Strange leaves

Right in the middle of a row of vines covered in red wine grapes, there is one grape plant that has the strange-looking leaves you see in the photos below. And it has bunches of white wine grapes growing on it.

I've never seen leaves like these on any other vines in the vineyard.

Meanwhile, the red/blue/black grapes all seemed to ripen at once a week or two ago, thanks to warm, sunny, dry weather.

You can see that the leaves on these plants are very different from the leaves on the one up above.

Can anybody identify the strange white wine grape plant? Somebody said it might be Chasselas, which is usually grown as a table grape, but none of the images of Chasselas grape leaves I can find look like the ones in my first two photos above.

Chasselas grapes are grown and made into a wine called Pouilly-sur-Loire in the village of the same name, about a hour's drive east of Saint-Aignan.

Despite the blight...

Walt says he thinks he's thrown out about half of the tomatoes that our 2014 garden has produced. Still, it has been a good year for tomatoes, and we have quite a few that are ripening on the vines. If this beautiful dry weather continues, we'll get a lot more. And we have these sitting in the kitchen, waiting to be eaten fresh or cooked for putting in the freezer.

Besides all the tomatoes we have eaten in August and September, we have made 15 pints of thick tomato sauce and have those in the freezer already, for winter meals. That's more than 15 lbs., or 7.5 kg. If half of the tomatoes from the garden hadn't had to be discarded, what in the world would we have done with them all?

Throwback Thursday — 1985

In the spring of 1985, somebody that I worked with threw a garden party. Pictures were taken. Here's one of me, nearly 30 years ago already. I had recently come back from a trip to Africa (Sudan, Niger, and Mali) as part of the press pool traveling with then-VP George H.W. Bush. Reagan was in the White House.

Look at all that dark hair — it was natural, too.

I was working as a writer and editor at the U.S. Information Agency in Washington. I had been hired by my friend CHM a couple of years earlier to be his assistant editor on the staff of a magazine published in French by the U.S. government. From that position I had moved into a job as a writer/editor in USIA's Africa press service. I traveled a lot, mostly in the U.S.

So I was working with CHM in a building near the Air and Space Museum and the NASA offices just off the Capital Mall. And I was living with Walt in an apartment on Capitol Hill. Walt was working as an office assistant for a prominent member of Congress from California. Thanks to CHM for saving and scanning the photo.

Kitchen news, retro-style

Yesterday I ordered a piece of kitchen equipment of a kind that I have never before owned and never before used. Decades ago these devices became popular in America. Back then, I viewed them as a ridiculous fad of little utility or interest. Times and tastes do change. In fact, whole countries and cultures change noticeably over just a few decades. I've seen it happen.

A new kitchen appliance

The thing I'm talking about is called a cuiseur or mijoteuse électrique in French. When I tell you that my favorite kind of French cooking is preparing what are called plats mijotés, you'll wonder why it took me four decades to decide to acquire a mijoteuse. Some of the most famous plats mijotés are coq au vin, blanquette de veau, and bœuf bourguignon — not to mention la poule au pot and le pot-au-feu.

So if you know what the verb mijoter means, you've figured out what appliance I'm talking about. The next time I decide to make a daube de bœuf, lapin en gibelotte, or choucroute garnie, it will be just the the kitchen appliance to have at the ready.

Here's an American slow-cooker that resembles the one I've ordered.

Mijoter means « faire cuire ou bouillir lentement, à petit feu » and, more figuratively, « préparer un plat avec soin, avec amour ». It means "to simmer", in other words. The device is a "simmerer" or, as it's known nowadays, a slow-cooker. A crock pot. I'm jumping feet-first into the '70s!

The one I've ordered from amazon.fr has a removable oval-shaped stoneware cooking dish that you can put on the table to serve the meal from. And then you can run it through the dishwasher. It holds 6.5 liters if filled to the brim, for about 5 liters of usable volume.

 The removable stoneware cooking vessel

With that shape and size, it can accommodate a small poulet, canard, or pintade, not to mention a small rôti de bœuf, de veau, or de porc that you want to braise slowly for several hours. I can see some good NC-style pulled pork or a batch of chili con carne coming out of it... not to mention all my favorite French plats mijotés listed above.

