Sunshine and daylight

You've probably heard about the big windstorm that swept across southwestern France and northern Spain yesterday. Down there, a lot of trees were uprooted or broken off, power lines are down, and roofs have blown off. Up here in the Loire Valley, 400 to 500 km north of Bordeaux and Toulouse, we were spared. It rained most of the day yesterday, but there was little wind.

Jets fly over daily and on clear days we see them,
but we never hear them.

We've had 35 mm of rain over the past week. That's nearly an inch and a half, and the ground is soft and squishy. We had a few hours of strong winds a couple of days ago, and now the yard is covered with branches and twigs that blew out of the apple, linden, and birch trees. One day we'll be able to get back outside and clean all that up. For now, it's too muddy.

On a sunny winter afternoon, flowerpots
remind you of the coming of spring

But we are having some nice days and the weather isn't cold any more. It's all relative, I know. Our lows are in the mid-30s with highs in the upper 40s or low 50s. Between 2º and 12º on the Celsius scale, autrement dit. That's normal for winter here in Saint-Aignan.

I thought my succulents would have frozen,
but they've survived. I'll soon start re-potting them.

It appears that the bitter cold we had in the first half of January didn't kill as many of our outdoor plants as I was afraid it would. Even plants in pots seem to have survived. I had moved the pots up close to the house on the south and west sides, and I guess that worked.

Now there are days when it positively seems like spring. This morning, for example, skies are clear and the sun is shining. But unless they have changed the forecast since yesterday, rain is supposed to start falling by afternoon.

This is not a green tree. It is a nearly dead apple tree
out back that is being taken down by mistletoe.

The pictures in this post are ones that I took last Wednesday, January 21. You can see it was a nice day. Now, one month after Christmas, the sun comes up a little earlier (but still around 8:30 a.m.) and, best of all, it goes down later, around 6:00 p.m. So all in all, the atmosphere is significantly less gloomy than it was just a short time ago.

Shrimp and mushroom pie

In French, what we call a pie is called une tourte. It's different from une tarte in that it has a top crust as well as a bottom crust. One famous example is called Tourte Lorraine, from the Lorraine region in eastern France. It's a meat pie filled with veal, pork, herbs, and cream.

Tourte aux crevettes et aux champignons

For the past couple of weeks, Walt has been making puff pastry — pâte feuilletée. He keeps saying how easy it is to make, and I keep saying, "Make more." This week he made a big batch, and a couple of days ago we had another Galette des Rois (a puff-pastry pie filled with almond cream).

Then Walt said, "Well, what about making a tourte, a savory galette." That wasn't a bad idea. Shrimp and mushrooms? Cream sauce?

Once you have the pastry, it's pretty easy. Wash and slice about half a pound, 250 grams, of button mushrooms. Sauté them slowly in butter with a diced shallot or onion. When they are done, take them out of the pan, add some more butter if necessary, and slowly sauté about two dozen little shrimp (prawns or crevettes). First, of course, you have to peel and de-vein the shrimp.

Don't throw the shrimp shells away. Put them in a sauce pan with just enough water to cover them. Add a quarter-cup of white wine, some salt and pepper. Then simmer the shells to make a stock. Let it reduce by about half. Strain that stock and it can be the basis for the cream sauce you'll use to make the savory pie.

With the the mushrooms and the shrimp lightly cooked and held in reserve, make the cream sauce. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a pan. Add a tablespoon of flour, stir it in well, and cook it on medium heat for a minute or two. Then add the shrimp-shell stock,beating it in as it thickens. Then add enough milk and cream — the more cream the richer the sauce will be, of course — and keep stirring to make a thick sauce. Keep it thick.

Sautéed mushrooms and shrimp, waiting

Lightly season everything as you go with salt and pepper. You can add some parsley, oregano, or chervil to the sauce — or whatever herbs or spices you want.

Layers of mushrooms and shrimp on the bottom crust

Then you just have to put the pie together. Cut circles out of the pastry. On the bottom crust, spread a thin layer of the cream sauce. Arrange the mushrooms on top of that. Add a little more sauce if you want, and then make a layer of shrimp over all. If you want, you can cut the shrimp in half lengthwise before putting them on top of the mushrooms, to make them thinner and approximate the same shape as the mushrooms.

Spoon some of the cream sauce over the filling ingredients
before putting the top crust on the pie.

With both layers of the filling in place, spoon some more sauce over the top. Don't overdo it, because you don't want it to come running out of the pie as it cooks. That's why it needs to be thick.

