Up close: the Eglise Saint-Etienne-du-Mont in Paris

Here is a series of photos of the Eglise Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, which is located just behind the Panthéon in the Latin Quarter in Paris. The current church was built from the late 1400s into the early 1600s, replacing earlier religious buildings on the site.

The Michelin Guide called the façade of the church "highly original... The church is Gothic even though it is 16C." I couldn't get inside the church to take photos because mass was being celebrated when I arrived. Remember that you can click on the photos with your mouse, or tap them with your finger on a tablet, to see them at a larger size, in more detail.

Lamb kidneys for lunch

How about a lunch of lamb kidneys? That's what we had one day last week. They are called rognons d'agneau. I think the kidneys are good — at least as good as veal kidneys — and I've been cooking and eating them since the 1970s, but not often. I don't remember the first time I ever ate them, but it had to be in France in the early to mid-1970s.

I was at Intermarché one day a couple of weeks ago and I saw two lamb kidneys on a tray at the butcher's counter. I asked for them and asked if he had more. He didn't. I bought the two kidneys he had on display and stuck them in the freezer.

Then a few days later I was at the Grand Frais supermarket up near Blois and I noticed that there were lamb kidneys in the butcher cabinet there too. And more of them. The woman running the show sold me four more kidneys and said she probably had more in the back if I wanted them. I didn't, especially, but it's good to know that Grand Frais is a source for the delicacy.

How do you prepare and cook them? Unless the butcher has already done it, you need to remove the thin, nearly clear membrane that covers each kidney — it peels right off. Then you cut each kidney in half so that you have two kidney-shaped pieces (as above). Then you carefully "de-nerve" them, as they say in French. That means cut out the white material, which is veins or whatever, in each half. If you want to, you can soak the kidney pieces for half an hour in cold water with a splash of vinegar in them to "disgorge" them. I didn't do that this time.

Next you clean and cut up a good quantity of mushrooms. And you peel and chop an onion or two. Set all that aside.

Heat up a pan so that it is searing hot. Dry the kidney pieces off a little with a paper towel if you have soaked them. Then sauté them quickly in the hot pan to "seize" them, as they say in French. Take them out of the pan as soon as they have browned for a couple of minutes on each side. Don't leave them too long or they'll go rubbery. Don't spare the black pepper.

Then sauté the onions and mushrooms in the same pan until they are done. At that point, pour in a splash of cognac or whiskey (or white wine) and let that evaporate to deglaze the pan and give flavor. Add a few tablespoons of cream — as much as you want — to the pan, along with a tablespoon or two of Dijon mustard. Mix everything together and then put the kidneys into the sauce. Let it bubble and cook just long enough to heat the kidneys through. You want to serve them medium-rare or, in French, rosé.

 

Serve the Rognons d'agneau à la crème with rice, pasta, or either fried or steamed potatoes and a green salad. I actually served them with millet (cooked as you cook rice) and "baby" collard greens. Spinach, green beans, broccoli, or another green vegetable would be good. Yum.

Back in the 1970s, when I was living in Champaign, Illinois, I used to go from time to time to the butcher counter at the supermarket and order a batch of fresh lamb kidneys to cook this way. Then I'd have to go back and pick them up 48 hours later — they were a special-order item. At least once, the butcher looked at me as he handed me the package of lamb kidneys and said: "Your cat is certainly going to have a feast tonight!"

I doubt that many of you reading this will be cooking lamb kidneys any time soon, et tant pis pour vous. They are a real delicacy.

Our summers vs. U.S. summers

Yesterday, Judy asked in a comment about our weather here in Saint-Aignan right now. I think she was a little surprised that, in the height of summer, we are using the oven to cook our meals. Well, the weather here is not like American weather.

Here are some Paris pictures for today: this one shows the chapel at the Sorbonne, the Eglise Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and the Grande Roue or ferris wheel over near the Place de la Concorde.