Gratin de haricots verts

Green bean casserole, the basis for my French title, is an American standard. Usually it's made with canned or frozen green beans, a can of Campbell's mushroom soup, and a can of something called "French-fried onions." In my case, the green bean casserole is made from scratch and with a breadcrumb and cheese topping instead of fried onions.

The advantage we have here is that fresh green beans have been plentiful in the vegetable garden this year. And we have good breadcrumbs that we make from pieces of our village baker's baguettes de tradition when they go stale. Thanks to the food processor...

I also took a section of saucisson sec (dried salami) and cut it into little sticks (lardons de saucisson). I coked the lardons in boiling water for a couple of minutes before adding them to the blanched green beans and mushrooms.

The mushrooms, by the way, came out of a jar. The variety is called  le pied-bleu (the blue-stalk mushroom). It is cultivated, packed, and sold by the people who operate the mushroom caves over in the village of Bourré, not 10 miles from here. (Thanks to Lynn and Joel for the gift.)

Finally, I made a small quantity of béchamel sauce (a white sauce made with butter, flour, and milk/cream) and added some grated cheeses — French Emmental (a "Swiss" cheese) and Italian Grana Padano (a hard cheese like Parmesan) — to make a sauce for the beans. Some more of the two cheeses got mixed with buttered baguette crumbs to serve as a topping for the gratin.

As I type, the "casserole" is cooking in the oven. It will be a side dish served with half a chicken roasted on the barbecue grill.

P.S. It was a success...

Garlicky sauteed chard with hot red pepper flakes

The garden series continues. After zucchini, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, and plums, here comes some more chard. Sauteed this time in olive oil, with sliced garlic, crushed red pepper, salt, and black pepper. It takes less than 10 minutes to cook, but the prep time is a lot longer.

The huge, mostly dark green leaves need to be washed carefully several times to remove all the sand, tiny snails, and little slugs that might be on them. Then the thick white central rib of each leaf needs to be cut out. It's a labor of love.

You can chop the white ribs and cook them along with the green leafy parts, but you need to give the tough ribs a head start. We decided to save the ribs and cook them separately later. They are good made into a gratin with béchamel sauce and melted cheese.

The sauteed chard leaves retain a pleasant al dente texture. At the same time, they are not tough or fibrous, especially if you use only the green leafy parts.

We ate the sauteed chard with a few oven-roasted new potatoes (the variety called Charlotte) and two saucisses de Toulouse, which are sausages of lean pork that is minced (en principe) by hand, with a sharp knife, and not put through a meat grinder. I love Toulouse-style sausages with greens or beans, and with good Dijon mustard.

Encore des prunes !

More plums! I kept watching the plum trees out on the edge of the vineyard. I even tasted a plum or two. They kept getting riper and riper. I halfway expected somebody to come pick them one day. Nobody did.

Finally, I couldn't stand it any more. I hated to see such beautiful sweet fruit go to waste. I went out a couple of mornings ago and picked all I could reach. It wasn't easy, because the area under the tree is waist-high in tall grasses and a méchant blackberry bramble. I got a big scratch on my shin. I also got 2.25 kilos of pretty plums (after pitting). Adding 1.8 kilos of sugar, that made us four more jars of confiture de prunes — bigger jars this time.

P.S. The recipe for the confiture is here.

Terrine de courgettes

This is the third in a series, if you haven't noticed, about eating out of the garden. First was haricots verts à l'italienne, using up nearly two pounds of green beans and several tomatoes. Yesterday was fish with cucumbers, using three garden cukes.

Today it's two big zucchini from the garden baked in a terrine with onions, garlic, basil, cheese, a roasted red pepper, and eggs. I saw the basic recipe and method on French cuisine-plus.tv, and then "enhanced" it.

