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French Food Focus
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     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.
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: OR 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.
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E-mail:
yankinparisot@gmail.com
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February
Valentine Lunch
Yes, the French do celebrate Valentine's day. Not as
boisterously as we Yanks & Brits perhaps, but they do send cards and have
a good time in general. We, Linda & I that is, always celebrate because
not only should one, but its also Linda's birthday. Normally we celebrate
quietly at home, but this year we decided to join a group of friends for a
Sunday lunch. Its been so cold that it was nice to be getting out.
We love this restaurant. It called Le Grange de
La Cros in other words the barn at La Cros. La Cros being a very small
hamlet on the way to Bach. And the restaurant literally is a barn. A very
charming barn it must be said, but like most barns it has some drawbacks.
The one Linda was worried about was the temperature. How to dress nicely
(what woman is going to look frumpy on her birthday?) and still keep warm.
I think she succeeded brilliantly. Velvet trouser suit with warm tights
under, several layers of I don't know what, boots with layers of socks. I
was easy t-shirt, shirt, sweater & tweed jacket and and extra pair of
socks under my brogues. As it turned out the barn was warm & so were we.
There were 8 of us. In this case all Brits except me
as per usual. We all know Thierry the restaurant owner well having been
regular patrons for several years so we got an enthusiastic greeting.
Thierry speaks a wonderful form of Franglaise to us. We say; "speak
French!", he says "speak English!" so we end up with a hilarious mishmash.
Sunday lunch is 19 Euros for 4 courses including
wine. There are normally two choices for each course except for the
cheese. Mrs. Thierry seems to cook everything herself. I've never seen any
helper. We always wave and say hello through the window into the kitchen
across from the barn. Anyway, the starter choices yester day were, a
roasted pear with a sauce and melted blue cheese or a a 'cheese cake' with
smoked salmon.
I choose the 'cheese cake' which was delicious. A
thick round of Chevres cheese with chopped nuts topped with smoked salmon
and on a bed of rocket with vinaigrette. Yummy. The pear was good, my
friend Rob gave me a bite of his. The choices for the main course were
roast cannette (baby duck) or pallet of pork (pork shoulder).
I had the pork which was nicely roasted and served
with parsnips and potatoes. This was the first time I've ever been served
parsnips in a French restaurant. Bravo Mrs. Thierry! The duck was done in
a very rich sauce and was very tasty.
The cheese come on a large wicker platter and there
are around 8-10 different cheeses to choose from. The platter is just left
at the table for you to serve yourself. I had a nice selection. The local
cabeque was particularly nice.
The dessert choice was a chocolate mousse type dish
or a pineapple dish. Not being a chocoholic I choose the pineapple. It has
been fried in butter and mixed with spices and bread chunks. Very nice
indeed.
All of this took several hours and much good
conversation. We solved all the world's problems several times over. Alan
was driving so I could safely have an extra glass (or two) of wine. So to
home and a nice nap in front of the fire. Nice day.
Happy Birthentines day Linda!
Too Sweet by Half
Possibly my most favorite dessert is lemon pie. I
just love it, the tarter and more lemony the better. I've been rating
lemon pies around the world for years and trying lemon pie recipes in
search of the best. I rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the
best possible.
My best ever, a 9.5. was at a restaurant called
McArthur Park in Palo Alto, California. We used to eat there frequently
when I worked in Silicon Valley. Nice place, it was a big barn like
building dating from WWI. The menu was modern & good. They did very good
ribs and a great Cobb Salad. Amongst their desserts was an absolutely
terrific lemon pie. Very very tart and very very delicious. It was the
featured item pictured on the front of their Dessert Menu. After having
moved away for some time I went back for a meal; the lemon tart was still
pictured on the dessert menu, but was in fact no longer available. Very
disappointing!
The other day I came across a new (to me) recipe for
lemon pie. It was from Lucy Vanel who does a beautiful blog with wonderful
recipes. (http://kitchen-notebook.blogspot.com/2006/01/introduction.html.)
She's based over in Lyon. I had to try it as it certainly was a new method
that I hadn't seen before and usually Lucy's recipes are good. It was
simple enough so here goes:
Ingredients: Pre Heat your oven to 275 degrees F. THE RESULT! About 6 out of 10 I'd say. Good, but too
sweet and not lemony enough for my taste. I tried it again today after
the pie had sat in the fridge overnight; better, but still not the
best. I'm going to try playing with this recipe as
I like the simplicity and ease of making it. Perhaps I might boil down
the lemon juice after it goes through the sieve. That should
concentrate the lemon flavor. Add that taking out an equal amount of
water. Maybe? Meanwhile, if anybody has a contender for the
'Best Ever Lemon Pie' recipe please let me know.
