Festive tables 2012

 Dinner at home on Christmas Eve. Nine of us for aperos, five at the table. A Quebecois-French menu of corn bisque, tourtière, and bûche de Noêl (that's the scrumptious traditional Christmas dessert that looks like a log). Cooking notes: I'd forgotten that ground pork is so much leaner here in France (and much more roughly chopped) than in Canada. A buzz or two in the Moulinex did the trick. I'd also forgotten that lard is hard to find (in the end I cheated and used all-butter in the pastry). I forgot the tomatillos in the freezer that I'd planned to make chutney from, thinking that their acidity would temper the rich pork pie. Still, it was all good.

   A day later, an incredible feast at friends John and Lee-anne's on Christmas Day. In true traditional style, we began with oysters, foie gras, prawns and smoked salmon...

   Fourteen of us all together. We're now into some serious eating...roasts of turkey, capon and pork...we began at 1 p.m. and ended many hours later. Our contribution was cauliflower gratin, red cabbage, and a classic English trifle.
   No problem finding the sponge cake to spread with jam to line the bottom of the bowl. Easy to find tinned apricots to go under the top layer of whipped cream. I even got my hands on some angelica as the rather naff, but definitely traditional, garnish.
  What I had a real problem making was the layer of custard. Our local supermarkets all have shelves dedicated to "British" groceries. Tinned steak-and-kidney pie, Branston pickle, Heinz Baked Beanz, that kind of thing. I assumed that's where the Bird's Custard Powder would be. Not in Intermarché, and--surprisingly--not in SuperU in Mirepoix which, on Christmas Eve, was so jammed with customers that the queue of cars trying to park stretched back beyond the roundabout.
   Thinking hard, I decided that crème Anglaise would work if I thickened it. I checked the bakery products shelf. Uh-uh. I looked along the coolers, thinking maybe it would be among the tubs of crème fraiche. Nope.
   Flailing around for ideas, I ran into a friend and told him the whole sad story. He led me over to the shelves of UHT milk, UHT cream and there it was--a contained of crème Anglaise. Why there? Good question. Long story short, back home, I tipped out the contents into a saucepan, added two, and then three, beaten eggs and ended up with lovely thick yellow English custard.

   Finally, our usual family Christmas breakfast of smoked salmon, caviar, scrambled eggs and bubbly made festively red with raspberry juice. Eaten on Boxing Day this year because we'd got up very late on The Day and realized that a big breakfast a couple of hours before a big lunch wasn't a bright idea.

How to Make Christmas Shortbread Mice.

     "Cute" doesn't begin to describe these festive little creatures and "onerous" doesn't start to describe the work involved in making them. Do you really want to hear the entire step-by-step process? Right, you asked for it.

      The night before.... mouse-making, the recipe told me to make my shortbread dough. Easy-peasy. Whack some butter into the Cuisinart, add flour, vanilla and egg, and it all turns into a single perfect ball of dough, ready to rest in the fridge overnight. 

      Except that it didn't. 

     It was more like fine shingle on a Norfolk beach. Gravelly anyway. My fault entirely. Mea culpa, ten times over. I'd only seen the word "butter" in the recipe, and not the term "softened." This had come straight from the freezer. Thinking fast but not very sensibly, I beat up another egg, and threw about half of it into the dough, which appeared to help. 

     Except that it didn't, as I found out the next evening. 

     Initially the dough felt alright. Though a bit sticky, I could still shape it into mice. I indented the eye sockets, stuck in two delicate pieces of almond for ears, did that 20 times and placed the baking sheet in the preheated oven.  

      And....as I watched....as the warmth hit them....they slowly spread into primeval flattish shapes. Mouse roadkill. 

      We ate them. I didn't bother with applying ickle chocolate eyes and noses (melt a chocolate bar; use a toothpick) but I did use the first batch to practice my tail insertion skills. (Poke skewer up mouse's derrière while it's still warm and insert length of licorice.)

      Made with properly softened butter, the second batch went better...

    Still not sure if I'd make them again. But it's seeded the idea for a separate post on how the world is divided into those who bake and those who don't. 

    

200 diamonds, 40 gift tags, and how to devein a foie gras.

    The magazines I buy in France often come with a little freebie attached, a small cadeau stuck to their cover with some magical sticky substance that you can peel off and roll into a ball.

