Una focaccia

With all the chilly, damp weather, we spend a lot of time indoors these days, and a lot of that time in the kitchen. Yesterday, we made a focaccia bread, which resembles a pizza but has a much thicker, breadier crust. In this case, the bread crust was made with four parts wheat flour and one part white corn meal. Here's what it looked like:

Just above on the left is the dough that Walt made and that we used to make the focaccia bread. It had been punched down and spread out on a baking sheet for a second rising in a warm oven. On the right above is the crust ready for the oven with all its toppings in place, except the olives and cheese

Other toppings were a thick tomato sauce made with shredded, chopped chicken and cubes of pre-cooked sausage meat. Thyme and black pepper went into the dough and dried oregano went on top before the cheese strips and olives were arranged on top and everything was drizzled with olive oil.

Inondations

Yesterday morning I went to the supermarket on the other side of the river from our house. 
That involves driving along the river road to the old bridge in Saint-Aignan and crossing the river.
What I saw along the river road looked sort of like this.

I say I it looked "sort of like this" because this is a photo I took in March of 2006, when there was flooding about like what we're having here these days. Parts of France are underwater, especially from Brittany down the Atlantic Coast to Bordeaux and on to Toulouse. We're not getting the worst of it here, but it rains nearly every day in Saint-Aignan. More rain is predicted for tomorrow. Meanwhile, a tornado touched down this morning up north near the Belgian border.

Clafoutis aux figues

Yesterday morning I was looking through our downstairs freezer where we keep things for long-term storage. I stumbled upon a plastic bag with 16 frozen figues in it. It was time to use them or lose them, so decided to make a fig clafoutis, a sort of crustless custard tart. Above left you see the figs once I thawed them and cut each one in half, and above left are the makings for the custard: milk, eggs, sugar, and flour.

What you do is mix together all the custard ingredients. You butter a baking dish and arrange the figs in a single layer. Then you pour the custard mix over them and put the dish into a hot oven and let it back until the custard sets up and starts to brown. Take it out of the over and sprinkle some slivered almonds and raw sugar over all that. Put it back into the hot oven and let it brown a little more. Serve it at room temperature or cold, spooning it out of the dish. I wouldn't try to unmould it.

Flat-bean stir-fry with pork...

The last time I blogged about, or even made, an Asian-style stir-fry, unless I'm mistaken, was in October last year.
I made another one yesterday. It was about time.

The main vegetable in yesterday's stir-fry was haricots plats (in English "flat beans). They are a variety of string bean (haricots vert.) I also put in some onions and garlic, some red, green, and yellow bell peppers, and some mushrooms. The pork was a shoulder roast (a Boston butt) that I cut up into small pieces.

To season the stir-fry, I made a "wok sauce" — a mixture of soy sauce, oyster sauce, mirin (Japanese rice wine), black bean sauce, and hot red-pepper sauce (Tabasco, Texas Pete, or Portuguese piri-piri. Maybe other sauces too, but I kind of wing it when i make a wok sauce and decide by tasting it to see whether it needs more sweetness, more spiciness, or more soy. I like British HP sauce in it too.