Terrine de courgettes au basilic

1,2 kg de courgettes
2 c. à soupe d’huile d’olive
3 œufs
1 oignon
10 feuilles de basilic
2 gousses d’ail
1 poivron rôti
150 g de fromage râpé
Sel, poivre

Rincez les courgettes et essuyez-les sans les peler. Coupez-les en très fines rondelles à l’aide d’une mandoline, ou d’un couteau bien aiguisé.

Hachez l’oignon et le faire blondir dans une cuillère d’huile d’olive, ajoutez les courgettes et faites les cuire environ 30 mn sans les laisser dorer et en faisant en sorte que tout leur eau s’évapore. Laissez refroidir et ajoutez les 3 œufs battus avec le sel, le poivre, le fromage, le poivron rôti coupé en morceaux, et le basilic haché avec les gousses d’ail.

Préchauffez le four à 160°C. Beurrez soigneusement un moule à cake (ou à soufflé). Versez-y l’appareil et enfournez au bain marie pendant 1 heure.

Démoulez la terrine une fois refroidie et présentez-la, avec le coulis de tomates tiède.

Set the dish in a pan, pour hot water in around it, and it's ready for the oven.

Basically, you cut the zucchinis into very thin slices and cook them down slowly with onion for 30 minutes to evaporate all their liquid. When the cooked zucchini has cooled to room temperature, mix in all the other ingredients. Bake the terrine in a water bath in a slow oven (325ºF) for an hour, covered, until the egg mixture has set. By the way, I used a mixture of grated goat cheese and feta, but any good cheese will work.

Serve the terrine cold or at room temperature with warm tomato sauce or coulis — we had the leftover green beans and tomatoes with ours. You can try to turn it out (after refrigerating it) or you can just spoon it out of the baking dish.

A Fishy Idea

Poached Fish with Cucumbers and Cream

For the cucumbers and cream:

3 medium cucumbers

1 Tbsp. salt

1½ cups cream

1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard (or more to taste)

3 sprigs fresh tarragon (or 1 Tbsp. dried)

For the poached fish:

1 cup white wine

1 cup water

2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar

salt and black pepper to taste

1 small shallot or onion, sliced

1 bay leaf

2 fish fillets (cod, in this case)

Peel, seed, and slice the cucumbers. Sprinkle salt over the cucumber slices and leave them to sit for 1 hour. Then rinse the cucumbers in a colander under running water to remove the extra salt.

Combine the cream, mustard, and tarragon in a saucepan over medium heat. When the cream is simmering, add the cucumbers and cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Taste the cream and season as needed with salt and pepper.

Pour the wine, water, and vinegar into a pan over medium heat to make what is called a court bouillon. Season with salt and pepper along with the bay leaf and shallot. Bring the wine to a boil and cook it for 3 or 4 minutes to blend the flavors.

Reduce the heat to low and lay the fish fillets in the liquid. Simmer gently until the fish flakes easily with a fork — 7 to 10 minutes depending on the thickness of the fillets.

Serve the fish fillets over the cooked cucumbers with rice or steamed new potatoes on the side.

So many beans...

No words, no typing. Good eating, nonetheless.

Une église étrange mais belle

The Eglise Saint-Ours in Loches, up in the cité médiévale near the donjon and the Logis Royal, has as its most notable feature two octagonal towers on the church's central roof (one is visible). They are called dubes, a word that's not in the dictionaries. They were built in the mid-1100s, and they are hollow inside. The great 19th-century architect and restorer of medieval buildings Viollet-le-Duc called the church at Loches « un édifice d'une étrange et sauvage beauté, unique au monde ».

The church's other notable feature is the white marble tomb of Agnès Sorel, the first "official" mistress of a French king, who lived in the mid-1400s and was known as the most beautiful woman in France. She died mysteriously before the age of 30 after giving the king three daughters who were "legitimized" after the fact and recognized as princesses.

P.S. My source for all this is French Wikipedia.

Doctor, meeting, and lunch

Yesterday morning, the doctor told me I've done and am doing the right thing for my busted finger. Wear the splint for a month, he said — I'm assuming that means for another month — and then I'll see the result. If all goes well, I won't need surgery.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, I had an appointment in Ligueil, a little town just 10 miles south of Loches, yesterday morning. It all came off like clockwork, under beautiful blue skies (the drive, I mean). More about the purpose of the rendez-vous later. Afterwards, we had a good lunch in the restaurant pictured above, Le George Sand, in Loches. Behind and above the restaurant, you can see the Eglise Sant-Ours and the Logis Royal, both in the old part of the town, up on a steep hill.

