hunters have
piled up and contemplate the view across the meadow. Then its onwards;

Now we walk back up and finally reach the paved
road again. We've spent about 45 minutes doing our walk and both Roop and
I are content.

In addition to the trees and woods we've spotter
some
other nice things. I particularly liked these moss covered stones from
an old wall.

And, naturally, we saw a variety of mushrooms and
other interesting flora. Here are just a few pictures.





Still hanging in there. Don't know what kind of
flower it is, but I admire its persistence.
What
walk around here would be complete without a curious cow?
And so we headed back home where we tried to
decide what to do with the crop of Japanese quinces and the little apples.
To pick and preserve? Or not?


Hope you have enjoyed our little walk. Rupert & I
certainly did. We're so lucky to live in a place like this.
What kind of cook are you?
My wife and I are two very different kinds of
cook. I don't think this is a gender things, its just that there are many
many different styles of cooking. I'm not going to be judgmental about
this I'm just curious. It goes without saying that my cooking style is the
best. How could it be otherwise? No, seriously I'm interested in other
people's style of cooking and equally importantly why they cook the way
they do.
In this case I'm using style to refer to the
methodology of how one cooks. Do you always use a written recipe? Are you
a 'tidy' cook? Cleaning up as you go. Or one who uses every pot, pan ,
knife, etc. then cleans up afterwards? Are you 'ad hoc'? Sort of making up
the recipe as you go. Or are you a strictly 'follow the recipe' type?
Since the proof is in the eating I think that all of these styles can work
equally well and, of course, most of us are probably some combination of
what I have described above.
By the way I'm addressing myself here to
strictly home cooking and home cooks. Restaurant cooking, catering and all
the other professional styles of cooking are something I'm not qualified
to comment on. Again, the proof is in the eating.
My wife's style is a combination of pretty
strictly following recipes and using every utensil our kitchen has to
offer. She chooses good recipes and she cooks them well so its a delight
to eat her food.
When she's finished preparing a meal, however, the kitchen looks like a
disaster are. Used stuff all over the place. BUT, she's a great cleaner
upper. Once finished she will wash, clean, scrub, tidy up and put the
kitchen back to sparkling rights, as clean as a pin.
She cooks this way because she's comfortable with it. She's more focused
on what comes next in her recipe than on keeping her work are a tidy. Our
kitchen is big enough to accommodate this.
I'm almost the opposite. I only use recipes as
a guide line (unless its new complicated dish & then I'll follow the
recipe closely the first time I use it. After that, all bets are off.) and
these days I often just make up dishes from my imagination. The results
vary; rarely a disaster, but not often a real gem.
I like to clean as I go. I use the inevitable slack periods during the
cooking process to tidy up, to wash pots, to clean our bowls, to pick up
and put away peelings and other debris and so forth. To me that makes the
final clean up so much easier.
I just like to have a reasonable neat area to work in and by cleaning as I
go I can reuse various implements if I need to. I guess it just appeals to
my sense of organization.
As you can see Linda & I are 'chalk & cheese'
in terms of cooking style. We learned a long time ago that there were only
two ways we could cook without coming to blows. (joke! it never got quite
that bad) The first way was just not to cook together. So Linda will cook
the whole meal or I will or sometimes we will cook sequentially, she'll do
her dishes, clean up then I'll do mine or vice versa.
If we must cook together we have a Chef's hat. Whomever wears the hat is
the boss and the other person is the minion and must do as they're told.
This includes both the style as well as the substance of preparing the
meal. This works for us - barely! There are usually quite a few gritted
teeth and compressed lips, but we manage. A real test is coming up at
Thanksgiving when we are having dinner for 21 people.
I'd be very interested in hearing about your
cooking style and/or how you and a significant other cope in the kitchen
if your styles are very different. Its a fun topic in general, but one
that people can get quite heated about.
A Simple Sunday Supper
I promised to get off the rare political stuff an to
get back to the main theme of this blog so that's what I'm doing. If you
haven't read my little political polemic, but would like to you can go
here. If you'd rather read about
our simple supper tonight then read on.
As
it was Sunday and Linda, Rupert and I were on our own and the friends who
had asked us to have lunch with them had begged off due to illness we
decided to have a lazy day. Thus, other than writing my political post for
the blog we took it easy. An easy walk around the lake for Rupert & I,
cruising eBay for Linda and a nap for all of us. (well, the clocks changed
didn't they. Would you believe jet lag? No, I thought not.) I managed to
watch the end of a European Tour golf tournament which was pretty good.
The winner had to birdie the last hole with a 18 foot putt to win. Anyway;
Dinner. After a very light lunch. (Fruit & cheese
for Linda & cheese rye crisps and tomato for me) we were hungry, So,
what for dinner? We started with a big bowl of popcorn while Linda talked
to her sister on the phone.
Then I made some french fries from a frozen packet by roasting them in the
oven. I sweated some chopped up leek in butter and I gently fried a couple
of duck breasts being careful to keep all of the fat for later use. We had
this with Linda's wonderful Chinese plum sauce. Not too bad for a lazy
Sunday supper.
Oh! I also made a very simple apple pie. We
haven't eaten it yet, but here's how I made it. I used some pre-prepared
crust from the freezer and I peeled, cored and sliced up some apples which
I mixed with some lemon juice, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. These gently
fried in some butter while I made a custard. When ready I put the apples
into the pie crust and poured over the custard . Into a hot oven for 20-30
minutes by which time the crust was browning. Out and now its resting
while I write this, Linda watches some saga on TV and our dinner settles.
Hopefully the pie will be good. Don't think we have
any ice cream. but there is some cream in the fridge.
Life is good when you just keep it simple and
surround yourself with loved ones. Hope your Sunday is as good as mine has
been.
No more politics, but I still say:
GET OUT!
GET OUT!
Get out! Get out now" Of Afghanistan that is. I can
see nothing, but disaster for the United States and it's allies ahead.
I promise that I'm not trying to nor will I turn
this into a political blog. Its just that some issues are so important and
that I fear that my country is going the wrong way so that I have to speak
out. I'm not egotistical enough to think that my voice will make much
difference, but at lest I can exercise my right to say what I think.
I had been thinking about Afghanistan and the
futility of our war there for some time. Of course its much in the news
what with Obama trying to make a decision. Then this week Linda met a lady
who has worked for the Red Cross for many years and has done several long
stints in Afghanistan as well as in other troubled areas of the world.
She's just back home for a much needed rest. Her opinions reinforced mine.
Mine are based upon my experience in general without any actual on the
scene knowledge of the country. Her opinions are based upon actual in
country experience. We both agree:
GET OUT!
Why get out?
Its the wrong war to be fighting and its one that we can't win. The
longer it goes on the worse it will get. Here are just a few points:
- No body has subjected this area to anything
other than tribal rule for a very long time. The British couldn't do it
at the height of their empire, the Russians couldn't do it when they
were strong and there's no reason to believe that we can do it.
Imperfect and backward though it may seem to we in the Western
democracies the Afghans' seem to prefer their ancient system of tribal
rule. That's their choice.
- Who are we to say that the Taliban are wrong?
They are at least natives of the country. Admittedly its very hard to
agree with their extreme form of Islam and the methods they use to
enforce it, but are the alternatives any better? The so called 'national
government' that we are trying to put in place is corrupt to its core.
- Yet again we in the West are backing a
government that's dead wrong. The crowd that we're backing no matter
which one wins the 'election' are nothing but a gang of crooks. They're
backed by the drug cartels. Democracy? Peoples rights? If you believe
that's what this crowd will bring I've got a bridge to sell you.
- The war on terror? Fighting the Taliban in
Afghanistan isn't going to win that. In fact the more we interfere there
the more recruits the terrorists gain. By all means use drones, special
forces, assassins and whatever means work to fight the terrorists. But
that's not at all the same thing as trying to build a very reluctant
Afghanistan into a Western democracy.
- Why waste lives both those of the Western
troops and the Afghani people in a futile effort to do what? Where is
there any National interest of the Western countries at stake here?
Suppose the West actually succeeds in establishing a kind of democracy
in Afghanistan. Do the terrorists go away? Does the threat diminish?
No, they just move their base and recruit more martyrs.
Lets do away with the macho thinking which says we can't back down. I'm
sure the Generals are sincere in their assessments that more troops will
do the trick. They were just as sincere in Vietnam.
- Obama made a good start
with his Cairo speech in trying to convince the Muslim world that the
West is not their enemy, but how can the billions of Muslims believe the
West is sincere so long as we continue to fight in Afghanistan?
I say; GET OUT! Get out now! Get out before we
waste more lives, money and political capital on a wrong and hopeless
cause.
By all means try to help the Afghan people with
humanitarian aid, by all means fight the terrorists by any means, but
quit this ridiculous belief that we can somehow win this conflict. We
can't.
No more rants for a while, I promise.
The Last of Summer's Bounty
Fall is most definitely here. We've had two minor
ground frosts now, we've had the first wild mushrooms (see previous post)
and as the English say; "the nights are drawing in" . We can't complain as
the weather has been great, sunny day with temperature in the high 60's/
low 70's, lots of sun and crisp nights. Still, its always a bit sad to see
summer depart.
Yesterday I harvested the last of our tomatoes and
the last of our basil. Both have hung in there pretty well. The tomatoes
are in a sheltered spot where they're protected from the frost, but still
get full sun from mid morning until late afternoon. So both the little red
variety and the yellow cherries have survived pretty well.
The basil has been amazing. I harvested it a couple of weeks ago then
pureed it with a bit of olive oil and froze it into 1/2 cup portions for
salad and pesto making this winter. This year, however, its actually come
back pretty strong with lots of new leaves. In fact we've even had a self
seeder which is growing in the middle of our gravel courtyard. Its
doing well and is about 6" high. I don't have the heart to pick its leaves
yet.
Anyway, with a nice handful of tomatoes and a goodly
amount of basil I just had to do something. On the theory that with
wonderful fresh ingredients like these simple is best I did the following:
- I cut the tomatoes in half or quarters
depending upon size.
- I mixed the red and yellow tomatoes together
in a bowl.
- I tore the basil into nice small pieces and
mixed them in with the tomatoes.
- I then cut pieces of brie into bite sized
chunks. (I'd let the brie soften, but not to the point of being runny .)
This was also mixed in with the tomato & basil.
- I poured over a mild vinaigrette (white wine
vinegar, olive oil & just a tad of Dijon mustard), sprinkled on salt &
freshly ground pepper.
I mixed the whole thing thoroughly, but gently
and let it sit out at room temperature for about an hour just to let the
flavors blend a bit.
It was delicious, simple, but delicious. A nice
way to taste the end of summer's bounty. Try it!
Seasonal Lunch
We had friends over for lunch yesterday. There
were eight of us which to my mind is about ideal for a lunch or dinner
party. Enough people to make conversation flow, but not so many that there
can't be a table wide conversation. In any case this group worked well;
lots of good conversation in which everyone participated. We started at
12:30 and finished at 5:00 PM. One of the joys of retirement is that four
hour lunches on a week day are not an issue.
As our weather has turned and its definitely
fall now (although yesterday was brilliant) the menu was seasonal and a
bit more robust than I've been doing. We had stuffed calamari as a
starter followed by slowly roasted belly pork with roast squash, potatoes
and Brussels' sprouts, then a bit of cheese (Chaource & St Felician) and
an orange cake with ice cream for dessert. A very simple menu, but tasty &
filling.
I was particularly pleased with the stuffed
calamari as the recipe was one I made up myself. Since I'm not possessive
about recipes I'll give it to you.
First buy some nice large calamari either whole or pre-prepared.

I bought pre-prepared then boiled/simmered them
for about an hour. Anything much less and they'll be tough. As you can see
at the right they're nice big ones.
Next you need to prepare the stuffing. In this
case I wanted a smoky fishy taste so I used smoked haddock. I could have
used any smoked fish; salmon, eel, trout, whatever. In any case you need
to flake the smoked fish fairly finely.
You
can see what I mean below.

Once this is done you need to peel & finely chop
some shallots (or onions if you don't have any shallots) then gently fry
them in some olive oil. Let them cool a bit,
Add some fresh thyme & pepper to the flaked fish and add the cooled
shallots. Now add some dry bread crumbs and mix everything thoroughly.
Now add cream while mixing until you get a consistency that's firm, but
moldable. A consistency that you think will easily stuff into the
calamari.
I deliberately haven't
given you any measurements as it so much depends upon the size of the
calamari & how many you're doing. Here's what my mix looked like:

You can fiddle with the mix consistency by adding
cream & bread crumbs alternately until you get a mx you like.
Anyway once the mix is done stuff the calamari by
just poking the mix down the shell. You want them to be full, but don't
stuff so hard that you break the shells.
All of this can be done several hours in advance.
Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the
actual cooking, however, its pretty straightforward. In this case I put a
bed a Mache (lambs lettuce) on a place & drizzled it with a lemon juice,
olive oil & touch of mustard dressing with some sale & pepper in it. I
simply fried the calamari in very hot olives oil until they browned, I
turned them frequently. I placed the calamari on the Mache bed and put
some finely julienned red bell pepper over the top just for looks. The
result was great! All the guests and even my best critic, Linda, loved it.
Unusual, tasty and pretty easy to prepare.
Here are a few pictures of other parts of the meal;





Here's the squash. Cut in half, deseeded then
sprinkled with freshly grated nutmeg with a dab of butter in
the cavity


The belly pork early in the roasting process on
the left and later by 3 plus hours on the right. This was just before I
turned on the top grill to crisp up the crackling. Not the onion
peeking out. There were 10 half onions underneath the pork.


Squash and potatoes in the other oven. On the
right my orange cake. I'm not fancy with my decoration, but the taste was
there. We gave all of the uneaten cake to our guests to take home so as to
save ourselves.
Here's all that was left:


Not much! Which is good.
A thoroughly enjoyable lunch. I enjoyed the
company and I enjoyed the cooking.
I'm very pleased with my new calamari recipe. Try
it, you'll like it.
High Hopes
Its sometimes funny how things happen. I've been
thinking about mushrooms lately and was going to post on how they're
coming into season, but events today overtook all that.
We had our first serious rain two days ago. A nice
crash bang thunderstorm followed by a steady rain. That got me thinking
that mushrooms wouldn't be far behind. Then yesterday on our way to
Montauban I noticed that two of the very locally plugged in
vegetable shops were advertizing cepes for sale. I also spotted a good
selection of grubby vans parked along the low road to Caylus. The low road
goes along a ravine which has good places to find cepes; the locals know
exactly where. I've never gone into those woods during the cepes season as
they're pretty protective of their spots. Cars with non-local license
plates have mysteriously turned over onto their backs.
Anyway I was thinking about all of this and hoping
we might see some field mushrooms when Roop, Linda & I went for our walk
this morning. Low & behold as went went up the path through the woods
Linda spotted the first mushroom. Not a field mushroom, nor was it a cep;
but it was big. As we looked we realized that there were lots of them all
over the place. Didn't know if they were edible or not, but we decided to
pick a couple on our way back and look them up in our mushroom books. So,
we finished the walk seeing lots more of them and on the way back we ran
into a hunter. After exchanging greetings we asked him if he knew anything
about these mushrooms. He did; he said they were edible, but not very
tasty and that they might give you an upset stomach and flatulence.
Needless to say we were disappointed.
We picked a few anyway just to check out and I
decided to get the camera and go back to take some pictures. Thus, here is
what they looked like.





Here's Roop with a mushroom next to him. This is to
give you some idea of the size of these things. They were pretty big, I'd
say some weighed over two pounds.

Some were quite orange in color.
At home I took some close ups and cut some open.



Interesting looking specimens. We couldn't find them
in our book. I've been doing Google searches, but no luck in identifying
these guys so far. If anybody knows please let me know.
We certainly won't take a chance and after Michael
got ill last year after having the mushrooms he found pronounced safe by
the local pharmacist we won't trust that source of information either.
If I don't see some field mushrooms soon I'll just
have to buy some cepes from the local shop in Caylus.
Still, we had fun with it. And it was sort of
interesting that we should spot these after all of thinking about the
subject.
I'm getting pretty frustrated by this
baloney!
Grrrr... It really is getting to me. Regular readers
will recall a post I did just a couple of days ago about 'strangers on the
shore' . In that I was going on about not trying to put oneself forward as
some sort of guru on things local when you really didn't quite know what
you were talking about. Yes? Well my favorite know it all, she of the
prophylactic blog, has done it again. A post that purports to be on local
food and cooking specialties that is rubbish.
We can start by looking at her lead picture of duck
breast (magret) which is way overcooked. Perhaps in the states or
somewhere they may cook duck breast this long, but not in this area of
France, believe me.
She shows Alliade in
the picture then much later gives a recipe for it. The proportions
are wrong to begin with, secondly it really should be made using a mortar
& pestle (although I'll forgive her the food processor) and where's the
parsley? Parsley is a key ingredient to Alliade.
Nice store bought fois gras and fig chutney except
that I would very seriously doubt that she actually made the chutney. Or
if she did not here & not recently. Firstly figs have only just come into
season and the chutney needs time to mature. Secondly it hasn't rained
around here until yesterday, Thursday. So where when did this get made?
She skipped over the cheese course which should have
been a very important part of the meal and would have been much discussed
at any French dinner party.
And, finally,
well there is a good patisserie in St Antonin where she could have bought
the tart, I'd almost bet money that she didn't make it herself. Besides
the last thing that would have been served with that kind of meal this
time of year would that kind of apple tart.
See what I mean? It looks good and sounds good, but
is about as authentic as a three dollar bill. EGO? Wanting to impress ones
friends who have never been here? I don't know, but why gild the lily?
Just do a post on the way things really are without all of the BS.
Sorry, I shouldn't let this nonsense get to me this
way. I guess if someone wants to spout rubbish its not my place or job to
correct it. I do find it hard, however, when they're talking about a place
that I love.
A rare somewhat political post
I don't often post about political topics
because that's not the intent of this blog, but I just can't resist a few
words about the debate that's going on in the states about health care. I
doubt that I have the solution, but I can at least try to clear up some
misconceptions about health care in Europe, well at least in France and
the UK.
First let me state some alarming numbers. The
USA spends about 14% of its gross national product on health care. France,
Germany and the UK all spend less than 9%. That 5% difference is a huge
amount of money that the USA could be using for other purposes. And
remember that in the European countries there is 100% coverage, nobody is
left out. In the states millions upon millions of people aren't covered.
Nobody in Europe can lose their home or their saving due to a serious
illness. Yet, many US commentators like to scare people with false
comments about 'socialized' medicine in Europe, lack of choice and waiting
lists.
Most Americans get their health insurance
through their employer. The last time I worked our company was paying
nearly 12% on top of wages to provide the health insurance for our
employees. The employees also contributed another 4-5%. In Europe there is
one plan and everybody pays the same percentage of income for it up to a
maximum. In addition most European countries have private 'top up '
schemes. In the UK the most widely used is called BUPA. (In my last UK
based company we provided this as a free fringe benefit to all employees.)
Here in France you can subscribe to a 'mutual'. Ours costs about $150.00
per month for Linda & I. The point being that if you have both the
government scheme and the top up you will never pay for anything medical,
no doctor's fee's, no hospital bills, no prescription charges. Pretty good
I think especially as you get older or if you have small children.
So, what I think is a better system at a
lower cost AND one that leaves no body out. How do they do it??
For one thing they cut down on the bureaucracy
. For another they're aren't insurance companies making large profits.
(BUPA and the 'mutual's' are non-profit organization.)
Here's an example. I want to see Dr. Jean, my
GP. I don't make an appointment I just go down to his office during his
opening hours. I wait my turn & then I see him. He makes sure that he sees
everybody who turns up. I may have to wait for up to an hour or I may only
wait for ten minutes, but I do get seen that day. OK, now the DR. has seem
me (in my case normally to check out my blood pressure & if it OK to get
another prescription for my medicine) I give him my 'carte vitale'
(medical card) and I pay him 22 Euros, the standard charge for a visit to
a GP. Within 3 days I am reimbursed directly into my bank account; 18
Euros from the government and 4 Euros from my Mutual. That's it. Dr. Jean
has no receptionist or other staff. In other words no overheads to speak
of.
Now lets imagine that there's really something
disturbing going on with me so Dr. Jean wants me to see a specialist or
the have some labs tests done or have a CAT scan or MRI done, whatever. He
will call a specialist himself directly while I'm there to make an
appointment for me. I've had the specialist appointment as soon as later
that day, but never longer than a day or two. For lab work I can either
just go to the lab and wait my turn or call them and make an appointment,
same thing with CAT or MRI scans at the hospital. In any case I've never
had to wait for any length of time. For these services the providers keep
my data and are paid directly by the government and/or my mutual. Note
also that I get the results directly; after all they are my x-rays or
scans or tests aren't they.
Going further. Late last year I had a stroke.
Fortunately it was minor and I've fully recovered. The point is the care I
received at our local hospital. Admitted immediately no questions asked.
The cardiologist examined me within 15 minutes of arrival even thought it
was 9 o'clock in the evening. I had a room for two even though at that
stage I was the only occupant. Next morning I has a CAT scan and the
specialists came around with the results of that plus the results of all
the blood tests from the admission procedure. They kept me in for three
days just to be on the safe side. During this time I had nice nurses to
look after me and my only complain was the food. The doctors had me on a
no salt no fat diet which was very bland. Cost? No one penny. There
was never even a bill presented. Nor was there any charge for the follow
up visits, tests or the medications (they had me on about 6 different
pills)
Now, the point of all this is not that the USA
should adopt the French system. Its too late to make that kind of radical
change. We (you) need our own system. But the point is that:
-
The French system gives excellent care for
far lower cost. As do the health care systems in all other European
countries.
-
We Americans need to change our system to
something that works better for EVERYONE at lower cost.
-
We need to get the profit motive out and a
caring motive in.
-
Compensate those who give the care (Doctors,
nurses, technicians & so forth) NOT administrators and insurance
companies.
Folks this should be simple, but the
politicians are making it complicated. Don't stand for it!!
Strangers on the foreign shore
I've been ruminating about being in foreign
countries. Foreign in the sense that they are not the country we grew up
in and whose culture and language we know and understand instinctively.
This is a topic I've thought about a bit since I have lived "on the
foreign shore' for a large part of my adult life. Although I
wouldn't call myself a sociologist or an anthropologist I do have a wealth
of experience in visiting and living in foreign climes and, thus, some
insight as to what works and what doesn't.
I've lived in six countries, the states (my 'native' country), Spain,
Belgium, England, Germany and Spain. My total time in the five non-native
countries is a bit over 25 years. During much of this time I
travelled extensively; all over Western Europe on multiple visits,
Australia, New Zealand, Japan many many times, China, Hong Kong, India,
Malaysia, Singapore, Korea and Mexico. I've missed all of South America and
Africa with the exception of South Africa which I've visited three times.
My point here is that I have a substantial amount of experience of
'foreign shores' so my mutterings have some basis to build upon.
My intent is to give some advice as to how to
approach foreign travel and how to behave once there. I'll also have a few
words to say about travelers who irk me with their behavior.
There are fundamentally four reasons one visits
foreign countries . These don't encompass all of the variations of
why we travel, but they do, I think, cover the ground pretty well. The
reasons are:
- Business, professional conferences or
collaboration and family reasons. This type of travel tends to be of
short duration and very focused. In many cases the visitor is cosseted
in the sense that the hosts in the foreign country have smoothed the
way.
- Tourism. Hugely popular in these days of
relatively cheap and convenient travel. Tourists can be independent or
organized (in the sense of group travel). I include vacationers in this
category even though many of them are only seeking better weather than
they have at home.
- Dilettantes. These are those who go to
do 'A year in XXX' and sort of live in a foreign country for an extended
period of time. In some cases this can span several years. The key
difference between this group and the next one is attitude. The
dilettante always intends to go back to live where they came from at
some point in the future.
- Immigrants. Immigrants intend to stay in the
foreign country for the foreseeable future. They have no intent of
leaving where they are once they have arrived.
The first two categories lump together fairly
well so I'll combine my advice to these people. My main piece of advice
is to try and learn as much as you can about the local culture before you
go. This will endear you far more to the locals than a few words of
their language. (Not that learning enough of the local language to be
polite isn't a good thing, but face it unless you are a linguistic genius
you can't possibly get fluent in many languages.) There are the obvious
pitfalls such as eating with your left hand in Islamic countries, but
there are many many other cultural pitfalls. For instance learning the
greeting rituals in the various European countries is a major topic all on
its own. (Do I shake hands? With women? What about 'air kissing'? )
Another example; picture taking. Absolutely fine in cities, around
monuments and so forth, but don't take pictures of people without prior
permission they can get very upset. Don't take pictures of your food in a
restaurant unless you want to be considered 'gauche'. Being quiet and
listening a lot will take you far in most countries. Try to be aware of
what's happening locally by reading the local papers (you can glean a lot
from them even if you can't fully understand the language.) Politics are
not a taboo subject in most European countries, but do try to have some
understanding of what's 'hot' locally and try not to be dogmatic or too
defensive if people are critical of your home country.
Do have an agenda of places you want to visit, but leave enough spare time
to be flexible. Many of my most enjoyable experiences have been ad hoc
events or diversions from my original intent.
Above all enjoy the differences. If everything was the same as at home
there wouldn't be any reason to travel would there? Things will be
different, not necessarily worse or better just different. A tip; when
speaking with those who speak some English, but not as their native
language try to keep your English straightforward. No slang and mainly
declarative sentences. Slow up just a bit. Doing these things will greatly
help understanding.
Now, I'll also lump together the dilettantes
and the immigrants. For both groups the trick is to act as if you are
going to live in that country for the rest of your life. So:
- Try to learn the language
- Work very hard at understanding and practicing
the local social customs.
- Get into the system. resident visa, Housing,
taxes, schools, medicine. Be legal in other words.
- Don't criticize just because they do things
differently.
- Learn the local pace of life.
In other words try to fit into the local society.
If you are a Caucasian in Western Europe you have the advantage of not
looking immediately different, but do notice how the locals dress. Often
your cloths mark you out as a foreigner.
If you are living in the country to do a job all of this will be easier as
you will have people around you at work to learn from and socialize with.
Go with the flow. Also, if you're associated with a company or school or
organization getting into the system is easier because you have easy
access to people who know how things work.
If you are retiring to this country things are a bit harder as there
aren't normally easy ways to know what to do. There is, however, lots of
good advice on the internet these days. Don't be an illegal immigrant!
Most governments in Europe are cracking down on this. Even though your
chances of getting caught are small its not worth getting thrown out of
the country. If you are a citizen of an EEC country you have no problem
living anywhere within the EEC. If you're an American then you need to get
a visa ( technically a 'carte de Sejeur' in France) if you're staying more than 90 days.
Taxes are a fraught issue. If you work for a company they should make sure
you pay what's owed and they should get you into the social systems. If
you are retired you will be much more on your own. Just take your time and
learn what needs to be done. If ,as many people who come here to France to
live are, you are an 'artisan' who works independently you need to
make friends with a local in your trade and learn the tax ropes from him.
What's declared and what isn't can get complicated. I know of one English
builder who had to return home because he was too honest in his tax
reporting. He ended up making much less take home pay even though he was
fully busy.
In general settle in just as you would in a new town or neighborhood back
home.
Finally, don't become what I like to term an
"expat" In my sense an expat is one who lives ON a country not In a
country. They get the newspaper from back home, they try to eat their own
'home' cuisine, they mainly associate with other expats. There are for
instance areas in the Dordogne in France where one can live an almost
wholly 'English' life. Try to avoid this of at all possible. By all means
be friendly towards ones fellow countrymen who live in the same area, but
not to the exclusion of getting to know the locals.
Finally, don't be a know it all to your friends back
home. Its very easy to try to impress them with your local knowledge and
the 'quaint' local customs, but don't do it. Often you'll be wrong or just
sound naive to the locals and truly knowledgeable people. A recent
example was a blog post by an American going on about being able to buy
raw milk in France and how the local mild cooperative had set up raw milk
stands. All very interesting I guess, but the French have had availability
of raw milk for as long as I can remember and the raw milk stands are an
attempt to sell more milk as there's a glut of it in France and the
farmers are suffering. Knowing only half a story does not make for good
relations with ones neighbors.
That's my little piece of advice for the moment.
Hopefully, it will be helpful to some people. I would, also say, however,
that I might be best ignored in favor of doing what feels right for you
personally when visiting foreign climes.
Oldies,
but goodies
One of the nice things about France is that they
treat their old people, like me, well. Families by and large stay close
and the younger ones help out the aged; government pensions are if not
overly generous sufficient to live on with a degree of comfort. I was
reminded of all this yesterday when we went for a meal with the local
Troisieme Age club. The French call old age the third age and think its a
time for enjoying life thus the club gets together for outings and meals a
few times a year. Yesterday was one of the meals.
Before I get into that, however, just a quick
update on the last night at the lake. As usual the steak and french fries
were delicious. The place was jam packed, not only were there lots & lots
of Parisot villagers it seemed that every Brit within 50 miles had turned
up to hear the band. Being that the band is made up of 'old' English
people and that most of the Brits around here are retirees I guess it
makes sense. Anyway they started off with a guest keyboard player who
turned out to be our friend Alan. He was really good; it made me thing I
was back in the Southern states in a bar with what I might call Western
blues. Western blues are hard to describe, but you used to hear them all
over Texas and the South. After he did his gig mainly with the lead
guitarist as his accompanist the band got more modern with a string of
Beatles hits. Pretty good, but not as much to my taste as the blues.
Back to the oldies repas. For once I remembered
to take the camera even though Linda wouldn't let me take very many people
pictures for fear of offending somebody. I started by taking a couple of
shots of the 'Salle des Fetes", the village hall.
Here it is. It has two big function rooms, a full
kitchen (not to mention a big BBQ are out side, a bar full sound system
and so forth.
I'm sure at some point there was a central government subsidy as it seems
that every commune in France has a very nice & modern village hall.
Ours in Parisot isn't as large as this one, but is nice nevertheless.
Here's the view behind the Salle des Fetes.