Put on the top crust. Seal the edges with some beaten egg, and then decorate it if you are so inclined. Paint the top with some more beaten egg, and then bake the pie in a hot oven for 30 to 45 minutes, until it is golden brown. The filling is all already cooked, so you don't have to worry about that. It will heat through as the pastry shell cooks.

Shrimp and mushroom pie —
I guess you could call it a potpie...

Let the pie rest for 10 minutes or so when it comes out of the oven. It'll be easier to cut after it rests. Thin the remaining cream sauce a little with milk and serve it on the side.

You could make the same pie with poached chicken breast. Or with mushrooms and vegetables, and no meat at all. Anything that would be good in a cream sauce would be good in this pie.

Damp

It's a wet and windy day in Saint-Aignan. It's the kind of day when you just want to pull the covers up over you head and stay in bed. The temperature is up to 12ºC — that's the mid-50s F.

The view through the bedroom window this morning

Or, if you do haul your carcass out of bed, then you want to cook something good. At least I do. Well, I'm obviously up and moving around, so you can guess what my project is this morning: lunch. Something with shrimp, mushrooms, shallots, cream, and flaky pastry — pâte feuilletée.

This morning's French weather map

I see that much of the U.S. is damp right now too. Wherever you are, eat something warm, tasty, and nourishing, and be patient. Spring is right around the corner.

Blog convergences

Last Sunday Walt was on his computer "twittering" with his Twitter friends, including Loulou of the Chez Loulou food and photography blog. I was in the kitchen making Red Beans and Rice. It turned out that Loulou was also making Red Beans and Rice that day. As far as I know, it was purely a coincidence.

Haricots roses stand in for red beans

After all, Loulou used to live in New Orleans, so it wouldn't be surprising for her to be cooking Louisiana food. I never lived there, but I've been to Louisiana a few times in my life. Here is Loulou's post about Red Beans and Rice.

Brined pork belly and smoked Montbéliard sausages
from Chez Doudouille at the Saint-Aignan market

My inspiration for making beans, sausages, and rice was an e-mail that I had received a few days earlier from another blogger, Elise in California. I'm on her mailing list, and glad of it. She is the author of the Simply Recipes blog, which is a treasure of food ideas — as is Chez Loulou. Elise posted a Red Beans and Rice recipe on January 14, billing it as "a Southern classic." Maybe Loulou had seen it too.

Pink beans, sausages, and pork belly

Another coincidence was that I had bought a kilogram of dried pink beans — haricots roses — on a shopping expedition in Blois a few days earlier. After getting Elise's mailing I consulted Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen cookbook and The Joy of Cooking. I didn't have any Cajun spice mixes, but that wouldn't stop me, because in the kitchen cabinets we had plenty of the right kinds of spices and herbs — thyme, bay leaves, hot paprika, smoked paprika, and so on. I like to improvise in the kitchen, anyway.

Pink beans and rice

My conclusion from looking at all these recipes was that Red Beans and Rice is just what we would have called "a pot of beans" when I was growing up. So I made a pot of beans with a few Louisiana-type spices thrown in for added flavor. And with some French ingredients.

Poitrine de porc demi-sel is better than
any salt pork I've ever eaten in the U.S.

The day before, I had gone to the outdoor market in Saint-Aignan to get some meat. Red Beans and Rice calls for smoked pork — hamhocks or pork shanks, for example — and smoked Andouille sausage, a Louisiana specialty. I couldn't get that kind of Andouille, but I could get good French smoked sausages in the form of saucisses de Montbéliard. That would provide plenty of smokiness, so I asked for a piece of brined pork, porc demi-sel, to go with them and the beans.

The Chez Doudouille charcuterie stand was the source of all the meats. There I not only get good pork products but good conversation when "Madame Doudouille" isn't too busy to have time to chat. We talked about her daughter's struggles with learning English at school, her upcoming trip to England, and her burning desire to travel to the States.

Leftovers: beans and sausages with some
cooked diced carrots added, and served
with polenta (yellow grits) cooked with cheese

So there it is. Red Beans and Rice inspired by one blog and cooked on the same day another blogger was making the same thing. It's a virtual world with so many more connections than ever in the past. But good cooking requires real products, and the quality of the foods I find here in France are one of the main reasons I live here. But I don't think I'd enjoy life nearly as much without the Internet and blogs, or without the variety of good foods available here.