Last year the 60 000 tulips planted in the grounds of the Chateau of Cheverny came into bloom about a month before they were expected to, somewhat to the chagrin of the management, who erected temporary signs apologising to anyone who inadvertently mistimed their visit and missed the mass of colour.
Luckily, we had clients who booked for early April. She was an professional artist and he a keen amateur photographer, so they were in luck and delighted.
The photos above are a few of the ones we took on 2 April 2014. The one below is one we took when visiting with clients 10 days later.
Still magnificent, but anyone who arrived over the Easter break, a full fortnight after this, would have been disappointed.
This year the chateau has planted 100 000 bulbs and again, we've managed to visit with clients at just the right moment. The photo above was taken on the warm sunny morning of Friday 10 April 2015.
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A la cuisine hier: Lamb ribs in a lemon, coriander and brown sugar glaze. I bought a lamb forequarter just before Easter and this is another of my attempts to make breast of lamb edible. This recipe steams the ribs for an hour and a half before glazing and grilling. The taste and texture is terrific, but it's still fairly greasy. Simon loved it and ate all of his plus most of mine.
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Au jardin hier: Simon has done up our window boxes for this year. We are having double red pelargoniums and mixed pansies.
6 comments:
Stonkin'!.....Absolutely stonkin'!!
Great banks of colour...
Susan... to get rid of a lot of lamb grease...
slow cook in water that is deeper than the meat....
with, or without seasoning veg....
for about an hour to hour'n'a'half...
the day before...
allow to cool and put in the 'fridge...
next morning, carefully lift off the fat and discard....
or, if you don't mind the strength of the flavour, put aside for roasties...
it has a higher burning point than lard...
and we can't get good dripping over here.
My Dad hated lamb fat and the above was Mum's way of getting rid of most of it...
if it was a joint, she used to use dripping or lard to baste.
Hope that helps....
The new Frits, by the way, are in a very long narrow field...
there must be over one hundred in total.
That method of cooking the lamb would work well for this recipe, so I might try it next year if I remember. The recipe suggests steaming and refrigerating overnight, but I didn't read it properly, so the fat didn't have time to harden before I grilled the ribs. It would have worked better if I'd stuck to the recipe properly.
Beautiful tulips, and nice photos of them too.
Simon took the photos, and I agree, they are lovely.
How gorgeous! I'm surprised they came out so early though. We are just getting into full flower mode around here, more than a month later than we sometimes do.
Here it seems like a fairly normal spring. Last year I think it wasn't so much that spring was early, but that Easter was late and people mistimed their visit in terms of the season because they wanted to fit Easter holiday.
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