Making hamburgers

It's summertime and, as I've already said, that's grilling season. One grilled food we enjoy, being Americans and all, is a good hamburger. We don't buy meat that's been ground in some factory. We buy whole cuts of beef (or veal, or turkey) and grind it ourselves to make 'burgers. When we first came to live here, I wanted to make a Greek moussaka using ground lamb. Nobody sells it, it turns out. We had to grind it ourselves at home...

I was making a ground beef filling for zucchini "boats" with some of this beef...

A few weeks ago, I went to the supermarket for the first time since March and actually went inside to shop. I went because the Super U market in Saint-Aignan advertised a special on the cut of beef called basse-côte. I think it would be called chuck steak in the U.S. In terms of value and taste, it's the best cut of beef we've found for grinding and making hamburgers and meat sauces. Often, fresh meat that hasn't been industrially pre-processed and pre-packaged in a factory somewhere is not available for on-line ordering and pick-up from the supermarkets. You have to go into the store to buy it.

Beef sliced up and ready for the grinder

We have a KitchenAid stand mixer with a meat-grinder attachment that we use to process beefsteak into hamburger meat. We've had it and used it for 25 or 30 years. We brought it to France when we moved here in 2003. I'm so glad we did. One reason is that while you can buy industrially made ground beef here in France as well as "ground to order" beef in butcher shops, you really pay a premium for it. And you can't buy ground lamb or veal, for example, as far as I know.

Hamburger patties ready for the freezer

A week or two ago Walt bought some ground beef in a butcher's shop in Saint-Aignan just to see what it would cost and whether it would be good. It cost something like 18 euros per kilogram. And it was too finely ground; the resulting grilled hamburger had a mushy texture. The basse-côte à griller that I got at Super U cost just 7.90 euros per kilogram — half the price. And we can grind it coarsely enough with the KitchenAid attachment that the burgers have a much more pleasing, meaty "bite" to them.

We also make our own hamburger buns, as you might remember. There's a post about them here, including photos and a recipe. It's nice to be retired and to have time to do all the work we do in the kitchen.

Refreshed

It's 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler this morning than it was yesterday morning. Walt tells me there was thunder and lightning overnight, but I wasn't aware of it. It's just getting light outside, and I can see evidence that we go a little rain during the night. All of nature, including me, is feeling refreshed this morning.

These are some photos I took 24 hours ago when I went out for my walk with Tasha. I walked down the hill on our north side, and by the time I walked back up to the house I was soaked. No, not rain. Sweat. The whole walk was just over a kilometer long, but the hill is steep. We also took a detour through a couple of long rows of vines.

La fin de la canicule de 2020

France's 2020 canicule ("dog days" or heat wave) appears to be ending. We had a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon and the temperature dropped significantly. However, after a couple of house-shaking claps of thunder and flashes of lightning, with a heavy downpour that lasted maybe 20 minutes, the sun came back out and the temperature rose again. It didn't get quite as hot as it had been earlier in the day, but the relative humidity was much higher. Still, we were able to go and spend the afternoon up in the loft for the first time in about a week.

In France, the period during which extended spells of hot weather are frequent and expected, called la canicule (dog days), runs from July 24 until August 24. That's when the Dog Star (Sirius) rises in the morning sky just as the sun is rising. Since ancient times, people believed that Sirius intensifies the heat of the sun enough to cause the summer's hottest weather.

August 2020 weather reports and predictions for Saint-Aignan

The worst heat wave of recent times occurred in the summer of 2003, which coincided with our arrival in Saint-Aignan. We weren't sure we were going to survive. The house we live in is not air-conditioned — a very small percentage of houses here in France have AC. That summer, the weather station over in Romorantin, 20 miles east of Saint-Aignan, recorded six days of temperatures at 40ºC or above. Forty degrees Celsius is the equivalent of 104ºF. This year's canicule will not have been as long or as intense as 2003's, but it has certainly been hot. Look at the Accuweather chart above.

