Échappées Belles : la Sologne

About a month ago, I posted a couple of blog topics about the Romorantin grape and the wines made from it in the area called the Sologne, just to the north of Saint-Aignan. I mentioned that at the same time we had, coincidentally, come across an episode of the French television show called Échappées Belles that focused on the same region.

I hadn't recorded the show, and I was sorry about that. But I noticed that a lot of other Échappées Belles [ay-shah-pay-BELL] episodes were available on YouTube.com. I hoped the Sologne show might appear there one day soon. I've been checking every few days, but until now it wasn't there. A couple of blog readers (Judy, Evelyn) expressed an interest in watching the show.

La Sologne is a forested area roughly south of Orléans and Blois, east of Amboise and Montrichard, and north of Saint-Aignan and Vierzon. Paris is just an hour north of Orléans.

A couple of weeks ago Walt noticed that the show was being re-broadcast on French TV, and we hurried to set up the recorder. Then last week I recorded the show from our satellite decoder box PVR onto one of my computers. I set about researching and experimenting with the process of uploading the Échappées Belles : Sologne episode to YouTube myself.

First I had to convert the video files from DVD format (.VOB) to a format that can be run on YouTube — in this case, .MP4. That took forever, and I had to convert the files several times because I wasn't satisfied with the quality. Once I had the quality I wanted, I started experimenting with the upload process. That took forever too.

I would set everything up and it would take as long as two hours to upload a single file. That pretty much disabled our Internet connection for the amount of time the upload was running. And then the first few times, after waiting two hours, twiddling my thumbs, I'd get a error message back from YouTube saying the file was too big to post. I had to break it down into four segments. Then I had to fiddle with the settings again to get the clear video and the 16:9 aspect ratio the show required.

On this satellite view, you can see that La Sologne is a large forested area spanning three French départements: le Loiret (Orléans), le Loir-et-Cher (Blois), and le Cher (Vierzon).

You get the idea. It has been a challenge, but yesterday I finally succeeded. The Échappées Belles : Sologne files are now available. The show is of course in French, with no subtitles. Here are four links to the four segments, which contain reports about, for example, the Château de Cheverny and the Château de Chambord; the Beauval zoo in Saint-Aignan; and the Domaine de Montcy wine property where Romantin white wines of the Cour-Cheverny appellation are produced.

Échappés Belles - Sologne part 1

Échappés Belles - Sologne part 2

Échappés Belles - Sologne part 3

Échappés Belles - Sologne part 4

I hope all these links work for you, wherever you live. If you want to see posts that I've done in the past about different villages and areas of the Sologne region, here's a link to a Sologne search page on this blog.

Romo, capital of the Sologne

Raked-up magnolia blossoms in Romo's river park

Soon after arriving in Saint-Aignan in 2003, we drove over to Romorantin and had in a restaurant there. With us were our good friend Ch. from California and the woman who sold us the house we now live in, J., who will soon celebrate her 81st birthday.

Vine-covered walls along the river walk in Romo

J., who was born and lived for many years in the big town of Châteauroux in the Berry province, south of the Sologne, pointed out to us some of the prosperous young (and not so young) farmers she noticed in the town and at the restaurant as we were having lunch. She talked about them in terms that made me think of the descriptions of small-town characters in an old novel by Balzac or Maupassant. You could tell theses guys had gotten dressed up to come into town for the afternoon — they had that "just spiffed-up" look.

Digging canals made for good drainage in
the Sologne and improved the environment.

Romorantin is the unofficial capital of an extensive farming and hunting region, and the local cuisine is based on game animals and birds, fish, asparagus, and strawberries. It's a rural, old-fashioned kind of place. The land is flat, the local soil is sandy, the forests are thick with pine and birch trees, and there are hundreds of ponds and small lakes scattered over the wide, flat countryside. The Larousse Gastronomique food encyclopedia calls the Sologne "the country of all game animals," and says "its game birds are the finest in all of France. Also, its lakes are full of fish."

There isn't much local stone in the sandy, marshy
Sologne, so bricks are used in most construction.

