Christmas in Paris

As I said yesterday (or was it the day before?) I've been trying to do some maintenance work on my photo database before the whole thing comes crashing down like a château de cartes. It was at the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic that I started losing control. I happened to notice the photos above, which are much older than that.

I enjoyed seeing them again. They brought back good memories of many Christmases past in Paris, and memories of visits from friends who were among the very first to come to see us here in Saint-Aignan. That was back in Dec. 2004, and we had been here for less than a year at that point. The visitors were our friends Evelyn and Lewis. As I admired the photos, I realized that they weren't ones that I took, but they are some that Evelyn took in Paris that Christmas. I'm trying to remember if that was the first time I ever met E. and L. face to face. I think it was. Over the years we've enjoyed spending time and seeing the sights in Paris several times, in North Carolina, in Alabama, in the Auvergne region, and in Normandy.

This is not it...

Yesterday, for dessert after his birthday dinner of steak au poivre, frites, et salade, Walt made a tarte aux pommes. But this is not it. This is one he made 10 years ago, in Dec. 2014, on his birthday. I don't know if he plans to post a picture of the one he made yesterday.

The 2024 Christmas tree

Here's a photo of this year's sapin de Noël. Many of the ornaments are 40 or even 50 years old. A lot of them were gifts from friends who have now passed away. By the way, today is Walt's birthday — his 65th. Steak au poivre for lunch...

I'm busy doing some much needed maintenence on my photo database. It's sadly neglected. Wish me success.

Blanquette de porc (2)

The blanquette made with pork shoulder turned out to be really good. The pork itself was very tender and tasty. I didn't have to cook it longer than I usually cook veal for a blanquette.

I'm still getting used to taking photos with my mobile phone. They come out very sharp, but I'm not sure about the colors. My Samsung A25 5G camera has a setting for food pictures, but I think that setting produces over-saturated colors. So I use the standard setting and tweak the colors in Photoshop.

Using standard settings, the blanquette sauce looked pale and too white. Using the phone food pictures setting, the sauce looked way too yellow. I tried to find a balance using Photoshop. By the way we served the blanquette with the vegetables that cooked with the meat, with mushrooms that cooked in the cream sauce, and with a side dish of a mixture of red and white rice.

Here's the recipe for blanquette that I like. This is my translation of a recipe in French that I've been using for 30 or more years.

2 to 2½ lbs. veal for stew
1½ cups dry white wine
1 carrot
1 onion
an herb bouquet (thyme, bay leaf, parsley, leek, etc.)
½ lb. mushrooms
½ lb. pearl onions
4 oz. cream
1 egg yolk
1 lemon
2 oz. butter
2 Tbs. flour

Put the veal in a big pot with the carrot (peeled and cut into four pieces), the peeled onion, the herb bouquet, and some pepper and salt. Pour in the wine and then add enough cold water to cover the meat by about an inch. Bring to a boil, skim off the foam that forms, and then let the veal simmer for two hours on low heat. Remove the veal from the pot and put it on a towel or in a strainer to dry.

In another pot, make a roux with the butter and flour. Pour in two or three cups of the veal broth to make a smooth sauce. Put the veal, the mushrooms (washed and sliced), and the little onions into the sauce and let it simmer for 20 minutes or more, until everything is cooked.

In a small bowl, mix together the cream, the egg yolk, and the juice of a lemon. Pour this mixture into the sauce, but don't let it boil or the egg yolk will scramble. Just let it thicken slightly on very low heat.

Serve the veal, the onions, and the mushrooms in a bowl, with just a little sauce over all. Serve the rest of the sauce in a gravy boat or bowl. Accompany with steamed rice (or pasta or boiled potatoes).

I usually skip the egg yolk thickening and just put a squeeze of lemon juice in the sauce at the end, along with the cream, to perk it up. And if I can't get tiny onions (pearl onions are harder to find here in Saint-Aignan than they were in California), I just cut up a regular onion and add it to the sauce along with the mushrooms.

