Translation of tajine recipe

Châteaudun

I got back from Paris yesterday at about 7:00 p.m. I had taken a long slow drive up there on Sunday, through Vendôme, Châteaudun, and Dourdan, as well as innumerable villages, to drop CHM off at his apartment. We had lunch at the Café Louis-Philippe yesterday and then I drove back to Saint-Aignan.

A window in the Sainte-Madeleine church in Châteaudun

Here's a translation of the tajine recipe I posted yesterday with some notes I added. French recipes are pretty cryptic sometimes, I know.

Tajine of Chicken with Carrots and Raisins

4 chicken leg/thigh sections (or one whole chicken, cup up)
4 large carrots (or more to taste)
1 onion
Ras el hanout* to taste
½ tsp. ground cumin
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup or so of water
a handful of raisins
salt & pepper

Brown the chicken pieces in olive oil at medium heat until they take on a golden color.

Peel the carrots and cut them into large pieces.

Cut the onion into slices and add it to the pan to cook down for 5 or 6 minutes with the chicken.

Then add the carrot pieces to the pan along with the spices, salt, and pepper. Add about a cup of water.

Cover the pan and let the chicken and vegetables cook at the simmer for an hour or more (I let mine cook for about two hours on very low heat). Test the carrots for doneness and when they are getting close to being ready, add the raisins and let them cook for about 15 minutes so that they swell up.

For a golden finish, put the whole dish under a hot broiler for two or three minutes before taking it to the table.

Serve with boiled rice or steamed couscous grain.

* Ras el hanout is a blend of "warm" spices that can vary from 6 to 21 ingredients. I have two packages of Ras el hanout that I bought on different days. One contains coriander, turmeric, cumin, pepper, caraway, mild red pepper, fennel, and fenugreek, all ground finely. The other is just cumin, turmeric, ginger, nutmeg, coriander, and cardamom. You can make your own blend or just put in pinches of many of these spices along with pinches of allspice, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, curry powder, and so on.

Here's a blend of ground spices for Ras el hanout that I found in the Joy of Cooking:

• 2 Tbs. ground ginger
• 2 tsp. each black pepper, allspice, nutmeg, mace, cardamom, cinnamon, and turmeric
• 1 tsp. coriander
• ¼ tsp. each cloves and cayenne pepper

That's ground cloves of course.

Tajine de poulet aux carottes

Tajine de poulet aux carottes et raisins secs

Still more food. It's such a big part of daily life here in Saint-Aignan and France. On Thursday I had bought a big bag of carrots. And I had a chicken in the freezer. Poulet aux carottes, I thought, like boeuf aux carottes, with onions, white wine, and smoked lardons (pork).

Couscous

Then I looked on the web for recipes and I found a Moroccan tajine with chicken and carrots. It sounded good so that's what we made. With onions and Moroccan spices: turmeric, cumin, ginger, fenugreek, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and so on. I added some raisins for the last ten minutes of the cooking time. It turned out to be delicious. Served it with couscous.

Here is the recipe, in French:

Tajine de Poulet aux Carottes

4 cuisses de poulet
4 carottes
1 oignon
ras el hanout*
cumin
1 cuillère à soupe d'huile d'olive
eau
une poignée de raisins secs
sel, poivre

Faire revenir le poulet à feu moyen dans une cuillère à soupe d'huile d'olive pour qu'il soit un peu doré.

Préparer les carottes, les nettoyer, les éplucher, les couper.

Couper l'oignon en lamelles, l'ajouter au poulet.

Mettre les carottes avec le poulet, rajouter le ras el hanout, et le cumin. Saler, poivrer. Mettre également un peu d'eau (3/4 verre d'eau).

Laisser cuire environ 1 heure et servir. Un quart d'heure avant la fin de la cuisson, ajouter les raisins secs.

* Le Ras el hanout est un mélange d’épices « chaudes » qui peuvent varier de 7 à 21 épices. C’est un assaisonnement typique d’Afrique du Nord pour tous les plats orientaux et couscous. Littéralement, Ras El Hanout signifie « Toit de la Boutique ». Le mélange peut être composé de : Coriandre, Piment fort, cumin, Fenugrec, Gingembre, Poivre noir, Carvi noir, Cumin, etc.

Here's a link to the topic that includes a translation of the recipe above.

