A country restaurant in France

Most if not all people eat a few meals every day. I know I do. It's a biological necessity, except for an occasional fast day. And those are very, very occasional for me. In France people say that it's a bad idea to skip meals, and that a meal should include meat, fruits and vegetables (whether cooked or raw), cheese, and bread. Wine is optional.

I figure if I have to eat every day, and since I have the time, I might as well cook my own food. It's a lot less expensive than buying cooked food at a shop, supermarket, or restaurant. Going out to restaurants can be fun when you share the experience with other people, but it's more a social occasion that it is a purely food experience for me. When I cook my own food, I control the menu, the ingredients, the cooking techniques, and the portion size. I like that.

Here's a photo I took out a back window just after we had a brief snow shower yesterday morning.

Of course, once in a while it's good to go to a restaurant to see how the other half lives and eats. Here's an example from a restaurant where we had lunch one day back in early December. I don't think we've been to a restaurant since then. This restaurant, Le Moulin de Chaudé, is is a village called Chemillé-sur-Indrois, a 20- to 30-minute drive south of Saint-Aignan, between Genillé and Montrésor. Walt posted a photo of the restaurant yesterday.

This shot gives you an idea of the look of the dining room at the Moulin de Chaudé restaurant in Chemillé-sur-Indrois.

As Walt said on his blog, we and the friends we were having lunch with were the only customers in the restaurant that day. The lunch cost us 45 euros per person, or about 50 U.S. dollars, and included an apéritif cocktail, a starter course, the main course, dessert, and coffee. And wine, of course — two bottles of a Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil cabernet franc red.

We were in the restaurant for about three hours, if I remember correctly. Here's an excerpt from the menu. It lists the main courses — les plats principaux — on the day we had lunch there. I'm not sure how often the menu changes.

Let me translate those:

• Meat pie made with hare and foie gras
• Slow-cooked beef chuck served with deep-fried potato & carrot croquettes and smoked eel
• Rib-eye steak grilled on a wood fire, served with French fried potatoes, mushrooms, and pepper sauce
• Monkfish served with white beans cooked with imported ham, garnished with a fish-soup foam
• Duckling breast served with a puree of pumpkin au gratin, braised endive, and orange sauce

Hare, foie gras, smoked eel, fish-soup foam, duckling... it was pretty fancy, with some exotic ingredients. The menu is fairly limited, and the owners pride themselves on that. They told us that a restaurant with a very extensive menu is a restaurant where food is not being prepared fresh. Instead, you're getting vacuum-packed (sous-vide in French) or frozen, pre-cooked food. The food at the Moulin de Chaudé is made to order using fresh ingredients.

Walt and I both had the entrecôte grillée (rib-eye steak) with steak fries and mushrooms. The photo above shows you what it looked like. It was tender and delicious. We enjoyed the fried potatoes, the mushrooms, and the pepper sauce. I figure I could have made the same thing at home for a lot less money, but the restaurant experience was fun. We got plenty of attention from the woman who runs the dining room while her husband is busy in the kitchen.

More about the meal tomorrow...

Isn't all food "comfort food"?

Our weather has turned chilly, with temperatures down near or even below freezing, so it's time for so-called "comfort foods" — aren't all enjoyable foods just that? — like beef stews. Here's a classic French one: Bœuf aux carottes. Beef braised with carrots. Also onions, potatoes, and herbs.White wine. I made it two or three days ago.

I've posted about it many times before and every time it comes out a little different. And every time it is delicious. This version was cooked in the slow-cooker with white wine, thyme, carrots, onions, garlic, and, at the last minute, some smoked pork bacon (lardons fumés) that I sauteed first. It was a kilogram of stew beef, called bœuf à bourguignon (or simply bourguignon) here in France. We have enough left over for another meal, and this is the kind of cooking that tastes even better the next day or the day after that.

Yesterday I made another dish of gratin d'endives au jambon. Can't get enough of that cheese sauce.

Walt just saw on a weather report that it's actually snowing in Le Mans, and predictions are for a few stray snowflakes in the Loire Valley. Today is January 15, after all.

