Le château de Martinvast, en Normandie

I was working on organizing some photos that I took in 2004, a year or more before I started blogging. This is the Château de Martinvast, AKA the Château de Beaurepaire, near Cherbourg on the Cotentin peninsula. It's just 15 miles north of the village of Carteret. CHM and I were there to see old friends and to do some sightseeing.

I don't remember this château clearly. There are so many châteaux in France that it's hard to keep track of them. Martinvast was originally a medieval fortress, but it was badly damaged during the 100 Years' War in the 14th century between England and France. A Renaissance château was built on the site in the late 16th century. That building was modified over the counse of the 18th and early 20th centuries.

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.

Sliced Brussels sprouts with lardons and beans

This is a recipe I found entirely by accident on the internet the other day. Credit goes to Jacques Pépin.

The first step is to trim and slice a pound of Brussels sprouts. The easy way to slice them is with the slicing blade on your food processor. You can drop six or eight sprouts in the processor's "feed tube". Then do another small batch. In just a few minutes all the sprouts are sliced. I rinsed sliced sprouts in cold water after slicing them and then let them drip-dry in a colander before cooking them in a skillet on the stove.

The second ingredient is meat of some sort, if you want it. I used French smoked-pork lardons. Diced cooked chicken would be a good substitute, as would diced cooked pork or veal. Sauté the meat in a skillet and then sauté the Brussels sprouts in the same pan, adding oil or some other fat to taste.

The third and last ingredient is a cup or two of cooked beans. I used canned flageolet beans in mine. Jacques used canned white beans in his. Red beans would be give the dish a nice color contrast. Lentils would be good, as would black-eyed peas, etc.

'Tasha

This is a photo of Natasha, the Sheltie dog that we call 'Tasha. Her ninth birthday is coming up the week after next.

After posting yesterday about an omelette I made recently, I came across
this post about the same recipe from November 2025.

Eggs for lunch

Yesterday for our lunch I made an egg dish that I guess is a kind of omelet. Or a quiche cooked in a frying pan — a quiche sans pâte, or "crustless" quiche. One recipe for this type of egg dish that I just found calls it une omelette paysanne à la farine.



The photo on the right shows the flavor ingredients that went into the omelet/quiche we had. I also added some diced up some pre-cooked chicken breast. Smoked-pork lardons (bacon) would be good if you don't have chicken. Or don't add any meat at all.

The way to make such an omelette is to whisk four whole raw eggs together in a bowl or measuring cup. Add three generous tablepoons of cream, three of flour and three of finely grated cheese (Parmesan, for example), whisking all these ingredients together for make a smooth batter. Let the liquid mixture rest for a few minutes while you sauté flavor ingredients including, for example, mushrooms, onions, garlic, along with red, green, and yellow bell peppers, in a non-stick frying pan. Or cooked spinach, broccoli, or other green vegetables instead of peppers and mushrooms if you prefer.

When the vegetables are cooked, spread them evenly on the bottom of the frying pan and pour the egg batter over them into the frying pan. Cover the pan so that the eggs will start to heat through and set. If you use a pan with a metal handle, you can then set the pan in a hot oven and let the omelette start to brown on top. Sprinkle on a little more grated cheese if you want. Use a spatula to check if the omelet is sticking to the frying pan. Slide it out onto a serving platter, or serve it directly out the frying pan. We had ours with air-fryer French fries.

Mariner, marinade

Judy (and all), here's what the Larousse Gastronomique food encyclopedia says in its article about the verbe mariner: 

Mettre à tremper dans un liquide aromatique un ingrédient pendant un temps déterminé, pour l'attendrir et le parfumer. Cette pratique culinaire est très ancienne : vin, vinaigre, eau salée, herbes et épices permettaient non seulement d'adoucir le goût très fort du gibier, mais aussi de conserver plus longtemps des pièces de viande.

A marinade can flavor the foods that have been marinated. The marinade also contains spices and aromatic vegetables that add flavor. Marinated meats are less gamey and marinated fish are less fishy. Food can be submerged in a salt, wine, vinegar, or cultured milk (yogurt) marinade.

