Chow main en trois photos

On Saturday morning, Walt went to the open-air market down in Saint-Aignan (just two miles from our house). He wanted to get some nems (Vietnamese fried eggrolls) from an Asian products stand there. When he got home after a successful shopping trip, he opened the packages he had been given and discovered that they contained not just nems and some samosas (another deep-fried Asian specialty) he had bought, but also a small container of cooked noodles with vegetables that he hadn't asked for. We assumed they were some kind of promotional sample that the vendors were giving out, and we enjoyed them as a light supper that evening.

We were inspired by that windfall to make Asian noodles, chow main, for our lunch on Sunday. We had some noodles in the pantry and we had all the other ingredients in the refrigerator: mushrooms, carrots, celery, shallots, garlic, baby corn, soy and other Asian sauces, and even some chicken meat that I had picked off a carcass I had boiled to make broth a couple of days earlier. Above is a photo of the mise en place, along with the nems Walt had bought.

And there, above, is a photo of the chow main as it looked after it was "wokked"; I use that term because one French recipe for chow main I found on the internet used the verb woker to describe the process of stir-frying the vegetables and noodles.

Here's the chow main as we served and ate it, with both sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds.

Times change

We changed our clocks early this morning. I was very groggy when I got out of bed and forgot to do a blog post. Oh well. Tomorrow, I guess. A+.

Julienned collard greens, pork belly slices, and smoked chicken

This was yesterday's lunch at our house — collards; slices of poitrine de porc fumée (smoked pork breast or "belly"; and smoked chicken. The little yellow logs are cornmeal dumplings. The julienned collard greens are slightly messy to work with, but even shredded this way they definitely have the flavor of collard greens. This is not haute cuisine, but substitute spinach, sauerkraut, sprouts, or cabbage for the collards, and it's very French.

Curry with meatballs, potatoes, and Brussels sprouts

Yesterday morning we made a batch of Swedish-meatball-style meatballs using 600 grams of ground beef and 350 grams of ground pork. That made about 40 small meatballs. It turns out that the Swedish meatball recipe I followed (Alton Brown's) doesn't have anything particularly Swedish about it. We had made a batch of these meatballs a while back and had ended up eating some of them with spaghetti and tomato sauce. Delicious. This time, I decided to make meatballs in a curry sauce. I found recipes on the internet called Pakistani-style curried meatballs. Delicious too, as it turned out, with Brussels sprouts and potatoes.

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I steamed the Brussels sprouts and put them pre-cooked into the curry sauce, which I made with coconut milk using curry paste that we had in the freezer. The nice thing about these meatballs is that they are plump and juicy. They dont fall apart when you cook them. We cooked them and some small potatoes in our air-fryer and put them pre-cooked into the curry sauce too. Why do these meatballs not fall apart when you cook them? First, we put two eggs as a binder, along with a couple of sliced of bread that we cut up and soaked in a little bit of milk. Then we put the ground meat mixture into a stand mixer and mixed it for about five minutes to make it into a smooth paste.

Here's the result after we let the pre-cooked sprouts, meaballs, and potatoes in the curry sauce and let them simmer for about 10 minutes to make sure everything was hot and completely cooked.

Caldo verde, anyone?

This week our local SuperU is having its annual (or semi-annual?) Portuguese days. Products imported from Portugal are featured, including sausages, hams, beans (black-eyed peas, pinto beans, and black beans, as well as — here's the kicker — collard greens. I went to the store yesterday and bought out the few packages of collards they had on display. They were frozen greens cut into julienne (tiny shreds). I bought five of packages — about a kilogram in all.

I've never seen collard greens prepared and sold this way. I'm looking forward to trying them. I think I'll use some of them in recipes that call for spinach. We'll see what that's like. Apparently, people in Portugal use julienned collard greens in a soup that's called Caldo verde ("green soup or chowder), which also includes potatoes.

You might not know that France, at least central France, has a large Portuguese population. Collard greens are a variety of cabbage that is enjoyed by the Portuguese as well as by Americans, especially in the southern states. Collards are called by various names in France, where they are not widely available. Some of the names are chou cavalier, chou perpétuel, and chou fourrager. They are very similar to kale. By the way, I haven't been seeing as many vendors in local markets selling kale as I used to see, say five or six years ago. That's too bad.

Endives, jambon, et sauce Mornay

I've posted about this dish, called gratin d'endives au jambon, many times. It's braised Belgian endives wrapped in slices of jambon de Paris (boiled ham), and baked in a sauce Mornay, which is a cheese sauce (a Béchamel sauce with cheese melted in it). Here's a link to a post about it (or two actually, parts 1 and 2) that I did years ago. I'll just post these recent pictures today...

Quick and easy lunch (or dinner)

Yesterday or the day before an e-mail from the Food section of the New York Times landed in my Gmail account. It was about beans, and what a good and easy product they are to use — especially out of a can. It gave a lot of ideas for dressing up the idiomatic "pot of beans" to make them more appetizing.