Le français est une langue qui résonne

It was 30 years ago today — January 14, 1986 — that Daniel Balavoine was killed in a helicopter accident in the Sahara Desert. He was 33 years old and had written and recorded a series of popular songs that are still much heard in France. He was an idealist, maybe a hothead and an angry young man, but he was really talented above all. He had a pleasant high-pitched voice and an incredible vocal range of several octaves. His words, songs, and sounds resonated with many of us.

One of his early songs is a paean to the French language. It's called "French is a language that resonates..." That means it "carries", it echoes, it reverberates, it rings out. It's something to be proud of, I guess — French linguistic pride. Here's a YouTube video, and the lyrics are below.

Le Français est une langue qui résonne

Quand j'entends s'enrouler les feuilles de l'automne

Que le ciel de l'été dans mon cœur se cramponne

Je me dis : le français est une langue qui résonne

Je me dis : le français est une langue qui résonne

Quand du fond du Québec les couleurs se bourgeonnent

Moi je crois bien que c'est la neige qui s'effleure et frissonne

Puis je me dis que le français est une langue qui résonne

Et je me dis que le français est une langue qui résonne

Endormi sous la mer qui saigne sur Narbonne

De mes yeux fatigués pleurent des Sables d'Olonne

Je me dis : le français est une langue qui résonne

Je me dis : le français est une langue qui résonne

Langue d'Oc, du Nord, les accents s'époumonnent

Dans ma tête versée mon pays se crayonne

Je me dis : le français est une langue qui résonne

Je me dis : le français est une langue qui résonne

Assis près de Calais dessous les lames bretonnes

Je regarde arriver les vagues anglo-saxonnes

Tous mes mots vieux français éclatent et bouillonnent

Tous mes mots vieux français éclatent et bouillonnent

Si les plages et forêts s'asphaltent et se carbonent

Si les ailes collées, les oiseaux abandonnent

Moi qui me crois bon Français, je sens que je déconne

De mes mots censurés que Villon me pardonne

Je me dis : le français est une langue qui résonne

Je me dis : le français est une langue qui résonne

The song that first revealed Balavoine's talent was this one: Le S.O.S. d'un terrien en détresse, from the late-'70s musical comedy called Starmania. I won't copy the lyrics. You can just listen to the voice.

Un terrien is an earthling. One version of the history of Starmania holds that Michel Berger and Luc Plamondon wrote this song specifically for Daniel Balavoine and his special voice.

Road in, sun up... years ago

We had a pretty afternoon yesterday, but chilly. It's colder this morning than it has been in a while — still not down to freezing but getting close. We've had a good bit of rain (about 1½", close to 40 mm, over the last six days), but I think it's over for the moment. For blog photos, I'm reaching back to find past January images in the archives.

The road up to La Renaudière, outside Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher — mid-January 2004

Sunrise through bare branches at La Renaudière — ten years ago today

La Renaudière is the hamlet — nine houses — that we live in, just 3 or 4 km from the market square in Saint-Aignan. The hamlet is on the edge of the Renaudière vineyard, which is mostly owned and tended to by the Domaine de la Renaudie winery crews. I think a family named Renaud used to live here and farm the land that is now planted in vines, but nobody I've talked to locally can confirm that.

Yogurt cake upside-down with pear halves

I don't do a lot of baking, but I do like to make simple cakes and breads from time to time. Yesterday, I realized we didn't really have any desserts or other sweets in the house. I was in the kitchen working on other things, it was raining outside, and I had time, so I baked a cake.

The recipe I chose is an old French standby — Gâteau au yaourt. This yogurt cake is something French children have learned to make for generations. Making it is very simple and straightforward, and you don't even need a kitchen scale or measuring cup. Yogurt comes in containers that hold 125 milliliters — that's about half a cup in American terms — and you can use the yogurt container to measure the other ingredients that go into the cake batter.

Here's my translation into English of the recipe I used yesterday. I don't remember where I got it; it's just one of several Gâteau au yaourt recipes in our collection.

Yogurt Cake

1 pot plain yogurt (one-half cup)

2 pots sugar (one cup)

3 eggs

1 pinch salt

3 pots flour (1½ cups)

½ pot vegetable oil (¼ cup)

1 tsp. baking powder

Mix together the yogurt, sugar, and eggs until the sugar is dissolved. Add the flour, oil, and salt and mix to make a smooth batter. Finally, mix in the baking powder just before pouring the batter into a buttered cake pan. Bake at 180ºC (350ºF) for 25 to 30 minutes or until done.

