Rural Life

Luscious leeks

Since we moved to France, I haven't had too much luck growing onions and onion related plants - garlic, shallots, leeks, chives, spring onions.  However last year in August at the la Fleche market, some gentlemen of a certain age (as we say here) were selling bundles of young leek plants that looked so good I could not resist.  I did also have some space in one bed where the party lettuces had been removed and I couldn't think what else to do.

They stood all winter and in the very cold snaps seemed to freeze solid and looked very sorry for themselves when they thawed out, so I was pretty well resigned to another waste of time, space and money.  However as things warmed up, they have put on bulk and started to look normal, so now we are trying to eat them all before they run to flower.

Because it is getting warmer, they are thinking about flowering and they have suffered a bit, some bits can be a bit stringy, but long slow cooking seems to get round that, and the three that went in the veal parcel casserole last night cooked gently for about 2 hours and just melted in the mouth.  I think we have another dozen to eat, and then that is over for the next 9 to 10 months.  The trick will be to spot those nice chaps at the market again in August!!

 

Nettle Soup

Well we are past the equinox and finally days are longer than nights and the sun is starting to have some real power in it, so Spring is definitely here.  While it brings good things (blossom, swallows and swifts, butterflies, longer days), it does mean that the weeds start to wake up as well, and I will soon lose part of the garden to goose grass if previous years are anything to go by.

I have wrought revenge on one weed (do it to them before they do it to you?) by eating it, and jolly good it was too!  I have tried making nettle soup before, but have found it comes out watery and rather uninspiring unless you are on a very serious diet or completely skint, but this time I ignored the advice of local cooks and did my own recipe and jolly good it was too.  So in the interests of helping people keep down but still maintain their nettle stocks (spraying is not the way forward as nettles are home to many nice butterflies when they are in egg and caterpillar form), I share my nettle soup with the world - or those bits that read blogs anyway.

Ingredients

• 1 or two medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
• The green bits of a leek or two you were going to throw away, but are still too good for the compost heap - at least a good heaped tablespoon
• 10 or 12 sorrel leaves, roughly de-ribbed (just the central rib - one set of strings too many otherwise)
• a full salad spinner bowl of nettle tops - the last 4 to 6 leaves
• stock - I used a chicken stock cube and the cooking water from the best bits of the leeks I cooked for another dish (leeks wrapped in best ham and baked in a goat's cheese sauce with crunch topping - yum)
• seasoning to taste

Method:

1. Put the potato cubes and the leek bits in a big saucepan with a knob of butter and a spoon of olive oil and heat gently to get them a bit cooked and coated with the fats so they don't stick to the pan
2. Gradually add handfuls of sorrel leaves and nettle tops and move them around the pan so they wilt in the oil - the sorrel will go a bit muddy coloured but the nettles will go a nice rich dark green
3. Add sufficient stock to only just cover the greens - add too much and you end up with washing up water in my opinion - and simmer until the potatoes are done
4. Whizz to get a nice smooth consistency and season to taste
5. To serve, pour in a bowl and add a swirl of cream - I had got to the end of the pot so I did Jackson Pollock cream which isn't so pretty - and serve with garlic croutons and crusty bread

It may turn your pee green but that wears off, just make sure you don't include too much other garden produce with your nettles (bugs, grass, other weeds, butterfly eggs) so wash your nettle tops carefully while wearing rubber gloves - for obvious reasons.

Here is our lunch today!

 

Restaurant Review: le Moulinet, Jarze

After a long break, we are back trying out the local restaurants and comparing the menus ouvrier again, and today it was the turn of le Moulinet at Jarze.  This is a definate truckers' stop on the main non-motorway route from Tours to Angers a little further on towards Angers from Bauge.

 
The menu here is 11 euros, wine and coffee included.  You enter via the bar and then are either directed to the right (macho workers) or to the left (posh restaurant).  Either way, there is a buffet of starters (we thought the chorizo had bite, the rillettes were good and the herring salad particularly fine, the home made mayonnaise was also very tasty) with bread, before you get to the matter of the main courses.  Today there was a choice of three - kidneys in a red wine sauce, chicken leg stuffed with wild mushrooms and roast pork.  There was also a choice of side dish - home made mash, a gratin of courgettes and tomatoes or garden vegetables.  John had the kidneys with the gratin and said it was good, I had the chicken and mash and it was very tasty indeed but rather rich.  The house red to wash it down was very nice indeed.  Cheese was brought round and served (no chance to try everything), and the Morbier was particularly pleasing.  Puddings were a little more adventurous than normal - coconut tart and creme brulee mousse.  The coffee was very strong.

