How to Choose the Best Foie Gras

The term foie gras is subject to a number of strict rules. Labelling on foie gras products must clearly distinguish between something that is 100% foie gras and something that has other ingredients as well as foie gras. The latter is not allowed to be called foie gras, although the label may state the percentage of foie gras present. These other products may be labelled as paté, mousse or galantine, for example.

Seventy percent of French people will eat foie gras during the Christmas period. Foie gras can be either duck or goose liver.

Top quality foie gras with truffles.

There are different grades of foie gras even when they are 100% foie gras. The term 'foie gras entier' must be composed only of entire lobes of foie gras and some seasoning. The term 'foie gras' refers to pieces of foie gras, not entire lobes, pressed together and seasoned. The term 'bloc de foie gras' means reconstituted foie gras. If it contains a minimum 30% of pieces it can be termed 'bloc avec morceaux', which is a higher quality than just 'bloc'.

Then there are the products that contain foie gras plus other ingredients. Preparations with more than 50% foie gras can be called 'parfaits de foie d'oie ou de canard' (at least 75% foie gras plus liver sourced from ducks or geese not raised using the force feeding technique to produce 'fat liver'); 'medaillons ou pâté de foie d'oie ou de canard' (at least 50% foie gras or bloc de foie gras, formed into a core wrapped in a liver paste); and 'galantine de foie d'oie ou de canard' (at least 50% foie gras or bloc de foie gras mixed to a paste and seasoned).

 The dizzying array of foie gras products on display in a small town 

French supermarket just before Christmas.

Mousses have to be 50% foie gras, mixed to a paste and seasoned. Preparations containing at least 20% foie gras can be labelled 'pâté au foie d'oie ou au canard'. Note the subtle difference in terminology -- products with at least 50% foie gras are 'of foie gras', products with less (but at least 20%) are 'with foie gras'.

Since 2000 there has been an Indication géographique protegée (IGP or Certified Geographical Protection) for Foie Gras Ducks of the South-West. Since 1996 duck foie gras in France has come exclusively from male ducks. Since 1995 a foie gras must weigh more than 300 g.

Of course, we avoid all of these complexities by making our own from scratch every year.

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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.

Eating Foie Gras

Every year we prepare our own foie gras. Every year I mention it on the blog and every year a friend who thinks foie gras should be banned contacts me with information as to why she won't be eating foie gras any time soon.

Separating the two lobes of the liver.

Foie gras is a victim of its own legendary tastiness and luxury status. As disposable incomes in the 20th century increased, demand for the finer things of life increased. Products like foie gras had been produced in small scale operations in the south-west of France. It was mainly eaten at Christmas time, and even for the comfortably off was considered a seasonal treat. But even in France the idea that consumers wanted access to luxury products, wide choice and all year availability took hold. Large factory farms began proliferating, producing duck foie gras (because geese don't adapt well to industrial farming). These factory farms were devoted to producing maximum quantity so they could price the foie gras enticingly and encourage year round purchasing and the idea that most households could afford it. Taste, quality, good husbandry practices, and bird welfare took a back seat.

Fairly quickly certain consumers noticed. Already opposed to the gavage (force-feeding) that is necessary for the production of foie gras, the added cruelties of mass production caused a groundswell of opposition to foie gras. Things like beak clipping (to stop birds fighting or plucking their own feathers out), throwing unwanted female ducklings alive into incinerators or grinders (only the larger male ducks are used for foie gras and magret), restrictive cages with no solid floors or possibility of natural behaviour such as puddling or grooming, and being kept in a shed with no natural light throughout the ducks' life were increasingly unacceptable to an increasingly urban consumer base.

Veins removed, seasoned and just about to put the lobes back together.

Every few years there is a scandal associated with the industry. The most recent was an exposé of practices in 2013 at a very large producer who supplied high end and well known restaurants. This producer found their contracts cancelled.

