Venison Cutlets and Colcannon Cakes

You would think that with all the wild game in the forests here venison would be in plentiful supply, easy to get and frequently eaten. But in fact you rarely see even farmed venison available for sale and if you want to get your hands on some wild game you need to be friendly enough with a hunter that he offers it to you. The hunters all have freezers full of the stuff, but they are not allowed to sell it because it is butchered in the field or at home. So hunters tend to have a repertoire of charcuterie, at least one outbuilding full of freezers chockablock with game, and their friends and dogs sometimes get lucky. So, last winter I was lucky enough to get my hands on some venison cutlets, and this is what I did with them.

Ingredients
Venison
6 venison cutlets
Olive oil
1 tbsp butter
A clove of garlic, crushed
1/2 cup white wine
1 tsp prepared mustard
Salt and pepper (ideally, a peppercorn mix that includes pimento)
Colcannon
1.5 cups mixed celeriac and potato mash*
1/4 of a small cabbage, shredded and steamed
A leek, cleaned, sliced and sweated in butter
An egg, beaten
2 tbsp wholemeal flour
1 tbsp butter (for frying)
Olive oil (for frying)

Method

1. Colcannon -- mix all the ingredients for the colcannon together and form into 4 patties. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
2. Venison -- place the cutlets on a plate in a single layer, season with salt and pepper. Leave them out about 30 minutes to get to room temperature.
3. Melt butter and olive oil in two frying pans over medium heat.
4. Add the colcannon cakes to one and the venison cutlets to the other. Fry for 3 minutes.
5. Turn the colcannon cakes and reduce the heat to low.
6. Turn the cutlets and fry for a further 3 minutes.
7. Remove the cutlets and set aside to keep warm.
8. Deglaze the cutlet pan with the wine, add the garlic and mustard, boil until reduced enough to have thickened slightly into a sauce.
9. Serves 2.

*I make mixed mash in batches for three meals for two people ie 6 servings. Peel half a celeriac and cut into 2 cm dice. Scrub three large potatoes and cut into 2 cm dice. Cook them together until soft then mash with some butter and milk. Freeze  whatever you don't need for this recipe in two batches for future meals. Mash can be reheated in the microwave (from frozen or thawed) by cooking for a couple of minutes, stirring with a fork, and returning to the microwave as necessary. 

As always, I sourced the vegetables for this recipe from my local organic market garden, Le Jardin Verger de la Petite Rabaudière, who sell from the farm on Monday evenings, are at Preuilly market on Thursday mornings, and supply the Maison des Producteurs in Loches (near Noz and SuperU).

Yum

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The Rabbits Invade

A display acknowledging the presence and history of rabbits in the country at the 

National Museum of Australia, Canberra.

Rabbits, which are native to Spain and southern France, may have been delicate creatures that needed cossetting by a warrener to survive in Northern Europe, but once introduced by the British to nice warm Australia, they had no trouble colonising and indeed over running the country. They remain a great menace to farming livelihoods and the natural environment, despite decades of the most extreme control measures being applied.

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The Roman Bridge at Ascain

Simon and I are suckers for anything Roman, so when he read that there was a Roman bridge near where we stayed in the Pyrenees, we obviously had to visit it.

The three arched bridge is in a park in Ascain (Azkaine in Basque), spanning the Nivelle River (Ur Ertsi in Basque). It was built in the 5th century but a flood destroyed the central arch in the 1990s and it was subsequently rebuilt. The bridge is about 40 metres in length and three metres wide.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

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A French Cake Tin

This pressed metal cake tin belongs to one of my neighbours. She thinks she inherited it from her grandmother. I've looked on the internet to see what I can find out about this sort of tin -- where they were made, why the pattern, and so on -- but with very little success. It's well made and good quality.

I came across a single flan tin with an identical pressed pattern, for sale on Ebay. It was brand new old stock and was described as French, from the 1950s.

My former boss in the UK tells me that her mother had a similar tin, which would have dated from the fifties and may well have been a wedding present. She doubts it was French.

My brocante (flea market) loving friends haven't seen anything similar.

And that's it. I can't find out any other clues. 

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

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Christmas at Chenonceau

A bizarre series of events, this one...

Susan and I had made plans with Antoinette and Niall to visit Chenonceau on Christmas Day. A Christmas expedition has become a bit of a tradition in the past 5 years, ever since we visited Chenonceau 5 years ago. As it happened, Antoinette and Niall didn't feel like they had the energy after a big Christmas evening dinner so we rearranged the visit for Saturday. Then on the Friday, Susan and I were stricken by Norovirus (the winter vomiting bug) and all plans were off.

The Christmas tree in the long gallery was themed on birds.

