bleudauvergne

It would be best if this conversation continued by e-mail or PM. If the three episode series does come back on again and anyone has the opportunity to let us know in advance, it would be wonderful to add the information to this thread!

I have decided, after my brief education, on another duck dish I think is just the perfect embodiment of the Limousin region - provided I can find the right kind of duck: Crepinettes au jus de colvert. Recipe in the Gullet I have to get this duck tomorrow, so I plan to do the dish tomorrow.

Looks delicious, Adam. Actually, from what I am learning about the traditional cooking of the Limousin, pork is the only meat that the people traditionally had all the time. When we think of the Limousin beef, a beef of superior quality and taste known all over France, we must remember that for the local country folk this was a rare luxury. When they did have meat, they were more likely to have pork more than anything else, and we'll see that many of the traditional country dishes from the Limousin use pork in one form or another. For an accompaniment to a rustic country dish like farcidure, it looks like you made a good instincitve choice there! There seem to be a lot of recipes for the farcidure using potatoes and unsmoked (salted) pork belly. I have posted one of such recipes in the RecipeGullet, Here. Can you post your recipe using the bread as well? The common local bread types were made from rye or buckwheat flour, or a mix of both. Is is safe to assume that the bread version predates the common use of potatoes in France? No, I think it's never safe to assume anything. I guess we'll have to find out for sure.

Crépinettes au jus de colvert (French Regional - Limousin) Serves 4 as Main Dish. In search of the perfect Limousin regional dish this is the one I finally decided on. For the crepinette 1 mallard duck, about 2 lbs. 1 T duck fat 300 g cèpes 50 g barde de lard 150 g cooked chestnuts 20 g butter 3 leaves swiss chard 100 g crepine de porc salt, pepper For the demi-glace 2 carrots 1 onion 1 clove garlic 1 bouquet garni 10 cl xeres vinegar 50 cl red wine 1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Put the duck on the rotisserie and smear the outside evenly with duck fat. Do not season the duck. Let roast for 20 minutes, remove from the oven, cool, and remove all of the meat. Slice the meat into small dice, set aside, and break up the carcass. 2. Bring the oven to 150C/300F. Peel, wash, and slice the carrots into rounds. Peel the onion and garlic, and roughly chop. Place the duck carcass, the onion, carrots and garlic into a shallow baking pan in the oven and cook until it begins to color, without letting anything burn. Watch the cooking process and turn things over from time to time. Put all of the ingredients into a heavy bottomed pot, and add the vinegar, the red wine, and 75cl of cold water. Bring to a boil and carefully skim for a few minutes. Turn the heat down and simmer for 2 hours. Strain the resulting stock into a saucepan and reduce until a syrupy consistency. 3. Clean the cepes carefully witht he aid of a cloth without immersing in water, and chop them roughly. In a saute pan, melt the pork back fat and cook the cepes in the fat for 5 minutes. 4. Slice the chestnuts into small dice and mix with the duck meat and the cepes. In a saute pan, reheat the mix for 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste (warm), return to room temp, and keep in a cool place for 1 hour. 5. Remove the green leaves from the chard. Reserve the stems for another use. Carefully wash the leaves. Parboil the leaves in salted water for one minute and then directly run them under cold water to stop the cooking. Strain the leaves. 6. Heat the oven to 220C/425F. Lay out the crepine on a work surfece, cut it into 4 pieces, and distribute the chard leaves among the pices of crepine. put into the center of each a quarter of the duck mix. Close each one individually and cook in the oven for 5 minutes. 7. Before serving: over a low flame or in the double broiler, incorporate the butter into the duck reduction, not letting it boil. When the sauce is steaming, season it with salt and pepper. Put a crepinette into the center of each warmed plate, and nappe with the jus. Keywords: Main Dish ( RG1573 )

