A Foie Gras Workshop

Our friends Jean Michel and Rosemary have made their own foie gras for a number of years. These days they use a super simple curing method which means you don't have to do any tricky cooking of the delicate foie.

A whole fresh foie gras.

They offered to show us how to do it and we arranged a date for Wednesday 10 December. I had previously ordered the foies from our local producer, Maison Perrin near La Celle Guenand. I picked the livers up on Monday, the day the ducks were slaughtered. For foie gras the ideal is to prep them as fresh as possible. Jean Michel and Rosemary are very particular about their foie gras and hadn't used Maison Perrin before. Thankfully they commented favourably on the good firm texture and were obviously happy with the quality.

We arrived at Jean Michel and Rosemary's at 11 am and the first step was to soak the livers in milk, or a mixture of milk and water. They float, so weighing them down or turning them over occasionally is a good idea. Jean Michel and I covered the work tables with plastic because things were expected to get messy.

Rosemary removing the veins.

While the livers soaked for a couple of hours we had lunch, joined by Jean Michel and Rosemary's friends and neighbours Paul and Françoise. I'd bought a liver for them too and they were going to join us for the workshop. Lunch was delicious -- scallops in shallot and mushroom sauce by Paul, chicken chasseur by Jean Michel and eccles cakes by me. Jean Michel kept us well supplied with a really interesting stream of carefully chosen wines for each course -- sparkling Vouvray for the apéritif, a most unusual 2009 vintage wine from the Jurançon region, made from very late harvest petit manseng grapes, then a red which I seem to remember was Italian, but I could be wrong.

After lunch Jean Michel brought in some granite slabs that had been sitting out in the cold and placed them on the table. We were directed to sprinkle our alloted slab with iced water then place the foie on them 'upside down' (the liver does have a fairly obvious upper side, which is smooth and intact, and lower side, which is more broken up or divided looking). The two lobes, one small, one large, of the liver must be separated and the internal veins extracted.

Seasoning.

This is the trickiest part of the whole process. You have to carefully probe the liver and lift up the veins for their full length. There are two in each lobe, situated more or less along the middle and one above the other. Each of them divides into several Y branches as you follow them along. The trick is to lift them for as much of their length as possible without breaking them before taking them out. You can burrow into the foie and dig about, but try to keep the smooth upper surface flat on the bench and unbroken. Once you've carefully checked the liver for any stray vein remnants it's time to season and form it. Each of us got a lobe to work with, so taking photos also got a bit tricky. The camera did end up smeared with foie gras at one stage.

Rosemary doled out sweet Vouvray wine and a spice mixture to precise proportions calculated as a ratio of seasonings to weight of liver. You can see the recipe for the spice mixture and how to calculate the quantities on her blog here as well as an excellent step by step set of instructions with photos. We pushed the lobes back into shape and sprinkled them with some dry seasoning then some wine. The small lobe was then pressed into the bottom of a cling film lined terrine, with a healthy dose of seasoning and wine. Then the large lobe was carefully placed on top, turned over so it had its smooth side uppermost. The remainder of the seasoning mix and the wine went on and everything was pressed down firmly.

Paul about to roll his foie gras in gauze.

Now for wrapping the foie up in gauze. Rosemary supplied gauze dressings from the pharmacy, which we laid out on the granite, overlapping to get a large enough sheet to roll up each foie. The foie was carefully lifted from the terrine using the cling film and placed on the gauze. Jean Michel demonstrated how to roll the foie one way and push back the cling film whilst simultaneously covering with gauze, then repeat in the other direction. Once encased in gauze the foie is patted and the gauze twisted at the ends to make sure it is all secure and solid.

The next step is curing the foie gras in salt. Rosemary kindly supplied a wooden champagne box and we tipped about 750g of coarse salt into the bottom. On top of this went our foie bundle, then more salt until the box was full and well packed down (it takes about 3kg of salt in total). Once Jean Michel was satisfied the lids went on the boxes for transportation home. The foie stays in the salt, at cellar temperature (10° - 12°C) for 17 hours, which we calculated was 8 am the next morning. We don't have a cellar, but I run one of our fridges at 12°, so it went in there once we got home.

The mummy that emerged next morning.

The next morning I excitedly tipped off the salt. The foie had shrunk noticeably and looked rather mummified. I suspect this is good. I brushed off the salt and peeled off the gauze. We are sharing our foie with Niall and Antoinette, so I cut the mummy in half and pressed each half into a small terrine. They went into the cold fridge (2°C), carefully covered in cling film, where they need to stay for 10 days before we can eat the foie gras.