Luckily, we had accepted a very rare winter booking, not something we normally do as the Tractions aren't set up for winter - no heater, no demisting, and you have to keep the windows wound down slightly the whole time. We decided that as the visitor was a friend and neighbour of Susan's uncle in Australia we would accept the tour but hire a comfortable modern car.

A life sized table ornament

This meant that we were able to see the Christmas decorations at Chenonceau, surely the highlight of winter in the Touraine. I have no idea how much time and money is spent decorating Chenonceau at Christmas, but it is certainly well worth it, as the effect is spectacular and even on a midwinter morning there was plenty of people visiting.

The theme in the chapel was owls.

Eeek! A red Christmas tree in a red room.
Not the most sucessful of the decorations.

If you are in the Loire Valley at Christmas remember that some of the chateau are open every day, so Christmas afternoon is a great opportunity to see some of the iconic sights of the Loire Valley without the crowds

Cooking With the Kiné

One of my neighbours is a kiné. That's short for kinésithérapeute or physiotherapist. We have come to a friendly arrangement that involves him giving me the occasional physio session for my knee, in return for me teaching him to bake.

Chopping hazelnuts to top the cakes with.

Our first session of baking was making chocolate cakes. This was a decision based on what he had in the house in terms of ingredients. He kind of sprung it on me,  but the cakes turned out fine using what we had on hand. The black silicone cannelé mould that we used to make cupcake sized cakes was found by him at a recyling centre.

Creaming the butter and sugar.

Sifting the dry ingredients, flour and cocoa, into the batter.

Apparently he's keen to learn how to make short pastry and a layer cake, but they may require a bit more planning.

Hamming it up.

Baking and physiotherapy are conducted in English, as Raphaël has a Masters in English, but lacks people to keep up his language skills with. 

The finished cakes being plated.

Raphaël took some of the cakes to work the next day to share with his colleagues, and gave me some.

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Striking a Chord

In early December we went to the Chateau of Candé to attend an event where the massive Skinner organ that resides there would be played. This is something that only happens a couple of times a year. The organ, along with modern plumbing, is one of the few major alterations undertaken by French American entrepreneur and music lover Charles Bedaux when he acquired the property in 1927 (he had shares in the Skinner organ company) .

The house manager introduces the chateau and the afternoon's activities.

It wasn't really a recital, but more an information session about the organ. We were very impressed with how much the house manager knew, as she freely admitted she was no musician. We got to peer at the organ close up, squish into the control room and listen to various effects it can do. The organist was the musician who normally plays the organ in Tours Cathedral. At half time we were offered afternoon tea, and at the end we got to look around the chateau's other rooms.

The library set up for afternoon tea.

The organ, commissioned from Skinner and installed in 1928, has three keyboards, with the bottom one being capable of playing all of the 'instruments'. This is to simplify the playing so the organist does not necessarily have to know which keys play which instruments. The organ can also be programmed so certain combinations can be played simultaneously and has a selection of 27 instruments and three percussion instruments. The organist needs to play three separate pieces simultaneously ie two hands and feet. Curiously, the organ is positioned so that the organist faces the audience, unlike the usual arrangement, where they would sit with their back to the audience.

The organist from Tours cathedral playing.

It took three men three months to assemble the organ, which is powered by electricity. Like everything in the house it is 'disguised' with carved oak panelling. As organs go, it is medium sized (the one in Notre-Dame de Paris has five keyboards and the biggest ever organ had seven).

The control room.

In theory the Skinner organ company could produce an organ a week, but this is an average based on the total number of Skinner workers and the number of organs produced annually. When the City of Tours took over the chateau it took ten years (2005 to 2015) for the organ restoration to be completed, what with there being long periods when the American specialist they needed to contribute to the project was unavailable. It has now been restored to fully working order, by a Breton organ making firm. It is the only working organ of its kind in Europe and one of only three working Skinner house organs in the world. It was classed as an historic monument in its own right in 1993.

The pipes.

In the days of the Bedaux's occupancy they would invite the organist from Saint Sulpice in Paris down for the weekend to play. If he wasn't available the organ had the additional feature of being able to play automatically, using rolls.

Interval.

Setting the organ up to play was likened to a chef's mise en prep in the kitchen. All the 'ingredients' are laid out and the organist combines them. The organist has to remember he is not in a cathedral. Playing in a private home he is the accompanist for a singer performing chanson, folk songs or jazz. The technical term for this type of organ is house organ (Fr. orgue de salon). Organs are wind instruments, unlike pianos, which are string instruments.

The organist demonstrates a part of the organ pipes 

(with a piece he has borrowed from the cathedral organ).

The organ was played during the marriage ceremony of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson) in 1937. Later, it was damaged when the explosives factory across the road blew up in 1943. Although repaired, after 1959 it was no longer used.

