209 replies to this topic

[johnnyd]

We're off to fetch the wizard.

[Shaya]

Hey ladies, I miss you both! I have braved the cold down here in Siberia (the corner of the new house where our computer llives) for a few minutes to catch up with ya'll but now I am typing with blue fingers...

The photography is stunning, the duck, the pastry with the ham, the squeaky clean tripe - it looks divine, and I would give anything to be in a bar in Southern France right now sipping on some vin rouge with you.

Here's to tripe and pig's feet!

Oh, and there really is a croissant bread pudding, I saw Nigella Lawson do it once, click .

[Dejah]

THIS is what I call the A.B.C. of POWER BLOGging!

Three super eGulleteers cooking three of my favourite ingredients: tripe, trotters and chicken inards.

[Busboy]

Dear Abra & Chufi, I am waiting impatiently for tomorrow to arrive.  I have my train ticket and have gathered a few things to bring down to you.  Luckily Les Halles is just near the station for a last minute errand before my train leaves.  It will be a pleasure to cook with you!

You know, I'm always the guy who calls dinner guests just as they're leaving their house as says "can you pick up some butter on the way over." I think I need to have more guests who can stop Les Halles for me before they drop by.

[racheld]

I can't tell you how wonderful this is. I woke, opened the bedroom door, and emerged into the lovely glow of the small buffet tree, which Caro (or the tree fairies) had set up and sparkled and lit while I was sleeping.

First glug of percolator sent that lovely aroma wafting round the rooms, and I sat down to this---isn't that a nice way to start a cold morning!!!

And you'd all be surprised how familiar this all is---the pigs feet, the tripe, all the lovely vegetables and herbs afloat in that golden broth---I can smell it from here.

The cooking is so reminiscent of the good old Southern kitchen, with even a still-recognizable whole chicken, crown still resolutely aloft despite the slumpy naked little body---I'd expect it to be still warm from the henyard dance with the hatchet.

And I am no stranger to a head in the pot. I especially remember one resigned blue eye once, peeking from the pot as I lifted the lid.

Just the idea of three wonderful cooks bustling about a warm, fragrant kitchen, each of a different cooking and lifeplace---I cannot think of a better cyber-present for this glorious season.

C'est magnifique, Y'all!

[Busboy]

Back into the oven with those. And we had breakfast:

The headline reads: Why are the wild boar entering the towns?

Midi Libre! -- I'm homesick now. Sniffle.

Any sangliere on the menu for the near future?

[Genny]

Can I just say this blog has me running to the computer this morning like a kid on Christmas morn! Coffee in hand, slippers on chilled toes, I sit hunched over my desk poking a hand out to move the curser waiting for the house to warm up.

Melange de madams, what - pray tell- do you plan on doing with the lovely hen? And its gizzards? The photo of the gizzards is amazing, you can SEE how fresh they are! Do you all eat the gizzards and liver? Will those be prepared separately?(I'll eat it all except for the liver, DH gets that all to himself!) And have you decided if the head will be included in the eating?


Hugs,
Genny
(gosh, now I have *another* reason to get myself across the pond!)

[bleudauvergne]

While Klary sits with her arms folded and relaxes as she gazes at the two of us with a mysterious smile, and Abra types furiously in order to head me off at the pass, let me begin by saying that indeed the trip to Les Halles was fruitful.

I have been put in charge of the cheese plate.







I also brought wine to go with the course, but that's for later.

Edited by bleudauvergne, 11 December 2007 - 09:39 AM.

[Abra]

Ok, we're here, all three of us, after a cozy restaurant lunch, in case we starved to death before dinner.

I wish there were going to be sanglier, and in fact I have ordered some, and considering that they're running loose on the streets of Perpignan they should be easy to get, but no, there's no wild boar for dinner in the forseeable future.

The poule is going to become Paula Wolfert's poule au pot, and since we're also using her recipe for tripe and her quince and prune tart recipe, I guess you could call this a

Dinner in Honor of Paula's Cooking of SouthWest France, as interpreted by Klary, Lucy, and Abra, with the aid of several bottles of excellent French wine and a veritable ton of cheese that Lucy hauled over here on the TGV, and a few sniff-inspections courtesy of Beppo.

And now, let's get cooking!

[Chufi]

And have you decided if the head will be included in the eating? 

the head did, eventually, end up in the bin...

It's a veritable blogging beehive here, with the 3 of us fighting over 2 laptops, lots of cameracords, cameras, phonecalls to homefronts about technical stuff, negotiating and discussion of all things Blogging.

I'm going to retreat into the kitchen and apply myself to the tart now for a bit. I'll leave you with this picture, taken just an hour ago on our after lunch walk through town:

Edited by Chufi, 11 December 2007 - 08:40 AM.

[bleudauvergne]

Clary is working diligently on the tarte, another one of Paula's recipes.

Psst. The tripe & trotter dish smells and looks wonderful. It took all I had not to reach in and snag a piece straight from the cooking pot. Just to confirm it's properly cooked, of course.

I heard the knife sharpening. Abra's man came down to handle the ham, a gorgeous Spanish beauty fed on acorns and walnuts during its living days. The knife slid through it like butter. I remarked on the smooth cut, and complimented the sabatier. He said that he wished he had one with a heftier handle, and a bigger blade. "The knife I want is right now in my mother's kitchen" he said, smiling.



I am in the livingroom, and I can hear them discussing (alright, arguing about) the meaning of "well blended". They are putting the tart together, and finishing the last steps to the tripes and trotters dish. I'll go take some pictures.

Edited by bleudauvergne, 11 December 2007 - 09:38 AM.

[hathor]

Ciao Ragazzi!
I would give my left trotter to join you guys!
Thank you Klary for giving me a heads up that you were blogging, I remember you telling me that you were going to visit Abra...and now Lucy in the kitchen....pure heaven! Now, if Paula Wolfert magically showed up, all of our fantasies would be complete!

I hate working on meats before breakfast, so I share your morning squeamishness. Coffee first, then body parts.

What cheeses did you bring, Lucy?? I don't care if you are squabbling over laptops, cameras and computers....post lots and lots of pictures, ok?

[bleudauvergne]

Just to let you all know:



Abra took us to the candy store this afternoon!

[Kent Wang]

The cooking is so reminiscent of the good old Southern kitchen...

Or a Chinese kitchen. It's great that so many cultures have recipes for all the cuts of an animal.

[hhlodesign]

A/B/C,

I must admit, I've skipped a few of these blogs in the past few months. But when I heard this amazing holy trinity would be gathering at Abra's Southern French kitchen, I had to stop in to say hello. Damn! I wish Lorna and I could come over for real! So glad you are enjoying your time over there Abra. Although we miss you back home!

[Abra]

Today I had the distinct pleasure of picking the first lemon from our lemon tree. Now the juice and rind are in our quince and prune croustade and we're ready for a little glass of something.



This is our cooking wine, a Charles de Cazanove. Wine to drink while cooking, that is. At least that was our plan. Shall I show you one bottle at a time, be a real tease? Or just strip all at once? Ok, I'll give you a break.



So here we have, from left to right, our cooking champagne, then an all-white lineup, which I find truly weird as a confirmed red wine drinker. After the champagne there's the wine chosen especially for the tripe and trotters by our awesome wine seller a Vin de Pays d'Oc Mas d'Espanet Eolienne , then the Domaine La Croix Belle N. 7 Vin du Pays du Cote du Thongue, for the poule au pot. Then for the cheese course a Domaine Prieure-Brunet Mersault-Charmes Priemier Cru, and a Chateau Mauras Sauternes to go with the dessert.

That was the theory, but of course, reality prevailed, and a red Faugères had to be opened for the cooking phase too, since, uh, a bottle of Champagne doesn't go all that far and a night without red wine is just no night at all.

So now we're listening to Laurie Lewis, eating French junk food, bacon flavored nut doodads, and letting things simmer. Sigh for us.

[Chufi]

here's another shot of that gorgeous ham that lives in Abra's kitchen:



a lot of that ham went into the stuffing for the poule, together with breadcrumbs, egg, parsley, and the chicken giblets. And here's Lucy sewing up the chicken before it went into a huge pot of stock:


And here are cabbage wedges and small potatoes, waiting to be added to the pot for the final half hour of cooking time.


Meanwhile, I'm sort of dazzled by the multitude of activities, kitchen conversations, little kitchentasks, snippets of getting-to-know-eachother that are going on all at once. I'm a solitary cook and a solitary writer... but not today

Edited by Chufi, 12 December 2007 - 01:57 AM.

[bleudauvergne]

We're just getting ready to sit down at the table but I wanted to add one thing, there's another cook with us. The one we've been referring to as "she".

"She said it should take an hour and a half..."

"She said that it was originally made with puff pastry..."

"She thinks we should do it this way,"

If I were Paula, I would be very happy knowing that she is going to be referred to for generations as the "she" we look to not only for inspiration but valuable knowledge she gathered and shared for us to transmit.

[Abra]

And now we sit down to dinner at last. The table, set with its pain de meule that's traveled from Lyon to start our meal, awaits us.

[bleudauvergne]

The first course was an everything but the kitchen sink slaw, consisting of red cabbage, radis noir, onions, shallots, apples, prunes, lots of spicy hand whisked mayonnaise seasoned with walnut oil, cider vinegar, salt and pepper. The slaw was surrounded by the last of Abra's romanesco broccoli, and topped with grated deep violet carrot called the carrot noir in these parts.