Not bad if I do say so.

Here's just one of the tables as people are
beginning to sit down.
That's Linda clowning on the right.
Here's another table full below.

Lots of chatting, shaking of hands and cheek
kissing goes on as everyone greets everyone else. It would be rude not to
go through the ritual with every acquaintance in the room so this process
takes a considerable amount of time when the crowd is fairly large.
You will note that there's already wine and
bottled water on the tables, but we started with a 'punch'. It was Ok,
orange based, but I don't know what else was in there.
Below is a scan of the whole announcement with a
complete menu.

As you can see the meal was 18 Euros, but only 10
Euros for members. Not a bad deal either way when you consider that all
the wine you could drink was included.

Most of the meal was family style serving as you
can see. This is Linda dishing up soup.
The soup was a nice rich vegetable broth.
As with much of the meal seconds were available.
Of course no French meal would be complete
without bread; basket in reserve shown below.

Next came a really delicious salad with smoked
salmon, shrimp and crab. The vinaigrette was superb.

Then the main course. Roast veal with a mushroom
sauce. Not any old mushrooms mind you, but cepes! Delicious!

The sauce was particularly nice; we could have
done with even more of it.
This is veal country so you can depend upon the
veal being good and well cooked.
The veal was served with Aligot which is very
much a local specialty. Now, you can get Aligot all over France, but they
claim around here that it isn't the real thing unless its made with a
special local cheese.
Said cheese is a variety of Cantal, but a very
young fresh Cantal.
You can buy Aligot in the Super Markets locally
or better yet you can buy it from vendors at most markets. Its always very
rice and requires a lot of effort in the stirring. I've never attempted to
make it since I'm sure what I can buy is better than what I could make.

And here's how you serve it! With a good pair of
scissors!
A big scoop then a few twists and a quick snip
and you have a portion Aligot.
After the main course we had cheese, a selection
of Brie, Cantal and Blue de Causse. I didn't get a picture of the cheese
unfortunately, but I did get on of the dessert.

Dessert was a sort of ice cream cake. Very tasty
with a cake layer, two layers of ice cream and a whipped cream top.
Don't ask me why the French call this a 'Norwegian Omelet", but they do
and its pretty popular around these parts.
We were now served a sweet dessert wine prior to
our coffee. They make some very good dessert wines around Gaillac and this
was one of them. And also, they're a heck of a lot cheaper then the
Sauternes.
With coffee came the offer of Eau de Vie. I've
talked about this drink before; its very very potent. This one which I
didn't taste was made from plums.
Quite a meal with plenty of good conversation
while we ate.

Then our President got up to get the singing
started. They do love their singing in our area and every repas like this
one will end in a song fest.
Some will be solos, but most will be group sing a
longs. Everyone seems to always know all of the words.
Linda & I had to leave at this point as we had to
pick Rupert up from his grooming. We had had
a great afternoon though.
Finally, a little plug for the caterer. Or the
'Traiteur' in French. They do a very good job of putting on these meals at
a realistic price. Below is one of his napkins so if you're every out our
way and want to put on a banquet he's you guy.

September 2009
Suddenly its ...
Fall. Autumn if you prefer. I'm always confused as
to which to call it. Anyway all of a sudden its no longer summer. You can
just feel that the air is different. Now, fall/autumn is one of my
favorite seasons so I'm not complaining, just commenting.
I was ruminating about this yesterday as I drove
down to pick up my friend Francis on the way to the golf course. (No, I
won't talk about golf. My game isn't worth talking about, but I do enjoy
it.) I left home at 8 AM in bright sun light, temperature
about 12 degrees C. By the time I got to St Antonin, or to give it its
proper name; Saint Antonin Noble Val, it was 8 degrees and very foggy.
This caused me to think about the importance of choosing where you live
very carefully. A 15 minute drive had made a huge difference in the
weather. This was no fluke as St Antonin gets a lot of day when the fog
never clears due the the fact that its in a river valley with steep cliffs
on either side. Beautiful without question, but not nice to live in. I was
also reminded of the fact that St Antonin is a very undesirable crowd of
people living there. Some are simply out of time & place hippies, artists
so called, but they're not too bad just a bit dirty & scruffy. No, the bad
part are the 'work dodgers' these are people permanently on the dole as
the English say and in fact a lot of them are English living on their
unemployment checks. There are a goodly number of French as well plus a
few Dutch and Belgians. It ends up being a refuge for what we Americans
would call 'swamp Yankees' or 'Rednecks' in English they don't seem to
have a similar expression. Its so bad that several friend both French and
British have moved their children out of the local high school equivalent.
Its sad because as I say its a beautiful town.
As I climbed back into the sunny morning I cheered
up and thanked my lucky stars that we hadn't made a decision to live in St
Antonin when we moved here. We easily could have done so. I now find that
my favorite American, she of the prophylactic blog, has ended up in St
Antonin this year. Fitting I guess, but still I feel sorry for her & her
husband as I'm sure they didn't know what they're getting into.
Anyway, back to fall/autumn. There's a crispness to
the air now even though the temperature are still in the mid- twenties. We
had our first proper rain (I say proper as opposed to rain from a
thunderstorm.) a week ago and as a result the grass has already turned
green again. Although I know it isn't true it seems as if the days have
gotten an hour shorter - overnight. Not too many leaves have turned yet,
but as soon as we get a cold night they will.
All of the bounty is ripening. We harvested our
hazelnuts last week, a friend brought us a big bag of figs which I've
dried, the walnuts are starting to fall and I harvested all of the basil
and made puree out of iy for the freezer.
Tonight we've going to the last night the café at
the lake will be open. We'll have our Argentina steaks and say goodbye to
the Belgian proprietors. It should be fun; there's a live band promised
which consists of a group of old fogeys like me. Well not quite THAT old,
but we'll see.
Finishing the pickles
As promised I finished off the dill pickles today.
Having tasted them I thought that about 60 hours of curing at room
temperature seemed enough for this batch. Each batch varies so
tasting is the only true guide to getting the degree of 'pickliness' that
you prefer; normally it will be somewhere between 60 and 100 hours.
Anyway the first thing to do is get you jars out.
This time I used two types.


Being a bit selfish I usually use the big jars for
our own consumption and the small jars to give to friends.
In either case the first thing that happens is that
the jars get sterilized. There are various ways to do this, but my
favorite for something like the pickles that won't stored long term and
will be kept in a fridge is to simply do them in the oven.

Note that I've taken the rubber seals off the
canning jars and have put the lids of the jam jars in.
I've pre-heated the oven to around 200 degrees
centigrade.
I now let them 'cook' for at least five minutes
before removing them from the oven.
Obviously, I do this very carefully using thick
oven gloves.


Here we are with the lid on and then the lid off.
The pickles are looking and smelling pretty good.

Here's a close up of the pickles. They're looking
good. Its hard to see in the picture, but one can tell just by looking
that they've softened as has the garlic and red pepper.
Another tasting is done at this stage just to be
sure the cure is where we want it. Its fine, but I must say that so far
the hot peppers haven't had much influence on the overall taste.

The best way to fill the jars is to simply pick
up the pickles out of their brine with your fingers and fill the jars. It
will normally take a bit of balancing to distribute the quantities fairly
evenly between the jars.
In this case I ended up with two larger jars and
three small ones.
Next you fill the jars with the pickling juice.
This should work out to be about the right amount of juice, but if not a
bit of plain water evenly distributed will solve the problem
The jars should be filled to cover the pickles, but with some space at the
top. If necessary push the pickles down in the jars.
Here are some pictures to give you the idea.

Not yet filled.

Same jar filled.

Here are a couple so you get the idea.


So, here's the finished product.
Two big jars and three small ones for our
friends.
I just has a sample ( they've now been in the
fridge for about 8 hours). The pickles are really great, crisp, dilly &
sour. The garlic comes through well. I'm not so sure about the hot pepper;
there's a nice after bite, but its not very strong. I'll have to think
about this as to whether to just not bother adding the pepper or whether
to add quite a lot more.
Ah well maybe next year as I doubt that I'll find
more little cucumbers this late in the year..
By the way the cloudiness of the liquid will
disappear as the pickles settle.
Try these yourself. They're easy and delicious.
T(P)ickled Pink
Hope I'm not trying to be too clever with my little
play on words title. What I'm trying to say is that were tickled pink to
be invited out for dinner last night by friends AND I made what will no
doubt be my last lot of pickles for this summer yesterday. We had a great
time at our friend's, good company and excellent food.
I hadn't realized that our friend, Sue, was a bit
nervous about cooking for me. In her mind my reputation as a chef is
larger than it deserves. In any case she needn't have worried. Her meal
was really really good. She started with a little amuse of fresh fig
stuffed with goat's cheese sitting on a parmesan wafer. Delicious and
light as an amuse should be. The entree was a salad of rocket, ham and
pears with a superb dressing made with walnut oil and walnut vinegar.
Another stunner! Our plat was beef bourguignon served with roast potatoes
and green beans. Yummy. Her dessert was a croissant cut open, coated
in a mix of eggs, sugar and creme fraiche, fried and stuffed with fried
apple and a nice daub of ice cream on the side. Cheese followed in the
English manner and was a delicious single type of cheese. Sue had
forgotten what it was, but I'd guess that it was a ripe Tome Fermier. We
had a succession of good wines to go with all this, in fact perhaps
a bit too much good wine, but the drive home was short and Linda was
designated driver.
Rupert was also invited,
but made a fool of himself over their young border collie, Summer. He
absolutely adores her. Even though he's fixed he gets very amorous with
her. Mind you she, little floozy that she is, encourages him to no end.
Both dogs had a great time and truly do seem to love each other.
Unfortunately, Rupert got so obnoxious that he had to be put in the car to
rest and cool off.
All in all a very nice evening with excellent
food and company. Sue's cooking skills are of a high order.
Earlier in the day I'd gone to the big market in
Villefranche de Rouergue hoping to buy more little cucumbers for pickle
making. Its getting very late in the season for them, but I was lucky and
found a stand that had some very nice ones. Only 3 Euros for a kilo of
them. I was also able to buy some beautiful fresh garlic and fresh dill.
I think I've put the recipe for these pickles
somewhere else on the blog, but here's a pictorial version from yesterday.
(I owe the basics of this recipe to Bittman's "How to Cook Everything",
but I've tweaked it a bit to my own taste. I 'd strongly urge anyone who
doesn't have a copy to go out & buy this book.)


Here are the main ingredients; the little
cucumbers, garlic and dill.
(what's shown are only some of the cucumbers not
all of them.)

In this case I've added some fresh red pepper
that my friend Jean gave me from her garden. I only used one of them.

The first thing is to cut the cucumbers in half
lengthways. I do leave some of the very small ones whole. I also make sure
to cut off the flower end, but leave the stem end.


Next put 1/2 cup of kosher salt and !/2 cup
boiling water into the container you are using for the pickles.
It is important that the bowl is large enough to
hold the cucumbers easily. They should not fill the bowl much more than
half way.
Once the salt has dissolved add ice cubes to cool
the mixture down then add the cucumbers.
Next peel & crush the garlic cloves. Chop them
very roughly. The amount of garlic to use is a matter of taste; for my
taste about 10 good sized cloves of garlic for 2 pounds of cucumbers is
about right. You may want more or less.
Now you need to roughly chop the dill. I use lots
as the taste is not all that strong. Cut out & throw away the largest
stems.
Almost there, cut a pepper in half lengthwise
then deseed it and chop it up finely. Be aware that this part of the
recipe is very much a personal addition. You may not want to add any
pepper at all. I'm trying it this time because I want to see what will
happen to the taste. I don't think the pepper will over power the other
ingredients; or I hope not anyway. Next time I may add more pepper or none
at all based upon how this batch comes out.
Finally, crush some coriander seeds in a
mortar & pestle and add them to the mix.
Again, the coriander is a personal taste of mine.
I like the flavor it adds,
By all means omit it if you want to.
To recap: We have:
- 1/2 cup of salt
- 1/2 cup of water
- some ice cubes (probably melted by now)
- about 2 pounds of cucumbers
- 8-10 crushed cloves of garlic
- A generous amount of roughly chopped dill
- One hot pepper, deseeded and chopped up.
- A generous amount of crushed coriander seeds
All of this goes into the bowl and one adds
enough room temperature water to cover everything.

Next we put a lid on. In this case I have a plate
that just fits nicely inside the bowl. The idea is that everything MUST be
covered by water while the pickles cure.

In my case I have a lid for this bowl so I put
that on on top of everything else.
The pickles now cure for a minimum of 48 hours at
room temperature. I normally like to let them cure for closer to 72 hours,
but as with so much of this recipe its a matter of personal taste. After
the first 48 hours try sampling every few hours until you are happy with
the taste.

Once the curing is finished you need to decant
the pickles into jars for storage in the fridge. They can be eaten
immediately, but won't keep for more than 2-3 weeks. Ours never last that
long anyway.
I'll do a post an bottling the pickles in a
couple of days.
A plentitude of plums
Its getting to be the time of year when we start
gathering the bounty of the countryside. One of the first things that
ripen and are therefore ready to be picked are plums. In fact a whole variety of
plums both red and green. Not to mention the prunes. I'm not quite sure
what the difference is other than prunes are considerably larger than most
plums.
Near to us towards the West is Agen which is famous for
it's prunes. This brings back memories as the area of California where I
grew up, North of San Francisco, was also a great prune growing area. I
used to make most of my money for school clothes by picking prunes. 25¢
a lug I got and it was hard work I can tell you picking up prunes from the
ground. Still. I could make as much as $6.00 a day which was pretty good
back then.
Anyway, back to the local
French plums. The 'Mirabelle's' are one of the first to appear. They're
yellow and small and make excellent jam and open faced tarts. You'll see
them in the patisseries with their thin crust and a single layer of plums.
Then their are the large
purple plums that start appearing in the markets, I don't know their name.
They're about the size of a large golf ball and come in two varieties that
I know of. Unfortunately I can't tell the difference. I say unfortunately
because one type has a stone that's easy to get out and the other doesn't.
In any case these are excellent for making my popular (locally popular
that is.) rustic fruit tart. There's a recipe somewhere on the blog if you
can find it. Now that I look I find that maybe that recipe isn't on the
blog. There is, however, one for apricots. You make the plum version the
same way, just substitute the plums for the apricots.
This year, I guess because
the weather has been so good our friends Michael & Ruve's plum tree went
berserk and produced an amazingly abundant crop. This tree has purple
leaves and produces small purple plums. They're hard to stone so not very
good for pie making, but delicious to just eat raw. One can, however, only
eat so many raw plums. Ruve decided to make plum sauce, So she was able to
use up a lot of plums by making both a sweet plum sauce AND a spicy plum
sauce. They're both delicious and, luckily, she gave us a bottle of each.
Linda decided to have a go as well so Ruve & I picked over five kilos
worth for her. She did two things with them. One lot she coated in a sugar
syrup and froze. (except in this case she used 'Splenda' rather than real
sugar to save calories) She'll use these to make plum crumbles this
winter. Linda made the rest into a Chinese plum sauce. This has ginger,
star anise, Sichuan pepper, soy sauce and so forth in it. Absolutely
delicious. She might not have started had she realized that the recipe
called for two hours of constant stirring. I did help with this part. I
parked a chair in front of the stove and stirred with one hand while holding
my book with the other.
Finally, and most famously of
all, the locals make their 'lethal' Eau De Vie from the wild plums that
grow in the hedge rows. I say lethal because this stuff has a very high
alcohol content. Way over 100 proof! The plum bushes seem to like growing
in the hedge rows, but not on their own. We have a number of them in our
hedges, but we don't make Eau De Vie as technically its illegal. You can
go
here for a write up on this subject and to find out why its
illegal to make your own Eau De Vie.
Who would have thought that I
could blather on at such length about plums, but there you are.
A new twist on an old recipe
A favorite dish especially this time of year in the
midst of tomato season is the Italian standard of Tomatoes with mozzarella
some basil, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. A lovely fresh and simple dish
which I have always enjoyed. The other day I has some beautiful large
tomatoes, but no mozzarella; just a hankering for the dish.
This is what I came up with.
The local shop always has brie on hand so I went up
& bought some. Now I was ready.
A slice of
tomato then a slice of brie on top of that (you can cut off o leave the
rind as you prefer) then another slice of tomato, then brie and so on
until you have enough layers. Now sprinkle on some nice olive oil followed
by a vinegar of your choice. (I used plain red wine vinegar, but sherry or
white wine should work well. I don't think balsamic would be right.) Now
some sea salt crystals and a grinding of pepper. The final touch is a
generous sprinkle of fresh thyme.
Voila! As we say here; that's it. I must say that
it turned out beautifully. The flavors work very well together. Its
important that the brie be ripe, but not runny ripe. Just ripe enough to
bring out the flavor. I suspect that Camembert might work pretty well
also.
Haven't thought of a name for this
yet, but I'm open to suggestions.
Try it,
you'll like it.
A post for
Charlie
Charlie was kind enough to send me a few messages
the last of which asked a number of questions. You can see that message
here. Since Charlie was
interested I thought others might be as well so here's a post
about Parisot & French life.
First of all Parisot is a small village. The
entire commune of Parisot has a population of about 450 people. About 40
of us are 'foreigners' that is Dutch, Belgian, British and so forth with
just two Americans. A nice thing about France is that if you live in the
community you can vote in the local elections. Not Nationally, but only
locally. It makes you feel part of things local. In any case last year we
elected a whole new village council, younger and more go ahead. They've
initiated a number of new things. More get togethers, English classes at
out newly refurbished Library, a Friday market and so forth.
Since we are so small the village can't support a lot of commerce, but we
do have a village shop which sells the basics, two bread shops one of
which does very good pastries, a restaurant, a drug store and a
restaurant. There is a new bar/cafe due to open up any week now & we're
all hoping that it will be good. We also have a Doctor, a veterinarian, a
hairdressing salon and a garage; two in fact. Thus, the village is
provided with the basic necessities.
For more major needs our nearest place is
Villefranche de Rouergue which is about 20 minutes away. While not a big
town, maybe 35,000, it has almost everything you would need. Two well
equipped hospitals. One of which I spent some time in last December and
was very well treated. A full range of shops including three supermarkets
(they're just about finished building a new larger branch of Leclerc a
major chain) there are do it yourself shops, dress shops, restaurants,
specialist food shops, lots of bread shops and a huge and very good open
air market every Thursday. So, Villefranche is where we go for most major
shopping.
I like the open air farmers markets & we have a great choice. On Sunday we
have both St Antonin & Limogne. Limogne is preferred as being less crowded
and touristy. My favorite on Monday is Caussade. This winds through
the medieval back streets & has everything from live chicken to all
vegetables & fruits to truffles in season. I recently did a pictorial blog
on this market which you can see here in the August posts (last
month)
In any case shopping is not difficult. If we need more there are
Montauban, Cahors or Albi all within about a 40 minute drive. For really
special things then there is Toulouse. the fourth largest city in France,
only just over an hour away.
Charlie asked about housing & house prices. A
wide subject. As in most places you can find all price ranges. The market
is fairly flat at the moment as are most places. The French are
conservative so have not over heated their market; thus in
general prices are rising, but slowly. The higher end of the market in our
area which mainly depended upon the British is suffering due to their
problems. One nice thing is that its not difficult to buy a house in
France. Like most places there's a fair amount of paperwork, but its not
all that complicated. In France almost all house sales go through a
Notaire. The Notaire is a quasi-lawyer type licensed by the government and
is a neutral party working to ensure fairness and making sure that all
relevant taxes are paid. The expensive part of house buying are the fees &
taxes; the real estate agent usually gets a 6% commission paid by the
seller and the various government taxes can amount to nearly 10% of the
purchase price.
As regular readers will know we have our house for sale as we want
to downsize. Here's our selling site if you're interested,
www.campdelmas.com.
There you can see what you get for a fairly high price. A good location
with views, nearly three acres of land and a nicely renovated house. You
can spend a lot less (or more) for modern houses or smaller old stone
houses. Or, if you're brave you can buy an unmodernized farmhouse for
renovation. This is not for the fainthearted or the non-French speaker.
Dealing with all of the building trades is hard enough in one's own
country; doing it in a foreign language can be a nightmare.
Still & all living here is great. The people are
wonderful, the weather terrific, the food great and life is just very
enjoyable. I don't think getting into the system is all that difficult.
The health system in France is probably the best in the world. We qualify
because I worked in England long enough to qualify there and as part of
the Common Market the French have reciprocal agreement with England. Other
friends buy private health insurance which is not expensive. Recently a
friend went through a whole diagnosis and treatment regime for a
major illness and it didn't cost them much at all. Thus what can be a
major worry in the states just isn't here in France.
Finally, I have to say that living in a foreign
country isn't for everyone. We find that many people just don't like the
fact that things are different from what they're used to. There's nothing
wrong with that at all. To happily live in a country that isn't your own
takes a certain mind set and openness to changes. For some of us that's an
adventure that we embrace for others it a constant pain in the neck. We
hear far too many people here who say "if only the French would do... or
do things this way....., then..." Well, the French (or for that matter the
American or English or whomever) aren't going to change to suit we
foreigners its we who have to adapt to their ways if we choose to live in
their country.
I've lived in six countries & I mean live in not just visit and I've
enjoyed them all. Now, however, I'm very happy in France and don't plan on
moving to any other country. Boing, what?
Any question please let me know.
Charlie, thanks for asking. Let me know if you
would like further questions answered.
A tribute
to Sheila Lukens
It was with great sadness that I read of the
death of Sheila Lukens recently. She and Julie Russo wrote the wonderful
cookbook "The Silver Palate Cookbook" in, I believe, 1979. I came across
it, can't remember whether it was given to me or whether I read about it
or what, in about 1982. I had just moved back to the states after the
breakup of my first marriage and was getting back into serious cooking (My
first wife wouldn't let anybody else near the kitchen even though she was
only a so so cook.) TSPC was a revelation. To me the recopies were so
fresh and original that I couldn't stop trying them out. I wouldn't say
that I cooked my way through the book, but I certainly tried the majority
of the recipes.
For this I owe Sheila a huge debt of gratitude.
TSPC really got me back into cooking and 'upped my game' as it were. I
went from strictly traditional dishes to the more modern innovative
approach in TSPC. That, along, with living in Berkley where Chez Panisse,
Pig by the Tail, The Cheese Shop and Monterey Market all existed at the
time revolutionized my cooking. Thank you Sheila!
I can't think of a better tribute to Sheila and
the book than to give you my interpretation of my favorite recipe from
TSPC. "Pasta and Seafood Salad with Basil". I made this yesterday for
friends and they loved it. If you've never made it give it a try, its not
difficult, but is delicious. Better yet go out and buy The Silver Palate
Cookbook. You'll thank me for suggesting it. By the way with basil in full
grown right now the recipe is doubly appropriate.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup diced sweet red pepper. (yellow or
green will do, but the red is nice for color)
- 1/2 cup minced purple onion (any onion will
do, but sweeter onions like Vidalia's are especially nice)
- 1/2 cup good quality olive oil.
- 3-4 tablespoons of lemon juice
- 1/2 cup basil puree (Simply take several large
handfuls of fresh basil leaves stalks & all and put then in a food
processor or blender and process them with just enough olive oil to make
a fine paste. Any extra can be frozen.)
- Salt & pepper to taste.
- Roughly 2 cups of pitted olives. (Kalamatas,
Nicoise whatever type you like)
- 1 lb small/ medium shrimp shelled & deveined.
- 1 lb bay scallops (the little guys. Don't be
tempted to use the large scallops.)
- Several small squid cut into strips. (this is
strictly optional as many people are put off by squid and besides
they're not always easy to find.)
- 1/2 lb of pasta. (shapes like fusilli are good
or the little shells. You want bite sized and you want a shape that will
capture the dressing.
- 1 cup frozen peas, defrosted and patted dry.
Technique:
- Put a large pot of water on to boil for the
pasta, a smaller pot for the shrimp & scallops and a third small pot if
you are using the squid.
- Chop up the onion and pepper.
- Make the sauce by combining the basil puree,
the olive oil and the lemon juice. Mix thoroughly with a fork or small
whisk.
- Pit you olives if necessary.
- When your water is nicely boiling start
cooking the pasta.
- In the second pot of boiling water put in the
scallops & shrimp and boil for no more than one minute. Drain
immediately. Dry thoroughly.
- Salt the water in the third pot and when
boiling drop in the squid. Reduce the heat & let simmer for about 5
minutes. Drain & dry.
- When the pasta is 'al dente' drain it
thoroughly.
- While still warm pour the pasta over the
onions, peppers, shrimps, scallops & squid. Mix well. Add the peas (no
need to cook them) Add the basil dressing. Mix well. Add the olives.
- Adjust seasoning. (Note: I like to use a bit
of sea salt crystals instead of regular salt, but if careful if you do
so as not to over salt.)
Serve the salad at room temperature. Serve with
some nice crusty bread and a decent white wine.
The salad is just as good the next day after a
night in the fridge.
Thank you Sheila! I hope this has inspired you to
go out and buy the book.
Village Life
Regular readers may remember that I posted about the
disaster that happened with our annual Festi'lac celebration. Turns out
that the committee is on the hook for several thousand Euros. Remember
that the organizers are all young people who live in the village. That's a
lot of money to try & find in a small community.
As predicted there will be lots of fund raising
events. The first is this Sunday down at the lake. I thought that you
might be interested in the flyer that announce the event so here it is.