I took a sneaky taste of the foie gras when I was transferring it to the smaller terrines and it is definitely melt in the mouth. As Rosemary notes in her post, with this method you don't lose any of the fat, and fat, after all, is what it's all about (foie gras = 'fat liver'). Our 504g fresh foie gras cost €28.70 (compared to about €35 for a ready to eat one in the supermarket).

Cut in half ready to be pressed into two small terrines.

We had a fantastic time, with great company and food, and learnt a lot. I would definitely not hesitate to buy a fresh foie gras and prepare it myself again. We greatly appreciate Jean Michel and Rosemary passing on their expertise and hosting this fun day.

For those of you interested in the ongoing ethical argument about foie gras, you may like to read this detailed, informative access all areas article on Serious Eats about a visit to an American foie gras producer. The ducks at Maison Perrin, where I bought ours, are free range.

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Preuilly News: My source for news of the other end of town has emailed me to say that a hole has been dug in the middle of the Carroir de l'Ormeau, in readiness for planting an elm tree. This is, as I understand it, despite the fact that this action did not appear to get proper approval from the local council. It seems the mayor is going ahead and doing it anyway, as predicted. I have absolutely no idea what the background to this particular political shenannigans is and await further instalments with some curiosity.

The local fire brigade has had its end of year get together. The départmental force has been restructured and instead of having each commune with a brigade, they have been amalgamated into 3 groups. Preuilly is part of the southern group.

Preuilly has 21 firefighters, all volunteers, and there have been no new recruits this year. The brigade has 7 vehicles and a boat. They assisted 137 people in 2014, attended 6 fires and 35 other emergencies. They were unable to assist in 31 requests for help due to lack of resources. Several firefighters got promotions or awards for long service at the ceremony. Overall the départment has 1950 volunteer firefighters, a new training centre and a budget of €29 million. The local authorities are keen to encourage new businesses to the area, as it is one way to gain potential new recruits (as well as the other obvious benefits to the area). There is going to be an outreach campaign to colleges to encourage young recruits. At the moment there are only 670 in training and this isn't enough. The meeting ended, as most things in France do, with drinks.

Galloping Gourmands

Soft Rush Juncus effusus is a native plant that grows in wet meadows. Nothing much eats it so it can come to dominate a habitat at the expense of other smaller, less robust plants. In order to keep rushes, sedges and woody scrub under control and maintain the highest possible biodiversity some wetland nature reserves, such as the Réserve Naturelle de la Chérine, owned by the LPO in the Brenne, resort to Konik Polskis (='small Polish horses').

Soft Rush in the Forest of Preuilly. Apologies for the atypical example shown. It's doing its impression of Compact Rush J. conglomeratus, due to the dry weather when the photo was taken.

The Koniks are semi-wild, quite close in appearance to the ancient wild horse that would have roamed here in prehistoric times, and formed the bulk of mesolithic man's diet in this area. They have feet that don't suffer from standing on squelchy ground all day and big bellies that can deal with a lot of very fibrous, low nutrient value plant material.

Two young Koniks watch as warden Tony and I survey flies on the Réserve Naturelle de la Chérine several years ago. The third person is my Dad, who was visiting at the time.

Consequently they are just about the only species that will eat rushes and keep them under control so other plants can have the space to grow and flower. The horses also create a micro mosaic of habitats by trampling bare patches here and dropping piles of dung there. The only alternative to grazing is to mow, which is never quite as successful, and requires more resources.

A Konik mare does her job.

 The ponies will munch some of the the rare and interesting flowers too, but after the rush is reduced, they can be moved from meadow to meadow to allow different species to flower at different times. They are kept in natural family groups, with a dominant mare, a mature stallion and assorted youngsters and bachelors. This allows the animals to behave in a natural way and a strong herd instinct prevents straying. This is better for their interaction with the site, meaning they graze the site more evenly than a more artificial (eg non-breeding or single sex) social group might, spreading out more as the bachelors tend to hang around on the fringes of the breeding (harem) group. They tend to graze fairly evenly over their allotted fields, but do have seasonal preferences. Rushes, sedges, scrub, willow bark, nettle, thistle and brambles gain their attention in the autumn and winter, but in summer they are seduced by the lush new grass that appears. Husbandry issues such as worms and hooves are monitored but generally there is no need to treat.

 In the Brenne the Koniks are used primarily to manage the areas where the European Pond Terrapin (Fr. Cistude) breed. The trails they make allow the terrapins to move around much more easily.

The Virgin Gets a Makeover

Currently there is an exhibition of sculpture from the Touraine Loire Valley at the Logis Royal in Loches, curated by Guy Bertaud du Chazaud, Curator of Art and Antiquities for Indre et Loire. Numerous works have been brought together from all over the département. The exhibition runs until 15 March 2015.