[Abra]

This is by far the best tripe dish I've ever eaten. The rich smoothness of the tripe, the little bits of gelatinous sensuality that are the nuggets of pigs feet, the cubes of intensely sweet and slightly salty ham, the highly aromatic and flavorful broth, all combine into a rich and heady delight. Not everyone at the table loved it as much as I did (not mentioning any names, Chufi!) but that's ok, it means there's some left for me to have for breakfast. Mmmm, tripe for breakfast.

[Vinotas]

This is by far the best tripe dish I've ever eaten.  The rich smoothness of the tripe, the little bits of gelatinous sensuality that are the nuggets of pigs feet, the cubes of intensely sweet and slightly salty ham,  the highly aromatic and flavorful broth, all combine into a rich and heady delight.  Not everyone at the table loved it as much as I did (not mentioning any names, Chufi!) but that's ok, it means there's some left for me to have for breakfast.  Mmmm, tripe for breakfast.

I am sitting here in NYC, drooling on my keyboard and tasting these dishes virtually. The cheeses, the wines and of course the main courses all look so amazing.
Keep up the good work!
Cheers!

[hathor]

Tripe for breakfast??

Chufi, I'm with you...tripe is just not my thing. It has a very unique...funkiness that is just not appealing to me. But,the pig foot,now that I could get into!

[Chufi]

Well, I'll add tripe comments later. For now I'll just show you this amazing poule au pot that we cooked:


being cut open to reveal the stuffing:


on the plate with the cabbage, potatoes and a green sauce of hard boiled egg yolks, oil, parsley and shallots:



Now I have to say something about this dish. It's one of those things that when I see it in a cookbook, I would never think of making it. But it turned out so delicious, that it's really teaching me something about being more open minded towards recipes that don't immediately seem very appealing or interesting.

"Like tripe?" Abra says.
No, not like tripe. But, like, taking a whole chicken and stuffing it and then boiling it. This is something I'll definitely be making again. And I want to make it for Dennis, who is now so far away in Amsterdam, and who would have loved it.

The cheeseplate, carefully selected by Lucy, is on the table and I cannot actually smell it from this room, but I know it's there and I want to go and eat some. See you in a bit.

[Smithy]

You all are very fortunate, to have gotten together over there and be getting to know each other. It is OUR extraordinary good fortune that you're all such accomplished cooks, photographers and bloggers!

This is a really fun blog. I like Klary's comment about keeping an open mind toward trying new dishes. I, too, might not have thought to try stuffing and boiling a chicken, but I will now. A question for y'all: after the chicken is cooked, do you then flake the meat off the bone? If so, what do you do with the skin? The wing in one of those photos doesn't look like something you'd serve intact.

[Jamie Lee]

You all rock!

I wish I could be with you.. A trifecta - three of my favorite posters all at once, and in France!

I just can't wait for more.

Jamie

[racheld]

on the plate with the cabbage, potatoes and a green sauce of hard boiled egg yolks, oil, parsley and shallots:

Told you. You could serve that at any gathering South of the M/D line. Perfect, right down to the eggs in the gravy.

[bleudauvergne]

A large dent was made into the cheese plate, consisting of a St. Marcellin, a palette de chevre, Reblochon fermier au lait cru, Comte fruite, arome de Lyon, and
Epoisses.

We enjoyed a glass of the Prieure-Brunet Mersault-Charmes Priemier Cru and a bread called Pain des Champs from my bakery in Lyon.

Edited by bleudauvergne, 11 December 2007 - 04:36 PM.

[Chufi]

We had tripe.
We had chicken.
We had cheese.
We had prune & quince tart.

Doesn't sound like very much, does it?
But maybe if I tell you we had also about 5 bottles of wine between the 3 of us, and if I tell you both the tripe/pigsfeet and chickenbroths were so rich that they started to gel on the plate the moment I layed down my fork and knife, and if I tell you the cheese was so delicious I had second and third helpings of some of them, and that I even had 2 slivers of the tart, you'll begin to understand that now that's it's 12:30, I'm really getting the feeling that a soft and comfortable bed is all I need.

But first, the final report.
Époisses

racheld, you wanna dive in?

Prune and quince tart:

According to the recipe, this was supposed to be a pie with a pastry lid on top. But we decided to revert to the original recipe mentioned in the book and use puff pastry (which we bought). When we came home we realized we would not have enough pastry to make a double crust, so the tart turned into a croustade, and delicious it was!


I'm passing the baton to Abra for the final post of the night. Welterusten and see you tomorrow!

[Marlene]

Never mind racheld, I'd like to dive into that cheese! Lucy, so lovely to see you again. I have to admit, I'm with Chufi and the whole tripe thing, but I'm more than willing to watch you ladies eat it.