But the Sologne wasn't always a healthy place for humans to live. The land had been cleared during the Middle Ages and then given over to sheep farming. The result was land stripped of vegetation and a lot of marshes, ponds, and lakes in which stagnant water supported an important populations of mosquitoes that carried "fevers" and other diseases. One that affected the local people until about 150 years ago was malaria.

Old-fashioned pastries alongside modern-style
cans of soft drinks in a boulangerie in Romorantin.

In the 19th century, Emperor Napoleon III sponsored a project to drain the marshes, dig canals and ponds, and plant forests that would create a healthier environment. The Sologne has changed greatly over the centuries, but the nature of the land has not. Reforestation brought the region back to life and made it into the attractive hunting, fishing, and vacation area it is today.

A house on a courtyard in Romo

The Sologne is a distinct region that contrasts with the river valleys and hillsides planted in rows of grapevines of the Touraine to the west and the wide rolling fields of grains planted over the Berry to the south. There's something dark and mysterious about the Sologne's forests and lakes that just feels old-fashioned.

P.S. Roselyne just delivered our daily bread. She had the local newspaper in the car, and I noticed the headline but didn't understand what it was about. Roselyne explained: there's been a plan to build a new shopping center in Romo to give the local economy a shot in the arm. Evidently, those plans need to be revised because of government objections. Ever since Romo's biggest employer, Matra, closed down its factory there, the economy has been suffering.

La Ferté-Imbault

The villages and towns of the Sologne region, which is just north and east of Saint-Aignan, are built largely of brick. There is no local stone to build with. The land is sandy and flat, pockmarked by little lakes, ponds, and marshes, and covered with forests of birch and pine. The land was drained and forests planted about 150 years ago, making it a healthier place to live. For centuries, mosquitoes were a plague.

Typical Sologne cottages in brick

In late May 2006, we went with some friends and spent an afternoon walking around in a couple of towns over that way. This one is called La Ferté-Imbault, and it is about 25 km/15 mi. east of the Château du Moulin, and on the other side of the area's largest town and "capital," Romorantin-Lanthenay (pop. 20,000). That puts La Ferté-Imbault about 50 km/30 mi. from Saint-Aignan.

Le château de La Ferté-Imbault

Saint-Aignan is really on the border of three regions. The town used to be called Saint-Aignan-du-Berry — the Berry is a farming area east and south of us, centered on the city of Bourges. I consider Saint-Aignan now to be naturally a part of the Touraine, the old wine-growing and vegetable-farming province centered on the city of Tours. That's partly because the wines around here are appellation Touraine. The Sologne is north and east of us; its southern boundary is the Cher River, more or less, and Saint-Aignan is on the south bank of the river.

View of the château from the streets of La Ferté-Imbault

There are several things the Sologne region is famous for. Because it is an area of forests, lakes, and marshes, hunting — rabbits, ducks and other birds, fish, deer, and boar are the local game animals — is the first one. (Here's a road sign you see frequently in Sologne.) A lot of Parisians make the two-hour drive to vacation in the forests of Sologne in summertime. The local cuisine is based on game. It is also based on asparagus and strawberries, which grow well in the region's sandy soil.

The Sologne is not really wine country, even though there are at least two appellations: Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny. Besides the forests and lakes themselves, the area's two biggest attractions are the châteaux at Cheverny and Chambord. Both châteaux are famous as magnificent hunting lodges.

To many, the Sologne is a mysterious, magical place. It's an island of forests in a sea of surrounding farmland. And it has always been very poor, so it hasn't changed much over the centuries. Times are changing now, of course, with the advent of the autoroutes. The Sologne sits inside a triangle of autoroutes with Orléans as its northern point, Vierzon its southern, and Tours its western limit.

View of the château from the streets of La Ferté-Imbault

So what about La Ferté-Imbault? There is nothing about it in the Michelin Green Guide for the Loire Valley, and there's nothing in the Cadogan Loire guidebook either. On the village's web site, I read that it was founded in the year 980 when the lord of the nearby town of Vierzon, whose name was Humbault, built fortifications on the site. The term ferté is an obsolete word meaning "fortified place" that survives in many place names around this part of France.

