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.)
  

Foie gras season is upon us...

     In addition to knitting patterns, "before" and "after" home decor stories and a beauty column--"oups, une ride!": "Oops, a wrinkle"--the November issue of Modes & Travaux also promises to deliver (in the largest type on the cover) recipes for jams, terrines and foie gras.
    To be honest, there are only two recipes for foie gras inside, one simply coated in salt, the other for foie gras poché au vin rouge. And the ingredients for that are in the photo. One vacuum-packed foie gras and one bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône, as specified by the recipe. It didn't say to wrap the foie gras in cheesecloth but I thought it might be a good idea. Finding it was a different matter. I eventually ended up with a sac à jambon--a ham bag. You can buy these anywhere at this time of year, also entire legs of pork at ridiculously cheap prices. I'm tempted, I'm tempted....
    I turned the gauze sac into a designer ham bag by cutting off one end and wrapping it tightly around the foie gras.  That was after I'd denervé-d it by letting it come to room temperature, feeling around inside it for anything vein-y and pulling it out with my treasured Spencer-Wells artery forceps (an insanely useful kitchen tool when you really need to get a grip).
    Once it had been very, very gently poached, the foie gras was left in the wine overnight. Not a pretty sight and the next morning, it looked so thoroughly disgusting that I started thinking about what else I could serve as a first course that night.
    Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I fished the foie gras out of its winy bath, pressed it hard on to paper towels, and repeated the process until most of the wine had gone. Then I left the foie gras to firm up in the fridge. In the end, it was delicious. Baguette and/or pain d'épices, and fig jam went with it, and glasses of rich amber Loupiac. Then we had salmon with lentils and leeks, various cheeses and a lemon and chocolate mousse. Let me know if you'd like the recipes for either and I'll post them.

Street food in Montmartre

     Held each October, the Fête des Vendanges in Montmartre celebrates the very small amount of wine actually produced right here in Paris. The harvest, of course, is just another excuse for a helluva street party. Much of it happens around the base of Sacré Coeur, the white onion-domed church that's one of the city's best-known landmarks. The view from the top is staggering, and so are you after ascending hundreds of stone steps. Rather than climbing on foot (or probably on knees by the time we'd made it there) to the base of Sacré Coeur, we queued with dozens of other party-goers and took the funiculaire, a cable car that, for the price of a metro ticket, whisks you from base camp to summit in about a minute.
    Wine, wine, wine, champagne, champagne, champagne. Sample it, buy it by the glass or by the bottle and ask for it to be opened and supplied with a few plastic glasses. Then go find a convenient spot to enjoy.

Then stack your empties alongside all the others.

      It's not all drinking of course. There's also food, food, food. This year's theme is France's various tropical islands. Spicy smells met us as we climbed towards the main exhibition area.

This stall sold sandwiches filled with foie gras--and your choice of fig chutney of confit of onions--or goose rillettes.

     Bad mistiming. It was too late for lunch, and too early for dinner, so we ruined our appetites about 6 p.m. with a barquette of potatoes and cepes, then funiculaire-d back to ground level, metro-d back to the Marais and, a couple of hours later, still found ourselves too stuffed for anything more than a bowl of Vietnamese noodles.

The Good Life at the Château de Cavanac

    Kate, our daughter, is staying with us so, for a treat, we booked us all into the Château de Cavanac, a few clicks south of Carcassonne. I'd heard good things about this place from my cousin in Ireland and local friends so, after a morning and lunch in the old walled cité, we drove there with high expectations, parked outside tall wrought-iron gates and crunched our way across the gravel into reception.
    The chateau is just plain gorgeous. Each room is decorated differently, and assigned the name of a flower. Ours overlooked this courtyard filled with palms and oleanders.  http://www.chateau-de-cavanac.fr/ 

    Dinner here is the kind of sumptuous meal that makes you glad you don't have to drive home afterwards. A five course event, complete with wine, it costs 42 euros--or a bit under $60 (US, Canadian or Australian--they're all around the same at the moment).
     The long beamed room was already almost full by the time we sat down. A wood oven blazed in the background behind a glass-fronted counter laden with meats and produce. Three opened bottles of wine stood on the table (the chateau has its own vineyard) and seconds later, peach kirs arrived and a basket of small peppery pastries typical of the region. I won't walk you through the entire menu (just click on http://www.chateau-de-cavanac.fr/menuvf.pdf ) and I'll only show you one photo--my first course, one of the four variations on foie gras you could start with.

     Roasted in a wood oven, the lamb was probably the best I've ever tasted, crisp and smoky outside, and meltingly tender. Next came a platter of five different kinds of local goat cheese with a pot of honey to drizzle over them. By the time we reached dessert, all I could cope with was raspberries and cream. A little glass of verveine tea and so to bed.

A look at the vineyards the next morning before we headed home.

  

Check Out This Blog--Even If You Don't Speak French.

