French food focus-About living and cooking in rural France,recipes,lifestyle,comments

French
Food
Focus

Life in rural France - Food - Friends - Wine - Cheese - Comments

Welcome to French Food Focus. The name describes the intent of this blog. I'll focus on food and because I live in rural France the stress will be upon French food. Not that I will limit myself to food only. There are numerous posts concerning life in France, comments on life in general and, certainly, opinions about anything that strikes my fancy.
I welcome your comments and promise to publish all of them good & bad so long as they're not offensive, pornographic or rude. A note on why I moved.

This is our village. Our house can be seen to the left of the picture.

We've decided to downsize. You can go to this website for full details:
www.campdelmas.com.

If you'd like a vacation in France we rent out part of the house as a gite. Have a look here: www.camp-del-mas.com.

About me

About 'My' France

Make a Comment

E-mail: yankinparisot@gmail.com

Comments

If you would like to comment the easiest way is to email me at:

yankinparisot@gmail.com.

Comments by others

Here's a link to both my Cassoulet recipe plus a few comments upon that complex subject.

Here's the place where contributions from readers of this blog can be seen. I hope that there will be many.
Express yourself! Have fun!

Note from Erika in Canada

Hi there,

I'm a Canadian married to a French man from Brive in the Limousin region (he also has family in Aveyron). I really appreciated your recipe for French cheesecake for I too experienced the joy and frustration of unwrapping 48 cubes of Kiri to make a Cheesecake for my French friends while we were living in Nantes.

But in actuality, I'm writing to you looking for one of your older articles referenced on another site (eG Forums) Walnut Oil - how do they make it? here's the old fashioned way on December 17, 2006. We're living back in Canada and I have access to a large number of walnuts and dearly miss my father-in-law's walnut oil (he takes his walnuts to someone who makes it for him). I'd love to know precisely how they do it France so maybe I can try here. Do you have a copy of this older article somewhere where you could share it with me? I've taken a look in your archives but didn?t see it anywhere.

Thanks for your time and Bon App?it,

Erika

Erika
Glad to know I'm not the only one who suffers the lengthy unwrapping process with Kiri.

The walnut oil write up was one of those that I was going to transfer over, but haven't gotten around to. I have moved it over now. (December, 2006)

Think the secret is too make sure that you very thoroughly cook the walnut meat, but maling sure that it doesn't burn. Thus the constant stirring.

Good luck & let me know how it turns o

From Lora in Washington state.

Thank you for your wonderful posts on the pressing of walnut oil. We have some trees on our farm and have been wanting to make oil and from your description we now are ready to try this. Amazing we had the equipment already from our numerous other food related hobbies! (the hobbies that all end with eating and merriment!)

My reply

Thanks for the comment. When you make your walnut oil let me know & I'll send you a recipe for Estafinado., a great local dish.

More from Lora in Washington

Thanks for the tip for the Alliade de Toulouse. I will google the recipe. We did press about 4 pounds of walnuts (guessing as we did not weigh them until after pressing) We now have about 14 ounces of precious oil! It is sweet and delicious. Thank you for the inspiration.

Since we moved to this farm in 1981 we have "planned" to make our own oil, from something. The walnut trees that are now producing on our farm were nuts that fell under the neighbors tree that same year we purchaased our land. The following summer our neighbor asked if we wanted to dig these seedling trees up and get them established on our land. It took 12 years to get our first nuts, 8 walnuts were not even enough to make brownies, but still what a celebration. Our idea is that these trees are for our retirement. When we can no longer climb a ladder to harvest the other tree fruits, we will be able to crawl around on the ground and pick up nuts!

Anyway, you were in our grateful thoughts as we pressed our first oil! Now we are playing with the left over "walnut flour" . So far we have had walnut pancakes, but our list of possible recipes is growing.

We also raise ducks and happen to have some duck breasts in the freezer!. So when we make up our concoction we will dream of the French countryside and drink a toast to you for blogging your way into our life.

thanks!

Lora Lea

My reply

I'm impressed! Nothing like acting quickly! It must be completely satisfying to have gone through the whole cycle from seedling to walnut oil. I'm looking forward to hearing about the Alliade when it gets made. Tomorrow? At the rate Lora moves!

The Muscovy breed of ducks that we raise are not very fatty. We render out the fat from their skin (then eat the crackling's) and use the fat to preserve duck (confit). This time of year (as we eat up the confit!) we use that fat to fry potatoes or add flavor to cabbage. I suppose we could call it duck butter!

I will look for the magret recipe on your blog.

Lora Lea

My reply is in the form of a post in the main section.

From Charlie

Dave, one thing I have been wondering is whether you do all your shopping in the village on market day or whether there is something equivalent to a supermarket that you venture out to periodically. No need to write back, just thought it could make for an interesting blog post, and what about household supplies, detergent / trash bags / toothpaste. I would be interested to know more about Parisot in general, commerce, schools, price of real estate, access to health care, cinema, that kind of stuff, no need to cover it all at once. Maybe you?ve covered it all before, I don?t know. By the way, your house is very charming. I must say I am quite envious. And I am little surprised to see you wouldn?t mind down sizing, although, I am quite familiar with the travails of upkeep, sometimes I don?t know what I would do with all my time if it wasn?t for maintenance. Charlie