You can make the same dish with chicken, turkey, or even lamb.

Blanquette de porc

We'll be going into high gear in the kitchen over the next week or so. Saturday will be Walt's birthday, and for that we always cook a French steak au poivre. Then three days later, on Christmas Eve, we'll make a cheese fondue (une fondue savoyarde) for our mid-day meal. On Christmas Day, we'll roast a guinea fowl (une pintade) that has been fattened, maing it into a capon (un chapon) with all the trimmings. More about those as all that unfolds.

Three views of the pork shoulder roast that I bought at Intermarché a few days ago

Meanwhile, for today and Friday, I'm going to make a blanquette de porc. Thats pork shoulder simmered until well-done with carrots, bay leaves, garlic, leeks, and white wine. I'm going to base it on my favorite recipe for blanquette de veau, cooking it a little longer because porc is naturally a little drier and tougher than veal. More about that tomorrow. Above are photos of the pork shoulder roast (un rôti d'épaule de porc) that I bought a few days ago. The pork had been de-boned, rolled, and tied (désossé, roulé, et ficelé by the butcher). I'll post a recipe and some photos of the cooking process tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I was looking through some old blog posts of mine and saw that I once pointed out that blanquette seems often to be something we make in December. This year is no exception. I also came upon the photo above of the church and château in Saint-Aignan, which I took exactly seven years ago today.

Decembers past

December views from and of our kitchen window

2019 (five years ago — that's the neighbors' house across the road)

2014 (ten years ago — this year, the weather has been gray and damp like this for months now)

2009 (fifteen years ago — the kitchen window is under the dormer window)

I ended up making eggplant lasagne

Yesterday I was looking at my recipe for Moroccan eggplant and potato au gratin and wonder what I wanted to do. I decided I wanted melted cheese in the dish, since it was being made with lasagna noodles. I was going to the supermarket anyway, so I bought some shredded mozzarella cheese to add to the tomato sauce, eggplant rounds, and noodles. Here's the process and the result. The first thing to do was make the sauce. I put some ras el-hanout in, but not as much as I had initially planned.

This is the sauce I made. It includes crushed tomatoes, sliced onions, chopped garlic cloves, ground beef, spices, salt, pepper, and herbs (bay leaves and dried oregano).

These photos show the process step-by-step. Make the sauce first and let it simmer for an hour or so. While it cooks, slice the eggplants, brush the slices with olive oil, and bake them in a hot oven on a sheet plan until they are soft. Optionally and separately, soak the lasagne noodles in warm water. That will make them soft and pliable so they are easy to work with.

Pour a layer of sauce into the bottom of a baking dish. Put a layer of noodles over the sauce. Arrange rounds of cooked eggplant over the noodles and top them with a layer of grated cheese. Arrange another layer of noodles over the eggplant rounds and cheese. Spoon sauce over those noodles and put on more grated cheese. I used mozzarella but use whatever cheese you like. I also sprinkled on some grated Parmesan for more flavor.

Bake the dish in the oven until the cheese is melted and is starting to turn golden brown. If the sauce and the eggplant slices are still hot, it won't take long. If you make the dish ahead of time and let it cool down, put it in a medium oven until the ingredients are heated through. Then turn the heat up for a few minutes to brown the top layer just before you take it out of the oven and serve it.

Eggplant and potatoes au gratin

I was poking around in my photo archive this morning when i came across the recipe that I published six years ago. I've decided to make it for lunch, but using lasagna noodles instead of potatoes. I'll let you know how it works out.

In a book about Moroccan tajines (spicy stews) that I've had for a few years now, I recently noticed a recipe for eggplant (aubergines) that tempted me. I read it and thought about it for a couple of days, and it dawned on me that it didn't have any Moroccan spices in it. Those were easy to add and they really livened the tomatoes up.

