09 January 2017

Campagnes TV — et un gratin d'endives

There's a French TV channel called Campagnes TV that we started receiving on our CanalSat satellite system last year. We watch it during the day as we are busy on our computers, slowly making lunch, doing housecleaning... whatever. The shows on Campagnes TV are about rural life in France, which is what we are living.

Every once in a while a segment about cheese-making, cooking, or farming will catch our attention. Since the channel plays the same shows over and over again all week, we don't miss anything if we get too busy. And if we see a report or a whole show that turns out to be fascinating, we can always record it later and see it again.

Cooking endives in chicken broth with slices of whole lemon

One of the shows I enjoy the most is called Du Champ au Fourneau — "From the Field to the Stove." (You can see that the word fourneau is related to the English word "furnace." Je suis aux fourneaux ce soir means "I'll be doing the cooking tonight.") There's a really interesting show about raising ducks for foie gras, confit, and magrets (breast filets) on YouTube, plus a lot of other Du Champ au Fourneau episodes. Another source is the Campagnes TV site itself. I don't know if you can play the videos on the Campagnes TV "replay" page — if you try viewing them outside France, let me know if they work or not. Please try it.

The finished product — gratin d'endives au jambon with a cream sauce

The other day I really enjoyed a show about making un gratin d'endives au jambon, which is one of my standards — what we Americans call "Belgian endives" first cooked, then wrapped in a slice of ham, and finally baked in the oven in a cheese sauce. The show included segments on raising pigs for pork, making ham, and then growing endives on a commercial scale.

Endives and grated cheese wrapped in ham and bacon

In it, I learned a new way to make the endive dish. It doesn't involve a cheese sauce, and the endives are cooked not in white wine with butter but in chicken broth. I had just bought a kilo bag of endives at Intermarché (for the princely sum of €1.29), so I was off like a shot to make it. Instead of a cheese sauce, it uses sliced or grated cheese in the "endive roll" and then calls for wrapping them in ham and bacon before cooking them in the oven.

Endives « Perle du Nord » from near Soissons in northern France

As it happened, the endive processing facility featured on the show was the one that packed the brand of endives I had bought. The recipe was demonstrated by a chef who either owns (or works in) a restaurant in Paris called Le Pavillon Montsouris and located on the edge of the Parc Montsouris, near the Cité Universitaire. The restaurant is on my list now... I'll see if I can find or download the segment of the show where he makes it.

13 comments:

  1. I watched the video on foie gras and magret. Interesting and 'access all areas' stuff, but Fréderique isn't as personable as Julie :-)

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    1. I like the way Frédérique takes standard foodstuffs or recipes and goes back to the agriculture involved in producing the ingredients. Julie A. connects with local people who make local recipes. I think the two shows are complementary in many ways.

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  2. Good morning from the Isle of Wight in England. I followed your link to the Canpagne TV channel and am able to watch the replays with no problem. My stomach wasn't up to greasy duck livers this morning but I have now dumped the housework for the forseeable future and am sitting among the mess watching coquilles St Jaques fighting back by catching a man's fingers. Wonderful stuff. Thanks Ken.

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    1. "Greasy" duck livers doesn't sound appetizing, that's for sure. Thanks for the comment.

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  3. No problem loooking at the replays here in Virginia. I didn't have my breakfast yet so I'll look further later in the day. Sounds interesting.

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    1. Thanks. It's interesting to me to know that the replay videos can be viewed outside of France.

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    2. In fact, it seems to work better than FranceInfo.

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  4. merci for the link..I watched many of these shows when I was there last May & enjoyed

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  5. I don't know what it is, but lately I find that whenever I look at your blog, I have to go have a snack afterwards :)

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    1. Well, the weather here these days is so gloomy and miserable that we can't take decent photos outdoors. Or at least I can't. So I use the camera mostly in the kitchen. I could blog about converting some 225 movies from .vob format to .mp4 on my computer, but it's hard to think of that process as very interesting.

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  6. The link is not working from Australia, Ken.

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    1. Thanks for letting me know, Jan. Often links that work in one country won't work in another, especially if they are to copyrighted material. Something to do with international (dis)agreements, I guess.

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