Yesterday our high temperature, on what was a hot day by our standards, was 25.5ºC — about 78ºF. Our highest temperature so far in July, on the 9th when I was in Paris, was 27.7ºC, or almost 82ºF. This past week, we had three days when the high was in the high 60s or low 70s F. And our relative humidity is, well, relatively low.

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

One reason the great heatwave, or Grande Canicule, of 2003 was such a catastrophe in France is that the people and the country are not used to long stretches where the temperature reaches into the high 80s F. In 2003 we had weeks and weeks of such high temperatures, culminating in a 10-day period where the highs soared into the 90s and low 100s. Not this year though. That said, but we are in fact supposed to have hot weather, in the high 80s and up to 90, over the next three days. Then it will cool down again.

Here's a wider view taken from the "balcony" of the Panthéon, looking in the same direction as the first photo above.

Some years we don't have much of a summer at all. And some years, like this past one, we don't have much of a winter either. The climate here is what they call "temperate" — which means it is only rarely very hot (exception: 2003) and only rarely very cold (exception: 2012). Otherwise, the temperature pretty much stays in the 35º to 75º range. It's like San Francisco, where the temperature range is 40º to 70º F, with few hot days and almost never a freeze or frost. At least here in Saint-Aignan we don't have the cold summertime sea breeze and heavy wind-driven fog we used to have back there.

A pot pie using smoked chicken

So yesterday I cooked. When the stress level mounts, we all fall back on the things we enjoy doing. I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen making a recipe I had been planning to make for about a year, ever since CHM and I went to the Perche region in May/June 2015. Yesterday, I finally got "a round tooit."

Tourte au poulet fumé, a recipe from the book « Un plat, c'est tout ! »

It's kind of a long story. One of the reasons we went to the Perche was that an old school friend of CHM's owned a château there. He had contacted the friend and learned that while that man now lives down in the south of France, his son has taken over the château and runs it, with his wife, as a hotel. I posted a photo of it last year. It's called something like the Maison-Château de Saint-Paterne, and it's just outside the town of Alençon.

The hotel owner's name is Charles-Henry de Valbray. We met him, spent an hour of so talking, and learned that he is a cookbook author. He has published at least two books, which he's co-authored with another man, Chistian de Rivière. The first book is Les Jules aux fourneaux (approximately "The Men Are in the Kitchen") and the second is Un Plat, c'est tout ! ("One Dish, That's All!" — the title is a play on the French expression un point, c'est tout, which means "that's all there is to it" or "that's all she wrote"). So the recipes are for one-dish meals.

Anyway, when we got back to Saint-Aignan last year after the short trip north to Le Perche, I ordered Charles-Henry de Valbray's second book from Amazon.fr. I read through a lot of it, and I came across one recipe that I wanted to make: it's called Tourte au poulet fumé — a kind of pot pie made with smoked chicken, mushrooms, smoked bacon lardons, Swiss cheese, and eggs baked in a puff-pastry crust.

Anyway, I finally tried it yesterday. For lunch, we had the tourte, served hot, and the three of us ate half of it, followed by a green salad dressed with vinaigrette. Today, unless we change our minds, we'll eat the other half, maybe as a cold dish served on a bed of dressed salad greens. It is very tasty. The recipe says it serves 8, but in our case it only gave 6 servings. We must be big eaters.

I don't know if you can buy smoked, cooked chickens where you live, but of course you could make the same dish using a roasted chicken or cooked chicken breast or thigh meat. Here is the recipe, in French...

Tourte au poulet fumé

1 poulet fumé
80 g de lardons fumés
2 pâtes feuilletées pur beurre
50 g de gruyère
300 g de champignons
1 bouquet d'estragon
6 échalottes
3 c. à soupe de porto
5 oeufs
70 g de beurre
2 c. à soupe de fécule
15 cl de crème fraîche
sel et poivre

Préchauffer le four à 180ºC.