Farcidure (French Regional - Limousin) Serves 4. Adapted from a recipe from Jean Bertranet, Le Moulin de la Gorse, La Roche-l'Abeille. Although some farcidure recipes use rye bread crusts, this one is prepared with mealy potatoes, the kind one might use for a puree, a common rendition of this traditional French dish from the Limousin region. The farcidure is commonly served as a light lunch dish, accompanied by a salad with garlic croutons, or as an accompaniment to meat in a heavier meal. 80 grams unsmoked salted pork belly 2 shallots 2 cloves of garlic 300 grams potatoes (bintje) 2 eggs 2 T. flat leaved parsley, minced 1/2 t. freshly grated nutmeg oil for frying Cut the pork belly into little cubes. Peel and finely mince the shallots. Peel and crush 2 cloves of garlic to a paste. Peel, wash, and carefully dry the potatoes. Grate them finely into a mixing bowl. Add the pork belly, the shallots, the crushed garlic, eggs, and parsley. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg according to taste. In the bottom of a 20-24cm (8-10 inch)heavy bottomed pan, heat about 2 cms of oil until it is very hot. Add the potato/egg mixture, and let cook over high heat until it develops a colored crust and comes easily from the bottom. Remove the cake from the pan, add oil and heat again, and replace the cake top-side down into the oil to cook the other side. Serve hot, in slices. Keywords: Side, French, Appetizer ( RG1572 )

Hi Tim, thank you so much for sharing details, and menus, from your kitchen! You mentioned that you work hard to keep variety in your menus and avoid repeating things if they don't request it. Where is it that you find the most inspiration? I'm really enjoying this thread!

This brings up a question in my mind. What about a chef who supervises his staff but in essence all the work behind the meal is executed by his staff? He's the one shaking your hand at the door, and soaking up your adoring praises. Do you see him mentioning the people who actually toiled over the details there? Would you ever say that chef X is a fake or a liar because he relies on his staff to prepare certain elements of his dishes?

Hard to say--maybe a couple of dozen. (Any more and I'd be buying my suits from a tentmaker!) And yes, they've all been different. Making cassoulets, like making love, should always contain an element of surprise. ← A couple of dozen, with plenty of time to formulate your thoughts in between, is formidable. I hope you will share the details of your past cassoulet experiences along with the one you'll be giving us this week. I look forward to the time leading up to your birthday with kind devotion!

Les editions du curieux looks like a nice little collection. The utiimate test would be to test their recipes, of course. I particularly like the bank of illustrations on their site by I think the person who does the drawings for the books. The editions seem to cover much of the south and southwest. Very nice. I hope they do continue and expand their coverage to all of France. Thanks, Mick for pointing out these editions.

Nanobatsu, did you explain your project to them? Perhaps you didn't speak to the right person. Another person to approach might be one of the chefs involved so that their staff could possibly request a copy on your behalf. Was this something you planned to show at the workshop? This could also pose certain permissions problems, especially if you are charging a fee for participation. When it comes to these things you have to be persistent. Good luck!

Wow, this looks wonderful, Wendy. The presentation of the toast for along with the sea urchin is insteresting, can you ask Dayne what the butter was flavored with? It all looks so delicious.

Apparently he's already done this, and got a 'no' from Arte. Did anyone see the series? It was three shows in December starting on the 13th. I was all tied up with stuff here and didn't get to see it. I'd love to hear comments on it on this thread. Click for Website

The dish ready to serve, it does steam the potatoes from underneath, so they roll back and can be served as a sliced roll next to the fish. The potatoes went really well with the fish.

We do the Foire au Vignerons Independents in Lyon once a year because we find that its the best way to build our cave, being able to research in advance the wines and then get to taste the ones we want. We narrow the 500+ vignerons down to a few of certain types we want to try, and limit our tastes to one or two types per day, about 15 tastes for one good day of tasting over the 3 or 4 times we go. We always spit, drink plenty of water, and eat plain bread in between tastes. We usually buy about 100-150 bottles each year. We've just started drinking the ones we bought in 2000. I am learning slowly but surely the virtues of attenting the larger tasting events. If you have done your research and know what you want to taste, you can get a lot out of it.

Yes, Larousse is a good place to start, and they also have maps of the regions. This dish is my mission this week because I have tons of duck at the moment.