A town grew up around the fort, but in August 1356 the English army marched through — it was the time of the Hundred Years War between France and England — and torched the fortress and the village. They left it in ruins and records show that in the early 1400s only a hamlet composed of 12 houses remained on the site.

Le château de La Ferté-Imbault

The château was rebuilt in the early 1500s, but was burned down again during the wars of religion at the end of that century. In 1627, a general named Jacques d'Estampes had the château rebuilt, turning it into a residence. That's the château you see in my pictures.

The d'Estampes were local notables that went back several centuries, and Jacques had the title of Marquis de La Ferté-Imbault. He was a general in the armies of King Louis XIII and rose to the rank of maréchal de France. The château has been in the family's hands for four centuries, according to the village web site.

Game for dinner?

Wow, look what Intermarché is featuring as its star products this week. Gibier. Game. Well, we do live on the very edge of La Sologne, which is an area famous for hunting, and for adorning its dinner tables with what gets bagged.

It's interesting, too, how different supermarkets in France can be from each other. A lot of people lament the standardization of food offerings around France and see supermarkets as the culprits. La grande distribution, as it's called, is seen as being at odds with current trends, like promoting locally-produced foods. But here in the Saint-Aignan area, the butchers at Intermarché do just the opposite.

A haunch of wild boar for dinner? It's on sale at 5.59 € a pound.

I'm pretty sure that the butcher counter over at Intermarché is a concession run by local butchers, not just another department in the store. In other words, these butchers in the past would be working out of their own shop in town. Nowadays, however, they set up shop where the customer traffic is, and that's in a supermarket. Of course, the store also sells packaged, brand-name meat products.

How about some roe deer venison at 6.50 €/lb.?

Over at SuperU, our other main supermarket, you can feel the differences in the meat, cheese, and produce departments. There's something slicker, less rustic and les old-fashioned about the store. There's no cheese counter where you can ask for a piece of Brie or Gruyère to be cut off a big wheel for you, for example. Most of the cheeses are in a self-service counter, in styrofoam trays and wrapped in plastic, pre-cut.

I have my eye on these: thighs of a wild hare at just over 6.00 €/lb.
Seems to me they might be good made into confit for a cassoulet.

I've never seen a sale like the current Intermarché promotion over at SuperU. But then SuperU has a better selection of many things, including and especially sausages in the meat department. The butchers over there obviously specialize in sausages. At Intermarché, they specialize in locally produced meats you don't find elsewhere: ducks in the fall, rabbits in the summer, beef and pork in all seasons. And right now, game animals.

How about a pheasant? They're priced
at 9.95 € apiece — about $15.00.

The Sologne is a 2,000-sq.-mile area of forests and small lakes that has never really been developed. The biggest town is Romorantin, population 20,000 or so, but the Sologne is mostly an area of small villages out in the woods. It's south of Orléans, north of Bourges, and east of Tours. When you look at satellite pictures of the Loire Valley region, the triangular area of forest that is La Sologne really stands out clearly.

Here's a map showing Paris, Orléans, Tours, Bourges, and La Sologne.

Saint-Aignan is on the southwestern edge of La Sologne, the northwestern edge of Le Berry, and the far eastern edge of La Touraine. Three old provinces come together here, then, with their different cultures, histories, economies and landscapes. La Sologne is forested, Le Berry is rolling fields of grain, and La Touraine is an area of vineyards and small vegetable farms ("le jardin de la France").

No pictures of these, but they are faisan ( pheasant), lapin de garenne
(wild rabbit), canard colvert (wild duck), and perdreau (partridge).
P.A.C means prêt à cuire — oven-ready (plumed/skinned and gutted).

Actually, Saint-Aignan, now with « -sur-Cher » appended to the name, used to be called Saint-Aignan-en-Berry. It is on the border with Touraine but on the Berry side. The village we live in, just west of Saint-Aignan, is in La Touraine, if I can believe the local people I know — we live on the edge of a vineyard, after all. Across the river is the Sologne, which is part of the Orléanais province. The old French provinces have historical and cultural significance, but they are not political or administrative units the way they used to be.

