The drought, and some sunsets

The Loire Valley is in a drought. There's no other way to look at it. It has been so dry for so long that we've nearly forgotten what rain feels, looks, and smells like. (Don't mention this to Bill in NH, because the three days he spent here in mid-September were drizzly and gray.)

Even the rain we did get in mid-August and mid-September was negligible. Looking at the yard, you'd think we were in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the winters are green and the summers are brown and parched. Saint-Aignan is not supposed to work that way.

Early October 2007...

...early October 2009

The reason I'm thinking about this is that weather reports say it will rain on Monday. We'll see if the reports are reliable. Today we need to go out and rake up some more leaves, as well as throw tarps over the piles we have already raked up. We want to be able to burn those leaves this fall, so we have to keep them dry.

The weather forecast for tomorrow — we're under
that big dark cloud in the center of France.

The other day I said "October — phooey!" Today I will say "October — finally!" Now that the garden is all harvested, and 90% of the hedge-trimming is done, we are ready for changes in the weather. Besides, they say that after the rain on Monday and maybe Tuesday, it will get sunny and warm again.

Sunsets on 30 September and...

...1 October 2009 at La Renaudière, outside Saint-Aignan

This is the time of year when we start having spectacular sunrises and sunsets. Above are a couple of recent sunsets as seen from the back gate. Every evening we have to make it a point to go look out the bedroom window to see what the show is like.

La Truffade — Auvergne-style potatoes

Now that I've cooked this and looked at the pictures, I realize it looks like an American breakfast. I mean the kind of breakfast you might make if you were out in the woods on a camping trip and cooking over a campfire. And you know everything tastes better outdoors.

That's what the Auvergne is like, I guess. It's high mountains and deep valleys. When you're there, you feel like you might be out camping somewhere, even if you are staying in a very big, nicely furnished house. It's something about the weather. Or the smell of the fresh air. The dampness. All those cows, maybe.

Potatoes, bacon, onions, and diced cheese in a pan

So yesterday I cooked truffade again. I think it's only the second time, or maybe the third, in the month since we got back from our brief trip to Saint-Chamant and the Pays de Salers. Blame SuperU: the store has had potatoes on sale for a month now.

They're nice spuds of the Agata variety, which make good fried or sauteed potatoes, and the first bag I bought was only 1.75 € for 5 kg (11 lbs). When we had gone through that bag, I went back to SuperU for something else and noticed that they had the same potatoes, same quantity, on sale for 1.00 €. I can't resist prices like that — at least not when we're talking about an excellent fresh product.

Here's another picture of the tome fraîche cheese.

I published the French recipe for La Truffade a couple of days ago — here's a link to it. The essential ingredients are thinly sliced potatoes; a good melting cheese, like Tome fraîche from Auvergne; bacon (smoked pork lardons); salt and pepper. Optional ingredients are onions and garlic. Here's how I ended up translating (adapting, really) the recipe:

La Truffade auvergnate

Serves 8

butter or vegetable oil for frying

3 lbs. potatoes

1½ lbs. cheese

½ lb. diced smoked bacon (lardons)

onions and/or garlic (optional)

In a large non-stick skillet, cook the bacon with a little bit of butter or vegetable oil until browned. If you're using onions or garlic, saute with the bacon. Remove from pan, leaving the fat, and set aside.

Cut the potatoes into thin slices and put them in the skillet with a little more butter or oil as necessary. Let them brown a little on the bottom and then cover them for a few minutes until they cook through.

Grate the cheese or cut it into little pieces. Add cheese and the cooked bacon lardons to the pan and toss or stir the potatoes around. Cover the pan again so that the cheese will melt. Let the potatoes brown on the bottom. Then turn the contents of the pan out onto a serving platter.

Serve with bread, red wine, and a green salad.

The cheese melts right into the sauteed potatoes.

Adding onion to the truffade is unconventional — but it sure is good. The famous French chef Joël Rebuchon, who specializes in potato dishes, has published a recipe for truffade in which he cooks the potatoes with garlic. I even found one recipe that includes diced tomatoes in the mixture!

I think Jack cheese or young white Cheddar would be good cheeses to make the truffade with. Instead of bacon, you could use little chunks of ham, or even chicken or turkey (especially smoked varieties). The amount of salt you need depends on the saltiness of the cheese and meat you use. Don't forget pepper.

La Truffade. Can't decide which picture I like better...

We ate sausages with our truffade yesterday. That was a little rich, probably, but then we are doing a lot of work outside right now. When Bill from NH was hear a few weeks ago, we had truffade with a stuffed tomato for lunch, and that was a good combination. Fried eggs would certainly be good alongside.

...so I'm including them both.

I guess Idaho russet potatoes would be the best U.S. variety for truffade, but I'd also have to try it with Yukon Golds or new red potatoes if I were making it over there.

Have truffade for breakfast if you want, but substitute coffee for the red wine. Then sit around the campfire and enjoy it. Don't forget to chop some wood or go on a long hike afterwards to burn off the calories.

October — inevitable, I guess

Our mornings have turned foggy and the days cloudier than before. October! Phooey. But it hasn't yet rained.

Yesterday morning Walt was out doing you-know-what (clipping the hedge, let me say immediately before other ideas pop into your head) when a gray VW mini-van drove up and parked near our back gate. A man got out and left the motor running. It was Bruno Denis. His winery, Domaine de la Renaudie, owns most of the vineyard that surrounds us on three sides.