Conservator Hélène Gruau touches up the base of the Virgin.

 

Some significant pieces proved too fragile to move to Loches though, including a terracotta Virgin with Serpent by Charles Jean Avissau from the Abbey in Preuilly. This notable 19th century sculptor is also known for his ceramic pieces exhibited in the Musée de Beaux Arts in Tours.

Conservator Laure Chavanne, who grew up in this area, catches up with one of the locals.

With transporting the fragile objects impossible it was decided to create a circuit for viewing them in situ. One of the circuits includes treasures in Boussay, Yzeures, Preuilly and Bossay. The sculptures concerned are currently being conserved with the help of the Conseil Général (the equivalent of county or supershire council). The Virgin with Serpent was carefully conserved by two graduates of the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Tours, Hélène Gruau and Laure Chavanne.

Hélène shares a joke with a local who's come to check out the work.

After a thorough cleaning, reassembling bits which have fallen off and filling cracks, they have given this forgotten work a new luminosity and she will hopefully attract more attention from the locals and visitors to the Abbey. 

I spoke to Hélène and Laure on Friday morning and they expected to finish the work that afternoon. Laure now lives in Lyon, but had come all this way for the opportunity to work with her friend and colleague on this project. Hélène said much of the work was actually redoing the work of an old restoration. When I visited the Abbey to see them in action she was working on evening out the colour on the repairs so they blended well with the rest of the sculpture. Apart from the overall clean, most of the repair work was done on the hands, the snake and the plinth. The statue has been moved to a different position in the church, perhaps to give it a bit more prominence. As yet there doesn't seem to be any plans to turn her into a theremin though.

Both women were relaxed and friendly with me and one or two other locals who dropped by to watch them working. They answered questions and engaged with us in a thoroughly professional and rewarding way. Visible conservation requires a delicate balance for the conservator, as they must concentrate on the work at hand and it can be really difficult for them to be interrupted by audience questions. On the other hand their audience really appreciates being able to see behind the scenes of what is involved in maintaining a work of art on display.

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A la cuisine hier: Endive and Leek Gratin, with gallons of cheese and bechamel sauce. Endives are not my go to vegetable of choice but they are local and seasonal and in the interests of ringing in the changes I'll cook them once or twice over the winter.

Eccles Cakes, made with the fruit mince that has been festering for a few days and home made rough puff pastry. These are my contribution to a shared lunch with friends today. I made 20, and some spiced cherry 'cream' (cheese) to serve with them. There is a jar of the fruit mince left over to make more cakes or pies with later.

Catching the Train to Biarritz

The station at Tours has a series of 18 painted ceramic panels decorating the walls. Their purpose is to beautify the station concourse and entice travellers to the destinations portrayed. At present the panels are badly in need of conservation and a crowd-funding campaign is underway to raise the money to save them. Each panel will cost €8000 to clean, conserve and reattach the tiles to the walls. You can see a patch on this panel where the conservators have already done some work. To learn more about the restoration fund and the panels themselves go to Ulule Gare Tours (in French).

We thought that it might be fun to show one of the panels every now and then, with the timetable information for how one gets there from Tours today. Looking at the timetable it is clear that you might as well start your journey at Saint Pierre des Corps these days rather than in Tours. From Tours you just take the shuttle to Saint Pierre de Corps and change to the TGV (fast train) to Bordeaux, where you change again for Biarritz.

Trading in Potatoes

Occasionally we have posted old photos of Preuilly sur Claise (here and here, for instance). Most of the old views have come from Delcampe, a worldwide web site that until two weeks ago we thought just traded in postcards.

As you probably know (if you have been reading the blog for a while), one of our buildings is the old Poupineau-Bardon grain merchant's barns. We have been looking into the history of the building and its surrounds, so occasionally "Poupineau-Bardon" gets typed into our search engine of choice. Imagine our surprise when it not only returned some new results, but that some of those were links for documents for sale on Delcampe. Bidding started at €1.61.

Seeds and Grains from Local Produce

Poupineau-Bardon
22 rue du Puits Berthet
Preuilly sur Claise (Indre et Loire)

Preuilly sur Claise 22 July 1913
 
Mister Menin
Grains
   Abilly I[ndre] et Loire

Would you be interested in buying 10 to 12 000 kg
of Dutch potatoes?
What could you pay? They are
available. Shipped from I[ndre] et Loire.
Reply by return message
 

Seeds and Grains from Local Produce
Poupineau-Bardon
22 rue du Puits Berthet
Preuilly sur Claise (Indre et Loire)

Preuilly sur Claise 26 July 1913

Mister Menin
   at Abilly I[ndre] et L[oire]

Regarding the potatoes I
told you about, I will be in
Chatellerault on Thursday and will bring you
a sample.