It is worth remembering that if you are eating magret (fat duck breast) or often even cuisse de canard (duck leg) it is a 'by product' of foie gras production. This may be considered a good thing if you are into whole animal eating and not wasting food, but a bad thing if you are fundamentally opposed to foie gras. It's a bit like the connection between drinking milk and eating veal -- if you do one you should be morally bound to do the other, and likewise, if you are opposed to one, you must eschew the other.

We are very lucky in Preuilly. We can indulge in very good quality foie gras produced locally, by farmers who are happy to show visitors around and who have always answered my questions. They looked slightly surprised when I asked them about beak clipping. I could see them thinking 'That old chestnut!' and the response was that it has been illegal for some time and they would be very surprised if anyone practiced it these days. Likewise, the business of throwing female ducklings alive into grinders. Why would the breeders do that, they say, when they can be sold on to finishers, who will fatten them up and sell them as caneton (young duck for roasting)? They are well aware of the ethical issues associated with the production of foie gras, and whilst I am a valued customer who they are happy to talk to openly about the industry, they do not feel able to allow me to take photographs of the farm. They feel that is a security risk.

Home made foie gras in terrines ready to eat.

I would hesitate to eat foie gras if I didn't know the producer, and feel that it is important to acknowledge that some producers work hard at the husbandry and ethical issues. I can understand why people choose not to eat foie gras. I know lots of people who don't eat it just because they are squeamish about offal. I know two people in France who don't eat foie gras for ethical reasons. One of them, who is French, admits that she loves steak and foie gras, but became vegetarian because of conditions on industrial farms.

So what does this mythical dish taste like? Why is it so seductive? To be honest I don't quite know (but then, I don't find bacon the most irresistible food on Earth either). I like foie gras as a seasonal treat, but I don't want to eat it all the time. A large part of its appeal for us is the annual workshop where we get together with friends to prepare it for Christmas. It's sweet like a lot of offal is, with an intensely savoury overtone. Texturally it is rather like eating salted butter. It's melt-in-the-mouth and smooth, which is why eating it on toast, with a bit of grape, fig or onion jam is my favorite way. A slice as a garnish on a steak is excellent too.

Several European countries have outlawed the production of foie gras (eg Germany, the United Kingdom). The EU has written guidelines which state that no animal should be fed in such a way as to cause distress or physiological harm and their official view is that although there have been very few properly conducted scientific studies of the issue, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that the gavage is detrimental to the ducks' health. France has circumvented this by making a law which declares foie gras to be part of France's cultural and gastronomic heritage and as such, is protected. Bullfighting in Spain is protected under similar legislation, and frankly, I think the days of the gavage, cages and bullfighting are numbered. Foie gras I think will continue, as the industry will be forced to reinvent itself, to use non-forced feeding methods or disappear. It will be like rosé veal taking over from milk veal, and older consumers will grumble but everyone will get used to it and animal welfare will win in the end.

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.

The Annual Foie Gras Preparation 2018

As usual a group of us gathered at Rosemary and Jean-Michel's house to prepare foie gras for Christmas. I had picked up the foies fresh from the producer's abbatoir the day before. Here are some pictures of the day:

I've separated the two lobes of the liver.

Me, Jean-Michel and Paul, digging deep for veins.

Newbie Tamsin is helped by Rosemary, who has years of experience.

Seasoning the foie gras before wrapping in gauze for curing.

Six people attended -- three Australian (me, Rosemary and Tamsin) and three French (Jean-Michel, Paul and Françoise). Four foies were prepared and are now ready for consumption, although we will keep ours until Christmas celebrations really get underway. This year I've got English onion marmalade and a jar of something labelled piperade de Noël which claims to be ideal with foie gras. Both were opportunistically bought at Noz in anticipation of Christmas foie gras.

Here is a link to a previous post about making foie gras, and another for if you are uncomfortable with the idea of foie gras.

