Winter photos

It's hard to take photos here in wintertime. There just isn't enough light. I guess if I went out at noontime on a rare bright day — we've had nearly 100 mm or 4 inches of rain this month — I'd do better, but at noontime I'm too busy in the kitchen (or in the dining room).

Here's an indoor photo. At 6 a.m. today I was busy making coffee

and getting the cat fed when I noticed that the light was nice.

A full moon was setting over the vineyard.

A couple of days ago we had a few moments of sunshine, and a rainbow.

Fences around the vineyard help keep the deer out and the donkeys in.

Here's an afternoon moon over the hamlet and vineyard — my latest banner photo.

SuperU's fine print

Yesterday I had to go out to the pharmacy, so I drove up to SuperU, which was advertising a special price on a 6-bottle case of champagne for 60 € —20 € off. It was too good to pass up. The store was a zoo (sometimes we call it SuperZoo), as it can be on the first day of a sale during the holidays. I spent 10 minutes looking in the wine section for the half-case of champagne I wanted to buy, but couldn't find any anywhere.

The latest SuperU advertising flyer features macarons and champagne on the cover

I went and stood at the service desk (l'accueil) for a while, and finally a young woman came to help me. She ended up just brushing me off, really: "Look on the end caps (les bouts de rayons) and you'll find it." Then she turned away. I had already looked everywhere, but I went back and looked some more.

No luck, except that another store employee happened by, pushing a cartload of cardboard boxes. I stopped her, carefully stared into her eyes and said Bonjour to get on her good side (you have to do that) and asked her for assistance. She looked around for a while, but she couldn't find the advertised champagne either. Single bottles of the same champagne were on the shelves for about 17 € per bottle.

Finally, the second employee went to find a third one. It was a young man this time. I explained the situation to him. "Oh, wait here," he said, "I haven't yet had time to bring that champagne out to the floor. I'll go see if I can find some." It didn't take him very long. He was all smiles, and I made sure I was smiling too, as I thanked him.

Walt just read this really fine print on the SuperU advertising flyer that we received this week:

« Si un article venait à manquer, veuillez le commander à notre point accueil, ce produit ou un produit similaire vous sera fourni dans les meilleurs délais au prix de l'actuelle publicité (sous réserve de disponibilité chez le fournisseur). Offres valables pendant les dates indiquées dans ce document sous réserve d'erreur d'impression. Chaque magasin se réserve la possibilité de ne pas faire droit à la demande d'un client qui ne correspondrait pas aux besoins normaux d'un consommateur. »

“If an item happens to be unavailable, please place an order for it at our customer service desk [and] the item or a similar item will be furnished as soon as possible at the price announced in the current advertising flyer (unless it is not available from the supplier). Special offers are valid for the dates indicated in this document except if there has been a printing error. Each store reserves the right to refuse to honor the requests of a customer that are not deemed to correspond to the normal needs of a consumer.”

Quails or a chicken for the New Year's holiday...

So we're right back where we started from, really. You'd have to be really determined to get the product at the advertised price before you'd be willing to go stand in line at the customer service desk and place an order for it. At least I would. And you have to know that the law requires the store to accommodate you. There's a good chance you'd be told that item was no longer available from the supplier.

At Grand Frais in Vierzon, there were no turkeys available at the low advertised price, but there were plenty available at twice that price. That's enough to make you suspicious that the advertising was a bait-and-switch trap. It probably wasn't, but I wasn't about to make a second trip to Vierzon to get a turkey, anyway. It's just too far.

...or duck — fresh or cooked into confit, your choice

Over at the Intermarché supermarket across the river in Noyers, I long ago gave up hope of ever actually finding the advertised specials available at the meat counter. So many times I tried, only to be told to come back later in the week because they might get a new supply. Might... Nobody ever volunteered the information that I could place an order and get the advertised price for the same or a similar item.

I've always had much better luck at SuperU in Saint-Aignan. Yesterday at SuperU they had chapons (which are capons — fattened chickens — in English) the size of a turkey on special at about the same price advertised by Grand Frais for those dindes blanches, so I bought one of those. With that and the champagne, I'm happy! We'll have a capon sometime later this winter, and the champagne will get us through special occasions over the next 12 months.

It happened again

Yesterday we decided to drive over to the big town of Vierzon (pop. 27,500), about 75 km east of Saint-Aignan on the Cher River. It takes an hour, mostly by (toll = 5€) autoroute, to get there. One point of the trip was to take the car out at high speed (130 kph) in low gears (4th) to continue burning the carbon out of the engine in preparation for a new contrôle technique in January.

Another point was to do some shopping at the Grand Frais produce and grocery store that's over there. We were especially looking for vegetables, and we got what we wanted: panais (parsnips), topinambours (Jerusalem artichokes), rutabagas, choux de Bruxelles, céleri-branches (as opposed to céleri-rave), gombos (okra), pommes de terre, and more. Grand Frais is a good store that offers a wide selection at good prices. A lot of the fruits and vegetables are imported, I'm sure (many come from the tropics), but so be it.

A sampling of the vegetables we found at Grand Frais in Vierzon. For those of you who live in the 37

(Indre-et-Loire), I'll note that there are no Grand Frais grocery stores in that département (or in the 86).

Preparing for the trip, we looked up Grand Frais on the internet to make sure that the Vierzon store would be open on December 26. And when we did, we noticed that the store was offering a promotional price on what they called dindes blanches ("white" turkeys, which I think means that they are not free-range birds) at 5.49 €/kg. Walt had been saying that this week he hoped to find a turkey we could put in the freezer to have in January or February.

So when we got to the store — which is sort of like a Trader Joe's in that it carries a full line of produce and groceries, including meat and dairy, but no non-food items — we went to the butcher counter and looked at the turkeys on offer. They were expensive (40 to 60 € apiece) and we didn't see any at the advertised special price. I asked the people behind the counter.