The ambience is very good and there is ample parking.  We have been told it can get full between 12 and 1pm, but we had no issues getting a table, but it is half term in some parts of France.  Well done, le Moulinet.

Another advantage of lunch there, was that one of the routes home goes past the One Acre Wood, which meant that we had a very good excuse to stop off for a walk and to see how everything was doing.  The hazelnut catkins are nearly over, but the snowdrops are still out, and the cyclamen leaves are still visible and pretty, while the primroses are starting to push through.  The newt pond has a bit of water in it - there needs to be more to give the newts a chance to spawn, hatch, develop and move on, this is not enough!

 

However we did break up a union meeting of the local buzzard group, and they lifted off and soared on up, but if you look very closely, you can see three of the four that we startled in this photo.

 

Finally, as we headed back to the car, we spotted evidence of a mole on the move in one of the mole runs I had jumped up and down on, as we entered the wood.  I blame the moles for a lack of cepe mushrooms, hence the need to jump up and down on their runs.  We tried to get face to face with him to explain the error of his ways, but he wasn't having any of it!

 

A fine selection of mushrooms

First off - DO NOT USE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING PHOTOS TO IDENTIFY MUSHROOMS THAT YOU FIND - ask someone who knows, however we thought the following tale of poverty food might amuse.

This year the finances have been a bit up and down (change of government purdah in the UK among my clients, swingeing social charges for John in this country), so we have tried to make the most of the natural food around us and the bounty in the areas that we look after.  It was a good year for plums so we are distilling (a story for another day when I know how legal that is).  It was a good year for quince so we jellied a load, we made juice with a load, we sold a load, and we gave away loads as well.  Round here, sharing surplus produce is an accepted thing and when you give away one load of things, you sometimes find you get given other things (we are almost back to the plums here - but for another day).

We have one couple we are friends with who are not afraid of hard work and know the best ways to make quince juice and quince paste, so when we had a spare 20 kilos starting to turn in the house, we thought of them.  We waited until we thought they were out then dropped off the vast bags of quince at their back door and ran away.  Somehow they knew it was us - the quantity of fruit may have been a give away - so next time Reynald went mushrooming (he is a formidable forager), he had us in mind.

He turned up with a big basket with four types of mushroom.  I didn't photograph one variety - partly because I forgot and partly because when you just look at them, they are similar to toxic varieties, but they were very tasty fried in butter and served on toast.  The other three varieties were coutrolle or parasol mushrooms, morille de sapin or cauliflower mushroom (rare in the UK, don't pick) and a big bag of field mushrooms.  See below:

 

 

 

Our neighbour, feckless Joel, was not to be outdone, and turned up later that day with a bag containing a dozen more parasol mushrooms and a pound of baby puffballs, which were very common this year.  The puffballs and the melange are shown below:

 

 

It took four days of intensive mushroom eating to deal with all of that, and we felt that a week or two off mushrooms might be the thing, however just 10 days later, Reynald was back as he was in the doghouse with his good lady wife.  He had been to his secret place and had hit a motherload of cepes (Pennybuns), and picked 57 before he remembered he had to collect the wife from work.  He was a bit disappointed when he proudly showed off his booty, only to be smacked round the head as it wasn't him who was going to have to prepare all of this, and Yvette had had a hard day at work already.  It worked to my advantage as he was sent round with a big bag, and I had time to eat a load, freeze a load, make soup, and still have enough to take a couple to my Mum's as well.  Aren't they lovely?