Foie Gras Fun

Thursday was our second annual foie gras workshop, held at Rosemary and Jean-Michel's place in Blois. I picked up the fresh duck livers from Maison Perrin on Monday and kept them in our 2ºC fridge. They were wrapped in cling film and I put them all together in a big plastic box. To transport them up to Blois they went in the eskie on a couple of freezer blocks. 

 Preparing foie gras involves quite a lot of peering and poking...

Mme Charcellay at the foie gras farm had told me to make sure the livers had been out of the fridge for at least four hours before we worked with them, so they weren't too hard. We also talked about the outbreak of bird flu to the south of us and she said she wasn't expecting it to arrive in our area. She had taken the opportunity to speak to the Health Minister, Marisol Touraine, who was in Preuilly last weekend for the Christmas market, and there is no indication that anything other than vigilance is required at the moment. Last time there was an outbreak all the birds had to be kept inside, to make sure they didn't have contact with the wild population which is responsible for spreading the disease.

 ...prodding and pressing...

We also discussed the new animal welfare laws that will be coming in by 2017 and how they will affect her work. She has already purchased and is using gavage cages that comply with the coming legislation but she is not convinced they add to the birds' welfare. She is at least the third generation of her family producing foie gras and she says the new legislation will make the salle de gavage look better to the uninformed visitor, but from a practical point of view may actually reduce the welfare of the ducks. The problem is that the cages are larger, which means the ducks have more wriggle room when they are being fed. With the new cages the handler has to hold the duck much more firmly and there is a risk they can be injured if they move.

The day of the workshop dawned with thick fog blanketing the Claise and Indre valleys. Fortunately as we travelled north the fog got thinner, but driving through the forest of Loches, with deer crossing in front of us twice, was not without stress.

 ...pushing...

We made a quick stop en route at Jean-Luc Bilien's goats cheese dairy, Fromagerie Moreau in Pontlevoy, and purchased a 60 day old Selle sur Cher for lunch (and one for us to take home). Jean-Luc was in good form and we wished each other seasons greetings before moving on.

  ...and patting.

At Rosemary and Jean-Michel's everything was prepared for the workshop and we went around the back of the house to admire JM's handiwork. He's recently installed a large new window over the sink, which makes an enormous difference to their kitchen. As usual he's done a terrific job. They bought the stone second hand, through the French equivalent of Ebay, leboncoin. We had quite a discussion about the stone as it is pierre de Beauce, a limestone that is harder than tuffeau but softer than marble. It looks great.

Françoise and Paul arrived for lunch, which began with an apéritif of sparkling Vouvray, some crudités and French onion dip (which of course as the name will tell you is a dish unknown to French people). Paul had made a delicious salmon quiche for entrée, followed by Jean-Michel's duck à l'orange, served with quinoa. I made apple snow and sablés (shortbread biscuits) for dessert, which turned out to be quite a hit.

Deveined foie gras.

Janet arrived just in time for dessert and coffee, then we all got to work with the foies. This went very easily as everyone except Janet had done it before. The next day I pressed the cured liver into two terrines and they are now developing flavour in the fridge.

For my previous post on making foie gras see here, and for Rosemary's post on this year's workshop, see here.

Seared Hanger Steak and Foie Gras

One of our favourite winter holiday season meals is French style steak topped with our homemade foie gras. Get your butcher to butterfly some hanger steak (the cut is called onglet in French and cut following the grain, not across it like rump or fillet) so it is fairly thin. This is a very popular cut in France, considered tasty but requiring some care to cook well.

Ingredients:
2 pieces of hanger steak
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
2 slices of foie gras

Method:

1. Pat the steak dry with paper towel.
2. Massage a little oil into the steak so it is lightly coated.
3. Season the steak with salt and pepper, then set aside to cure for a bit (until it is room temperature).
4. Heat a cast iron pan until smoking.
5. Place the steak in the pan and sear for one minute.
6. Turn the steak and top with the foie gras. Cook for one minute further. Serves 2.