I had made the batter (except for adding the baking powder) and was doing other things when Walt came into the kitchen. "What can I put into this cake batter to make it better?", I asked him. "Raisins? Cranberries? Walnuts?" I didn't feel like cracking and shelling walnuts. Walt said we had a can of pear halves and a can of peaches down in the cellar.

"What about a pear upside-down cake then?" That was my idea — gâteau renversé aux poires caramélisées. I made a caramel syrup on top of the stove in a sauté pan that I could bake the cake in, using maybe half a cup of cassonade (raw unrefined or light-brown sugar, that is), a splash of the syrup the peaches were packed in, and about 2 tablespoons of butter.

When the syrup had thickened slightly, I put the pear halves in it cut side down and let them cook for a couple of minutes. Then I took the pan off the heat and let it cool slightly while I added the baking powder to the cake batter and stirred it one last time. Finally, I poured the batter over the pears and baked the cake as per the recipe above. Yum.

It's important to turn the cake out of the pan while it's still hot. If it cools too much, the caramel will seize up and the cake won't fall out. But one thing you can always do is heat the cake back up over a low fire for a minute or two. When the cake will move in the pan, it's ready to be turned out and served, pears upwards.

Météorologie et géographie

The winds and heavy rains that were predicted for this week haven't yet materialized. We've had some rain but nothing exciting, and the wind has been only slightly gusty for short periods — no real gales.

Early January 2012 sunrise

Let's see if this link works: it takes you to an Accuweather radar screen showing precipitation moving across Brittany, Normandy, Paris, and the Loire Valley, including Tours. If you click on the link and then move the map around a little you can also see the southern part of England, including London. Refresh the page to see the current weather. Below is a still image that I captured just a minute ago.

We're only about 40 miles east of "the capital" of the old French province of Touraine, 25 miles south of the old royal town of Blois, and about 65 miles south and west of Orléans. Paris is 140 miles north of Saint-Aignan.

There's some geography and weather for your Monday. The temperature this morning is about 7ºC (45ºF) with light rain right now. We cooked something good yesterday — Thai chicken with basil and garlic — but I forgot to take any photos. I had to debone a chicken because we can't buy ground chicken meat here.

Rainy weather, and Poulet à la Kiev

The long, tall, wide laurel hedge around our yard has been trimmed one more time, so it looks today just like what you see in the five-year-old photo below. We hire the job done these days instead of doing it ourselves. The best part is that the gardening crew rakes up and disposes of all the clippings.

Early January 2011 — looks like the weather then was about like the weather now: rainy.
It's hard to believe that 2011 was already five years ago...

A day or two ago, Walt mentioned on his blog that we made chicken Kiev the other day. For me, that was one of those things like veal cordon bleu, veal piccata, or steak Diane, that we thought of as exotic and fancy cooking back in the 1970s.

We happened to see Jamie Oliver prepare chicken Kiev on a show on French television a few days ago, and that inspired us. Our version worked pretty well, though most of the butter ran out of the chicken breast before it finished cooking. Still, the garlic and herbs of the compound butter gave the chicken good flavor. I thought the peas with carrots and mushrooms were good with it.

We used panko for the crust on the chicken, and we decided to bake the breaded chicken breasts in the oven rather than frying them.

It seems that chicken Kiev is still a commonly featured dish in the U.K. and Australia, but I don't think that's true in the U.S. Am I wrong?

By the way, I can't recall ever seeing poulet à la Kiev on menus in France, but Ricardo, the Quebec cook and TV personality, has a recipe for it on his web site.

What we didn't have for lunch...

...and what we did have. It was Thursday, and we were still eating holiday leftovers. We had a couple of pieces of roasted Christmas turkey from the freezer, and we had some white beans left from the January 1 cassoulet.

We also had a green salad. After I'd washed the lettuce, Walt noticed the little gastropod pictured above crawling around in the kitchen sink. I'm glad we didn't eat him by accident. We both like to eat escargots but this one was just too little.

With the leftover beans and turkey, we made a version of Boston baked beans. Or Québec baked beans, because I saw the recipe on the web (www.ricardocuisine.com) and it called for maple syrup, among other ingredients (ketchup, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, cloves, cinnamon, paprika, and cayenne pepper). Delicious with chunks of turkey meat in it and bacon on top.