We had a string of five days with highs above 93ºF, including three days with highs of 98, 101, and 100. Three or four other days saw temperatures in the high 80s. Today it's still supposed to hit 89. Notice also that the historical average high temperatures in this part of France in August are in the high 70s Fahrenheit. It'll be nice to be just "average" again over the coming days.

We are also hoping for some rain — the vegetable garden will like that. Our tomatoes are suffering, but maybe it's not too late for a healthy late-season crop. The chard plants like the one on the right will appreciate some rainfall too.

Summertime foods — pasta and "pterodactyl"

Grilling season. A spur of the moment idea: pintade. "Pterodactyl" as American friends called it years ago when they visited and we bought a pintade at the market. It's a guinea hen. Walt got it from the poultry vendor in the market last Saturday. It weighed nearly 2 kilos (just over 4 lbs.) and sold for 6.50€ per kilo — about $3.50/lb.

I wasn't sure I'd be able to cut it up the way I would cut up a chicken, but it turned out to be pretty easy. The plan, given our current afternoon temperatures in the 35ºC range (that's 95ºF), was to cook it on the barbecue grill on the front deck.

We cooked just one leg and thigh and one half of the breast. The other meaty pieces went into the freezer for later. And with the back, neck, and giblets I made broth (despite the hot weather). It was morning and all the windows were open anyway. By noon it would have been to hot in the house...

This is the liver. I poached it briefly in the broth I was making. It was a tender morsel to enjoy with the grilled guinea fowl pieces, and with a pasta salad on the side.

I made the salad with leftover cooked pasta and steamed cauliflower from lunch a few days ago, plus some chickpeas, green beans, and a lot of fresh basil leaves and tomato.

P.S. Sorry I neglected to take any photos of the grilled guinea fowl pieces. Next time...

Melon au jambon

We've probably eaten more melons [muh-LÕ] this year than ever before. The French melon is a variety of cantaloupe that was brought to France from Italy at the beginning of the Renaissance (the late 1500s). People in the Charente region of southwestern France later began growing it so successfully that it came to be known as le melon charentais. The Charente département is centered on the big town of Angoulême, located mid-way between Bordeaux and Limoges. (Another well-known town in the Charente is Cognac.) The Charente melon is famously grown in Provence around the town of Cavaillon, in the Luberon north of Aix and Marseille. It's also grown in Spain, Morocco, and Senegal.

One way to enjoy the melon charentais is as an appetizer. It's served with what is called jambon cru or jambon sec in France — "raw" or "dried" ham that's air-cured, not cooked. The most famous ham of this type in France is jambon de Bayonne. The saltiness of the ham complements the sweetness of the melon. The ham in my photo above is actually jambon de Parme — Italian ham from the town of Parma that we know as prosciutto. It's cut into thin slices, and the slices are big enough that half a slice is enough to have with one quarter of a melon. The melons we're finding in local markets weigh between two and three pounds and cost about 2.50 euros apiece. You can also serve these melons as a dessert, and they're good with a little port wine poured into or over them.

Here are a couple of photos I took of melons in a Paris market back in July 2000 — 20 years ago. Walt and I were in Paris for the July 4th weekend. CHM was there, along with his late partner Frank and our late friend Jeanine, who had a house in the little town of Carteret in Normandy. We went shopping one day in the Paris outdoor market that sets up along the avenue de Saxe, not far from the Eiffel Tower.

The French melon has a smoother skin and a sweeter taste than the American cantaloupe, according to the Wikipedia article about them. They are two different varieties. The melon charentais is described as "sweet and flavorful" while the American cantaloupe is called "moderately sweet." The one below, which we bought at the market in Saint-Aignan, must be a hybrid. Growers are constantly trying to hybridize cantaloupes to maximize both flavor and shelf-life, because the melon charentais is so fragile and can easily be bruised and spoiled during shipping.

When you buy a melon charentais at an outdoor market in France, the vendor will usually ask you when you plan to eat it. Today? Tomorrow? In two or three days? Then she or he will carefully choose one that it at the perfect state of ripeness for you. It's partly a joke, and it's all good-natured, but I'm sure the tradition started out as a serious question.

