Potted duck — confit de canard

How easy is it buy duck in your country? How expensive is it? In France, duck is not an exotic treat. It's everyday fare and it's not expensive. Breast filets and leg/thigh sections are there in the butcher section of the supermarket, right next to chicken, turkey, and rabbit (!) parts. You can also find jars of duck or goose fat on the shelves of every supermarket, to be used as a cooking and flavoring ingredient.

Duck cooked in duck fat until tender and succulent is called confit de canard.
(The dark specks are thyme leaves.)

Back in days before people had refrigerators, the way duck was preserved for the winter was to cook it and then store it in its own fat in cellar or other chilly place. Goose was done the same way — the two birds have a thick layer of fat that is easy to render (melt) and that congeals at low temperatures. Packed in jars or pots and covered completely with fat, the duck  or goose pieces are protected from contact with air and can be kept for months in a cellar or an unheated outbuilding.

Just wipe or shake the marinade ingredients off the duck pieces...

To preserve the duck — to make confit de canard, in other words — the first step is to "cure" the duck pieces in salt. Leg/thigh sections are the parts that normally are turned into confit, because the breast is usually treated as a steak and pan roasted or grilled and served rare. The duck pieces cure in salt for hours or even days. For good flavor, chopped onion, chopped garlic, black peppercorns, bay leaves, thyme, cloves or allspice, and even hot red pepper flakes are added along with the salt.

...and pack them into a pot or baking dish for slow cooking.

After they're marinated and cured, the duck parts are just wiped with a cloth (not rinsed in water) to remove any salt kernels that haven't melted, along with the peppercorns, onion, garlic, etc. Then they're put in a pot or a baking dish and enought melted duck fat is poured on to completely cover them. They cook for an hour or two at low temperature on top of the stove or in the oven until they are succulent and the meat is almost falling off the bone.

Pour on enough melted duck fat to cover the duck pieces completely, and then poach them.

After cooking, the duck is left in its own fat and stored in a cool place. It's better to let the meat continue to "cure" for a few weeks or months before re-melting the fat and removing the duck pieces. There's some kind of chemical reaction between the meat, the fat, and the salt that transforms the duck into something more delicious than cooked "fresh" duck could ever be.

Canard confit — slow-cooked duck, ready to be stored for weeks or months in the cellar

A preservation method that was a necessity before the advent of modern freezing and refrigeration technologies continues to be practiced because it produces a luxurious food with an inimitable taste and texture.

More photos from Le Grand-Pressigny

Here are a few more pictures that I took in Le Grand-Pressigny in late August. It's a beautiful village — town, really — that is worth the visit, especially on a fine day when you can walk through the little narrow streets, the local parks, and some of the surrounding countryside. But be forewarned — some of the streets are pretty steep.

Walt, Lulu, Nick, and Callie approching a one-lane bridge over the Claise River in Le Grand-Pressigny

We have British friends who bought a little vacation house in Le Grand-Pressigny six or seven years ago. When they are here, we often drive down to visit them, and we often spend the night so that we can have dinner with them and not have to drive home in the dark. We usually go on long walks with the dogs while we're down there.

The sign on the old train station — train service to the town was ended many years ago.

Le Grand-Pressigny is an hour's drive south of the city of Tours, in the southern part of the old Touraine province. Where we live is on the far eastern edge of Touraine, and Le Grand-Pressigny is a little more than an hour's drive southwest of Saint-Aignan. It's a pretty drive, so it's better to do it in the daytime.

A house reflected in a street mirror that lets drivers see if any cars are coming around a blind corner in town

The village, which now has a population of about one thousand, used to be home to twice as many people, back in the 1850s. Now a lot of the houses — and there are many beautiful ones — are used as vacation homes, by French as well as British people. By way of comparison, Saint-Aignan, which doesn't seem to be much bigger than Le Grand-Pressigny when you walk around the town, has a population of nearly four thousand.

Looking back at the same house, across the street from the mirror

Two rivers, the Claise and the Aigronne, come together in Le Grand-Pressigny. Walt recently posted a picture of Callie standing in front of the changing booths on what used to be a swimming beach on the Claise, across the road from the old train station. The village must have been a resort town at some point in its history — maybe it still is.