Baby, Its expensive outside!
Well, to paraphrase the old saying it is expensive
out there. Its cold as well or at least it has been for the past week or
so. Nothing like what I'm reading about in the Eastern USA. Anyway, I get
asked a lot about the cost of living here in France so I thought I might
bring my readers up to date a bit on that subject.
Its particularly interesting right now as the dollar
is making a modest comeback due to the Euro's problems with Greece,
Portugal, Spain & Ireland. Unfortunately the English pound is just sitting
there not doing much; still that's better than going down. Much of what
I'm going to say is based upon the fact that the dollar and the pound have
both depreciated fairly severely against the Euro. No question that the
Euro is over valued.
Suffice it to say that it hurts if you live in the
Euro zone and your income is in dollars & pounds as ours are. C'est la
vie as they say. We don't HAVE to live here, we choose to. Still,
however, its fun to complain.
OK, down to the nitty gritty- what do things cost?
Well for one thing the 11 ?
four course lunches I used to brag about now
cost $17. Not bad, but not the $11 they used to be. Gas? Don't ask; its
running around $2.00 per LITER! 8 bucks a gallon. & you thought you had it
bad. Decent beef in the supermarket runs around $10 a pound. Our monthly
electricity bill is around $300 per month, not to mention our gas central
heating bill which was nearly $1,800 for December & January. Wine is still
OK. We can get a decent red or white for about $4 a bottle. I could go on
& on, but won't I think you get the picture.
A note for my British friends. I
did a fairly detailed price comparison at a Sainsbury's supermarket in the
UK vs. our HyperU here during our recent UK visit. I'd say that the
British prices were at least 15% cheaper, maybe more. Petrol & Diesel are
about the same price.
Is there a point? Not really,
but I just wanted people to know how expensive thing have become. No
surprises if you come for a vacation. I did enjoy complaining though.
Bottom line? We still love it
here. I just hope that the Euro keeps sinking.
Age gap? Cultural gap?
I some times see things o0n the Internet that really
puzzle me. I wonder if I'm just getting old. Or maybe, perhaps, I'm really
losing my cultural roots. Let me cite a few examples of what I mean. (By
the way I'll really welcome comments on what I'm about to say. Is it just
me? Or....)
My first example is of a blog post I read just the
other day (from she of the prophylactic blog). This is supposedly a blog
about food, cooking and living in France. Not for the first time was was
baring her soul about her husband's illness. This isn't the first time;
she's gone on about him and her diabetes several times before. Now I'm as
sympathetic as the next person I like to think, I can't imagine airing my
private problems to the whole world. I guess I'm just too private a person
for one thing and not egotistical enough to think that the world would
give two hoots about my personal problems. I find it slightly disgusting
to be honest. I plea for attention?
Following on from that was the fact that she got a
whole ton (well, 39 or so) messages along the lines of "Poor you, how sad.
Wishing you the best... ad infinitum. I have no way of knowing how many of
these people actually know this lady or her husband, but I'd guess not
many. Again, why would anyone send messages of a personal nature to
somebody they only know via a blog on the internet. I just don't get it.
Which leads me to Facebook. This great cultural
phenomenon leaves me cold. I just can't see why anybody would put all this
personal information out there for the world to see. Then I just can't see
why anybody would bother to read it. If I want to communicate with my
friends there are plenty of ways I can do it; I can actually talk to them
face to face, I can talk to them on the phone (with or without video
camera). I can send them emails and I can even send them snail mails. All
of which I can do privately. I don't need to let perfect strangers know my
thoughts & actions, nor do I assume that they give a damn anyway. Again, I
just don't get it. Finally, I find Twitter
more ridiculous than Facebook. I can see it as a teen age fad, but from
what I read supposedly adult people are engaging in Twits (pun intended)
Maybe it really is just old age creeping up on me.
I've always thought that I was a pretty good communicator, but this stuff
is more like 'stream of consciousness' The keyboard has replaced the
shrink's couch. Cheaper I guess. Please
comment if you like, but not via Facebook or via a tweet.