Today's cooking project: jarret de porc frais (fresh, unsmoked hamhock) poached with

aromatic vegetables, later to be browned in the oven with roasted root vegetables

One employee said she didn't know anything about it, and she asked the man working with her, who was busy cutting meat. He said they didn't have any more of the less expensive turkeys. "In fact, that promotion ran out the week before Christmas," he said. "It's too late." I told him that on the store's web site, it said clearly that the turkeys were on special offer until the end of December. Oh no, he said; vous vous trompez (you're wrong).

Then the woman working with him pointed to a huge poster on the wall behind the meat counter. Dindes blanches, offre spéciale, 5,49 €/kg. Offre valable jusqu'au 31 décembre. So there it was. "On that's an error, obviously," the man said. "We sold all those turkeys a long time ago."

A screen capture from the Grand Frais web site

I don't know about you, but I find that very frustrating. It's false advertising, and there is no offer of a rain check (though we wouldn't drive all the way back over there later just to get a turkey at that price). It happens to me more frequently than I want to dwell on that stores around here don't have the products they advertise at the published prices. It doesn't faze the employees to tell you they are désolés but there's nothing they can do about it.

By the way, the car ran great at 80 mph (the speed limit on the autoroute) in 4th gear at between 3000 and 3500 RPMs, for nearly an hour. I hope the high revs and the fuel additive are doing their job. I'm having a lot of fun driving like a racecar driver instead of like somebody's vieux grand-père.

Stuffing and roasting the Touraine chicken

Even at 30 euros, the géline de Touraine we bought for Christmas dinner was worth the price. The géline really is a high-quality, extraordinary bird. I have to say I've never cooked or even tasted the more famous poulet de Bresse, which is raised in the Bresse province north of Lyon, so I can't make that comparison. The Bresse chicken is reputedly the finest fowl in France. One day I'll get one (but I don't know if you can around here — might have to go there).

The oven-roasted farm-raised géline de Touraine chicken

Meanwhile, I don't know how any other chicken could be better than the géline. What I always try to think about when I splurge on special ingredients for a special meal is how much that meal would cost the two of us if we ordered it in a restaurant. You can't be frugal with ingredients all the time, even if you live on a limited income. Il faut se faire plaisir de temps en temps.

The géline, squash, and stuffing roasting in the oven

Anyway, I'll finish up the story of 2012's Christmas dinner. We made chestnut stuffing for the Touraine chicken, and we actually filled the bird with it for once instead of cooking all the stuffing in a separate pan. I posted the ingredients yesterday, and I just went back and updated that list to reflect what I actually put in the stuffing mixture. It was pretty much what I wrote yesterday, but I added cream to it when I realized the recipe didn't include melted butter and chicken broth for richness and moisture. The cream was a good addition.

The géline came with giblets, so I put the chicken liver in the mixture too. The first step in making the stuffing is to sauté the chopped onion, lardons, garlic, and mushrooms. When they're done (but not overcooked), take the pan off the heat and add the breadcrumbs, spices, and sage leaves. Stir all together and then add the chestnuts, some of which you've left whole and others of which you've roughly chopped.

The stuffing mixture before the cream and eggs went in

Here are the ingredients for the chestnut stuffing in English:

a scant half-pound of diced bacon or ham
10 or 12 small button mushrooms
1 onion finely diced
2 garlic cloves, sliced or crushed
½ cup bread crumbs
two sprigs fresh sage leaves, chopped (or a teaspoon of dried sage)
salt and pepper
1 pinch ground cloves (or allspice)
1 pinch ground nutmeg (or a good grating)
1 raw chicken liver, cut into small pieces
1 jar or tin of peeled chestnuts (one pound)
½ to ¾ cup heavy cream or crème fraîche
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Finally, when the mixture is fairly cool, add the two eggs and the cream (between a half and three-quarters of a cup, just enough to moisten the stuffing). Then you can stuff the chicken. Cook the rest of the stuffing in a loaf pan the way you would cook a pound cake (no need to butter or flour the pan). You could make the same stuffing mixture by substituting cubed bread for the chestnuts.

This hollowed-out winter squash, which we grew in last summer's garden, was spectacular.

We planted seeds we saved from a patidou squash purchased at the supermarket last year.

To prepare the stuffed géline for roasting, I just brushed it all over with olive oil and then salted and peppered it well. I roasted it on a rack in a pan with some liquid (water + white wine) in the bottom. I added more water as the liquid evaporated. Putting half an inch of liquid in the bottom of the pan keeps the chicken juices and fat drippings from burning.

I started the chicken roasting at a fairly low temperature (160ºC / (325ºF). After about 45 minutes, I turned it up to 190ºC / 375ºF. That's the opposite of what I usually do, and it was an experiment that worked. I wanted the chicken (and the stuffing inside) to cook through without over-browning the bird's skin, and I wanted to give the (significant) layer of fat under the skin on the breast and legs time to "render" or melt and "nourish" the meat

Carving the géline de Touraine

The total cooking time for the bird (4 lbs.) was about 90 minutes. I had planned to turn the heat up even higher to brown the chicken at the end, but I didn't need to. I basted the bird with the pan juices several times during the cooking. When the chicken was done, I turned off the oven and set the door ajar to let the bird rest for another 20 to 30 minutes.

The loaf pan of stuffing cooked in about 40 minutes' time in the oven with the chicken. We also roasted a winter squash in the oven during that same time, and we made some green beans to complete the meal. I didn't make gravy but just served some of the chicken drippings from the roasting pan with the beans, chicken, stuffing, and mashed squash. It was pretty simple (the most complicated part being the stuffing) and simply delicious.