Rural Life

My LaCanche Cooker - at last!

Before Christmas I wrote a blog about the trials and tribulations of getting my lovely new cooker in for Christmas.

Actually, while it was in the room for Christmas, it wasn't connected to the gas so I couldn't use it.  Nor could I use it for New Year - still no gas.  All through January and February I couldn't use it other than to stack things on as there was still no gas.  This was all due to the slowest and least efficient donor of Certificates of Conformity somewhere in Briollay, whose list of why we didn't have the certificate went through - well there was Christmas, New Year, snow, 'flu, a computer virus, half term and not answering his telephone.  Finally however it was delivered, and with 2 weeks delay, a meter was delivered and connected up and now I am cooking with gas (yes, I am indeed a former British Gas employee) and on my lovely new cooker.

The sales blah from the company says that it is the piano of the virtuoso cook, or some other flowery phrase.  All I know is that I have cooked 5 meals on it now and every one has worked perfectly and been delicious, from a simple pasta sauce and spaghetti, through scrambled eggs to last night's stir fried satay chicken.

If I weren't so full of cold, I would be in 7th heaven, but right now in any case my world is a better place - and soon our ground floor room will be back to normality.  Here is the wonderous beast in all its glory.

New Cooker for Christmas

No - not a reference to my Christmas present from my beloved - more a howl of pain for trying to get stuff organised so that I can use my new cooker at Christmas and not have to eat dinner in the bathroom!

Back in September I ordered my lovely new cooker - a LaCanche - customised as befits a major element of our main room decor to our taste, so brushed steel knobs, brushed steel central heat plate and British Racing Green enamel bodywork.  It would take some time to be made and delivered to the kitchen suppliers, but not a problem apart from the plummeting Euro exchange rate.

As ours is a totally new gas installation (the year has been blighted by perpetual road works and similar), we have to get pipework installed and and a certificate of conformity before we can have gas and a meter.  The gas fitter is very busy but will fit us in on Monday, having been booked in September.

Once I have the certificate of conformity, Gaz de France will come round and put in my meter and put gas into the pipe - they have just asked if I can wait until the 30th December for that, as I am not really a priority.

The gas cooker arrives on Monday or Tuesday - it is big.  It will go where my current crockery and ingredients shelves go.  Those shelves will move on a temporary basis to where the old cooker (a bit of a beast like a small range but with a gas bottle hidden away in it) currently sits, once the new cooker is linked up with the gas and is working.  As the final stage, the old cooker will go into a cellar until we can clean it up to sell it or think of another use for it.  Think of one of those children's puzzles with the 15 squares to move round to get the numbers in the right order - that is how our house works, and finding the space to move a block into to move others around is a nightmare.

So if I waited until the 30th to get linked up, all the crockery and ingredients would be spread over the living room and at risk of being broken or eaten by cats, while I have a huge and gorgeous cooker that can't be used and I try to produce Christmas dinner in no space at all on the old cooker.  As I generally do goose with 7 vegetables as the main event, life starts to get difficult.  Like I say, the bathroom could become the dining room.

The lovely lady from Gaz de France did try the line of there are little old ladies without any heating out there who are a priority over me, and I respect her for it (although I suspect those little old ladies have other sources of heat - no French peasant does cold).  But not enough not to be a bit insistent on having my meter next week.  Of course it could all go horribly wrong and I could be begging not to have the meter put in until the 30th, but I hope not.

Imagine below in British Racing Green - you can see why it is urgent!

Making the most of fruit

It is undeniable that Autumn is now with us in the Northern Hemisphere, and it is a race against time to gather in as much of the fruit, vegetables and nuts as we can before the first frosts damage them.  I will add the proud photo of the four best pumpkins lined up in the sun to ripen once it is off the camera, as it is hugely satisfying.  Last year's feral pumpkin was late and never ripened properly so didn't reach the rich and satisfying red colour that we have this year.