A water strider on the smooth waters of the Aigronne River in Le Grand-Pressigny

Tim, an Englishman who with his spouse Pauline lives near Le Grand-Pressigny, reported in a comment on my post yesterday that he had measured more than 50 mm — 2 inches — of rainfall yesterday. Walt just checked our rain gauge and it showed we got a total of 38 mm of rain yesterday, or about an inch and half. We needed it.

By the way, I did a series of posts about Le Grand-Pressigny back in January 2007, after our first visit there. You can find them in my blog archives, organized by date, or by searching for Grand-Pressigny using the blog's search feature. Or click this link and scroll down through the posts.

Rain, memories, and our own "big dig"

We're expecting more than an inch of rain today. This morning, Walt is planning to go to the open-air market in Saint-Aignan to get us a guinea hen (une pintade) for tomorrow's lunch — unless the rain is really pouring down. We'll see.

Summer weather is just a memory. This is the Claise River in Le Grand-Pressigny...

...where we took a walk in late August with friends Jean and Nick. Walt and Callie posed for a photo.

Today's rain will be a test of our roof repair, which now dates back nearly three months. Since the roofer was here in June, the only significant rain we've had was back in early August. The roof passed that test. Let's hope it passes today's too.

You can see how brown the grass in the back yard is right now. Soon to change...

Yesterday a big piece of digging equipment was parked out behind our hedge and left for, I assume, the weekend. It's a backhoe of some kind. The work of undergrounding the power lines that bring electricity up to our hamlet must finally be beginning.

Will the grands travaux begin on Monday?

The crew putting in the underground wires will have to dig a trench along the road down the hill a distance of about 500 yards. Then they'll take out the tall concrete poles that hold up the existing wires. At least today's rain will soften up our rock-hard clay-and-limestone soil and make the digging easier.

Autumn weather = kitchen tasks

It's amazing how fast our summer ended. Thinking back, it had started just as abruptly. It's as if meteorological forces looked at the calendar, saw July 1, and combined to create hot sunny weather for les grandes vacances. The sun beat down all through July and August, which were two of the warmest months in France in a decade.

Then September arrived, and just a few days in, the weather changed again. Sunny skies turned gray, high temperatures dropped into the 60s F, with nicer days in the low 70s. Drizzle became our lot in life. We got garden work done — the tomato harvest is ongoing, the greens are planted for an early winter harvest, apples are covering the ground out back.

Slow-roasted pork shoulder for winter meals

So it's time to work in the kitchen and prepare food for the winter. Pickles... check. Tomato sauce... we start this weekend. Apple sauce and apple jelly... next week. Confit de canard... the duck legs are marinating, the graisse is in the fridge, waiting to be melted. Pulled pork... check — as of yesterday.

Meanwhile, our supermarkets are in autumn mode too. Now that the tourists have gone home, prices for fresh produce and meats seem to have dropped back to their pre-summer levels. I think supermarkets around Saint-Aignan take advantage of summertime, and all the visitors the area attracts from the Paris region and elsewhere, to realign their offerings and push prices upward. Parisians are used to paying 25 to 50% more for many grocery items than we pay out here in the country. Why disappoint them?

Tomatoes, late but enormous, for September salads and wintertime sauces

And it's not just prices. The offerings are different. Meat, for example. This week at the local SuperU you could buy a front quarter of a hog — shoulder, hock, ribs, neck bones, and even the foot (good for adding to a stew to make the broth more unctuous) — for just two euros per kilogram. Or you could choose just the pork shoulder, including the shank, for 2.50 euros/kilo. I don't think many people from the city would know what to do with all that meat at one time.

Six pounds of "pulled" pork

People in the country do know. Many have big freezers and cellars. Personally, I bought a pork shoulder — nearly 6 kilograms, or about 13 lbs. — for 14 euros. The shank end went into the freezer raw, for a boiled dinner like a potée auvergnate later on. On Wednesday, the shoulder, whole, went into the oven for a slow roasting that lasted 8 hours. When it came out, I removed the rind and most of the fat, which Callie will enjoy nibbling on over the next few weeks.

Tomatoes, sliced and salted, waiting to be dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Then I pulled the lean meat off the bones, chopped it and tore it into shreds, and seasoned it with paprika, cayenne pepper, thyme, salt, pepper and vinegar. The shoulder yielded nearly 6 lbs. of tender, lean, slow-roasted "pulled" pork. Into the freezer it went, packed in one-pound bags, for our autumn and winter meals. Or at least five pounds of it went into the freezer. The other pound (maybe a little less) was yesterday's lunch, along with a nice salad made with a gigantic beefsteak tomato from the garden. Autumn pleasures.