Yours sincerely
Poupineau

You can click on the photos to see the documents full sized.

These documents are from the era of the accounts books shown to me by the son of the last member of the family to run the business which I wrote about here. You can see a photo from 1939 of Désiré Poupineau and Aimée Bardon in this post.

Because these are pertinant to us, we really felt that we had no option but to bid. We were the only bid, so each letter cost €1.71, which with postage came a grand total of just over 4 euros.

UPDATE: In February 2015 we got an email from the grandson of Louis Menin, the man Désiré Poupineau was trying to sell potatoes to. He very kindly sent us a photo of his grandfather's account book showing all the transactions the two men made between 1911 and 1922. Over those years Louis Menin regularly purchased legume seeds (vetches, lucerne and sainfoin), oats and potatoes from Désiré Poupineau. However, it seems that he did not take up opportunity to purchase the potatoes Poupineau mentions in his letters of July 1913 as there is no entry that would fit the dates of the correspondence.

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Preuilly News: The local council is currently working on various traffic calming projects. We are getting a series of chicanes on the Loches road as it leaves Preuilly. Traffic lights were trialled a while ago and were not practical. Our street is going to be one way from the top to a side road in the middle, while the bottom remains two way. We think this is an excellent idea and will stop people wizzing past our front window at breakneck speed. A speed bump was proposed but thankfully rejected as being too noisy for the residents. And finally, there is a controversial proposal to plant an elm tree in the middle of the intersection at the top of rue des pavillons. The residents oppose it but the mayor appears to be dead keen. A friend sent me a photo of the intersection yesterday -- it seems some wag has positioned a tiny Christmas tree on the spot.

The council would dearly like to create a bypass for heavy vehicles, who currently rumble up and down the narrow main street. They've introduced parking restrictions which have helped a bit, but they've recently been told that a bypass is not on the cards. National funding for major roadworks has been allocated up to 2025 and with a bypass requiring a new bridge across the Claise and the agreement of neighbouring communes, there doesn't seem much hope. So we are stuck with logging trucks, B-doubles full of turkeys and all sorts of machinery and goods being transported through town and unwary drivers who don't anticipate causing daily traffic jams.

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A la cuisine hier: Meatballs in cream sauce, made with half beef mince, half rabbit.

Apple pie, with the last of our homegrown apples and homemade sweet short pastry from the freezer. I made a spiced cream cheese to dollop on the pie, with an added touch of a wonderfully appley Calvados that was a gift from our friend Liselle. I made some more sablés from the leftover pastry.

Quesadillas, which until recently we had never heard of, but now are completely addicted to. We buy the big packs of Turkish flatbreads at Auchan rather than the expensive packs of a measly 6 small tortillas.

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Weather News: Yesterday morning was the first frost for the season. The autumn was completely frost free.

Here and There: Informal Dining

Above, the Chinese restaurant and take away, run by a family of Chinese Malaysian immigrants in the small Australian town I grew up in; 

below, the nearest equivalent in Preuilly, a creperie, run by a woman from Normandy.

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A la cuisine hier: Fruit mince has been mixed up and set aside to fester for a few days before being made into eccles cakes. I used various non-standard ingredients such as powdered dried cranberries (purchased at Noz, the disposals store, for 99c/500g), homemade orange syrup left over from preserving orange peel, homemade vodka soused sour cherries and homemade sour cherry liqueur. I added some almond meal as I find fruit mince is often too juicy and leaks everywhere when cooked. I'm hoping the almond meal will thicken the mixture as well act as a substitute for suet. I actually have some ready prepped suet (brought over by British friends as it is unobtainable here) but I am taking the advice of this recipe which says it isn't necessary.

Confit de canard, made using my usual cheaty method of slow cooking in a foil parcel rather than in duck fat. So much less fat to deal with, cleaner and safer.

Flying Urban Foxes

Australian cities and towns are finding that foxes are increasingly taking up residence in urban areas. But they aren't the introduced pest Vulpes vulpes. These ones have wings and are otherwise known as fruit bats.

 Grey-headed Flying Foxes Pteropus poliocephalus roosting in Sydney Botanic Gardens (that's right in the middle of Sydney, next to the Opera House, on the harbour).

