Les Desserts

I'll finish up with the meal we had in Bracieux (see yesterday's post) at the restaurant called Au Relais d'Artémis. I didn't get any good photos of the cheese plates we had just before dessert — lighting conditions, with dappled sunlight and intense contrasts, were difficult.

For our dessert, Walt and I ordered the Tarte Tatin, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was almost overwhelmingly caramelized. Tarte Tatin, as probably everybody knows by now, is an upside-down apple tart. It was invented in the region (la Sologne) in the 19th century.

For his dessert, CHM chose the pear poached in red wine, hollowed out, and filled with a sorbet (was it raspberry?). It looked awfully good, as you can see.

After dessert, we had coffee. For Walt and me, that meant an espresso served with a little chocolate tablet. CHM ordered a café allongé — a shot of espresso in a large cup with a pot of hot water he could add to dilute the strong coffee.

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On a different subject entirely, I'm pretty pleased with myself and with my "new" computer — the one I got back in March. After doing a lot of reading on the 'net, I finally figured out how to install Windows 7 alongside Windows 8.1 on the machine, so now I can boot up into either operating system that I want to use. Now I'll have to decide which system will become my main choice for daily use.

Entrées et plats au Relais d'Artémis à Bracieux

Last week, our friend CHM invited us to lunch up at the Relais d'Artémis near the Château de Chambord and the city of Blois. We've been there three times now, and it's an excellent restaurant with reasonable prices. The occasion for our lunch was the 11th anniversary of moving into our house near Saint-Aignan and the 10th anniversary of the first time CHM came and stayed here with us.

At the restaurant, we were able to sit outside on the patio and enjoy fine weather along with some fine cooking and food. Last summer, we wanted to have another restaurant in the village of Bracieux where we had had a very delicious meal earlier. Unfortunately, it was complet — completely booked — for the day of our outing.

We chose the Relais d'Artémis as a back-up plan a year ago, and now it has become one of our restaurants of choice in the Blois/Chambord area, for the food and the setting. We plan to return to the other Bracieux restaurant, Le Rendez-Vous des Gourmets, as soon as we can, by the way.

The menu we ordered from at the Relais was priced at 26 euros per person for first, main, and dessert courses. For 31 euros, you can have all that plus a cheese-and-salad course between the main dish and the dessert. We ordered a bottle of the local Cheverny rosé wine (18€) to drink with our meal.

Okay, what was the food like this time? CHM and I both ordered what you might call « le festival canard » — duck foie gras as a first course, and pan-roasted duck breast as the second. Foie gras is controversial in many countries but not in France, and it is delicious. It's the fattened liver of a fattened duck, served as a kind of pâté. This time it was served with a dollop of slow-cooked figs and two little crispy pastries filled with a creamy stuffing, and with some good bread.

The duck breast was cooked just enough to be served just « rosé » or medium rare. That's the way duck breast is normally cooked. It came with a few steamed new potatoes and a little pile of sauteed carrots and cabbage. I'm not sure which part of the duck I enjoyed eating more.

Walt went the fish route this time. He had a salad featuring cured salmon as his starter course. He said it was pleasantly salty. He didn't say or I didn't ask what the ring of red sauce around the plate was.

As his main course, Walt ordered a fillet of sandre or zander — a.k.a. "pike-perch" — which is a European river fish. The only time we ever eat sandre is in restaurants, as it doesn't seem to be available at the markets or supermarkets around the area where we live. I know Walt said it was really delicious with the accompanying risotto and fava beans.

I wrote last year about the Relais d'Artémis several times. Here's a link to the search results page with four or five posts about the restaurant listed.

A nice end to springtime

All in all, we are having a very nice month of June. It's not quite summertime but it already feels like early summer. A lot of the plants in the back yard are doing well this year.

A friend who lives on the other side of the village gave us a couple of cuttings from a thornless blackberry bush a few years ago. The plant survived but the berries usually disappear very quickly as soon as they get ripe, feeding the local birds or deer.

We planted five artichoke plants about seven years ago. Two survive, and there are quite a few artichokes this year. We usually just let them flower, rather than cutting and eating them.

There were a lot of roses growing around the house when we moved in eleven years ago. Many of them are still doing well, but we just dug out two big rosiers out front. Now I have to replant them elsewhere in the yard.

The same friend who gave us blackberries also gave us these hens and chicks. They have spread everywhere — I keep them mostly in pots.

Ten years ago CHM brought us some cactus cuttings from Virginia in the U.S. I rooted these cuttings over the winter and then planted them in a pot.

I hope our summer turns out to be as nice as the latter half of spring has been. The vegetable garden is just starting to grow. I'm also getting some persistent "weeds" under control these days. Ivy is trying to take over all around the yard.