Cucumber abundance –> dill pickles

Our garden has produced a lot of courgettes / zucchini this year, but it produced even more cucumbers. We didn't know what to do with them all. Cold cucumber-yogurt soup was good, as was sliced cucumber salad in either a yogurt or vinaigrette dressing.

Pickled cucumber spears in vinegar with spices and herbs

But the cukes kept coming. Actually, we had a plan. We wanted to make American-style dill pickles. We had even planted some dill out in the garden for that purpose. So I looked for recipes and came up with several for dill pickle spears. Our cukes grew large, so splitting them into either spears or disks seemed to make the most sense.

The first step in making pickles is to salt the cukes down for 24 hours or so to let them disgorge some of the water they contain. I hope I put in the right amount of salt, and I think I did because I tasted the cukes after their salt cure and they were good.

The cukes after their salt cure, waiting to be packed into jars

Then I boiled up a sufficient quantity of vinegar with different spices and herbs — mustard and coriander seeds, dried dill leaves, allspice berries, black peppercorns, bay leaves, etc. — improvising all the way. When that liquid cooled, I tasted it too, to decide if it was right. It seemed pretty good.

We ended up making nine — count'em, 9 — liters (quarts) of dill pickles. In one batch, I just used distilled vinegar (vinaigre blanc in France) and spices. In the other batch, I added white wine to the vinegar to soften and sweeten it slightly. I read about doing that somewhere, and it said to use about one measure of wine for two measures of vinegar to cut the acidity of the liquid. Some people would put sugar in the pickling liquid, but I didn't.

The salt-cured spears before I poured hot vinegar over them to fill the jars

We hope these are going to be good pickles. On the advice of a friend in Illinois who has a lot more experience with pickle-making and canning than I have (thanks, Harriett), I processed the filled jars in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes to sterilize and seal them. We haven't opened a jar to taste them yet. The recipes said to wait a month or even two before opening the first jar, and that time is now approaching. The proof of the pickle will be in the October eating.

Pizza aux pommes de terre

It's not often that I can show you beforehand what we are having for lunch today, but today I can because the pizza in the photo below is one we made on August 20. Today's will be a repeat performance. Each of us eats one pizza and then a salad. Walt makes the crust, which is a no-knead bread dough that cooks up just crispy enough but not crackery.

In France, another name for this kind of potato pizza might be « pizza campagnarde » — country-style pizza. In our version, there's no tomato. It's basically cream, potatoes, and cheese. The potatoes are pre-cooked and then sliced for the pizza.

Well, there are a couple of other ingredients. Meat is one; either bacon, sausage, chicken, or turkey, cut into small pieces. And hot peppers in one form or another spice it up a little. We have banana peppers that we grew and pickled in vinegar last year. One of those chopped up and put on the pizza under the potatoes perks the whole thing up. The cheese can be Cantal, Comté, Emmenthal, Cheddar, or Mozzarella — whatever you like.

De la ratatouille

According to the Grand Robert dictionary, the French dictionary of reference, « ratatouille » in its modern, everyday sense means:

Mod., cour. Plat d'origine niçoise, mélange de courgettes, de tomates, d'aubergines, etc. cuites ensemble à l'huile.

It's a vegetable dish that originated in the Nice area in southeastern France, and it's a mixture of zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, and other summer vegetables cooked together in oil. Olive oil, of course. Other vegetables that go into ratatouille are red and/or green bell peppers, onions, and garlic.

Ratatouille niçoise in the early stages of cooking

Pronounce ratatouille this way: [rah-tah-TOO-yuh], with the stress on the third syllable. It's easier to make than to say, maybe. Slice or dice an onion or two. Roughly chop some fresh ripe tomatoes. Seed and cut up some bell peppers. Peel (or don't bother to peel) some zucchini and eggplant, and then slice or chop those up. Add a couple of cloves of garlic.

Cook everything in a big pot with olive oil, thyme, salt, and pepper. Let it cook until the vegetables are soft. Some recipes say you can mash everything together. Others say you want to be able to detect the individual pieces all the vegetables. Eat the ratatouille hot or cold, depending on the weather and what you're having with it.