    I must, I MUST, I really must start a list of the blogs I regularly visit (a vow that's right up there with I must post more regularly, I must clean my office, I must finish planting bulbs in the garden, and I must quickly track down an on-line supply of bluebell bulbs because I can't find any here in France and I have visions of drifts of wistful blue replacing the wilderness area come spring). 
    The reason I've held off a blog listing is because, as my old history teacher would say about some of my projects, it demonstrably "lacks focus". Cooking, crafts, clothes. travel, design, gardening, my blogosphere loves are all over the map--and I mean that quite literally. Browsing posts on a Malaysian, Thai or Chinese food blog is almost as good as being there. 
     One of the most luscious French blogs I've found is http://pechedegourmand.canalblog.com/ All recipes, all likely to make you drool. No excuses about not speaking French. If food is one of your passions, you can probably translate enough to work out what you'd need to do to recreate each dish.

     The most recent recette was for a baked potato stuffed with smoked salmon and topped with thick cream and a poached egg. (By the way, both these shots are from the blog.)  I love how the author has set the potato on coarse salt, and primped it up with a sprig of dill.
    The post before that reminded me once again of the huge role that luxury ingredients play in the run-up to Christmas. What you see on that salad plate is a mix of foie gras, scallops, girolles (wild mushrooms) and truffles. Yum.

 

'Tis the season

   We must have already taken last week's supply of "pub"--the printed publicité that shows up in our mail-box--to the dechetterie, otherwise I would have photographed and posted the front page of the Intermarché flyer which shows an almost life-size foie gras.

   Foie gras and other duck parts are everywhere in the run-up to Christmas. The butcher in the marché couvert at Lavelanet had a fine stock on Friday along with duck gizzards, big white fat-laden duck legs for making confit, duck necks to stuff, duck wings, and duck carcasses (I keep meaning to buy a supply of these for stock-making purposes). 

   Also displayed was what looked like an enormous sausage. We asked about it and, as well as explaining what it was--the duck carcass deboned, stuffed, rolled and stitched with stout black thread--the butcher cut us a slice to taste. Good stuff indeed, essence of duck. It can also be sliced thickly and seared in a pan, he said. There's no name for this seasonal "sausage" so I expect it's a dish he invented.

   On the way home, we stopped at the supermarket for basics. The first item that greeted us was a sale on champagne--another sign that Christmas is on its way.

More finds at the Pamiers flea market

We drove to Pamiers this morning through a mist so thick and wet that most cars had their headlights and windscreen wipers on. When we got there, we saw that many of the stallholders had covered their wares with plastic sheets. It was too chilly to eat our pains aux raisins outside so we squeezed into a café on the main square and drank our crèmes elbow to elbow with everyone else. Eventually the sun burned through and the thermometer shot up but not to the high teens (Celsius) that it's been for the past couple of days. 

As usual, what was for sale ran the gamut from these 1930s soda syphons to spanners and children's clothes.

Our buys today included a saw for pruning roses and hedges, a DVD (although we still need a player) a classic tweed overcoat which I was sold by a very persistent vendeuse, a small folk art house to hang on the wall or, as you can see, stand on the stairs, and a china mold for foie gras. The woman who I bought both these from--for a total of three euros--did add that the mold could hold other foods besides foie gras.

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.  

Fête de la Noisette--the lunch

The annual lunch that celebrates the hazelnut is one of the high points of September. As communal meals go, this is a record-breaker in terms of size of crowd, and amount of food and wine consumed.

This year 320 people sat down in les halles in Lavelanet and 50 more had to be turned away. As always, the first course was a large slice of foie gras, this year served with pain d'épices and a fig confit. Wine flowed. The young man at the top of this post came around the tables offering seconds. Seconds of foie gras...aren't those words to haunt your dreams?

Next, volunteers deposited cassoulets on the table. As is traditional, we all lined up outside to get servings of meat off the grill, pork this year. Wine continued to flow. After that came cheese and finally dessert. Replacing the usual hazelnut based tarte was a multi-layer cake served, as is traditional, with bottles of blanquette de Limoux and hazelnut liqueur. That's my good friend, Corinne Barthez, serving coffee. 

Original Chocolate Sin

Shouldn't it be called "faux gras"? This disk on the left is made of solid chocolate--chocolate ganache coated with white chocolate. Below, a troupe of drum majorettes wearing smart leather boots the pale green of new spring onions.

The link is that we saw both this morning in Pamiers, a town a half hour away. We knew about the foie gras made by this little chocolate shop. I visit its window frequently but have yet to get up the

nerve to go inside knowing that I would leave in a chocolate-induced coma. 

We weren't expecting the majorettes. Instead, we were geared up for the weekly Sunday morning flea market, mais non. Instead, tables and chairs filled the square and the stage at the end was bouncing with brass bands and majorettes. Either they had several costume changes--the common element being very short, twirly skirts and spangles--or there were several majorette troupes. 

Just your average Sunday morning in France...