Thinking about how tajines are often sweet and spicy at the same time, and how there's a recipe in the book for chicken with tomatoes and honey — I've made that before — I decided to add a big spoonful or two of honey to the spicy tomato sauce I was making for this gratin. It worked really well. And since I had some ground veal in the freezer, I thought: why not make this a meat sauce and turn it into a full meal? There's no cheese in it, but we ended up grating some Parmesan over it at the table.

Instead of frying or even baking the eggplant slices, Walt browned and partially cooked them on the barbecue grill out on the terrace (photo below). That added really good flavor to the dish. The recipe turns out to be a kind of Moroccan-spiced lasagna with layers of sliced, pre-cooked potato in the place of pasta.

Moroccan eggplant and potatoes au gratin

2 large eggplants (aubergines)
2 or more large potatoes
5 tomatoes
3 onions
3 cloves of garlic
1 or 2 Tbsp. honey (to taste)
3 parsley stalks
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. dried thyme
4 Tbsp. olive oil
optional: oil for frying
salt and pepper to taste
cayenne pepper to taste
ras-el-hanout spices to taste

Cut the eggplants into slices and brush the slices with olive oil. Cook them on the barbecue grill or on a baking sheet in the oven. It’s messier, but you can also fry them in a non-stick pan on the stove.

Wash the potatoes and boil or steam them until they are mostly done but still firm. When they’ve cooled down, peel them and cut them into slices.

Peel the onions and the garlic cloves. Cut the onions into slices. Dice, mash, or slice the garlic cloves. Optionally, peel the tomatoes by dropping them for a few seconds into boiling water, putting them into cold water to cool down, and then slipping the skins off.

Make tomato sauce: sweat the onions and tomatoes together in olive oil in a frying pan, and then add the garlic and parsley. Add salt and pepper, thyme, and bay leaf. Season the mixture with ras-el-hanout spices and some cayenne pepper (don't overdo it) and let it cook for 30 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC (400ºF). When the tomato sauce is cooked, put a layer of it in the bottom of a baking dish. Over it put alternating layers of potatoes, eggplant, and sauce, finishing with a layer of tomato sauce. If all the ingredients are hot, slide the dish into the oven and let it cook for 5 minutes. If the ingredients are cold, slide the dish into the hot oven, and gradually turn the heat down so that the ingredients heat through without burning on the bottom or top.

P.S. My store-bought, imported ras-el-hanout
spice blend contains:

   • curry (curry)
   • coriander seeds (coriandre)
   • cumin (cumin)
   • salt (sel)
   • carraway (carvi)
   • turmeric (curcuma)
   • corn starch (farine de mais)
   • piment fort (hot red pepper)
   • cayenne (cayenne pepper)

Modify freely...

Abondance de biens

This morning I asked my laptop computer to tell count the number of JPG image files it could find on my hard disks. Here's the number it came up with: 724,956. That's almost three-quarters of a million JPGs. So why am I finding it so hard to find one or two to post this morning?

In French, people say: Abondance de biens ne nuit pas. That means something like "you can't have too much of a good thing." Or: "An abundance of good things can do you no harm." Think of French biens meaning "possessions" but also "goods" as in "baked goods."

Here's one photo I can post today. Since I posted pictures of our loft space yesterday, here's a photo of the two staircases we have to climb to get up there from ground level. Hope the photo doesn't make you dizzy.

Staying put and clearing out

I mentioned a while back that with the rainy weather we're having, preventing us from doing much yard or garden work, we've started an early spring cleaning cycle this year. We've been sorting through things and re-organizing their storage areas. These are some photos of our loft space that I took a couple of days ago with my new smartphone/camera. It's a Samsung Galaxy A25 5G. I'm finding it takes better photos in low light conditions than do any of the four or five digital cameras I have.

We had the loft (attic) converted to living space in 2010. We turned it into a single large room that serves as a bedroom, a TV room, and computer room. A few years later, we had a half-bathroom (sink and toilet) put in up there, mostly for nighttime use.