Touraine-Amboise wines

When we were out riding around one day last week, CHM and I drove through the town of Amboise (my photos of the château are here) and ended up in the village called Limeray, the center for production of the wines that carry the Touraine-Amboise appellation.

We happened to drive past the wine cooperative just on the edge of Limeray. Walt and I have been there before to buy wine — the first time with our friends Jean and Nick, and then another time on our own. We didn't need to buy wine last week, but CHM asked if maybe we shouldn't stop in and buy a bottle to have with our supper. That's what we did.

Most of the wines made in the Loire Valley are not aged in oak barrels, but we noticed one, a Cuvée Léonard, that was barrel-aged, and we decided to buy that one. The Léonard in the name is, of course, Leonardo da Vinci, who spent the last few years of his life in Amboise as the guest of the Renaissance French king François 1er.

On the label you see the words « Vieilli en fût de Chêne » — that means "Aged in oak barrels". As I said, very few Loire Valley wines are aged that way.

Mostly, the wines are fermented and stored in huge stainless steel vats. Some say that process gives the grapes a more natural expression, so that the wine tastes of the grape rather than of wood and heavy tannins.

In fact, most Loire Valley wines are not « vins de garde », or wines you can "put down" to age for a long time. They are « vins de soif » — "thirst wines" — wines you drink young (and that keep you feeling young yourself, I'd say!)

Tarragon turkey with salsify roots

Have you ever eaten salsify? It's called salsifis [sal-see-FEE] in France, and it's known by the names "black salsify" or "Spanish salsify" — among others — in English. It was something CHM wanted to eat while he was here. He remembered his family cooking and eating salsify when he was growing up in Paris back in the 1930s and '40s (if I understood correctly).

Salsifis in a tarragon cream sauce with sauteed mushrooms

I've eaten salsifis several times over the years, but I've never used the fresh vegetable. It's the root of  plants in the sunflower family. The root has a thick black skin that has to be removed either before or after the salsify is cooked by boiling it in water. Salsifis have a mild taste and are cooked served with melted butter, or in a white sauce made with cream and, say, mustard or fresh herbs. They are also good battered and fried, or cooked as fritters.

Turkey legs and thighs browned and then braised in the same tarragon cream sauce
 (Thanks to CHM for this photo)

We bought a can of cooked salsify roots at the supermarket the other day, and we had them with turkey legs and thighs that I cooked in a creamy tarragon sauce. It's easy to get turkey leg/thigh sections here in France, and I enjoy them slow-roasted in the oven with various sauces, including tomato, red wine, or cream. In this case, we wanted the flavor of tarragon, and we used it in its dried form.

Turkey legs and thighs marinating in white wine and vinegar with onion, garlic, and dried tarragon leaves

The first step was to marinate the turkey legs and thighs in white wine and vinegar. I chopped up a small onion, a fairly large shallot, and a big garlic clove. I put all that along with about three heaping tablespoons of dried tarragon on the turkey pieces in a big bowl and then poured about a quarter-cup of tarragon vinegar and three-quarters of a cup of dry white wine over all of it. The only other ingredients in the marinade were salt and pepper. I covered the dish with plastic wrap and let the meat marinate for about three hours.

Put the turkey pieces into a hot oven, uncovered, to brown with vegetable oil and butter.

When it was time, I took the turkey parts out of the marinade and used the back of a knife to scrape the onion and tarragon mixture off each leg and thigh — not throwing it away but putting it back into the marinade dish, the contents of which was going to be the cooking liquid. But first, I wanted to brown the turkey parts in a pan in a hot oven, with some canola oil and butter.

The first stage of the cooking process is to brown the turkey pieces slightly in a hot oven.

As soon as the turkey legs and thighs were slightly browned, I poured the marinade over them and covered the pan I was cooking them in. They went into a 180ºC (350ºF) oven for about an hour. While they cooked, I got the rest of the sauce ingredients ready. I had three-fourths of a cup of heavy cream, about half a cup of chicken broth, and a teaspoonful of potato or corn starch. Dissolve the starch in a little cold liquid before you add it to the hot liquid in the pan with the turkey.

Oven-braise the turkey in the marinade, covered, for 90 to 120 minutes in all.

When the turkey has been in the oven for an hour or 90 minutes, pour the cream and the rest of the sauce ingredients into the pan and stir them into the cooking liquid. Spoon some of the sauce over the turkey pieces and cover the pan. Let it cook for another 30 to 45 minutes in the oven. A good addition to the sauce is a few sauteed mushrooms.