A sculpture in the grounds of the chateau, which clearly references the organ. According to a friend, you can speak in some pipes and have the sound appear from others -- hours of fun for small boys.

Galette des Rois

Galette des Rois, made from flaky pastry and almond frangipane, is traditionally eaten in France at Epiphany, on 6 January. It is the last of the festive seasonal foods before we all get back to work or school again. Hidden inside is a ceramic token known as a fève ('bean'). The person who gets the fève in their slice gets to be king for a day.

Ingredients:

Pastry
250 g butter
320 g flour
A pinch of salt

Frangipane
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup almond meal
100 g butter
A pinch of salt
2 eggs (+ one for the eggwash)

Method:

1. Put the 250 g block of butter in the freezer for an hour.
2. Combine the flour and a pinch of salt.
3. Coarsely grate the butter into the flour.
4. Mix with a knife and / or your hands until it forms a dough, adding water as needed.
5. Put the dough in the fridge for half an hour.
6. Combine the sugar, almond meal and a pinch of salt in a stand mixer bowl.
7. Add 100 g butter and mix well.
8. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well each time.
9. Divide the pastry in half and roll each half out into a circle of 28 cm diameter (use a large dinner plate as a template).
10. Line a baking tray with a silicone mat.
11. Place one of the pastry circles on the mat.
12. Spread the almond paste (frangipane) on to the pastry, leaving a 5 cm margin all the way around.
13. Put a fève in the frangipane.
14. Beat an egg and brush the pastry margin.
15. Place the other pastry circle carefully on top, matching the edges and pressing gently around the edge of the circle.
16. Chill the cake for 45 minutes.
17. Heat the oven to 200C.
18. Incise a decorative pattern in the pastry with a sharp knife. Be careful not to cut through to the filling.
19. Pinch the edges together to ensure a seal and add to the decorative look.
20. Snip a nick in the top to allow steam to vent. If you don't it is certain to leak at the edges.
21. Brush the top with eggwash.
22. Bake for 30 minutes.
23. Cool on a rack. Serves 8.

At Step 16 you can use the leftover pastry to make mini galettes. Roll out the pastry and using a small scone cutter cut out as many fluted circles as you can. Cut small pieces of almond paste (available in the baking section of any French supermarket, sometimes plain, sometimes green or pink) and place on half of the little circles. Eggwash the edges and top with the remaining circles. Press to seal. Chill along with the big cake. When the big cake is ready to bake, eggwash the minis and put them on a separate tray. Put them in the oven at the same time as the big cake, but take out at 20 minutes and cool on a rack.

Locally made butter from the Laiterie Cooperative de Verneuil can be purchased from their factory shop, the Maison des Producteurs in Loches, the EpiService corner stores in Preuilly sur Claise and Le Grand Pressigny and the Intermarché supermarket in Yzeures sur Creuse. 

There are several local flour millers, milling either their own wheat or working with local farmers. I used flour from Farine du Berry, available in the Intermarché supermarket in Yzeures sur Creuse.

The eggs came from Lait Grand Cru, a local dairy farm who make home deliveries of dairy products, as well as poultry if you order it.

The almond meal and sugar were purchased from the SuperU supermarket at La Roche Posay.

Yum

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

Two Years Ago, Before the Bushfires

Much of the country that is burning so ferociously in Australia is places we are quite familiar with. On our 2017-18 trip we travelled through Gippsland and stayed on the New South Wales south coast. Both these areas are experiencing unprecedented bushfires.

My sister travelled from Canberra to south-east Queensland for Christmas and New Year and said she'd never seen so much smoke. She is delaying her return because of the poor air quality in Canberra.

All tourists, thousands of people, mostly staying in caravan parks, have been ordered to leave the south coast and go home, via the few roads that the fire brigade have deemed safe to travel on Thursday. The most dangerous day at the time I am writing (Thursday) is expected to be Saturday. We have friends who live in the 'leave zone', and all residents have been told to be prepared to leave. I worried that they may not get very far -- reports at the time of writing were of traffic jams near Cooma of 30 kilometres and Koscuiszko National Park evacuated. Later on Thursday I heard from Facebook contacts that people were making it through, just taking twice as long to make the journey as normal. People were apparently calm and coping. The air quality remains terrible.

The fire brigade is saying that the fires can only be extinguished if it rains. The weather bureau is predicting that the earliest rain will be at the end of January, and may not arrive until April.

Here are photos from exactly two years ago, to show you what these places should look like.

The Genoa River, which joins the Wallagaraugh River and empties into Mallacoota Inlet, where 4000 people spent a night on the beach while the town of Mallacoota burned.