Click here for a full page view of the
notice.
Some of the language is interesting.
'Soutine' mean in aid of or in support of. In this
case in support of FESTI'LAC, the committee.
The meal price is fixed at 16 Euros, but! Donations
are welcome!
An 'urne' will be at your disposition. Literally an
urn will be at your disposal. However, in French an 'urne' is also a
ballot box. Thus a place where you can make your additional contributions.
We will.
The meal itself is very simple and inexpensive.
Melon with Port or Country ham, followed by chicken then cheese then
dessert. It goes without saying that wine will be served with coffee to
follow. A very simple meal at low cost. We have a get profit into the kids
so they can pay their debt.
We'll be there with all the friends we can gather &
we'll contribute something extra.
I'll report more on Monday.
Regular readers may remember that I posted about the
disaster that happened with our annual Festi'lac celebration. Turns out
that the committee is on the hook for several thousand Euros. Remember
that the organizers are all young people who live in the village. That's a
lot of money to try & find in a small community.
As predicted there will be lots of fund raising
events. The first is this Sunday down at the lake. I thought that you
might be interested in the flyer that announce the event so here it is.

Click here for a full page view
August
Silly
Season
Silly Season; now I can't remember whether that's
an American or British expression. Maybe its both? I get confused
sometimes between my native American sayings & my adopted British ones. In
any case the expression refers to this time of the year when there's so
little going on that we resort to having deep discussions about silly
subjects. We even get serious about things like baseball & cricket!
(Congratulations England for beating the Australians and taking the Ashes.
Now I won't have to listen to endless discussion about the game from my
friends.)
What led me to this post, however was a Silly
Season discussion on eGullet about garlic. Can you believe that there were
87 posts on the subject and 2,232 viewings in the space of 11 days.
Amazing! The main discussion was around 'natural' vs. pre-peeled garlic.
Now, you've got to admit that that's pretty silly.
I haven't weighed up the pro's & con's of each
camp so can't say who 'won', but I can say that it seemed in general that
those in favor of pre-prepared garlic were mainly city types and their
point was the difficulty in finding fresh natural garlic of high quality.
This more than convenience or laziness seemed to be their point.
I was in the natural garlic camp. In fact I'm not
even sure that you can get pre-peeled garlic here in France. To be honest
I've never looked. I know that you can buy peeled cloves of garlic in some
kind of liquid (vinegar?) at the olive stalls on the market. Their is
never a problem with garlic quality here. I don't find peeling garlic to
be much of a chore. Sure it takes a while if you're doing a lot, but I
really don't mind. If I need a lot and/or I need whole cloves then I just
pop the garlic into some boiling water for a few seconds.
What did get me going during this silly season
discussion was all the posts about garlic presses. To me the garlic press
is just about the most useless kitchen tool ever invented. They do a
terrible job, are hard to clean & unhygienic and spoil the garlic. I threw
mine out years ago after trying at least a dozen models; none of them were
worth the drawer space they occupied.
So, there you have my silly season post. I'll try
to be more serious in future. Now you know why I ended my post on Caussade
market with all of those garlic pictures.
To end a picture of my favorite rose garlic.

Monday
Market
The Monday market in Caussade is one of my
favorites. I've persuaded my friend Michael to switch from the Sunday
market in Limogne in favor of Caussade. Its not a grand market nor is it
much shopped by the foreign community; its a real working market. In
addition to the food there is a large section selling everything from soup
to nuts. There is in season even a truffle market.
Anyway today I took my camera with me as I wanted
to share this market with you. Enjoy the pictures. I'll keep the
commentary to a minimum.

Where we park is near the part of the market
where they sell live fowl.



Let us not forget the ducks.

Here's the daily menu from one of the local
restaurants. Not bad for about $17.00.
Translated it reads:
Country Salad or House made Duck Terrine
Followed by
a choice of:
Grilled Bar (a fish) or Grilled baby
chicken or Marinated grilled pork.
Followed by:
A dessert of your choice. (I can't quite make out
what it says about the cheese at the bottom. Normally you can substitute
cheese for dessert.)
Wine (1/4 liter) and coffee are included. You
don't tip in these places.

Here we start into the market properly.

A selection of local wines & beers. This is from
a permanent shop just behind the table.

Sunflowers for sale
.
Nice!

Nice tomatoes at a good price, but not the
cheapest on the market.

Here they are at 50 centimes per kilo. These are
the ones I bought a couple of weeks ago to make sauce out of. Last week
they didn't have any & Michael had to buy the slightly more expensive
ones. He's still moaning!

Just to complete the tomato story here are some
really nice old fashioned cherry tomatoes.

As you can see meat prices in France are pretty
high. He's only advertising beef & lamb here both of which are quite a bit
more expensive than pork.
Notice that 'Merguez' sausage is cheap.
Here's the butcher himself.


Fancy, expensive, canned goods. High quality
though.

I like this picture.

What do you use green almonds for?

These are all herbal remedy mixtures. They will
cure almost anything according to the seller. France is very big on this
sort of thing and you can buy herbal products in most regular pharmacies.

How about some bread?


Grow your own lettuce.


These are very high quality, but expensive
cheeses. Here's the most popular cheese vendor. There's always a long
line.


What would a French market be without the fabric
& table cloth stand? There almost always is one. And, no they're not just
for the tourists.

This is just one of several fish mongers. Great
quality.

Lovely berries and
chanterelles. Yummy!

This stand is all
organic produce. They have some really nice stuff and the best selection
of fresh herbs on the market. They're my best source for cilantro.
(coriander here in France)

This is one of my favorite stands. Its run by
'The Herb Lady' and her son. In the foreground are their dried and candied
fruits, then their olives (great quality, low price) and at the other end
Mom with all the herbs. What you see below is just a selection of her
total range of herbs. And she knows her stuff, you can ask most questions
about herbs and get an exhaustive answer.


How about some raw unpasteurized milk? Only 1
Euro per liter.





Lots and lots of garlic. This is for those over
on eGullet who have been moaning about the difficulty of getting good
garlic. As you can see there's no such problem here. (A livre by the way
is a pound or 500 grams.)
I hope you've enjoyed this little market tour.
I'll try to do one later in the year so you can see how the products on
offer change.
Gluten
Free
This seems to be the latest mantra. All of a
sudden people we know are becoming gluten intolerant. Why I don't know,
perhaps its to do with age or gender. Both of the sufferers we know are
female and over 60. I'm not implying that there's anything psychosomatic
about this because they truly do suffer effects if they eat anything with
gluten in it.
All of this, you guessed it, leading up to a tale
and a recipe.
We had 10 for dinner last night two of whom are
gluten intolerant. Our starter was oven roasted tomatoes with garlic,
basil and balsamic vinegar. Now, you have to have bread with this dish;
not to would be criminal. Difficult, but my clever wife had found gluten
free bread at the supermarket. I can't say that it looked much, but both
guests said it tasted fine. The rest of us had to suffer 'tintin' with our
tomatoes. Its just about my favorite bread.
We were Ok for our main course as it was cold
roast pork loin with a mustard & sage sauce accompanied by Caponata and
green beans. Cheese followed, but they still had the gluten free bread to
put their St Felician on.
Dessert. Here's where the real tale starts.
Several months ago we were invited to tea at some new friend's house.
They're still renovating, but you can see that its going to be a great
place. Anyway they served an orange cake with the tea. It was absolutely
delicious, fabulous in fact. It turned out that it was John, a recently
retires solicitor, who had made the cake. We were lucky enough to
have it a second time at the Shakespeare picnic (see a few blogs back).
Knowing John better by then we asked for the recipe which he gladly
supplied.
Now, we hadn't realized that the orange cake was
gluten free until we actually read the recipe. So I made it myself for the
first time last night. And I must say that it was wonderful, again. I
loved it and so did our guests both those gluten intolerant and the rest
of us.
Thanks to John here's the recipe:
Orange & Almond Cake
Ingredients: (These ingredients are right for an
8" diameter spring form cake tin. Or, as I did, you can use a 10" angel
food cake tin. (the type with a hole in the middle))
- 2 large oranges
- 6 eggs
- 8 oz (250g) ground almonds
- 8 oz (250g) light brown sugar (golden caster
sugar if you're English)
- 1 teaspoon Baking powder
Method:
- Boil/simmer the whole oranges for about 2
hours until soft. Allow to cool, cut up into chunks and remove any
seeds. Puree the oranges, skins & all in a blender or food processor.
- Pre- heat the oven to 190 degrees C (375 F.)
- Beat the eggs until they are smooth and pale.
Mix in the almonds, sugar and baking powder and blend well.
- Add the pureed orange to the egg mixture.
- Pour the cake batter into the buttered cake
tin.
- Place in the pre-heated oven and bake for
about 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean.
Serve with crème fraiche, whipped cream or ice
cream. I made a little orange sauce using the zest (boil for 5 minutes to
soften) and juice from another orange plus sugar. Simply put the zest,
juice and sugar into a pan & boil until the mixture thickens. To serve
place a spoon full of the sauce on a plate and put the cake slice on top
of it.
My thanks to John. This is a terrific recipe AND
its gluten free. Try it you'll love it!
Recent
traffic
Here are copies of some recent letters I've
received and replied to which I think may be of some general interest. Let
me know.
Hi
just been reading
on your website, regarding cassoulet and especially cassole's, I've been trying
to buy myself
a traditional
cassole for a long time now, BUT to no avail, could you direct to any
potteries or their website's,
I've looked at a
few sites, mostly in French obviously (very ignorant of me not to
understand the language).
if you could help
with some information it would be gratefully appreciated
kind regards
Richard
Preston, Lancashire, England
Reply:
Richard
Thanks for your message. I don't know of anywhere in the UK where you
can buy a cassole. I'm sure there must be somewhere.
In any case here are a couple of links to sites in France that sell
them.
http://www.poteriecassouletcastelnaudary.com/Cassoles.htmlhttp://www.
Its hard to tell whether or not these people sell online or not, but its
worth a try.
Let me know if you succeed.If nor maybe we can find another way.
Regards
Dave
Another letter:
Hello Dave/Linda,
I first want to say that I've been reading your blog/site
for some time and truly enjoy it. As an ex chef and current photographer I
long for retirement and the opportunity to enjoy France for longer periods
of time other than the odd week or two we can now spend there.
The reason that I am writing is to see if you have available a list of
area restaurants? Either on your site or maybe via a posting Dave may have
done on Egullet? I saw recently that he encouraged someone to inquire
about
good restaurants next time they were to be in the area.
We are going to be staying in Salles la Source (between Rodez and
Marcillac) in a gite.
It will be my wife,myself and our 6 1/2 year old son. So,they would need
to
be places where having a six year old would be appropriate. Our tastes run
to more rustic,local preparations than highly refined,tortured-stacked
food
kind of places. Possible Ferme Auberges,great bistrots etc.. We've
traveled
several times before in the Dordogne and Provence and digging up
restaurant
recommendations for those areas seemed easier I guess because they are
more
highly touristed. We are really looking forward to our week in the Aveyron
and are spending the second week in the Minervois.
At this point we are considering trips to Villefranche,Corde,Najac,the
Aubrac area,
possibly around Millau. Any where that is day trippable from Salle la
Source. Any recommendations you could point us to would be greatly
appreciated. Hope you have some good fortune in finding a buyer for your
home and keep up the great work on your French Food Focus site! It's
inspiring for those tied down among us.
Cheers,
Vance
Reply:
Vance
Here's the promised reply. Its a good day for sitting in front of the
computer as its really hot outside today. Well into the 90's (I'd say we
may see 37 -40 C today) and its set to continue for at least a few days
more. Our gite visitors are loving it and making full use of the pool.
I've attached a copy of my restaurant list, but I'm not sure how useful
it will be to you as we're just about 30-40 miles West of where you'll
be and the majority of the restaurants are pretty local. What is on the
list and what I'd highly recommend is Le
Vieux Pont in Belcastel. Its
a Michelin one star & worth every penny. What you do is reserve for
lunch during the week. Order the 28 Euro menu. You get a limited choice,
but you also get all the little amuses & extras that are served with the
full 50 Euro menu. Order your wine from their short "Coup de Coeur" list
as these are inexpensive and always very good. If you like good food you
will love this place.
Taking a 61/2 year old to restaurants in France is not a problem. The
French dote on children & he will be welcome anywhere. ( our big
standard poodle, Rupert, goes to all the restaurants with us. He's been
to a two star, but hasn't tried a three star as of yet.)
Your best bet in this rural area is to focus on lunch. You can find
yourself eating nearly alone at dinner time; besides of which you don't
normally want to go to a restaurant before 8:00PM in France which is
difficult with young children. Ask around and you will find that there
are a number of places where you can get a 3-4 course lunch for between
11 -15 Euros including wine. Local specialties are various duck based
dishes (comfit, magret), nice salads, veal (your area is famous for it),
aligot (a potato & cheese dish), the pork is excellent as is the chicken
and, of course, the vegetables this time of year. Normally, the beef is
not good by American standards and is expensive.
You will be in great cheese country. Not far from Roquefort & its caves,
but also near the Cantal and Salers areas. In addition you will find a
great selection of goat's & sheep's milk cheeses. Yummy. Don't be shy
about trying them.
The places you mention are all good ones to visit. Go to Villefranche de
Rouergue on a Thursday morning as its market day. Its a big & very good
market. Cordes is nice, but make sure you park legally as their meter
maids are ferocious. You might also want to try St Cirq Lapopie & Pech
Merle which is nearby. They are both near the River lot & its a pretty
drive from Conques down the river heading West. Pech Merle are the caves
with prehistoric paintings, very interesting. Seeing the viaduct are
Millau is a great sight as you head East.
Najac is very pretty and you can buy a favorite cook book there called
"Goose Fat and Garlic" its written by an English lady who has lived in
the area for many years. Its as much a social history of the area as a
cookbook and is throughly enjoyable.
If you should get as far West as Parisot give us a call (the number's on
the website) and come by for a drink or something.
Have a great holiday and do let us know how it goes. If we can be of any
further help just let us know.
Cheers
Linda & Dave
I'm happy to try and help whenever I can. Keep
the letters coming.,
Just
Wonderful!
Just wonderful is the only way to describe the
concert we went to the other night. The music was great. We had Schubert
by a very accomplished violinist accompanied by an equally talented
pianist. Then we had Stravinsky with the same pianist and a young cello
player from Finland. She was terrific. So, the music was wonderful.
The setting, however, was at least equally
wonderful. Imagine yourself on a perfect summer evening sitting in an open
courtyard surrounded on three side by a magnificent chateau. The fourth
side has a parapet overlooking a 100 foot drop to the river Lot. The
valley is superb; there is a small village nestled in the hills above the
river about 1/2 a mile away and you watch it slowly light up as darkness
falls. Now, that is the way to listen to a concert! Just wonderful!
Another thing that was just wonderful was the
Caponata that I made yesterday evening. I haven't made this for a long
time, but Linda came home with a couple of aubergines (eggplants) from a
friend so I was inspired to have a go. I suspect that this is a dish with
many many variations, but I must say that my variation turned out well.
Here goes:
- Ingredients:
2 lbs aubergine
1 large onion
2-3 stalks of celery
1 large red or green bell pepper
2-3 cloves of garlic
15-20 olives, pitted either green or black to your taste.
1 tablespoon of capers
5-6 tablespoons of good olive oil
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar
Salt & pepper to taste (easy on the salt as the capers are normally
quite salty.)
Method:
- Cut the aubergine into about !/2 inch cubes.
You can peel them if you like, but I don't bother. Likewise you can salt
& then rinse them as well. Again I don't bother.
- Heat up the olive oil in a large skillet (but
one that you have a lid for) then dump in the aubergines. Toss
frequently and cook until slightly browned and soft. This will take
about 10 minutes
- While that's happening chop the onion, celery
and pepper into bite sized chunks. Minch the garlic.
- When the aubergines have browned nicely dump
all of the other vegetables into the pan and stir well to coat.
Add the capers.
- Let this cook for a couple of minutes then add
the sugar and the vinegar.
- Cover the pan and continue cooking until all
of the vegetables have softened. Stir frequently.
- Take the cover off and cook for a couple of
minutes more .(if the Caponata looks too dry at any stage just add a
tablespoon of water)
- Take off the heat and let cool. This is a dish
best eaten at room temperature. Serve with really crusty country bread
and a lusty red wine.
Wonderfully delicious and a great way to use up
any aubergines you have grown. Try your own variations. Zucchini
instead of or in addition to the aubergines go well for instance.
Tomato Season
I had a whole post just about finished yesterday
when the power went off & I lost the whole thing. Pity. It was about yet
another concert and dinner afterwards. The dinner grew from 5 people to 12
in the matter of an hour, Linda just can't help being generous.
Fortunately, I'd anticipated her to some degree and
had put 9 very large potatoes into the over to bake before the concert.
Thus I could serve !/2's to some of the delicate Lady diners. The green
salad was easily expanded with extra lattice and tomatoes. Luckily I had
plenty of sausages, four different types. Linda had decreed no desert, but
I improvised. Vanilla ice cream covered by my home made marmalade. (this
was good because that batch of marmalade hadn't set properly. Thus the
consistency was about right as an ice cream topping. In any case everyone
seemed to go home full & happy.
I'm coming to the tomatoes believe me.
My original started course was to have been
roasted tomatoes. I'd done 6 really large ones so was able to divide them
in two to make the requisite number of portions. I'd roaster them in two
halves anyway so no problem. As this is an absolute favorite of ours I'll
share the recipe. ( Don't know quite where the original recipe came from,
but Delia Smith's version is very similar)
Roasted Tomatoes
- Get one really large ripe tomato per person. Big beefsteak type or
the large heirloom types work best.
- Cut the tomatoes across about 2/3 of the way up towards the stem
end.
- Arrange them on a baking tray. Put a light sprinkle of sea salt on
each followed by about a teaspoon (or slightly more) of olive oil. Now
sprinkle on a a nice bunch of finely chopped garlic. (amount is to
taste. In my case its lots.) Grind on a goodly amount of black pepper
and top the whole thing with a fresh basil leaf.
- Place in a hot (190-200 degree C.) oven and bake until the tomatoes
are soft and their edges are just starting to brown. This normally takes
about an hour or slightly less.
Remove the tomatoes from the oven to cool.
- Make a mixture of equal parts olive oil & balsamic vinegar and mix
it well. Drizzle about a teaspoon's worth over the top of each tomato.
Now add a nice fresh basil leaf to top everything off.
- Place on individual plates. Serve with the best crusty French bread
you can find. Note that this dish is actually better served at room
temperature or even slightly cold. Thus the timing is not important, I
normally make it several hours in advance.
NOTE: I like to serve 2/3 of a large tomato, but
in a pinch !/2 will do & takes only half as many tomatoes.
You will find that these are the most delicious
tomatoes you've ever eaten. Try them, then you'll believe me.
Monday Michael & I went to Caussade market. I was
lucky enough to find more of the right size cucumbers to make some more
dill pickles; I bought about 3 lbs. (We've eaten all of the last batch).
I also found a stall selling local tomatoes at
the equivalent of 30 cents a pound. I didn't buy immediately as they are
at one end of the market & I didn't want to lug a big lot of tomatoes all
over the place with me so I did the rest of my shopping then came back. To
my dismay a lady was just buying the last tomatoes in the big box. Shucks!
I asked, however, if they had any more. Fortunately the answer was yes &
they brought out a whole new crate from their van. This was wonderful
because I could pick the best from the crate. So, I bought about 10 pounds
of tomatoes for $3.00. I was very pleased.
Of course now I had to do something with the
tomatoes so I made a basic tomato sauce to freeze for later use. I
will be able to use this as a base for various pasta sauces or for a chili
or for stews. Here's what I did:
- I fried up a miripoix (carrots, onion &
celery) in a bit of olive oil.
- I then peeled, seeded and deveined the
tomatoes. Quite a chore this with that many tomatoes.
- I added the tomatoes to the miripoix. Then I
added Pepper; oregano, dry basil, and finely chopped garlic. Gave all
this a good stir and let it simmer for several hours.
- I then added some fresh basil and a couple of
cups of red wine. I pureed the mix using an immersion blender
and let it simmer for another couple of hours.
- I might have let it simmer even longer, but
Linda thought that it was thick enough so I turned it off and let it sit
in the pot overnight. Next morning I ladled equal portions into a number
of plastic containers, labeled them and put them into the freezer. We
now have 8 nice large lots of tomato sauce for meals later this year.
Another concert tonight. This one at a beautiful
chateau overlooking the River Lot. The Count likes to greet his guests as
they come in. He was proudly telling me when he realized that I was
American about how a number of men from this area fought with Lafayette on
our side in the revolutionary war. Great fun!
More later.
'Much
Ado about...' Something!
We went to see Shakespeare in the open air the
other night and I must say it was wonderful. The play was 'Much Ado About
Nothing' and it was performed in the village square in Lauzerte. The
weather was perfect, the actors very good and our seats couldn't be
bettered.
Having gotten organized for once we had reserved
and paid for our seats via the internet. In fact we got the last ten
bookable seats. When we arrived and collected our tickets we were early
enough to choose our own seats. We took front row. Believe me, sitting
only three feet away from the performers put a whole different complexion
on the play. Absolutely wonderful. Its amazing how little scenery or props
are needed to stage a play like this. The actors were dressed in what
looked like first world war military costumes with the actresses in nice ,
but plain dresses. The only props were a table with a bowl of fruit and a
bunch of sunflowers. A bottle of wine & some glasses. Thats it! The
performance was great.
There were 15 of us in all so we'd traveled over
in a convoy of 4 cars. We led the way with our Sat NAV plotting the route.
We arrived in good time and found a great place to picnic. Lauzerte is a
beautiful hilltop village and we were able to park just near the city wall
in the shade and have our picnic sitting on benches overlooking the
countryside. Everyone had contributed a dish or so. I did a tortilla with
salsa, there were several quiches and salads. John had done his rightly
famous orange cake and Deborah had done a superb apricot tart. Very yummy
with a bit of wine to wash it down. We only had to walk 50 yards up to the
square for the play.
Here's a mystery. On the way home we all went of
own separate way except for Toyin who followed us as he had no Sat NAV in
his rental car. The machine took us home by a totally different route from
the way we'd come. Don't know why. There was no traffic is speak of either
way; it was all country roads. Go figure?
Now even more amazing; each of the other two SAT NAV'S took a different
route from ours, again not the same way we'd come. BUT, after an hour of
driving we all converged at Caylus AT THE SAME TIME! Don't think I'll ever
figure that one out.
Anyway all was well. Nobody got lost in the dark
and we'd all had a wonderful evening.
Disaster!!
Poor kids! The local young people work so hard every
year to put on the Festi' Lac event, but this years was a disaster.
There was a thunderstorm earlier in the evening so
people stayed away. Only about 400 turned up instead of the 5,000+
expected. The irony was that the storm never amounted to much at the
actual lake. It sort of skirted the edges, but never dropped any rain to
speak of.
There were so few people that they had to try to
refund everyone's money since they couldn't really try to put on some of
the bands & events. Some fireworks were let off. Those that couldn't be
taken back.
We're told that the losses are 20,000 Euros. Thats a
lot of money in anybody's language, is huge in terms of a small village
committee. I have no idea how they'll try to raise it. We can only have so
many vide greniers and village repas.
To add insult to injury and turn this into a true
tragedy a young man drowned in the lake that night. He went missing at
about 4:00 AM and was found at 6:00. Nobody quite knows what happened. The
assumption is that he'd had far too much to drink. He was only 25 years
old and was from Montauban.
I'll keep you posted on any further developments.
I promise that my next post will be a happier one.
July, 2009
This'N That
Well, its that time of summer when life slows
down a bit. In our case just before the cultural storm hits us in earnest.
So its been a fairly quiet week.
We went to a concert in Cordes-su-Ciel Tuesday.
That started nicely with an early supper at Seglar, one of our favorite
inexpensive restaurants. Linda had comfit de canard & I had a great pizza.
We both had salad starters; mine was a 'fisherman's' just chock full of
cold seafood & smoked salmon. Very yummy & all for 12 Euros each with
wine. As the name implies Cordes is one of these places perched on top of
a hill, very picturesque, but the village makes its living from parking
fines so one doesn't dare to park illegally. I dropped Linda off as high
up as you can drive & went in search for a legal parking place. The best I
could find was quite a ways down the hill. So, up I trudged. The
combination of wine with dinner, a very hot evening and a lot of steep
hill nearly did me in I can tell you. Then I found out that they wanted 20
Euros. EACH! for admission. I was not happy, but we were there so we paid.
To add insult to injury the opening pieces was an ultra modern atonal
something or other. I must say that I've never heard a cello make sounds
like that before. I hated it. Linda loved it. The composer was there so
one had to be polite. I far preferred the Schuman & Ravel that followed.
I missed my golf on Thursday. Linda had forgotten
I was going to play & had loaned the car to a friend. No big deal it was
really too hot to play anyway. Our poor friend; her cat had just died, she
had been to the dentist with an abscess and her car was broken. What's the
old expression? I certainly don't begrudge her the use of our second car
for a couple of days.
Its busy down at the lake; they're getting ready
for Festi'lac. There will be something over 5,000 people which is a really
big deal for our little village. Great fireworks are the big attraction as
well as several bands plus a giant paella. I do mean giant, it will be
over 8 feet in diameter. We won't go, but will try to stay awake to go up
into the village to watch the fireworks. Hope they make money this year,
they usually go overboard on the fireworks so lose money.
Simple dinner with friends last night. Rupert's
pal, Barty a retire greyhound, came with his owners as did our friends
from up the hill. I had made gazpacho with garlic croutons to start. We
had both Toulouse sausage and my own brand of Italian sausage done on the
BBQ along with baked potatoes, green beans and yellow courgettes as a main
course. Dessert was a lemon cheesecake. A nice simple meal served out on
the verandah.
Next week activity hot's up, but not the weather
according to the forecast. We've got two more concerts to attend plus the
Shakespeare ("Much Ado About Nothing"). I'm particularly looking forward
to the play which will be done outdoors in a charming village square.
We're going with friends & doing a communal picnic. Should be fun.
Its a simple life in rural France.
Tis 'fete' season
In our part of France July & August are the season
for fetes. The fetes come in all shapes and sizes and get the villagers
involved, especially the young adults.