 Serve the braised turkey, mushrooms, and salsify roots glazed with tarragon cream sauce.
 (Thanks to CHM for this photo)

Heat up the salsify roots in a pan on top of the stove with a little butter or oil. When the turkey is done, spoon some of the creamy tarragon sauce over the salsifis and serve the turkey and vegetables with the sauce. It's delicious. The tarragon, wine, and vinegar give the sauce a slightly tart flavor that complements the otherwise slightly bland flavors of the turkey meat and salsify roots. A green salad with vinaigrette dressing is a good second course.

Prophets and saints in color

It's hard to believe it was already ten days ago, June 3, when we had that nice lunch at the Restaurant Agnès Sorel in Genillé. Before we went into the restaurant, we spent a few minutes looking around in the village church across the street. Here a composite photo of some Old Testament prophets and New Testament saints depicted in stained glass inside the church.

Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Enjoy the colors. And happy Friday the 13th.

By the way, it was 11 years ago this morning that Walt and I woke up in our "new" French house for the first time. And of course it was also a Friday the 13th (2003). So maybe today is a new beginning. The weather is going to be beautiful, and we're getting some things done around here. Also by the way, CHM has gone back to Paris after a really good two-week visit in Saint-Aignan, which included a delicious lunch at the Relais d'Artémis restaurant near the Château de Chambord yesterday. More on that to come...

The Amboise stop

CHM and I took a drive yesterday afternoon — the weather was gorgeous for a change — over to Amboise, Pocé-sur-Cisse, Limeray, Cangey, Monteaux, Mesland, Onzain, Chaumont-sur-Loire, and Fougères-sur-Bièvre. The only place where we managed a Kodak moment was in Amboise.

This is not one of my photos, but it is the Château d'Amboise. It's an artist's rendering that appears on the label of a bottle of Touraine-Amboise red wine. We enjoyed the wine with our supper last night.

Just above is my camera's rendering of the same monument. Mine has a tourist bus in it, but the real artist's doesn't. I could try to take it out of the photo, but I don't have time this morning.

Finally, here's a wider view. We were on the island that sits in the middle of the Loire, admiring the town and château. So were 40 or 50 Japanese tourists. I enjoyed the brief photo stop.

My old Renault 4L

Before I moved to France permanently in 2003, I had owned only one French car before. I lived in Paris and other French cities for about eight years in the 1970s and early 1980s, but with the excellent subway and railway transit in this country, I never felt the need to buy a car. Once in a while, I would rent a vehicle for a special trip out into the French countryside.

In 1981, however, some friends of mine decided to sell their little Renault 4 and buy a newer, bigger, more comfortable car. The little R4 was a 1972 or 1973 model. I don't remember how many kilometers it had on the odometer, but I'm sure it was quite a few. I bought the car from them for... get this... 1500 French francs, or the equivalent of $300 (not a typo). I didn't buy the car because I needed one — I lived just a few steps off the rue Montorgueil, square in the middle of Paris — but because I thought it would be fun to have it. And it was. I don't think I have any photos of the R4, but I have a lot of memories.

Parking was a big problem in Paris, but somehow I figured it out. The rue Montorgueil hadn't yet been turned into a pedestrian-only zone back then, and I could usually find a parking space — legal or illegal — on that street or on one of the many side streets in the neighborhood. Actually, I got quite a few parking tickets that year. It turned out to be my last year as a resident of Paris, and the little pale-blue R4 (it was a 4L, I'm pretty sure, meaning the « Luxe » model) made the year very memorable. The fact that I met Walt that year in Paris also made it into a pivotal moment in my life.

I still sometimes think I'd like to own an old Renault 4, but I feel like I'd need to know how, or have the inclination to learn how, to work on old car engines. I don't have any skills or any ambitions in that area — I'd rather be in the kitchen making lunch than in the garage tinkering with or repairing an old vehicle. The last R4s rolled off the assembly line more than 20 years ago. By the way, the R4 was, in 1961, the first front-wheel drive passenger car that Renault ever manufactured. It was Renault's answer to the Citroën 2CV, which was a car designed for people who lived in rural areas, and it was intended to be what some might call an "urban assault" vehicle. I know that mine rarely ventured even into the Paris suburbs.

The R4 or 4L had two very distinctive features, at least in my memory. First was the gearshift lever. It stuck out of the dashboard. You couldn't call it a "four on the floor" model, and it also wasn't a steering column shifter. In addition, the shift pattern was not the familiar 4-speed H pattern, with first gear being the upper left position and fourth gear on the lower right. The R4 shifter worked in a W pattern, with first gear in the lower left position and fourth gear the upper right. Reverse gear was where you might expect to find first gear in other cars. So you pulled the lever toward you to get into first gear and start moving. See the diagram on the left. Anyway, it was very different from the American and German cars I was used to driving in the U.S.

