My second short road trip

I went for my second drive in my new car yesterday. By the way, we need a new word in English. Or maybe I 'm just not thinking of a word that I should remember. In French, when I say « ma nouvelle voiture », I'm not conveying any information about whether I am the vehicle's first owner, or its second or third owner.

If the car is brand new and has never had a previous owner, then « c'est une voiture neuve ». A brand new car. Neuf and nouveau are only partial synonyms. My "new" car is not a "new" car. Oh well. It drives and looks like a voiture neuve. On my first drive in it, I was not enthusiastic. I hadn't yet got it all set up to my tastes and driving style. Yesterday's drive was a totally different experience. A fine one.

How do you like that speedometer (le compteur de vitesse) up on top of the dashboard (le tableau de bord)? What you see through the steering wheel (le volant) is the tachometer (le compte-tours). And no, I wasn't going 90 mph, but 90 kph.

I drove through the middle of Saint-Aignan — that takes about three minutes! — and south past SuperU and the Zooparc de Beauval on the very curvy road that runs down toward the village called Nouans-les-Fontaines, population 800. The road becomes as straight as a board about half way down, where I took the photo above. I know, driving and taking photos at the same time is not too smart, but as you can see, there wasn't much traffic to worry about.

At Nouans (where there is a famous 15th century painting in the church that was "discovered" less than 100 years ago), I turned left toward Luçay-le-Mâle (pop. 1,500), where there is a château that I've never been able to find, and on toward Valençay (pop. 2,600), where there is a famous château that I've visited many times. There, I turned north toward Selles-sur-Cher (pop. 4,600), where there is also a château and where I had an errand to run. From there, it's a straight shot west back to Saint-Aignan (pop. 3,000).

In all, I drove about 80 kilometers — that's 50 miles — and fiddled with the car's cruise control (le régulateur de vitesse), which I'm glad to have again; the heater and air conditioner; and the radio and CD player, when I was on open highway with no traffic (a lot of the time). The Peugeot is old enough to have neither cruise control or a CD player. I like the way the Citroën feels and drives, but it is bigger than the Peugeot 206 and that takes some getting used to.

Almost back home, I stopped in Noyers-sur-Cher, where there is no château but where there is a pretty 12th century chapel, and took a photo of the car with the chapel as a backdrop. I also took a photo of the interior, which I'm posting in black and white because I didn't like how the colors came out in the day's bright sunshine. The interior is all gray anyway. When I got home, I put the Citroën in the garage for the first time. The garage has a narrow door and I wasn't sure the Citroën would fit through it. It did. I didn't even have to fold back the side mirrors. Whew!

Feuilles de chou (bis)

Following up on the cabbage rolls: I made stuffing out of slightly more than two pounds of fresh pork shoulder, grinding the meat myself and adding a cup and a half of cooked rice and three-quarters of a cup of raw couscous grain. I also put in about a cup of grated zucchini flesh for moistness. The seasonings were diced and sauteed onions, chopped raw garlic, and several spices: black pepper, smoked paprika, fennel seeds, celery seeds, powdered allspice, powdered hot red pepper, and so on. It's free-form. Use what you like. Add two or three eggs and mix everything together really well.

That made an awful lot of stuffing. I knew I would have some left over, and I wished I had saved a few more cabbage leaves. When I rolled up the 14 cabbage leaves with a generous dollop of stuffing in each, I was surprised how little pork I had left. So it worked out. I cooked the excess separately as little meatballs and we'll have them with pasta or on a pizza this weekend.

We ate six of the cabbage rolls at lunchtime. There was no need to have anything else with them besides bread and wine. Cabbage, rice, pork, eggs — a complete meal. The pork stuffing was smooth and tender. It tasted good. I didn't take a photo of one of the rolls cut open, but I will next time. Oh, the rolls cooked for 2½ hours in a medium and then low oven. They were packed tightly together in a big baking dish and moistened with chicken broth and white wine. We served them with some tomato sauce yesterday. Next time I think I'll make a lemony oregano cream sauce to go with them.

With eight cabbage rolls left over to put in the freezer, we'll have them again soon. Next time maybe I'll make some kind of side dish to go with them. Potatoes. Chickpeas. Kidney beans. Carrots. Something like that. I'm glad I bought that big Savoy cabbage and cooked it the ways I did. It feels good to eat healthy, delicious food. There's a also feeling of accomplishment in that.

Feuilles de chou farcies au porc

That's pork-stuffed cabbage rolls. I'm making them this morning. But first, let me say that I found the body color code on the Citroën. It's on the driver's door frame. KTC, it says, and that translates to a color called « iridis métallique », according to a web search. In England, it seems to be called "iridis mica" — a pearlescent gray, an iridescent color. That mystery's solved.

Now back to the cabbage rolls. I have fourteen nice Savoy cabbage leaves in all. They've been blanched.

I also have a big chunk of pork that I will run through the meat grinder. With onions, garlic, herbs, spices, rice, and some eggs, that'll make a good filling. I need to get to work if we want to have cabbage rolls for lunch today.

Aimez-vous manger les choux ?

Yesterday was a beautiful day, one worthy of early spring. Problem was, I didn't feel the greatest. I woke up groggy. I felt a chill, and I wondered if I was coming down with something. It turns out I don't think I was, because I felt better in the evening and seem fine this morning.

I spent yesterday morning in the kitchen. I got involved in cooking a big crinkly Savoy cabbage that I had bought at the supermarket for one euro a couple of days earlier. Maybe it was eating cabbage that made me start feeling a little better.

I didn't want to cook the cabbage in a big pot of water or broth as soup. I looked around on the web and I happened upon a recipe called « Poulet au chou vert frisé » — chicken with Savoy cabbage. I had also picked up a chicken at the supermarket the day I bought the cabbage.

The recipe calls for blanching the coarsely chopped up cabbage for five minutes in boiling water before cooking it. French recipes often call for blanching vegetables and then cooking them in fresh liquid. I think it makes the vegetables sweeter. That's what I did. I also sauteed three small chopped onions in butter. (I saved a good dozen of the sturdy outer leaves of the cabbage for making stuffed roulades later this week. I blanched them too, while I was at it.)

The cut up cabbage cooked for about 45 minutes with a cup of broth and the buttery onions, seasoned with salt, pepper, ground allspice, bay leaves, and a pinch of ground cloves. When it was mostly done and getting tender, I set the raw chicken, seasoned with some smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, and more salt and pepper, on the bed of cabbage and onions. That all cooked, covered, for 45 minutes more in the oven.

Then I took the lid off the baking dish, turned up the heat, and let the chicken brown for 15 or 20 minutes. That was enough time for a good bit of the cooking liquid in the dish to evaporate. The result was tender cabbage and crispy, succulent chicken. The recipe said to serve the chicken and cabbage with some warm cream, but I left that part off for yesterday. We just had cabbage, chicken, and good fresh bread from the local baker.

While I was blanching and cooking the cabbage, Walt went out to do some chores in the yard. When he came back in, he looked at me and said that it sure smelled like cabbage in the house. "And it smells really good," he said. Luckily, we both like cabbage and find the aroma of it cooking to be appetizing.