Aujourd'hui, on fait mariner les aliments surtout pour les parfumer, les aromatiser ou renforcer leur saveur. Diverses traditions gastronomiques font appel à ce procédé : dans les pays méditerranéens, pour les légumes et les poissons (sardines, charmoula, thon, achards, rougail, poivrons ou oignons marinés, champignons à la grecque) ; dans les pays nordiques, pour l'oie (salée et marinée, en Suède), la langue de bœuf à l'écarlate, le ambon, les quetsches (au vinaigre), les maquereaux (marinés au vin blanc), etc. ; en Inde, pour de nombreux ingrédients, marinés au lait caillé et aux épices ; au Japon et au Pérou, pour le poisson cru, mariné au citron (sashimi et ceviche).

Day 2 of the chicken in red wine

Some say that dishes like coq au vin and bœuf bourguignon actually improve with age, or are better the second day than they were the first day you eat them. Within reason... We'll be having our second lunch of our poulet au vin rouge today. At this point, the chicken is falling off the bone, the vegetables are very tender, and the red-wine sauce has become a gravy. As you can see, we are having it penne rigate pasta, but it would also be good with steamed or sautéed potatoes, steamed rice, or even polenta.

Faites colorer les morceaux de poulet

The next step is to take the marinated chicken pieces out of the marinade, dry them off, and brown them lightly in oil or butter or a combination the two.

After taking the chicken out of the marinade, strain the marinade and then brown the vegetables in the pan you browned the chicken pieces in.

Pour the marinade liquid (red wine in this case) into the pan with the browned and partially cooked vegetables. Place the browned chicken pieces on top of the vegetables. Add more liquid (water, wine, or chicken broth) so that the chicken parts are nearly completely covered. Simmer the chicken and vegetables for 30 minutes or more to be sure that everything is fully cooked.

Découpez le poulet

The first step in making a poulet braisé au vin rouge (coq au vin style) is to cut up the chicken. It dawns on me that you could buy chicken parts — you need two boneless breasts, two drumsticks, two thighs (boneless or on the bone), and two wings. You can use skinless chicken parts or leave the skin on. If you'd rather cut up a whole chicken to get these parts, you can make broth out of the carcass and trimmings.

Above left are the raw chicken pieces listed above. Above right are the same pieces after I poured on most of a bottle of red wine to start the marinating. The other ingredients in the marinade are carrot (diced or sliced into disks), parsley sprigs, chopped onion and garlic, thyme, black peppercorns, a couple of bay leaves, and (optionally) a few allspice berries.

Above are the same chicken pieces after they spent nearly 24 hours in the marinade (vegetables and red wine) and in the refrigerator.

Ce que nous allons manger ce weekend

Well, it's not these exact birds (which I photographed in 2005), but we are going to have chicken. Coq au vin, or Poulet au vin rouge if you prefer. This morning I'm preparing the ingredients for a marinade and cutting up the chicken, which I bought at the supermarket, into pieces we can braise in red wine (with smoked pork lardons) after they've spent the night soaking in the marinade.

Rain rain go away

I suppose plants like the ones above, which seem to be two different kinds of cyclamens, need weather like what you see below. Right now, it rains nearly every day — not hard rain, but never-ending rain, or fog, or mist, or drizzle. Today's forecast is for more of the same. As they used to say in Rouen (Normandy) when I spent a year there: Ici il ne pleut pas beaucoup... mais il pleut souvent.

Pouding au pain

Pouding means "pudding" and pain means "bread." So "bread pudding", which is a kind of pain perdu. I made some yesterday and flavored it with diced apple, whole pecans, yellow raisins, apple brandy, vanilla extract, sugar (cassonade which I remember being sold as "raw" sugar in the U.S.), and a small amount of maple syrup. The three main ingredients are stale bread — in our case, that means stale baguette cut into cubes (crusts and all), whole milk or even half-and-half, and eggs. Above is a photo of the pudding as it came out of the oven.

