The château and church at Saint-Aignan

The church and the château at
Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, in eastern Touraine
Click the pictures to see them full-size

Speaking of the Crêpiot restaurant, I have a distinct memory of going there for lunch with visitors from California (or America, anyway) one day when we all wanted to eat pommes frites. We got to the restaurant and found that the daily special was filet mignon de porc with green beans. It looked really good. So we all had that and then we ordered a big assiette de frites for the table to eat with it.

The câteau as seen by my zoom lens from Noyers-sur-Cher

The question is: who were the visitors with whom we enjoyed that lunch? Walt and I both think it was with Candy and John. Cheryl, I can't believe you haven't been to eat at Le Crêpiot. Next time... Chrissoup, have you been? Susan, I vaguely remember that we ate there when you were here two years ago. Thanks for the reminder and the memory.

The church at Saint-Aignan seen from afar

Day before yesterday CHM and I went out in the afternoon to buy some duck gizzards over at Intermarché in Noyers-sur-Cher, which is on the other side of the river. The gizzards, by the way were on sale: three good-size cans of gizzards cooked in duck fat (!) for €6,74 — a steal. Duck gizzards are great sautéed and then served on a salad.

Another view of the château
from a slightly different vantage point

After our shopping, we went on a picture-taking excursion. We only had an hour or two. I drove us up into the vineyards on the north side of Noyers, which are on high ground above the river valley. From there, we had fairly good views of the château and church in Saint-Aignan. Thus the pictures in this post.

An old windmill, minus its blades,
and some red poppies in Noyers-sur-Cher

This morning we are off to the outdoor market over in Montrichard to pick up some things: goat cheese from the Ferme-Auberge de la Lionnière and some tarragon plants in little pots to plant here at La Renaudière and also for CHM to plant in his garden in Paris. The weather is cloudy today but is supposed to get pretty warm this afternoon. We plan to have lunch at the Grill des Nouettes over in Noyers. That's the place I call The Truckstop. I've had lunches there with Gabby, Chrissoup, and my mother over the years. Not sure who else.

Lunch in Saint-Aignan at the Crêpiot

Yesterday we decided to go have lunch in one of Saint-Aignan's real institutions, Le Crêpiot. It's a small family-run restaurant on the town's main street, just across the street from the post office, and it has been in business since 1979. Here's the Crêpiot's web site.

The restaurant's sign hangs out over
Saint-Aignan's narrow, cobblestoned main street

In summer, the Crêpiot puts out a wooden deck with an awning over it and sets up tables for seating outside. It can be very pleasant, even though the cars rumble by right next to diners on the cobblestone street. The interior is — well, it's in the pictures below. It's rustic. We decided to eat inside because for mid-June, there was a slight chill in the air — le fond de l'air était frais.

The Crêpiot's summertime terrace,
which is taken down at the end of the season

The owners of the restaurant are Elie and Véronique, and they make it a point to welcome all their customers with a handshake and a big smile. Elie spends his time at the bar in one corner of the small room, and Véronique explains the menu and takes orders. She speaks very clearly and slowly in French. I used to think she spoke extra-slowly to foreigners, but CHM said he had the impression she talked that way to all her customers. She's easy to understand and she takes time to make sure everything about the menu choices is clear.

The typically rustic décor at the Crêpiot

Speaking of the menus, there's a daily special at lunchtime for about 12 euros. Yesterday the main course was a grilled slice of ham served with white beans. As a starter, there was a salad with warm goat cheese, a salad with strips of chicken breast, or a half an avocado stuffed with tuna salad. The desserts were tarte aux pommes (apple tart), a "floating island," or two scoops of ice cream (several flavors available). Instead of dessert, you could choose to have the cheese plate, with pieces of two different cheeses.

We decided to have the €16 menu instead, because we wanted steaks. As an entrée, CHM had a salad with Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine goat cheese. There were four big pieces of cheese on the plate with salad greens and chopped walnuts. Walt had a herring salad — two or three fairly large pieces of fish served with sliced boiled potatoes, onions, and salad greens in vinaigrette. I had the half-avocado stuffed with tuna salad.

We arrived early and were among the first noontime customers.
The gentleman in this picture was evidently celebrating his
birthday, and Véronique and her wait staff went over and sang
Bon Anniversaire to him when they served the couple's desserts.