They can live in colonies numbering thousands of large, noisy, stinky bats. Worst of all they are vectors for several serious bacterial or viral diseases. The most well known of these, Hendra virus, cannot be contracted by humans directly from bats. The bats transfer it to horses who munch on fruit the bats drop. The horses amplify the virus and people in contact with them can then catch the virus. Four people have died so far. I have friends who have personal experience of how dangerous to human health these bats can be, and I can totally understand why they feel the bats should be removed from urban areas.

Unexpectedly, the flying foxes do not seem to be moving to the suburbs because their wild habitat is being overtaken by development. They are relocating because they like living in towns -- there are fewer predators, more food and more shelter.

The bats are not entirely living the good life though. Last summer and again already this summer Australia experienced some severe heatwaves, with many places having 5 days of maximum temperatures in the high 30s or 40s and minimums in the mid-teens. The weather proved too much for thousands of fruit bats, who simply dropped dead from the heat. In a number of places local authorities scrambled to collect the bodies which ponged and constituted a health hazard. The shocked wildlife rescue organisation WIRES sought volunteers to raise orphaned babies. As a local authority manager in an affected area said, "Whatever anyone's opinion is either side of the bat debate, no one wishes this sort of tragedy on the bats."

But living with bats is not all negative. Many Australian plants rely on bats for pollination and spreading seeds. They are an important part of the Australian ecological picture.

 A flying fox heads out for a night of stealing people's fruit from their gardens in the western New South Wales town of Moree.

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A la cuisine hier: Samosas, made using leftover Kheema curry and North African brick pastry, baked in the oven.

Now and Then: the Staircase

 Above, this is what the staircase in our house looked like when we bought the place in 2006. 

Below, what it looks like now.

The photos are taken from the same spot on the first floor landing, but the staircases are in fact different. The original staircase was too far gone with water damage and had to be demolished. We commissioned a new staircase from our local joiners. The old one was made of oak and stained almost black, the new one is made of a hardwood from a managed forest in Ghana. Earlier this year Simon sanded and varnished the staircase so that its natural red colour is beautifully enhanced and protected.

To follow the history of our staircase adventures click here, for all the past posts about this part of our house renovations.

The reason the photos are posted is because Simon has recently been sorting the photos we have taken with our various digital cameras - all 60,815 of them. He was struck by how much work we have done: as he said "you sort of forget how far we have come". more than 10% (6,817) of the photos are of our house and the work we have done on it.

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A la cuisine hier: Méndiants are a chocolate studded with fruit and nuts treat that appear on French chocolatiers shelves at Christmas. I usually make them myself, and this year I used a non-standard recipe from Clotilde Dusoulier. This had the added bonus of giving me a batch of homemade granola as well.

For dinner I combined some cooked salmon with some mixed root vegetable mash and made a sort of savoury cake. It was a bit stodgy, but perfectly edible.

I charred some red peppers over the gas, slow roasted some anaemic supermarket tomatoes and set some duck legs to curing for confit. I also chopped and froze the remaining chillies we got from Colin and Elizabeth. A batch of chicken stock burbled away on the wood stove.

The Toadstool in the Fairytales

You've all seen this mushroom, even if not in the wild. It's the one in the illustrations of your childhood fairytale books. It's called the Fly Agaric Amanita muscaria. It grows in the forests here in association with conifers. The mushrooms and the trees form a symbiotic relationship. The mushroom plugs its mycelia into the tree roots and allows the tree easy access to nutrients from the soil that the mushroom can take up but the tree roots are less efficient at processing. In exchange the tree sends sugars which it has produced by photosynthesising, down to the mushrom from its leaves.

Fly Agaric has a red (or sometimes orange) cap, white gills and white flakes on the cap. It and several of its kin contain hallucinogenic chemicals and neurotoxins in potentially lethal quantities, although the toxins can apparently be at least partly neutralised if you cook the mushrooms in water (the idea is the chemicals are water soluble and you discard the water) and it looks like no one in living memory has died from ingesting it. Drying the mushroom on the other hand may increase its toxicity and the effectiveness of its psycho-active chemicals. It is a bioaccumulator of the metal vanadium. No one knows the biological reason for this, but it is possibly connected to toxicity.

Its name may come from the practice of soaking pieces of the mushroom in milk to make an insecticide, a custom that dates from at least as early as the 13th century in northern Europe. However it is uncertain whether this actually works, as an 18th century French mycologist tried and failed to kill flies using this method. Flies seem to be attracted to it, but some species use the fungi as a larval host, so it seems unlikely to me that it is an insecticide.