   In the spirit of the approaching season, this month's issue of Modes et Travaux has two giveaways: a small booklet of 40 quite good-looking gift tags, and a petit sachet of 200 "diamonds" to sprinkle on your festive table. This photo doesn't do them justice. These are very sparkly indeed to the point that I think I'd want to save them rather than throwing them out at the end of the meal, (except that the thought of sorting them out from the baguette crumbs doesn't thrill me).
   I suppose I'd define Modes et Travaux as a women's general interest magazine, assuming her interests are fashion, home décor, crafts, gardening, travel and food. At this point I can see I've wandered far off-piste and am going to have to cut straight to the topic I planned to write about in the first place, which is...
   How different the recipes are in French magazines.
   I'll pass briefly over the one for poularde au champagne, which calls for an entire bottle and is snuck in with an article on decorating, and move to the main event: seven fabuleux menus to make for Christmas.
    One begins with a soup of wild mushrooms and foie gras, and moves on to filet mignon en croûte. Dessert is a quick assembly of hazelnut, and chocolate, ice creams, marrons glacés and cream. A "black and white" menu kicks off with a carpaccio of black radish and scallops. "Noël So British" is nothing like any Christmas meal I've ever had in the motherland. Not when you start with a truffled pea soup and the main course--leg of lamb--calls for a great deal of whisky and Asian spices. Dessert is a traditional Christmas pudding topped with sparklers rather than the usual blue flames. Thank you, and God save the Queen.
    The points I'm trying to make here is that a) Christmas in France is more about the food than anything else, b) that what elsewhere in the world are thought of as luxury ingredients may not be cheap here but they're definitely within the realm of possibility--and finally, c) that you'd better have your methods down pat.
    In case you don't, Modes et Travaux's monthly "Masterclass" this time around describes, in words and pictures, four basic techniques that, at this time of year, everyone should have at their fingertips:
     How to fillet a salmon.
     How to open oysters.
     How to carve a capon.
     And...wait for it...
     How to devein a fresh foie gras
(P.S.  I'm dying to make the recipe on the next page. A "shepherd's pie" of duck with wild morilles.)
  

Christmas Wrap-Up

       The carcass of the chapon is in the big green enamel pot burbling away into soup. The Brussels sprouts, parsnip purée, roast potatoes, stuffing--the chopped celery and onion mixed in with lots of leftover baguette plus sage, rosemary and thyme from the garden--and gravy are all gone, reheated for a last dinner with Karen and Rob, our friends who stayed here for Christmas. The last of the bûche de Noël went while we watched Love, Actually, an annual tradition guaranteed to leave you teary-eyed.

     Here we are getting into the spirit on Christmas morning with glasses of bubbly before we sat down to scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. 

      Brunch over, it was time to start peeling, chopping and mixing--and discovering "oh, ****, the chapon still has its head on." I hadn't thought to check but at least the innards were gone. What we needed was a chicken guillotine. Instead, Peter used our huge Asian cleaver. Stuffing into the bird. Bird into the oven. It all gradually came together. 

      More friends arrived at 3:30 p..m., the foie gras and more bubbly came out, and then the bird and all its trimmings. 

    Next came cheeses from Spain, and some considerable time later found Isabelle in the kitchen adding a little dusting of icing sugar to the individual desserts she'd made.

   In fact, she'd brought along two desserts. Even though we didn't think we could, we all managed a slice of her luscious chestnut-cream bûche de Noël. 

   Most friends left a bit after 11 p.m. and then the rest of us snuggled in to the sofas, threw another log on the fire, and caught the AbFab Christmas special on BBC. 

...And it's almost Christmas....

    I'm not going to waffle on about the long silence between blog posts. Just know that my New Year's resolution is to post more often. It's late afternoon on Christmas Eve, there's a cup of tea at hand, a nap in the offing, friends coming for aperos at 6:30 p.m., a table booked at the café for an hour later--and all the ingredients for the Christmas feast in the fridge, or in the making.
    I'm in the middle of foie gras preparation. It's been deveined, sprinkled with salt, pepper and some of Alain's legendary eau de vie. This morning, I wrapped it into a roll, and wrapped it in plastic. Next, I'll wrap it in cloth, poach it for 90 seconds, chill it, and rewrap it even more tightly with a second layer of cloth. This is the "torchon" method as spelled out by Michael Ruhlman. http://ruhlman.com/2011/05/how-to-make-torchon-recipe/
     Yesterday, we were on the road before 9 a.m. and at Lavelanet market soon after. What a magical drive there with thick mist covering the fields, and steaming away into invisibility as we watched.

   With the mist gone, the sky was as blue as heaven.
The town was bustling, everyone in a convivial mood as they went about collecting their Christmas orders. I'd ordered a chapon--a capon--from the butcher's so we picked that up first and took it back to the car after the moment of terror when the butcher ran his finger down the hand-written list of names and couldn't find mine...

A corner of the butcher's shop. Note the silver  Christmas candelabra on the counter, and the row of cups awarded to "best butcher..." on the top of the sausage display case. Carcasses hang behind the wooden doors to the left.