 

But what about the One Acre Wood?  About four years ago, we got raided by a bunch of travellers who cleaned out all the edible mushrooms from our wood to sell them at the local market, and did so in such an irresponsible manner that they killed the mycelium that used to produce fine cepes and pied de mouton.  The pied de mouton are starting to come back and there were a few puffballs and a parasol mushroom this year, but nothing more.  So, remember, if you do go mushrooming, there are a few rules:

• make sure you are not on private property - not all private property is clearly marked
• only take what you can eat - it is not legal to pick to sell unless you are licenced
• do not damage the mycelium
• if in doubt, leave alone, as Nature is having a tough enough time at the moment
• if in doubt, don't eat - ask someone who really knows, and ideally share with them to make sure they are really confident about what they are saying

Restaurant Review: Le Commerce in Bauge

For those of you who know Bauge and who do lunches, you have probably been to le Commerce and either enjoyed a four course worker's lunch or pushed the boat out and had the five course gastronomic menu at about 13 euros including wine.  Well, those days are gone as Le Commerce has changed hands.  It has been redecorated inside and out, and now has a fresh grey and white theme - the dodgy tourquoise effect in the back room has gone and the tables are no longer in horizontal rows seemingly barring any access to bar, loo or back room.

The new owners are friendly and understanding about English foibles, and if you look relaxed and like you are having fun, they won't rush you through your food or try to chuck you out dot on 2pm.  I think the lunchtime menu has gone up and is now 10,80 euros including wine or cider, but not including coffee, and the five course menu has gone.  Now there is just one menu and one choice of main (although I think if you have real problems with it, you might get a substitute), but the plat for each day of the week is listed on a blackboard, so you know what you might get later in the week.

So, what is the food like?  The buffet of starters trolley is a bit smaller than some, but there were about 12 different things.  There was a particularly nice cold leek salad, the mushroom a la creme salad was clearly home made and very good, nice salami, very good herring and potato salad, plus hard boiled eggs, grated carrot, sardines and pots of rillettes.  The plates were quite small, but knowing my ability to pile one high, I think that was good as it meant I had not over-eaten and could face my main course properly.  Yesterday, the main was a quarter guinea fowl with a forestiere sauce (wild mushroom and cream) and very nicely done little fried potatoes.  If I was being picky I would say that the potatoes might have been slightly over salted - certainly check before you make with the salt shaker!

If you wanted cheese, you got a small plate with a piece of camembert and a nice, if mild, other cheese that I couldn't identify.  There was an extensive choice of simple puddings - the one issue with eating slowly was that the workers had got all the chocolate mousse before I got there!  I had a nice fromage blanc, John had an ile flottant that he didn't quibble about, and the chocolate tart looked good.  Coffee was extra, but a proper expresso hit.  The red wine was very good as well.

When it came to paying, they were able to cope with our table having 3 people wanting different bills (you go to the bar to pay), and the fact that not all of us had the full menu.  We weren't shoved out, and felt very welcome.  John and I will certainly be going back.

Chums in the village, and not the British ones either, had said we should try it as it was very good.  Some have had venison, others said the steaks were good, and none quibbled on prices.  Overall, while we were sorry when the previous owners retired, the new owners have taken up the baton and the Commerce remains a very reliable lunch stop in Bauge.  It still doesn't open in the evenings or on Sundays.

Next week I hope to review the new, high class restaurant in Bauge to see what their rather pricier lunch is like - watch this space!

 

Peeling sweet chestnuts - illustrated stage by stage

At this time of year, the search hits for my blog change from those seeking advice on broody chickens to those seeking advice on peeling sweet chestnuts.  While my previous post on this was fine, when I was doing a recent pile of chestnuts, I thought a better illustrated post might be in order.

I have found that boiling up 4 or 5 chestnuts at a time and replacing them as I go gives a good rhythm to the process and doesn't let the nuts get too mushy, however don't use a posh pan as the tanin that comes out of the membrane is phenomenal.

So first get your chestnuts.

 

Then cut off the bottom of the nut - cut through the membrane so the water can get under it and make your life easier.

 

Then cut off the top of the nut - that irritating little tuft of prickles you can see on the cut off bit.

 

Then take off the rest of the hard outer casing - this is easy enough to do with the aid of a knife.

 

Once you have a few prepared in this way, get them into the boiling water - you don't have to do this next stage immediately if you cover the bowl of nuts with cling film, but you only have another 24 hours to do the rest.

 
Once boiled for around 4 minutes, fish them out and they look a bit like this.  You can see the water on the plate is highly coloured - this maroon tainted water is the stickiest, nastiest stuff around and will stain a stainless steel sink!  Anyway, now to peel off the membrane.

 
Doesn't that look easy, peeling away the membrane?  Isn't that satisfying?  Here is another shot.