Another theory on the origin of the name suggests that the flies are those that were believed in medieval times to get into your head and send you mad. The species has many names in European regional dialects that suggest the 'fly' is in fact 'fool', meaning that it is an inedible lookalike for the rare but desirable edible species Caesars Mushroom Amanita caesarea. On the other hand Fly Agaric is often found in the same locations as the highly desirable Cep Boletus edulis, acting like a beacon to mushroom foragers on the look out for ceps. Animals as diverse as flies, cats, dogs and reindeer appear to be attracted to the mushrooms, with varying effects after ingestion ranging from severe poisoning to merry intoxication.

Shaman used the mushroom to see visions and aid religious trances. They didn't necessarily consume the mushroom directly, but may have boiled the mushrooms then drank the water, perhaps as a way of standardising the dose. This is a wise precaution, as although on average a single Fly Agaric is sufficient to be effective in an adult human, and the consumption of 15 has been calculated as a lethal dose, in fact the quantity of active chemicals can vary 10 fold, depending on season and locality. There is no antidote, and treatment for poisoning is mostly a matter of waiting for the effects to wear off. It isn't considered a reliable recreational drug as the effects are notoriously variable. It seems those using it today in the remote places where it is part of traditional life mix the dried powdered mushroom with water and drink the resulting potion. Apparently it induces buckets of vomit as a side effect to the trip.

Although the species is native to the Northern Hemisphere it has been introduced to Australia along with Monterey Pine Pinus radiata, which is widely used in commercial plantations. There is some concern in Australia, as it is forming new associations with native trees and possibly displacing native Australian fungi species.

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A la cuisine hier: Roasted Cauliflower, so much easier than Cauliflower Cheese.

Coq au vin

Ingredients for coq au vin. This is half a cockerel, weighing 1.5 kg and costing €6.49 (€4.35/kg)

Everybody's heard of coq au vin. It's a classic of French cuisine. I usually make it once a year in the late autumn or early winter, when the supermarkets have coq découpé for sale. Genuine coqs, for genuine coq au vin, are only available at this time of year. The male chicks produced when breeding egg layers in the spring are allowed to grow to maturity, then killed a few weeks before Christmas, at about 9 months old. They are big and muscular (and no doubt full of raging testosterone which also affects the flavour of the meat). Their leg tendons are like rods of iron and their flesh dark and tasty. They need to be combined with robust flavours and cooked low and slow.

Blanch the little onions to make them easier to peel. These are yellow onions and the skins stain the water quite strongly (it makes a good yellow dye).

I use Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe, which is a bit of a fiddle, but delicious. This recipe is for turkey legs, but is almost identical to the recipe in Meat that I used, except that it appears to have forgotten the mushrooms (which you sweat and add at the end). Our friend Ken does it slightly differently, marinating the meat overnight and no doubt equally delicious.

The onions being browned in butter and olive oil.

Check out the size of that drumstick!

Reheated and mushrooms added.

Plated up with mixed root vegetable mash.

Catching the Train to the Donjon de Loches

The station at Tours has a series of 18 painted ceramic panels decorating the walls. Their purpose is to beautify the station concourse and entice travellers to the destinations portrayed. At present the panels are badly in need of conservation and a crowd-funding campaign is underway to raise the money to save them. Each panel will cost €8000 to clean, conserve and reattach the tiles to the walls. To learn more about the restoration fund and the panels themselves go to Ulule Gare Tours (in French).

We thought that it might be fun to show one of the panels every now and then, with the timetable information for how one gets there from Tours today. The well preserved medieval/renaissance town of Loches is about an hour by train from Tours. These days the 'train' is mostly a replacement bus. From the station it's just a short walk to the Donjon. Cross the bridge over the Indre river then meander your way through the streets, remembering to look up and admire the architecture. The Donjon is at one end of the Cité Royal, accessible by entering the walled inner defensive perimeter which protected the Counts of Anjou, the Kings of England then the Valois Kings of France, via the Porte Royale.

Catching the train to Loches caused this frustrated outburst by Henry James in 1883:

The trains in Touraine are provoking; they serve as little as possible for excursions. If they convey you one way at the right hour, it is on the condition of bringing you back at the wrong; they either allow you far too little time to examine the castle or the ruin, or they leave you planted in front of it for periods that outlast curiosity. They are perverse, capricious, exasperating. It was a question of our having but an hour or two at Loches,...

It has to be said the situation hasn't changed very much.

The photo of the ceramic panel above was taken a few weeks ago, and it appears to be covered with a semi-transparent film. To see what the panel looked like a few years ago, go to this post.

The Touraine Loire Valley in December

December is the least sunny month of the year, with well under 100 sunshine hours, average maximum temperatures of around 10° and average minimums of around 0°.

Hoar frost on our neighbour's wall last December.