Simple Soup
Another dismal day weather wise. Some good stuff
though.
Lo & behold the local Hypermarket got in some Irish
beef. Whoopee! Those of you who have followed this blog for a while will
know that although I like most things French beef isn't one of them. The
French seem to prefer their beef with no marbling and no aging in other
words - tough. Every so often the markets get in some British or Irish
beef which is far more to our taste. (fortunately, the French have this
law which makes sure that all meats & vegetables must be marked with their
country of origin. Makes it easy to tell,) Not only is it to our taste,
but its usually cheaper than French beef. These were bone in rib steaks
about a kilo in weight each. Priced at 9.50 Euro per kilo they were a
bargain. We bought 4 for the freezer.
The other good thing was mushroom soup for dinner. I
love good mushroom soup and its very easy to make. If you are reading this
early enough in the day where you are to shop. why not go out & buy the
simple ingredients you need and make it for dinner tonight. If not that
make it for lunch or dinner tomorrow. Here's how you make it. You need: 1/4 pound
lardons (if you can't get lardons then take a quarter pound of smoked
bacon and cut it into thin strips); about 1 oz butter; 1 pound of plain
white mushrooms; 1/8 to 1/4 pound dried wild mushrooms (ceps, bulots,
porcini, morels or the like or a mixture), 2 quarts (American) of
vegetable stock and about 8 oz full cream. That's it. Delicious, low in calories (well Ok
the cream doesn't help.) and inexpensive because you don't use a lot of
the expensive types of mushrooms. Serve with some really good bread. We
had some of the no knead bread. I made a new loaf today just to try the
recipe again. If you make this please let me have your verdict.
If at first you don't succeed... Tried the bread again yesterday. This time it was
a great success. Light, crusty and delicious. Here's what I did. We probably should have waited longer, but didn't
as the bread looked good and smelled good. So I cut a couple of slices
off. Delicious! Light and delicious. Linda loved it. In fact we forwent
what we had planned for dinner and had bread & cheese then bread & jam
instead. Great recipe and very easy. I'll just prove the
yeast in future just to be sure. We'll also try some variations. Have a go. Its easy, cheap and good.
Doldrums
The January doldrums; they seem to happen every
year. The holidays are over, the bills are in, the weather's lousy and,
inevitably, we both have colds. Mine's almost over, but Linda's in full
spate. h well at least we don't seem to have the flu. Our friend Jean is
in the hospital with and a severe chest infection.
Anyway, the weather has brightened up a bit. There's
sun and the temperature is up to about 50F (9C).
I decided to try and make bread yesterday. Disaster!
Why do I bother to make bread in France? Just stupid I guess. This was a
no knead recipe I'd read a lot about. You can find it in the NY Times.
Just flour, salt, instant yeast and water. Mix them together until they
form a mass then let rise for several hours. Only mine didn't; rise that
is. Bad yeast? Maybe. I went ahead anyway. I rolled the dough out onto an
oiled surface, turned it onto itself and was ready for it to go into the
oven.
Why toast? Because we were having home cured bacon
and eggs for dinner. Our friend Rob had taken advantage of a sale and
bought us a large piece of belly pork then he'd salted it to make bacon.
(Amongst his many other jobs Rob learned to be a master butcher). He
brought it over the other day. Most of it is in the freezer, but we kept a
big piece out. Delicious!
Seemed a bit strange, but I had a glass of red wine
with my bacon & eggs. Linda being more traditional had tea.
I'll try the bread again, but I'll prove the yeast
next time.
In any case it helped lift the doldrums.
Comfort Food
Even though its warmed up and the snow has all
melted its still winter and we need something to keep us warm. Good old
comfort food fills the bill so that's what we're having for lunch
tomorrow. Everybody probably has their own favorite comfort foods, but
what we're having tomorrow is a selection of our favorites. We have two
local friends coming over plus an American wine merchant who we've never
met before. He's a friend of our friend Scott Parisot. (Scott has visited
a few times tracing his family history. With a name like Parisot this has
got to be the place, right?)
Before I get into the food I'd like to tell you
about an experience I had today. I went to Caylus to buy some vegetables
for tomorrow and on the way home I stopped up at Paul's to buy some wine.