Foie de veau au déjeuner

La Taverne de Maître Kanter near the cathedral in Bourges

While I'm on the subject of food, let me tell you what CHM and I had for lunch in Bourges. It was foie de veau — calf's liver — en persillade, which means with a sauce of butter or olive oil, garlic, and parsley.

And it was delicious. The restaurant we went to is a big chain called La Taverne de Maître Kanter. We weren't being very particular, or we would have looked elsewhere. We just found the place closest to the cathedral, because the cathedral was the point of the trip. Maître Kanter features Alsatian specialties including choucroute garnie — saurkraut with sausages, pork, and potatoes.

Foie de veau en persillade, purée Crécy

The liver was the restaurant's plat du jour, the day's special. It was served with a puree of carrots and potatoes. So that's what we had. I think it's usually a good idea to have the plat du jour if it's something you are at all interested in eating. That's the dish that the cooks are focused on that day and they make a special effort to see that it is attractive and delicious. It was.

French truckstop food

It was warm and the front door of the restaurant
stayed open while we were there.

Yesterday, at the invitation of CHM, we had lunch over in Noyers-sur-Cher at the Grill des Nouettes, which is the place I call the truckstop. One friend described the décor as more like an American Midwest church supper hall, and I think she is right. But his is definitely a truckstop: it has the Relais Routiers sign displayed prominently out front on the road.

Le Grill des Nouettes in Noyers-sur-Cher

Yesterday there were several big rigs, some cars, and quite a few white vans (little ones and bigger ones) parked on the gravel lot out in front of the restaurant. It was 12:15. We went in and there were a dozen or more guys in t-shirts, jeans, and other workclothes-type outfits in the bar, having their apéritif I guess, and another dozen or so sitting at tables in the restaurant. There was one woman we could see — a 60-something woman having lunch in a corner with, presumably, her husband.

The salad bar at the truckstop

What's the food like? First of all, at noon there's a fixed-price menu for 11 euros. For that price, there's an hors-d'oeuvres buffet (all you can eat) featuring standard French salads of carrots, beetroots, and grated celery root as well as mussels, salami, local rillons, cantaloupe, hard-boiled eggs, and so on. It's quite a spread.

Beets, tomatoes & mozarella, mushrooms à la crème,
taboulé, and rillons

There are two main courses that change daily. The constant is that one choice is always meat or fowl and the other is fish. Yesterday, the two choices were (1) a brochette or shish-kebab or (2) a truite aux amandes, a whole pan-roasted trout served with slivered almonds.

The room. I think we counted three women
among many dozens of men.

We asked what the brochette was. Lamb? No, beef, the waitress said. Beef and kidneys, actually. Presumably veal kidneys. We all ordered that and then went to the salad bar for our appetizers.

Kidneys for lunch twice in one week. That's a record. Especially since Walt had only eaten kidneys once before in his life, and I hadn't eaten kidneys many times over the past 10 years (I do remember having then at Astier in Paris in 2006). The brochette was big chunks of meat served in a thick brown sauce that had plenty of Dijon mustard in it. That made it very tasty. The meat was cooked rare, and the beef and the kidneys were tender. The accompanying noodles were just so-so.

Beef and kidneys in a brown sauce with noodles

The third course at the truckstop is cheese, which is served without ceremony. A platter with half-a-dozen cheeses is passed around from table to table by the waitresses. When one piece of cheese has been eaten up, another is added to the plate. As you can see from my photo, the cheeses are varied, going from Swiss-type cow's-milk cheeses to brie to blue to goat's-milk cheese. The plate is left on your table and you take what you want.

The truckstop cheese platter

As for wine, it's included in the price of the lunch. The waitress brings a 50 cl carafe of local red wine to the table when she comes to take your order. That's the equivalent of two-thirds of a bottle, and it doesn't matter if you are one person or four at the table, that's what you get. But wait: you can get more. You just tell the waitress you need more wine, and she brings it. No extra charge. You also get a carafe of tap water.

The coffee is espresso

And then there's dessert. Floating islands was one choice yesterday. We all three decided to have ice cream, or glaces. Two scoops each. There were many flavors. CHM had two scoops of black-currant. Walt had pistachio and vanilla. I had pistachio and chocolate.

Then we had coffee. The bill for three people came to 37 euros. The meal was definitely worth the price.