Sunrise in the vineyard day before yesterday

Walt said something about the weather, and Bruno answered that this has been, and still is, an exceptional year. He had come by to inspect some vineyard plots that were going to be harvested later in the day.

I hope the driver of this schoolbus knows what she's doing.
The sign says the road is closed up ahead.

I was busy doing my own version of you-know-what (raking up leaves, don't get excited) closer to the house. I asked Walt to ask Bruno about the variety of the blue grapes right outside our back gate. Just curious. I assumed they were one of the big three around here: Gamay, Cabernet Franc, or Côt/Malbec.

Blue grapes — I think they're Grolleau.

Well, I was wrong. Never assume. Bruno said those blue grapes are a cépage called Grolleau. It's not really a common varietal in France. Most of it is planted in the Loire Valley, but plantings of Grolleau have declined steeply over the past 50 years, from 25,000 down to 5,000 acres. Grolleau is often used to make rosé wines.

The label of another local winery that makes
rosé with Pineau d'Aunis grapes.

Just on the other side of the Grolleau parcel, there's a big parcel planted in Pineau d'Aunis, which is another grape used to make rosé wines. Those grapes are pink. They were harvested a week or so ago.

At the ready to receive a load of grapes

The grape harvest is winding down now. Most of the grapes are in. Some late-harvest varieties still hang on the vines. If the weather stays dry, they might hang there for a while yet.

What was left in the vegetable garden

As for the vegetable garden, it's winding down now too, except for the green leafy things, which tolerate cold, even frost. Not that it's frosty yet — far from it. But it's coming. Yesterday morning we picked all the tomatoes we could find that were worth picking, and also the eggplants and red bell peppers. I pulled out the pepper plants and some of the eggplant plants. October. You know how I feel about that.

Salers, the cheese again

This is France, the land of human rights, high fashion... and wine and cheese. Salers is no exception when it comes to wine and cheese. Well, wine isn't made in Salers, or even just outside, but there is good and interesting Auvergne wine. The cheese, of course, is made all around what is called the Pays de Salers, the outlying hills and valleys.

Cheese. I've already written a lot about it, and published a lot of pictures of Salers cows. But here, to add to all of that, is a photo of the market stand on the main square in Salers where we bought our first Auvergne cheeses.

Buying cheese and ham at the market in Salers —
"Welcome to the farm," the sign says.

The woman in the little market coach had a good selection of cheeses made on a farm just outside Salers, as well as cheeses from a little farther away. She was also selling jambon d'Auvergne, like the ham I showed yesterday with the Pounti recipe (link to photo). I think — I'm sure — she was also selling Pounti, in fact. But I didn't know what it was, and I neglected to ask.

The back cover of the brochure we got
at the cheese stand in Salers...

What we did ask about was the cheese. There was Salers, there was Cantal, and there was Tome Fraîche. What were the differences? The woman explained patiently — enthusiastically, actually — to me, Evelyn, and Linda. I was translating and enjoying myself. The woman was willing to spend some time talking to us.

...and the front cover

She had "young" Salers cheese, made last May. We tasted and bought some of that. There was a more mature Cantal from last January, and we tasted and bought some of that too. And then there was a 2008 Cantal that had recently won a gold medal at some Paris food event. We tasted that one too, but I don't think we bought any — compared to the two others, it was pretty crumbly and strong. It was a little too sharp for us, but would have been good with a dark red wine.

The recipe from the brochure

Linda noticed the tome fraîche and wanted to buy some of that. The woman selling the cheeses quickly pointed out that tome is not a cheese to eat the way you eat Cantal or Salers — it's cheese to cook with. Melting cheese. It hasn't been salted, and it is pretty bland. I knew about it, but at that point I didn't know about the cheese-making process and the salting that fresh tome gets before it becomes Cantal. We tasted and bought some tome too.

I mentioned aligot to the cheese woman — aligot is a dish consisting of mashed potatoes made with tome fraîche and garlic — a local specialty. Walt and I had some in Paris a couple of years ago, in a restaurant called Aux Ambassadeurs d'Auvergne, near the Pompidou Center. It seemed like a lot of trouble to make, because you have to beat the potatoes and cheese until the mixture will form long strings when you lift it out of the dish with a wooden spoon.

There was goat cheese on sale in the market in Salers, too,
but we had brought some with us from Touraine.

The cheese woman told me another way to use fresh tome is in something called truffade. It turned out that truffade has nothing to do with truffles, the expensive fungus balls that pigs and dogs are trained to sniff out in the Dordogne and in Provence. In Auvergne, truffade is a dish of potatoes sauteed with lardons (salted or smoked bacon, again) and tome cheese. Onions and garlic are optional. I told you Auvergne food was rustic and filling.

To finish our shopping at the cheese vendor's, I also bought some Auvergne ham and pieces of two other local cheeses, Saint-Nectaire and Bleu d'Auvergne. All that was going to be our dinner.

We made truffade at the gîte that night, and it was excellent (if I do say so myself). We had a big green salad with it. And some of the cheeses and some Auvergne ham that I bought. The next day several of us had truffade at lunch in a restaurant in the village called Tournemire. We all agreed that our home-made truffade had been more delicious.

Tome Fraîche de l'Aubrac, made with raw milk

I'm going to make truffade again tomorrow, using some tome fraîche that I bought at the market in Noyers on Sunday. It's not Tome de Cantal, but Tome de l'Aubrac, a similar cheese from the area just south of Auvergne. Then I'll translate the recipe and take some pictures too.