Et ainsi commence septembre

We suddenly are very busy — yesterday and today. This morning, I have a doctor's appointment at 8:30 a.m. in Saint-Aignan, and then we need to be down in Ligueil (south of Loches) by 10:00. I'm not sure we'll make it on time, because Ligueil is a 55-minute drive from here. We'll try not to speed.

I'm doing some typing these days, as you can see, but it's still a struggle. I guess I'd better get used to the situation. My finger will be splinted for another month, if not two! I'll see what the doctor says about it this morning.

The photos in this post show our own yard, garden, and house, not our friends' place.

Yesterday we were able to sit outside from noontime until late afternoon — we were invited for lunch by friends and had the meal around a table under a big shade tree. It was sunny and pleasant, though it was far from hot out. Welcome to summer in Saint-Aignan. It's only three months late this year. Let's hope it lasts more than a couple of days.

Hunting and pecking on the laptop keyboard is frustrating. That's what I'm doing right now. It's actually easier to type short messages like blog comments and e-mails on the Android tablet — and that's saying something! Typing on the tablet's on-screen keyboard is no fun. Maybe it's because my fingers, even the ones that aren't swollen, are just too fat. And getting the cursor to land in the right place when you want to correct an error or change the text is like trying to thread a small needle with fat twine. Sigh.

Blettes

Des blettes. Swiss chard. It has many names, both in French and in English. We're growing some this summer.

(I guess it's prettier in color than in monochrome.)

And we are cooking some too. I like it with cream. And also with a little Dijon mustard mixed into the cream sauce.

It's a lot like spinach. Sometimes I think I like it better.

 Serve it with hard boiled eggs and steamed potatoes.

Sépia et couleurs ensemble

Few words but several photos. Here are some contrasts in color and in sepia. First, the local soil, which is called terre à vignes. It's poor, as you can see. It's composed of heavy clay with a lot of chalky limestone in it.

We've struggled with the soil in our vegetable garden. We've been moderately successful in our efforts to improve it by tilling in a lot of compost every spring.

The local viticulteurs take another approach. They don't try (much) to improve the soil. They just plant a crop that thrives in it: grapes. They work under beautiful skies (sometimes) to nurture the vines.

The carpet of green that is the vineyard in August conceals uncountable bunches of plump grapes, including the ones below and thousands more.

There are of course green grapes for making white wines, and purple grapes for making red wines. Everything is ripening now and the weather seems to be improving. Vivement un beau mois de septembre.

Life in...

...sepia tones. It's a setting on my camera, and Photoshop helps to improve the look of the results.

I didn't remember that the word "sepia" derives from the Greek word for marine animals of the squid family. In French, a related term is seiche [SESH], meaning cuttlefish. The ink called sepia is basically squid ink. It's dark brown, and not really black. Sepia-toned photos are rendered shades of brown rather than black, gray, and white. They give everything an old-fashioned look.

Berries

I'm still struggling to enter text with this finger brace on. I realized yesterday that I also cannot manage handwriting. I can't hold a pen or pencil correctly. It's amazing how bothersome having to wear this splint is — and it's affecting just one insignificant finger on one hand. Unfortunately, it's my right hand, and I really am not ambidextrous. I have to wear the splint until October.

I just heard on the news that this August has been the wettest August in 50 years in northern France. Why am I not surprised? In Saint-Aignan, We've had at least twice the normal amount of rain since August 1, and it's been mostly light rain spread out over many, many days.

Anyway, it's definitely berry and fruit season right now around here. We've been cooking and eating many plums and peaches, thanks mostly to generous neighbors. We are watching the grapes ripen out in the vineyard. On my walks, I see a lot of blackberries on the edges of the woods. I also see a lot of black and red berries that I can't identify. I can take pictures of them, however.