Going to Amiens to see the cathedral

It was July 21. We drove northwest from Rancourt — site of French, German, South African, and British WWI battles and cemeteries — up the valley of the Somme River. "Valley" is probably an overstatement. The land is fairly flat but with some high and low points. CHM said he had read that the Somme follows only a very gradual slope on its way to the sea.

In fact there are many places where the river spreads out to form wide lakes. People sit with their poles fishing along the edges of them. Most of the buildings are built out of brick, and many are of fairly recent construction, since the area suffered such extensive destruction in the three wars — 1870, 1914, and 1940 — France and its allies were forced to fight with the Germans on French territory.

The Amiens cathedral is dizzyingly vast.

Amiens was our destination. I wanted to see the cathedral. It was one of the few great Gothic cathedrals in France that I hadn't ever seen. Chartres, Rouen, Reims, Paris, Laon, and others have been on past itineraries. Now Amiens. They say the cathedral in Amiens is so enormous that two churches the size of Notre-Dame de Paris would fit inside it. That's hard to conceive of. Amiens is about two hours north of Paris by car.

One of the best-known sculptures at Amiens
is "The Weeping Angel" (1636).

Years ago, I was visiting friends in Rouen. They asked me if there was anything special I wanted to do or see while I was there. I told them I would like to go see Amiens cathedral. It's not much more than an hour's drive from Rouen, I thought — about 75 miles. My friends looked at me like I was crazy. It was as if they thought Amiens was at the ends of the earth. In China, maybe, or Australia. They had looked at me the same way, once, when I said I'd like to see Le Havre.

Gargoyles at Amiens

When CHM and I got to Amiens, we didn't really look at a map. We just looked for the cathedral towers on the skyline and headed that way. Maybe that's why it took us so long to actually get there and find a place to park the car. All the streets seemed to be one-way, and most all of them were going in the wrong direction. What few parking spaces we saw were already occupied. We needed to park close to the cathedral, because a long strenuous walk was out of the question.

There are dozens of elaborate sculpted and painted scenes
like this one in the cathedral at Amiens.

We were so close at one point! There was the cathedral, and there was a little parking lot. Unfortunately, there wasn't a space to be had in the lot. We were forced to drive on, and that's when the one-way streets really took their toll. Before we knew it, we were back on grand boulevards far from our destination, and we were looking for directional signs that might get us close to the target again. We saw a lot of Amiens.

The ornate west façade of Amiens cathedral

We found them (the signs) and we found it (the cathedral) again. And just as we drove up to that little parking lot, a car was backing out of a space. We had lucked out. But for that, we might have had to leave Amiens without seeing the cathedral but from a distance.

The labyrinth at Amiens cathedral

The cathedral at Amiens is so big that it is very difficult to photograph in any satisfying way. I've read that it's the largest church in France, as measured by its interior dimensions. It is also the archetypical example of the Classical Gothic style. It was built between 1220 and 1280 on the site of several earlier churches, most of which had been destroyed by fires caused either by lightning or warfare.

Colorful interior decorations tell stories

Additions and improvements to the original cathedral continued over the next two or three centuries. In the late 1400s, one of the building's architects realized that the whole structure was in imminent danger of collapsing. Part of the huge Beauvais cathedral, not far south of Amiens, had come crashing down a couple of decades earlier.

The west front of Amiens Cathedral

At Amiens, the flying buttresses and the interior pillars were not strong enough to support the weight of the vaulted ceilings long-term. Part of the solution was to encircle the whole structure with heavy iron chains on the upper level to keep its supports from bulging and buckling. It worked, and the bracing chains are still in place today.

Sculpted figures on the façade

The photos I'm posting give some idea of the scale of the cathedral building, and show some details of its interior and exterior decoration.

Laundry, potatoes, and so many squashes

Here it is, Monday again. The laundry is done and hung out on the line to dry. The weather is warm and dry, with sunny skies but cool mornings. We are so lucky to be having our second warm, dry, sunny summer in a row. We have to get back to the painting upstairs.

I pull up another potato plant every couple of days. We're not eating them all. Some are in a cardboard box down in the cellier — a windowless pantry with a floor of sand — for storage. Many more will have to go in there, too, if I get as many potatoes from the rest of the plants as I've gotten from the last few.