   Chapon out of the way, it was time to whizz down the length of the market to the halles--and my favourite produce stall.

    The family who run this have a farm about half an hour away. Everything they sell, they grow. Can you make out the bright pink and red stalks of the chard? We got through a few kilos of that at a meal with friends earlier this week.
    No chard needed today but Brussels sprouts, parsnips, parsley, carrots, leeks, shallots, onions and garlic...the bags were getting heavy by now. I walked back outside on this bitingly cold day, and spotted Peter queueing to buy oysters which, like foie gras, are traditional at Christmas.

  
    While he waits patiently, I want to tell you about the profusion of seafood at this time of year. Earlier this week, we drove over to Pamiers where, among other places, we trawled the Carrefour supermarket. As well as the usual fish counter, pretty impressive at any time of year, there were two huge displays of oysters in wooden boxes, and a central table covered in seaweed, and heaped with live lobsters, crabs, langoustines, mussels and clams. (Next to it was a cooler the size of a bus filled with foie gras in various forms: pale beige lobes, vacuum-packed to be prepared at home, tins of different dimensions, slices...a colossal amount.)
    The other essentials in the Christmas triumvirate are champagne and Sauternes (or some other sweet wine) to sip with your foie gras.

     A bûche de Noël --a Christmas log--is the traditional dessert. So what's it to be? The Black Forest version? The "white lady" kind with vanilla and chocolate? Or a Norwegian omelette which, for reasons unknown, is the French name for Baked Alaska. Our friend Isabelle is bringing dessert so I can't tell you what we'll be eating....
    Merry Christmas to all--and to all a good night.

Christmas in Bangkok.

   Apologies for the long silence--and very belated good wishes for 2011--now well underway. Anyhow, here's what we've been up to...
   Soon after my last post, we took off for Thailand, a long, long flight made extra exciting by snowed-in airports in Paris, missed flights, I won't bore you with the details except to say that Air France has my vote for keeping its sang froid when confronted with hundreds of delayed travellers.
    A couple of months there, and in Laos, went by in a flash...but now we're back in France. The jet-lag is conquered, we've become used to cold weather again, and also used to reaching for a glass of vin rouge instead of a Singha or Beer Lao.
    I won't do a day-by-day travelogue, just take you through the high spots, and throw in a few photo essays, and then, mes amis, back to life in France.
   Flashing back to December.... It felt very, very peculier spending Christmas in a warm climate. In fact, it didn't remotely like Christmas at all. Instead of putting on winter coats, hats and boots, and going for a frosty walk, we got into what would we would end up wearing every day: flip-flops, cotton pants and T-shirts or tank tops. We didn't eat turkey or Christmas pud. Lunch was noodles and stir fries, and dinner was outdoors on the roof of a smart hotel. Steak frites was what we ate, oddly enough.
  

Thai people may be mostly Buddhist but that doesn't stop them putting up Christmas trees, lights and--in the case of the colossal MBK shopping centre, a full-size helicopter with ascending Santas. 

The staff at the little restaurant where we ate lunch were definitely in the mood too.

Mirepoix on a wintry afternoon....

We drove into Mirepoix the weekend before last for its Christmas market. The day was sharp and cold as a diamond but I've rarely seen this medieval town look more beautiful. It wasn't too crowded, and the winter light was low enough to spotlight the carvings under the arcade. Anyway, mes amis, some photo ops with extended captions.

A boulangerie that believes when it comes to Christmas decorations, more is more. The climbing Santa figure is very popular around here. 

Different varieties of honey, from the mountains, from wild flower meadows, from the forest. Don't their amber and gold colours make your want to spoon them out on to freshly made hot buttered toast?

I love this butcher's shop in the corner of the square. See those rotisserie chickens behind the sign?



Kids around here watch these instead of television. 

This sign hangs outside a store catering to pampered chiens et chats.

Decorating for Christmas

  Our house standard Camembert is La Rustique which comes in the traditional round wood box with an inner wrap of red-and-white checked paper. I'd been squirreling away this paper for ages, smoothing it out and stacking it in a drawer. Here's what was at the back of my mind. The inside of the "gift" is a chunk of polystyrene. Kate did the work, wrapping each little white block, sealing it with tape and then trimming it with red ribbon. The evergreens are prunings from the garden. 

    When the checked paper ran out, she used leftover pages from an 19th century book that I've torn apart for its illustrations.

A Last Look at Christmas

And you thought Santa's only way into your home was via the chimney? Not in France. Although clues--no sack, no toys--suggests that maybe this is his exit route. This time of year, exterior-ly mounted Santas on ladders are everywhere. Also the occasional Santa on a swing. I still haven't worked out what that's all about.