OK then. The regional dishes I know from this area are; farcidure, madeleines, broccana, clafoutis, brejauna, some hare dishes, canard a l'aigre-doux, numerous beef dishes. This is from the books I have on hand, I will do some more research on the area and list others ← I'll add some detail to Adam's list: Farcidure: balls of dough (which I could say might be like dumplings) made with buckwheat flour, sorrel, and beets which are wrapped in cabbage leaves. (as described by Waverly Root.) These are often found in the local soups. They also do one with potatoes. Worth some looking into. Madeleines: Those lovely little cakes we know and love. Broccana, meat paté made with veal and ground pork. Soupe Brejauda, a cabbage bacon soup. clafoutis to which a thread has been devoted already in the France forum - click! A hare dish: Lievre en chabessal - otherwise known as Lievre a la royale, (according to Larousse?) but I can't understand how truffles and fois gras made their way into this list of simple country dishes... Unless it has been imported from the neighboring Perigord.... Canard a l'aigre-doux which has a sauce that has a mix of acid and sugary flavors, will research the recipes. And I'll add Canetons limousins which I cannot find a recipe or reference anywhere except Larousse here at home. The library opens tomorrow. The limousin Beef Dishes, to which I begin with a local Pieds de veau farci We should not forget the bounty of fresh water fish, trout, carp, perch, brochet.

Mackerel is a really tasty fish! They looked very healthy and fresh. When they're just staring at you like that you just have to get them. They were priced at about 3 bucks a pound this morning, definitely the cheapest fish available today. I cleaned out the cavity of each one and washed them up, put them into a clay cooking dish, and just threw in a bunch of stuff I had on hand - some half-dried tomatoes, a squeeze of lemon juice, lots of fresh dill, a couple of pats of butter, dusted them with various seasonings - photo above. For the liquid I poured in enough white wine to cover them about halfway, then sliced some potatoes thin and laid it all across the top like I was sealing it up to steam. I topped that with some more dill and baked that for awhile in a slow oven with a short burst of higher heat at the end.

I would love to know what is a shortening agent. Would duck fat do the same thing as lard in savory pastry?

Our intimate knowledge with a restaurant has something to do with it was well, I think. If we don't have the pleasure to eat somewhere often enough to really know the place, we can collectively piece one together here on the boards if everyone posts their experiences. I think that over time, as we build threads with individual experiences of certain places over time, we can finally get a clear picture of where the place falls. So while I would go back and update with my recent experiences, both good and bad, and yes a repeat good experience is worth a note in my book, I would not necessarily say I have changed my mind altogether about a place unless something really horrible happens that simply cannot fall into the 'bad day' category.

Lets go to the Limousin! Shall we start in Limoges?

Nice, Adam! The other night I could have used this inspiration - I just souped up some choucroute - I've been putting some thought into your regional recipe source question. The recipes circulating on-line are not ever my primary source when I'm researching a region, just because I have never found much well documented info, it is really difficult to sort out. I like to do my own research as close to the source as I can get it - but first I figure out where I want to go and do the background work! There is a lot to choose from! For those really not sure where to start, I have found that for a basic overview of the regional dishes, Waverly Root has done some beautiful descriptive field work, and gives some nice points of departure for further research in his Food of France. Once you've decided on a region, you can hone down to a town or a place that seems interesting or particularly rich. Virtual visits the tourist bureaus of various towns and communes to see what they have to say about the local gastronomy are often fruitful for setting out in any particular direction looking for interesting dishes. There are plenty of little nuggets of information that you can then research more closely. If you do get a chance to go, like Ptipois says, the little locally produced books are a wealth of information. Background research is important. Before I do any traveling, I go to library reading rooms and find all the little books that have been put out in the past about the cuisine of a region, in French, especially older ones. Common sense judgement on source becomes much easier once this is done. I try to uncover a sampling over time, because as you go back over the profusion of pretty picture books put out in the past 35 years, you see that many recipe books adapt their recipes to be more "health conscious" - tips and tricks to sap out any "unnecesary use of fat" which can really corrupt the results and cloud the terrain quite a bit. The further back you look, the more likely you are going to be able to get a clear idea of how the local cuisines evolved before the info explosion, explaining the use of certain terminology or sometimes certain ingredients, and giving you a nice foundation to work on. Once you slog through this step, you'll see that you'll be able to focus much more clearly and judge for yourself when a recipe is a good one. I am interested to check out the 'Euroterroirs' collection - I think I will check that out in the next week, thanks for that information. Don't forget the actual visit and taste... Trumps all other methods - although the background work can do wonders in helping you get the most from your visit. There's something to be said for being able to ask the right questions, or to prove you actually have more than a trivial interest in a certain dish - This more than anything else can open doors.