 Pixie Cups Cladonia sp, a type of lichen, in the woods between Richelieu and Chinon.

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Loire Valley Nature: A new entry has been added for Agricultural Land Habitat.
Photos have been added to the Violet Limodore Limadorum abortivum entry.

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A la cuisine hier: Far Breton, a sort of halfway between flan and clafoutis. I used lait ribot (Breton style buttermilk) and my homemade 2013 vin de noix, which is very nicely raisiny and port like these days.

Here and There: Post Offices

 Above, the post office in the small Australian town that I grew up in; 

below, its equivalent in Preuilly.

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A la cuisine hier: Sweet Chilli Sauce, made with chillies from Colin and Elizabeth's garden. We visited them recently and helped them out with their glut of chillies by taking a bag full. I made two batches of the sauce just to refine the consistency and flavour. It's fairly pokey.

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Au jardin hier: I finished planting the onions and have sown half a row of peas. I'm extremely dubious about the peas and fully expect to be providing a tasty feast for the resident rodents. However, the Aged One tells me I should be planting them now. A bed has been prepared for broad beans, but I need to go and buy some seeds.

No Swimming

Like the more famous Todd River which runs through Alice Springs, this river at nearby Simpsons Gap is ephemeral. On the rare and brief occasions when it does flow it is dangerous, rising to fill within minutes and carrying a heavy silt load and much swirling debris.

Super Simple Salmon

Recently I bought a whole Atlantic salmon. It was priced at €5 / kg and weighed in at a smidge under 3 kg, so it cost me about €14.50. A while ago we acquired a fish kettle, kind of by accident. It sits on top of one of the kitchen cupboards and I hadn't previously used it.

Whilst I love salmon, Simon thinks it is boring, so I wanted to cook the salmon and break it up into portions that I could freeze, then use just for me if he didn't want to eat it. I thought what better way to do that than in the fish kettle.

You'd look a bit surprised too if you suddenly found yourself in a tight fitting stainless steel pan...

 My salmon came scaled and gutted by the supemarket fishmonger, but it still had its gills. I cut these out with scissors because I had read that they can make the flesh bitter. I also trimmed the tail with the scissors, as the fish was slightly too long for the kettle.

Then I added aromatics -- chunks of leek, quarters of lemon, crushed black peppercorns, lots of salt, a couple of bay leaves and a small glug of a friend's homemade rosé wine which has rather unfortunately turned to vinegar. I put the kettle over two gas burners and filled it up with water. Once it was properly boiling I turned it off and allowed the fish to sit in the liquid until cool. Then I lifted it out, took off the skin, removed the flesh, checked it for bones and divided it up into 200 g lots. The yield was 1.5 kg of cooked salmon meat.

So far I've used one portion to make a sort of Nicoise salad for two with a very lemony dressing and it was good.

Yum

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Update to Previous Post: I've updated the Humungeous Hornets Nest post as the nest has featured in the local paper. Go to the post to read my translation of the article and there is a link to a related post on Chris Luck's blog.

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A la cuisine hier: Walnut Treacle Tart made from homegrown walnuts. The mixture escaped but luckily didn't burn and we got to eat lots of treacley goo off the oven tray. This dessert was only made possible by the kindness of various British friends who keep us supplied with golden syrup and black treacle amongst other things. There is no French equivalent for either, although you can sometimes buy golden syrup in the supermarket here these days.

Sablés, from the leftover sweet shortcrust pastry. Simon loved them and scoffed most of them before dinner.

Little Battlers

The smallest bat species here, such as Pipistrelle Pipistrellus spp and Lesser Horseshoe Rhinolophus hipposideros, weigh between 5 and 8 grams during the summer. They only need to put on a couple of grams of fat and they are ready for hibernation! By this time of the year they are tucked away in their hibernation site (although warm dry nights may still tempt them out). Lesser Horseshoes stay in hibernation from October to April, much longer than Pipistrelles, who don't get serious about hibernating until November and emerge as early as February if the weather is good. Their tiny size is why it is so important not to disturb them while hibernating. A single awakening could lose them enough energy that they don't make it to spring.

A downed Pipistrelle in our garage, not taking the hint to move into the nice safe toilet roll tube I am offering it. I'm wearing gloves because it is potentially not safe to handle bats with bare hands as they can carry serious diseases which can affect humans.