Here's is a photo showing what it looked like before I cooked it. And here's
a link to a post with a recipe that I published a decade ago.

2026 N.C. snow report

My home town, Morehead City in North Carolina, has a foot or more of snow on the ground this morning. My sister lives just two or three miles from the local National Weather Service Office, which reports 15 inches of snow. That's the biggest snowstorm that the area (Carteret County) has had since December of 1989 — or maybe in the history of weather record keeping. I remember my mother telling me about digging out after that 1989 storm. I had moved to California in 1986.

My sister, who still lives there, says she is snowed in and doesn't know when she'll be able to get out again. She doen't want to try to drive on snowy, icy roads and bridges. There is more water than land in Carteret County. All this makes our weather here in Saint-Aignan seem pleasant. Actually, the sky is clear here this morning.

Weekend weather

Since Christmas we've had more bad weather days like the ones were having this weekend than not. Cold rain is getting me down again. And we still have February and March to get through. The little red dot on the map above is approximately where Saint-Aignan is, and the black dot just to the left is the city of Tours. Paris is pretty much due north, in the rain belt.

This is the coldest, wettest winter we've had in years. Meanwhile, the eastern half of the U.S. is experiencing frozen precipitation of all sorts, and Arctic-like temperatures. Florida is having its coldest winter in decades. Coastal North Carolina, which gets snow about once a decade that melts away in less than 24 hours, is expecting icy weather for the next three or four days. The capital of Russia, Moscow, has had more snow this winter than in any year out of the last 200.

What has happened to global warming?

Vegetables, precipitation, and an arachnid

We made another batch of roasted vegetables yesterday, using a parsnip — un panais [pah-NAY] — and a big turnip un navet [nah-VAY] — left over from the first roasted vegetables we made a few days ago. This time I used the air fryer to cook the vegetables and I think they were better than the batch I made in the oven. Those were delicious, though, and the leftovers from them went into a delicious soup a couple of days ago.

This morning when I got up and went downstairs to the kitchen to make a pot of tea, look what I saw on the wall over the stove (below).

Légumes rôtis au four [2]

Before roasting them in the oven, we cut the winter vegetables into approximate one-inch cubes, tossed them in a small amount of olive oil, and seasoned them with black pepper, allspice, and herbs (thyme, bay leaves, and oregano).Toward the end of the cooking time (45 minutes, we added a few chicken tenderloins and drizzled some honey over everything.

C'est quoi qu'on mange à midi ?

Des légumes. Je parle de légumes d'hiver — des navets, des panais,  des oignons, de l'ail,
 des pommes de terre, une patate douce, et une carotte. On va les faire rôtir au four
avec de l'huile d'olive et des fines herbes, et peut-être un peu de miel et de poulet.

Bon appétit...

Now, and in 1989

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I don't often post pictures of myself. This blog isn't so much about me as it is about France. Anyway, on the left above is me today. On the right is me in a photo that was taken in 1989. I was 40 years old.

Walt and I had left Paris (where we met) in 1982 to go live and find jobs in Washington DC. For a variety of reasons, we ended up leaving DC for San Francisco in 1986. In 1989, I was working as managing editor of a computer magazine in San Francisco, and Walt was in graduate school at Berkeley.

In 2003, after 18 years there, we left California for Saint-Aignan, in the Loire Valley in France. We're still here.

Everything is coming up...

...no, not roses, but cyclamens. In our back yard, I mean. I think the woman who sold us the house we've been living in since 2003 used to buy little pots of cyclamens to set out on her window sills and when they stopped flowering in late spring, she would just pull them out of their pots and throw them outdoors. We've never done that, but her cyclamens still come up here every year in wintertime.

I'm headed out to get a haircut at nine this morning. I quit going in for regular haircuts last summer, when I started feeling arthritic and got tired of my short hair. It's really long now, and I'm tired of that. Back in the 1970s, when I lived in Rouen for a year and then in Paris for two or three years, I always had long hair. I didn't want to spend my money chez le coiffeur because my pay was low. And long hair on men was in style.