 

Do make sure you get the bits out of the main crevices at least - that dark line had to come off or it would have made anything bitter.

 
And here are the finished product, ready for eating as they are or for whatever recipies you have in mind, or you can pop them in a bag and freeze them like this for future use.  You will see that not all are as clean of membrane as you would like.  Nature, in her infinite variety, sometimes makes these a right pain to peel!  I hope this helps you to peel yours more easily.

Finally, a word of caution, when you are doing all this, keep an eye out for small holes and critters - normally in the biggest, fattest and juiciest of nuts!

 

From fruit to juice

I am getting very behind with things, but did download a fascinating series of photos from the big camera, which need to be shared.  During September - season of mellow fruitfulness - we and John's clients were inundated with fruit of all sorts.  We are fortunate to have a juicing press in the area however, which makes dealing with this sort of excess much easier.

Between 3 families, we managed to gather together about 250 kilos of grapes.  Actually if John and I hadn't run out of buckets, patience and flexible back muscles, we could have raised that to 350 kilos, but there we go.  This is what 250 kilos of grapes looks like!

 

Once it is our turn at the press, the grapes get fed into a special machine that whacks them off the tresses - you have to be tall to feed the grapes in.

 

From there, the stalky bits get chucked into one bucket, while the grapes go into the press and the juice comes out into a nice plastic tank.

 

John was daring and got a picture of the inner workings of the press.

 

From the plastic tank, the juice is sucked through a pipe in the wall to the steriliser before being pumped back out into the bottling machine.

 

The juice is bottled at about 90 degrees C, and closed immediately, and the bottles laid on their side so a slight vacuum is created as the juice cools.  Because of this, the juice keeps for 2 years.

Our 250 kilos of grapes produced about 127 bottles of juice, of which our share was 47 bottles - don't they all look pretty?

 
A couple of weeks later, we were part of a consortium doing apple juice.  Despite the best efforts of Dave and Pauline and their tree, we only had 60 kilos of apples, but the consortium as a whole had 550 kilos, producing over 200 bottles of juice.  Our share of that was 31 bottles.  The juices cost about 96 cents a litre, including processing and bottles, and we all know they are free from pesticides, added sugar, and added water.  As well as tasting good, we feel smug that we have made the best use of this year's bumper harvest.

Restaurant Review: Hotel du Chateau, Bauge

Life has been a bit hectic recently with John's birthday party organisation, so it was a wonderful surprise and very welcome to be taken out to dinner by our friends Angela and Ian the night before the big event.  We went to the Hotel du Chateau in Bauge as it was close, open and not full up.

I include the link above so you can see for yourselves what you get.  The dining room is light and airy with a few weapons of painful destruction around the walls.  There are a number of menus, but we went for the Menu du Chateau at 18,60 Euros a head.

We chose different starters.  The chaps had red mullet fillets on a sort of pizza style base, which was nicely balanced.  I had the goat cheese starter which turned out to be a sort of mousse and was very nice indeed with a well dressed salad to complement it.  Angela had the rabbit terrine which was also good and liberally spliced with pistachio nuts to make an interesting change.

We also managed to cover all the main courses on the menu!  I had the salmon escalope, which in true French fashion was served with beurre blanc sauce and rice.  If I am being ultra picky, I would have to say that the edges of the escalope were a little crunchy - no doubt from sitting under a heat lamp until the other dishes were ready, but the flavours were lovely.  Angela had the duck filet with Layon sauce - a very nicely judged dish, while the chaps had beef kebabs with a shallot sauce.  The meat was meltingly tender and they understood the "a point" cooking instruction.

On the pudding front, the panacotta was very good and well judged with the acidity of the fruit.  My tea mousse was nice but didn't go with the lime sorbet, so I ate one after the other, and both were fab.  The chocolate pudding was pronounced to be a suitable chocolate hit.  We had a nice pichet of local rose wine and a big jug of tap water that was refilled when down to a quarter.  Service was fine, and all in all it was a nice, convivial experience, with good food, nicely cooked - not haute cuisine with all that entails.

Many thanks to Angela and Ian for treating us.

There will be tales from the Party shortly, but as the Comice will be on us shortly, time is getting rather precious so apologies now for any delays!