The state of the grapes

The red wine grapes are turning red. Or purple, I guess, would be more accurate.

Some of the leaves on the vines are taking on autumnal colors. I took these photos three days ago.

The extreme heat continues. The house is hotter this morning than it was yesterday at the same hour. And there is no air moving outdoors. Yesterday there was a slight breeze. We actually had a couple of light rain showers yesterday morning. The result was that the humidity level went up, raising the discomfort level.

Baking

As in, we are baking, like roasts in an oven. It's 80ºF in the house this morning. It was nearly 95ºF up in the loft yesterday afternoon. We stayed downstairs, where the temperature was not so oppressive. This morning I have all the windows and doors open to let the heat out and the cool air in. Yesterday, London, three hundred miles north of us, recorded its hottest August day since 2003 (97ºF). Accuweather says it was over 100ºF (38ºC) here in Saint-Aignan yesterday afternoon.

The canicule (dog days, heat wave) is supposed to continue until at least Tuesday.

Plants on our deck are enjoying the heat and sunshine, though if we didn't water them almost daily they'd quickly perish.

I hope this doesn't turn into a repeat of the 2003 canicule, when so many thousands of older French people died of heat stroke and dehydration. Meanwhile, all we can do is hunker down and try to stay out of the blazing sun.

Almost forgot... I had a close encounter with a deer yesterday afternoon. I had gone out with the dog. We just walked around the neighbors big yard across the road (nobody's there right now) and then around our own yard, where I somehow came face to face with a fairly big deer. It was hiding behind a bush and suddenly leapt out as I approached.

The panicked animal could have killed me if it had kicked me, and I was close enough to it for that to happen. It ran toward the vegetable garden and must have jumped over the four-foot fence on the north side of the yard — I didn't see the escape. It had to have jumped over the fence to get into the yard in the first place. Tasha was so startled and confused by the whole incident that she didn't even bark. I think the deer are getting desperate because of the drought and heat.

More trees come down

We were surprised yesterday when a tree service crew showed up at our closest neighbor's house at about 6:30 a.m. We knew that the neighbor, who lives in the Paris area and who inherited her father's house when he died 5 or 6 years ago, wanted to have two very tall pine trees taken down. They were growing really close to the house and must have been 50 or 60 feet tall.

In Google Maps, I just measured the distance between these two trees and our front deck/terrasse. They stood about 65 feet (20 meters) from us. They stand no more. I'm showing the photos in this post in chronological order. In the first one, above, the top of the smaller tree was just getting ready to fall to the ground.

Above, you can see the larger tree before its trimming began. It's very possible that the man who climbed up into the tree to cut off the branches was the same one who did the same job on our big blue spruce tree last winter. He seems to be a local specialist in this line of work, since we had contracted to have the job done by our regular landscaping service but were asked to write the tree-climber a separate check to pay his fee.

These photos are very back-lit because the sun was just coming up over the horizon when the work was done. It all seemed to go smoothly, and the two tall pines were down well before lunchtime. There was of course a lot of noise — chain saws and chippers buzzed and whined, and the five member of the work crew whistled and shouted to communicate with each other over the noise of the machines. Part of the crew worked all afternoon chipping up branches and raking up debris, using leaf blowers.

I took some of these photos from our deck, and others from the yard on the north side of our house. The neighbor's house will certainly get a lot more sunlight without the big pine trees growing in front of her windows on the west-facing façade. We still have a screen of trees in our yard that block views of her windows and give us privacy. At this point, at least, she doesn't live here full-time. We're hoping she's not preparing the house and property with a view to selling it.

There was no sign of the neighbor yesterday, and we think she cleared off just in time to avoid all the noise and commotion. She was there the day before. We assume she went back to Paris. When she's here, she leaves her front gate open. Yesterday afternoon when the work crew left, they closed it. So she must not be here. We know her just slightly and have only ever talked with her a few times, briefly.

Chou-fleur au pesto

Yesterday's lunch was based on a vegetable that is often considered a wintertime staple: cauliflower. I only bought a cauliflower last weekend because it was too beautiful to pass up when I went shopping at Terre Y Fruits. You can see it here. I don't know why it occurred to me that it might be good with pesto. Then I did some searching on the 'net and, as usual, I found many recipes for just such a dish in English as well as in French.

