Guess what I found in Léran!

   More days than not, I go for a walk through some part of our village. Sometimes it's just down to the halles to buy a baguette. Other times it's because I've been writing all morning (or afternoon) and need a break. Often it's out into the open countryside all of five minutes away, or along by the river.
   Almost always, I see something new. It could be a tiny passageway that threads between houses, or a date carved in stone over a door, or simply the changes in the seasons.
    But rarely is it as good a surprise as this.

    A duck pond with chateau view, sandwiched into a little gap down by the river. Apologies for the quality of the image. To be honest, it's not that photogenic a pond but I was delighted that it even exists.

       Here's a closer look at the ducks. What I'm wondering if whether they're kept as pets or....?
After all, this is serious confit and foie gras country.

Food So Good You Follow Your Nose

  Even before you see this stall in Mirepoix, you can smell what it sells from the great heady, indescribably good waft that lures you on, so tempting that it makes your stomach gurgle. Walk round the corner and you see this. Beyond it--and I'll post on this separately sometime soon--is the stall where we buy almost all our vegetables.

 In the foreground, what you get with your couscous (out of frame, in an equally large pan to the right).

  "La Part" means a serving. Parmentier de carnard is shepherd's pie made with duck.

A paella. Get there early enough and you can watch the stallholders building it from scratch.

 Mussels in cream sauce. Also available: moules marinières. Send a comment and let me know what you would order.

Greed Times Two.

   I usually hate coming up with titles for these posts but this one was a simple case of every-picture-tells-a-story. 

Spotted outside a restaurant in Foix. I think, I think that "gourmand" was mis-translated as "greedy".
But, so help me, I still can't work out what a "muffe" is. Feel free to contribute ideas in your comments. Oh, and I should point out that "gizzards"--usually from a duck, and confited--are really tasty. (Finally, "day dessert" is probably "dessert du jour")

The tenuous link between this and the first shot is that both feature duck. These were magrets that we bought at Lavelanet market and put on the barbecue that evening. Rosy and succulent, they're better than the best steak. Rounding out the plate: new potatoes with parsley, and salad elements. Increasingly lazy, I arrange radishes, lettuce leaves, sliced green onion etc on a large platter and let everyone assemble their own.

  

Aiguillettes

   At some point over the past couple of weeks (this being the season when The Duck takes precedence) I picked up a package of aiguillettes. These are fillets cut from the breast of a duck and I got eight in this particular packet for about 2.50€. 

  Aiguillettes are incredibly simple to cook. All you do is fry them in hot melted butter--not too long because you want them pink in the middle. Once they were cooked, I put them on a warmed plate, tented with foil. Then I deglazed the pan with a slosh of Armagnac, reduced that down and whisked in some crème fraîche to make a sauce. Butter, booze, cream. Got that? With them we had rice cooked with herbs and onion, and leeks braised in butter and a slug of Picpoul de Pinet (got to use up all those odds and ends of wine). The apples are there because the plate needed tarting up if it was going to appear on a blog.