Confused

Memories of past winter skies. Rain is preventing me from taking new photos this week.

January 8, 2008 — sunrise over the Renaudière vineyard outside Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher

Day before yesterday, we drove over to Romorantin to do some shopping. As we were walking through the parking lot of a big supermarket, I looked down at my feet. I was wearing two different shoes! The blue and gray left shoe from one pair, and the brown and tan right shoe from another. Both are comfortable, and I couldn't feel the difference. That was, as Walt said, my fashion statement for the day.

We did our shopping and nobody in the crowded store seem to notice my mismatched footwear. Complètement gaga, ce mec-là....

Wondering about winter

Our back yard looks nothing like this right now. Maybe later this month or next. Today, rain.

Early January, 2009

Yesterday morning, I found a tiny tick on the cat. Warm-weather pests in January. Strange.

Still quiet

Late December 2015 at sunrise

Going quiet

Yes, well, the sun. And me. I've been talking — writing — too much lately.

Coucher de soleil à la Renaudière, le 4 janvier 2013

Gratin d'endives au jambon

I really ought to throw up my hands and just take a day off. With the steady rain we had all day yesterday, there was no way to go outside and take any photos.I walked the dog in the rain in the morning, and Walt walked the dog in the rain toward evening. We just took turns getting wet. I don't have much to blog about besides food. Then again, yesterday's lunch was a classic.

I had three Belgian endives in the fridge. I bought them to eat as salad, but I also bought a head of romaine that looked appetizing and we ate that instead. And we've had so much other food lately — I don't know about you, but the holidays just flew by, even though we weren't busy, and we enjoyed all the food we made and ate — that the endives almost got lost in the shuffle. (You'll notice I also had a few cooked Brussels sprouts left over, so I tossed them in too.)

Endives wrapped in ham and then baked in a cheese sauce (sauce mornay) are a standard in Belgium and France, and there's nothing much better for a hot lunch on a cold, rainy day. First you cook the endives in butter and lemon juice, with garlic. That takes about an hour on low heat. Brown them in the butter before adding the lemon juice. Do them ahead of time if you want.

Then you wrap each endive in a slice of nice ham, or even sliced chicken or turkey breast sold as cold cuts. I used ham. And you make a sauce béchamel and add a lot of cheese in it. Add in the lemon-garlic cooking liquid from the endives too, for more flavor. Pour the cheese sauce over the wrapped endives in a baking dish and set the dish in a hot oven. If the endives and cheese sauce are hot when they go into the oven, it won't take long. Just long enough to brown the casserole, or gratin, on top a little. Don't burn your tongue when you eat it. There's a full recipe here, in two blog posts.

“Rain is coming”

We're going into a rainy period now, and temperatures are supposed to drop. That'll be good weather for eating more of those white lingot beans. I might have to take another couple of duck legs out of the dish of congealed fat to have again as an accompaniment. Yesterday, for a change, we made a chicken Caesar salad for lunch, and boy was it good. I didn't take photos...

As a change from all the "food porn" here are a few vineyard sunrise photos that I took at the very end of 2015.

I took the first and third shots as I began the walk one morning at about 8:30 — in other words, before actual sunrise, in low light conditions.

The shot above is one I took as I was getting back home, so the sun was up. I like the rows of tall poplar trees on our neighbor's property.

A groggy Walt (he says he didn't sleep well) just called out to tell me that "rain is coming." A front is moving in off the Atlantic, bringing significant rain to the British Isles and to northern parts of France. I hope it doesn't start falling before I can take Callie out into the vineyard for this morning's walk, but I don't want to go out much before sun-up, which is still a good hour away.

Cassoulet — white beans with duck and sausage

One of the best memories Walt and I have of eating cassoulet takes us back to the town of Castelnaudary in southwestern France in 1989. We were doing a 10-day driving trip around that region and decided to stay the night in the main hotel in the center of the town. It had a nice restaurant and, Castelnaudary being the birthplace of cassoulet according to local tradition, that's what we ordered. (Pronounce those [kah-stehl-noh-dah-ree] and [kah-soo-lay]).