Here's the side window of our village shop
advertising just a few of the very local events.
As you can see there is a fair amount of competition
so the signs are made as colorful as possible to attract attention. In
actuality the Mayors of the local communities do get together and set
'fete' dates so as to minimize conflicts.

Here's the notice board as you enter our village.
Naturally, our very own 'Festi'lac' gets prominence.
It will attract several thousand people to its three
bands (one to suit each age group) and very impressive fireworks display.
As you can see the will be a giant paella to eat. The paella is very
popular in our area and is very good. By giant they mean a paella that
will be at least 6 feet in diameter. The following day there will be a
large vide grenier/ brocante (yard sale/ flea market)
Saint-Antonin Noble Val is in competition on the
Sunday with its 'fete des Battages' (here's a link to what a battage is
all about:
http://www.breuillet.net/05agriculture/battages.html.)
Its a sort of harvest festival for when the wheat was brought in and
threshed.
My favorite is this one for the horse races at
Puylagarde:

The straw horse looks a real fast steed and the
jockey a true professional. The races themselves are fun. Very informal
with some trotting races and a few flat races. Every year somebody manages
to fall off, but normally they're not hurt. Everyone brings a picnic and
lots of beer and wine is consumed.
Its great fun.

Of course the races are only part of the whole fete
in Puylagarde. There's lots more.

In case you're wondering Veronique Pomies who is on
on Monday plays the accordion. Our local people do love accordion music so
she and her fellow players are very popular. All of the traditional songs
are played and everyone except we foreigners seems to know all the words.


The turn off to Parisot from the main road
is a hotbed of sign competition. It very visible.
Croches is a musical term and this is a musical
festival held every year in the nearby village of Verfeil sur Seye.
Somebody forgot to put the place on the sign. Its
hard to get good help these days!

Our local Festi' Lac takes pride of place.

Unfortunately, more around the corner is the sign
for Parisot's Art Festival. They'll get a more prominent position after
the other festival have passed.
The Art Festival is growing year by year and this
year there will be over 20 artists exhibiting. A unique feature is that
the art is shown in people's homes. Living rooms, garages and so forth.
The children have their competition in the old market hall.
This year there will also be three musical
evenings held in the church. Chamber music, a piano recital and an opera
singer. It should be great fun.

Finally, here's the sign as you leave the
village.
I don't think any other part of France can match
ours for the number and enthusiasm of its summer 'fetes'.
They're very much local events not put on for the
tourist trade, but for the local populace. If as a visitor you happen to
be here and read the signs all the better.
What are we going to? Well the races for sure
plus the art festival. We'll also be going to an outdoor production of
"Much Ado about nothing" put on by a travelling company of English actors.
In addition there are a number a classic concerts that we'll attend.
Promises as always to be a busy summer our here in the sticks.
Summer Pickles
Much as I love the French Cornichons I miss my
American dill pickles. We do eat a lot of Cornichons and I've sampled as
many other types of French pickle as I can find, but they just don't seem
to do good old dill pickles. So, I've resorted to making a version
of them myself.
The first problem is finding the right cucumbers.
'English' cucumbers are always available. These are the great large dark
green guys. Mostly hothouse grown I suspect and very mild tasting. As
summer starts you can begin to get something close to the right kind of
cucumber. They look right, but they're always too big. At least 6" long
and very thick. And, of course, at the right season you can get the little
guys for making Cornichons. Every so often, though, I find they type of
cucumber I need at one of the markets.
Such was the case on last Saturday. I'd gone to
Villefranche to buy some cards downtown and as I walked through the main
square in front of the church I took a look at the small stands selling
local produce (they're there very day except Thursday when the BIG market
fills the square) AH HA! There was the inevitable little old lady with a
basket full of just the right kind of cucumbers. I'll have a livre
says I. (NOTE: A livre is half a kilo or 500 grams. Its also pretty close
to a pound. Of course, its also the word for book and the French call the
British currency, the pound, a livre. Interesting. I'd love to know the
derivation of all the lexicography. But, I digress.) They cost me one
Euro. I took them home all happy & excited.
For these summer pickles I basically use the recipe
from Bittman's "How to Cook Everything". Its very simple, the pickles are
delicious and I love them because they don't have to cure for very long.
Long lasting dill pickles made with vinegar are a whole different ball
game. For these you simply dissolve some kosher salt in hot water then add
crushed garlic cloves and dill to taste then add your scrubbed cucumbers.
Voila! I cut these in half lengthways to speed the process. Put everything
in a bowl with a weight on top to keep the pickles submerges and let them
sit out for 24 to 48 hours to develop taste. After that jar them and store
them in the fridge. They need to be eaten within a couple of weeks.
I could hardly wait. I put mine in the fridge Monday
afternoon. I managed to hold on until about 7 PM before sampling.
Delicious, I love these little guys. They were even better the next day.
We had guests over that evening (cold beet soup, salad 'Nicoise' and plum
tart.) and they ate a goodly portion of my batch with their wine. I have
some left, but they'll easily be gone before the two weeks are up.
I'm looking for more cucumbers!
"Orage"
Orage is simply French for thunderstorm. We had a
dozy yesterday evening. Lots of lightening, buckets of rain and very gusty
winds. We don't get them this bad very often, but this one went on & on.
We had a family of renters in on the other side of the house so had to go
over and make sure that they'd closed all their shutters.
They were all up at the pool admiring the
lightening. We advised that this wasn't the best idea in the world as
swimming pools are not a place to be near in this kind of weather. We
invited them down to the verandah to watch the fireworks.
Rupert of course was not at all happy. Poor guy does
not like thunder at all at all. Fortunately all the people helped to
reassure him and he calmed down. In the meantime the parasol above the
dining table on the back patio ended up on the lane. Luckily the table was
OK>
In any case we gave the renters some wine and I made
some popcorn to watch lightening by. The show ent on for over half an
hour. Very impressive! We think it was a highlight of our renters stay.
They really seemed to enjoy it. They also enjoyed the apricot pie I'd made
for them earlier (the recipe is somewhere on the blog). It was a good one
as I'd found some excellent apricots at our Parisot market AND I'd coated
them with my recently made 4 fruit marmalade. Delicious if I do say so
myself.
Anyway happy 'locataires' left today promising to
return. Nice to hear.
I'll tell the tale of marmalade soon. Its sort of
weird.
The
'repas'
Last night was our village 'repas'. This is a public
meal open to all who live in the village or who are visiting. I'll admit
that I'm feeling very stupid today for having neglected to take the camera
along with me, my apologies. The prices was 15 Euros which is a bargain
bearing in mind that you get a substantial meal, unlimited wine and a live
band for the price.
Last night we were
blessed with perfect weather. The festivities began at 19:30 outside in
the square in front of the town hall. As the sun went down the square was
in the shade and the temperature dropped to a comfortable level. As is
usual on these occasions nothing started on time. The ladies collecting
the money didn't even arrive until 20:00! The bar was open though and the
lads were stoking up the BBQ.
We had
brought two Scottish families who are staying in the gite with us. I
brought them & smart Linda joined us later. We started greeting friends.
Its surprising how many people we've come to know over our years here.
Lots of kisses & handshakes exchanged as well as the latest local gossip.
(a new restaurant is opening at the top of the village. Will it succeed?
Will the food be any good? The jury awaits.) I made a point of thanking
Gina who I knew had helped the Mayor with his speech at THE wedding.
The band made an appearance and played a short set
of tunes. This was a 'traditional' band complete with trumpet and
accordion. They were good & not too loud. By now most people had
gravitated to tables and were sitting. The jugs of wine and bottles of
wine began to be placed up each table at fairly short intervals. The party
was truly on now!
Serge, our local
restaurant owner, appeared with the huge tub of aligot. For those
of you who don't know it aligot is a dish made of boiled potatoes
and local cheese. The cheese is a form of Tome and the locals will tell
you that you can't make a truly good aligot without it. Its
delicious, but a heavy stick to your ribs type of dish. Its preparation
requires much stirring of the potatoes and cheese. Its hard work. It was
fun to watch the village children try to have a stir. The smaller ones
couldn't get the paddle to move.
While the
aligot was finishing we lined up for our starter which was a selection of
cold cuts; salami like sausage, friton, headcheese and a lone Cornichon.
All very nice and there was plenty of local bread on the table. Seconds
were offered by local young women moving around the tables.
At this point with everybody sitting down I could
estimate the size of the crowd. About 200 I think, not bad since
there are only just over 400 resident in the entire commune. The foreign
contingent about 11% of the total population were well represented. I
think we all feel that we should support local events and causes.
Next the main course. The aligot and BBQ'd lamb and
local sausage. Absolutely delicious. AT this point the local girls were
selling bottles of a better wine for those who wanted it. 6 Euros per
bottle. Seconds of the lamb & sausages were also on offer. Lots of bottles
water available still.
Now the music really
got going as did the dancing. The French are avid dancers and good at it.
This band was aimed at the older crowd so there were lots of foxtrots,
waltzes and more traditional dances. Dessert, ice cream cones, was served.
By now it was nearly midnight and everybody was
having a great time. We left not too long after midnight as Rupert had
been inside at home for a very long time. One friend, however, didn't quit
until 04:30. He has quite a head today!!
In
all a fun evening in rural France. Sorry about the lack of pictures, but
there's always next year.
The Capon Caper
It all started when our neighbor and my good cooking
pal Ruve offered me a frozen capon AND a whole fois gras!! What a
challenge. The deal was that I had to cook them with she and guests coming
to dinner. Thinking quickly I said OK so long as you give me a truffle as
well. A bit of a gulp at that, but she's game and the deal is on.
This was planned to take place after THE wedding,
but when we still had guests. As it turned out our brother & sister-in-law
were still here as was Ruve & Michael's nephew. (He & Michael had just
finished a three day hike so were ready for a good meal.
I had my recipe out of La Russe Gastronomic so I was
in good shape. All was well until the day before the meal. The plan was
that the ladies were going off to visit a pornographic potter (its another
story, I'll tell you sometime.) and we guys were supposed to meet them in
Villefranche for lunch. This worked as I could visit my favorite butcher &
get the things I needed. Well, the pottery was closed so the ladies wanted
to go to Seglar for lunch followed by shopping (sight seeing they said,
but shopping they meant) I began to panic as I absolutely needed a few
things for the capon & they had to be in place 24 hours in advance. I
won't bore you with the whole story, but I managed to break free with the
guys & find a good French butcher.
After some linguistic difficulties he produced
exactly what I needed. Some pork fat and a thin slab for barding,
Perfect! And the price was right, no charge! I wanted to invite him to
dinner since he now knew what I was cooking & was amazed that a
'foreigner" would try it. Happy now & with ingredients in hand we made it
home so I could start preparing.
This recipe requires that you start 24 hours in
advance. Having unfrozen the capon and the fois gras previously I could
start. For the capon I carefully loosened the skin over the breast area
then slipped in very thinly sliced pieces of the truffle. With the fois
gras I deveined it then whizzed it & some of the pork fat in the food
processor (about 1/4 by weight fat). I also added the left over truffle.
The mixture then had salt & pepper added plus a bay leaf and a few fennel
seeds ground up. I cooked this in a pot for about 10 minutes just to
combine the ingredients. Once it was cool & coagulated again I stuffed the
capon with it .
I now trussed the bird and covered it with buttered
parchment paper. Now it could rest in a cool place until the next day. As
it was very warm a cool place was our spare fridge.
Next day I made our starter which didn't turn out as
well as I'd hoped. This was slices of smoked salmon surrounded by avocado
with finely minced cucumber & tomato with extra concentrated Balsamic
vinegar dotted around. The flavor combinations worked, but the avocado was
not ripe enough & the vinegar lost it shape & spread around. If the
avocado had been riper & I'd been able to serve immediately I think I
would have been OK. I may try this again as the flavors were good & its a
nice light starter to have before a heavy main course.
The capon was in the oven covered with it's barding.
180 degrees C for roughly three hours then I took the barding off & let it
brown & finish off for another half hour. I served the capon with creamed
potatoes, green beans with herb de province and julienned carrots with
sugar & a bit of ginger.
The capon was absolutely delicious, moist & flavored
by the truffles. The fois gras stuffing went well even though a bit
decadent. All in all a very nice main course and special.
We had a perfectly ripened St Felician for the
cheese course. I served it with four kinds of breads from my favorite shop
in Villefranche; country style, rye, whole wheat and multi-grain, all were
small loaves the call Valentines.
Dessert was a sort of lemon mousse. Its very easy; I
had made lemon cheese the previous day so was able to whip some cream then
just add & whip in the lemon cream. Light & delicious after a large meal.
Too busy cooking to do pictures, but you can use
your imagination I hope.
Thus ends the capon caper. It was fun and a good
thing to do after all the wedding festivities.
June, 2009
The Wedding - Finally the actual event
Finally the big day is upon us. (sorry that this
post is so delayed, but I was just plain wedding'd out!) Again the weather
was perfect. Sunny, bright, but not too hot. No major panics at the last
minute.
Everybody gathered at our house for the walk up to
the church. The bride was so anxious to get there that she took the direct
route which is pretty steep instead of the planned longer, but easier
route..

A proud father walking up the hill to give away his
daughter. Given the steepness of the hill & the vagarities of ladies shoes
everyone stopped at the top for a breather.
The bridegroom & best man were spotted by some
peeking around a corner.
Here he is in front of the marie . Does he
look happy or what?

Into the marie we all trooped. Once we were settled
the ceremony began. I must say I was very proud of our Mayor; he gave a
wonderful speech, in English! He'd obviously had some help in writing the
English version as the grammar was perfect and he's obviously practiced
the speech as well as his delivery was excellent. This from a Mayor whose
normal English is no good at all. It was a gracious gesture on his part
and made me very proud of our village.

Here he is with the happy couple after the
formalities were finished. Te groom just can't stop beaming.

Here's the couple with two of the bridesmaids. The
third & smallest bridesmaid is missing because she went fishing!

After the rice throwing and nine million pictures we
all headed for the chateau and the champagne reception in the marquee.

Denise had organized the marquee and the tables
beautifully. Although you can't see them the views from the open sides of
the marquee were spectacular. It was terrifically kind of Michael & Ruve
to offer the chateau for the wedding. Everyone was very grateful.

A table setting. We had a super fish soup starter
followed by roast lamb then a wonderful selection of cheeses followed by a
trio of desserts.
Finally the dancing began once the cake was cut.


A thoroughly enjoyable wedding which came off with
hardly a hitch. The dancing went on until the wee hours. I ducked out for
some much needed sleep.
Thus ends my Wedding posts. There was a great BBQ at
the chateau the following day which was enjoyed by all. Again, the weather
held. This was catered by Bavo who had also done the dinner. Well done as
always by him.
The next post will concern the great capon caper.
Wait for it.
THE WEDDING DAY #6
Now we're really getting into this. Perfect weather
yet again. I got up early to make brownies. Linda wanted them for tonight.
I also bought some bread and made sandwiches to take to golf as the
course has nowhere to get food without driving back to the village. I made
French style concoctions, some with garlic sausage, mustard & Cornichons,
Some with Lagioule & just a bit of cucumber & mayonnaise and some with
just butter & sheep's cheese.
Derek (the bride's father), Tony (a close
friend of the bride's parents) and I took off at 9 AM to play golf. Its
nearly an hour's drive to the course. When we got there there was the edge
of a thunder storm going on with a bit of thunder & lightening. Just a few
drops of rain. We went ahead anyway, the course even loaned Derek & Tony
clubs for free. Much to my delight I won the first hole. This is a rare
event as they're bother better golfers than I. The weather got better &
better, we stopped and had our sandwiches after nine holes and then
carried on. After the 18 holes Tony had won 4 holes and Derek & I three
each. The rest were halved. A just result and pleasing to me as I played
well by my low standards.
Back home & everything was going pretty well.
Everyone was supposed to start arriving about 6:30 for drinks & a stand up
supper. Linda had made her delicious mussaka's, fresh green beans & mashed
potatoes (they were supposed to be baby new potatoes, but they boiled a
bit too long so became mashed potatoes instead.) I unfroze some canapés I
had made before hand, not good. They don't as it turns out freeze well so
many were spoiled. Those that survived and got cooked were good though. I
whizzed down to Caylus and got some potato chips & nuts to fill in. It
worked.
Everybody arrived in dribs & drabs and it turned
into a really nice party with lots of wine, beer and conversation. Linda's
food was a real hit. We barely had enough for the 25 people who ate. Great
evening which continued until not too late as people had been travelling &
were tired and also wanted to be in good shape the THE BIG DAY.
As I wasn't cooking I had time to take pictures.
Here are a few selections. You can see the whole lot here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/davidlewishatfield/JohnVictoriaSWeddingNight1WelcomingTheGuests?feat=directlink.
Or
at least I hope you can.

Rupert watching for more arrivals.


Linda getting ready in the kitchen for dinner.



The bride and groom. We're not nervous - are we?
Victoria's thinking & John looks like a deer caught in the
headlights!

John (the groom) with his mother, brother and
sister-in-law.
They all seem to be having a good time.




Various crowd scenes.
Everyone was having a good
time & the weather was perfect for being out on the verandah.


Of course some people just can't resist
clowning around. Including Linda!

A tired maid of honor. This is one of Victoria's
nieces.
They've spent most of the day in the pool, but are burned out now.