The chestnuts are starting to fall and we have had our first outdoor fire with chestnuts roasting, and lovely they are too.  We must also go scrumping and collecting our own so that we have enough for savoury crumbles, chocolate cake and soups.

The walnuts are also starting to fall - it looks like it will be a mixed year this year.  Some trees are loaded, others have virtually nothing.  However the key thing is to get them gathered over the next couple of weeks and then let them dry slowly in nets in the garage, so they can be enjoyed over the coming months.

Grapes are ripening - they have taken advantage of the very sunny September here to add sugars and develop a sweet flavour.  We have picked a good 40 kilos and using the potato masher and a flat bottomed bowl, plus a large piece of kitchen muslin, we have managed to crush them and make a very palatable grape juice - strong, smooth and rich.  It lasts up to about 10 days in the fridge, although by the end it is starting to feel a bit sparkly on the tongue, showing that the first fermentation process has started.  Others are better at making wine than us.

Finally, we were introduced today to the joys of getting your fruit crushed and juiced.  Lydie and Dominique Edin at Clefs have a huge fruit press, pasteurising system and bottling kit.  You can take along 100 kilos of fruit (ideally apples) or more and they will run it through their press, pasteurise it (unless you want to keep some unpasteurised for cider making) and bottle it for you for a very reasonable price per produced litre of juice.  We went along with friends who were old hands at the pressing game, and had ordered a slot on the press, and came home with 50 litres of bottled juice, still hot from the pasteurising process.  The juice keeps for up to 2 years, but if it is as good as it looks, I doubt it will last much beyond May!!

As I eyed up the juice, jams, pumpkins, chutneys and nets, I felt that we might be nearly ready for winter.  If only we could just get the fire wood issue sorted out...

Things to do with giant pumpkins

In the autumn I was worried about my giant feral pumpkin - see here.  On Saturday I strolled up to the greenhouse to check on it and the new locks for the greenhouse door.  The latter work a treat.  The former was starting to show signs of needing to be eaten.

Once I got it into the house, the monster had to be weighed.  It came in at 36 pounds or just over 16 kilos for the metric among us.  I have to point out that it must have lost some of the weight it had when harvested, as I could carry it this time, which I couldn't before.

We cut it open and tackled the bits that on the surface looked like they were going off.  This was very much spot damage and doesn't go more than 1 cm into the flesh, which is good news I think when you remember that I have 36 pounds of the stuff.

In my earlier post, I wondered if it would be OK to eat, as it ripened so late and the skin never got to the lovely rich red colour I usually associate with Vif d'Etampes pumpkins.  So far we have had a soup, which was a little insipid if I am honest, but was also a lot thinner than I usually make soups.  We also had pumpkin puree done with lots of garlic and butter and baked - the first time for one hour, the second time for two hours.  The second was better as more of the water had been driven off (36 lbs of pumpkin of which I estimate 25lbs of water).  We also had it in a savoury rice where it added colour and a certain sweetness.

More recipes to follow as we work our way through it all - if you have any ideas, please add a comment.  Here is the pumpkin again in all its glory!

Mutant Pumpkin

It has got cold here - really cold.  At least we are in the village, so it doesn't get quite as cold as out on the farms, but even so we have had two nights of frost already and "they" are predicting a frost of minus 4 degrees Centigrade tonight.

As an aside, this is in sharp contrast to this time last year, when my diary notes temperatures of 18 degrees Centigrade during the day, the ability to sit outside for lunch, and the fact that we drove off to Spain for a few days without jackets.  Currently Spain is under threat of snow, as is Corsica - climate change or the natural variation?

So the question is, what to do with the monster pumpkin I have grown this year?

The reason it is an issue, is that all the proper plants I had going did not produce any fruits at all.  The monster is on a feral plant that grew up on the edge of the chicken run, germinating in about mid-July.  This fruit did not set until mid-September and to my eye is not yet ripe, but it weighs a lot as I found when I cut it off the now dead plant this morning and moved it to the garden bench to dry off.

Will it be edible and sweet?  Please let me know what you think!!

