Smokin'

We like smoked fish and fowl. We were introduced to the smoking process through graduate school classmate Lynn and her husband James. I still remember the chicken James smoked using apple wood. I bought RXC a smoker almost 25 years ago and he got great use out of it. It finally rusted out and got replaced with one with 2 levels which increased our cooking capacity, since some of the smoked food went into the freezer. Well the smoker came to France with us along with the small collection of wood chunks. Nice weather meant it was time to pull out the smoker and give it a go over here. So as if we have not been up to our necks in food events, we bought a whole salmon to try out the smoker.

French charcoal is very different from the brickets you buy in the US. We had a bag of charbon de bois left behind by friends who used the house many years ago which we used, along with some alder wood. The charcoal burned beautifully and the fish was perfectly smoked. Isabelle came over to watch how the smoker worked since they are fairly unusual here (nice to be able to share a cooking process and a sample of the finished fish with her). The greatest beneficiary of the smoked salmon however is Zabelle!

Now that we know we get good results from the smoker, we will begin to experiment with making fish dip. Last year in Florida we got addicted to the stuff thanks to Karen and Pete who are fish dip afficinados. We tended to order it in every restaurant we dined at and have a good idea of what we like. Now we need to try which of the fish we can buy here will work well. Stay tuned.

DUCKS!

Living in the Southwest means that ducks are a very important part of the regional diet. Each year our neighbor order 50 fatted ducks from a producer in the Dordogne and for 2 days processes them into confit, rillettes, conserved foie gras, and fat. This year we ordered 2 ducks to learn the process. Here is how we spent the weekend.

The fatted ducks (always male) come from a woman in Lalinde who raises them and does all the work. She grows the corn she feeds them and does the gavage herself. She also slaughters and cleans them, so that when you buy a duck from her it is ready to process. This winter there were terrible storms in the Southwest and Lalinde was in the area worst affected by them. This had a stressful effect on the ducks so they were smaller this year. We thought the size was just fine for our needs.

When the ducks arrive they are cut up in a very particular manner. The manteau is taken off the carcass and you have to be extremely careful not to cut into the tripe or the gall bladder when removing the foie. The magrets are put in the freezer, the legs, wings, and gizzards are salted and rest overnight for confit, the foie are left in lightly salted water overnight, the fat is cut up to be cooked down the next day, and the carcasses can be cooked in the fat for rillettes or frozen to make soup. Very little of the duck goes to waste and the products are either frozen or conserved depending on how much space you have in the freezer.

The ducks arrived about 6 PM on Friday. We watched Isabelle cut up several ducks and then plunged in and did our own. We got our work for step one finished up in a couple of hours but Isabelle worked until midnight getting hers ready to sit overnight. See you tomorrow at a "tres bonne heure".

Our phone rang about 7 AM the next morning. It was Isabelle saying all of her foies were out and ready to process come! We put our tea in travel mugs and rushed across the street for the next step.

The rest of the day was spent watching Isabelle as she assembled 2 magrets with a foie in the middle in large canning jars, put the foie on its own in canning jars, grind the fat to render for the confit and rillettes, and then going home and working our own ducks. Isabelle regularly came by to make sure our fat was not cooking at too high a temperature and to suggest improvements to our techniques. By the end of the day we had frozen the magrets and carcasses, made confit with the legs, wings, gizzards and neck, set aside a slice of foie for dinner to eat with an apple compote, used some of the foie for a terrine with Pinneau des Charentes. We conserved the rest of the foie in jars, made rillettes, and ended up with 6 jars of duck fat. This was a great experience and hugely successful thanks to Isabelle's tutoring. Next year we are thinking of ordering 10 ducks. For more photos go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/petillant

Back to working inside the house

While the weather has been so nice, we have worked outside a lot. RXC built a small wall behind the house which cleans up the property line nicely and gets a large rock pile out of the lawn. We are going to put gravel and pavers down between the back of the house and the wall which will make keeping out the weeds and vines much easier. I am contemplating seeding the wall with some alyssum. There is enough sun back there to make it grow and if I add a few flower pots on the wall we will get some nice color.

The lawn has needed mowing twice and that is without much rain!