A story before bed time.
The other brides maid.
This one when she heard that her sister was going
to be a
brides maid asked if she could be a 'mermaid' too.
Of course she
could as you'll see tomorrow.
And so to bed for everybody. Tomorrow's THE big day!
THE WEDDING DAY #5
Not much cooking today. Yard work though and all the
ladies still working on the marquee and table arrangements. First guests
arriving & getting settled into their B&B's.
Naturally, my normally trusty ride on mower refused
to start this morning. The problem appeared to be with the starter switch
so Ben & I took it apart .(Ben installs electronic security systems for a
living so was just to guy to have around) Couldn't find the problem even
using my old voltmeter. Ben was saying that it acts like a blown fuse &
I'm saying that I've never heard of a fuse on a lawn mower. Turns out that
he's right, buried underneath in a bundle of wire there is a fuse and its
blown. Off we go to Caylus to my trusty quincaillerie to get one. Can't
find them so I ask where they are. Over here is the answer, except
that we're out of them! Frustration. I then think of a Renault garage a
couple of miles up the road. So off we go again. I ask the girl at Service
Reception. She goes off & comes back with the head mechanic. "you want a
fuse", he asks. Yes, I do. OK, come with me. We go into the work area & he
produces a large plastic container stuffed with fuses of every size. I'm
saved. He gives me two of the right size free of charge. We head back
home.
The mower works now and I get the lawn mowed while
Ben rakes the grass. My brother-in-law gets going with my fancy new
strimmer. Soon we have a very tidy garden.
Everyone fends for them selves for lunch. I have a
much needed nap.
Later people start arriving. First two, then another
two. Wine is poured and everybody chats out on the verandah. The weather
couldn't be nicer. Its a good start to the festivities.
About 7:30 we all meet at the restaurant at the
lake. This is not a grand place, but they do good simple meals al fresco.
Most of us have steak frites. (the owners are Belgian and make fantastic
french fries) We drink more wine, but not too much as I'm up early to play
golf tomorrow.
Thus ends day #5
THE WEDDING DAY #4
Day 4 and all's well. Yesterday was more
cooking; two big pots of Bolognaise sauce one vegetarian & one normal with
lots of meat. Took a while simply due to the quantities I was making. Both
sauces turned out pretty well when we had them with spaghetti for dinner.
In the morning I had walked the dog which relaxed
both of us. We went on one of our favorite walks up through the woods.
Very beautiful with lots of wild flowers. Roop was disappointed as he
couldn't find any rabbits or deer to chase. Still, a nice walk.
I took Ben & Cholodie with me to Villefranche when I
went shopping and gave them a little tour. Its a pretty old Bastide
town and they enjoyed it. After the supermarket we stopped at a favorite
bread shop and picked up a loaf of "Le Secret". This is a large
loaf of bread with a great crust and is absolutely delicious. I don't know
what the secret is, but it seems to be a good one.
Back home I made a couple of carrot cakes. It seems
that a couple who will be wedding guests have their 40th wedding
anniversary on Sunday so I've been asked to make a cake for them. I dearly
love carrot cake, but always seem to have a hard time getting it to rise.
Its one of the few recipes that I follow exactly, but this doesn't seem to
help. I'm beginning to think that maybe my baking powder is old & past it.
I bought new baking soda not long ago, but not baking powder.
While I was baking all of the ladies, five of them,
who had been decorating the marquee came down and sat on the verandah
making gauzy butter flies and drinking wine. As I baked I was giving Ben
instructions on how to make gazpacho. He made a big batch witch turned our
well and went down a tread with the ladies. I finally got to have a glass
of wine and a chat with my friend Allen about 18:30.
We persuaded he and Denise to stay for the spaghetti
and an apricot tart I'd made (this recipe is somewhere here on the blog)
Afterwards I tried to watch some tennis, but the TV seemed to crap out.
Hopefully its Ok, if not we have another one.
And so to bed. Lots of arrivals tomorrow and lots of
yard work scheduled. We're going out for dinner so not much cooking in
store.
THE WEDDING DAY #3
Day #3 was good. The weather is holding and is
perfect. Sunny, a slight breeze & temperature in the mid-70's. Who could
ask for more?
The groom went down to Toulouse to pick up a Nephew
and family; wife and two delightful little daughters. Their plane
was about an hour late due to a security scare back in England, but still
the delay wasn't bad. It was Chlodie's (the wife) first visit ti France so
she was fascinated. The children couldn't wait to see Rupert. Francesca,
the older one at 5 years old, says she's going to marry Rupert. Her
younger sister isn't so sure as normally she's afraid of dogs, but she's
coming around. Rupert is very gentle & patient with children.
We had Jacques in for lunch as well as the family. I
did my now infamous sort of Spanish omelet's. One vegetarian & one with
lardons & chorizo. Those plus a nice salad plus oatmeal cookies for
dessert made a simple, but nice lunch. After lunch everybody headed for
the pool to play & work on their tans. I had a nice read & a nap.
For dinner we had roast pork which I had been
marinating with roast potatoes and a selection of vegetables. Everyone is
trying to lose weight even though its too late now so no dessert. Plenty
of wine thought!
The weather is holding so far. Keep your fingers
crossed.
The Wedding Day #2
Day 2 has past and I'm still alive. Not a bad day at
all; the weather was perfect and the forecast remains good. Bride's
Father, Rupert & I went for a good walk through the woods first thing in
the morning. Came back, had some, coffee and got ready to go to market.
(if I'm on my own I go to market in my scruffy morning condition, but if I
go with Linda I spruce myself up. I went with Linda yesterday.)
We went to St Antonin market yesterday instead of
out favored Limogne. What a zoo! St Antonin is very touristy, you hear
lots & lots of English spoken and there are quite a few stalls that sell
tourist oriented gee gaws. The streets are narrow so its very crowded and
hard to do one's shopping. We went because the Herb & Spice Lady has a
stand there and I needed to stock up on ingredients for Leo's Rub & my BBQ
sauce. In addition we needed vegetables to feed the masses yesterday
evening.
I had quite a discussing with the spice Lady about
dried onion. I wanted onion powder, but she said that it was no good and
that I should buy shredded onion as it keeps much better. But, I said, I
need it in finer sizes that that for my rub. She said, OK then run it
through your spice grinder when you need it. I gave in as after all she's
the expert and she's right running it through my coffee grinder (this one
kept only for herbs & spices) is easy enough. I do love her stall. Its
very colorful and she seems to have virtually every herb & spice known to
man. Its fun to work out the names in the two languages. She's better at
the English names than I am at the French.
Anyway, we got everything else including 4 dried
salami type sausages for 10 Euros. Plus I got a gift sausage; great deal.
Then we got out of town as the crowds were getting to us. Got home,
unpacked then made up a batch of rub and a couple of jars of BBQ sauce. By
now it was lunch time so we had a simple bread & cheese with fruit type
lunch.
After lunch I put two pork roasts that had been
thawing out into their brine mixture so they'll be ready to roast on
Tuesday. I also put the shoulder of lamb we're having tonight in the
fridge as it had nearly thawed. I then rubbed all of the spare rib racks
that we had last night. Everybody except Rupert & I went off to Najac to
tour the castle. (its pretty spectacular & Linda was chuffed because she
got in free because we know the care taker & his wife. Its nice when you
know the locals.) Back home I was going to have a nap, but couldn't sleep
so I got up and made croutons to go with the gazpacho we're having as a
starter tonight . I also decided to part bake the ribs ready for the BBQ.
Then I tried to think up something suitable as a main course for our
vegetarian niece. In the end I took two fairly large yellow zucchini, cut
them in half lengthwise and cut ou their seeds. I then sautéed a mixture
of red bell pepper, onion & garlic chopped finely; once this mix was
cooked I stuffed it into the center of the zucchini and it was ready for
baking when the time came.
In the end there were 8 of us for dinner. The
gazpacho was even better the second day especially with the addition of
honey vinegar which we'd found at market. The ribs took a while as I ran
out of gas on the BBQ in the middle of cooking them. A had to change
bottles & get the heat back up. They were fine in the end and even though
everyone said there were to many of them, they somehow all disappeared
along with the twice baked potatoes and coleslaw that Ruve brought.
Dessert was some sinfully good chocolate that Linda had bought.
Watched a bit of the rain delayed golf and then off
to bed. Another day survived, getting there!
Wedding Day #1
Ok, here we are on day#1. The parents arrived, well
actually Linda picked them up from the airport at Toulouse after a much
needed therapeutic shopping foray in Montauban's. They arrived on time
which was good, but on the way home car problems ensued. Mind you we had
just had the Mercedes serviced, but nevertheless a light fixture fell off
then something else happened (Car mechanics are not Linda's strong suit)
which made things worse. At least they made it home. We'll see what
Bernard has to say on Monday since it was only in for service yesterday!
My theory which holds that you don't take any car in for service until it
has something really badly wrong is proven yet again!!! Anyway. they made
it here safely whic is good. Rupert, the dog, went berserk as he
absolutely adores my brother-in-law.
Anyway after an hour or so the kids (namely the
Bride & Groom) arrived having driven straight through from England. They
were early since they had set off early because they were too excited to
sleep. Their trip went well & the SatNav got them safely through Paris
even in the rush hour. Lots & lots of unpacking ensued, I won't bore you
with the details of what got unpacked except to say that there were lots
of ohhs & ahhs from 'Auntie' over the dresses.
The groom, his prospective Father-in-Law & I managed
to watch a fair amount of the US Open Golf on TV. Good that.
Dinner? Ah yes, a gazpacho with nice fresh croutons
I'd made earlier in the day. Pretty good if I do say so. Then a baked
potato & salad for our vegetarian Niece and a nice pot of Cassoulette for
the rest of us. Suitable wines. I would have dons a sautéed fresh
pineapple with ice cream, but they were all too full. I'll save it for
another day.
Thus ends day #1. I'd be ecstatic if they were all
this easy. Of course I haven't mentioned shopping, lawn raking, path
clearing, gravel raking or any of the cooking.
Still, tomorrow may be easier - I hope!!!!!
THE Wedding is nearly upon us!
I've spared you any posts about THE Wedding until
now, but I can't hold off any longer. The event has been dominating our
lives for low these many months; or I should say dominating Linda's life &
the mine by proxy. The grand event will take place next Saturday, June
27th right here in our humble village. The preparations have been going on
for months. Plans made & remade. Dresses bought & then almost unsought.
Question? How many of my male readers know what a fascinator is? (and no,
its not an obscene expression or object) Menus thought up, then
rejected then finally agreed. You wouldn't believe the paperwork involved
when getting married in France. Guess what though? Neither of the kids
getting married are ours!
No, its Linda's favorite Niece! and her intended
John. For reasons best known to them they decided many months ago that
they wanted to get married here in Parisot rather than in England where
they both come from. You can read all about it at:
www.victoriaandjohnswedding.com.
A website that I put together for them. Why we don't know. We should be
flattered I guess. Once we discovered that it was actually possible
legally for them to get married here the event was on.
Little did we know the amount of paperwork involved
in getting married in France. And, this is only a civil ceremony as
neither of the kids is religious. So much for the Common Market! Our local
Marie has been very helpful, they've done everything to help, but
there's just a lot of paperwork even though this is a first marriage for
both kids. Our sainted friend, Jacques, has been of enormous help. Just
today we had to have the kids scan & send down copies of their passports
for me to take to Madame at the Marie. Don't ask why; we just do
what's asked of us. The Mayor is being very helpful; he's even been taking
English lessons so that he can do the ceremony in Both languages. He'll
wear his ceremonial robes. Very kind indeed.
Once our friends Michael & Ruve found out about the
wedding they offered the grounds of their Chateau for holding the
reception and wedding dinner. That expanded to include a BBQ and games the
next day. As you can imagine the kids (& their parents) were over the moon
at that news. It is a very beautiful chateau; very storybook like and has
been beautifully renovated. The grounds & gardens are terrific. Michael &
Ruve are extremely kind to have offered this and I must say there couldn't
been a nicer or more romantic setting for a marriage.
The event is being kept small. Only about 30
including some locals whom the kids have gotten to know over the years.
Another friend, Denise, is designing and supervising all of the
decorations for the marquee. She's brilliant at this kind of design. Bavo
is catering the Wedding dinner and the BBQ. He's Belgian and moved down
here a few years ago having sold a very successful tapas bar back home.
He'll do a great job.
As for us we will have 8 people staying in the house
for the next two weeks. This includes two delightful nieces aged 5 & 3.
The older one wanted to be a Brides Maid, but the younger one wanted to be
a mermaid!So we're feeding never less than 8 and at times up to 25 people
every day for the next two weeks. I've had to do a spreadsheet to keep it
all straight. I'll start filling you in on our food preparations on my
next post.
Meanwhile, keep your fingers crossed for us. Some
positive thoughts wouldn't go amiss.
May 2009
Piddling about, ain't it nice!
Haven't been doing much exciting the last few days.
Staying home to avoid the crowds (Assumption is a big holiday in France &
a 4 day weekend so the roads are crowded. (Friends drove home from the
Paris area yesterday & got stuck in four traffic jams.) Its nice though;
we've had so much hecticness over the past month that its nice to just
piddle about.
Linda has been concentrating on the garden which is
looking splendid. I keep mowing the blankity blank grass which has been
growing like mad. I've cleaned the pool, its heating up nicely, and the
tiled areas around it. I've put up some hanging baskets for Linda on the
veranda. My only big job was to move one of our satellite dishes. When it
was installed some years ago the trees were much smaller and even though I
keep cutting them back it had become a question of the dish or the trees.
I decided to move the dish. Its embedded in a big lump of concrete and I
decided to move the whole thing; this involved much digging to uproot the
dish and to dig a new hole. Moving this heavy lump by myself was a bit of
a problem, but I managed using a bit of applied physics. Leverage in
other words. Lo & behold both of my levels have lost their liquid for
leveling in the vertical direction. ( called friend, but his fancy laser
level only levels in the horizontal direct. Ah well, I'll just have to buy
a new one.) I've called Mark, our local satellite guru, to come over and
re-align the dish.
Nothing fancy on the cooking front. Roast chicken
the other night. Steals at the Lake cafe last night, nice though as
they've just opened again for the summer. Tonight I'm trying a new recipe
for salmon from Jacques Pepin. Sounds good. I do like his cooking.
Only three weeks to preparations start for the big
wedding. After that its guests all summer, only one free week during all
of July and August. Want a French vacation? Call us, maybe we can do a
deal for the week of July 18th.
I'm going to play around with Wedding dinner menus
(only the printed ones; somebody else is doing the actual cooking. Think
I'll use a stylized picture of the chateau where the dinner will be
held. Here's a couple of my efforts so far. If you're so inclined let me
know what you think of them.



Confusion!
Well we really got messed up the last couple of
days. Linda thought that she had invited our friends from South Africa for
lunch the day before yesterday. She'd also invited some local friends who
she thought would go well with the South Africans. I planned a meal and we
were all set.
Our local friends arrived on time so we sat around,
had a drink & nibbles and chatted. And chatted. And chatted, by now our
South African friends were seriously late. Linda called them - no answer.
No South Africans. Ah well. I started dividing things up; most of the
par-boiled potatoes stayed out of the oven. So did the majority of the
carrots, they had to wait to be braised. The zucchini stayed off the BBQ
as did one of the brined pork roasts.
I got us going with chilies and brie done on the
BBQ. These were good, but the chilies were a bit to hot for our friends.
We finished off the main course; roast pork, braised carrots, baked baby
potatoes and BBQ'd zucchini. All went well. Dessert was Tarte Tatin with
ice cream. (I'd made two of them so one went into the freezer.) All in all
we had a nice meal and a good chat with our friends who we hadn't seen for
a while.
Next day Linda got a hold of Tony, the South African
neighbor, And found out that he was expecting to come to dinner that day,
not lunch the day before. Who knows who got their signals mixed up? In any
case we decided that they could come for dinner anyway.
To adjust the foods now that we were a bit short I
bought some baby back ribs to go on the BBQ with the remaining pork roast.
There were just enough carrots, zucchini and potatoes if we plated up
instead of serving family style. To add a bit of substance I used the
remaining chilies along with some tomatoes, onion, cucumber and sweet
yellow pepper to make a brochetta. I got this wonderful loaf of bread
which is ideal for brochetta. Its called 'Le Secret' and comes from my
favorite bakery in Villefranche. Its a big rectangular loaf with a thick
crust and is very much pain de Campagne. Anyway, I sliced it thickly and
quickly toasted it in the BBQ. Everyone got a clove of garlic to rub on
their bread, the brochetta mix was passed around and a chunk of parmesan
with a grater to top the mixture. This was a real hit.
The rest of the meal was fine and the South Africans
particularly enjoyed their Tarte Tatin.
We broke up at about 12:30 having managed to
demolish a fair amount of wine and improve international relations
immeasurably.
All's well that ends well.
Ethics - slipping I think
I'm afraid that this post won't be of a lot of
interest to you if you are not a regular on the eGullet forums and have
been following their arguments about an ethical code when posting. You can
read the whole thing on: www.egullet.org.
In a nutshell they have written up a code of ethics for posting on the
site and they seem to have high hopes that it might be adopted by other
bloggers. Most of it is what I term 'motherhood & apple pie' in other
words so innocuous and self evident as to be banal. Who wouldn't agree.
Where I got into a discussion with the power that is
was over 'comps'. This is where (in this case) a restaurant, food
provider, event or the like provides a meal, product, tickets or the like
to someone. In other words its complimentary. In most cases these comps
are given in the hopes that the recipient will comment or more importantly
write favorably about the donor. They are very prevalent in the restaurant
business as a method of, hopefully, generating favorable comment and
reviews.
Now, the eGullet view was that comps were OK so long
as the compee revealed that a comp had been received when they wrote up
whatever it was that they were comp's. I took and take strong exception to
that policy. eGullet is a forum for those interested in all thing related
to food, most members are like me non-food professionals although there
are a goodly number of people in the industry who participate. My position
was and is that even disclosed that comp'd opinion is tainted and,
therefore, of little value. How can one possibly know what the real
opinion is? Therefore, my opinion was and is that if a comp has been given
that restaurant, provider, event or whatever should not be written about
by the compee on eGullet.
This doesn't mean that the food professional isn't
free to write about it anywhere else if they so please. One assumes that
articles in magazines are biased by comps, that reviews of events are by
people who receive free tickets and so forth. Blogs are personal opinions
and should be taken as such. (would anybody be in any doubt that French
food focus is strictly MY opinions?). To me it's just that forums such as
eGullet exist to be non-commercial, places where the membership express
their opinions freely and fairly, not commercially.
The granddaddy of all review publications' the
Michelin Guide insists upon anonymity got its reviewers and for good
reason. No comps there.
Additionally, I think there is another common
practice that is perfectly acceptable; this is what I term the 'freebie'.
Your vegetable guy gives you an extra carrot or your regular Friday night
restaurant throws in a free dessert. Any provider adds a little extra
something either in the hopes of gaining your repeated custom or your good
opinion . To me these are OK in almost all cases. They are a far different
kettle of fish from the 'comp'.
Here in France the 'freebie' has almost become
expected in up market restaurants; the amuse bouch is common in fact we
had one the other night in Toulouse. Comps are another matter. The only
personal example I can give is from when I was in business in a fairly
small town in England. Whenever a new restaurant opened you could bet that
I'd get an invitation for a free meal. This was because we were a
relatively large company in the town and did a lot of business
entertaining. Fair enough & all above board, but I certainly wouldn't have
written up my opinion of these places in a blog or on a forum.
Anyway I lost the argument on eGullet as one tends
to do. I'm starting to wonder why I bother with it. Well, I do know why I
bother; its because there are some nice people who frequent it. Besides I
like a good argument every so often although I can't say that I appreciate
not being taken seriously and cut off.
Who was it that said 'dictatorship is the last
refuge of little minds'?
Brai !!
Or at least that's how I think you spell it. Its
supposed to be the South African word for a Barbeque. They are rightly
famous for BBQ in South Africa or at least in my experience over several
trips. In any case we have a South African neighbor, Tony, who shows up a
the beginning of every summer. He's a nice guy and very hospitable. This
time he has two couples from home with him; they'll be here for several
weeks. In any case we got invited over for a brai the other night. Sounded
good to us; we volunteered to make some salads.
As an aside. Make the opportunity to visit South
Africa. Its a wonderful place especially the Western Cape around Cape
town. Great people of all colours, wonderful scenery, superb food (both
ingredients to buy & restaurants) and wines to savor. All at prices that
are hard to believe. How much longer this will last is anybody's guess
given the politics, but our friends from South Africa say that the
elections held recently were encouraging. GO! is my advice.

Here we are watching the 'brai master' at work. He's
built two fires from very well aged hardwood and has let them burn down to
ashes.

Some part baked potatoes getting finished off.

Toulouse sausage just going on the other fire.
The South African allowed as how our local sausages
were more than OK.

Here are the two fires doing there job. If you look
closely you can see that the sausages have been turned once. They ended up
being turned multiple times to ensure even cooking.
Later, and u8nfortunatel I didn't get a picture of
them, we had a whole passé of sheep's sweet breads that our friend Rob had
bought from the local butcher. They were delicious. For my American
readers they are known as 'Rocky Mountain Oysters".
So the brai was good and we enjoyed it. The other
thing I wanted to share with you was my recipe for potato salad. Now, I'm
perfectly aware that just about everyone has their own recipe for this,
but this I think is a good one. I don't claim that its my own. I call it
Mary's Potato Salad as it was Mary an Irish neighbor many years ago who
was kind enough to share her recipe with me.
Mary's Potato Salad
Ingredients (this quantity will serve about 10
people.)
- 7-10 large potatoes.
- 1/3 cup Italian style vinaigrette (olive oil,
white wine vinegar, Italian herb mixture, garlic, salt, pepper)
- 3/4 cup diced celery
- 1/3 cup diced white onion
- 4 hard boiled eggs, chopped up
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- about 1 tablespoon horseradish
- 11/2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
Boil the potatoes unpeeled. Peel as soon as you
can & cut into bite sized pieces.
Mix the cut & peeled potatoes well in the Italian dressing while still
hot.
Chill for a couple of hours in the fridge.
Mix in all of the other ingredients.
Season with salt & celery salt (or celery seeds)
to taste.
Cool in the fridge for a further 2 hours or more.
This is both simple and delicious. Just ask our
South African friends. The recipe with now go from Europe to South Africa
having migrated from Ireland, to the states.
Chili Joint!
No, there's no such thing as a Chili Joint in
France. Or at least I don't think so. Certainly not out here in the wilds
of deepest France. Might be nice if there was, but there isn't. Besides,
it was a national holiday today in France so nothing much was open & we
couldn't shop. That's why Linda and I decided to make chili for dinner
tonight. Sometimes we just get these cravings.
The 'joint' part is that we made this chili as a
team. I tend to like things spicier than Linda so for this effort it was
agreed that she would be in charge of adding all the condiments and I'd do
the bulk ingredients.
So, I started off by making a miripoix (onions, carrots & celery) plus
some garlic, then I fried up a goodly quantity of hamburger in a bit of
duck fat (the hamburger here is 85% meat so can us a bit of extra fat).
This was added to the miripoix and I then added a can of red beans plus a
can of tomatoes. This simmered away nicely for while.
As that was happening Linda made up her spice mix.
Alas, we discovered that our jar of chili spice mix was empty. No big
deal. Linda just added red pepper flakes, lots of ground cumin, some
cayenne and oregano. She ground these together in the mortar & pestle and
added them to the mix along with some salt. The chili got a good stir and
was left to simmer for a good while, well half an hour anyway.
We both had a taste and agreed that it was a bit
'wimpy' so more of most things especially cumin were added. Better. More
simmering. Linda checked again and added Worchester sauce and
chicken stock which
further improved things.
We did some braised leeks and coco beans to lighten
things up and served up the chili. It was pretty good. In fact very good.
We both agreed that although good something was missing. For our next
attempt we'll add some tomato puree and drain the beans as we thought
their juice was too strong a flavour. And we'll think about the missing
ingredient.
Thus we created our own chili joint right here in
Parisot. I don't think we'll open it to the public, but the chili was good
and we enjoyed making it. By the way, Rupert enjoyed licking the plates. A
real gourmand is that dog.
Famous - Maybe?
Funny how things happen. Yesterday I was working in
the garden in only my shorts (not a pretty sight) and wondering why Linda
was taking so long to shop (she was relishing the chance to do so with
nobody in tow) when here she came closely followed by an Audi convertible
that was vaguely familiar. Yoikes I thought what's going on ere? I
quickly grabbed a shirt and went over. Linda says "here's somebody who
wants to talk to you". I leaned down and there was Charlie a local Real
Estate Agent we know well. He explained that he had a writer with him who
was doing an article about Americans living in our area of France. As they
were driving around Charlie though of me. Not hard as they're aren't
hardly any Americans who live in our part of France. Anyway, we asked them
in.
Turns out that Steenie Harvey is the European Editor
for a magazine called International Living and she's doing an article about
Yanks in France. Her partner is taking pictures. So we get Charlie to show
them around the house while Linda & I put away the perishable bits of her
shopping. We then make everyone a cup of tea (not very American, what?). I
get interviewed by Steenie which is fine and sort of pleasant as I haven't
been interviewed by a journalist since I retired. She asked both the
obvious questions and some non-obvious good ones.
The one that struck me the most was when she asked
what I thought would most surprise an American coming to this part of
France for the first time. An interesting question and one I've been
thinking about ever since. Here are my answers now that I've had time to
think. The only difference between these and my off the cuff answers is
their completeness.
- I think the first surprise would be the
tranquility of this part of France. It is very peaceful, but not
isolated or backward. There's plenty of life going on, we're less
than an hour from the cities of Albi, Cahors, Montauban and Rodez; and
just over an hour from Toulouse so everything modern is available. But
it is quiet and peaceful, life proceeds at its own pace and there always
seems to be time for a chat or a coffee or a glass of wine. It just
seems that the hecticnees and frenzied pace of so much modern life is
missing.
- A second surprise would be the sheer beauty of the countryside. Its
not dramatic, but its wonderful and very varied. One goes from gorges,
to vineyards, to rolling hills, to rivers, to medieval villages, to oak
& chestnut forests and to cities all within a short drive along deserted
roads.
- The natives are friendly! Most Americans have a concept of rude
abrupt Frenchmen. Its just not true. It is too a certain extent true of
Parisians, but I think all big city dwellers tend to be a bit rude and
abrupt whatever their nationality. Here the local people are very
friendly, curious about strangers, eager to talk about the area and its
history just plain friendly. For most Americans the language is a
barrier, but one that is easily broken with a modicum of French and a
modicum of English on the local's part. Everyone has a good laugh
together even if the language isn't working to well. A sub aspect of
this friendliness is politeness, the French are very very po0lite. To
you and to each other, they are also formal. We've mostly lost the
differences between the formal and the familiar forms of address in
English, but they're retained in French. Vous, not Tu. At least until
you know someone well or you're addressing a child.
There are more points, but I think those are the
ones that stand out to me. Anybody who reads this is welcome to chip in
with another point or a disagreement.
With any luck I'll be quoted in Seenie's article
next month.
I did go to the magazine's website (www.internationalliving.com)
to have a look. Interesting, all about good places to live. According to
their most recent research France is the best country in the world to live
in! How about that? I'm glad they agree with Linda & I and I'm glad they
reached their conclusion on a more scientific basis.
I'm more than glad that I had a chance to make a
slight contribution.
Home Alone - 56?
It only seems like 56 days since the last time we
were home alone, but it's nice to be on our own for a few days. Mind you
I'm not complaining. I love having our friends and family visit. They're
all 'good' guests, they help out, share expenses, cook, BUY WINE! and are
generally a pleasure to have around. Eventually, however, it becomes a bit
too much of a good thing and Linda & I appreciate a few days on our own to
relax & recoup.
Our friends from the states left yesterday for
Northern Germany to visit a great Grand daughter and her parents. Its a
long drive & we've loaned them a car for the journey. Its a good long
distance car and has our newly acquired GPS system so navigation isn't a
problem. They're stopping off overnight (in fact two nights so they have a
day to explore the area where they're stopping. Smart idea I think.) in
the Champagne region which should be a good break.
For their last night here I cooked the first BBQ
meal of the year as it was a beautiful evening. We started with large
mushrooms grilled stem side down then flipped and filled with garlic
butter. Easy and delicious. For our main course we had grilled quail
(split down their backs & sprinkled with thyme, salt & pepper and a very
light coating of olive oil.) These were accompanied by twice baked
potatoes. (small potatoes baked in the oven, let cool, insides scraped out
and combined with a bit of butter and chopped chives & put back in. Then
onto the BBQ to heat & crisp up.) and zucchini squash, quartered and
coated with Herbs de Province, garlic granules and S&P and cooked on the
grill. It all worked pretty well together.
For dessert I had made two mousses. One was a
chocolate mousse uncooked with 85% chocolate, beaten egg whites and cream
so it was light. The other was an uncooked lemon mousse with gelatin to
stiffen it up. They were served side by side separated by bought Galatine
cookies. The chocolate was topped by lemon zest and the lemon was topped
by chocolate mint. (yes, it exists!) Absolutely delicious. This
dessert with definitely go into my permanent repertoire of dishes.
Sorry no pictures as I was too busy cooking.
It was a good send off for our friends and we now
have a week on our own. Except for dinner out with local friends on
Wednesday and Friday evenings. Well, somebody has to do it.
Grass, Grass & more Grass!
We've had a lot of rain lately; real spring weather.
Unfortunately, the grass loves it. I seem to spend all of my time on the
lawn mower. The good news is that I have a deal with a local farmer where
he cuts the majority of our field in return for the hay. Unfortunately,
again, that still leaves a lot that I have to cut.
It dried off and was a nice day today so I was out
on the mower knowing that if I left it the grass would quickly become
impossible. This was after a visit to the local quincaillerie.
Now, if you visit France you should make a point of
visiting a quincaillerie; they're wonderful. Imagine an old fashioned
hardware store combined it a dry goods store and you have an
approximation. Today I wanted three things. A special mop head for doing
the wooden floors, no problem. A bucket with enough for the mop head, no
problem. A very fancy stopper for an IKEA sink, problem! It wasn't even
the same size as the ones in the catalog. However, we found a normal plug
that although not fancy seemed to be the right size (this after much
discussion and measurement) so I bought it with many assurances that I
could bring it back if it didn't fit. This for a 50 cent item. I didn't
get to go down into the catacombs today mores the pity. They're not really
catacombs, but a myriad of cellars under the main store stocked with all
kinds of hardware goodies. Do find and visit a French quincaillerie if at
all possible; guys will be in heaven and Ladies bemused, but intrigued.
Back to the lawn. Ran out of gas half way through.
Local gas station closed for lunch. Nuts!
Decided to make lunch. Local whole wheat bread for
tuna mix sandwiches (tuna, chopped onions, chopped celery, diced red
pepper, diced Cornichons and low fat mayo) ; Celeri rave, salad
parmentiere and julienned carrots; great Spanish potato chips and, of
course, some white wine.
Filled up my gas can and finished the lawn. Planted
some sweet corn brought over by an American friend and planted some
beefsteak tomatoes he brought as well. He says its not too late for the
tomatoes, but I'm not so sure. Will keep you posted. My cilantro & basil
are doing well by the way.
Came in to watch some snooker (World Championship
semi-finals) An addictive game if ever there was one.
Now finishing this and will get ready to go out to
dinner at some friends house. They're both good cooks so I'm looking
forward to it. They serve good wine as well so the evening will be nice.
Such is life in rural France. Tough isn't it?
Cassoulet - Continued.
Had a good nap and was ready to start cooking again.
Linda reminded me that we didn't have any nibbles to feed our guests with
their pre-dinner drinks. So, I had a look at what was available in the
fridge and came up with two kinds of little snacks.

These are bits of fois gras wrapped in flaky pastry.

And these are salmon Rillets with fresh chives from
the garden, again wrapped in flaky pastry.
These seemed to satisfy everyone as they drank their
wine and caught up on the events of summer. I find it interesting how
Europeans love to cluster together in small areas. In this case there were
16 people crammed into an area of maybe 10 by 10 feet even though at the
other end of the room there was a space at least four times larger
complete with sofa's and comfortable chairs. Go figure?
Anyway, we got everybody seated on our miscellany of
chairs, made sure there was plenty of wine on the table and served the
salad.