King Edward potatoes, freshly dug

These King Edward spuds have lived up to the billing they get from the local British expatriates, who miss them here in France. Of course, I'm sure there are French varieties that are just as good — you just have to find them. Many varieties are available, even in the supermarkets.

Yesterday, an easy lunch of French-fried King Edward potatoes
with some home-made Chili con Carne out of the freezer

With the King Edwards, we've had success roasting them in the oven in chicken or pintade drippings; mashing them with cod fish to make a brandade de morue; and now, French-frying them. They make better frites than any other potato variety we've tried since we've lived here.

Baked patty-pan squashes

With so many ways to cook potatoes, I now need more ways to cook patty pan squashes. We gave some away to neighbors. Yesterday I roasted six patty-pans in the oven, just to get them cooked and put away. Now what can I do with them? Some kind of casserole, I guess. A lasagne-like dish? I think I'll go to the kitchen and see what I can come up with.

Le Château de Mesnières-en-Bray

I always tease my good friend Marie, who is an English teacher in Normandy, about the weather up there. She gets tired of it, I'm sure, but she's a good sport. It really doesn't rain in Normandy all the time.

You see, I lived in Rouen for a year, way back when I was a young teacher. One of the first things I learned there was something told to me, maybe facetiously, by the principal of the high school where I worked. To help me adapt to the climate, he said: "Remember, in Normandy, it doesn't rain very much. It just rains all the time." It's that fine, misty drizzle that can get to you.

It was good weather for geese, that day.

Well, this time, when we entered Normandy through Blangy-sur-Bresle, we caused quite a splash. Literally. Here we were, two American senior citizens (me a sexagenarian — that's less fun than it might sound — and CHM an octogenarian — no, no tentacles) tooling around in our Renault Kangoo utility vehicle, when suddenly the skies opened up. The bottom really fell out.

A rooster either strutting or hunting, after the heavy downpour

It was a rainstorm that people in North Carolina might call a frog-strangler. Des trombes d'eau, they say in French. Raining buckets. And we were on little back roads through hilly country, with very few road signs. For part of the way, we drove through dense forest. The Michelin guide for Normandy calls this region of Normandy "the Bray Buttonhole" — "Wide and deep undulations were formed" here by movements of the Earth's crust in the Tertiary area, when the Alps were pushed up farther south. "The whole area is a watershed," Michelin says. I was convinced.

Here he is, close up. Nice comb.

The sections of road that go through forest are shown on the map in the Michelin Road Atlas as scenic routes. We couldn't see much, though — it was too dark. Many of the roads we were on didn't have route numbers on the map. The ones that did have numbers on the map were as often unmarked as marked by signposts. We just had to keep going, hoping we might be headed vaguely in the right direction. The rain kept pouring down.

Another rooster at Mesnières

It's only about 30 km/18 miles from Blangy-sur-Bresle to Mesnières-en-Bray, our next stop. It seemed a lot longer. The two forests we drove through are called La Haute Forêt Domaniale D'Eu — Eu is a town near the coast — and La Forêt du Hellet. I liked a lot of the local place names: Croixdalle, Bonnerue, Smermesnil, Houppelande, Fresnoy-Folny, Mesnil-Follemprise, and Saint-Vaast-Equiqueville, to cite just a few. As you can imagine, the rain and a focus on driving on curvy roads prevented me from taking any pictures.

The mill and millpond at Mesnières

Finally, we found a little narrow country lane called the Route de Lucy — Lucy is a village — and we knew we were almost there. I remember passing two tourists on bicycles. They were a middle-aged couple, probably English or Dutch. We were going down a steep hill at the time, which meant they were trying to pedal up it. I flashed my bright lights so that they would be sure to see us coming. They smiled at us gamely as they struggled up the hill in the driving rain.

I guess these are all chickens.

Our destination was the town — village? — called Mesnières-en-Bray. There's a château there. Since the 1820s, the building — a Renaissance edifice reminiscent of the Loire Valley castles we know so well — has been used as a school that teaches general courses as well as horticulture. We didn't expect to go inside. We just wanted to see it from the outside, maybe just from the car windows. Maybe get out and take a picture or two. But with the rain that was falling, it seemed increasingly unlikely that we would get even a glimpse of it.