The Christmas Feast

Our good friends John and Lee-anne had invited us for a lunch that started a bit after 1 p.m. and saw us wandering home through the village about nine hours later. There was a walk in there somewhere and a spirited carol session around the piano so it's not as debauched as it sounds....quite. 

We began with hot sausage rolls, then moved to the dining table for oysters, followed by foie gras. After that, we got into serious eating. There was a chapon--a capon, a castrated rooster if you want to be technical--and sage-onion-and-apple dressing. Kate made a marvellous dish of Brussels sprouts braised with lardons and white wine. Lee-anne roasted pork stuffed with prunes, tender enough to cut with a fork, and made broccoli au gratin. Leeks, carrots, potatoes parboiled and roasted while, like an actor between gigs, the bird was resting...two ovens-worth of food in all. 

Sometime later, we ate dessert, a fruit cake but made with chocolate which made it the best, moistest fruit cake I'd ever tasted. 

Champagne, blanquette, white wine, red wine and, for the men, a concluding shot or two of single malt. Friendship, memorable food and wine, singing and laughter. It doesn't get any better than that.  

Christmas Morning.

No stockings this year. We either left them behind in Vancouver or they're in one of the innumerable boxes still waiting to be unpacked. 

We also left it a little late--late on Christmas Eve in fact--to buy a Christmas tree. "Desolée," they said at Bricomarché. All gone. So we roamed around the outdoor section, currently filled with heather, pansies and dispirited-looking plants left over from the summer and eventually bought a very small tree, about a foot high, in a pot. Once we'd adorned it with a single string of lights and our littlest decorations, it looked very sweet.

Christmas morning dawned bright and frosty. Down at the boulangerie, the mood was cheerful. The other madame there pointing out that this was not a good day for a swim in the lake. Croissants and pains aux raisins were another break with tradition but we knew we were in for a feast of Rabelaisian proportions later in the day.

Last Market Before Christmas

A cold, crisp and sunny Monday morning for the final trip to Mirepoix before Christmas. Most people had decorated their stalls. Purple tinsel for the olive, nut, and anchovy sellers. Holly sprigs for the madame who sells antiques. Some folk had set up a festive table behind their vegetable stall, dressed up as Santas and were indulging in a bit of Noël cheer.

Crimson Cherries and Fat Pigs

Right now, the stalls at the daily market in the old section of Nice are loaded up with sweet treats for Christmas.  Glacé fruits glow as though they have lights inside them--clementines, lemons and long green stalks of angelica. Elsewhere are confections of nuts and nougat. The petals of violets and roses are candied. 

Best of all are the little sweets made of marzipan. Treated like a sublime modelling clay, the fruits and objets made of almond paste are so exquisite you can't imagine actually biting into one of them.

The amazingly realistic cherries pictured here are the same size as real ones, and no two are the same. The pigs are about the length of your thumb. 

I watched a woman assemble a small box of marzipan fruits, then add a little bag of crystallized violets. Maybe she'll give them as gifts or take them to her family's as a treat to hand round after the Christmas feast.

A Day in Toulouse

It's been a few weeks since I've been in the big city so today Kate and I took the train to Toulouse. First stop, a little retail therapy at Galeries Lafayette where we sniffed lavender-scented candles, fondled cashmere blankets and looked with longing at twinkling modern versions of classic chandeliers. 

It was bitingly cold today and all the small kids out on field trips were so heavily bundled up that the smallest ones could hardly stand up. 

Rows of wooden chalets had transformed the main square into an Alpine village. We cupped our hands around plastic glasses of spicy vin chaud as we wandered around. Because he looked so exactly like the drawing of him, we photographed this foie gras seller. 

The Léran Choir Makes its Debut

Four weeks of weekly rehearsal and the choir was ready for its first performance. Choirmaster Alan Simmons had done a stupendous job of making a random group of singers sound, if not dazzlingly professional, at least in tune. 

At 7:30 on Saturday night, we had our final run through in the usual rehearsal hall. Then, abandoning our coats, we hurried through the cold night to the café. Eventually brought to order (and drinks orders temporarily suspended) we launched into our six carols, some French, some English before ending with choir + audience renditions of "Oh come, all ye faithful" and other popular Christmas songs. 

Our first Noël in France.

Three weeks to go and Christmas food is now starting to show up in the shops. 

But not a plum pudding in sight.

Instead, following a tradition that started in Provence, French people go through 13 desserts after their Christmas Eve dinner, before they go to midnight mass. The number represents Christ and his 12 apostles. 

Not quite as intimidating as it sounds as you can see from this shot of a pre-packed 13-dessert tray at SuperU.