As of Thursday, the tiny township of Genoa itself was inaccessible -- nobody could get in or out. The historic bridge we were standing on to take this photo was destroyed by fire on New Years Eve. It was a real landmark in this area and many people have fond memories of it. I don't know if the nearby pub survived.

 Lakes Entrance, a small seaside town which was cut off by a bushfire (and where my parents spent their honeymoon 60 years ago).

 A view of Merimbula from the veranda of some friends. 

Standing here today you would probably be able to see a burning bushfire.

 The road between Canberra and the coast. Many places along this axis have burned, but this is also the route taken by many of the evacuees. Lines of backed up traffic reached 30 kilometres long.

I'm pleased to see that the small town of Nowa Nowa, and especially The Big Root, who do great breakfasts, survived. It was a close call though.

Before and after shots.

France 24 report from Thursday 2 January.

One thing that is worth noting about these fires though. Although far more people have been directly affected, and the fires have burned for longer and over a bigger area than ever before, and have been very hot burning fires of the sort that cause the most environmental damage, fewer people have died than in past fire seasons. In 1969, the year my family lost several homes, 23 people died, mostly trapped on the highway between Geelong and Melbourne in their cars. In the 1984 fires which for years held the record as the worst ever for every marker, 75 people died. So far, 18 people are confirmed dead since July 2019. I believe this is all due to concerted efforts by the fire brigade to educate people on how to behave and survive. What will be one of the legacies of these fires is lung conditions I suspect. Anyway, always listen to your fire officers!

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

White-throated Dipper

While we were in the Pyrenées in September we had the privilege of watching a White-throated Dipper Cinclus cinclus hunting for food in a shallow fast flowing stream. We have seen a dipper before, in Yorkshire, but they are not a species we see a lot.  They are fast moving and wary, so not easy to photograph.

Dippers are small birds that hunt in streams for invertebrates. Their name comes because of their habit of bobbing and 'dipping'. They hunt by diving into the stream from rocks in the middle of the stream then walking along the bottom poking around under rocks for shrimps and caddis larvae.

They are an upland species, sometimes descending to the lowlands in winter if the rivers are frozen.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

The Dig is Done, Now for the Analyses

Saint Ours, Loches (right, middle distance).

The dig season conducted at the Church of Saint Ours in Loches for the Indre et Loire county archaeological service finished at the end of May 2019. During five weeks of research, the former floor levels and flagstones of the 11th and 12th centuries were identified, along with traces of changes to liturgical practice. Most exciting of all, five tombs were found and remnants of the original 11th century front of the church can be recognised.

The fortress in Loches where Ludovico Sforza was held.

Several structural elements relating to alterations in 1771 were exposed, such as a much bigger choir than is extant today. The position of the old choir screen was determined and the position of one of the altars which butted up to the choir screen.

Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan's prison cell in the Martelet Tower on the citadel of Loches.

The church, originally dedicated to Notre-Dame, was founded by the Count of Anjou, Geoffroy Greymantle about 980. This predates the reconstruction under Fulke Nerra at the beginning of the 11th century. The current research confirms all the known documentary evidence of the chronology of the church. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of a church any earlier than this.

 Graves in Saint Ours being excavated.

Several graves, dating from the 12th to the 18th centuries, and in front of the choir screen, have all been carefully excavated. One of these, quite well preserved, and situated in the position described by several historical sources as that of the tomb of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. However, it's still too early to confirm the identity of the deceased interred here. The group of graves discovered will now be the subject of analyses to determine the sex, the age at death and the date of burial as precisely as possible for each individual. If the tests prove that there is a man of about 60 years old who died at the beginning of the 16th century, further analyses of isotopes will be done, to determine the geographic area the individual lived. Finally, DNA analysis is envisaged and the research responsibility will be handed to the county anthropologist. The results will be released in the next report.

The front half of the church is blocked off while work is undertaken.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Loches Flood Meadows

The flood meadows along the Indre River at Loches do their thing almost every winter (this photo was taken 19 December 2019). The river is divided into multiple channels just here and the low lying grassland in between, known as the Prairies du Roy and run as a nature reserve, is allowed to flood and dry out naturally with the seasons.

Abandoned as pasture in the mid-20th century these sorts of naturally cycling meadows are no longer widespread. Nowadays they are often turned into poplar plantations supplying local paper manufacturing. But where they still exist they perform an important ecological role. They serve to purify the fresh water that washes through them, regulate floods and protect surrounding urban areas from inundation, and they are a hotspot for biodiversity, being an interface between the aquatic and the terrestrial environments. 

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Happy New Year 2020 From the Loire Valley

Thanks to all our readers and friends for their support during 2019.

I hope 2020 turns out to be better than expected for everyone.

 

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos.