Cheese in the Touraine Loire Valley

In our experience travellers to the Loire Valley are divided into two sorts of people. The first are already fans of goats cheese. The others are people who have tried goats cheese elsewhere, and think they don’t like goats cheese. Once they try any of the Loire Valley cheeses they discover a new food that they love, and from then on are hooked.

Sainte Maure de Touraine goats cheese, showing the organic rye straw inserted down the middle.

All of the traditional cheeses in the Loire Valley are goats milk cheeses(usually referred to as ‘chevre’ in French) and the area is known for them. The biggest selling goats cheeses in France come from here and there are protections in place to ensure the product is what the label says it is. The most popular and best known Loire Valley cheese, AOC Sainte Maure de Touraine, is so commercially valuable that truckloads of it are not in frequently stolen, and there have been cases of fake Sainte Maure cheeses on the market. For all that, an individual goats cheese bought locally from a producer or local retailer is entirely affordable, usually being about €3 - €5 a piece.

These Sainte Maure de Touraine cheese logs have been coated by hand with salt and ash.

France uses a system of categorising and certifying high value artisanal food products known as the Appellation d’Origine Controllée (Controlled Origin Certification) or AOC for short. There are five of these for the farmhouse Loire Valley cheeses: Sainte Maure de Touraine, Selles sur Cher, Chavignol, Valençay and Pouligny Saint Pierre. Each of them comes from within different geographical boundaries and they are different shapes. Sainte Maure de Touraine is a tapered log shape with a rye straw inserted down the middle (if it doesn’t have a straw with the producer’s name lasered on to it, it is not the real thing). Selles sur Cher is a disk. Chavignol a puck (known as ‘crottins’ in French, which means ‘droppings’ - in the scatalogical sense!). Valençay and Pouligny Saint Pierre are truncated pyramids.

Each producer must be making cheese from a single herd of goats of a designated breed, on their own farm premises and growing fodder for the goats on the farm. Chavignol is the biggest seller in terms of numbers of cheeses, but that is because they are small. Sainte Maure de Touraine is the biggest seller in terms of weight, closely followed by Selles sur Cher. Pouligny Saint Pierre production is very small and so it is by far the lowest in terms of sales.

Sainte Maure de Touraine cheeses draining in their moulds.

The shapes are important and contribute greatly to the taste of the cheese. The surface area differs depending on the shape and it means the cheeses dry out and mature at a different rate and in different ways. All these cheeses are coated in ash and salt which helps to protect the cheese against bad bacteria and undesirable fungi. All of them are made from raw milk too, which my cheesemaker friends tell me is much safer than using pasterised milk. They say that pasturising kills not just bad microbes, but protective ones too, and that in cheesemaking you are much better off working with the natural processes than trying to over control them. In the end you will get a much tastier and more distinctive product, which of course is what they are aiming for.

Alpine breed dairy goats being milked.

 

Our village is part of the Sainte Maure de Touraine appellation, but we have easy access to nearby producers of Selles sur Cher, Valençay and Pouligny Saint Pierre, all within 20 kilometres of home. Our personal favourite is Valençay, but the one we eat most often, because it is delivered to our door by the producer, is Sainte Maure de Touraine. 

 

Selles sur Cher cheeses displayed on traditional organic rye straw mats.

Sainte Maure de Touraine offered with Vouvray wine at a tasting.

Crottins de Chavignol, with the traditional ceramic moulds on the right.

Cheesemakers making Selles sur Cher.

Cheesemaker showing a maturing Selles sur Cher.

Valencay, with the top cut off its pyramid supposedly so as not to remind Napoleon of defeat in Egypt.

 

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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. 

Primulas Mean Spring

Primroses on the roadside.

Every year we post a photo of the wild Cowslips Primula veris (Fr. Coucou) that grow on the north facing roadside banks and other cool damp places.

Primrose.

This year the wild Primroses P. vulgaris (Fr. Primevère acaule) are flowering simultaneously with the Cowslips, which doesn't always happen.They don't grow in the same places, so clearly have different habitat preferences.

Cowslip.

These were all photographed on 4 March between Preuilly sur Claise and Le Petit Pressigny.

Cowslip.

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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. 

French Onion Soup

French onion soup.

French onion soup is one of those rare dishes that references a country in its name that really does originate from that country. Although it seems like a simple soup, with few ingredients, it takes time to make and should not be rushed if you want the real thing.

The onions ready to cook.

 

Ingredients

2 kg beef shin and rib

2 carrots, scrubbed and cut into chunks

2 leeks, cleaned and cut into chunks

4 ribs of celery, including leaves, washed and cut into chunks

A bouquet garni

1 tsp peppercorns

5 litres of water

8-10 yellow onions (the variety Mulhouse is good, as are the pale pink Roscoff, or a mixture)

6 tbsp olive oil

50 g butter

1 tsp sugar

Salt

2 cloves garlic, crushed

150 ml white wine

2 bay leaves

3 sprigs of thyme

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

30 slices of baguette

100 g gruyere, grated

50 g parmesan, grated

 

Method

1. Brown the beef in 2 tbsp olive oil in a large pot.
2. Add carrots, leeks, celery, bouquet garni, peppercorns and water and bring to the boil.
3. Turn the heat down and simmer for 4-6 hours. 
4. Leave to cool overnight then strain the stock (put the meat and vegetables aside and use for something else eg pot au feu and vegetable soup).
5. Boil the stock for half an hour to reduce and concentrate. 
6. Peel and halve the onions, then slice from root to stem.
   
7. Heat 3 tbsp oil in a large pot on medium and add the onions, stirring frequently for 20 minutes.
8. Increase the heat a bit, add another tablespoon of oil and the butter, stirring for 15 minutes, as they will go golden.
   
9. Add the sugar and a teaspoon of salt, and cook, stirring, for a further 15 minutes, so the onions go brown and caramelised. 
10. Add the garlic and cook for a minute.
11. Deglaze the pot with the wine.
12. Add the stock, bay leaves and thyme, and bring to a boil then simmer for half an hour.
13. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
14. Brush the baguette slices with olive oil and put under the grill to make croutes.
15. Just before serving turn the baguette slices over and top with the cheeses and put under the grill again so the cheese bubbles and browns.
16. Ladle the soup out and float 3 cheesy croutes on top of each bowl.
    
17. Serves 10.
    

Caramelised onions, and you can see how much the cooking has reduced them.

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.

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

Green Sea Turtle

I came across this Green Sea Turtle Chelonia mydas washed up on the beach at Iluka, New South Wales in March 2003. Green turtles are not in fact green, at least on the outside. They are so named because of a layer of green fat under their carapace (shell).

These peaceful creatures are herbivores, grazing on seagrass in shallow waters. Their feeding grounds and nesting beaches are thousands of kilometres apart and female turtles migrate long distances in order to lay their eggs. The young turtles' sex is determined by the temperature, and rising temperatures are leading to a critical lack of males.  The little hatchlings, if they make it to the sea and survive, might live to be 80 years old. An adult turtle like this one may have been hit by a boat or caught in a fishing net to end up dead on the beach like this.

They are endangered and supposedly protected world wide, but in some places their eggs are still eaten, and light pollution and urbanisation of coastal areas disrupts their life cycle. A mature turtle is about a metre and a half long and weighs about 120 kilograms. Green turtles are distributed world wide in tropical and sub-tropical oceans. Australia's Great Barrier Reef, and the Caribbean Sea have the largest populations.

The 79 hectare Raine Island, off the Far North Queensland coast, is the most important breeding site in Australia. A hundred thousand females have been counted coming to lay their eggs on the island's beaches but in the past few decades this coral cay has changed shape and beach profile, causing thousands of turtles to die as they struggled up the increasingly steep beaches. Recently a large scale conservation project has intervened to reshape the island, and investigations are ongoing to work out how to keep the water temperature cool enough to produce more males. The island is monitored by satellite and drones.

A Paris Street at Night

 

I can't remember precisely in which street in Paris this photo was taken, but it would have been from a hotel window, in September 2002.

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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. 

Algerian Irises

 

The Algerian Iris Iris unguicularis put on a splendid show throughout February in our back garden.

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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. 

A Belgian Surprise

Anyone who has driven in the area around Azay le Rideau will have, at some time, encountered the army training area Camp Ruchard.

In 1871 the French army rented the moors of Le Ruchard and set up a military camp. From what we have observed it now appears to be mainly a tank training area, much like Salisbury Plain in England. During the First World War it was at first an internment camp for German prisoners before becoming a convalescent center for Belgian soldiers, 63 of whom are buried in the communal cemetery of Avon les Roches.

We didn't know any of this before we arrived in Avon les Roches on Sunday afternoon on one of our magical mystery tours.  You can imagine our surprise, then, when we discovered this magnificent memorial and rows of headstones.

Mushrooms at the Markets

Good markets in the Loire Valley have mushrooms for sale. They fall into two categories -- cultivated (truffles, buttons and chestnuts in various sizes, several species of oysters, shiitake and wood blewits) or wild foraged (ceps and boletes, chanterelles and girolles, morels, trompettes de la mort and hedgehog). Expect to pay between €800 and €1200/kg for truffles (a ping pong ball sized truffle costs about €30), €10 - €15/kg for cave grown and €25 - €30/kg for wild foraged. Supermarket button mushrooms (champignons de Paris) are about €2.50/kg.

Black Truffles at the specialist market that is held once a month over winter.

The truffles come from inoculated oak plantations and are only available at specialist markets over the winter. There are no longer commercial species of wild truffle in the Loire Valley due to decades of using fungicides on cereal crops. The other cultivated ones are grown in troglodyte caves. From a few established producers they are a high end quality product much loved by chefs all over the world, and far superior to other commercially produced mushrooms of the sort that are pumped full of water to accelerate their growth and sold cheaply in large quantities in supermarkets. Loire Valley cave grown mushrooms are slow growing, resulting in a meaty mushroom that does not shrink with cooking and keeps for several days in the fridge without going slimy (keeping times vary between species, with oysters being the most delicate and blewits being the most robust). Cave grown mushrooms are available all year round. Experienced producers also supply the pharmaceutical industry, where mushrooms like shiitakes or certain oysters are used in supplements and skin care products.

Wild foraged Chanterelles at a greengrocers in rue Daguerre, Paris.

The wild mushrooms can only be gathered commercially by someone with a licence (and it is illegal to even give away wild mushrooms for human consumption if you are not licenced). Professional mushroom foragers usually do not sell direct to the public, but to a market stallholder who retails them. They are also strictly seasonal, with the peak being October, and come from the many forests in the Loire Valley, both broadleaf deciduous and softwood conifers. Weather conditions mean supply is very variable. Many people where we live (including us) also go out into the woods and forage for their own.

A truffle orchard.

 

The reality of market shopping in the autumn in the Loire Valley :-).

Mushrooms being cultivated in a troglodyte cave.

Shiitakes growing in a troglodyte cave.

Chestnut mushrooms (champignons rose in French).

A selection of ceps and boletes gathered by us in our local forest.

Susan's friend Dominique teaching members of the public how not to die by accidentally picking and eating a Deathcap.

Hendrick the mushroom man with his cave grown mushrooms at the market in Loches. Sadly, he  retired in January, but this was where we usually bought our mushrooms.

Homemade mushroom ragout with polenta, made using a mixture of mushrooms bought at the market -- button, blewits, oysters, shiitake, porcini, girolles.

Homemade sautéed cave grown button mushrooms, onions and lardons.

Homemade cultivated White Ferula Mushrooms (a highly sought after and rarely grown type of oyster mushroom) in cream and garlic sauce.

A wild foraged Bay Bolete (closely related to ceps/porcini) prepared for cooking at home.

Yellow Oyster Mushrooms being cultivated in a troglodyte cave.

 

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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 Grain Silos at La Celle Saint Avant and the Railway Station at Port de Piles

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The grain silos at La Celle Saint Avant.

The grain silos at La Celle Saint Avant are run by Agrial, the largest agricultural co-operative in France. We have a sort of connection to them because our place was a grain merchant's in the early and mid-twentieth century, and one of the people who grew up here, who has become a friend, was the manager of the silo complex at La Celle Saint Avant.

The old silos.

So much grain is produced in this area that it takes a full cycle of the seasons to empty the silos in preparation for the new harvest. They are located right next to the railway station of Port de Piles, and rail transport is crucial for distributing the grain. Port de Piles and La Celle Saint Avant are twin towns, one each side of the Creuse, close to its confluence with the Vienne. In the Touraine Loire Valley there are six such big silo complexes directly networked to the railway, at Reignac sur Indre, Villeperdue, Descartes, Neuillé Pont Pierre and Ville aux Dames, as well as La Celle Saint Avant. Two or three trains a week head out from these stations, transporting grain to the Port of La Rochelle. It takes 45 semi-trailers to carry the same as one grain train. Just three of the silo complexes, those owned by Agrial, store 180 000 tonnes of grain. The other big co-operative in the area is Axéréal, who own four of the silo complexes. If there is a rail strike the impact on the grain transport is in tens of thousands of euros, sometimes into the millions.

The silos viewed from the station.

The town is located on the old Highway 10 (now the Route Départementale 910), between Chatellerault to the south and Tours to the north. The railway likewise follows this route, while the new Autoroute 10 sweeps round further to the west. The countryside around the town is open and slightly undulating, as you can imagine, typical of grain producing areas.

The old silos.

Agrial was created in 2000, when three agricultural co-operatives in Normandy came together. Ever since it has steadily developed by absorbing other co-operatives and acquiring private businesses, not just dealing with grains, but now also dairy, drinks and ready to use vegetables. They are active not just in France but in other European countries, Africa, the USA and the UK, and own the brands Florette,  Maitre Jacques, Elle & Vire, Ecusson and Loic Raison, amongst many others. They took over the silos at La Celle Saint Avant in 2009, as part of an acquisition of a failing co-operative. The move meant that they also acquired pork and beef holdings, stock feed and nearly 40 Gamm Vert concessions.

The silos at La Celle Saint Avant and the shed at Port de Piles railway station.

Today Agrial has a total turnover of 5.84 billion euros and they are the European leaders in ready to eat salad leaf. Dairy is more than 40% of their activities, and grain is less than a quarter. They have 9100 members of the agricultural (grain) side of the co-operative and deal with between 1.3 and 1.8 million tonnes of grain annually, of which 60% is wheat.

Port de Piles railway station.

Port de Piles railway station is on the Paris Austerlitz to Bordeaux Saint Jean line. Curiously, the station is called Port de Piles, but is actually in La Celle Saint Avant, across the river. It was put into service in 1851. There are three platforms and a passenger service every day except Sundays and public holidays to Poitiers in one direction and Tours the other, with the journey taking about half an hour either way.

The station building.

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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. 

Tarte vigneronne

A slice of tarte vigneronne.

Tarte vigneronne ('winemaker tart') is a simple thin apple tart [link], with a twist made popular in the Chinon wine region. The apple tart glazed with red wine jelly was invented by Patisserie Ayrole in Chinon and the name tarte du vigneron registered in 1994.

Ready for the oven.

The apple variety used is often Reinette grise du Canada or Golden Delicious. Sometimes there is a thin layer of apple sauce spread on the pastry before the slices of apple go on. The wine jelly can also be used with foie gras or poached pears. 

Just out of the oven.

 

Ingredients

A bottle of light fruity red wine

500 g jam sugar

A packet of ready made puff pastry (which in France comes ready rolled into a 25 cm diameter circle)

About 50 g butter, melted

About 2-3 tbsp raw sugar (called cassonade or sucre roux in France)

1/2 cup apple sauce (optional)

A pinch of ground cinnamon

3-4 apples

Method

1. Sterilise 3-4 jam jars (run them through the dishwasher or heat them up on low heat in the oven for half an hour).
   
2. Put the wine and jam sugar into a boiler, stir and bring to the boil. Make sure the sugar is dissolved in the wine. Follow the instructions on the jam sugar packet for how long to boil.  Don't be tempted to boil as long and hard as you would for fruit jam made with regular sugar -- you will end up with wine rubber.
3. Ladle the hot jelly into the prepared jars and put the lids on (use a cloth to handle the hot jars).
   
4. Leave the jelly to cool.
5. Heat the oven to 180C.
   
6. Roll the pastry out to a 25 cm circle if necessary (or just unwrap and unroll if French).
7. Lay it out on a silicone mat or sheet of baking paper and brush with some melted butter, then sprinkle with raw sugar.
8. Turn the pastry over and brush the other side with melted butter, then sprinkle with raw sugar.
9. Spread the pastry with apple sauce if using, leaving a margin of a couple of centimetres around the edge.
10. Peel, core and slice the apples into thin wedges.
    
11. Arrange the apple slices attractively on the apple sauce, leaving a margin around the edge of the pastry.
    
12. Mix a pinch of ground cinnamon into a tablespoon of raw sugar and sprinkle over the apples.
13. Bake for 40 minutes.
14. Melt 2-3 tablespoons of the red wine jelly and brush it all over the top of the tart.
15. Serves 8.
    

Glazed and finished.

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.

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