Mushroom weather

In 2005 and 2006, we had loads of wild mushrooms in our wood.  Some were not edible but interesting, some were not edible and not interesting either (unless you are that way inclined I guess), but the best ones were the 3 or 4 varieties of edible mushrooms.  We had cepes, bolets and pied de moutons a plenty.

The picture above from November 2005 shows a good selection of cepes and bolets, ready to be taken home and eaten with friends.

I have muttered before in these pages that there don't seem to be many mushrooms around, but perhaps today the weather will change that.  Between midnight and 9am this morning we had 16mm of rain and there has been more since then.  Fingers crossed that the season is about to begin!

Walnuts

As I have said before, this is a good year for "free" and not quite so free food.

Here we are in the middle of the walnut season.  In past years, we may have flirted with buying the odd kilo or two from market stall holders, but have always remained faithful to those supplied by our next door neighbour, who gets them from his son's farm at Montivert.  They have always been sweet, tasty and good keepers (at least until we have scoffed the lot), and so we always get a few kilos from Roger.

This year we have had more scope for seeing what other people's nuts are like - not least as they do a bit of damage to the lawn mower, so have to be raked up and bagged before mowing or strimming can commence.  Alan's nuts are small but sweet, Gordon's are prolific and very tasty, Peter's big ones are a bit tart for me still, though his small ones are nice, Jenny's are very good too.  So in this year of exceptionally good nuts, how do Roger's stand up against the competition?

Montivert nuts are still the best!!  It's a pity the local wild boar feel the same and have been scrumping them.

Shaggy Ink-caps

Autumn is a favourite time of year for me for "free" food.  We have done well so far this year with chestnuts (see previous posts), walnuts and hazelnuts, but the mushrooms have been slow.

Last year was a bumper year for wild mushrooms, particularly cepes and bolets of many varieties.  This year we have yet to see any in our wood - we hope it is because the conditions aren't right yet, but thieves cleared the wood 5 times to our knowledge last year, so it could also be a problem with the mycelium.  Cepe development is apparently a mystery even to the experts, so we wait and see.

Today John did find a few Shaggy Ink-caps however, which he brought home for our lunch.  Once picked, these lovely mushrooms have a shelf life of no more than about three quarters of an hour - fortunately he found them quite close to home!  Gently fried in a bit of butter, they made a lovely lunch, and have fired our enthusiasm for seeking out more.

That crumble recipe

I mentioned in an earlier post that I would reveal the secret of my savoury chestnut crumble - here it is!

Take 2 ounces or 50 grammes each of lightly cooked chestnuts, flour, freshly grated Parmesan and salted butter (yes, frightfully unhealthy, but saves adding salt).  Either rub them together if you are a hands on sort of person, or whizz in a food processor with the sharp attachment if you aren't, and there you have it.  Add more salt, pepper or herbs to taste.

It takes about 20 minutes minimum to cook with whatever filling you are using at gas mark 5.  Enjoy!

How to peel sweet chestnuts

This is an excellent year for sweet chestnuts - there are lots around and they are big and plump and luscious.  Even trees that don't normally produce any are dropping a few of these fabulous nuts.  There are so many in our wood that we could only eat them roasted if we set the brazier up every night from now until Christmas, and of course by then, some will have sprouted, some will have gone off, some will have been eaten by mice, so what to do with the surplus?

There are lovely recipes for stuffings and soups, but they all start with "first peel a pound (or other quantity) of chestnuts".  Then they tell you how to do that more easily - slit the top of the nut and boil variously for 5 to 10 minutes, then pop them out of their shells and inner casings.  THIS DOES NOT WORK.

The way to do it is to take off the hard outer shell while the nut is in its raw state, but leave the tannic inner membrane on.  When you have enough, pop them in a saucepan and cover with water and boil for 5 minutes.  At this point the membrane does come off quite easily and you can even get nice whole nuts to do marron glace with.  Chestnut soup is very nice but very very rich!!