Les Desserts

I'll finish up with the meal we had in Bracieux (see yesterday's post) at the restaurant called Au Relais d'Artémis. I didn't get any good photos of the cheese plates we had just before dessert — lighting conditions, with dappled sunlight and intense contrasts, were difficult.

For our dessert, Walt and I ordered the Tarte Tatin, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was almost overwhelmingly caramelized. Tarte Tatin, as probably everybody knows by now, is an upside-down apple tart. It was invented in the region (la Sologne) in the 19th century.

For his dessert, CHM chose the pear poached in red wine, hollowed out, and filled with a sorbet (was it raspberry?). It looked awfully good, as you can see.

After dessert, we had coffee. For Walt and me, that meant an espresso served with a little chocolate tablet. CHM ordered a café allongé — a shot of espresso in a large cup with a pot of hot water he could add to dilute the strong coffee.

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On a different subject entirely, I'm pretty pleased with myself and with my "new" computer — the one I got back in March. After doing a lot of reading on the 'net, I finally figured out how to install Windows 7 alongside Windows 8.1 on the machine, so now I can boot up into either operating system that I want to use. Now I'll have to decide which system will become my main choice for daily use.

Entrées et plats au Relais d'Artémis à Bracieux

Last week, our friend CHM invited us to lunch up at the Relais d'Artémis near the Château de Chambord and the city of Blois. We've been there three times now, and it's an excellent restaurant with reasonable prices. The occasion for our lunch was the 11th anniversary of moving into our house near Saint-Aignan and the 10th anniversary of the first time CHM came and stayed here with us.

At the restaurant, we were able to sit outside on the patio and enjoy fine weather along with some fine cooking and food. Last summer, we wanted to have another restaurant in the village of Bracieux where we had had a very delicious meal earlier. Unfortunately, it was complet — completely booked — for the day of our outing.

We chose the Relais d'Artémis as a back-up plan a year ago, and now it has become one of our restaurants of choice in the Blois/Chambord area, for the food and the setting. We plan to return to the other Bracieux restaurant, Le Rendez-Vous des Gourmets, as soon as we can, by the way.

The menu we ordered from at the Relais was priced at 26 euros per person for first, main, and dessert courses. For 31 euros, you can have all that plus a cheese-and-salad course between the main dish and the dessert. We ordered a bottle of the local Cheverny rosé wine (18€) to drink with our meal.

Okay, what was the food like this time? CHM and I both ordered what you might call « le festival canard » — duck foie gras as a first course, and pan-roasted duck breast as the second. Foie gras is controversial in many countries but not in France, and it is delicious. It's the fattened liver of a fattened duck, served as a kind of pâté. This time it was served with a dollop of slow-cooked figs and two little crispy pastries filled with a creamy stuffing, and with some good bread.

The duck breast was cooked just enough to be served just « rosé » or medium rare. That's the way duck breast is normally cooked. It came with a few steamed new potatoes and a little pile of sauteed carrots and cabbage. I'm not sure which part of the duck I enjoyed eating more.

Walt went the fish route this time. He had a salad featuring cured salmon as his starter course. He said it was pleasantly salty. He didn't say or I didn't ask what the ring of red sauce around the plate was.

As his main course, Walt ordered a fillet of sandre or zander — a.k.a. "pike-perch" — which is a European river fish. The only time we ever eat sandre is in restaurants, as it doesn't seem to be available at the markets or supermarkets around the area where we live. I know Walt said it was really delicious with the accompanying risotto and fava beans.

I wrote last year about the Relais d'Artémis several times. Here's a link to the search results page with four or five posts about the restaurant listed.

A nice end to springtime

All in all, we are having a very nice month of June. It's not quite summertime but it already feels like early summer. A lot of the plants in the back yard are doing well this year.

A friend who lives on the other side of the village gave us a couple of cuttings from a thornless blackberry bush a few years ago. The plant survived but the berries usually disappear very quickly as soon as they get ripe, feeding the local birds or deer.

We planted five artichoke plants about seven years ago. Two survive, and there are quite a few artichokes this year. We usually just let them flower, rather than cutting and eating them.

There were a lot of roses growing around the house when we moved in eleven years ago. Many of them are still doing well, but we just dug out two big rosiers out front. Now I have to replant them elsewhere in the yard.

The same friend who gave us blackberries also gave us these hens and chicks. They have spread everywhere — I keep them mostly in pots.

Ten years ago CHM brought us some cactus cuttings from Virginia in the U.S. I rooted these cuttings over the winter and then planted them in a pot.

I hope our summer turns out to be as nice as the latter half of spring has been. The vegetable garden is just starting to grow. I'm also getting some persistent "weeds" under control these days. Ivy is trying to take over all around the yard.

Touraine-Amboise wines

When we were out riding around one day last week, CHM and I drove through the town of Amboise (my photos of the château are here) and ended up in the village called Limeray, the center for production of the wines that carry the Touraine-Amboise appellation.

We happened to drive past the wine cooperative just on the edge of Limeray. Walt and I have been there before to buy wine — the first time with our friends Jean and Nick, and then another time on our own. We didn't need to buy wine last week, but CHM asked if maybe we shouldn't stop in and buy a bottle to have with our supper. That's what we did.

Most of the wines made in the Loire Valley are not aged in oak barrels, but we noticed one, a Cuvée Léonard, that was barrel-aged, and we decided to buy that one. The Léonard in the name is, of course, Leonardo da Vinci, who spent the last few years of his life in Amboise as the guest of the Renaissance French king François 1er.

On the label you see the words « Vieilli en fût de Chêne » — that means "Aged in oak barrels". As I said, very few Loire Valley wines are aged that way.

Mostly, the wines are fermented and stored in huge stainless steel vats. Some say that process gives the grapes a more natural expression, so that the wine tastes of the grape rather than of wood and heavy tannins.

In fact, most Loire Valley wines are not « vins de garde », or wines you can "put down" to age for a long time. They are « vins de soif » — "thirst wines" — wines you drink young (and that keep you feeling young yourself, I'd say!)