Découper et désosser le poulet. Couper la chair en morceaux. Nettoyer les champignons et les émincer.

Peler et émincer les échalotes. Les faire revenir dans une grande sauteuse avec 50 g de beurre.
Ajouter les champignons et les lardons. Faire revenir encore 5 minutes.

Battre les oeufs en omelette.

Hors du feu, ajouter la fécule au mélange de champignons avec le porto, la crème, le fromage râpé, et enfin les oeufs. Saler et poivrer.

Beurrer et fariner un moule à tarte. Tapisser avec la pâte feuilletée et répartir les morceaux de poulet par-dessus.

Verser la préparation et ajouter des feuilles l'estragon ciselées. Dérouler par-dessus la deuxième pâte feuilletée et souder les bords. Faire une cheminée. Enfourner pour 35 minutes de cuisson. Servir chaude ou froide avec une salade verte.

I'll translate the recipe later and give the English version here. No time this morning...

P.S. Here it is:

Smoked-chicken pot pie

1 smoked (or roasted) chicken (2 lbs. of meat)

4 or 5 slices smoked bacon, chopped (80 g)

2 sheets of puff pastry

2 oz. grated Swiss cheese, grated (50 g)

10 oz. mushrooms, sliced (300 g)

1 bunch tarragon (or 2 Tbsp. dried)

6 shallots (or one large onion)

2 Tbsp. port wine

5 eggs

½ stick butter or more (70 g)

2 Tbsp. corn starch

½ to ¾ cup heavy cream (15 cl)

salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC).

Cut the chicken into pieces and take the meat off the bones. (Use cooked, boneless chicken thighs or breasts if you don’t want to de-bone a whole chicken.) Cut the meat into bite-size chunks.

Clean and slice the mushrooms.Peel and slice the shallots (or onion). Sauté the shallots/onion.in butter. Add the mushrooms and the bacon. Sauté for another 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs.

Off the heat, add the cornstarch to the mushroom mixture, and then add the port wine, cream, and grated cheese. Finally, mix in the eggs and some chopped tarragon leaves.

Butter and flour a big pie pan. Line it with one sheet of pastry. Spoon the filling into the pan and cover it with the second sheet of pastry. Crimp the edges to seal the pie. Cut a vent hole in the top crust. Bake in the oven for 35 minutes. Serve hot or cold with a green salad.

Dur, dur de rester optimiste

I try to remain upbeat and optimistic, but it's not always easy. This morning is another sad one. Anger-tinged too. There's no way I can clearly express my feelings about the attack in Nice last night. On top of the two horrible Paris attacks last year, the sorrow and rage are overwhelming.

Ce drapeau sera en berne ce matin. Notre joie de vivre aussi. This flag will be flying at half-mast this morning, I'm sure. The photo shows the rue Soufflot, where I worked for several years, decades ago, in happier times. That's the Luxembourg Palace on the other side of the boulevard Saint-Michel in the Latin Quarter.

Ce que nous avons mangé à Paris

Last Saturday in Paris CHM and I had lunch with friends P. and M. at the Grand Bistrot on the avenue de Breteuil. It's a restaurant we've been going to for years. Walt and I had dinner there about 20 years ago, for example, one of the times we were on vacation in France.

As a first course, I ordered a salad of green asparagus with thin slices of marinated tomato and some nice lettuce. I enjoyed it. P. had snails, and M. and CHM had a big platter of oysters. I have no pictures of those. At the Grand Bistrot, the set menu comes with half a bottle of wine per person included in the price (44€).

Then I had fish — a grilled daurade — served with spinach and diced raw tomato. That was good too. I don't eat fish all that often these days, but I like it. Daurade, also spelled dorade, is called sea bream in English. I think what I had was the fish called la daurade royale, or the gilt-head sea bream in English. One photo on Wikipedia makes it look an awful lot like what we called hogfish in North Carolina when I was growing up. Those were good eating.

