La vie de chantier

There's an expression in French that describes what we might call "the good life" — it's la vie de château. The definition in French is: une existence très agréable passée dans le luxe et les loisirs... It describes a time when "you've got it made." It's like living in a castle — luxurious and leisurely.

That's not what it's like around here right now. Instead of la vie de château, we're living la vie de chantier. I made that up, but it fits. What does chantier mean? Well, one definition is something like "a construction site" — with all the disruption and dirt that entails.

Another definition is this one: Endroit où sont entassés ou travaillés des matériaux de construction — a place where building materials are stored or worked on. That's more the case here, since there's no real construction going on in our hamlet. Even so, we get the disruptions of the chantier...

Instead, the work is going on down the hill, a kilometer or so from our house. I'm not even sure what the work is all about. Maybe the work crew is undergrounding electrical wires, or fiber optics cable. Nobody has told us anything. All we know is that the crew seems to be working in the ditches along the road. But they didn't set up their chantier down there.

The crew is working down along the river road, but they are eating breakfast and lunch almost in our back yard, in one of the trailers you see in these photos. And they're keeping their backhoe (tractopelle) right outside our back gate. It doesn't help that the weather is so rainy right now. Rain means mud, when you live out in the country. I hope the job is finished soon.

Le vignoble en novembre

A big storm — une tempête in French — named Amélie is sweeping across France this morning. Wind gusts as high as 160 k.p.h. (100 m.p.h.) have been recorded on the Atlantic coast south of us (Bordeaux, Basque Country) and to the west in Brittany. We've been having heavy rains for 12 hours or more, but we've been spared the wind.



Here's a slideshow made up of photos I took early yesterday morning on my walk with the dog out in the Renaudière vineyard. The light was very dim, so I've processed some of the photos in Photoshop to rescue them. The storm was approaching at that point and it started raining around noontime.

Couscous au veau (3) : le service

"Rain starting in one minute." That's what Accuweather says about the weather in Saint-Aignan this morning. The sound of hard rain woke me up sometime in the wee hours last night. That said, it's weirdly warm outside. As I mentioned yesterday, a strong, wet warm front is moving across France right now, and it's pushing drier, cold air off to the east. Where the two air masses meet, rain falls.

The warm front is going strong, but I've kind of run out of steam (as it were) with the couscous posts. It's not that we have finished eating it, but I think that I might make it into what we call "couscous soup" for today's lunch. That just means dicing up all the vegetables and meat, and maybe adding some water to the broth to make it a little soupier. On the right is the couscous as we served it a day or two ago. I hadn't yet sprinkled on some broth with harissa hot-pepper paste dissolved in it when I took this photo.

The second time we ate a lunch of couscous, I poured all the meat and vegetables into a big, shallow roasting pan so that we could better see which vegetables we wanted to eat with the couscous grain. Covered with aluminum foil, into the oven it went for a slow reheating. We cooked another batch of couscous grain to have with it.

On the left is the couscous served with some of the broth and some harissa poured or drizzled over it. You can make it as spicy hot as you want with the pepper paste. As for preparation of the couscous "grain" in a steamer pot (couscoussier), here's what you do. It takes a while, and it's probably better if you use long-cooking rather than processed, pre-steamed couscous grain:

Cooking the coucous "grain" in a souscoussier

Fill the bottom container of the couscoussier (steamer) pot two-thirds full of water or broth and place it over over high heat.

When the liquid comes to a boil, set the perforated steamer basket containing uncooked couscous on top of the pot. Make sure the two containers fit together snugly so that steam rises up into the couscous grain and doesn’t escape out the sides. If the holes in the steamer basket are large enough that the couscous grains might fall through, line the basket with cheesecloth or a clean, thin kitchen towel.