He was a bit slow in coning, but when he did he asked if I'd like to see
something. Although I wasn't quite sure what it was he wanted to show me I
said yes and we set off across one of his fields. On the other side was
what looked like a chicken coop at first glance. It was actually a trap
for foxes. There was a live rooster in the middle with a cage at either
end. When the fox enters the cage he steppes on a flap which closes the
door behind him. Sure enough there was a fox in the trap. He was unharmed
and absolutely beautiful. His coat was glossy and he was in excellent
shape. I don't think Paul had the heart to kill him, but I suspect he'd
get a hunter up to do the deed, after all the fox had eaten 15 of Paul's
chickens. Such is country life.
Back to food. We'll start with Carrot cumin soup.
Here's the recipe: Method: This soup is easy, wonderful and filling. We'll follow that with roast belly pork. Cooking
the belly pork is easy. Just cut through the skin at about quarter inch
intervals, then add some salt and cut one onion per person in half. Place
the pork cut side up with the onion underneath in a roasting pan then
roast at about 180- 200 degrees F for 3 more more hours. Near the end turn
on the grill portion of your oven to crisp up the skin. Watch carefully as
its easy to burn the skin if you're not careful. When done cut into slices
along the lines you cut through the skin. We're going to serve this with the roast onions,
Lyonaise potatoes and green beans, but any selection of hearty vegetables
will work equally well. Dessert is going to be a Tarte Tatin. There's a
recipe somewhere on this blog or I can recommend Julia Child's recipe. If
in doubt email me & I'll happily find a copy of the recipe for you. Since our American guest is a wine merchant we're
looking forward to what he may bring. And just in case of need we're
prepared to dip into what I bought today from Paul. I'm trying not to think about the fate of that
fox.
For Sale by Owner
That's right. We're selling our house. Actually, its
been for sale for some time, but I haven't mentioned it here on the blog.
Since the article in International Living was published there have been a
lots of hits on this blog and a few e-mails asking about the house.
So, if you would like to have a look go to:
www.campdelmas.com.
This is the website that I put together for selling
the house. Its pretty comprehensive, but we'd be happy to answer any
questions anybody has.
The first question that's always asked is, what is
the Price and secondly, why are you selling. Well, we're selling because
we want to downsize. This house at over 3000 square feet plus a large
garden and a swimming pool which has become more work than Linda or I want
to do. We would like a much smaller place that's more easily maintained.
Part of the house only gets used when we have gite customers plus lots of
family visits, but it needs to be kept up all year round. I'm 72, nearly
73, and Linda is nearly 62 and we've both decided that we'd like to do
things other than keeping a large house in tip top shape.
The next question we get asked is "where will you
move to?" The honest answer is that we'll decide once the house is sold.
The most likely scenario is that we won't move far at all. Probably less
than 5 miles. We love this area and have made many good friends here so
have no real incentive to move out of the area. If we can find the right
plot we may even have a house built to our specifications. The idea of a
small modern house is appealing, but on the other hand we'll look at some
local cottages as they do have a lot of charm. Once this house is sold
we'll have a close look at what's available and make a decision. Luckily
for us we have several friends who will happily rent us a place locally
while we look.
The website above and our website for the gite
(www.camp-del-mas.com.)
have a lot of information about this
wonderful area of France. One would look hard to find a better place to
live all things considered. As a place to retire to its very hard to beat.
We're also, increasingly, finding younger people moving to the area; they
telecommute or run business from home or are crafts people of various
types. They enjoy all of the attractions of the area plus finding it a
great place to raise their children in a sane and safe society.
So, have a look. Spread the word. Its a great house
in a wonderful location. There's even an incentive. You can save 5% off
the price by buying directly from us without an agent in between. This is
the commission we'd normally pay if we sold via an agent.
Here's just a couple of pictures to whet your
appetite.
Front of the house with the village in the
background.
One end of the living room showing the fireplace
with wood burning stove.
The whole of this room is nearly 700 square feet.
Home Again - Barely
Well, we made it home from England Saturday night,
but just barely. I'll talk about our very enjoyable trip to England and
Scotland in future posts. This post, however, is about our travel
adventures. They started on December 22ond and ended on January 8th.
Those of you who live in Europe or have been
following the news will know that the weather during the period has been
unprecedented; lots of snow and freezing all over Europe. Just when we
chose to travel in our rear wheel drive car some 3000 plus kilometers. Our
excuse is that we didn't know it would be that way that long.
Still, we were very lucky as we managed to miss most
of the really bad driving conditions.