The other distinctive feature was the seats. They were kind of like the old lawn chairs in the U.S. that were woven vinyl straps attached to a tubular metal frame. The R4 seats had a vinyl cover and some perfunctory padding, but they were basically lawn chairs. As I remember it, they were pretty comfortable, actually, both in the front and in the back. As an aside, let me say that when I left Paris in 1982, I sold the R4 for exactly what I had paid for it 9 or 10 months earlier. And you can ask Walt about what condition the car was in after I parked it for a week in springtime on a tree-lined boulevard in Paris while I went on vacation in England. Let's just say that "guano happened" in a very major way that week.

I almost bought a red Renault 4 in 2003, when we first arrived in the Saint-Aignan area. I had already bought a Peugeot 206 as our everyday vehicle, but one day I saw an R4 sitting in the parking lot at the Mairie in the village of Pouillé, just down the road from where we live. It had a "for sale" sign in the rear window, with a telephone number. I called. The man I talked to discouraged me from buying the car. The reverse gear no longer worked, he said, and the car was worth more as spare parts than as a mode of transportation. I decided against the purchase. I'm not sure I did the right thing.

Anyway, a few days ago CHM and I were out touring around the region and we passed through the village of Nouans-les-Fontaines, just 10 miles south of Saint-Aignan. We drove past a warehouse of some kind with a parking lot along the edge of the road, and there I saw a dozen or more beautiful Renault 4 cars parked in a row. It was a rally of some kind, and it was just breaking up. I drove on for a few hundred meters and then decided to go back at take some pictures. I didn't talk to anybody, so I don't know if this is regularly scheduled event or just a one-off. You can see what the cars looked like from the photos here.

The local economy

Across the river in Noyers-sur-Cher there's a roundabout a.k.a. traffic circle (carrefour giratoire) on the old highway that runs from Tours to Vierzon and on to Bourges. It has been "redecorated" over the past few years and now features some live grapevines, a replica of a grape workers' hut typical of the region, and a metal sculpture of a man with a horse plowing a field.

Where we live is in the Touraine wine district, and it's now called Touraine-Chenonceaux after the town with the famous Renaissance château 15 miles downriver. Grape-growing and wine-making are the mainstays of the local economy, along with tourism. Centuries-old châteaux including Chambord, Cheverny, Chenonceau, Chaumont, Amboise, Le Moulin, Le Gué-Péan, Blois, Saint-Aignan, Chémery, Montrichard, and Montrésor are within a 30-minute drive of Saint-Aignan and Noyers. Not to mention the nationally renowned Zooparc de Beauval, where there are two giant pandas from China and important collections of birds and animals from North America, Africa, and Australia, including gorillas, orangutans, manatees, kangaroos, koalas, and white tigers.

Stormy Monday

This is the town of Preuilly-sur-Claise [pruh-YEE-suyr-KLEHZ], seen from the road as you arrive from Le Grand-Pressigny [luh grã-preh-see-NYEE], in the southern part of Touraine.

We've had an exciting morning. When I woke up just before 6 a.m., the sunrise was a bright, luminous red. I was starting to hear thunder. When I pulled up a shade on a west-facing window, I could see lightning off in the distance.

Ten minutes later, the storm was upon us. The thunder clapped loudly right over the house. Lightning lit up the landscape. Then heavy rain turned into hailstones! They were the size of marbles. I went running down to try to get the car in before it was damaged. Walt also came running down two flights of stairs to help. We got the car into the garage and it doesn't seem to be pock-marked. Then the hail stopped. Close call.

En vous souhaitant un lundi agréable et productif...

Genillé scenes

We had lunch in the village of Genillé last week, and I posted pictures of some of the food yesterday. Here are some scenes I saw around the village church and from the restaurant window. We were treated to the best seat in the house.

I enjoyed the view of the village church from the front window of the restaurant. And I thought it was fun taking a picture of it through a glass of the wine that we were drinking, which was a very pale, 100% Cabernet Franc rosé from the wine village of Bourgueil, on the Loire just downstream from the city of Tours.

Here's the church again. Before going into the restaurant, I went inside and took some photos of the stained glass windows. They are not particularly old, but the colors are nice. Maybe I'll post some of the photos this coming week.

Looking back from a point near the church, here's a view of the front windows of the restaurant. As I said yesterday, the service was excellent, the food was delicious, and the prices were affordable. Two thumbs up.