We spend evenings in the loft watching television, and we sleep up there too. We spend daylight hours in the living/dining/kitchen area one floor down from the loft. I have a laptop computer in the living room that I use all day, and we have a television there for daytime viewing that is smaller than the one up in the loft.

I hope we can stay motivated to get the loft space better organized and to get rid of things that seem to accumulate up there. Do you remember the comedian George Carlin's riff about "stuff" (possessions) and how we all have too much stuff? Even though Walt and I got rid of a lot of stuff when we moved out of our house in San Francisco to re-locate to France, more than 20 years ago, somehow we have just as much stuff now as we did back then.

CHM at Crosville-sur-Douves

Today would have been my late friend Charles-Henry Michel's 100th birthday. He passed away last February, a couple of months after his 99th. I hope he is resting in peace. He and I were colleagues in Washington DC at the U.S. Information Agency (U.S. cultural services) from Jan. 1983 until I left for California in Oct. 1986. We gradually became good friends over the years because Charles-Henry had a partner and other friends in California, and we always saw each other on his annual visits to the West Coast. In 1992, Walt and I met up with him in Paris. That's when he learned that Walt and I were domestic partners and had been since 1983. Washington DC was not an easy place to live and work in for same-sex couples back then.

The first time Charles-Henry stayed at our house in San Francisco was at Christmastime in 1995. Around that time, Walt and I started driving down to the desert in Southern California to tour around with CHM and his partner Frank, who lived down there (in Salton City) permanently, partially because of health issues. Frank, was exactly one year older than Charles-Henry; he was born on Dec. 13, 1923 and passed away in 2006. We four became close friends and shared many good times together. We stayed at Frank's house many times, though it was a nine-hour drive from San Francisco to Salton City.

Walt and I left California and moved lock, stock, and barrel to France in June of 2003. By then, Charles-Henry had retired from his job in Washington and had taken back possession of his apartment in Paris, where he grew up. Old friends of his family had been living there, I think, for about a decade. C-H started spending a month or two in Paris every year at about the same time Walt and I moved to France, so we saw him often. He stayed with us in Saint-Aignan numerous times, and we stayed with him in his Paris apartment. Our times together in France ended just before the Covid pandemic started in 2019. I stopped traveling to the states at that point. In 2018, C-H suffered a broken hip joint and he never was never able to travel, or even walk, again.

These are some photos that Charles-Henry took at the Château de Crosville-sur-Douve in the Cotentin region of France in 2004. He used to give me copies of the photos he took in France when he was traveling back and forth to Washington and to California. I was his backup, in case his bags were lost or damaged in transit. He and I had been to Crosville-sur-Douve once before, in 1998, when the two of us spent a few days in the Cotentin, as well as in Rouen and Paris. We drove all around the Loire Valley for several years, and we drove up to the Somme/Picardy region north of Paris several times too. That was where his family had come from. C-H's father was born in 1860, if memory serves, and his grandfather, Charles-Henri Michel, a well known artiste-peintre, was born in about 1817. Their roots were deep. It was an honor and a privilege to know Charles-Henry. I often find myself wishing I could pick up the phone and talk to him these days.

Crosville-sur-Douve is described in the Michelin Green guidebook I have as one of the most imposing châteaux in the Cotentin region of Normandy. It's about 15 miles east of Barneville-Carteret.

Au revoir, Saint-Vaast. Bonjour, [?]

Here in Saint-Aignan, we are still having gray weather, including rainy days and foggy days. The sun doesn't come up until 8:32 this morning, and it goes back down at 5:04 this morning. In October, we had 55% less sunshine than usual. November wasn't quite as bad, but there weren't very many sunny days. Now December — ugh! Looking at these colorful photos I took in the Cotentin (Normandy) cheer me up a little. I hope they do the same for you. Tomorrow I'll be leaving Normandy in my mind. I might go to (North) Carolina in my mind next. Or not. I'm talking about virtual vacations, not real ones.