And here's a haunch of the large red deer native to our area.
It's a little less expensive than the boar, roe deer, or hare.

And we do have game animals here. We see rabbits and hares frequently. There are pheasants and partridges and other game birds in the woods and vineyards. Deer, both the smaller roe deer and larger red deer, are all around us — as in many areas, the populations are too large. We have seen wild boars not 5 minutes north of Saint-Aignan, crossing the road at night. And there are, as well, big animals that are not hunted as food: badgers, foxes, great white owls, blue or gray herons, and many birds of prey.

Saint-Aignan has a big, highly reputed zoo. One day, according to the woman who sold us our house seven years ago, she and her husband were sitting out on the front deck, enjoying warm weather, when a kangaroo went hopping down the street. No, kangaroos are not native to the region. This one had escaped. They called the zoo, and the animal was pretty soon rounded up and taken back to its pen.

In fact, it was on a Tuesday in early December seven years ago that we first laid eyes on this house. We looked at each other and decided this is was the one. It was December 10, 2002. When we moved in 6 months later, deer frequently grazed in our back yard early in the morning.

Sunday Sologne pictures

It's Sunday and we're busy in the kitchen this morning. Walt is making onion and lardons pizzas and I'm going to make a salade de crudités with steamed cauliflower florets, oven-roasted beets, grated raw carrots, braised Belgian endive, and cooked chickpeas, all in vinaigrette.

A typical little French country bar & restaurant,
with typical Sologne brickwork trim

The pictures here are some that I took that same day in La Ferté-Imbault in Sologne when I took the pictures of the château there.

L'Auberge à la Tête de Lard is a hotel & restaurant
that's part of the Logis de France association

I told Walt that the next time we go out for a nice restaurant meal, I'd like to go over to La Ferté-Imbault and try out the Auberge à la Tête de Lard. Maybe it'll be for my birthday, which is coming right up. I've nearly always enjoyed lunches and dinners at Logis de France establishments.

Lard in French means bacon or pork belly,
not lard as in American English.

By the way, I don't know why the hotel/restaurant is called « à la tête de lard ». Maybe somebody can explain it to me. When you call a person a tête de lard, I think it's the same as calling the person a tête de cochon. That means pretty much the same thing as "pig-headed" in English.

I'm a sucker for a nice 2CV picture, so here's one.

I've joked that I'll soon have a picture of every window and door in the Loire Valley and the Sologne. And the Berry region too — why not? So here are some windows I photographed in La Ferté-Imbault.

Again, typical Sologne-style trim work in brick

This is one that has been entirely bricked in.

A nice front stoop and door, with good flowers

This decoration is a little over the top, I think.

A Sologne brick building with white shutters in need of paint

Maybe this one would look better with the shutters open.

On our afternoon excursion to the Sologne, we sat down in a little café, late in the day, for an apéritif together. While we were there, a truck delivering wine pulled up. I took a picture of the business logo painted on the side of the van.

Wines of France from Willis Howard

Willis Howard is an English name, and it's funny to see it on a French truck. You can tell that Willis is the first name and Howard is the last name because HOWARD is written in all capital letters. The reason this name is especially funny to me is that one of my ancestors was named Howard Willis — WILLIS was his last name. He had a grocery store in North Carolina, but I bet he didn't sell wine.

P.S. I talked to my mother today. Howard Willis was her grandfather. She said he might not have sold wine in his grocery store, but he might well have been selling moonshine!

Romorantin's Journées gastronomiques

Our local newspaper is called La Nouvelle République. It's published in Tours, and it has different editions for different départements in our region.

The article below is about a food festival last weekend over in Romorantin, which everybody here calls "Romo" and which is about 20 miles northeast of Saint-Aignan. Romo is the largest town (pop. 20,000) in the region called La Sologne, which is a flat, sandy area of pine forests and small lakes. La Sologne is known for game animals and hunting, along with asparagus, strawberries, and some of the most famous châteaux of the Loire Valley — Chambord, Cheverny, and others.