For dessert, CHM and I both ordered a baba au rhum. It was served with whipped cream and the waiter brought a bottle of vanilla-flavored rum to the table for us to dribble onto the cake. The baba itself is a yeast-leavened cake.

Our friend M., whose 86th birthday we were celebrating, ordered crêpes suzette for her dessert.

The next day, Sunday, CHM and I took the train back to Blois, where Walt met us at the train station with the car. We drove over to a restaurant near the Château de Chambord for lunch. More about that later... Meanwhile, happy Bastille Day — Bon 14 juillet.

Itself

I mean the building itself. Le Panthéon. It stands on top of a high point of land called the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. The Sorbonne is nearby. Saint Geneviève is the patron saint of Paris. The Panthéon replaced a half-ruined church on the site when it was built in the 1700s, during the reign of Louis XV.

It was built to be a church, but construction was completed just as the French Revolution began late in the century. In 1791 the revolutionaries, who were anticlericals — anti-church — closed down the new place of worship. The revolutionary Constituent Assembly decided to transform the Panthéon into a national shrine that would "receive the bodies of great men who died in the period of French liberty." (I'm quoting a 1976 English-language copy of the Michelin Green Guide that I happen to have.)

The dome of the Panthéon is a huge iron-framework structure. Where we went when we climbed up to the observation deck was the colonnade you see at the base of the dome. Considering the hill that the Panthéon sits on and the 200+ steps we climbed to get up there, we were pretty high above the surrounding city.

Above is the front porch of the Panthéon in Paris's Latin Quarter.

Last night we enjoyed a funny coincidence. Kind of a series of them, really. Yesterday CHM, Walt, and I were invited to dinner by a man who lives part-time in Paris and part-time down here. His Paris address is fairly close to CHM's apartment. As I've said, I worked in the Latin Quarter, in the neighborhoods around the Panthéon, in the 1970s. Two other dinner guests were people who live on a small street just off the Place du Panthéon. That street is one that I know because it was the setting for a series of dialogues and lessons in a French textbook we used at the University of Illinois when I was a teaching assistant there. I also know it from wandering the neighborhood for several years. The people who live there were surprised to learn than anybody had ever heard of their small street. We had a fun evening and good dinner, by the way, but I'm feeling a little worn out this morning.

Up close: the neighborhood around the Panthéon

I worked in the Latin Quarter back in the middle 1970s. I was a part-time teacher, giving English lessons in various schools, and a part-time student, taking classes at the Sorbonne in French. The neighborhoods around the Panthéon were my stomping grounds for 4 or 5 years. I spent some of the best years of my youth there.

Here's a view looking up the rue Soufflot from the "front porch" of the Panthéon. I worked around here in the 1970s. The University of Illinois, where I was doing a graduate degree, had its Paris office at 21 rue Soufflot back then.

I never went up into the upper levels of the Panthéon back then. I asked the guide last Saturday morning if the kind of tour I was on was offered back then. No, he said, not on a regular basis. The monument was badly managed, and for years there was only a skeleton crew on duty. The Panthéon was open to the public once in a while, including the upper colonnade and the crypt, but on a very irregular schedule.

The Hôtel des Grands Hommes is the one in the middle of these three buildings.

In 1970, the first time I was in Paris, I stayed in a couple of different hotels in the area on several visits. I remember spending at least one night in the mid-'70s in the Hôtel des Grands Hommes, which is the middle building in the photo above. It was, frankly, a dive back in 1974. The hallways were dark and narrow. The rooms and plumbing were time-worn and in disrepair. My main memory is of not being able to get the key to open the door to my room when I arrived, completely jet-lagged and with a ton of baggage. I had to trudge back down two or three flights of stairs to get somebody from the front desk to come up and help me. They must have thought I was a lame-brain. Today, the Hotel des Grands Hommes is a three-star hotel.