Plum tart

I didn't make this one. I just took the pictures. Walt cooked a plum tart yesterday — and it was beautiful as usual.

 The plum tart — la tarte aux prunes — ready to serve

The greenish yellow plums came from a tree out on the edge of the vineyard. It's the second pie-type thing we've made with them. The other was my creation, a plum cobbler (using Elise's Simply Recipes method). It was really good but not nearly as photogenic.

The tart ready for its final baking and glazing

Walt always blind-bakes his pie crust. In the pre-cooked crust, he put a layer of almond powder on the bottom to absorb excess moisture and then covered that with a half-inch layer of apple sauce, which he had made from apples off our trees. Then he pitted the plums, cut them into quarters, and arranged them on top. He glazed the tart with strained apricot jam.

Zucchini boats « au fromage de chèvre »

A while back we saw a French cooking show on which the host prepared zucchini ‘boats’ — courgettes farcies — stuffed with ricotta and parmesan cheese, along with pine nuts (pignons de pin). We had a good crop of zukes this summer, so we made those, and they were delicious.

Zucchini boats stuffed with ricotta, parmesan, and pine nuts

The zucchini kept coming and we were having a hard time keeping up... isn't that the eternal story of growing summer squash? You almost always end up harvesting many more than you know what to do with. We had a surplus, as we had a cucumber surplus too.

I had an idea for a variation on the ricotta/parmesan stuffing for squash. What about goat cheese? Here we are in the Loire Valley, where some of the best goat cheeses in the world are produced: Selles-sur-Cher, Valençay, Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine, and more.

Our local Intermarché has a whole refrigerated case full of locally made goat cheeses at all stages of ripeness and in all sorts of shapes. The cheeses go from spreadable, cream-cheese-like chèvre frais, to slightly riper and more crumbly chèvre demi-sec, and all the way to nearly rock-hard dry, Parmesan-like aged chèvre sec (with « Je suis sec ! » stamped on the label).

Here's my goat cheese and walnut version of the stuffed zucchini, ready for the oven.

I figured a soft fresh goat cheese could stand in for Italian ricotta, and a hard dry goat cheese, grated, could stand in for grated Parmesan. The soft cheese gives consistency and background flavor, and the hard cheese gives a stronger but pleasant up-front flavor to the stuffing. Instead of pine nuts, we decided to use walnuts, and rather than mix them in we studded the top of each stuffed courgette with them.

Here's the recipe I based the goat-cheese stuffed zucchini boats on:

Zucchini ‘boats’ with cheese stuffing

3 large summer squash

250 g ricotta or fresh goat cheese

1 medium onion

80 g parmesan or hard goat cheese, grated

Toasted pine nuts or walnuts to taste

1 egg

Salt to taste

Olive or walnut oil for the baking dish

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C / 350ºF.

Wash the squash and cut them in half lengthwise. Scoop out the center of each squash half to make 'boats' out of them. Chop the scooped-out flesh and dice the onion. Sauté that mixture on low heat for 5 to 10 minutes to evaporate some of the moisture in the vegetables.

Toast the pine nuts or chopped walnuts if you're going to mix them into the stuffing. If you plan to put them on top, they will toast in the oven as the stuffed zucchini cook.

Mash the soft cheese and mix in the grated hard cheese. Add the egg and mix well. When the sauteed onion and squash flesh has cooled down, mix it into the cheese stuffing.

Fill each zucchini boat with the cheese stuffing. Film a baking pan with olive or walnut oil, and drizzle some over the top of each stuffed boat. Put the dish in the oven for 30 minutes or until nicely browned. Serve hot.

Tasting Touraine-Mesland and Touraine-Amboise wines

We had our picnic with friends J. and N. after all yesterday, and we didn't exactly have it indoors. We set ourselves up out on the front deck, where if rain fell we would be sheltered. The rain didn't fall, but the sun hardly peeped out from behind dark clouds all afternoon.

We needed the predicted rain but will have to do without. According to one local source, we're not supposed to get any rain for the next two weeks. Everybody is talking about how dry the weather and the ground is, apparently. It's true that our grass and the neighbors' is completely brown, parched by the sun.