Loir-et-Cher — Local happenings
A Blend of Sologne and Portuguese Flavors in Romo
After the success of the 2007 event featuring the food of Martinique, just as many attend the Portuguese festival.

High attendance marked Romorantin’s 31st Food Festival. The local Portuguese community got involved to organize the celebration, and were successful.

Re-energized by the success of the Martinique celebration last year, the Food Festival was faced with the challenge of matching 2007's attendance figures. The organizers placed their bets on Portugal, calling on local associations and the Portuguese community, a long-time presence in the Sologne and the Cher Valley.

Portuguese dance troupes entertain crowds at Romo's food fest.
Thanks to La Nouvelle République for the photo.

“People really turned out. We are very pleased,” said Antonio Azevedo of the “Friends of Portugal” association yesterday.

“We hadn’t attended in a long time. This year was better than ever: lively, festive, fun,” said Claude and Alain Benoît from Palluau-sur-Indre. They were munching on chorizo and shrimp croquettes, the ubiquitous salt cod, and “natas” for dessert.

“We are proud for Portugal to be so honored,” said Marie and Isabelle de Jesus.

They are sisters, Romorantin natives of Portuguese background. “The community turned out in mass. There was a festive atmosphere in the streets thanks to dance troupes. The bigtop where Portuguese products were on sale was not as much fun as last year’s, though. But that’s how Portuguese people are. We aren’t like people from the islands.”

“The cultures are different. You can’t compare them,” said Laetitia and Catherine, attending with 2-year-old Mathys and 6-year-old Manon. “At any rate, this gave us a chance to experience something different — to feel like we were somewhere other than in the Sologne for a little while,” said Amandine Berry and Julien Duwicquet, forks in hand.

Construction hands
For the town of Romorantin, this 31st Food Festival was an occasion for reflecting on recent history, especially immigration trends from the 1950s to the 1970s, which brought in Portuguese farm, construction, and factory workers. The festival program featured a retrospective on the years when local and immigrant populations began to mix. There were concerts, lectures, slideshows, and story-telling sessions.

Next year, the Romorantin Food Festival will focus on Spain. It will be organized with the help of Romo’s new Spanish sister city, Aranda-de-Duero.

I found this web site for a Portuguese bakery in Los Angeles that describes the Protuguese "natas" pastry. It seems to be a little custard tart.

I enjoyed this sidebar, printed on the same page:

Bourges resident wins “best cook” prize
Victor Ostronzec carried the day in Romorantin.

Bourges resident Victor Ostronzec, 25, won the Robert-Guérin competition, which honors the best cook at the Romo Food Festival.

Thanks to La Nouvelle République for the photo.

Ostonzec works at the Saint-Ambroix abbey in Bourges. This was his first competition. “It’s a lot of work,” he said. “Intensive training over a month or more, with this help of the whole abbey team. My chef was always there to coach me.” Ostronzec won the competition with his saddle of wild hare. “I stuffed it with foie gras and garnished it with potatoes (or apples), carrots, and wild mushrooms. I served it with a small cabbage stuffed with truffles and a sauce made with the blood of the hare. Everything was carefully timed. An hour and a half to prepare a dish like this is really tight!”

I'm not sure whether the foie gras stuffing included potatoes or apples. The French just says « pommes » without specifying. I translated it as potatoes. The wild mushrooms the cook mentions are called trompettes-de-la-mort — "trumpets of death"— in French. I've never tried them. Would you? Maybe you know them by their English name, which is apparently "horn of plenty."

It seems like Walt and I went to the wrong festival. Romo's would have been more fun than Saint-Aignan's.

Dhuizon

On our way to Chambord on Saturday, after stopping in to see the church at Fontaines-en-Sologne. we started seeing people standing out along the side of the road as if they were waiting for a bus to pick them up. We were far out in the country, so it was remarkable and mysterious to see these old couples standing out there just waiting and watching.

Exterior and interior shots of the church
at Fontaines-en-Sologne. You can see the
name plates on the backs of the pews.