Hanger must be cooked very rapidly at a high temperature. It overcooks easily and dries out because it does not have a high fat content. Cooked this way it retains all its flavour, tenderness and juiciness. Overcooked it becomes tough, stringy and flavourless.

Yum

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

Lunch With Friends

Every year we get together with friends in early December to prepare our foie gras for Christmas. It involves having lunch at Rosemary and Jean-Michel's house and each of the three couples involved bring a course each. This year we were on starters, Rosemary and Jean-Michel made the main and Françoise and Paul brought the dessert.

I made gravlax, using big pieces of trout rather than salmon. To my surprise when I came to buy fish for the recipe, salmon wasn't available in big enough pieces and trout was half the price. So trout it was, and I thought it was very successful. It's super easy too. The recipe is here. The most important thing is to have a truly sharp knife for slicing it thinly. To serve with the gravlax I made carottes et betteraves rapées, which is one of my favourite salads. The sparkling Vouvray that Jean-Michel had opened for pre-lunch drinks went perfectly with it. The Chablis he had thought might suit it (before he'd tasted the gravlax) turned out to be too dry.

Jean-Michel made coq au vin and Rosemary did roasted parsnips, potato and pumpkin.

Françoise had made a chocolate charlotte, which she said was a family recipe. It was served surrounded by raspberries and was like a ganache inside.

As usual we spent way more time eating, drinking and talking than preparing foie gras. All of us could quite easily prepare the foie gras at home in the course of an ordinary day, but it is so much nicer to come together and treat it as a winter celebration.

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A Passion for Baking: The Food Programme on BBC Radio 4 has featured the Clandestine Cake Club on their latest episode. You can listen to it here. We belong to the Loire Valley chapter of the CCC.

The Annual Foie Gras Workshop

As in past years we went up to Blois at the beginning of December with three fresh foies gras in the esky to prepare them in the company of friends Rosemary, Jean-Michel, Françoise and Paul. I buy everybody's foie gras at our local duck farm and we have lunch at Rosemary and Jean-Michel's. This year Antoinette very kindly drove us up, as she is working up there two days a week. Part of the tradition that has developed is that she and Niall go halves with us on a foie gras.

Françoise took these photos. I am very amused by all the pointing fingers in the top photo. It's because we are all doing maths to work out how much seasoning we need for each of the foies. Below Paul, Jean-Michel and I are deveining our foies.

This might be the last year we all come together to do it. Françoise and Paul have seen an apartment in Saint Nazaire and are planning to sell their home in Blois and retire further down the Loire River to where it exits into the Atlantic ocean.

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Loire Valley Nature: A new entry has been added for the extremely common moss Rough-stalked Feather-moss Brachythecium rutabulum.

A new entry has been added for Bush Vetch Vicia sepium, a plant of lush grasslands.

Dinner at the Chateau

Chateau Valcreuse is a 19th century country house owned by our friends Caroline and Alexander. During the summer months they run it as a high end bed and breakfast (or chambres d'hôtes as B&Bs are known in French).

Alexander rang us one day recently to tell us they had English guests who read the blog, and since he and Caroline had been meaning to invite us to dinner for some time, he thought we might like to come over and meet Nina and John. We did not hesitate, as they employ an excellent chef!

 A table: John, Caroline, Gerard, Alexandrine, Crystal, Alexander, Nina and Simon.

It turned out there were two other guests staying at the chateau, Gerard and Crystal, who are Flemish, and so we were 8, with 3 languages between us. We began with a champagne apéro by the pool, but once the sun went behind a cloud we decamped to their wonderfully comfortable sitting room.

Alexandrine, their housekeeper, served more drinks and verrines of red lentil velouté topped with toasted pain d'épices crumbs (it sounds weird but looked attractive and the spices in the 'gingerbread' blended well with both the slightly sweet crunchy crumbs and the smooth savoury soup). Moving on to the dining room the menu was foie gras with jerusalem artichoke purée, followed by roast leg of lamb served with a jus, girolles mushrooms and parsnips. I had Maroilles, Roquefort and a Brebis Fougère from the cheese platter, then dessert was a Belgian chocolate moeulleux with homemade vanilla iceream. Yum.