Goats climbing up on rocks and trees

We drove into the village from the east, where the Route de Lucy intersected with the main road through the town. We turned right, toward the Dieppe to the north, looking for the château. I remember roads that were flooded, and people out in slickers with brooms, trying to unclog storm drains so that the water could run off rather than pond up. In a couple of minutes, we found ourselves back out in rase campagne — open country — a realized we had gone too far and in the wrong direction.

This tree doesn't stand much of a chance.

Where was the château? In such a small town (pop. 706, according to Wikipedia), an enormous building shouldn't be all that hard to find. Blame it on the rain. We were having a hard time seeing much at all. I pulled off the road and turned around. A big tractor-trailer rig roared by, sending spray everywhere. A couple of miles south, right in the middle of the village, this time we noticed a sign — Château >> — pointing to the right.

...comme chèvre qui pisse ?

And the rain suddenly slacked off. By the time we drove a mile up the road and found the entrance to the château, it had pretty much stopped. There was a ray of sunshine, and everything look and smelled fresh and clean. There was a little parking lot for maybe 10 cars, and it was empty. We parked there and even got out of the car.

The Château de Mesnières-en-Bray (Normandy)

So I got some pictures after all. Snapshots of the Château de Mesnières. And in a pen on the grounds, near the parking lot, there were chickens, roosters, geese, ducks, and goats. We enjoyed being out of the car for a few minutes and not having to walk too far to find something interesting to look at and photograph. Sometimes what you actually see is more interesting that what you set out to see.

Le Château de Rambures

We were driving around, lost, and soon to be caught in a storm. Well, we weren't exactly lost, and we were making good time. We just didn't know how to get to where we wanted to go. The rain would soon start falling in sheets (tomber des cordes is the French expression, or pleuvoir comme vache qui pisse), and that wouldn't help matters. We had a map, but it would be impossible to read the road signs. It was Wednesday, July 21, 2010.

Arriving at Rambures, in the calm before the storm

Earlier, after lunch in Poix-de-Picardie, we had left the main highway at a place called Aumale, about halfway between Amiens (in Picardie) and Rouen (in Normandie). We drove up the valley of the Bresle river, through towns called Vieux-Rouen-sur-Bresle, Bouafles, and Hodeng-au-Bosc. At one point we crossed the river on a little bridge and we headed back into Picardy to find the Château de Rambures. I certainly had never heard of it, but CHM had (I think). He found it on the map.

Cows that produce the milk for Neufchâtel cheese

It wasn't raining at that point. After driving around a while on unmarked roads, we turned left at Foucacourt-Hors-Nesle and before long found our way to Rambures and the château. Along the way, I stopped and took some pictures of cows. This is the Neufchâtel cheese production area, and Neufchâtel is one of my favorite cow's milk cheeses — so I needed a picture of a cow, n'est-ce pas ? This Neufchâtel, by the way, has nothing to do with the cream cheese we call by the same name in America. It's more like a Camembert, only saltier and... well, you'd have to taste it.

This is how we saw the Château Fort de
Rambures — it was closed that day.

The Château de Rambures was — wouldn't you know it? — closed on Wednesdays. The Michelin green guide hadn't been clear on that point. There was a parking lot, but it was empty and even barricaded. A couple of other cars stopped as we took some pictures of the château through the big iron gates. One young woman came up to talk to us. She too was disappointed to have driven all that way, only to find she couldn't enter the château or even the grounds.

A photo of Rambures from a slightly better angle

According to its web site, the Château Fort de Rambures has been owned and occupied by the same family since the 11th century — that's 1000 years. There have been three different fortified castles built on the property during that time but, even so, the one that exists now dates back to the 14th and 15th centuries. It was fortified because the 100 Years War between France and England was raging at the time it was being designed and erected. Lord Rambures is mentioned in Shakespeare's Henry V.

The old towers and steep rooftops
of the Château de Rambures

At Rambures, there's a 25-acre park with a fine collection of ferns and a rose garden planted with 420 varieties, both modern and heirloom. There's an English-style garden that was planted in the 1700s, when exotic trees including a sequoia and a black walnut were brought to Rambures from America and Asia. Of course, we didn't get to see any of that — but I'm not sure we would have taken the time to do so even if the château and grounds had been open that day.