After our semi-indoor picnic, we set off to accomplish a mission we had planned about two years ago. It had never worked out before, but yesterday it did. We went wine-tasting. What a surprise, eh? Our destination was the village of Limeray, on the north side of the Loire River, about 45 minutes from Saint-Aignan by car. Limeray (pop. 1,100) is near the big and famous town of Amboise and within the Touraine-Amboise wine-production area.

Actually, our first stop was in Mesland, closer to Blois. Mesland is a wine village that has its own appellation — namely, Touraine-Mesland. We stopped in at the Château Gaillard winery, which practices bio-dynamic, organic grape-growing.

We tasted several wines — one white, one rosé, and two or three reds. I thought the white was interesting and I learned something about the appellation that I hadn't known before: the Touraine-Mesland white are made from an assemblage of Chenin Blanc and Chardonnay grape juices. I had always assumed that they were Sauvignon Blanc wines, as are the whites produced in the part of Touraine appellation where we live.

I liked the white and the rosé we tasted at Château Gaillard but I didn't find the reds to my taste at all. One was dry and metallic, one had only a slightly more palatable fruitiness, and the third, aged in oak barrels, tasted almost of kerosene on my palate. I passed on buying any of those.

I don't think there is an actual château at Château Gaillard — maybe there used to be one. We had friends in the village of Mesland seven or eight years ago and went there fairly often, but the people we knew moved to Nice and we've lost touch with them. Actually, they lived right across the little road from the Château Gaillard tasting room. There's no château in view.

Next, we drove not on the main highway but on along the narrow, curvy road that parallels the Loire farther north, passing through Monteaux and Cangey, before arriving at Limeray. The villages are pretty, with their old churches and a mix of old and new houses in the typical Loire Valley style. Arriving at Limeray, we stopped at the first winery we noticed, the Domaine des Bessons. It's owned by a couple named Péquin (Brigitte and François), and it was Madame Péquin who hosted a tasting for us. She said that she and her husband bought the winery, which includes their home, the tasting room, and a cave or cellar carved into the limestone bluff that rises up above the northern edge of the Loire river valley, in 1987. It was nearly a ruin and they have restored it nicely.

We tasted six wines, all of which were excellent. The Touraine-Amboise whites are made with 100% Chenin Blanc grapes, as in Vouvray, but have their own special character because the soil and climate are different from Vouvray's. The reds in Touraine-Amboise are based mostly on the grape known locally as Côt and internationally now as Malbec. Blending grapes are Gamay and Cabernet Franc, as in much of Touraine. We ended up buying a selection of all the six wines we tasted because they were all excellent.

Finally, we stopped in at Limeray's cave coopérative — the local wine co-op. That's where I took the pictures in this post. It's a pretty kitschy place and it was full of local people buying wines pumped directly from huge stainless steel vats into jugs and jerrycans that the customers brought with them. We bought some wines — a rosé and a red — in the packaging that's called a "bag-in-box" or fontaine à vin. That's wine for everyday consumption. We only buy bottles when we are going to serve the wine on special occasions

Walt took more photos than I did during the afternoon and he'll no doubt be posting some of them over the next few weeks. I might post more about the Domain des Bessons and its wines over the next few days because I really enjoyed the tasting there.

Dog days

That's la canicule in French, and you can see that the term derives from 'canine'. Officially dog days are over, but yesterday the weather wasn't paying attention to the calendar. We had what is called « un soleil de plomb » in French: a 'leaden' sun. It's idiomatic, and very different from English usage of 'leaden' — our 'leaden sky' is dull and dark gray, usually cold, while the French soleil de plomb expresses the idea that the sun is a heavy burden bearing down on the Earth and its people.

Callie, sunbathing (must be a nude beach)

Anyway, it seems to be over. This morning is blustery, and storm clouds are moving in. Yesterday at lunchtime, Walt looked off the deck down toward the front gate and was surprised to see Callie sprawled out on the gravel driveway. What was the poor dog thinking? Was she warming her bones one last time? She didn't stay there long.

No crowds on this "beach" — it is September, after all.

Later in the afternoon, Callie and I went out in the back yard and played with the hose. She loves to try to drink or bite water squirting from the nozzle. She runs around me in wide circles while I do my best to wet her down. She's in heaven. Sorry, no pictures... When the temperature outside is 90 or so, her coat dries really fast. By the time we got back from taking a short afternoon walk, she was all dry and a little bit cleaner than she had been.