Restaurant review: Aux P'tits Oignons, Echimire

It seemed like an awful long time since I did one of these, so John thought we needed to go out and find a nice menu ouvrier so that I would have something to write about.  Today it was one of the places nearest to us, in the next village, but on the main road from Bauge to Angers - Aux P'tits Oignons in Echimire.

As by lunchtime, it was over 28 degrees in the shade, no one was interested in eating out on the terrace - besides despite it being in a village, lorries hurtle by all the time in a most alarming manner.

We have resisted trying here for quite a while on a rather philosophical point - you can see the blackboard by the road, and they write the lunch menu on it each day, but so small you can only read it by stopping the car and getting out, which defeats the point.  However, today we succumbed and we are glad we did.

This is one of the cheaper menus ouvrier (9.50 Euros including wine or cider, coffee extra), taking advantage of the VAT reduction.  You can get a meal if you turn up until about 1:30pm, and there are a lot of smallish tables so you don't have to share.  When you turn up and have found a table, you are given a bowl of bread and can go to the buffet of starters.  There was perhaps not enough raw salads (only radishes - tomatoes and slices of cucumber might have been nice), but otherwise a very fine selection and the rillauds and pate were very tasty.  

For main there was a choice of four main dishes, and most of them came with a choice of salad, chips, haricot beans, broccoli or salsify.  The mains were steak, andouillette (if you know what it is, you will know if you like it or not, but most English loathe it), fish in sauce and pasta gratin with bolognaise sauce.  We had the fish and the pasta and both were good, plain, tasty home cooking and generous portions.  The steaks looked good.

The cheese course was a plate left at the table with a selection of seven well kept cheeses, while pudding could be selected from the chill cupboard and there were about eight different things.  We went for creme brulee, which was much richer and creamier than usual and well dosed with vanilla.

Overall, we thought it was excellent value, the rose wine was perfectly pleasant, and while not haute cuisine, it was designed to do what was needed - feed a worker so that he has the energy for an afternoon's hard graft, and be an enjoyable experience so that he will go back again.  Don't make the mistake of expecting fine and fiddly food at one of these lunchtime stops.  In general they can also spot a tourist from a worker, so John and I generally get moved through courses quickly (we look like workers, even if we speak funny), whereas obvious holiday makers seem to go at a more leisurely pace.

Aux P'tits Oignons is also a hotel with a small number of rooms (no idea of the quality or price of these) and does do evening food and caters for parties there or at your own venue.  We have been there (a couple of years ago now) for a cous cous evening where the pudding was a Baked Alaska - we thought that a bit expensive, but things might have changed now.

 

Fruit and eggs

Today is a great day - after weeks of no eggs of our own, indeed having to buy eggs - I found an egg in the hen house.  You can see it in the picture below (left), and I am pretty sure that either Salt or Pepper is responsible as it is a bit of an odd shape, as would be the case of a first offering.  It takes a few days to get the shape just right and even then, something can happen and affect it.  Looking at it (the one on the left) against the market bought egg, I suspect it was actually Salt who produced it, as she is a hybrid Light Sussex like White was and they seem to produce quite light coloured eggs.  I thought Pepper was nearly ready to lay, as I was putting her back in the run after one of her escapes on Saturday and instead of running away, she squatted and "assumed the position".  Billy next door would have been delighted I'm sure!  Anyway, they are both getting near maturity.

The weekend has been spent picking blackcurrants and making jam - 26 pots of it!  What I picked is shown below - about 9 pounds in total.  John went to admire the stripped clean bushes and came back to enquire as to whether someone had given me them as I didn't seem to have made much impact on the bushes.  I must pick more shortly but think I will try making cordial this time - we still have two litres of cassis we made in Worcester, so I don't think I want to go down that route, although it is very easy to do.

The final picture is pretty shonky, but gives you an idea of what I am keeping an eye on each day at least once a day!  I love fresh figs and while one of John's clients has a fabulous tree, clients come and go and cannot be relied on to supply our needs in the long term.  About 4 years ago I bought a fig tree at the local garden centre and last year in September it thought about having its first fig, and then changed its mind.  In March it had another go, and then got fed up of that too.  Those little nodules at the base of two of the leaf stalks could be more figs trying to come through.  There are loads more of them too.  If only the weather would warm up, the tree might start to get a move on and put me out of my misery of not knowing!  I'll keep you posted anyway.