Maybe the last...

...snow pictures for a while. It's supposed to start melting today. The sun is out this morning but it's still very cold out. The rain or rain/snow that was predicted seems to have stayed to the north of Saint-Aignan. Rain is still expected tomorrow.

La Renaudière, a hamlet near Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher...

...and a view from farther out in the vineyard

The vineyard was frigid but picturesque on my walk with the dog earlier. I took my camera and my right hand got pretty chilly. I also had to be very careful where I stepped so I wouldn't find myself face down in the snow. Or on my fesses.

Callie surveying part of her domain...

...and then waiting patiently to be let in the back door

Callie doesn't worry about any of that. She just runs through the snow, stopping every few meters to sniff at something. She uncovers whatever it is with her paw. You don't know what it is! Then she eats it, and I yell at her: « Ne mange pas ça ! Tu vas être malade après. » She looks abashed, but then she does it again just a few meters farther on.

Snowy branches and vines

Walt just saw the woman who, with her husband, owns a lot of the vineyard parcels out back. She was walking down the road taking pictures. It's that kind of morning. I bet she's going to use them on her web site, or in some marketing materials. The winery is the Domaine de la Renaudie and here's a link to the web site in English.

Braised endives au gratin

I bought a piece of Gruyère cheese the other day. Usually I buy Comté, a French AOC cheese that is similar to the Swiss Gruyère. Both would be in the category that we in America label as "Swiss" cheeses but which are not made in Switzerland at all.

Both AOC Comté and AOC Gruyère are made with lait cru de vache — raw (unpasteurized) cow's milk. Similar cheeses from the Alps, with slightly different flavors, are Beaufort, Abondance, and Emmental.

The other thing that SuperU was running a special on was Belgian endive — in French, that's endives, in the plural. This is their season, and they are really good au gratin — in a cheese sauce with melted cheese over the top.

Gratin d'endives au jambon

Even if Belgian endive is expensive where you live, this dish is worth the cost. That's especially true on a cold snowy day, when your body needs comforting and your senses need stimulating. Endive has a slightly bitter taste and is good braised in butter with white wine and/or lemon juice to add some sweetness. A few cloves of garlic in the braising liquid don't hurt either. The endives need to cook on low for 60 to 90 minutes, until they're tender.

That gives you plenty of time to grate some cheese. Wait until the endives are nearly cooked so that you can use the endive braising liquid to make the sauce, along with milk and cream. Be sure to add a pinch or a grate of nutmeg to it along with the grated Swiss or cheddar cheese. As I said, I had Gruyère cheese, and Walt and I decided it really does taste different from Comté, though both are excellent.

Braised Belgian endives wrapped in ham slices
and cooked in a cheese sauce

When the endives are tender, put them in a baking dish and spoon some of the cheese sauce over them. Actually, put a spoonful or two of sauce on the bottom of the pan before you put the endives in, so that they won't stick. Sprinkle some grated cheese over the top for good measure, and put the pan in a hot oven for a few minutes until it turns a golden brown.

As an extra touch, you can roll each braised endive up in a slice of jambon de Paris or slices of smoked turkey or chicken before you put them in the pan. Then spoon on the sauce and top it with melted cheese. Now it's a full meal, with meat, vegetables, and cheese.

Here's a post with more pictures and with links to other posts about cooking endives.

Here's a big photo — click the image twice to see full size —
that I took about five minutes ago out the back window.

P.S. It snowed again overnight. I had intended to take the car out yesterday and go to town, but I thought better of it after my walk with the dog. It's just too icy out there. Now I have to decide whether to venture out today, but it snowed again overnight. It's snowing right now, in fact, and it's really coming down. I'm starting to get cabin fever but I still don't feel like going out in it.

Here's a link to the weather map showing the snowy areas — the north coasts of Brittany and Lower Normandy, along with the whole center of the country.

Taking a snow day

The snowstorm that came up from the south yesterday pretty much missed Saint-Aignan and this part of the Loire Valley. We had some flurries overnight, and a flurry or two yesterday morning, but very little new accumulation. High today: –2ºC, about 28ºF.

Today a storm is moving in from the northwest and is supposed to drop snow over about two-thirds of France during the day. It sounds like it will be light snow, however. The Paris area will get a few inches, and that's always a problem up there because there's so much traffic around and in the city.

The French weather forecast for Thursday 02 December 2010.
We're under that –2 below the cloud with the sun hidden behind it.

And I have to go out. Just to Saint-Aignan, which is three miles down the road. I hope the hill isn't too slick. We saw a few cars on our little road yesterday, so some people were out driving around. I talked to a neighbor who grew up at La Renaudière and he told me he had never seen snowy weather like this so early in the season. He said he has vivid memories of a period of such weather around Easter one year when he was growing up. I thanked him for pointing out that the snow might last well into the spring!

A friend from Blois called last night just to say hello and see how we were doing. She said the school buses around Blois haven't been running this week, so all the kids are staying at home. Teachers are posting lessons for them over the Internet to keep them busy and productive. That's the 21st century, I guess.