As previously mentioned this was a simple
combination of lettuce, wild garlic, cilantro and chives (complete with
flowers) with creamy vinaigrette dressing.
Nice and light to just wake up the taste buds in
preparation for what was to come.
All three Cassoulet ready to come out of the oven.
(Note: this is a good illustration of why having a full 36" oven is so
handy. We also have a regular sized oven which gets most use, but the big
oven is ideal for times like this and for big birds and such. If you have
kitchen space I encourage you to have one.)
The small white container in the foreground is the separate cassoulet I
did for our friend who is gluten intolerant so couldn't eat the bread
crumb crust.


Here is the cassoulet getting served up.
We lucked out as after seconds we still had enough
left for us to freeze and save
for a nice dinner for Linda & I sometime in
the future.
After a suitable interval. i.e. more wine drinking
the cassoulet had settled enough to allow room for dessert. This was
apricot pie or strawberry pie brought by our friends from up the hill.
Delicious with either crème Franche or ice cream.

A good time was had by all, much wine imbibed, much
food eaten, many jokes told. Just as it should be!

HAPPY EATERS!!!
Cassoulet - Again, last of the season
Spring is really with us and is roaring away. Not
cold, but blustery with periodic showers, some heavy. Ideal weather for
cassoulet before it gets too hot. I've written up a detailed pictorial of
my method of making this dish elsewhere on this blog so won't go into any
detail this time. I will, however, share with you some shortcuts and
variations I used for this one. These were necessary due my having none of
the ingredients on hand and having to get the cassoulet prepared after
only one day back from our holiday in Spain.
Since I last posted my gregarious wife has upped the
number of guests to 18. Good thing I made what are in effect two
cassoulet. (A third if you count the little individual one for our friend
who can't eat flour.) Fortunately, another friend has agreed to do the
dessert. Wonderful apricot tarts by a superb local patisserie. Here's a
few pictures of the preparations:

Flowers for the table. These are straight from our
garden. Linda is very good at setting a beautiful table and currently is
delighted with all of the flowers from the garden.
Here's a view of the table. Long so we have to go
across our dining room of get everybody in.
Since its going to be a messy meal there's no fancy
linen for tonight, besides I don't think we have a cloth big enough
anyway.

Further along now with plates on. The usual
miscellany of chairs.
As a starter we're having a very simple salad. Baby
lettuce, cilantro and a creamy vinaigrette, but sprinkled with wild
garlic. Here's the garlic straight out of the ground.


The cassoulet is ready to go back into the oven for
a couple of hours having spent a good 4 hours in the oven yesterday.

Here they are. The biggie in its cassole and
a
smaller one in my old green pot.
What did I do differently? Mainly the meats. I
roasted two pork loin roasts with salt, pepper and fresh sage then cooled
them and cut then into large bite sized chunks for putting in the
cassoulet. I used about 3 lbs of lamb breast which I cut into ribs and
browned. Then made a miripoix added the lamb back in & made a stew with
lots of tomato puree, herbs de province & oregano. After cooking this for
2 hours I fished out the lamb and added the beans (which I'd boiled for
3/4 hour then let soak) ad garlic. This was allowed to simmer for 2-3
hours then cool.
I was now ready to assemble the cassoulet. A layer
of bean, then pork, then beans, then lamb, then beans, then sausage, more
beans and finally the comfit. Into the oven for 4 hours then out to rest.
So far so good. More later with picture if I have
time, but a nap is in order right now so as to be
rested for the evening's
festivities.
Eating out & Messing around in the
kitchen
Well my most unflavored blogger does it again. This
lady who purports to be a super cook was recently going on about how you
can't make Mexican food in France. She's back in the states now and,
according to her, loving the fact that she can eat Mexican again. This is
typical of her, stupid statements that just aren't true. Of course you can
make Mexican food in France. Admittedly, you will probably not find any
Mexican restaurants outside of Paris, Lyon or other large cities, but with
a little looking and some ingenuity you can find the ingredients needed to
make a wide variety of Mexican dishes.
I make guacamole pretty regularly. Avocados are
both good and inexpensive here, finding limes is easy and in the summer
season finding hot chili peppers is a doddle. (the rest of the year you
can buy both red & green ancho chilies , bottled in most supermarkets).
Likewise, refried beans are easy. Either starting from scratch or starting
with canned red beans (these are incredibly cheap) if you're a purest you
can buy lard or if you're not so pure you can use duck fat as I do.
Tortilla chips are easy to find. One is limited for choice in terms of
variety of chilies, tomatillos are impossible to find, corn flour is easy
and so on. Thus, you can get pretty much everything needed to make most
Mexican dishes. Maybe my blogging fried should take off her French Letter
and look around her.
As it happens I made a sort of Mexican dish the
other night. (before I'd read the blog above. Promise!) I called it an
omelet ranchero because like the famous heuvos rancheros it has
ingredients that one associates with Mexican cooking. I this case there
was a bit of Spain as well since there is a famous omelet made in Spain
called a tortilla. So this was a sort of combination. Here are the
ingredients:
- Lardons (or thick cut smoked bacon cut into
1/4 inch strips)
- Chorizo (chopped up)
- Potatoes
- green bell pepper (chopped)
- Onion (chopped)
- Eggs
Use a large non-stick frying pan. Size dependent
upon how large your omelet is to be. Keep the heat at a medium level.
- Peel the potatoes, boil them then cut them
into bite sized pieces.
- Start frying the lardons then after a minute
or so add the chorizo.
- Add the chopped (roughly) green pepper then
the chopped onions.
- Add the potatoes.
- Let all this cook stirring frequently until
the onions & peppers are limp.
- Beat the eggs thoroughly then add them to the
pan. Tilt the pan around to distribute the eggs evenly.
- Let cook for 3-4 minutes or until a bottom
crust has formed.
- Move the frying pan under a hot grill in your
oven. (careful!!) and cook until the top is set & browned.
- Shake the pan to be sure the omelet is set. If
needed put it back on the stove to finish off the bottom.
- Let the omelet cool for a minute or so then
turn it out (upside down) onto a large plate.
I did this for a 60's party where you were
supposed to bring a dish so it was served cold. Its equally good hot off
the stove.
To go with it I made a simple red salsa. Finely
chopped tomatoes and onion. Lime juice and tomato puree. Salt & pepper.
Chopped fresh green chilies (the type is not relevant since the names vary
so much from place to place. Here they're called Piment Vert fort.
But hot green chilies doesn't help a lot.) The ones here are moderately
hot. Add water to get the right consistency. If the salsa isn't hot enough
for your taste you can add either cayenne pepper or chopped very hot
chilies from a bottle or, if you're in the right place some ancho or
jalapeño. Play around until you get the taste & hotness that you like.
The combination of the cold tortilla and the
salsa is a great one. Both certainly disappeared quickly at the party.
Nothing difficult at all. We do like Mexican food
so we go to the little bit of extra trouble to make it every so often.
As for the lady blogger maybe she'll just
stay in the states & quit spreading misinformation about France. Probably
too much to hope for, but what can you expect from someone who does a blog
whose very name is an insult to her host nation.
Salad Time - Nicoise here we come!
Its that time of year. We can just begin to get all
of the top quality ingredients for salads. To me perhaps the king (or
would it re queen?) of salads is Salad Nicoise. You can get a healthy
argument going as to where this salad really originated, but I'll settle
for the South of France. If the denizens of Nice want to claim it that's
OK with me. In any case I really love this salad and the process of making
it. Here goes!

Here are some of the green beans which need to get
topped & tailed then cooked very briefly. Steam or boil the just long
enough to soften them then cool the beans rapidly until running cold
water.
See below.


Hard boil the eggs. Normally one person plus one or
two for the pot so to speak.
Also, boil the potatoes. As you can see I found very
small new potatoes & was able to leave them whole

If you can't find very small potatoes' its no big
deal, but be sure to boil the larger potatoes whole first; then cut them
into the size you want. Cutting them then boiling will yield fuzzy edges
and small bits.
Next you need to slice the onions (I like to use red
onions, but any type will do.) I use my mandolin so that I can get really
thin slices. The onions I had for this salad were not the best so I had
some trouble with them.
Next you should make a nice vinaigrette. In
this case I made a creamy variety pretty much as described in "How to Cook
Everything" by Bittman. By all means use your own favorite.
Next slice up the pepper.

As you can see I've used a red pepper, but green
or yellow work equally well. You're looking for color as well as flavour
in the salad.

As soon as the potatoes are boiled drain them and
while still hot put them in a bowl and pour over some of your vinaigrette.
(or let them cool a bit if they're large before cutting up and
marinating.)
Now we're ready to start assembling the salad.
Stage one is to spread out the drained tuna over
the serving dish. (if you tuna is oil packed save the oil for pouring onto
the salad later.)
Next add the onions.

Then add the potatoes, pepper and green beans.
The cherry tomatoes (or tomato chunks) come next followed by the black
olives (deseeded).

Last, but by no means least come the hard boiled
eggs. Cut the eggs in half and top each with an anchovy fillet.
Finally pour over your vinaigrette and any saved
oil from the tuna or the anchovies.
Here are some pictures of the result.

And we enjoyed every bite!

Lamb - I love it!
As mentioned yesterday I went down the other day to
watch Rob cut up our half a lamb. I've seen him do this before, but this
time I took pictures. I promise that they're not too gruesome. Our half of
a dressed lamb weighed almost exactly 10 kilo's (22 lbs); the other half
slightly more as Rob hadn't cut exactly down the middle of the backbone.

Here's the whole half of lamb before any cutting.
Rod has simply sawed the lamb in half ready to be cut into the cuts we
would like.

Here are Rob's tools. As you can see a saw, a
cleaver, two knives and a large barding needle. (you can look up barding
if you don't know, I won't tell.)

Here's the whole hind leg separated from the front
of the carcass. To the right is the leg after cutting the top bit.

This will all get boned out so that one has two leg
roasts, ideal for us as we can use the smaller roast for the two of us and
the larger will happily feed four to six people.

To the left you can see the two leg roasts in the
foreground. In the bottom corner are the delicious kidney's.
Moving on from this Rod does the shoulder next. This
is probably my favorite cut. In the shops & at the butcher's we normally
just buy it whole then slow roast it, delicious. With Rob, however, I let
him bone it out and tie it.

Unfortunately I didn't get a decent picture of the
process of boning and tying the shoulder. The picture at right shows the
end result.

Next came the breast which was carefully boned then
rolled to make a really nice roast for two hungry people.

Here we are ready for doing the chops

The chops are first cut then chopped though the
bone.
The end at the left which hasn't been cut as of yet
is where the 'infamous' rack to lamb comes from. We don't both, but just
go ahead a cut out the chops.
That's it really. Being an ex-master butcher Rob
make it look easy. I still haven't figured our how he does his neat little
knots that hold when he's tying the roasts. If we had more freezer space
I'd buy a whole lamb so we could have a crown roast, but there are too
many other things competing for space. Here's what was left of our half
lamb.

No bones you say? Well I now have about a quart of
delicious lamb stock that I made last night. All night in fact since I
forgot to turn it off when I went to bed.
I tossed & turned until finally about 4 AM I
remembered that I had forgotten. I was lucky it was still reducing, but
not burning. I turned it off and went back to bed & slept well. I tested
it this morning, added some water, let it simmer for a while longer, then
passed it through a sieve.
Its resting in the fridge now ready to be degreased.
Then frozen.
Thus, my tale of the latest lamb.
Panic!
This will be a short post just to say that I'll do
something more robust tomorrow. The panic was today when I opened the
program to write a blog post and all of the images had disappeared.
None in my header or in the body of the posts. Just
the blank rectangles with the dreaded little red X's. I tried everything I
could think of to fix it to no avail. Interestingly it was only my
Frenchfoodfocus website that was affected; all of my other sites were Ok.
I even reinstalled the whole program to no avail.
Finally, I went through every menu item by
item. Still no luck. Finally as I went through the toolbars I noticed a
red X in a circle. Low & behold clicking this solved my problem!
My pictures were back. Whoopee! All was well. As I
was at it I deleted that link thing for Tips that I had inserted over on
the Left pane. It was sort of intrusive. They claimed it would bring in
more hits, but if it did I couldn't see the difference.
Speaking of hits I'd like to get more & have more
people read & comment on the blog. Please pass the message along to your
friends if you would. Also, I'm open to suggestions; just
Make a
Comment.
Tomorrow's blog with be a pictorial on my watching
Rod cut up our spring lamb, I've commented on this before, but not with
pictures. It not gory I promise you.
Until then?
When the
wives are away....
The ladies are off to Toulouse to get an IKEA hit
today. No doubt they'll have a good time, spend a bit of money and,
hopefully, have a good lunch. We're going out for drinks at some friend's
house this evening so a decent lunch is in order. So, I invited Michael
down & we'll have lunch here. He suggested going out, but I've got a few
new recipes to try and Michael is a good critic so here it is.
The menu today starts with a new variation of
brochetta followed by a bean salad & BBQ's ribs with sausage and
baked Apricots with crème frache for dessert. Simple, but there are some
new twists hidden in it.

Here's the bread from our local baker. I'll
slice it diagonally and lightly toast it.

Here's a sort of mise en place of the topping
ingredients. Note the avocado and, sort of buried in there, the spring
garlic that I bought at market. This all gets chopped up and doused with a
bit of olive oil & white wine vinegar plus a bit of S&P. Its then spread
on the toasted bread. Here's a picture of the mix

Next I put the dry rub on the pork ribs. Here's
the recipe.
5 T Paprika
4 T Salt
4 T Garlic Powder
2 T Ground Black Pepper
2 T Onion Powder
2 T Cayenne Pepper
2 T Dried Leaf Oregano, Ground
2 T Dried Thyme
NOTE: T stands for
tablespoons. I usually make a double batch as it keeps well in a sealed
jar.
Combine all ingredients and
place in a shaker container that can be sealed.
Shake and rub on to any cut
of pork. Place meat in a pan and roast for one hour at 250°F., prior to
cooking on the BBQ.
Brown the meat and baste
both sides with your favorite BBQ sauce.
I call this "Leo's Rub"
because I got the recipe from my good friend Leo. Who knows or cares where
he got it, but I can tell you that its excellent. Another picture:

Next came the bean salad. To a drained can of
white beans I added lots of the chopped spring garlic plus fresh basil.
The salad was seasoned with dried coriander and cumin powder. Simple, but
a sample taste says its pretty good.

To finish off I mixed in some chopped mixed
greens.
Here is the dessert ready for the oven.


I simply halved the apricots (these were some
kind of 'special' apricot; much larger that normal that I bought at
market.) and removed the seed. I then sprinkled them with a bit of vanilla
followed by a bit of maple syrup and ground cinnamon, ginger & nutmeg.
They go into a hot oven just long enough to soften & be served (warm, not
hot) with some full cream.
At this stage after about an hour in a low oven
(275F) I pulled out the ribs.

Here's what they look like part cooked.
They'll get finished off on the BBQ.
At this point I also made some BBQ sauce.
Recipe!

1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup dry red wine
1/4 cup corn oil
1/4cup soy sauce
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon paprika
2 teaspoons black pepper
4 garlic cloves crushed
4 teaspoons dried oregano
Substitute tomato puree for the
ketchup.
Add a couple if tablespoons of
honey.
Mix all in food processor
Brush on meat near the end of
BBQing turning frequently.
You want to caramelize the
sauce, not burn it.
Don't know where I got this
recipe, but its a good one. Simple to make and keeps well in the fridge
for a couple of weeks.
About ready now so I'm going to
go clean myself up. I'll add some more pictures after the ribs & sausage
have been on the BBQ.

So, here's a bit of the view
from the verandah where we ate
our lunch. Another lousy day in paradise. Hard to take!
Unfortunately, Michael & I got
so involved with conversation and eating the lunch that I forgot to take
pictures of the rib cooking process. You'll just have to imagine the ribs
& the sausage on the BBQ getting just a bit of the sauce and then coming
off to get eaten.
What I can show you is the end
result! Great looking bones; what?

I did remember to take pictures of dessert.

Looks good & tasted very good.
That's it! A nice lunch and good conversation.
What more could one ask?
Perhaps a nap. See you later.
April 2009
Viva Espana!1 -- Ole!
Well, we just got back from our little vacation in
Spain. A good time was had by all. The time share apartment that our
friend's son had donated was fine, small, but nice & clean and close to
everything in the resort town of Salou. We managed to find everything we
needed without any difficulty and by and large the weather was good,
especially for this time of year.
Unfortunately our friends had picked up a bad cold
somewhere over the Atlantic so were not up to too much exploring. We did,
however manage to find a really nice tapas bar just down the road from our
apartment. We ordered a bottle of their house white wine and were shocked
by what we got, It was an absolutely delicious chardonnay! Very fruity and
light and just gorgeous! It tasted almost like a Sauvignon Blanc with
muscles. Wow! is all I can say.
Our tapas were; calamari, gambas a la hijo, toasted
bread, potatoes with a sauce to die for and chicken wings. All delicious,
all perfectly done. They made a very nice meal indeed. We ordered some
calamari & a half portion of potatoes for our friend who was feeling too
bad to come with us. He was appreciative.
The next day we cooked. Nothing special, but it was
fun to explore the local Supermarkets and notice what they did & did not
have. Also, the ladies scouted out a 'nice' restaurant for lunch the
next day as our friends wanted to treat us to lunch seeing as it was my
birthday. (72ond, I'm not coy.) They chose well! The name of the
restaurant was "Villa Alexander" and it is beautifully decorated and laid
out. The ladies tell me that the rest rooms are superb, I didn't have
occasion to use them so you'll have to take the expert's word for it.
The food lived up to the decor. The pick of the day
was probably the sea bream that Linda had, gorgeous! All the starters and
mains were good. My favorite was my dessert of lemon sorbet which was out
standing. The wine list was long and I think outstanding. I say 'I think'
because I'm no expert on Spanish wines, but it was long and seemed
comprehensive. What I like about it was that the grape varieties used to
make each wine were identified. Thus without knowing a lot I could choose
a very nice Chardonnay (this one oaked, older and more substantial than
our 'tapas' variety.) and a red from Cataluña which was a classic Bordeaux
blend. (It turned out well, it was a 1998 and opened up very nicely.)
All in all a very nice meal over three hours in the
Spanish style and much appreciated by the birthday boy.
More cooking at home followed. As our friends were
still under the weather Linda & I went on a short excursion to
Tarragona. This seemed a really nice small city with some outstanding
Roman ruins, a very interesting 'old town' and lots of nice shops. Worth a
visit.
Next day we did a trip to the nearby mountains. This
was spectacular, not totally good for me with my vertigo, but some truly
great views. We climbed from the coast to well over 3,000 feet and, of
course, back down. All were feeling better so we went back to the tapas
bar for dinner. Just as good second time around. We added delicious
mushrooms and roasted pork to the tapas repertoire and managed two bottles
of their wine. They didn't have dessert, but offered various ice cream
concoctions. A very enjoyable evening.
Back home today. As soon as we hit the French border
it started raining and it still hasn't stopped. Still, its nice to be home
and Rupert was very happy to see us even though he's being spoiled rotten
by Linda's sister & her husband.
No rest for the wicked. Shopping tomorrow then
Cassoulet for 14 people on Tuesday.
Baaaa...
A tale of two lambs!
Yesterday the ladies went out and bought two legs of
spring lamb for dinner. The idea was that with six of us one wouldn't be
enough. No problem with that as in my opinion there's no such thing as too
much lamb. We decided that we'd try a little experiment as to cooking the
lamb.
My friend Leo who is a formidable cook would cook
one leg his way while I'd cook the the leg my way. Not a competition, just
an opportunity to compare both methods side by side. Its not often that
ones cooks two legs of lamb at the same time.

Here's the two legs ready for oven. Mine's in the
red roasting pan and Leo's at the back in the fancy French roasting tin.
Note the bone at the back of Leo's leg. That's going
to be a treat for Rupert, our standard poodle.
Leo did his as follows: First he butterfly's his leg
and carefully trims it. Then he makes a marinade with both regular Dijon
mustard and coarse grain mustard plus fresh rosemary. The marinade
is spread over the lamb and allowed to rest for a couple of hours. Its
then roasted at 160 degrees C until the internal temperature reaches 140
degrees C. It then rests for 10-15 minutes before carving. Here's a close
up of Leo's lamb ready for oven.

Really looks good doesn't it?
My technique was to tunnel bone my leg and trim it.
Inside the tunneled part I placed rosemary, garlic and anchovies (just a
couple of filets). I then trussed the leg into a fairly neat shape, cut
some slits on the outside and placed more anchovy filets into the
slits. Slivers of garlic were placed in some deep cuts. (you can just see
one between the two anchovy slits.) Pepper and more rosemary, but no salt
as the anchovies have plenty. Here's my lamb in close up:

You can just see the anchovy in the slits if you
look closely.
I roasted at 140 degrees C for a much longer time
than Leo, but ended up with the same internal temperature. Also, the same
resting time.
The results? Two absolutely delicious legs of lamb.
It was hard to say one was better or worse than the other since they were
both good. You'll just have to try both ways to see which is your personal
preference.
I did cheat and combine the pan juices from both
roasts to make the gravy. This also was good over the potatoes and other
vegetables. Overall a really nice meal. Oh! By the way we had fresh
asparagus with Hollandaise sauce as a starter. Life is good.
We were also having another comparison going on with
this meal. That was of wine. Our Niece is getting married here in June and
lamb will feature in the Wedding Dinner. She wants a St Emillion to go
with it so her father had bought a couple of 'Grand Cru's' to sample
before ordering the full quantity of bottles.
Both were very nice wines and, of course, went very well with the lamb.
Opinions varied a bit around the table, but the consensus was to go for
the cheaper of the two as the quality of the two was equal.
This stuff is hard work you know, but somebody has
to do it. Don't they?
Buying Wine - Locally!
Our next set of guests is arriving shortly; in fact
Linda has gone down to Toulouse to pick them up and should back any time
now. Anyway, I looked and realized that we were out of our favorite local
red wine so my brother-in-law and Rupert hopped in the car and we went to
buy some.
We drove just up the hill no more than half a mile
to the 'cave'. Now I have to be honest this isn't really local wine. It
comes from further South near Carcassonne and is an AOC Minervois. The
reason I say local is that our friend Paul sells it from a cellar on his
farm complex. He sells it because his daughter is married to the vintner.
Low overhead operation, but good wine. Down South they have close to 200
hectares of vines (around 500 acres) which is a big operation.
As usual as we drove up the dogs raced out to greet
us and to alert everyone to our prescience. When they realized that Rupert
was in the car the barking got even louder and Roop responded in kind. A
good bark was has by all and honor was satisfied on all sides. Paul was
nearby pruning some trees so he stopped and greeted us, I introduced
Derek, my beau frère. I love that My beau frère, my good brother. Somehow
it sounds nicer than brother-in-law.
In any case Paul took Derek off to see the gite he's
created. (Its very nice, I've seen it before, and would be a good place
for a holiday) Meanwhile Paul's Mother has come out to see what's going on
so she and I went into the cave so I could buy the wine. Now, they have a
whole selection of wines that they make at the vineyard. In bottles all
the way from about 3.50 Euros up to around 15.00 Euros per bottle. When I
normally buy, however, is the 10 liter boxes. They sell a 10 liter box of
AOC Minervois red for 19.90 Euros. That's what I bought today. Works out
at less than 1.50 Euros per bottle. Don't laugh because if I decant it
into a nice looking container, let it breath for a while and serve it to
you, you will be delighted at the quality. They also sell a chardonnay for
about the same price. Its quality is amazing! Not oaked of course as
is the French custom, but absolutely delicious. Why pay more I ask?
Tour over, wine bought so with a last barking
contest we were off. I do like buying wine here.
Sometime I'll describe buying wine at the wine shop
over in Villefranche de Rouergue. No that's a long process if you're
after a serious wine.
Pork Roast- My favorite method
One of the great meats of France is pork. They
do it wonderfully well and its inexpensive. After all the whole
charcouterie thing is based upon ways to do pork, nothing is wasted.
Somewhere back in the annals of this blog are a host of posts about going
to a farmhouse and 'doing' a whole pig. Great fun and quite an experience.
This post, however, is far simpler. Its about my
favorite way to cook a pork loin roast. Tasty and delicious. In fact as
I'm writing this after dinner my sister-in-law is still going on
about how good the pork was. Nice compliment. Anyway, first you buy your
pork. Look for a nice lean loin roast , not the tenderloin, but loin.
Once you have that you want to brine it for at least
48 hours, preferably for 72 hours. Just make up a brine with roughly one
cup of salt per 2 quarts of water, add about a tablespoon of sugar, then
your herbs. The herbs are to your choice, but I use marjoram, thyme,
crushed juniper berries, crushed black peppercorns and coriander seeds.
Mix the brine well, put the pork roast in making sure its covered and put
it in the fridge for the requisite amount of time. Give it a stir every so
often.
About 3-4 hours before you're going to cook it take
the pork out of the fridge and out of the brine and let it rest at room
temperature. Set the oven for 150 degrees C.
Now make a paste using lots of Dijon mustard, fresh
sage (dry if you can't get fresh) well chopped up, and coarsely ground
black peppercorns. Spread this thickly over the top of the roast then
place the roast in the pre-heated oven.
Roast for one to two hours depending upon the size
of the roast or until a thermometer inserted into the middle of the roast
reads 135 degrees F.
Take the roast out of the oven, scrape the crust off
into the roasting pan and set the roast onto a carving board to rest.
Place the roasting pan over medium high heat, add a good dollop of dry
white wine to the roasting pan and stir around to get all of the
crust and baked on bits dissolved. Add one pork stock cube (if you have
one. If not its OK, the gravy just won't be quite as rich.) Turn the heat
right down and when the mixture quits boiling add a generous amount of
cream (the heavier the better, but if you're watching the calories you can
use lighter cream or even sour cream), bring back to the boil and stir
until it gravy is reduced and of a nice thick consistency. Put the heat on
low and carve the roast into nice slices.
Don't be panicked if the pork looks red. The brining
process cures the meat and its perfectly safe to eat and will be the
moistest most tender pork you've ever had.
Serve with the gravy and enjoy.
I apologize for the lack of pictures, but when I
went to use it I discovered that our trusty Nikon's batteries were too low
for picture taking.
In any case its not a particularly photogenic
recipe, but do try it as its absolutely delicious.
Big Night Out!
Well, sort of. Our local restaurant, L' Auberge de
La Castille was having a special meal yesterday evening so we went. We
always wonder how Serge survives as a restaurateur since he normally
doesn't have a lot of business. Its not that he's not a good chef because
he isn't bad at all; its just that the menu seldom changes and isn't very
adventurous to begin with. Still, he has to depend upon local custom
and the locals like the familiar. Anyway the Auberge is a pleasant enough
place and Serge has recently done some decorating to spruce the place up.
The special meal was mules- frites. This is a great
favorite both of the locals and of ours. He had a full house for the
evening, probably about 50 covers. The three course meal was 16 Euros. The
started was a choice of a smoked salmon salad or a fois gras pate. I had
the salad which was very good. Dessert was a chocolate gateau with a light
mint sauce; again very tasty. The Moules and the frites were delicious and
plentiful. Each table got two servings of both.
In addition we had live music. This was provided by
an old gentleman who was a very good singer/ musician aided by two
attractive ladies. The gentleman was, I think, someone who had in his
younger days been well known throughout France, but was now retired. He
was both good and professional. The ladies were, again I think, either his
grown up daughters or, perhaps, a daughter and a Grand daughter. In any
case both could sing well. Thus we had music throughout the evening, all
French standards and easy to listen to. And, yes, he did have an
accordion. This is somewhat of a standing joke among the local foreign
community in that anytime the French get together like this there will be
an accordion player. In this case he only used it once, mostly he played
the keyboard or the drums.
Part of the crowd of diners were, obviously, his
family. You could see the resemblance. As the evening wore on various of
the family member got up to sing or to accompany the two lead singers.
They were all good. By the end of the evening the tables had been cleared
and pushed back and the dancing was going strong. We left about 12:30 AM
and things were still in full swing.
Not bad for the wilds of France. It was a lot of fun
and we got to have a chat with many of our local neighbors.
Kids go home tonight & their parents arrive. No rest
for the wicked.
Getting
Busy
My posts may start getting pretty erratic in the
near future. Things are starting to get busy. We have a whole series of
visitors arriving over the next days and weeks. The weather getting good
and the visitors starting to come sort of go together; funny how that
works. And good weather we've been having; it was up in the high 60's
yesterday & today with sunny skies.
Currently we have our favorite niece and her
fiancée staying with us. They're making plans for their wedding in June.
HERE!! Don't ask why they want to get married in Franc, but they do.
Should be a lot of fun. It won't be a big wedding only about 40 people in
all. The Mayor will do the honors. (They were up at the town hall today
sorting the incredible amount of paperwork it takes to get two English
people married in France. Everything was OK except one form & Madam Bosc
will be sorting that out.) As I write this they're up at the chateau
trying to sort out how to get a wireless Internet connection out to where
the marquee will be for the dinner and dancing. (Our friends kindly
offered the chateau grounds to the kids.) Tomorrow Bavo, who is doing the
catering, is coming over to discuss menus. (Fortunately, I only have to
cook for one main meal for about 20, I think.)
When the kids go home on Sunday we pick up our
Niece's parents who are coming for a visit. They'll be with us for a few
days until our friends arrive from the states. (Get this! Our friends sold
their house in Spokane in a week and have now bought a bank repossession
in the Bay Area. They are determined to make this visit so everything is
in storage and they will move into their new house when they get back.
What housing crisis?) They'll be with us for several weeks.
Shortly after they arrive, however, the four of
us are going to Spain for a week while our in-law's baby sit Rupert our
dog. Then back home for a while.
So, please bear with me and keep checking in if I
don't get the time to put up many posts over the next few weeks. I'll be
thinking about it, however and may have some things to say about Spain.
After all I did live there many years ago when things were very different.
Free Food - Living off the land
As those of you who have followed this blog for some
time will know I'm a great believer in free food, that which one can
forage for in our local countryside. I've posted, a couple of times I
think, about Michael & I's forays in the fall for walnuts, apples,
mushrooms and other goodies.
Now its springtime and things are growing again. You
frequently see the French out walking the hedge rows and scouring the
roadside ditches. They're looking for edible bounty. One of the local
favorites in the spring is 'wild asparagus'. Its really not asparagus at
all wild or otherwise, but it does look like skinny stalks of the real
thing. It has a funny name in French; repariou.. something or other. Not
only can I now spell it I can't pronounce it properly either.
Not that it matters since I don't like it. The
locals rave about it. They steam it and pair it will hard boiled eggs and
vinaigrette and pronounce it delicious. Sorry neighbors, I just
don't like it.
This week though our local farmer showed Linda a new
wild plant to eat. She in turn showed me what to look for. Its a form of
wild garlic. Its found along the sides of the road mainly on steep banks.
One needs a tool to dig it our or the bulbs will break off. There's lots
of it not far from our house so we went out the other evening and picked
some. Our Niece has arrived from England and wants to try it so we'll go
out again this evening.