Might this refer to Bill Lalor of the trendy Manhattan eatery, The Saloon? He was your muse? Care to tell us more? ← Yes, that Bill Lalor. But it sounds like you found a link that might be very ... ... both so young and to know that a lot of what he taught me has guided me for thirty years. ← Wow what a wonderful wonderful story. This guy sounds amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that story with us.

In a way, my mom was always there as an unfailing source of last minute information when I was learning to cook. But the people who really inspired me, all along the way... Childhood friend, Jessica Johnson. She moved when I was 8 but before that time we managed to perfect all kinds of candy from divinity to toffee, and we learned to cook lots of other things. I have wonderful memories of standing on chairs side by side at the stove at both her house and my house. It was with her, aged 7, that I first tried snowpeas, from the vine, in her mother's garden, and with her that I first ruminated on the mysterious quailities of bees and the honeycomb (her mother was a bee keeper). She and her sisters gave me some unforgettable lessons on the art of saying please and thank you too, which is somehow inextricably tied in to food for me. Clare Murray was my partner in crime for our clandestine harvests of the fruits and berries of the neighborhood starting around age 9. I wrote something for the Daily Gullet about that. I also learned about garlic and learned I actually liked salad from Clare. I wrote her an e-mail just the other day to tell her how much garlic I put into that night's spaghetti sauce! Susan Marsh taught me not to be afraid of the gas oven when we were in high school. We also learned to appreciate wine together. Sitting down like civilized people, drinking wine and appreciating its qualities. A series of hungry boyfriends got me trying to cook once I was at the University. There was this pretty girl named Heidi who made this spinach dip in the bread bowl at Syracuse... The romance of apple picking and then making pies comes to mind, this would not be without a boy to make the pie for. Travel to many countries does wonders for the palate. I liked the food in Holland and in Turkey. I wasn't very adventurous with German food. I still crave pickles and blinis from Russia. The food in Western China and over the border into Khazakstan was not too hot but the adventure of getting it was something I'll never forget. After that, there's my Chinese housekeeper who gave me the cooking lessons when I was in Beijing. But heck, I can say the whole country of China was my personal food muse when I was there. That whole experience was like one everlasting first time with every kind of food imaginable, my first real experience with 'fresh'. Here and now, my food muse is my husband. He fully supports my endeavors and is not afraid of me throwing a roast out the window if he criticizes it. He brought me to this wonderul country, and he loves to talk about food. His appreciation really is that fire that keeps me going. eGullet has everything to do with my drive to continue, and to take it one step further, all the time! I have derived a whole lot of inspiration from this place.

See, that's the thing. I love that hidden door. Because when your average home cook gets a chance to learn about something, the chemistry and alchemy that comes from devotion to a task, anatomy lesson; botany 268; one step further - I love that! I love the possibility that anyone can learn every detail of the gosh darn basics, and realise, at the same time, that home cooks throught the centuries, they have put it together in 15 minutes prep time and and kept those home fires burning as long as it takes to make it good, but especially if a person doesn't consider it a chore, but a discovery process, they'll realize the impact they can have on their loved ones this way, and it reinforces everything. I am all for the one hour meal.

Here is a photo of the one generally found down south. They call it a "couronne" in the midi near Toulon, it might have other names elsewhere, it's a brioche type galette made with fleur d'orange. There are people down there who say the one with the almond paste is not the real thing, but these are people who simply like the "couronne" better, I'm pretty sure of that. Either way, we enjoy both kinds this time of year. I like the crunch of the sugar. I also noticed that there are bakeries selling the ones like the one above but without filling as well. This year's santon from a "couronne", it also came with a real feve. I snapped this photo today, not really thinking about it, but I guess it was on my mind.