Our waiter recommended the cassoulet, accompanied by a salad and a nice bottle of the local Fitou red wine. He was very attentive, and I think he enjoyed talking to two young (imagine!) Americans who spoke French and enjoyed good French food and cooking. After the fine dinner, he offered us — on the house — a couple of glasses of Armagnac brandy (also a local product) as a digestif (that's a strong after-dinner drink that supposedly helps you digest the rich food you just ate). We were staying upstairs in the hotel, so we didn't have to drive anywhere until the next morning. The whole thing is a very vivid and positive memory of those long-ago days when we started exploring France together.

Today I want to post the last of the 2016 cassoulet photos. I cooked the beans (big white beans called haricots lingots in France, or cannellini in Italy and the U.S.) in the slow-cooker for nearly 8 hours. They were maybe a little overcooked, but then the cassoulet needed only a short time in the oven so it was good that the beans were already done. I put a layer of beans in a baking dish and laid two slow-cooked duck leg pieces on top, browning the duck in a skillet first.

Then I added more cooked beans to cover the duck pieces (those are duck gizzards — gésier confits — along with the duck leg pieces in the photo above). On top of the beans, I placed a few pre-cooked, fairly plain pork sausages (saucisses de Toulouse are good) and spooned on a few more beans so that the sausages were nearly covered but still visible. Actually, I used some little chipolatas aux herbes that I had on hand. Cassoulet doesn't normally include smoked meats...

Next, I covered the beans with breadcrumbs. My breadcrumbs were home-made from stale baguettes, and I sautéed them lightly in some duck fat before I spread them over the beans. There is a little bit of duck fat in the beans too — beans need some fat for richness, and duck fat is a delicious ingredient. There's also a little bit of cooking liquid in the dish with the beans, and you can add more as it cooks. If the beans go into the oven already heated through, all you have to do is brown the top of the cassoulet quickly. Liquid will bubble up to the top in places.

It's hard to take a "pretty" picture of cassoulet, but it certainly does taste good. It's filling, obviously. The duck is tender and succulent, and the sausages add a little spice and contrast. The beans melt in your mouth, and the bread crumbs lend a nice crunch. Actually, we had a stray saucisse de Monbéliard (smoked pork sausage) in the fridge, already cooked, so we heated it up with the cassoulet and enjoyed it alongside.

Bonne année 2016

In France, people always wait until January 1, at the earliest, to say « bonne année », and around Saint-Aignan they often add « et surtout, bonne santé ». Officially, we have until the end of January to express our good wishes — « meilleurs vœux » — for 2016. I've now expressed mine to you.

New Year's Eve for us means oysters, so here are five photos of ours. Walt bought two dozen oysters of medium size (numéro 3 on a scale that goes from 5, the smallest, down to 1, the largest) for about 12 €. We steamed the open — most of them — this year, except for half a dozen that I shucked so we could try them raw on the half-shell. In the photo above, you can see that the one in the foreground on the right has started to open up. It's ready to be removed from the steamer. See this Wiki-How web page  for information about cooking oysters.

These are the farmed oysters called « fines de claires » — they are fattened in saltwater ponds on the coast down near the Ile d'Oléron for weeks or months before they are brought to market.

We are lucky to have a fish and seafood vendor who drives up from the Oléron area to Saint-Aignan every week, bringing us the freshest seafood you can imagine. I blogged about the seafood at the market a few weeks ago here.

The last two photos are before and after shots. Steaming them open doesn't fundamentally alter the taste or texture of the oysters — they are not cooked but more or less mi-cuites, like a good foie gras. And it's a lot safer than risking stabbing yourself in the hand with the oyster knife when you shuck them raw.

Slow-cooking duck legs to make confit de canard

I made slow-cooked duck — canard confit or confit de canard — nearly three weeks ago. We'll be eating some of it tomorrow in what in France is called a cassoulet. That's a dish of slow-cooked white beans with meats like duck, pork sausages, salt-cured pork, or even lamb. Cassoulet is not especially a New Year's Day dish in France, but it's become our own particular January 1 tradition.

That's the slow-cooked duck above. Making confit is kind of like poaching a turkey, except that the poaching "liquid" is pure duck fat rather than water or broth. Both processes give you moist, succulent meat — especially the cooking in fat. Like the poached turkey, the slow-cooked duck then normally goes into the oven at the end for a good browning, to make the skin crispy.