Here's what it looks like as it comes out of the
ground.
A lot like spring onions except for the roots which
are different.

Here's a close up of the bulb end.
Note the little modules growing around it.

Here are the bulbs after cleaning up.
The nodules are clearly visible now. As you can see
the roots are very long which is why a tool and a deal of care are needed
to get them out of the ground.

All trimmed and ready to eat.
Just add a bit of salt and eat as is or chop them up
and add to a salad.
Either way they're good. The taste is somewhere
between that of a spring onion and mild garlic.
They are best eaten as soon as possible after
picking we found.

Delicious!
I'm really pleased to have been introduced to a new
wild free food. These will feature permanently on our Spring menu from now
on.
By the way, remember the rules off foraging for wild
food.
- Only take what you plan to eat.
- Always left some to there will be seeds
for next year.
Another recipe and a look at the mainly
edible part of the garden
First the recipe. We've gotten into the habit of
playing poker with out friends most Friday or Saturday evenings. (shows
we're getting old, I guess) We all enjoy it even though we don't play for
money, just the prestige of having the most chips at the end of play. We
also share a 'simple' supper. Last night it was our turn to provide the
meal.
We did asparagus as a starter with the classic
Hollandaise sauce. The asparagus is now into season and is delicious. As a
main course we roasted a chicken with lots of garlic and herbs de Province
and served it with roast potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli. All very nice
and very simple.
I had been thinking about another low calorie
dessert and here's what I came up with. I call it Poker Pears.
Ingredients:
- One pear per person
- 1/2 bottle of sweet white wine
- cinnamon, nutmeg & ginger
- fake sugar (I use the Sweeta stuff) or regular
sugar
- One scoop of vanilla ice cream per person
- Walnut meat
- Maple syrup
Method:
- Trim the ends of the pears; peel them; cut
them in half lengthways and cut out the core.
- In a pan just large enough to hold the pears
(cut side down) pour in the sweet wine and the spices (let you taste
buds guide you as to how much of the spices to use. I normally use a
ratio of 2 parts cinnamon to 1 part nutmeg and 1 part ginger).
Add water to just cover the pears; bring to a simmer and simmer
(covered) until the pears are soft. This should take 20-30 minutes. Test
with a skewer to gage doneness.
- While the pears are cooking take the ice cream
out of the freezer and let it soften up a bit. While that's happening
toast the walnut meat in the oven. Once toasted & cooled chop the walnut
coarsely.
- Measure out the ice cream then mix it with the
chopped walnuts and the maple syrup. (about a generous tablespoon per
scoop of ice cream. Mix all together until the syrup & nuts are well
distributed. Cover the bowl and return to the freezer.
- When the pears are cooked remove them from the
cooking liquid using a slotted spoon. Put the pears and the cooking
liquid in the fridge to chill.
- When ready to serve place two pear halves on a plate; top them with
a scoop of the ice cream and serve the poaching liquid separately in
small cups. A spring of mint looks nice on top of the ice cream.
This is a lovely combination that is both
easy to make and not very calorific. You can of course use low fat ice
cream to keep the calories down.
On a different topic entirely I was out in
the garden taking a few pictures this morning so I thought I would share
some of them with you.

Lets start with the Iris's that grow outside our
bedroom window. As you can see they're just coming out.
Pretty aren't they? Won't be long until they're
fully out.

Close to the Iris's you can see the dill just
starting to sprout after it's severe cutting back. It was huge last fall

Here's just one of our self seeding chives. It
seems that no matter how much I decimate these poor little plants for use
in the kitchen they just keep coming back.
As you can see here they've spread out of the
flower bed and onto the gravel of the path. There are lots of them . This
guy, however, is the largest.
Fortunately, they're not on a part of the path
where they would get walked on.

My favorite! A tiny little thyme plant.
Like the chives they are very persistent. Their
big brothers from past years have grown spindly and woody from my repeated
cutting for the kitchen, but these little guys (and there are a lot of
them) are doing well.
Little do they know what I have in store for
them! They're one of my favorite herbs so I use thyme a lot.
I'm happy to say that my cilantro (coriander) and
basil seeds are prospering. They're up and doing well.
A little rant and, no, its not an April
Fool joke
Before I start ranting a brief word about Rupert.
He's doing fine and will get his stitches removed later today. We had to
switch him to an even larger lampshade when the bandage came off as he
could just reach his stitches. He'll be a happy dog when the lampshade
comes off in a few days time!
My rant. I've been noticing lately or, perhaps, its
just annoyed me more as of late that a lot of English speaking people who
live here in France seem to like to lace their writings and conversations
with French words. It drives me nuts! Please speak one language or the
other. The golden rule is to speak one language at a time. The one that
you and whomever you are communicating with both speak best. Thus, I speak
French with my French friends (unless their English is better than my
French.) and English with my English friends. ( I did live in England for
many years so am reasonably fluent.) And, yes, I speak American to my
American friends.
Don't say "....." just say I'll see you later
if you're speaking or writing in English. I recently saw on one of the
worst offenders blog the use of the French for swimming suit (or
bathing costume if you're English.) in the midst of a blog in English. It
was the only French in the whole piece. Why? The same person also fairly
recently did a whole list of all the euphemisms the French use for death
or dead. Very interesting to somebody learning French I suppose, but not
of much interest to the average English speaking audience. (Its not as if
we don't have plenty of ways to say death or dying in English)
To me its sheer pretension. Its saying "look at me,
I speak French" or "wow, I live over here and speak the language". Aren't
I clever? My response is; so what? Don't you know its rude to drop words
and/or phrases that your audience is unlikely to understand into any
communication? This is especially pretentious when writing or speaking in
your native language to an audience who are mainly natives of your home
country.
There's a simple rule that most multi-national,
multi-lingual people follow when in the company of others. You speak the
most common language. If for example you have a group of five people from
five countries and three speak French, two English, but four speak Spanish
then you all try to speak Spanish. Logical, no? The same goes when
writing; if you are writing in English, write in English not franglaise.
Enough ranting! You get my point.
There are some words or expressions, however, that
defy expression in another language. I will now use one, its French, to
describe the pretentious, arrogant and rude people I've been ranting
about.
They are arriviste.
Unfortunately, the word does not translate well, but if of the people I'm
referring to should read this they may just understand.
An Apology! In my agitation over Rupert
I forgot to upload this
post. Its a week late! Sorry.
Saturday - Stuff happens
Well as you can read below Friday was looking pretty
good when I wrote up my thoughts for the day.
I duly picked up Rupert from the groomers. He seemed
fine & looked good as always. I went downstairs and Rupert & linda went up
to the kitchen so Rupert could have his dinner.
After that Linda took Roop outside so he could do
whatever he had to do. Suddenly she burst in shouting "come quick!
Rupert's sick! He had been vomiting, then running, then vomiting. Now he
was down in our field just laying down. I rushed down to see what the
problem was. He couldn't get up, poor lad. When I tried to pick him up I
noticed that his stomach was very hard and he whimpered when I tried to
raise him. So I just stroked him and talked to him while Linda called a
neighbor to help carry him. Before the neighbor could arrive Roop managed
to get up and let me lead him back to the house. It was obvious that he
was in great pain even though like most dogs he was stoic about it.
After some difficulty we managed to reach Huguette
our vet. She was on her way home from another call so came to our place on
the way back. She quickly diagnosed what she thought was a twisted
stomach. This is a very dangerous condition and Rupert could die very
quickly if it isn't treated. Huguette gets a hold of the vet practice in
Negropolisse where they have all of the necessary equipment.
Off we go, its a 45 minute drive. The vet there
confirms Huguette's diagnosis after an X-ray and a ultra sound scan. He
immediately went in for an operation. We're told to go away & come back in
an hour. We do. We get back and the vet announces that all is well. Rupert
did indeed have a twisted stomach, but they've turned it and sewn it to
the muscles on his right ribs so it can't happen again. We're relieved as
you can imagine.
We're sent home with the advice to have a glass of
wine & relax than call the vet's at 10:00AM the next morning. Meanwhile
we're trying to get through to our friends in Toulouse to let them know
why we aren't there. Turns our our cell phone is dead so we have to wait
until we get home to leave them a message.
Looking on the Internet we find that a twisted
stomach is something that affects large dogs with deep chests like
standard poodles, great Danes and German Sheppard's. No body seems to know
what causes it, but all agree that it can kill a dog very quickly if not
operated on immediately. We certainly can't think of any cause for Rupert
to have this affliction.
Today we called & he was OK so went to get him. He
was, obviously, very happy to see us and although subdued and under par
seemed Ok. We got lots of instructions from the vet as to care & feeding
over the next few weeks and, of course we got the dreaded collar so the
Roop can't lick his wounds. It seems unfair, but I did take some pictures
of him.
Not looking very happy. You can just see his
bandage over his incision.

Here's a close up of his bandage. Its quite a long
incision with a lot of stitches.

Here he is looking very sorry for himself and
rightly so.
We'll nurse him for the next few weeks and hope
there aren't any complications.
He's got to be in good shape by June as he's got a
role as Best Dog at our niece's wedding.
Anyway so much for T.G.I.F. Our Friday didn't quite
work our as planned. According to our friends the Flamenco was brilliant.
Ah well.
Friday ramblings
Thank God It's Friday, but I no longer say that
since I retired. Actually Friday's are pretty nice these days. This Friday
certainly was a busy one.
First I took Rupert for his walk. Well, this was
after Linda served me coffee in bed and I read the last bits of The
Economist. Anyway, we just did a circuit of the lake so Roop could
do his stuff. Then we came home so he could have his breakfast before we
left for Villefranche and the groomers.
This is the downside of poodle owning. They have to
be clipped every 5-6 weeks. Its not cheap, but then when you think of how
much hair there is to cut compared to a human it doesn't seem so bad. She
spends 4 hours on him what with a bath & a blow dry before she even stats
clipping. The shop is called Funky Toilettage, Toilettage being the
French word for dog grooming. Rupert is conflicted when he goes in. One
the one hand he adores the girl who clips him; on the other hand he hates
having it done. (wouldn't you if you had to stand still for 4 hours.) So
he greets her happily, but keeps his tail tucked between his legs. He
looks at me accusingly as I leave.
I can't resist popping into the patisserie next door
for a croissant, this one is filled with raspberry jam. Very sinful,
but good.
Back home I stop at the Post Office, mail my letter
then go around the corner to our little Friday market. After greeting a
few people I notice that one of the local goat farmers is selling aged
Cabecou. I can't resist a bargain so I buy 6 for 4 Euros. Here's a
picture.
Aren't they pretty.
The thing about aged Cabecou is that the taste gets
sharper with age. The older the sharper. But they also get harder & harder
with age. These are just right; nice and sharp, but still soft enough to
be chewed.
I'm in heaven and Linda is reminding me of my diet
so I only eat one. I'll try to restrict myself to one per day.
Back at home I decided that just a plain picture of
the cheeses was a bit boring so since it is another beautiful day I
decided to take some pictures in the garden. See what you think.

My somewhat feeble attempts at artistic poses for
the cheeses. Still, I had fun trying to set them up.
Here are a few pictures of our more spectacular
bushes that are in pretty much full flower right now.



I'm happy to say that this year Linda has caught the
gardening bug. She done a huge amount of work in the garden. All I've done
is to haul away the debris and a bit of digging when it was too heavy for
her.
If all of her seeds take I think we'll open our own
flower stand later this year.

I'll take it easy for a while now then have lunch
(Dare I try more Cabecou?) then I've got to pick up Rupert at two O'clock
from the groomers. He'' be delighted to see me as always and will urge me
to drive faster on the way home.
Linda will make a fuss of him which he loves then
he'll water the garden and have a long nap as being groomed is hard work.
About four thirty we'll take off for Toulouse where
we're meeting friends for dinner followed by a flamenco performance.
Toulouse has a Flamenco Festival every year which attracts some of the top
artists so we're expecting something pretty good.
We'll get home late, but having had a pretty nice
day. Such is life in rural France.
Anticipation!
Surely Spring is coming; isn't it? Yesterday we
thought it was here. The temperature was nearly 70 degrees and it was nice
& sunny. Not so today, its overcast and quite a lot colder.
Linda, Rupert & I went down to the local lake to
have a look.
Here's
Roop looking. Not sure that he's finding much.

A downed tree that hasn't been cleaned up as of yet.
Then some very nice oak logs seasoning away.
Still the willows are trying to come out, but aren't
quite there yet.

We love walking around this lake so do so
frequently. Its about a mile and a half around so it makes a nice walk.
Rupert absolutely adores it as he can chase the ducks to his heart's
content. No matter how hard he tries they just laugh at him. He never
gives up though and is convinced that one day.... ! Of course I don't
think he'd know what to do if he actually did catch one.

Even our local heron is waiting. I saw the pair
of them the other day so we must be getting close.
They seem to stay at the lake all year around,
but I've never spotted their nest or any young ones.

The little barn where they keep the boating stuff is
sitting there ready to go.
I even saw a bunch of fisher men yesterday so the
season must have started.

The cafe is looking forlorn and abandoned, but will
liven up later in the year and serve delicious cheap meals, good local
wine and Stella Artois beer. What could be better on a warm summer
evening. Something to look forward to.

Looks like the heron has given up and flying off to
who knows where. He'll be back though.

Linda and Rupert have also given up and are heading
back to the car. Guess I'll join them. We'll try another day as Spring
can't be long now.

Here's the village on the way home. Looks pretty
good.
Once home we can console ourselves with the evidence
that the garden is waking up.





Even though we know its too early for Spring in our
part of France we can't help anticipating. Who wouldn't?
Lamb; as purchased locally
Every year about this time we get a call from
Bernard Rossignol who runs his family's farm. Its time to buy our Spring
lamb. We do this every Spring and for that matter every fall since Bernard
manages to get two sets of lamb every year.
Half of his ewes are kept indoors in a huge barn
while the rest are outside in the fields. The indoor ewes are the pregnant
ones. They switch places roughly every six months. Indoors or out they're
well fed and cared for. It still amazes me that Bernard manages to keep
the barn so clean. His lambs are of course all milk fed by their mothers
so they taste delicious. Some of you may object to this, but all I can say
is even though they lead short lives they're good ones.
No,
that's not Bernard with his lambs, but it might as well be. He's
passionate about his sheep and his farm. When the time comes his lambs are
driven off to a special organic humane abattoir for butchering. He's
very particular about the whole process.

Here's how the lamb is delivered. In a nice neat
box. Our 1/2 lamb this year weighed 9.7 kg (just under 22 Lbs.) We only
have freezer space for a half lamb otherwise we'd buy a whole one as its
so good.

Here's how the lamb is packaged. These are packs
with two or three chops in each pack. (Bernard will have the lamb cut up &
packaged to your preference) The packs are all vacuum sealed and ready to
go into the freezer.

As you can see at the right each package is
carefully labeled.
The printing in Red
is the standard data; the Abattoir name
(SARL SALAS);
their logo on the right; the 'grower (ferme
de la Serin); the farm's registered number
and at the bottom the keeping instructions
(keep between 0 & 20 degrees).
The data in black is all of the variable data. The cut (cote= chop); the
date it was butchered and the sell by date (without freezing); then the
weight; followed by the lot number and finally the farm name & address.
Pretty complete data.

Here's the shoulder. Our favorite cut. This one
weighs about six ponds and will be very slowly roasted with rosemary &
garlic. Yummy!

Here's the leg. And its label.

We also got the breast & ribs and the abats (sounds
better than the kidney's, liver & heart doesn't it?)
Finally, here a a couple of pictures of Bernard's
brochure which he puts in every box.


We like buying locally and in this case we can see
the farm up the hill from our house. The quality of his lamb is terrific.
Besides we know spring is not far away when Bernard calls.
As an aside we had a nice chat with Bernard about
the World Economic crisis. Most conversations seem to end up on that topic
these days. He was very sorry for & sympathetic towards those economically
distressed by this depression. At the same time as a farmer he hasn't been
much effected. The price of lamb is down marginally, but not enough
to be a worry. He & his family are mostly self sufficient and their farm
so don't need a lot of cash income to be OK. I think that's the situation
for a lot of our neighbors. Another large lot are pensioners which here in
France means that they're pretty well provided for.
A cute story involving Bernard & his family to end
on. A few years back he arranged for this son, then about 12 years old, to
go to Scotland and stay with our local friends Rob & Jean's sons &
Daughter at their hotel & sheep farm in Balquidder. He had a great time &
picked up quite lot of English from the farm lads, hotel kitchen workers
and waiters. He came home & both he & his parents were quite proud of his
newly learned language skills. Some time later our friend's son, Tom who
runs the family hotel, came for a visit. Naturally, they were invited to
Bernard's for a meal. As they arrived Bernard & his wife plus Bernard's
Mother & father were there to greet them. The young son wanting to show
off his English walked up to Tom and said; "Tom, you old S.O.B, how the
f___k are you?" His parents were beaming & our friend trying to keep a
straight face and the lads who'd taught him this 'english' were in big
trouble when Tom got back to Scotland.
Spag Bol
Good old comforting Spaghetti Bolognese. Just about
every person in the Western hemisphere cooks it and just about everybody
has their own recipe. I think of it as the ultimate comfort food. What's
not to like? It can be meaty or vegetarian, it can be made quickly or can
be cooked for hours, days even. Its filling, but not particularly
fattening. Its cheap to make although you can spend quite a lot on the
ingredients if you really try (I know somebody who use ground filet steak
in hers!) Almost everybody likes it. Its so universal that its hardly
ethnic any longer; although I guess Italians from Bologna might beg to
differ.
As you may have guessed by now I'm leading up to my
particular recipe for spaghetti Bolognese. I don't claim any special
skill or magic touch, but like most of us I like my version better than
almost anybody else's. I can claim that I originally learned to make it
from various friends mother's or Grand Mother's. There was a heavy
concentration of first & second generation Italian families in the
California town where I grew up. We even had our own pasta factory & they
made fresh ravioli once a week!
Ok, here's my recipe:
Ingredients:
- 3 carrots
- 2 large yellow onions
- 2 stalks celery
- 2 Lbs high quality ground beef
- 1/2 Lbs smoked lardons or smoked bacon cut up into strips
- 2 large tins of whole tomatoes
- 1 tube or small can of tomato puree
- Garlic to taste
- Dried oregano, rosemary, thyme and fennel seeds
- Salt & pepper
- Red wine
Steps:
- Chop the carrots, onion, celery &
garlic into a medium dice
- In a large deep pot fry the lardons for
3-4 minutes over high heat.
- Add the carrots, then after 2-3 minutes the onion, then the celery &
finally the garlic. Stir well & often and continue cooking over medium
heat. The vegetables should cook for at least 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile fry the ground beef in a large frying pan until it just
begins to brown. It will require frequent stirring and will best be done
in 2 or 3 batches. If in batches, pour the batches as they are done into
the pot with the vegetables.
- When all the beef has been fried and added to the pot add the tins
of tomatoes and mash them with the meat & veggies to break them up. Add
the tomato puree,
- Add the herbs. Quantity is up to your taste, but do be somewhat
careful with the fennel seeds as they can over power the other flavors.
Add the salt & pepper, again to your taste. Make sure you are stirring
well as you go to distribute the herbs.
- Finally add the red wine. A cup or two will do. Give the sauce a
good stir and turn the heat down to where the uncovered pot is just
gently boiling. Boil for a minimum of an hour, but up to 6 or 8 for
fuller flavor. If the sauce is getting too dry add more wine.
- Serve over you choice of pasta shape. My favorite happens to be
Fuseli. I also like plenty of cheese over my Spag Bol, but its up to
you. Just make sure everything is good & hot.
This recipe will feed 6-8 very hungry
people or you can put it into freezer bags and freeze as it will
keep this way for a long time.
That's my recipe and I'm sticking to it.
If you care to tempt me with your very own variation I promise to post all
submissions. Should you decide to try my version let me have your opinion.
Everything, but the quack

I've had some correspondence
recently with a lady in Washington state
who has a farm where they raise ducks amongst other things. (see the
comments section) They raise Muscovy ducks which I remember as mean
spirited devils from years ago when we had a pair. In any case it got me
to thinking about ducks in French culture and how important they are and
how the French use every bit of the bird.
Here in France they raise mainly the Mulard breed of
duck. I don't know enough about ducks to have an opinion as to which breed
is better. I do know that locally we see fairly large flocks, 100 to 200,
in fenced fields. What amazes us is the way that every bit of the bird is
used, nothing goes to waste. Here's a catalog:
- The liver. This of course ends up as the
fabled fois gras. Delicate, delicious and very expensive.
We don't buy a lobe very often, but when we do its cooked very simply,
served with good country bread toasted and local sweet dessert wine.
- The breasts. Magret in French. A favorite dish of ours.
Simply fried/baked, but kept rare with all of the fat rendered out of
the skin which has been cut into a cross hatch then cooked slowly. The
fat is poured off several times and saved. We serve Alliade de
Toulouse with it. This is a sauce made of garlic and walnut oil. A
single breast can way one pound.
- The leg & thigh. Their are two main ways to use the cuisse as
its called in French. One way is to just cook it; fried slowly or better
yet combines with shallots, olives & garlic then cooked slowly in a
covered pan.
The main way to use cuisse., however, is to make confit. For
confit the leg & thigh (plus other parts like the wings) are seasoned
then cooked slowly in rendered duck fat. Stored in jars or cans these
can be preserved for months. I must admit that we don't make it any more
as it somewhat mess with all the fat and we can easily buy just as good
if not better than our own locally. The cook it one simply wipes off
most of the fat & fries it in a pan. Or its an essential ingredient of a
Cassoulette.
- The feather & down. These of course are cleaned and used to stuff
duvets. Not quite as good a goose I'm told, but a lot less expensive.
- The carcass. Again, there are two ways to use this. The first id to
pick off all the remaining bits of meat and cook them slowly in the duck
fat. (Usually done in conjunction with confit making) The results is
called confit just as the leg/thigh is. The resulting paste is delicious
spread on crusty country bread.
Another way with the carcass is to fry it in duck fat then pick off all
the little edible bits to eat. This is called friton.
- Just to confuse things further there is another dish
called friton which is a kind of rough pate made from the bits & piece
of meat, kidney, skin & so forth. Can't say that I'm overly fond of it,
but it does have the advantage of being cheap.
Just when you thought there was no more there's the neck. Yes, it gets
used as well here's a
link to a
recipe. By the way you should have a look at "Lucy's Kitchen" it a most
wonderful food blog by an American lady who lives in Lyon. I only wish I
could cook as well as she dos.
That's it, there ain't no more duck left!
On the cheese again, just can't wait
..................
Those of you who have been following along with my
recent health problems will know that one of the things I had to give up
was cheese. Now, I love cheese and you will find a host of posts &
pictures of cheese if you plow back through this blog. But orders are
orders so no cheese since late December.
Last week, however I went for a check up with my
cardiologist. He gave me a clean bill of health; good heart, good blood,
good exercise and I've lost around 12 pounds. As a result I'm back
on the cheese again, but cautiously. This was why the cheese pictured
below caught my eye. (well that & the fact that it was on sale)