Until last Saturday, I had never been inside the Eglise Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. Well, I got sort of inside. There was a priest celebrating mass and we tourists could only get just inside the front door for a glimpse of the interior of the church. Visitors are not allowed to wander around in the church while services are in progress. I'll have to try again the next time I'm in Paris.

Above is the town hall of the 5th arrondissement of Paris, which is the old Latin Quarter. I once spent a night in a jail cell in this building, which housed a small police station with a "holding tank" for people picked up wandering the streets drunk or drugged up. I was neither. But a friend I was traveling with and I couldn't find a hotel room in the area one evening in May 1970. We went to the police for help, and they let us sleep in a cell for a few hours until the sun came up. Then we were back on the street again. We found a hotel room in short order.

Looking out over Paris

My short weekend trip to Paris went very smoothly. I got the train at the little Saint-Aignan-Noyers station Friday afternoon at 5:44. I changed trains at Vierzon, with just a 20-minute layover, to board a non-stop Intercités train to Paris. I arrived at the Austerlitz train station in Paris at about 8:35 p.m.

The Panthéon is a national monument so the French flag flies over it. Here I'm looking out over the Palais and Jardin du Luxembourg toward the Tour Eiffel and the Dôme des Invalides.

From there I took a bus (the 89) from Austerlitz station over to CHM's and arrived chez lui at about 9:15. It stays light here in July until after 10, so I wasn't traveling in the dark. There were no surprises or hitches. CHM had dessert waiting for me — I had taken a sandwich to eat as a light supper on the train.

This is the Eglise Saint-Sulpice up close, with the skyscrapers of the La Défense business quarter, west of the city, in the background.

On Saturday morning, I did one of the things I really wanted to do while I was in Paris. That is, I rode the 89 bus back over to the Panthéon in the Latin Quarter, paid for a ticket to go into the old building and take the accompanied tour up into the main tower and out onto the colonnade far above ground. I and about 15 other people climbed the 225 or so steps to the top to see and photograph the views from up there. And take pictures.

Looking north past the Sainte-Chapelle (foreground) past the Eglise Saint-Eustache toward the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur up at Montmartre.

According to the Panthéon web site, the first montée up to the colonnade and walkway at the base of the dome was scheduled for 11:00. I got there at 10:10, and when I bought my ticket (10.50€) I was told that there was a tour up to the top at 10:15. No waiting! Above are three of my photos from the top. The weather was fantastically beautiful — hot but not too hot. Don't forget that you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

This is not the Grand Bistrot but a little restaurant in the Latin Quarter, near the Panthéon, that I thought was picturesque.

The next thing I was looking forward to doing in Paris, besides just spending some time with CHM, was having lunch with him and two friends of his, P. and M., whom I've gotten to know a little bit over the years. Saturday was M.'s 86th birthday, and CHM had invited them and me to lunch at the Grand Bistrot near where he lives. More about that over the next few days.

Strawberries, apples, and pears

Not only do they grow strawberries at the Château du Moulin...

...but they also have a lot of apple and pear trees on the grounds.

I especially liked this tree and the outbuildings in the background.

This last photo is just to remind you what the Château du Moulin looks like.

I'm in Paris this morning, heading back to Blois and Saint-Aignan this afternoon. Yesterday morning I climbed up to the top of the Panthéon, and I'll show some pictures tomorrow.

Fraises

Fraises is French for strawberries. The Château du Moulin, near Romorantin and 20 miles east of Saint-Aignan, has dubbed itself the strawberry "conservatory" for France.

The strawberry is a "false fruit" made up of a fleshy mass in which are embedded the real, tiny yellow fruits that seem like seeds. ("In fact," the French says, "every time we think we are eating a strawberry, we are really eating a whole bunch of fruits at the same time."

Picking the berries

Making the confiture

I'll let you read this last poster. By the time you read this, I should be in Paris...

How does the garden grow?

The weather is beautiful right now, and Walt is good about watering the vegetable garden. Even so, everything is very late. To blame are the six weeks of constant rains and dark clouds that we recently endured.