Put the lid on the steamer basket. After about 30 minutes, take the grain out, pour it into a large flat dish, and let it cool slightly. Oil your fingers and work the grain to break up any clumps. Put the grain back in the steamer basket over the boiling liquid and repeat the process twice, not forgetting to work the grain with oiled fingers each time to to break up any clumps. After the third cooking, dot the couscous grain with small cubes of butter and serve it with vegetables, meats, and the spicy couscous broth. Optionally, mix plumped  raisins into the grain.

The above is a loose translation of instructions I found in the 1990s electronic Larousse Gastronomique food and cooking encyclopedia. The older 1960s print edition of the LG gives the following instructions as an easier way to prepare the grain:

Cooking the couscous grain "by spontaneous boiling"

For this method, you don't need a couscoussier pot. Moisten the couscous with a little water and wait for it to absorb the water and plump up. Then carefully pour the couscous little by little into about a liter of boiling liquid, preferably strained couscous broth — or just water, clear chicken or vegetable broth, or milk.

Stir constantly. Cook the couscous for about 15 minutes. When it's done, strain it and and dot it with butter. Serve it hot with stewed couscous vegetables and meats.

The third method is to follow the instructions on the package. For example, to serve two, put a cup of couscous into a saucepan. Pour a cup of boiling water over it and let it soak for five minutes to absorb the water. Stir with a fork to break up lumps. Add a little olive oil or butter. Serve hot. This method assumes you're using quick-cooking couscous grain, which is about all you can find dans le commerce these days. I've looked at amazon.fr for couscous that requires long, slow cooking, but I haven't found any. Here's another take on the whole couscous cooking issue.

Couscous au veau (2) : pourquoi ?

Before I continue posting about the couscous we are eating again today and probably into the weekend, let me show you what our weather is like today. Here's the forecast for this morning. Saint-Aignan is of course under the clouds and rain being brought in by what they call une pertubation — the French-English dictionary calls it "a weather disturbance" — a warm front bringing rain. See the dot on a white cloud just below the number 50? That would be Saint-Aignan, or Tours actually. There are two other 50s south of it. That's the wind speed in kph (30 mph).

And here's the forecast for the afternoon. It's not much better. We're in for your classic rainy day. It's been raining nearly every day since I got back from North Carolina a week ago, in fact. At least we don't have to worry about forest fires. La pauvre Californie ! So far, I haven't seen any reports of fires near where our friend Sue lives, between Lake Tahoe and Sacramento. I hope it stays that way and that the winds pushing the fires westward will soon diminish in intensity. Meanwhile, we will be wearing rain parkas on our walks with Tasha.

Back to the couscous: When cooking the meat for the stew (le bouillon) — lamb, chicken, or veal — brown it first in olive oil. Then pour on vegetable or chicken broth with some tomatoes or tomato sauce added, and let it simmer until the meat is tender. Also add the North African spices to the broth. The veal in my photo is yellow because of the addition of turmeric and other spices to the pot.

The sausages in this photo are called des merguez and are made with beef and lamb (no pork). Merguez sausages are fairly spicy. They're cooked separately and served as a kind of garnish with the stewed vegetables and meat. The other garnish is some harissa red pepper paste, dissolved in some of the broth and drizzled over the stew and the steamed couscous.

After I had let the carrots, turnips, and eggplant cook in the couscous broth long enough to start becoming tender, I added in chunks of peeled zucchini along with some pre-cooked green beans and cubed celery (from the freezer). Zucchini cooks quickly. Yesterday, I also cooked a red bell pepper (from the garden) in a small amount of the broth, along with some frozen okra, and added those to the stew.

Walt cooks the couscous according to the instructions on the box it comes in: Plump up some raisins in a cup of hot water. Then cook a cup of couscous in a cup of boiling water with the raisins. Turn it off when it comes back to the boil and let the couscous completely absorb the water. Add salt and a little vegetable oil, and also a tablespoon of butter for flavor just before serving the couscous with the stew and broth.

By the way, here's the weather forecast for the next week or so. Several more fronts are going to sweep across France, bringing rain on a daily basis. This is typical Toussaint (All Saints' Day) weather in France. Happy November!

[More about couscous tomorrow...]