When we arrived at Bracieux, the town just south of Chambord, there were many more people standing along the side of the road. We realized there must be an event in the making. Then a gendarme stopped the small group of cars we happened to be in and we saw several vans and then some classic cars drive by the in the opposite direction, escorted by a blue gendarmerie van with lights flashing.

The painted window of a salon de coiffure
shows an animal common in the Sologne,
the sanglier or wild boar

At first I thought it was a classic-car rally, but Chris recognized it as a bike race. There were many vans, some rented from SuperU, in the cortege. After 12 or 15 cars and vans went by, the gendarme moved aside and let us proceed. But in Bracieux, we found ourselves caught in a little traffic jam of about 20 cars. I was able to turn left and head east out in the the Sologne forest to avoid the clog.

A Logis de France hotel/restaurant in Dhuizon

We ended up in the village called Dhuizon, which I had driven through several times before. It's just east of Chambord, by maybe 15 km/9 mi. We stopped and walked around for a few minutes, and I took some pictures. Dhuizon is a typical Sologne town and is very pretty. I had always wanted to stop there, but hadn't had the chance. We were lucky with the weather on Saturday, too. It was clear, not cold or windy, with big puffy clouds overhead against a blue sky.

A café in Dhuizon, in a typical Solognot building.
Just as I snapped the picture, a young man threw open
a window and yelled "Cheese!"

We later saw posters announcing a bike race called Le Tour du Loir-et-Cher (our département) and realized that was the event we had gotten caught up in. We never did see the cyclists.

This morning the rain is really coming down. And yesterday it was very gray and showery all day, with steady rain starting to fall by late afternoon. So far, this is not the April I had hoped for, weather-wise.

Cépage Romorantin

Cépage in French means grape variety. I've been here in the Loire Valley for more than 10 years now, but I learn something new about the local grapes every month.

The part of Touraine where Saint-Aignan is located is the Vallée du Cher, the local river that is a tributary of the Loire. The wine production areas along the Cher River are now in what has been dubbed the Touraine-Chenoceau appellation. The main grapes grown here are Sauvignon Blanc, Gamay Noir, Côt (a.k.a Malbec), and Cabernet Franc.

Just north of Saint-Aignan, south of Blois, is a different wine district called Cheverny. It's centered on the town and château of Cheverny. I knew of its existence, and we've had Cheverny wines in restaurants, though we had never been up that way to buy wine for home consumption until last week. I thought that Cheverny wines were made with the same grapes, basically, that are grown around Saint-Aignan.

And they are, with one exception. There is a separate wine district, sort of embedded in the Cheverny appellation, called Cour-Cheverny (which is another village in the area). All the wines that carry the AOC Cour-Cheverny are made with a grape varietal called Romorantin, named after the largest town in the Sologne region. Saint-Aignan is on the southwest edge of Sologne and on the eastern edge of the old province called Touraine.

The Romorantin grape is used to produce white wines in the Sologne. The grape has an interesting history. It seems that the Renaissance king François 1er, who had a residence at Romo (as it's called locally) in addition to his residence at the Château at Blois (among others), ordered 80,000 grape plants from Burgundy in 1519, about the time he started construction of the grandiose Château de Chambord.

The grapes he had brought in and planted in the Sologne came to be known as the Romorantin cépage. Recent DNA testing has shown that Romorantin is a hybrid of Pinot grapes and another varietal called Gouais Blanc, which is not well known or even well regarded in France. (I think Gouais is grown more in Germany).

The Romorantin hybrid is not very well known either. Apparently, it used to be grown more widely around the Loire Valley, but nowadays there are very few vineyards (about 150 acres in all) planted in Romorantin, nearly all in the Sologne. In fact, one local grape-grower and wine-maker claims that he has the oldest vines in France on his property just a few miles northeast of Saint-Aignan. They were planted in 1850, and they somehow survived the phylloxera epidemic that devastated most of the vineyards in France and other parts of the world in the late 19th century.