You can see how deep the shadows were yesterday, with that sun beating down.

We had of course planned outdoor activities for today — a picnic in a park. We'll have to have an indoor picnic, I think. It's too windy, even if the rain holds off. Our food would be blowing all around, and the temperature is supposed to top out at 70.

Going out with a bang

Okay, it's officially too hot. It was near 90ºF yesterday afternoon out on the deck and up in the loft. Today's predicted high is 33ºC in Tours, Paris, Reims, and Lyon — between 90 and 93. Those are the spots in France that are supposed to be hotter than a firecracker on the 14th of July (Bastille Day, ha ha ha). Summer is going out with a bang.

Vines baking in the sun at 5 p.m. on September 4, 2013 — seen from the back yard

Why is it that I always end up out back digging in the dirt on the hottest day possible? For weeks, I had long been planning to go pull the weeds in the plot in the back corner of the yard, till the soil, and and put some autumn plants in there. But first we had to harvest the dill and the coriander (cilantro) we had sown there early in the summer. We wanted to gather the seeds of those plants.

I'd had these little collard and kale plants in pots for a month or two. Now they're planted for a fall crop.

So I finally was ready to till up the plot yesterday and put in the plants I had in mind. It was hot, but I wasn't out there in the hottest part of the day. The photos in this post, however, are ones I took at around 5 p.m., when the temperature was at the top of the scale and the sun was at its brightest. I was out watering, to try to make sure my kale and collard greens survive. Then I came back in and collapsed. No air conditioning here...

Somebody asked about the volunteer tomato plant that's growing in the gravel outside the back door. Here it is (two of them actually, one much smaller) surrounded by some potted plants.

With any luck, the greens will grow this fall. They're going to need more water than we've been getting, but tomorrow the weather is supposed to turn stormy. Over the weekend, temperatures are going to fall from 30+ down to 20ºC (from 90 to 70 in fahrenheit), according to the forecast. I'm looking forward to that.

You can see the holes some animal has dug at the base of these tomato plants, exposing the roots.

That marten / fouine or whatever has come back and done some more digging around the base of our tomato plants. He must be desperate for moisture and something to eat. The roots are partially uncovered. I need to go cover them this morning, before the hot afternoon sun cooks them. It would be a shame to lose our tomato crop at this point, after waiting so long.

P.S. I just came back in from repairing the damage to the tomato plants and watering them. One of them had been completely dug up (the one with shriveled up leaves in the photo). I guess we can ripen those tomatoes inside if we need to.

Deck plants enjoying this fine weather

According to news and weather reports, this past July was the third hottest month of July in France in 100 years. The only two other months of July that were warmer occurred in 1983 (I missed that one, because I moved back to the U.S. in August 1982) and 2006 (that one I remember — CHM was visiting, and he and I toured all around the region).

Who would have predicted such a fine summer after all the rain and gray skies we suffered through in the spring, including June? In fact, we were completely waterlogged for the first five months of 2013, and we thought we might not have a summer at all. I heard on one recent weather report that this summer — July and August combined, and the summer weather continues even now — has landed in the top five in French records-keeping history.

Coleus plants on a window ledge

The plants out on the deck — I can't stop using that term, but I think what we have is not a deck but more exactly a terrace or a balcony — have been having a great summer, especially on the north side of the house. Sort of by chance I put plants out on the north side that love the bright indirect light they get there. (Our high temperature is supposed to approach 90ºF today.)

 This one doesn't mind the morning sun, and it gets shade the rest of the day.

The coleus plants in the pictures here are ones that I got at a plant nursery in May or June of 2012. They grew really well last year on the same window ledge. I brought them in for the winter. They got very leggy but survived. Three months ago I took cuttings and rooted them in water. Those I potted up in long window boxes and placed outside the north-facing living room window. I didn't know whether coleus plants were annuals or not, but it turns out that they over-winter just fine — indoors.

 Kalanchoe flowers

The kalanchoe plants above are ones that were here when we moved into this house 10 years ago. The previous owner left them behind, in pots. I've worked with them all this time, repotting them as necessary, and succeeding in getting blooms every summer — some years more, some years less. This year has been moderately successful.