Fact is, weather forecasts are saying that by Sunday we'll have high temperatures in the range of +6 to +8 ºC. That will feel like a heat wave. And with the milder temperatures (mid-40s) will come rain. That will wash the snow away. Then life will get back to normal.

Blanquette de dinde

I approached turkey blanquette with a certain measure of skepticism. I thought the white meat of the turkey would be dry and stringy compared to the gelatinous, succulent, tender pieces of veal that go into blanquette de veau, which always figures at the top of the list of traditional dishes that French people enjoy.

In the supermarkets here in France they sell turkey especially for blanquette, and just to make sure you recognize it they call it blanquette de dinde right on the package. The pieces in the package are the first section of the turkey wing, the one closest to the body and with the most meat on it. It's white meat but probably less dry that turkey breast.

I bought some last week when it was on sale for 2.50 € a kilogram. Even though a lot of what you are paying for is bone, that's a very good price. In our situation, we can cook the wings, strip the meat off the bones, and then save the the skin, fat, and cartilage as a treat for the dog and cat. Nothing is wasted except maybe the one big bone per wing, but even those cook with the meat to make a very flavorful, rich broth.

Turkey wings cooling after cooking for three hours in
water and white wine, with aromatic vegetables and spices

The package of blanquette de dinde that I bought contained four big wing joints and weighed just over a kilogram (or about 2½ lbs.). I put them on to cook the way I would cook veal shoulder to make a blanquette — that is, in cold liquid that is about one-half water and one-half dry white wine, and enough of it to cover them amply. Into the water go some leek tops or a big onion, 4 or 5 carrots, some parsley stems, a couple of bay leaves, some black peppercorns, and some allspice (Jamaican pepper) berries. And salt of course. Then bring it all to the boil.

The turkey wings cooked with all those flavor ingredients for about three hours, at a very low simmer. They made a delicious broth, and the meat was starting to fall off the bone when I took it out of the liquid to let it cool.

Sliced mushrooms — I usually buy big mushrooms rather than
small ones because they are easier to clean and taste the same.

While the turkey is cooling, sauté some chopped onion and sliced mushrooms in a little bit of butter. You can add a quarter-cup of the turkey broth to the frying pan. Instead of chopped onion, you can use pearl onions, for a fancier presentation. Rehydrated dried mushrooms could replace fresh ones.

Take the turkey meat off the bone and
set the skin and cartilage aside for the dog or cat.

Let the turkey wings cool until you can easily work with them using your fingers. Pull the nice white meat off the bones, leaving it in big chunks as much as possible. Save the skin and cartilage for your dog if you have one. Or cat. Discard the bones — there's only one big bone per wing. I eneded up with about 600 grams of turkey meat, or a little less than 1½ lbs.

Strain the sauce and discard the flavor ingredients (with the possible exception of the carrots, which I usually keep and put into the finished sauce). With the broth, make the cream sauce. If you are lucky, you'll have plenty left over to make a soup or other sauces.

Here's the off-the-bone turkey wing meat.

The sauce is the broth thickened with a roux and enriched with cream. Make the roux by melting about two tablespoons of butter in a saucepan. Then add two tablespoons of flour to the pan and stir it around so that it absorbs the butter and cooks on medium heat for a minute or two. Don't let it brown — blanquette in French derives from the word blanc, meaning "white," and you want the sauce to be as white as possible.

Start pouring the turkey broth into the roux slowly, stirring all the while. Pour in about a cup to start with. The sauce will thicken and start to bubble on the heat. While it is still very thick, pour in a cup of cream or half & half to whiten and enrich it. Then add more broth until you get a sauce as thick as you judge it ought to be. It should not be gloppy, and it should easily coat a spoon dipped into it and pulled back out. The thickness of the sauce is a matter of taste, really.

The boneless turkey meat, along with mushrooms, onions,
and carrots, cook for a few minutes in the blanquette sauce.

Now add the chunks of cooked white turkey meat to the sauce, along with the carrots (if you saved them), as well as the mushrooms and onions you cooked while the turkey wings were cooling. Let everything cook on low heat until the sauce is bubbling again. At the last minute, squeeze in some lemon juice to perk it up.

We had the blanquette of dinde with steamed rice on Sunday. It would also be good with noodles or pasta, or with boiled or mashed potatoes. You could always serve some green beans or Brussels sprouts with it. And yesterday, with the leftovers, we decided to have French fries. That was really good. The sauce was as good with the fries as it was with the turkey and mushrooms.

Blanquette might not be the most photogenic of dishes,
but it is one of the most comforting.

And by the way, the turkey meat was not dry or stringy. Normally when I cook veal for a blanquette I simmer it for two hours. I let the turkey wings cook for three. The turkey meat was not as succulent as good veal, but it wasn't bad at all. And turkey is easier to find in many places outside France — not to mention that it's more affordable. This would also be good made with turkey thighs, or with chicken thighs and/or drumsticks.