There is a lot of information about the Romorantin grape and the Cour-Cheverny appellation on the Internet. I don't know why I had never researched it before. Oh, and I bought a bag-in-box of white Romorantin wine called the P'tit Blanc at the wine co-op at Mont-près-Chambord last week. Note that it is a 2006 vintage, which makes it pretty old compared to most Loire Valley wines. They sell it for about 2.20 euros per liter.

I have to say it's very good. It reminds me of Chardonnay. I particularly like French Chardonnay wines like Chablis and Mâcon, not to mention Blanc de Blancs Champagne wines, which are 100% Chardonnay. Now I know I like the Romorantin P'tit Blanc too. I foresee more trips to the Mont-près-Chambord wine cooperative in my future.

Leaving home in a hurricane

I know, that sounds more dramatic than it really was — but it's the truth. As we left home last Tuesday morning for the drive to Burgundy, what remained of that hurricane that hit Bermuda the week before was sweeping across northern France and the British Isles. It was blustery and rainy, which didn't augur well for our mini-vacation.

The drive is a straight shot through the forests of the Sologne region.

The drive takes about four hours. The northern part of Burgundy, centered on the small city of Auxerre in the département called l'Yonne is basically due east of our part of the Loire Valley. We headed out across the flat, forested Sologne toward the midway point of the trip, which took us past the wine village of Sancerre and on to the other famous wine village of Pouilly-sur-Loire.

There are curved roads through the villages and towns along the way — which one was this?

Notice the sign that says Toutes Directions — a driver can't go wrong.

There's little or no car traffic in the Sologne woods, but you do have to be careful not to collide with animals like deer and wild boars. Such collisions usually occur at night, however, and we were traveling in broad daylight. We did see a deer or two during our trip, and I saw a fox standing next to the road at some point — I'm not sure, though, that it was on this particular day.

Every town and village has its church and a few businesses.

Other than the woods, the Sologne road takes you through a series of small towns and villages, including Theillay, Neuvy-sur-Barangeon, and Méry-ès-Bois, and then into the old Berry province through Henrichemont (a planned town dating back to the early 1600s), La Borne, and Neuilly-en-Sancerre. Each town or village as its own old church and its business selling farm equipment, along with a few shops like bakeries, groceries, and cafés.

As you reach the eastern edge of the Sologne and approach the Loire River, you leave the flat country behind.

We planned to have lunch in Pouilly-sur-Loire, where I also wanted to pick up a bottle of a wine that I had never tasted before. It carries the name of the village and is made with a different grape, Chasselas, compared to the nationally and internationally known wine called Pouilly Fumé, which is made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes in the same area.

The Sancerre area on the west bank of the Loire is famous for its vineyards and especially for its Sauvignon Blanc wines.

By the way, I've been taking my finger splint off for several hours at a time for the past few days and carefully exercising the damaged digit. When it starts to ache, or when I plan to engage in some activity (including sleeping) that might put the finger at risk, I put the splint back on. This morning, for the first time since the accident happened back in August, I am typing on the keyboard using all ten fingers!

Loire Valley food specialties

This weekend we had friends here from California. Since we can't go to restaurants right now, we planned, purchased, and prepared food for Saturday night and Sunday afternoon meals with our visitors.

Why can't we go to restaurants? It's the puppy — we don't want to leave her unsupervised in the house, we don't want to lock her in her kennel for hours while we are out, and we aren't sure she has sufficiently polished restaurant manners at this stage. Well-behaved dogs are admitted in most French restaurants, as you might know.

We thought we'd go with local specialties for the weekend's dinners, and seasonal ones as possible in the case of vegetables and fruits. In the Saint-Aignan area, that means asparagus and strawberries (in season now), along with goat cheeses and rillettes (potted meats), all available year-round.

Peeling white asparagus from the Sologne

The local asparagus, grown in the neighboring region of sandy soil, small lakes, and pine and birch forests that is called La Sologne, are of the white variety. In fact, the white and green asparagus varieties are really the same plant. It's just the way they are grown than differentiates them.