Think of making duck confit as a little like frying chicken, but without that layer of flour on the bird to absorb a lot of cooking oil, and cooked at a lower temperature for a longer time.

When you take the duck out of the poaching fat, you put it on a rack to drip as it heats up and browns in the oven. Duck fat is delicious, by the way, and in France people think of it as being much better for your health than, for example, butter.

One thing that really enhances the flavor of the duck is the dry marinade or rub you use to cure it before you cook it. It's a mixture of onion, garlic, black pepper, coarse salt, and thyme, and the duck legs (you can also use wings) can sit in it for anywhere from 6 to 48 hours in the refrigerator before you cook them. This year I rinsed the marinade off the duck legs before I cooked them in fat — that's optional but safer if you think the confit might turn out too salty.

In France you can buy duck fat at the supermarket, either in jars or, this year, in these 500 gram tubs that were selling for two euros apiece. You can cook with the duck fat and then save it almost indefinitely in the refrigerator for re-use later. Fry potatoes in it. Season beans and greens and other vegetables with it.

I melted the duck fat in the slow cooker and then carefully lowered the duck legs into the fat when it was liquid. I cooked the legs on low temperature for 6 hours. The meat was starting to fall off the bone by that time.

All I added to the crock pot with the fat and duck pieces was a few black peppercorns and a few bay leaves.

Here are the duck pieces after I took them out of the cooker (see the first photo at the top of this blog post) and then put them in another container for storage. I poured the warm fat over them so that they were completely covered, straining the fat to remove the peppercorns and bay leaves.

The confit is better tasting if you let it "cure"  and mellow in the cold, re-congealed fat for a few weeks before eating it. Because it is submerged in the fat it doesn't spoil. Keep in in the refrigerator or in a cold cellar or pantry.

In the days before people had refrigerators and freezers, making confit was a way to preserve cooked meats over the winter.

Going out like a lamb... here

I hear and read stories of all the bad weather in the middle section of the U.S. — Judy says parts of the Saint-Louis area are under water and friends in Illinois have flooding on their property east of Urbana. Evelyn has mentioned, and news reports here in France have shown pictures of, all the tornadoes and damage in Mississippi, Alabama, and east Texas. There have been blizzards in New Mexico, parts of Texas, and Oklahoma.

Photos from Monday morning's walk

In addition, parts of Scotland and northern England are flooded and are expecting more rain today. Meanwhile, 2015 is going out like a lamb here in France. Temperatures are still exceptionally mild around Saint-Aignan, and we've had mostly sunny days recently with only light rains from time to time. The forecast for today is for more of the same, with some gentle rain possible tonight. I washed a couple of comforter covers overnight and I'm thinking of hanging them on the line outside to let them dry.

Yesterday I loaded up the car with broken-down cardboard boxes — we've ordered a lot of little packages from Amazon France over the past six weeks — along with the usual empty bottles and cans, plus tons of publicity flyers that arrive in the mail. I headed for the recycle center, just 4 or 5 miles from the house, over on the other side of the river in Noyers. It doesn't open until 10, so I made sure not to get there too early. (One service we don't have here is curbside recycling.)

I found the gates locked and the place closed. I noticed a sign that lists the déchetterie's business hours. There I saw: Mardi matin — Fermé. Mardi après-midi — Fermé. Closed on Tuesdays. Well, that's new. For years, the déchetterie has been open every weekday, with the only exception being Thursday mornings. It took a while, but I'd gotten used to that schedule. Foiled again.

Today, Walt's driving down to the market in Saint-Aignan, which will be open today to give people a chance to do their New Year's Eve food shopping. There won't be a market on Saturday. We're getting oysters, as I've mentioned. Oysters and lettuce are the only things we need, really. I went to the market a week ago to pick up our turkey, and it wasn't crowded at all, so I imagine Walt will be out of the house for just a few minutes. We are only two miles from the market square.

Yesterday's turkey lunch was mushroom-barley soup made with turkey poaching broth, pearl barley, fresh mushrooms, and some onion, thyme, and oregano. Oh, and some chopped up turkey meat (a drumstick). At the last minute, I added some green beans for color. It was tasty and satisfying.