La Charcuterie

 The Charcuterie in Preuilly-sur-Claise, in the main street.

The charcuterie in Preuilly is well patronised and they have a good range of products. Most are made in house, some bought in. French charcuteries focus mainly on value added pork products -- often cured, but sometimes simply cooked and ready to eat. They also do salads and prepared dishes. This is because many of them, like the one in Preuilly, are also traiteurs (caterers).

In the window there is always an array of tempting prepared dishes. On this day there was anchovy pizza, quiche Lorraine, feuilleté jambon (ham in flaky pastry), feuilleté fromage chèvre frais (fresh goats cheese in flaky pastry), rillons (slow cooked cubes of pork), fillet of sole with Dieppe style sauce, paupiette de dinde aux champignons (turkey parcels with mushrooms), tongue in some sort of sauce, coquilles st jacques (a classic scallop dish), hachis parmentier (cottage pie), hard boiled eggs in aspic, salmon and prawns in aspic and sausages and beans, all made in house.

I shop here about once a fortnight, buying all sorts of cured meat, terrines and patés, salads and occasionally something like a savoury pastry or soused herrings.

And in this cabinet we have baked custard, local goats cheeses (Pouligny St Pierre, Ste Maure de Touraine and Couronne Lochoise), wild boar paté with wild girolle mushrooms, grattons charentais (like rillettes, a type of pulled pork paste), persillé (parsley brawn -- the name means 'parsleyed', and also 'marbled'), rillettes de porc, plain sausages, brawn, two sorts of liver paté and pork fillet.

The place is owned and run by Régis Mas and his wife. In the usual way of these things, he works out the back in the kitchen and she runs the front of house. They live over the shop.

Bayonne ham is the most prestigious of French dry cured hams, and Vendéen comes a good second. Four wafer thin slices of ham to go with lunch will cost less than €2.