We have spent much of the week looking for a new kitchen sink and tap. Our ideas about what we want in the house continues to evolve as we find out what is actually available "off the shelf" vs. the cost, aggravation, and wait for things that are custom. So after hours of looking on the web and visiting numerous home depot like stores we bought a sink. It is a compromise from what we wanted but it is in our possession and did not cost a fortune. RXC can install it himself in a couple of hours and we will have a bright, clean sink which is our objective. Next we will tackle the wall tiles and a select a granite (?) top for our island. That and a coat of paint completes the "fix up" of the kitchen.

Sunshine and Shadows

Sunday we drove to St. Cyprien in the Dordogne to visit what used to be a lively and interesting market. It was a sunny and warm day, perfect for walking through the market and sitting at a cafe in the sun for a coffee. We set out early as it is about 1 1/2 hour drive from the house. The roads were empty, a pleasant difference from a summer excursion to the Dordogne. The market had changed considerably in the last 20 plus years but we still got wonderful artisanal goat cheeses.

On the way home we passed this lovely church with these sculpted trees. We call this distinctive way trees are trimmed here the "French bob". The play of the sun on the branches which created shadows of the branches on the ground was beautiful. We had a nice lunch in a restaurant that specialized in regional cuisine. All in all a good day out.

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Fritillarias and Tulips

I love 18th century Dutch tiles that depict the distinctive checkerboard flower of the fritillaria. When we travelled to Amsterdam last fall, I bought a bag of them for the small garden at the edge of the terrace. I also bought a bag of dwarf tulips called "persian" which are blooming along with the fritillaria.

Market/Foire

Every year on the 20th of March and the 20th of November the town of Ste. Foy hosts a large market/fair. Before the days of the hypermarkets, folks would come from all over the region to buy such necessities are clothes, dishes, pigs, etc. Today the market consisted of lots of shoes, clothes, perfume and these colorful bags.

Bake Day Thursday

One of our favorite cookbooks is the Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking. We have sampled and enjoyed many of its recipes. We particuarly like the rugelachs which are made with cream cheese. RXC has not tried this recipe since moving to France as we needed to find a cream cheese substitute. Thanks to a list of substitutes for American ingredients in David Lebovitz's blog, we found a substitue in the local supermarket for a trial. Well it worked just fine and the rugelachs are delicious. And since the oven was on, it became pizza night with a few pitas to put in the freezer.

Galettes for dinner

Dinner tonight consisted of this beautiful buckwheat galette with mushrooms and cheddar cheese and a dab of butter on top (rxc) or mushrooms and an egg for jlm. They were served with zucchini seasoned with paprika a new spice after our trip to Germany. It was all delicious and galettes will be a new staple in our diet.

Eirinn go brach

It would not be St. Patrick's Day without Irish Soda Bread. RXC did the day proud with a delicious dark and crusty bread thanks to a recipe from Christina. Written on a scrap of paper from the Met dated Feb 28, 1980, it is hard to believe that this recipe has been part of how we have celebrated putting on the green for 29 years. Hope you are enjoying one too Christina.

Sunshine and Asparagus

Mid March and we are experiencing spring. The past week has been warm enough to eat lunch on the terrace. Days are in the upper 60's/70 degrees. We have continued to clean up the garden and have pruned many of the trees. The plum trees and forsythia are in full bloom and the apple and pear trees are very close to flowering.

Saturday the first green asparagus appeared for sale at the market, from our favorite bio veggie producteur. It gave us a reason to celebrate and was delicious with grilled duck breast.

We planted the spring garden on the 1st of March and the shallots and peas are beginning to sprout. The heirloom tomato seeds we started indoors too are growing well. And thanks to RH ferrying seeds to us, we will have jalapenos this summer. There are worse places to be.

Touring and Eating our Way Through Berlin

We have just returned from a short trip to Berlin. A friend needed to travel there for work and it was a perfect chance to meet up with her for a visit and tour the city we had not visited in 20 years. We took a bus tour when we arrived to get a feel for the city. We walked around many of the different areas visiting chocolate shops, teestubes, and the grand department store KaDeWe. We had great food, eating in what are considered Berlin institutions. We went to the Pergamon and technical museums. The weather was kind. It was a great trip.

We spent several days in Berlin in 1989 shortly after the Wall came down. It is amazing to see the changes to the city especially all the new (and on-going) building that has taken place in the interim.