Our main dishes were steaks called bavette d'aloyau, which is a sort of flank or skirt steak. It's lean mean with no fat or gristle. We all ordered the steak cooked rare (saignant). Walt and I got frites — French fries — with ours, and CHM decided to substitute sautéed mushrooms for a supplement of one euro. I thought the steak was perfectly cooked and tender (French beef is from grass-fed cattle and therefore very different from American beef). It was served with a pat of parsley butter that melted on top of and flavored the meat. CHM had such a big portion of mushrooms that he couldn't eat them all, but Walt and I both finished our fries.

Our desserts were a crêpe with warm chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream for CHM, a piece of apple tart for Walt, and a floating island for me. Do you know what an île flottante is? It's blobs of soft meringue sitting in a light crème anglaise — an egg custard — with toasted sliced almonds on top.

Saint-Aignan's post office is
just across the street a few doors up

I completely forgot to take pictures of the food. I was too busy anticipating and then eating. Oh, and now I almost forgot this detail: the Crêpiot features a locally made wine every month as its vin du mois. This month it is a Cabernet Franc and Côt (aka Malbec) blend made and bottled by a couple over in the village of Couffy, about three miles east of Saint-Aignan. It was tasty.

A number of you who regularly read this blog have had a meal or two at the Crêpiot. I'm thinking of Evelyn, Marie, Luke, BettyAnn, Danielle, John, Candy, Cheryl, and others (it's hard to remember who has eaten where on various visits). The Crêpiot is one of Saint-Aignan's mainstays.

The cathedral at Bourges

-La Cathédrale de Bourges

Bourges is a small city about two hours east of Saint-Aignan. We drove over there yesterday to see the city's cathedral, one of the most remarkable in France. Many people know the cathedrals at Chartres, Reims, Rouen, and of course Paris, but the one at Bourges is just as impressive. Besides, it is surrounded by an amazingly intact Medieval quarter full of old half-timbered houses.

The people in this picture give you an idea of the scale of this enormous cathedral.

In fact, the Bourges cathedral is the widest and one of the tallest in France. It was built over a period of 65 years, from 1195 to 1260, replacing an even earlier cathedral in Bourges that had been judged too small. The north tower is 65 meters high — that's 213 feet. It collapsed in the early 1500s and was rebuilt.

The cathedral has five entrance portals, which are being cleaned
at present. Two were hidden by scaffolding and tarpolins.

We left Saint-Aignan at about 10:00 yesterday morning and decided to take the autoroute over to Bourges. But the autoroute was closed at Romorantin for some reason, so just 20 minutes after getting on we were shunted off, and we ended up driving small roads through places named St-Julien, Graçay, and La Ferté. It was much more interesting than riding on the high-speed toll road. After some stops to take pictures, we finally arrived in Bourges at about 12:30. It was raining when we got there but the shower didn't last long.

A close-up of one of the portals

I found a parking space on a street less than a block from the cathredral. The parking meter was broken, so instead of the usual parking receipt, I just put a little note in my window saying Horodateur en dérangement. I didn't get a ticket. We ate lunch in a nearby restaurant (foie de veau, calf's liver, very good) and then spent an hour or two walking around the cathedral, taking pictures of flowers in the Archbishop's Garden, and touring the inside to look at the architectural features and all the stained-glass windows.

The gardens next to the cathedral, with
the archbishop's residence in the background.

It took us about three hours, with photo stops, to drive back to Saint-Aignan through St-Florent, Charost, Issoudun, Vatan, and Valençay. It's beautiful country with many little towns, churches, and châteaux.ý

Nouans-les-Fontaines

Ten miles south of Saint-Aignan, on the road to the town of Le Blanc, Nouans is a village of some 800 souls that looks like an overgrown intersection these days. It has a small grocery store, a boulangerie, a restaurant, a pizzeria, a combination boucherie-charcuterie shop, and a florist's.

A restaurant and a shop in Nouans

It also has a 13th-century church in which was found and identified, in 1931, a masterpiece of what the Michelin Guide calls art primitif. It's a painting by the 15th-century artist named Jean Fouquet and is known as the Pièta de Nouans, picturing Christ being taken down from the cross.

La Pièta de Nouans-les-Fontaines, re-discovered in 1931

One of Fouquet's best-known paintings is this
Virgin and Child.

Little is known about Fouquet's life except that as a young man he spent time mastering his art in Italy before returning to France and settling in Tours. He became famous for his paintings and worked for two French kings, Charles VII and Louis XI, who held court at nearby Loches. Then he was nearly forgotten for centuries until the Romantic movement of the early 19th century, interested in all things medieval, re-discovered his work.

Ceiling vaults in the church at Nouans