We started off just after the snow had melted at
home and drove through the night up to Calais. It was cold especially
North of Paris, but the roads were clear. We were able to get an earlier
channel tunnel crossing. (by then all the fuss about the Eurostar trains
was over) This turned out to be a very good thing as it put us on the M25
around London earlier than the commute hour. There was lots of slush on
the road, but the traffic wasn't bad. Past London the M4 was bad, but
again not too much traffic and we were able to chug along at a reasonable
rate. The secondary road from Swindon to Chichester was snowy, but OK as
they had gritted it. The steep hill down into Stroud was much better than
anticipated. And so we arrive at Linda's daughter's house safely after
about 12 hours of driving.
We had a wonderful Christmas and performed the
families traditional Boxing day walk with X-mas cake & sherry up on the
downs in the snow & ice.
On to Menston near Leeds. No driving problems at
all. We stopped on the way to visit Linda's brother for a cup of tea and
excellent home made mince tarts before arriving at our sister & brother in
laws house. We had a nice quiet time. Linda stocked up on her stuff & I
hit pay dirt at St Gemmas charity shop. Hundreds of used books at 50p
each. I really stocked up. New Year's was fun and w only had to walk 50
yards down to the neighbor's for dinner. I got a great beef hit with a
superb Beef Wellington that Tony had done.
Our challenge now was to make it up to Scotland.
There'd been more snow & cold weather, but the reports weren't too bad. As
it turned out once we made it over to the M6 motorway everything was clear
and there was virtually no traffic. Glasgow was easy except for major
roadwork's and so onto Callander. Once past there we called ahead as we
knew there was no way we'd get up the single track road to the hotel. We
parked at the head of the valley & Rob came & got us in the Range Rover.
Good thing as on the way in we had to rescue another wedding guest who had
a car just like ours. She just couldn't get up the hill, too much wheel
spin. We had a great dinner that night and a nice, but cold walk in the
morning. The wedding was that afternoon OUTDOORS! It was a beautiful
location what with the lochs & the mountains. It was cold, but clear and
there was a roaring fire and hot drinks being served. Much more on the
wedding later.
Our drive back to Menston was, thank goodness,
uneventful. Next day we headed for Sandwich. The main motorways were OK &
traffic wasn't bad. The problems started as we neared Sandwich and got off
the main roads. There was quite a bit of ice on the road. We made it and
were warmly received by our good friends. We had planned to stay two
nights, but the weather forecasts were getting worse & worse. So we
decided to head home a day early. We left about 07:00 which as it turned
out was a good thing as the police closed many roads around Sandwich
because of ice & drifting snow in the high winds. It was a bit scary, but
we made it to the tunnel OK.
We had already decided to take the long way home via
Bordeaux. This avoids the high hills down the center of France from
Limogne onwards. Its longer (1100km), but lower. This ploy worked well as
the roads were clear even though the temperature was just below freezing
all the way. As expected our problems started as we headed West after
Bordeaux. Once past Agen on the A62 motorway we started hitting snow; it
was both on the road & in the air. We toddled along at a reasonable rate.
Eventually we came up behind a snow plow which was spreading grit & salt
so we. and several other cars, followed him at 35 miles per hour until we
reached our turn off ay Montauban.
Montauban was OK and all was well until Caussade. In
Caussade it didn't look as if they'd even tried to clear the roads, but we
made it through to Septfonds. Past Septfonds there is a long fairly steep
hill which I had been dreading. We barely made it up. I was doing my best
to balance forward motion against wheel spin and succeeded by the skin of
our teeth. After that the road is pretty straight & flat until Caylus. At
Caylus you have to go down a steep hill through the town then back up
another steep hill. I really was anticipating that we'd never make it up
the hill. Thank goodness for trucks & gritters they'd cleared the road
enough for us make it up. We didn't exactly sail up, but we made it with
no real difficulty.
We now only had about 8km to go and the road is
straight & flat. It was very very slippery, but no problem. We reached our
village and slowly eased our way down the hill to home.
Linda was greatly relieved; I was exhausted, our
house sitters were amazed that we'd made it and Rupert was delirious with
joy at our being home.
What a journey. I just can't believe how lucky we'd
been with the roads & driving. As far as I know this has been the worst
sustained spell of weather for many a year in Europe. But, between the
driving adventures we had a great time with family & friends.
More tales soon in future posts.
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