Bats have a dilemma though as they work to bulk up for the big sleep. They can't afford to get too fat or they risk being too heavy to fly. Both Pipistrelles and Horseshoes are exclusively insectivores. During summer they catch and consume as many as 3000 insects a night (I saw a calculation that worked out that this is the equivalent of a human eating 50 pizzas in a night), but during hibernation they wake only occasionally, if at all, to eat or drink. There are fewer insects around, so they conserve energy by hibernating. It's a delicate balancing act, putting on just enough weight to get through the winter. This is one of the reasons bats often roost socially -- they help keep each other warm. Roosting sites, which are used during the summer, can be tree hollows, rock crevices and all sorts of nooks and crannies in buildings (behind shutters and render which has partially detached from the wall are favourite places for Pipistrelles especially).

A hibernating Lesser Horseshoe in an old underground limestone quarry. 

Horseshoes are easy to recognise because of their habit of wrapping themselves up in their wings.

The hibernation sites here (as opposed to summer roosts) are generally abandoned limestone quarries, known as caves. They have stable low temperatures and constant relative humidity. In such places bats can safely enter a state of torpor where they lower their body temperature, slow their breathing and reduce their metabolic rate. By the time they emerge in the spring they will have lost half their body weight.

A small brown bat which I think is a Pipistrelle, but could be something else.

These little bats are about the size of a teabag, with a wingspan of about 20 cm. They live on average about 5 years but can live to 15 or so. The locals are quite tolerant of them, often recognising the sterling service they provide in terms of eating mosquitoes and midges. All bats are protected species in France. Nevertheless life is fairly tough for them here. Modern agriculture and its intensive use of insecticides is reducing their larder, and the many domestic and feral cats make their life a misery if they choose to roost in buildings or hunt near human habitation. Fewer and fewer roosting spaces are available in buildings as people renovate and fill gaps, block holes and renew blown render. Common treatments for woodworm in rafters and beams can have the unintended side effect of also poisoning roosting bats, even years after the treatment was administered. Bats like to follow linear features when hunting, and the loss of hedgerows in the countryside as fields get amalgamated to facilitate larger and larger machinery has affected the hunting success of the Lesser Horseshoe bats in particular.

A Pipistrelle flying over our garden.

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A la cuisine hier: Nutcracking. Honestly, this is the most tedious task in the kitchen that I can think of, with the exception of peeling chestnuts. Walnuts are alright -- they are large and I never have a huge crop of them as our trees are still young. Hazelnuts on the other hand are always abundant, and about one shell in three is empty, even after culling all those with weevil holes and those that don't come away from their husks cleanly, as these are always empty. Their small size means they don't work with many commercial nutcrackers and you risk getting your fingers pinched. This year I resorted to holding the base of the nut steady in some pliers and whacking them smartly on the tip with the meat mallet. Still took hours and some nuts were still fiddly.

Fungi in the Orchard

Recently the Association de Botanique et de Mycologie de Sainte Maure de Touraine held its annual fungi exhibition. I went along to help set it up and I took the opportunity to get the fungi from our orchard expertly identified by my friend Jean Bouton. So this is what it turns out we have:

Warted Amanita Amanita strobiliformis (Fr. Amanite solitaire).
This one caused Jean to exclaim with delight, partly because it was a perfect specimen, partly because the species is rare. It is found in forests, oak woods, hornbeam woods on calcareous soil. It is a large white mushroom with flakes on the cap like many Amanita spp have (the most famous is the Fly Agaric).  The stem is thick and bulbous. Jean assures me it is very tasty and perfectly edible. However, further reading suggests that not only does it share the Fly Agaric's flaky top, it possibly contains the same hallucinogenic chemicals. Therefore, despite Jean's enthusiasm, I will not be eating it.

Ivory Funnel Clitocybe dealbata (Fr. Clitocybe blanchi).
This species is widespread and common, appearing in lawns, meadows and pelouses (short calcareous grassland). It is a small white mushroom that forms fairy rings. It is very toxic, potentially deadly and its nickname is the sweating mushroom because of the symptoms that very quickly develop (within half an hour) if it is ingested. The specific antidote to the poison muscarine that the mushroom contains is atropine -- so that's OK then -- if I accidently poison myself I'll just take a swig of Simon's eye drops that give him funny dreams or chew on the nearest Thornapple Datura stromonium, which is a terrible weed here.

Weeping Bolete Suillus granulatus (Fr. Bolete granulé).
This mushroom grows in association with pines and is edible with the proviso that you are best to wipe off the slimy coating on the cap, as it has a laxative effect. The pores will produce milky droplets when fresh and removing the pores before cooking is also recommended.  Neither the pores nor the flesh stains when damaged or cut. It is the most common of the Suillus species that grow in a symbiotic relationship with pine trees and can be included in commercially available wild mushroom products. Apparently handling it can make some people come out in a rash.