There's CHM waiting for me to take one more photo.

It was when we left Rambures and drove into Normandy at the town called Blangy-sur-Bresle that the heavy rain started. We were on our way to a place called Mesnières-en-Bray to see a château there, and then on to Neufchâtel-en-Bray for a night in a hotel there and a dinner featuring the local cheese.

OVNIs farcis — Stuffed patty-pan UFOs

You have to admit that they do look like some kind of « OVNI » — that stands for « Objet Volant Non Identifié » in French. An Unidentified Flying Object. But they are patty-pan squashes. They don't actually fly, but they grow so fast you might think they should be featured in a science fiction movie.

We had a whole batch of them last week — in French they're called « pâtissons » — and I decided to make stuffed squash, a.k.a "squash boats," out of them. Or squash flying saucers (soucoupes volantes) in this case. As I type this, there are six more patty-pans on the work table in the kitchen. I'm going to stuff them with ground pork — chair à saucisse in French — this morning and put them in the freezer for eating over the winter.

Patty-pans are summer squashes like zucchinis/courgettes
and can be cooked the same way. The taste might
remind you a little of artichoke.

Last week, I wanted to make a different meat stuffing for the patty-pans, with tomato sauce. I had about a pound each of beef and lamb in the freezer. The beef was chunks of stew beef (bœuf à bourguignon) and the lamb was slices of gigot d'agneau — leg of lamb. Walt put all of that meat through the food grinder to mince it up.

Cook the patty-pans in boiling water (or steam them)
to soften the skin and flesh before you hollow them out.

The easiest way to get the patty-pans ready for stuffing is to cook them in a big pot of boiling salted water for 10 minutes or a little longer, until they are partially cooked. Then take them out of the water and let them cool to the point where you can handle them without burning your fingers.

Save most of the squash flesh and mix in some raw rice
or millet — plus some paprika. Put this mixture
in the bottom of the baking pan.

Cut the top — or the bottom actually — of each patty-pan off with a sharp knife and then scoop out the seeds and part of the flesh of the vegetable, without piercing the skin. I've discovered that it's easier to cut out the bottom, and not the stem side, without making a hole in the squash. Chop the squash flesh and seeds coarsely and set it aside. You'll use some of it in the stuffing, and some will go into the bottom of the baking dish, along with some rice, as a bed for the squash to sit on.

A meat stuffing with onion, garlic, cheese, herbs, and tomato sauce

For the stuffing, chop a big onion and some garlic and cook them in butter or oil until they are softened. Add to the pan some of the chopped squash flesh and the ground beef and lamb (or one or the other, of course — whatever you have or want) and cook that with salt, pepper, other spices, and a little tomato sauce until you have a kind of thick, fairly dry meat sauce — like what you would serve with pasta, but with less liquid.

Patty-pan squashes with a meat stuffing

Let the meat sauce cool and then mix in plenty of chopped fresh herbs — parsley, basil, thyme, rosemary, etc. — and a good amount of grated cheese. Fill the patty-pans with this mixture. Add a little of the meat sauce to the extra squash flesh and mix in a good handful of raw rice (I used millet instead). Stir that together and put a layer of it in the baking dish you plan to cook the squash "flying saucers" in.

A stuffed patty-pan squash, ready for the oven

Put the stuffed squashes in the pan and pour in just enough water to cover the rice in the bottom of the pan. As it all cooks in a medium oven for 20 to 30 minutes, keep adding a little water so that the rice cooks completely without drying out.

Serve the stuffed squashes with a tomato or cheese sauce. They are tasty. Here's a post about another way of stuffing patty-pans, with rice and aromatics — no meat. There are plenty of French recipes for pâtissons farcis on the web — and American recipes too.

The jam jam

Through a combination of favorable circumstances and sheer willpower, I managed to avoid making any cherry jam this summer. But now the plums have come in. Blame the neighbors for my latest jam-making spree. Now I'm in a jam.

When M. brought us three kilograms of golden mirabelle plums, what was I to do? You can't just sit down and eat three kilograms of plums, can you? You can put them in the freezer, I guess, but they'll take up a lot of room that you'd rather use for tomatoes and eggplant. Jam is the only logical thing to do with them.