 Denis the chef, who came out to tell us we were eating légumes de la guerre (meaning that Jerusalem artichoke was all you could get during the War). The combination with the foie gras worked very well

A still white moeulleux wine was served with the foie gras, a red with the lamb, but unfortunately I didn't catch where either was from. With coffee Alexander produced a bottle of ice cold genever, which we non-Flemish assumed was the same as gin. He was delighted to be able to educate us. It smelled like gin, but tasted more like vodka, and was clearly very good quality, as it was very drinkable.

 My Belgian chocolate moeulleux, properly squidgy and gooey.

Caroline and Alexander are such good hosts, thoughtful and generous, that it's no wonder all their guests rave about them. We enjoyed meeting Nina and John and discovered that we know and love quite a few of the same areas in England too.

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Donkeys in pyjamas: Not all the donkeys on Ile de Ré have dreads but they all wear stripey pyjama-like trousers when working and are known as ânes en culottes. This is a nod to the old practice on the island of protecting the donkeys' legs from salt and prickly plants as they worked on the salt marshes. Nowadays the donkeys don't do anything more strenuous than providing rides for small children.

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Sour Cherries: I have started picking the sour cherries in earnest now. 7kg yesterday, destined for liqueur and clafoutis to start with. Simon has made a batch of his ChilliCherry Sauce. Any readers within cooee and not overwhelmed by their own cherries are very welcome to get in touch with us if they would like to come and pick their own (email us through our profiles on the right side bar if you don't already have an address for us). 

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Other Orchard News: The grape vines are in full leaf and sending out shoots and tendrils. The white Chasselas grapes have not flowered, so there won't be any grapes from them. The black Hamburgs have a nice showing of tiny grapes coming. It looks like being a moderate but not huge crop, which is just fine.

 If you live in Europe and are madly weeding your vegetable garden at the moment, please be careful of Wild Parsnip. It is capable of giving a very nasty 'burn' (I have the painful blisters on my wrist to prove it).

Magrets et Mogettes

One of the by-products of raising ducks for foie gras is the delicious morcel known as magret de canard (fat duck breast).  They are widely available in the late autumn and winter, as the foie gras ducks are slaughtered for their livers to be prepared for Christmas.

Duck meat is traditionally often paired with white beans in France, with the southern dish cassoulet being the most well known recipe. White beans go under a variety of names in French. They might be mogettes, lingots, cocos or haricots blancs. 

 

Here I am combining a simple way of cooking duck breast with a simple winter side dish of white beans and vegetables.

Ingredients:
2 fat duck breasts (magrets de canard)
Salt
Duck fat
Half a celeriac, peeled and thinly sliced
6 chard leaves, coarsely shredded
A large can of white beans
Pepper

Method:

1. Place a cast iron pan in the oven and turn the temperature up to its maximum.
2. Pat the duck breasts dry with paper towel.
3. Score the skin of the duck in a diaper pattern then rub a pinch of coarse salt into the cuts. Put aside at room temperature to cure a bit.
4. Heat some duck fat in a large frying pan.
5. Saute the celeriac for a few minutes until just cooked and starting to brown.
6. Add the chard, cover with a lid and wait for it to wilt and cook.
7. Add the can of beans with their liquid, mix well and cook for a few minutes until the beans are heated through.
8. Once the cast iron pan is smoking hot, place the duck in the pan, skin side down.
9.  Cook for 10 minutes in the oven then remove, cover and let sit for 10 minutes.
10. Season the beans and vegetables with pepper.
11. Slice the duck breast and serve with the beans. Serves 4.