If you need to visit the toilettes, you have to climb this old spiral staircase in the restaurants back room. I used to live in an apartment building in Paris that had a staircase like this one. I lived on the 5th floor (U.S.) or the 6ème étage (French). I was so much younger then...

I liked the posters on display in the Agnès Sorel's front window. The woman who runs the restaurant explained to us that the big plate glass windows had to be replaced after World War II, the older ones having been shattered by the force of explosions and bombardments in the area around Tours.

Lunch at the Agnès Sorel restaurant in Genillé

On Tuesday, CHM, Walt, and I had lunch at the Restaurant Agnès Sorel in Genillé, a village about a half-hour's drive from Saint-Aignan over in the direction of the town of Loches. Walt posted a photo of the front of the restaurant a couple of days ago. Here are some photos of the food we ate.

I started with a bowl of cream of celery root soup, with some whipped cream, shavings of parmesan cheese, slices of bacon, and chives.

Walt and CHM ordered what was called a mousseline de sandre for their first course. Sandre is a European river fish known in English-speaking countries as zander and resembles pike. The mousseline was a light, puffy concoction that seemed to be made with pureed fish, whipped cream, and maybe egg white, served on  what the restaurant called a buisson or "bush" of salad greens.

For our main courses, Walt and I both had poitrine de porc confite or slow-cooked, caramelized pork belly with spring vegetables. Delicious.

CHM had lotte (monkfish) for his main course. This is his photo of the dish (merci). I thought it was really beautifully served.

For dessert, we all ordered what was called a délice d'enfants.  It was a clafoutis of rhubarb with a little cup of strawberry sorbet on the side.

With our coffees, the restaurant served three little Paris-Brest cream puffs filled with a coffee-flavored cream. Oh, and we had a bottle of Loire Valley rosé from Bourgueil with the meal. The price of the menu was 25 euros per person and the wine was 28 euros for the bottle.

Couscous day

Yesterday was couscous day at La Renaudière (our hamlet). At least it was at Les Bouleaux (our house). Today will be couscous day II because there's a lot of it and the leftovers are at least as good as what you eat on the first day.

We put raisins in the steamed couscous "grain" and served a gravy boat of the cooking liquid on the side.

Couscous is a form of tiny pasta that is a specialty of North Africa and countries including Lebanon. In English, people call it a "grain" but it's not a grain like rice or bulgur. It's a kind of pasta. In French, people call it « la semoule », but it's not exactly that either. No matter.

Walt used a dry spice rub including cumin, black pepper, turmeric, coriander seed, and fenugreek to flavor the grilled lamb.

And then the name couscous gets expanded to mean the whole meal that is based on the couscous you buy in a bag or box. Usually, it's a big bowl of stew containing lots of vegetables — onions, carrots, turnips, tomatoes, green beans, courgettes, chick peas, bell peppers, artichoke hearts, and so on — and two or three meats — lamb, chicken, beef, meatballs, etc. Spices including cumin, piment fort, and allspice go into the broth.

Merguez sausages and cubed lamb cooked on the barbecue grill

Our couscous yesterday was based on lamb — a New Zealand gigot d'agneau or leg of lamb — and a rabbit (instead of chicken). I deboned the lamb and used the shank end as stew meat. With the leaner, more tender large end of the leg we made brochettes — cubes of meat on skewers that Walt cooked on the barbecue. We also grilled the requisite North African lamb & beef sausages called merguez. It's nice to have a combination of boiled and grilled meats.

We put green beans, rabbit, artichoke hearts, green and red bell peppers, leeks,  zucchini, and even a rutabaga in the stew.

An American friend of mine whom I've known for 35 years spent a few years in Paris back in the 1970s, when I lived there too. She had an Algerian friend, and one summer she spent a couple of months with the friend's family in Algeria. She brought back this couscous "recipe" — it's more of an idea or method — for making a couscous. She developed it by observing her friend's mother working in the kitchen.

Authentic Algerian Couscous

Group 1
chick peas
turnips
carrots
onions

Group 2
zucchini
yellow squash
tomatoes
string beans

salt
pepper
saffron
turmeric
ginger
cinnamon
parsley
cayenne or harissa

Brown meat and some sliced onions in butter and/or oil. Add spices.

Add everything else and enough broth cover, bring to a boil, and simmer for one hour...

... or ...

Add Group 1 to broth, bring to a boil, and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes. Then add Group 2 and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes longer so that total cooking time is one hour.

Finally, while the broth is simmering, prepare the couscous itself. Moisten the couscous with water and work it to avoid lumps and clumps. Steam it uncovered for 30 minutes and work it again to break down lumps. Repeat the operation.

For the sauce, mix to taste some broth, ginger, and cayenne or harissa.