As you can see its called Lacandou and is made from
raw sheep's milk. What you can't see too well in the picture is that it
show two measurement of the materiel grasse or fat content. Its a
law in France that the fat content be published on the label of the
cheese. What's unusual here is the fact that there are TWO measurement
whereas normally there is only ONE. I was intrigued so did some research.
It turns out that you can measure the fat content of
cheese in two different ways. The percentage fat in the normal cheese
after its made is one way. The other way is to measure the fat content as
a percentage of the weight of the dry solids in the cheese. It is this
second measurement that is required to be shown by law. Its logical if you
think about it since the fat percentage of the total weight will vary with
the age of the cheese because the cheese will lose water weight as it
ages. Dry weight on the other hand won't vary.
So, now you (and I) know what 55% mat. gr means when
we see it on a French cheese label. We also know what it means when there
are two percentages shown. And we know that the lower (28% in this case)
measurement if shown is the fat content of the whole cheese. Now, this is
something that you probably didn't care whether you knew it or not, but I
find it comforting to know that the cheese I just ate is only 28% fat, not
the 55% I thought it was.
The Lacandou by the way was a sort of so so cheese.
Smooth and nice enough, but no real character. Maybe I should have let it
ripen some more before eating.
In the course of my investigation I turned up some
nice websites dedicated to cheese. Her for you edification and use are a
few of them:
www.frencheese.co.uk. A very
comprehensive site. I think it was done to encourage the British to eat
more French cheese. In any case its a nice resource.
www.fromages.com.
Not as comprehensive, but good. Its a commercial site where you can buy
cheese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_cheeses.
Can't leave out Wikipedia can I? Not as good
as I would have hoped, but there are some very interesting articles on
individual cheese.
www.frenchcheese.dk.
Nice site by someone in Denmark. Obviously a
labor of love and very useful.
http://about-france.com/cheese.htm.
All kinds of information about France, but I
do like their cheese section as it has good information in a concise form.
Probably more than you ever wanted to know about
French cheese, but its one of my passions so bear with me.
Sunday Lunch on a cold day
Spring keeps trying, but its not quite here yet.
Yes, our bulbs are up and in flower which is nice and I mowed the lawn for
the first time yesterday, but still today was cold. So we had four friends
over, got the fire place going and cooked a comforting lunch.
Linda made carrot soup with cumin & crème
fraiche to get us going.
It was lovely, nice and warming.
I made poule au pot. Normally this is chicken boiled
in a pot with a range of vegetables then cooked in the stock from the
chicken. Certain purists will insist that it be made with an old hen past
her time and that it be cooked for days. They like to try to place a lot
of mystique around the dish when in reality its a good old fashioned
simple country dish with a lot of variations. Why make life complicated
and why try to make the dish so that nobody who lives outside of France
can duplicate it? So, here's what I did:
I used young roosters (cocquetes) instead of an old
chicken. I did this because in France old chickens are expensive and
it would have taken two of the to feed 6 people. I could buy 3 little
roosters for a lot less money. If I were outside of France I would use
whatever type of whole chicken is cheap. So, I boiled by little guys for
about 10 minutes in plain water then added the herbs (bay leaf, thyme and
rosemary) and boiled them for 15 more minutes. Because of my diet I used
some artificial salt sparingly. (normally you should just lightly salt the
stock.} After this 25 minutes of boiling I took the chicken out to cool.
Once they were cool enough to handle I cut them in half down the backbone
then peeled off the skin and removed the backbone and ribs so I have the
boneless carcass with the legs, thighs and wings attached.
All the bones went back into the pot and got gently boiled for another
hour. The meat got a bit of stock over it and was then covered to rest.
While this was going on I prepared the vegetables.
Carrots (peeled) whole, leeks cut into long lengths, onions peeled (for 6
people I used 2 largish onions and cut them into 3rds), butternut squash
peeled and cut into large chunks, a Savoy cabbage cur into 6 and 12 good
sized mushrooms.
When the stock was ready I skimmed off as much
fat as possible (these little roosters didn't have much) let it cool for
while then strained it through paper towels - twice. This was all in
advance in the morning.
About half an hour before serving I brought the
stock back up to the boil and added all of the vegetable except the
mushrooms. Everything boiled for 15 minutes and then I added the mushrooms
and boiled for another 10 minutes. As I put the mushrooms in I also turned
the heat on under the chickens so as to reheat them.
In this case we served half a chicken to each
person, dipped out all of the veggies into two big tureens and let people
serve themselves. To go with the poule au pot we served a big pot of Dijon
mustard and a pot of Cornichons (little French pickles)
These accompaniments are absolutely essential and
really make the dish!
You'll find that the mustard is delicious with this dish and that the
pickles enhance the flavors nicely.
Just the thing for a cold Sunday afternoon. Filling
yet not at all calorific. Delicious and easy to make if you don't do a
fussy version.
We had a really nice dessert of dried apricot pureed
and baked it a timbale sort of custard. Good, but low calorie. I'm getting
better at these 'healthy' meals. I think?
Saving money in hard times - Cheap wine.
I was reading somebody's blog today and they were
going on about inexpensive wines here in France. They were only paying 5
Euros (about $6.25) a bottle at a local wine coop. I guess they're richer
or less in tune with French ways than I since I don't find 5 Euros a
bottle cheap. Not by French standards anyway.
Now, 75 centimes a bottle is cheap. That's for a
nice Minervois red. Their chardonnay is about 1.20 Euro per bottle. This I
get from Paul who lives up the hill. He gets it from his son-in-law who
has a winery down near Carcassonne. There has to be a catch - right. Well.
yes there is. I'm buying this wine in a box. The same wines in a bottle
would cost a lot more, but still nowhere near 5 Euros a bottle.
Now, if I decant either of these wines and serve
them as I do to guests who know their wines I get nothing but praise.
Everyone likes them because they are nice wines. Not top Bordeaux or
Chablis, but very nice acceptable wines that I am happy to serve. I've
even served them to food writers & restaurant reviewers with good results.
When serving them I just say where they're from and never mention the
price.
Now, I also know that things are different back home
in the states. Boxed wine have a deservedly bad reputation. I can't
believe, however, that somebody out of the 1,00's of winery's in the
states isn't putting some good wine in boxes. The trice is to find it.
Also, there should be at least a few importers bringing in good boxed wine
from Europe. I'd encourage you to look and sample.
You might just save a bunch of money.
Southwestern French cooking - A Paula
Wolfert evening
Yesterday my friend Michael and I decided to do a
dinner based upon recipes from Paula Wolfert's excellent book "The Cooking
of Southwestern France". I've used this book quite a lot, but it was new
to Michael. Along with "Goose Fat & Garlic" I think its the best book
around for our regional cuisine.
G
iven my dietary restrictions I had to choose the
recipes carefully to avoid as much fat & sugar as possible. I ended up
with three dishes. "The Archbishops Tourain', 'Michael
Guérard's
Pureed Celery Root with Apples' and 'Batter Cake with Fresh Pears'. These
meet my criteria which isn't easy given the richness of French cooking in
the region. They also satisfied a long standing desire to find out what
could be made from celery root other than remoulade. I also wanted to try
the batter cake as if successful it could make the base for a variety of
fruit topped desserts.
Michael agreed the menu and we
headed off the the Sunday market at Limogne to buy our ingredients.
Limogne is one of our favorite markets so we go on most Sundays. Yesterday
the weather was nothing to brag about and as its a school holiday next
week there were a number of missing stalls. (Lots of market stall holders
take a break this time of year especially those who are local growers
since they don't have a lot to sell at end of winter.) Still there were
plenty of stalls to choose from.
For the Tourain we needed duck
confit. This was easy at the charcouterie. We got 4 nice leg-thighs
(cuisses) and a bit of extra fat. The vegetables we needed were easy;
nothing special there.
There was ,as always, lots of celery root for
sale. We just had to make sure that we got celeri-rave , not celeriac.
They look fairly similar, but aren't the same thing at all. Next we needed
sweet apples. Paula calls for Red Delicious which are easy to find in the
states, but no known here in France. Or at least I don't think so. Never
fear as there are more varieties of apple in France than there of cheese.
(believe it or not!) and Limogne market has THE APPLE LADY. This lady,
well into her 70's if not 80's, stocks about 15-20 varieties of apples and
is a font of knowledge. Since the apples called for are sweet that's what
I asked for. She recommended a large beautiful looking variety at first,
but when I said they would be cooked she switched me to another variety.
These were huge, yellow and firm. (I bough an extra one for tasting. They
were indeed sweet and very delicious)
The next thing we needed was rye bread and I knew
just where to get it. My favorite bread stand has a nice selection of all
kinds of bread (if fact if you go into their shop in Villefranche the
selection is superb, great cakes & pastry as well, but not the elaborate
fancy stuff). In any case she had half a loaf of dark rye left. I wanted
her to slice it along the long direction as I could have 4 slices, but she
didn't want to do that as it would have left her an unsalable lump. So,
she cut it in half the other way & I got a quarter loaf.
( An aside: When shopping at market in France
don't be afraid to ask for a half or even a quarter loaf of bread if
that's all you need or if the smaller size loaf you wanted is sold out.
Also, you can take of of the bunch & buy a single stalk of celery if you
so desire. Because these things are sold by weight you can within reason
buy the quantity you like. Took me a while to realize this and to p-luck
up the courage and the French to do it!)
The next item we needed was you pears; again we
wanted sweet ones. Again I was able to ask a stall holder for advice. This
lady said one variety was sweeter, but I'd have to keep them at room
temperature for 4 days to bring out the sweetness. Another variety she had
was sweet enough for immediate use.
We picked up our other bits & bods and headed for
the cafe for a coffee. Some brave souls were drinking outside (the smokers
I suspect), but we went in & chatted to some casual friends we only see at
market. Then off to home again. Michael & I arranged to meet at his place
later to do all of our preliminary cooking.
You can easily look up the recipes in Paula's
book so I won't go over them in any detail here. I will, however, make a
few comments:
- The Tourain didn't thicken up much when we
added the egg/vinegar combination. Don't know why. Perhaps we should
have reduced the soup a bit more earlier in the recipe.
- We tried to be clever and form the celery/apple mash into patties &
fry them just before serving. It didn't work! So much for our brilliant
ideas.
- Our 'cake' didn't rise nearly as high as we expected. After Paula's
write up we were expecting something pretty high, but we didn't get it.
The other thing with the cake was that it definitely wants the sugar
sprinkling over it to bring out the flavour. We left it off in deference
to my diet.
All in all this meal turned out well. The
cooking was straightforward and the results were good. Our wives enjoyed
it which is pretty good going. Another aspect of this menu that I liked
was that we were able to do all the preparation in advance. In fact the
cake had to be rested for a couple of hours. This enabled up to do our
prep, have some time off cooking, change clothes and have a rest.
We returned to Ruvé
& Michaels about 6:30 and played poker for a while before putting the cake
in the over. We played for a while more then quickly finished off the soup
& the celery root. By the time we ate that dessert was ready.
All in all a successful
experiment that we had a lot of fun doing.
Low Calorie Dishes
I'm happy to say that I've been lucky enough to come
through my strokes with no discernable damage; so far at least. The
cardiologist gave me a clean bill of health yesterday. I'll still.
however, watch my diet carefully. I've managed to lose around 15 pounds
and an back at the weight I was at in my prime. I'd like to keep it that
way.
Thus, I've worked up a few low calorie dishes that
also happen to taste good. They're pretty easy to prepare as well so are
suitable for quick meals. Here they are:
- Mussel Pasta
Clean the mussels (about 1 to 11/2 pounds per person) then cook as for
Moules Mariniere .
That is you sauté finely chopped onion & celery in a bit of butter in a
deep pot. When they are soft add some wine & bring to a boil. Add the
mussels & cook at high heat until the mussels open. Shake every so
often. This should take about 5 minutes.
Drain the cooked mussels over a sieve into another bowl. Put all of the
juices from the mussels back into the pot and boil gently to reduce to
about 1/3 of the original volume. While is is happening & once the
mussels have cooled remove the 'mussels' from their shells. Keep as much
of the onion & celery as possible.
When the juice has reduced enough thicken it with roux or
cornflower. Boil up a pot of water for your pasta; then cook the pasta
until al dente. Add the mussel meat back into the reduced hot
mussel juice, then add the cooked pasta. Stir well & serve immediately
with parmesan cheese to sprinkle over.
Not only is this a delicious pasta its both low calorie & low fat.
Alcohol is eliminated by boiling the wine. If you want to be healthier
yet use whole wheat pasta.
- Tuna sandwich filling
Nothing too innovative about this, but its a great quick lunch. Take a
can of water packed tuna, open it & pour off the water. In a bowl put in
the tuna, some chopped onion or shallot, chopped Cornichons (or if you
can't find those use sweet gherkins) and some chopped celery. Add some
ground cumin, salt & pepper and just enough low fat mayonnaise to bind
the mixture. Spread the mixture over bread slices (your choice of bread
type) or for an even healthier disc spread the mixture on Swedish rye
crackers.
This both quick and nutritious. You can make a batch as it keeps well in
the fridge for a day or so.
- Fried apple & banana dessert
Dead simple, delicious and very low calorie. Allow one apple per person
& 1/2 a banana. Peel, core and cut the apples into a dice of 1/4 - 1/2
inch chunks. Peel & slice the banana thinly. In a frying pan on high
heat melt about one teaspoon of butter per apple. When the butter is
foaming add the apples and toss well to coat with the melted butter.
Sprinkle over a generous amount of ground cinnamon. Stir & toss the
apples until they just begin to brown at the edges then add the banana
slices. Continue cooking until the bananas start to brown.
Depending upon how "good" you want to be you can serve the mixture over
plain yogurt, sour cream or vanilla ice cream. For an extra kick
sprinkle over a bit of ground walnut.
This is very low calorie and very low fat and very delicious.
Those three are a start. I'm working on some more
recipes and would welcome any suggestion or contributions.
Should you try any of these please let me know
what you think of them.
March
Getting
Busy
My posts may start getting pretty erratic in the
near future. Things are starting to get busy. We have a whole series of
visitors arriving over the next days and weeks. The weather getting good
and the visitors starting to come sort of go together; funny how that
works. And good weather we've been having; it was up in the high 60's
yesterday & today with sunny skies.
Currently we have our favorite niece and her
fiancée staying with us. They're making plans for their wedding in June.
HERE!! Don't ask why they want to get married in Franc, but they do.
Should be a lot of fun. It won't be a big wedding only about 40 people in
all. The Mayor will do the honors. (They were up at the town hall today
sorting the incredible amount of paperwork it takes to get two English
people married in France. Everything was OK except one form & Madam Bosc
will be sorting that out.) As I write this they're up at the chateau
trying to sort out how to get a wireless Internet connection out to where
the marquee will be for the dinner and dancing. (Our friends kindly
offered the chateau grounds to the kids.) Tomorrow Bavo, who is doing the
catering, is coming over to discuss menus. (Fortunately, I only have to
cook for one main meal for about 20, I think.)
When the kids go home on Sunday we pick up our
Niece's parents who are coming for a visit. They'll be with us for a few
days until our friends arrive from the states. (Get this! Our friends sold
their house in Spokane in a week and have now bought a bank repossession
in the Bay Area. They are determined to make this visit so everything is
in storage and they will move into their new house when they get back.
What housing crisis?) They'll be with us for several weeks.
Shortly after they arrive, however, the four of
us are going to Spain for a week while our in-law's baby sit Rupert our
dog. Then back home for a while.
So, please bear with me and keep checking in if I
don't get the time to put up many posts over the next few weeks. I'll be
thinking about it, however and may have some things to say about Spain.
After all I did live there many years ago when things were very different.
Free Food - Living off the land
As those of you who have followed this blog for some
time will know I'm a great believer in free food, that which one can
forage for in our local countryside. I've posted, a couple of times I
think, about Michael & I's forays in the fall for walnuts, apples,
mushrooms and other goodies.
Now its springtime and things are growing again. You
frequently see the French out walking the hedge rows and scouring the
roadside ditches. They're looking for edible bounty. One of the local
favorites in the spring is 'wild asparagus'. Its really not asparagus at
all wild or otherwise, but it does look like skinny stalks of the real
thing. It has a funny name in French; repariou.. something or other. Not
only can I now spell it I can't pronounce it properly either.
Not that it matters since I don't like it. The
locals rave about it. They steam it and pair it will hard boiled eggs and
vinaigrette and pronounce it delicious. Sorry neighbors, I just
don't like it.
This week though our local farmer showed Linda a new
wild plant to eat. She in turn showed me what to look for. Its a form of
wild garlic. Its found along the sides of the road mainly on steep banks.
One needs a tool to dig it our or the bulbs will break off. There's lots
of it not far from our house so we went out the other evening and picked
some. Our Niece has arrived from England and wants to try it so we'll go
out again this evening.

Here's what it looks like as it comes out of the
ground.
A lot like spring onions except for the roots which
are different.

Here's a close up of the bulb end.
Note the little modules growing around it.

Here are the bulbs after cleaning up.
The nodules are clearly visible now. As you can see
the roots are very long which is why a tool and a deal of care are needed
to get them out of the ground.

All trimmed and ready to eat.
Just add a bit of salt and eat as is or chop them up
and add to a salad.
Either way they're good. The taste is somewhere
between that of a spring onion and mild garlic.
They are best eaten as soon as possible after
picking we found.

Delicious!
I'm really pleased to have been introduced to a new
wild free food. These will feature permanently on our Spring menu from now
on.
By the way, remember the rules off foraging for wild
food.
- Only take what you plan to eat.
- Always left some to there will be seeds
for next year.
Another recipe and a look at the mainly
edible part of the garden
First the recipe. We've gotten into the habit of
playing poker with out friends most Friday or Saturday evenings. (shows
we're getting old, I guess) We all enjoy it even though we don't play for
money, just the prestige of having the most chips at the end of play. We
also share a 'simple' supper. Last night it was our turn to provide the
meal.
We did asparagus as a starter with the classic
Hollandaise sauce. The asparagus is now into season and is delicious. As a
main course we roasted a chicken with lots of garlic and herbs de Province
and served it with roast potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli. All very nice
and very simple.
I had been thinking about another low calorie
dessert and here's what I came up with. I call it Poker Pears.
Ingredients:
- One pear per person
- 1/2 bottle of sweet white wine
- cinnamon, nutmeg & ginger
- fake sugar (I use the Sweeta stuff) or regular
sugar
- One scoop of vanilla ice cream per person
- Walnut meat
- Maple syrup
Method:
- Trim the ends of the pears; peel them; cut
them in half lengthways and cut out the core.
- In a pan just large enough to hold the pears
(cut side down) pour in the sweet wine and the spices (let you taste
buds guide you as to how much of the spices to use. I normally use a
ratio of 2 parts cinnamon to 1 part nutmeg and 1 part ginger).
Add water to just cover the pears; bring to a simmer and simmer
(covered) until the pears are soft. This should take 20-30 minutes. Test
with a skewer to gage doneness.
- While the pears are cooking take the ice cream
out of the freezer and let it soften up a bit. While that's happening
toast the walnut meat in the oven. Once toasted & cooled chop the walnut
coarsely.
- Measure out the ice cream then mix it with the
chopped walnuts and the maple syrup. (about a generous tablespoon per
scoop of ice cream. Mix all together until the syrup & nuts are well
distributed. Cover the bowl and return to the freezer.
- When the pears are cooked remove them from the
cooking liquid using a slotted spoon. Put the pears and the cooking
liquid in the fridge to chill.
- When ready to serve place two pear halves on a plate; top them with
a scoop of the ice cream and serve the poaching liquid separately in
small cups. A spring of mint looks nice on top of the ice cream.
This is a lovely combination that is both
easy to make and not very calorific. You can of course use low fat ice
cream to keep the calories down.
On a different topic entirely I was out in
the garden taking a few pictures this morning so I thought I would share
some of them with you.

Lets start with the Iris's that grow outside our
bedroom window. As you can see they're just coming out.
Pretty aren't they? Won't be long until they're
fully out.

Close to the Iris's you can see the dill just
starting to sprout after it's severe cutting back. It was huge last fall

Here's just one of our self seeding chives. It
seems that no matter how much I decimate these poor little plants for use
in the kitchen they just keep coming back.
As you can see here they've spread out of the
flower bed and onto the gravel of the path. There are lots of them . This
guy, however, is the largest.
Fortunately, they're not on a part of the path
where they would get walked on.

My favorite! A tiny little thyme plant.
Like the chives they are very persistent. Their
big brothers from past years have grown spindly and woody from my repeated
cutting for the kitchen, but these little guys (and there are a lot of
them) are doing well.
Little do they know what I have in store for
them! They're one of my favorite herbs so I use thyme a lot.
I'm happy to say that my cilantro (coriander) and
basil seeds are prospering. They're up and doing well.
A little rant and, no, its not an April
Fool joke
Before I start ranting a brief word about Rupert.
He's doing fine and will get his stitches removed later today. We had to
switch him to an even larger lampshade when the bandage came off as he
could just reach his stitches. He'll be a happy dog when the lampshade
comes off in a few days time!
My rant. I've been noticing lately or, perhaps, its
just annoyed me more as of late that a lot of English speaking people who
live here in France seem to like to lace their writings and conversations
with French words. It drives me nuts! Please speak one language or the
other. The golden rule is to speak one language at a time. The one that
you and whomever you are communicating with both speak best. Thus, I speak
French with my French friends (unless their English is better than my
French.) and English with my English friends. ( I did live in England for
many years so am reasonably fluent.) And, yes, I speak American to my
American friends.
Don't say "....." just say I'll see you later
if you're speaking or writing in English. I recently saw on one of the
worst offenders blog the use of the French for swimming suit (or
bathing costume if you're English.) in the midst of a blog in English. It
was the only French in the whole piece. Why? The same person also fairly
recently did a whole list of all the euphemisms the French use for death
or dead. Very interesting to somebody learning French I suppose, but not
of much interest to the average English speaking audience. (Its not as if
we don't have plenty of ways to say death or dying in English)
To me its sheer pretension. Its saying "look at me,
I speak French" or "wow, I live over here and speak the language". Aren't
I clever? My response is; so what? Don't you know its rude to drop words
and/or phrases that your audience is unlikely to understand into any
communication? This is especially pretentious when writing or speaking in
your native language to an audience who are mainly natives of your home
country.
There's a simple rule that most multi-national,
multi-lingual people follow when in the company of others. You speak the
most common language. If for example you have a group of five people from
five countries and three speak French, two English, but four speak Spanish
then you all try to speak Spanish. Logical, no? The same goes when
writing; if you are writing in English, write in English not franglaise.
Enough ranting! You get my point.
There are some words or expressions, however, that
defy expression in another language. I will now use one, its French, to
describe the pretentious, arrogant and rude people I've been ranting
about.
They are arriviste.
Unfortunately, the word does not translate well, but if of the people I'm
referring to should read this they may just understand.
February 2009
Cheap eats in hard times
We drove down to Caussade today so I could have some
blood tests done in preparation for my big Doctor's appointment next week.
(I hope the results are good, I'm tired of being sooo good about my diet.
Still, I've lost 14 pounds and my blood pressure is now near perfect so
its been worth it) Anyway we took a walk around town, stopped at the post
office then went for a cup of coffee.
As we sat there, outside as it
was the first warm day in a while, I started studying the large menu
posted on the wall. As I looked at it it dawned on me that given the
prices we could afford to eat lunch out even in these straitened times. A
faux fillet steak with french fries was 9 € ($11.25). You could have a
nice portion of cassoulet for the same price. Or you could have the 'carte
de jour' for 12€ ($15.00) which would get you a choice of two starters,
charcouterie or a salad with magret, a choice of three main courses, faux
filet, a pork stew or sea bass with vegetables, Cheese and dessert. Now in
my book that's pretty good for the price. AND, you know that it will be
good. The French won't put up with poorly cooked food.
As I thought about that I
realized that what I was seeing was pretty normal for this part of France.
There are at least 4 other places in Caussade where I could get something
similar for about the same price; Caussade being a town of no more that
10,000 people I would guess. This in turn led me to think that even in
hard times its nice to be able to afford to eat our occasionally, to eat
well if simply. Maybe the decor isn't much to look at and the service
isn't flashy, but everything is clean and friendly, the other patrons are
usually interesting and you leave satisfied.
Further rumination let me to
think about other countries we've lived in and to remember that all of
them had similar places where one could get a satisfying meal at a
reasonable price. In Rhode Island it was "The Middle of Nowhere Diner"
(great fish & chips for $5.00). In California it was "Plaza Linda" in
Carmel Valley Village. (great Mexican) In England it was one of any number
of pubs. And so on; there was always somewhere.
So I guess my question to
anyone reading this is: Where are your places like that? I'd like to hear
from you about them.
To continue my story; we didn't
eat there, but headed towards home because on the drive down I'd noticed
that a little restaurant in Caylus was doing faux filet also for 9€.
We happen to know that his steak is of exceptional quality & served with
great sautéed potatoes. Two steak & 1/2 a liter of red wine for 20 Euros
50 centimes; pa