Excellent local duck breast can be purchased from the farm shop at Maison Perrin. The vegetables for this recipe came from my local market garden Les Jardins Vergers de la Ferme de la Petite Rabaudière, who sell from the farm every Tuesday evening or from a stall on Preuilly market every Thursday. The SuperU supermarket at La Roche Posay stocks locally grown and processed white beans sold in glass jars.

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.

Christmas Eve Dinner

Last year's Christmas Eve dinner for two:

Flashed beef flank steak from our local butcher topped with homemade foie gras, served with roasted cherry tomatoes, peas and pommes boulangère.

Christmas cake with winter spiced custard.

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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.

Winter Truffle Markets

The second truffle market for the season will be on Sunday 28 December at Marigny Marmande near Richelieu. According to the local paper, the truffles promise to be abundant and well matured. The local producers are happy, especially as prices look like remaining stable, at about €800 to €1000 per kilo.

Truffle producers on one side, customers on the other, truffles in the middle.

Good climatic conditions from May to July, with alternating heat and rain, were favorable for the legendary fungus. The first tentative excavations at the beginning of December have already hinted at some nice surprises, supporting the predictions based on observing the weather. Depending on the area, the crop seems to be a few weeks more advanced than last year.

 Brie with a layer of truffle.

The market includes around 40 local producers and artisans as well as the truffle farmers. 2014 looks like being a good vintage, not just for wine, but for the truffles too.

 Buying a truffle a few years ago.

The markets will be in the Salle des Fêtes, Marigny Marmande, from 9 am to 1pm, Sundays 21 and 28 December, then Saturdays 10 and 24 January and 14 February.

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A la cuisine hier: Grilled oysters, leftover guinea fowl with salad, homemade foie gras with toast, flash fried steak with foie gras, potato wedges and buttered spinach, leftover Christmas pudding and custard.

Short/City Break Report: Cahors, Lot, Occitanie

Cahors sits in a big loop of the Lot River.

We spent two nights in Cahors in late July, on the end of our trip to the Pyrenees. It is a small city with an attractive old central quarter which has been largely restored in recent years (and some older restorations). The City has gone down the route of restoring medieval buildings and thus providing a lot of social housing. The neighbourhood demographic of this section of town is pleasingly mixed.

Pont Valentré.

 

We stayed centrally, opposite the train station. There is a good range of restaurants and cuisines within walking distance. Many restaurants have large terraces, and there are lots of take aways. Cahors is the centre of an increasingly well regarded wine region, considered these days by many to be better value than Bordeaux (certainly for 'daily drinkers', although they don't yet compete in terms of the really high end product). Cahors is also in foie gras country, with many producers in the surrounding farms. Foie gras means lots of other duck dishes too, especially smoked fat duck breast (magret de canard fumé), which often features on salads in the city.

The Tourist Office, on the main square, Place Gambetta.

 

There is a large hospital in the area and clearly a bit of a substance abuse problem which put me on alert when I was alone in the evening. During the day there were plenty of tourists and it was entirely safe.

Medieval buildings.

 

The medieval quarter is full of impressively historic and nicely crumbly brick merchants houses and warehouses. There are many narrow alleys with jettied first floors nearly touching above you as you walk down them. The cathedral has an intact cloister which is a lovely cool and calm visit.

 

Old doorway.

It's not a city I would recommend for first time visitors to France, but if you are here for the third or fourth time I would suggest it as an option, particularly if you use it as a base to explore the Lot Valley and are into hiking and water sports. The river plays an important part in the life and history of the city and the gorge it flows through is quite dramatic, with its towering sandstone cliffs. For those of you who are French speakers, the local accent can be a bit difficult to understand, especially in these masked up days.

Alleys intersecting.

A medieval building.

Creation story wall painting in the Cathedral.

A pedestrianised shopping and residential street in the old part of town.

Jacques Chapou, a hero of the Resistance. A teacher who was fired by the Vichy government, he joined the Resistance, leading and organising many successful operations, which ended when he was wounded in a skirmish, finally shooting himself rather than be captured.

 

The Cathedral cloisters.