 Zebrina, the inch plant

Finally, the zebrina plant in the photo just above is one that I pinched from a planter box in the town of Luynes on the Loire river west of Tours several summers ago. It was a big plant and was obviously happy outdoors, so I took just one little branch. I coddled it and have turned it into several potted plants — six or seven — of which this one is the best-looking right now. It enjoys being under the summer sky but not in direct sunlight. I've heard it called an "inch plant" — because it grows fast, I guess.

Tandoori chicken on an electric grill

A few years ago, we bought a little electric grill that we could put out on the terrace and cook sausages, steaks, chops, and chicken on. I know it's not charcoal, but quoi l'enfer, as Walt says. A charcoal fire would be too smoky so close to the living room and kitchen.

Actually, what we cooked was half a chicken.

We cook on the electric grill all summer. We even had an electrical outlet installed on a wall out on the terrace just for this purpose. The other day we cooked "tandoori" spiced chicken on the grill and it was excellent. The weather here is still summery, and we are still cooking on the electric grill several times a week.

To go with the chicken, we made some fresh green beans sautéed in garlicky olive oil...

 ...and we finished up some leftover scalloped potatoes from a couple of days earlier.

The electric grill has a pan to catch any dripping fat or juices from the food you're barbecuing. You fill the pan with water before you start cooking. That way, there's no smoke when fat falls in the pan. And the water helps slightly steam the meat or vegetables being grilled. It's a great little grill.

Making our own bread

The bread lady has been on vacation for the past two weeks. She also took two weeks off earlier in August. That means that we have had to fend for ourselves when it comes to bread, rather than depend on her four-times-a-week deliveries.

There are basically three solutions when it comes to bread: (1) get in the car every day and drive five miles or more round-trip to buy fresh bread from one of the local boulangeries; (2) buy several baguettes at a time and put them in the freezer, thawing some for consumption each day; or (3) make your own. I've been doing a combination of all three, but making my own has been the most satisfying.

Besides being better shaped, the loaves (épis) on the right cooked at a higher temperature and have a more pleasing color.

All four loaves were made with 400 grams of all-purpose flour and 100 grams of oat flour.

I'm pretty pleased with the result. I use a stand mixer (a Kitchenaid) to mix and knead the dough. I bake the loaves of bread on a pizza stone in the oven. Here is the ingredient list for three to four small loaves:

400 grams of all-purpose flour (French type 55)

100 grams of some other flour (corn meal, oat flour, rye flour)

1 package (5 grams) of active dry yeast

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of honey

about 1 cup of warm water

Those proportions have been working really well for me. The amount of water is approximate. The only way to judge the precise amount is by feel. Put all the dry ingredients — flours, salt, yeast — in the mixer bowl and stir them together well. Then slowly pour in the warm water, with the honey dissolved in it, as the mixer turns the ingredients until a ball of dough forms and feels not too sticky to the touch. The mixer kneads the dough for 10 minutes, and then I knead it by hand on a work surface for two or three minutes before I put it into a bowl to let it rise.

These two fat loaves were made with 400 grams of all-purpose flour and 100 grams of corn meal.

Cover the bowl containing the dough ball with plastic wrap and then with a couple of kitchen towels to protect it from air currents and to keep the dough ball warm. It will double in size (volume) after an hour to 90 minutes of rising.

At that point, take the dough out of the bowl, using a pastry scraper if needed, and shape it into a loaves or boules as you want (make sure they'll fit on the pizza stone). Flour the work surface and the loaves lightly, and let the dough rise a second time. Score the tops of the loaves with a very sharp knife or a razor blade. I've found that letting the loaves rise on a floured wooden board for about an hour works well, and then it's easy to slide them off the board onto the hot pizza stone.

 This one's a couronne or crown of pain aux céréales (grains and seeds in the flour).

I've also found that cooking the bread at 250ºC works best — that's 480ºF. Lower temperatures don't give as good a result. It's important, also, to humidify the oven by pouring a cup or so of hot water into a shallow pan placed under the pizza stone near the floor of the oven. The steam produced gives the bread a nice crispy or crunchy crust, along with a tender moist crumb or mie. It takes about twenty minutes to cook small loaves. Then they need to cool on a rack before you cut and eat them.

As I said, this has been working really well for us during the bread lady's time off. I'll almost miss making bread when she resumes making her rounds tomorrow morning. But then, the professionally made bread is really good too...