The first step in my version of cauliflower with pesto was to cut the florets apart and then cook them in a steamer pot until they were just starting to get tender but retained a little crunch. When I cut up a cauliflower, I save and cook both the tender parts of the plant's stem, cutting away the fibrous "skin", and I also trim up, save, and cook the green leaves that envelop the head of chou-fleur (including their thick, fleshy ribs) if they are not wilted or damaged — in other words, if the leaves look appetizing. They're cabbage, after all.

The second step was to cook some pasta. Pasta is optional, but wanted to cook some with the cauliflower. We had some mini-bowties (mini-farfalle). I cooked them in boiling water and let them cool down. Save some of the pasta water and use it, hot, to thin the pesto with you mix it with the vegetables and pasta. I let the cauliflower cool down too. I was going to reheat everything anyway. When the time came, I panned the cauliflower florets and leaves with the pasta in olive oil.

We had the makings for pesto in the fridge and freezer. This happens to be radish-leaf pesto, but it could well have been pesto made with basil, kale, or chard leaves. The other ingredients are olive oil, garlic, and grated Parmesan cheese, along with some powdered hazelnuts for flavor and consistency. You can make delicious pesto with powdered hazelnuts, almonds, or walnuts instead of the traditional pine nuts (which are very expensive).

Put the pesto in the bottom of the bowl you're going to serve the mixture in. Spoon in the reheated cauliflower and pasta. Stir and toss everything together to melt the Parmesan. If the pesto needs a little liquid, add some or the hot water that the pasta cooked in. Serve immediately.

Since this was a meatless lunchtime dish, we had an appetizer of pâté de campagne. I had bought it at Terre Y Fruits. It's local, from the Berry near Buzançais and Châteauroux.

And as a combination salad and cheese course, we had tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Summer sights around the hamlet

Here in the Saint-Aignan area, we got less than half an inch of rainfall in July (11.5 mm). Half of that fell on a single Sunday afternoon. We'd normally expect about 2 inches of rain in July. June was a lot wetter. Right now, everything is dusty and parched. Here are some photos I took on July 22.

Because it's so quiet and empty around the hamlet, the local roe deer, called chevreuils in French, are very active this summer. Here's one loping across a yard across the street from us that nobody is using this summer— except us and Tasha, when we take walks over there. The owners come down from Blois about twice a month to mow the grass and trim the hedges and trees.

The hamlet where we live — 9 houses on the edge of an extensive vineyard and just two miles by car from the middle of Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher — has a couple of new residents this summer, and they're keeping goats! Still, 4 of the houses in the hamlet are unoccupied 90 percent of the time. That means 11 people live now here year-round. The hamlet consists of 12 or 13 acres of land surrounded by 125 acres of vineyards and woods (measured using Google Maps).

The grapes seem to be doing well right now. They like the dry, hot afternoons and the cool summer nights and mornings. Right now, two of the four houses that stand empty more than 11 months out of the year are temporarily occupied by there owners, both of whom live in the Paris area. Soon, we'll have more visitors in the hamlet, because one other house is currently being renovated and will be turned into a vacation rental property, a gîte rural.

A lot of wild carrot plants, known also as Queen Anne's Lace, are blooming around the hamlet and around the edges of the Renaudière vineyard. When you look carefully at the flowers, you often see white crab spiders lurking on them, busy feeding on passing insects. I usually don't notice them until I look at close-up photos I've taken on walks with the dog.

Finally, here's a photo especially for my friend CHM. It's a cactus plant that grew originally from cuttings he brought to Saint-Aignan from his house in Arlington, Virginia, 15 years ago. I planted it in a pot a few years ago and it seems to be happy. It flowered in June and July, but for some reason I didn't take any pictures of the blossoms this year.

