A country restaurant in France

Most if not all people eat a few meals every day. I know I do. It's a biological necessity, except for an occasional fast day. And those are very, very occasional for me. In France people say that it's a bad idea to skip meals, and that a meal should include meat, fruits and vegetables (whether cooked or raw), cheese, and bread. Wine is optional.

I figure if I have to eat every day, and since I have the time, I might as well cook my own food. It's a lot less expensive than buying cooked food at a shop, supermarket, or restaurant. Going out to restaurants can be fun when you share the experience with other people, but it's more a social occasion that it is a purely food experience for me. When I cook my own food, I control the menu, the ingredients, the cooking techniques, and the portion size. I like that.

Here's a photo I took out a back window just after we had a brief snow shower yesterday morning.

Of course, once in a while it's good to go to a restaurant to see how the other half lives and eats. Here's an example from a restaurant where we had lunch one day back in early December. I don't think we've been to a restaurant since then. This restaurant, Le Moulin de Chaudé, is is a village called Chemillé-sur-Indrois, a 20- to 30-minute drive south of Saint-Aignan, between Genillé and Montrésor. Walt posted a photo of the restaurant yesterday.

This shot gives you an idea of the look of the dining room at the Moulin de Chaudé restaurant in Chemillé-sur-Indrois.

As Walt said on his blog, we and the friends we were having lunch with were the only customers in the restaurant that day. The lunch cost us 45 euros per person, or about 50 U.S. dollars, and included an apéritif cocktail, a starter course, the main course, dessert, and coffee. And wine, of course — two bottles of a Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil cabernet franc red.

We were in the restaurant for about three hours, if I remember correctly. Here's an excerpt from the menu. It lists the main courses — les plats principaux — on the day we had lunch there. I'm not sure how often the menu changes.

Let me translate those:

• Meat pie made with hare and foie gras
• Slow-cooked beef chuck served with deep-fried potato & carrot croquettes and smoked eel
• Rib-eye steak grilled on a wood fire, served with French fried potatoes, mushrooms, and pepper sauce
• Monkfish served with white beans cooked with imported ham, garnished with a fish-soup foam
• Duckling breast served with a puree of pumpkin au gratin, braised endive, and orange sauce

Hare, foie gras, smoked eel, fish-soup foam, duckling... it was pretty fancy, with some exotic ingredients. The menu is fairly limited, and the owners pride themselves on that. They told us that a restaurant with a very extensive menu is a restaurant where food is not being prepared fresh. Instead, you're getting vacuum-packed (sous-vide in French) or frozen, pre-cooked food. The food at the Moulin de Chaudé is made to order using fresh ingredients.

Walt and I both had the entrecôte grillée (rib-eye steak) with steak fries and mushrooms. The photo above shows you what it looked like. It was tender and delicious. We enjoyed the fried potatoes, the mushrooms, and the pepper sauce. I figure I could have made the same thing at home for a lot less money, but the restaurant experience was fun. We got plenty of attention from the woman who runs the dining room while her husband is busy in the kitchen.

More about the meal tomorrow...