Thirteen Bonne Maman jars full of home-made plum jam,
plus one nearly full one that went directly into the fridge.

Never mind that there are several quarts of plum jam down in the pantry, from a batch that I made in 2007. There it sits. We don't eat much jam, it turns out. My resolution to make a lot of jelly-roll cakes last winter fell flat. Did I mention that I also have six or eight jars of Asian plum sauce, spiced with hot red pepper and ginger root, both down in the cellar and in the refrigerator? We can't seem to eat that up either.

Here is jam for the taking...

The neighbor's mirabelles, combined with about a kilo of our own reine-claude plums, made beautiful jam. It's thick and red, with big chunks of fruit in it. I'd certainly eat some this morning, except for the fact that we have completely run out of bread. The bread lady doesn't come by until after 10:00, and that'll be too late. We have errands to run.

I'm going to have to build a set of shelves
in the pantry, devoted just to jam.

There were fourteen jars of the new jam. I already gave one away — no, not to a passer-by, but to an old friend who stopped by yesterday afternoon. I'm not sure she wanted it. She mumbled something about making plum jam herself, because her trees are full too. But she took it. That's what counts.

Here's another plum idea: a clafoutis made with little red plums
given to us by other neighbors. It is delicious,
and you don't even have to pit the plums.

Who's next? Stop by when you can and get yours.

Lunch at Le Mange-Grenouille

Walt told me yesterday that he is planning to post today about our lunch Monday at the Mange-Grenouille restaurant in Saint-Aignan. I decided this morning to do the same. It was CHM, who's back in Paris now, who invited us to lunch at Saint-Aignan's best restaurant (in the opinion of many). It's located near the bridge, on the main street that leads up into the old town.

The patio at the Mange-Grenouille restaurant in Saint-Aignan

It was a sunny to partly cloudy day, and the weather was warm. We hadn't reserved a table, and we weren't sure whether we'd be seated inside the restaurant or out on the patio. I had tried to call for a reservation the night before, but the restaurant is closed on Sunday nights, I found out, and there's nothing on the answering machine recording about reserving by leaving a message. So we took our chances.

The 14€ lunch menu is written on a little blackboard
that the waitress or waiter brings to your table.

When we arrived, the woman who greeted us said at first that all the outdoor tables were reserved, but then she looked at her log and said, oh, there's been a cancellation. You can have one of the two front tables outside — you choose. That was nice.

My faux-filet in a pepper-cream sauce was served rare
and was delicious.

Walt has pictures of most of the food, so I'll just post one of my steak, along with the wine bottle and the after-lunch coffee. The steak was a faux-filet, sauce au poivre et à la crème — a strip steak in a pepper-cream sauce. CHM had a skate wing in a shellfish-reduction sauce (aile de raie, fumet de crustacés). I didn't get a decent picture of CHM's plate.

We chose a wine from the village of Saint-Romain-sur-Cher,
just up the road from Saint-Aignan. It was a 2008
Pinot Noir from the Domain de la Renne.

The restaurant serves only a set menu at lunchtime; there's nothing offered à la carte. But for your 14 euros, there's a lot of choice — two starter choices, and three main courses. Then either dessert or a cheese plate. We had a bottle of local Pinot Noir (15 euros) and then coffee — espresso of course. The service was friendly and efficient, and all the food was really good.

And we all had coffee to finish off the nice lunch.

Talking with CHM afterward, we decided that the name of the restaurant, Le Mange-Grenouille, must be a franglais invention. Mange-grenouille is not a set expression — at least not in French French. There is a hotel/restaurant in Québec called L'Auberge du Mange-Grenouille, and information on its web site leads us to believe the expression is a literal translation of the Canadian term "frog-eater" — a term of derision English-speaking Canadians used to use to describe their French-speaking compatriots.

There were no frogs' legs offered on the lunch menu on Monday. Thanks to CHM for a fine dining experience.

Confiture de mirabelles

Day before yesterday, our neighbor rang the front bell. She was bringing us a big basketful of mirabelle plums from one of the trees in her yard. She was almost apologetic about giving them to us. «Dans certaines les oiseaux ont fait un trou, » she said, « et dans beaucoup d'autres tu vas trouver un petit ver. » — "Birds have pecked holes in some of them, and inside a lot of them you'll find a little worm." Or an insect larva of some kind, I'd say.