Couscous à la volaille

On Saturday morning I went shopping at the fairly new and very big produce market in Saint-Aignan called Terre Y Fruits. It's not clear to me what the name means, but it is clear that the produce sold in the store is excellent. I hadn't been inside the shop or even at the open-air market in Saint-Aignan since February or March, and I went kind of crazy. Look at what I brought home — a load of local produce.

I had an idea, and the idea was to make couscous. So I was looking for aubergines (eggplant), tomatoes, celery, and turnips. We already had zucchini (courgettes) from this year's vegetable garden, and some carrots in the fridge. I also wanted lettuce, melons, shallots, and mushrooms. I let myself be tempted by a beautiful head of cauliflower, and now I have to figure out what to do with it. I'm thinking about oven-roasted cauliflower florets dressed with radish leaf pesto...

Above is the couscous as we had it for lunch yesterday. From the bottom right, going counterclockwise: The couscous vegetables cooked with spices in broth. The steamed couscous "grain" (a tiny pasta, actually) with re-hydrated raisins. A bowl of chickpeas (from a can) flavored with the couscous broth. And two meats that Walt cooked on the barbecue grill — turkey wings and chicken sausages flavored with merguez spices. The meats are why I call this a coucous à la volaille — couscous with poultry. (Often it also includes lamb...)

The vegetables cooked in the broth are carrots, turnips, eggplant, zucchini, green beans, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and artichoke hearts. The chickpeas are a garnish. The spices in the broth are the North African blend called ras el hanout — cumin, tumeric, paprika, cinnamon, fenugreek, fennel, curry, coriander seed, carraway, etc., all in powdered form.

Our local poultry processor and vendor makes very nice sausages with chicken, turkey, or duck, spiced with the couscous spices or just with piment d'espelette from Basque country, or just with onions and herbs. The turkey wings are now available at Super U, the Saint-Aignan supermarket.

Finally, here's the couscous as we ate a plate of it at lunchtime yesterday. It's served with a little bit of hot-pepper paste called harissa, which you mix with some warm broth in a ladle and drizzle over the vegetables and meats. There's a recipe in this post from 2014. Bon appétit  !

Zucchini lasagna

And it fell right out of the pan. When I turned the pan over, that is. This is a zucchini (courgettes) lasagna that I didn't actually have a recipe for. I just made it. After it cooked, I let it cool and then put it in the refrigerator for 24 hours, in the baking pan. When it was completely chilled, I turned the pan over on a board and crossed my fingers. It worked, as you can see. We haven't tasted it yet, by the way.

I had cut the zucchini (2 largish ones) into fairly thick rounds — say 2 centimeters, about ¾ of an inch thick — and then cooked them in a steamer pot. I think the reason the lasagne fell right out of the pan is that the bottom layer was a thin coating of tomato sauce, with a drizzle of olive oil and some crumbled, dried oregano leaves. Next was a lasagna noodle (une feuille de lasagne). Over the noodle I put a layer of zucchini disks, and over those I spread a layer of meat sauce that I had made with ground beef, aromatic vegetables, herbs, and crushed tomatoes (tomates concassées). And on top of that some cubes of mozzarella cheese and some grated Parmesan.

Then I repeated that layering two more times, ending with a lasagna noodle spread with the rest of the tomato sauce and a good layer of the same cheeses on top. In the photo above, you can see the lasagna turned upside down on a board, after it fell right out of the pan. I then cut it into two pieces and turned one of those pieces over you you could see the browned melted cheese on top. That's the photo below.

The goal was to put the two blocks of lasagna loaf into the freezer for future enjoyment. We have no shortage of courgettes right now. Courgette, by the way, is the French and British word for zucchini — une courge is a tough-skinned (winter) squash, and une courgette is a tender, immature (summer) squash. We often freeze foods like this one on a "silpat" silicone baking mat and after they're frozen put them in plastic bags for long-term freezer storage.

There you have it. I can't wait to taste it, but I'll have to be patient. Today we're having couscous for lunch. That's a broth made with tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, turnips, carrots (etc. etc.) and spices. More about that tomorrow. We are taking advantage of a short spell of cool weather to do some baking and boiling before the hot weather returns toward the end of the week (according to predictions).