I took inspiration from that article and opened up a can of white beans (often called cannelini in the U.S. or lingots in France). I decided to flavor them with dried herbs — oregano, chives, etc. — that I soaked in warm water for a few minutes before adding them and the soaking water to the beans. I also put in some diced shallot, garlic, and bell peppers that I sweated in olive oil, and a couple of bay leaves. We enjoyed them with some smoked chicken that I bought at the supermarket.

Beans that are sold in cans are already cooked. You don't have to soak or cook them at all, unless you want to add some aromatic ingredients the way I did. The flavor and texture of beans (except haricots verts) don't seem to be altered by the canning process, so they taste the same as dried beans that you soak and cook yourself. Actually, the ingredients listed on the label of the canned beans I buy are just eau (water), haricots blancs secs trempés (dried white beans, soaked), sel (salt), and arôme naturel d'ail (natural garlic flavoring). (I wonder what that last ingredient is all about.)

It's almost funny....

These were yesterday morning's weather maps showing the forecast for the day — morning and afternoon. And it all came true. If it weren't so miserable, it would almost be funny. Joking about it helps a little. Should we build an arc?

Yesterday, our neighbors from Blois, whose maison de campagne is the house across the road from ours, had a birthday party there for a member of the family. They had invited 25 people. It rained off and on all day. I went over there to say bonjour at noontime.

I talked to one gentleman that I don't remember meeting before. He appeared to be about my age, maybe older. He said he has had a bad cold for two months now. Congestion, coughing, teary itchy eyes, aches and pains. So have I, I told him. We compared notes and commiserated. The eldest of the clan, a woman who is nearly 90 years old now, said hello to me but wouldn't faire la bise or even stand close enough to me for us to be able to talk. She was too afraid of catching what I've got.

Spinach/Mushroom lasagna

Here are some photos of a pan of spinach and mushroom lasagna that I made last week. I used frozen spinach, fresh mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, tomato puree, ricotta cheese, and mozzarella cheese. Here's a link to a recipe for a similar lasagne from Elise Bauers Simply Recipes web site.

Except for the large picture of the finished product, the pictures are in chronological order. First you cook the spinach/mushroom filling. As it cooks, mash the ricotta cheese. Put a layer of tomato slices or tomato puree in a lasagne pan. Arrange layers of lasagna noodles, spinach filling, and mashed ricotta over that. My lasagne had three layers. The top layer is noodles, sauce, and rough cubes of mozzarella (looks like popcorn but it isn't). Bake for 30 or 40 minutes until the cheese has melted and browned.

Pasta and pesto, with a twist

Yesterday's lunch was pasta and pesto, as you can see in these pictures. You might wonder where we get fresh basil at this time of year. Well, we don't. We make pesto using radish leaves. You may have noticed that we eat a lot of radishes in springtime, when they are at their best. When the "tops" (leaves) are pretty, we wash them, and then blitz them with some olive oil using a stick blender. Into the freezer they go. Are radishes sold with their leaves still attached in the U.S.?

I almost forgot to mention that I bought another smoked chicken at the supermarket a day or two ago. We had some of the smoked chicken breast meat as a side dish with the pasta and pesto.

When we decide to eat some radish-leaf pesto, we let the ground-up leaves thaw, add grated Parmesan cheese along with some pine nuts or powdered hazelnuts or almonds (plus a pressed garlic clove or two) and stir that all up. We put a good "puddle" of pesto at the bottom of a big bowl and add pasta lifted right out of the water it has boiled in, and stir it again. The cheese melts. If the pesto is too thick add a few tablespoons of the hot pasta water to thin it to the desired consistency.

Confinement

We are confined not to quarters but to our property, unless there is a compelling reason to leave it. Blame the weather. One chore I would really like to get done is emptying the greenhouse. All the plants and especially all the junk needs to go outdoors so that I can clean the inside. But there is still a risk of frost and some plants might not survive outdoors. On top of that, most of the plants that have spent the winter outside need to be repotted.

The primrose bloom in our yard and hamlet is nearing its peak right now. I can't stop taking pictures of them because the colors are good for my eyes and my morale.

The grass really needs to be mowed, but the ground is still squishy and soft. With the rain predicted for this week, we'll still have plenty left to do when April comes.

The plant above is one that my mother had growing in her back yard in North Carolina until she sold the house in 2005. Back then, I took some cuttings and brought them to Saint-Aignan, where I put them in a pot. The plant comes back every year but now really needs a bigger pot. On the left, our cars won't be getting much of a workout this spring. Blame the weather. Mostly they get short trips to one of our two nearby supermarkets.

Soupe de poulet aux nouilles

This is what I did with the leftover diced chicken meat after I made that Morbiflette the other day. I made chicken-noodle soup. I had taken all the meat off the chicken carcass and then boiled the carcass with carrots, leeks, bay leaves, a turnip, etc. With that broth and the vegetables I made the soup, using yellow Asian wheat noodles.

Foggy views of the Renaudière hamlet and vineyard

We've had a couple of days of sunny weather. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be even nicer. Then we're in for a week of rainy, stormy weather, with mild temperatures. That's what the weather woman on TéléMatin just told us. On verra... ce qu'on verra.