The plums are organic, in other words.

Plums pitted and macerating in sugar

Yesterday morning, CHM and I sat at the work table in the kitchen for a couple of hours and trimmed an pitted all the plums. Mirabelles are little golden yellow plums, with just a tinge of red on them when they are getting very ripe. There indeed were holes in a lot of them (birds or wasps) and worms in a lot of them too (wasp larvae, I think).

They look good enough to eat, don't they?

We trimmed and cleaned them all up with great care, and we ended up with 2.8 kg of usable fruit — just over 6 lbs. I added some greengage plums (reines-claudes) from our own trees to bring the quantity up to about 4 kg, and then I poured 2.5 kg of sugar over them and stirred them around. They are macerating in that sugar, which has now liquefied, and I'll make jam out of them this afternoon.

Plums are my favorite fruit for confiture. Cherries are a close second.

Luynes looms over the valley

Last Friday CHM and I drove over to the west side of Tours, a good hour from Saint-Aignan, to see some sights over that way. I also planned a stop in Bourgueil to see Amy and Laurent for a minute, and to buy some good red and rosé wine in their village.

The first stop CHM and I made was in the little town of Luynes, just outside Tours on the north (or right) bank of the Loire. There's a château in Luynes that dates back to medieval times, and it sits on a high rock bluff above the town, with views out over the Loire river valley. Luynes is not nearly as well known as nearby castles like Langeais, Villandry, Ussé, and Azay-le-Rideau.

The château at Luynes sits high above the rooftops of the town.

Being less well known is definitely an advantage where tourists like CHM and I are concerned. We had the place to ourselves, basically. In contrast, we made a stop later in the day in front of the château d'Ussé, on the other bank of the Loire, and it was a zoo. Hundreds of cars were parked in a lot across the street, and crowds of people were trudging toward the entry to the so-called "Sleeping Beauty" castle with children in tow. It was hot and dusty, and the kids were cranky. It felt like Disneyland on a bad day.

The main place in the town of Luynes

Luynes, however, was quiet and peaceful. On the 11 o'clock guided tour, there were exactly two paying customers — not me and CHM, because we are not big on guided tours. We just walked around the park and the interior courtyard of the castle complex, leaving the tour of the interiors for another day. I'm sure Luynes is a place I will go back to, and probably soon.

The old château-fort is just slightly forbidding.

The defensive walls and ramparts of the château de Luynes date back as far as the 1100s. The place is pretty forbidding, seen from above and behind. Changes and new buildings over the centuries added windows and gardens, with magnificent views, making the place a pleasant place to live. Only three families have owned and lived in the château de Luynes in its 900-year history.

There are great views out over the town and the river valley.

When we arrived, a gardener out in the park was having a conversation with a youngish, pregnant woman about his work. The woman had two small children with her. She was wearing a dress, but was definitely not dressed up, made up, or fancily coiffed. She could have been anybody on the street of any little town in the Loire Valley.

Inside the walls, there's a comfortable-looking residence.

I couldn't hear much of what this young woman and the gardener were saying to each other. But at one point, I heard the gardener say something like, "Well, if that is what Monsieur le Duc wants me to do, then I'll do it right away." A few minutes later, I saw a big black Land Rover SUV pulling out of the château courtyard. I couldn't see who was driving it, but I wondered if it was the duke. And I wondered whether the pregnant woman was the Duke de Luynes' daughter or his wife.

Day off

Taking the day off today. We had friends over last night and stayed up late, sitting outside under the big-top, eating finger foods, and drinking rosé wine. I admit to being slightly hung over. But it was a lot of fun, and it's important to take full advantage of these warm summer evenings. The sun goes down earlier and earlier these days, and the mornings are kind of chilly.

An Evian ad on a bus stop in Tours. It says
"Live Young" — good advice.

I'm making a fricassée today, using a pintade (guinea hen) from the market, along with some dried mushrooms, onions, garlic, herbs, and cream. Should be good, but I already need to get busy if we are going to have lunch at a decent hour. We're also going to make some frites using those good King Edward potatoes from the garden.