Green asparagus are allowed to grow up out of the soil and be exposed to sunlight. That makes them green. White asparagus are grown under mounded-up soil and sand so that the spears never see the light of day. They stay white. I bought a kilo (2.2 lbs) of white asparagus spears from a farmer's stand at the Saint-Aignan market Saturday morning for four euros ($5.50 at today's rates). That was the best price I found at the farmers' market that morning.

Cooked white asparagus, ready to be seasoned and sauced

I think green and white asparagus are equally good to eat, if they are prepared and cooked appropriately. The main difference is that the white ones need to be peeled before you cook them, and they need to be cooked a little longer than the green ones. If you cook the green ones just a minute or two too long, they turn mushy and strong-tasting; the white ones are less fragile and stand up better in the cooking process. I cook them in a wide, shallow pan of boiling water.

Wrap bundles of cooked asparagus spears in slices of ham.
Place the bundles in a pre-baked pie shell and pour an egg custard
mixture around them. Cook the pie in a hot oven for 20 minutes.

Asparagus are good served hot with melted butter or cold with mayonnaise or vinaigrette. They can be cut into pieces and incorporated into a soup or a risotto. Or they can be cooked in a pie the way Walt does them. Again, cooked properly, they are delicious.

The other plant that grows well in the sandy soil of the Sologne and in the sandy bottom land along the Loire and Cher rivers is the strawberry (la fraise). The season runs from April through June. On Saturday, I bought strawberries from a farmer who sells them at the Saint-Aignan market, along with asparagus and honey. He didn't have any asparagus this week, but the strawberries he was selling looked and smelled delicious.

Loire Valley strawberries

I asked him if he grew the fraises himself and he said he did. I didn't recognize the variety, which was spelled cigualine on his sign but can also spelled cigaline. I have found references to it and other strawberry cultivars on the web (in French). This particular farmer grows cigaline and cireine strawberries, he told me. The varieties I find more often are called gariguette and marat des bois. I like those, but was more than willing to try others.

On the local markets and in the local supermarkets, I also see strawberries that are imported from Spain. They are plump, bright red, generally attractive, and pleasing to the nose. But they are usually spongy in texture and bland on the tongue. I avoid them. They are the same variety that is grown in California, according to what I have read. They have been bred to withstand transcontinental shipping and to last a long time on the shelf. Taste and texture are lower priorities.

The local varieties I've mentioned have a very short shelf-life but they are luscious and sweet. The cigaline strawberries the farmer at Saint-Aignan had grown were a pale red color, verging on pink. They were smaller than Spanish strawberries, and they smelled great. I took the farmer's word for it that they were sweet and juicy, and he didn't lie. He said the other variety he grows, les fraises cireine, are a darker red color but otherwise similar to the fraises cigualine.

I asked the farmer if he was local, and he said not really, His farm, he said, is up near the town of Contres, about 12 miles north of Saint-Aignan! I told him that that qualified as local to my way of thinking. Contres (pop. 3,000) is considered to be in Sologne, while Saint-Aignan is in the Cher River valley and on the edges of three old provinces (La Sologne, La Touraine, and Le Berry) as well as at the point where three "modern" administrative départements meet (Loir-et-Cher, Indre, and Indre-et-Loire).

I paid eight euros for a kilo of fraises cigaline. That would come out to a little less that $5.00 U.S. for a pound (454 grams). I had to throw one strawberry away because it was kind of smushed and had started to grow mold. And I ate two or three while I was rinsing and de-stemming them, because they were a little over-ripe. All the others were pretty much perfect.

Gariguette strawberries from Chouzé-sur-Loire

I didn't take any pictures of the food I was preparing yesterday. All the pictures in this topic are ones that I took back in April but didn't post back then for some reason or other. Above are pictures of some strawberries I bought back then. They were grown in fields along the river at Chouzé-sur-Loire, not far from the wine towns of Bourgueil and Chinon. I guess that could qualify as local; it's about 50 miles west of Saint-Aignan, on the other side of the city of Tours.

I plan to talk about other local foods — goat cheese, roasted peppers, and local potted meats — tomorrow.