I tilled new ground last year and this past spring, enlarging the garden plot by about 100 sq. ft., bringing it to a total of about 1300. There are more than two dozen tomato plants, two rows of green beans, six plants each of eggplant (aubergine) and bell peppers (poivrons), eight or ten squash/pumpkin plants, and some radishes and snow peas planted out there.

There is also a good stand of Swiss chard plants (called bettes or blettes) on the edge of the garden plot that survived our springtime deluges. It's time to start harvesting some... next week.

I grew from seed and transplanted a dozen or more kale plants in May and June. The ones above are called "dinosaur" or lacinato kale, known also as cavolo nero. Various people have told me that these plants will produce very tasty, tender greens. I've never grown or cooked this variety before. I'm a firm believer in eating your greens on a regular basis.

I also planted a variety called Red Russian Kale. I found the seeds for both varieties in a store in North Carolina when I was there in February. Kale is starting to catch on in France now. I saw bunches of curly kale for sale in the Grand Frais supermarket near Blois earlier this week. I thought it was expensive.

We are optimistic that the weather will stay warm and sunny enough for us to have good harvests of all these crops. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I'm off to Paris for the weekend. My train leaves Saint-Aignan at about 6 p.m. this afternoon.

Maison à vendre à Saint-Aignan

Some people we know are selling their house in Saint-Aignan. They're Dutch, and they've owned this vacation house for 20 years. We were invited over there for a glass of wine Tuesday evening. They asked us to spread the word about the house being on the market.

I found it on a realtor's web site this morning. Here's the description:

Située dans un environnement calme et agréable aux portes de Saint AIGNAN, cette charmante MAISON DE PAYS, SH 150 m², offre en RC (poutres, tomettes) : cuisine A/E, salon avec cheminée foyer ouvert, 1 chbre avec sdb/wc privatifs + une 2nde partie non communicante avec 1 chbre spacieuse, sdb/wc, buanderie - À l'étage : pièce palière, 3 chbres mansardées dont 1 commandée, sdb, wc - Vaste grange et four à pain non attenants - Terrain clos de murs et arboré de 600 m²

and my translation:

Located in a pleasant, peaceful area on the outskirts of Saint-Aignan, this charming country house, 1600 sq. ft., has on the ground level (tile floors, exposed-beam ceilings): a kitchen with cabinets and appliances, a living room with an open fireplace, a bedroom with a private bathroom and WC, plus a spacious bedroom with a separate entrance and a bathroom, WC, and a laundry room. Upstairs, there’s a mezzanine, three bedrooms, a bathroom and WC. There’s also a spacious barn, and a bread oven. The walled-in property (6000 sq. feet) is landscaped.

SH means surface habitable, or living space. WC is water closet, what they call a "loo" in England, I think — in other words, a half-bath (toilet, sink). Often, the room called the salle de bains or bathroom in France doesn't have a toilet in it.

Salon avec cheminée

The house has a bedroom suite with a separate entrance that I haven't seen. The living room and kitchen are spacious and pleasant. One of the three bedrooms upstairs, which appear to be converted attic space (like ours), is accessible only through another bedroom, according to the description (une chambre commandée). I bet that space could be used as an office. That would still leave four bedrooms in all.

Cuisine A/E means cuisine aménagée et équipée — with cabinets and appliances

The house is on one side of a large courtyard, with the barn on the other side. The courtyard is completely walled in. I believe there is more land outside the walls — with fruit trees and room for a vegetable garden, maybe. I'm not sure about that though.

The bread oven (le four à pain)

I of course am doing this post because it's interesting to see what a maison de pays in the Loire Valley looks like. I'm not being paid. The photos are ones I found on the realtor's web site, and you can see more photos by clicking on the this link or the one above. The asking price is under $200,000. Oh, and I should probably point out, in light of the recent flooding, that the house is on high ground.