bleudauvergne

Do you want to make this for me?

Good Morning! I am just now beginning to freak out. Hey Kathy, I fill out the notes in my journal sometimes before, always after a meal, noting recipes for dishes that worked well and using them again. For a meal like thanksgiving, I'll make notes about timing, dishes for serving, sometimes how to get through certain stressful moments, how to solve certain logistical problems, etc. Normally in the journal when I fill it in I put notes about what recipes worked in retrospect. For example, I put the celery root and pine nut sauce into the book after I made it. Oh that wasn't a planned outfit - I wish! I was thinking I wanted an outfit like that one and was lamenting that I couldn't find something like that anywhere...

The Beaujolais area is really close, about 45 minutes to an hour outside of town to the west by car. Every rural area has their local recipes. The question about what makes the andouillete special is a very good one, worth a trip out to the countryside. I can say that the two women who run this shop do manage to produce some of the best charcuterie in Les Halles, and the most beautiful terrines I have seen for sale at the market, they've been doing it for many years.

Lolo has chosen a wine from the cave and we'll have dinner now. Actually I think that a real nice chicken in one of those sacks may be the same thing as the poulet de bresse in a pigs bladder. No, the bladder does not impart any kind of extra flavor, although when it is cooking it smells nice from the outside. This is the traditional way to steam the bird, before they had things like those oven bags to steam them. My brother Ford disovered the idea of putting a Thanksgiving turkey into one of those sacks that steams the bird one year and he was so happy with it he recommended it to all of us- I think the pigs bladder, though pretty (sorry I didn't get good pics of it when it as all puffed up) is about the same. Dinner tonight: I think I could have bought a superior bird for less € and cooked it in my own way and it would have been really nice all the same - but his did taste really delicious.

Abra, that cheese has rosemary running through it. Of course I chose one for the plate. The bladder, It's to promote steaming. edit: I was wrong, it's thyme. The Cheese is called Thyme Tamar. Sorry!

Having mastered the art of procrastination over the years, I have more and more stress free time before I begin to freak out. A leisurely lunch, falling behind schedule in my errands, miss the bus, etc. No worries. Be happy. The time to freak out has not yet arrived but it will any time now, I'm sure. There is something really amazing in the air at Les Halles. I think I took it for granted when we lived just near there, in our first apartment. It was my place to shop for awhile, I mainly frequented certain vegetable vendors, and I was in tune with its ups and downs and the feelings of the people there for a couple of years. It was the place where the vendors warmed up to me really well, they are used to foreigners, they recognize and greet rather quickly, I loved the luxury of it all, the big place, just brimming with every luxurious food item you can imagine. I also liked the fact that a normal person like me, if she spends enough time and looks hard enough can find the bargains and kind of sense when something is going to go on special. I think I still look familiar to a few of the vendors, although they can't place where they know me from. They smile at me as if they think they should know me. Some of the vendors treat me like a chef, in a knowing kind of way when I ask questions and probe about this and that. Things are behind windows there. You can't touch, although if you ask politely some will lift the window so you can look more closely. I walked in there this afternoon it just bowled me over with the vibrant energy of the place. God I love it! So this afternoon I tried to get photos there and the results were not as good as I hoped. The light is terrible in there. I did think of bringing a small tripod which helped here and there but a good number of photos just didn't turn our the way I'd hoped. Oh well! My first stop was a butcher named Maurice Torilliet where I wanted to get something I've always wanted to try. Loic and I talked about possibly going out to dinner tonight, but I decided to get this instead, because preparing this at home costs less than a meal out. A special chicken that has been prepared in a pig's bladder, a Poularde de Bresse en Vessie. It is cooking now. The butcher told me in detail how to prepare and serve it and it is going to be just wonderful. All I have to do is put on some rice tonight! Some game from the same butcher. I didn't shop at the vegetable vendors because I have better sources now. But Les Halles is the place for finding all kinds of very special local delicatecies and no where in town is there such a huge amassing of the highest quality stuff like you'll find here. As the fromageries die out about town, Les Halles has become the number one source for cheeses as well. I picked the cheese for the plate among several cheese purveyors at Les Halles.

I did not get much from the market this morning. Fresh herbs, eggs, some pears, a quince, a butternut squash for the succotash, and a kind of radish that I like very much that the grower calls a radis raifort, I guess what you might call a 'horseradish radish', not being real horseradish. It just has the taste of it without being as strong. I desperately miss horseradish with my oysters and cannot find it fresh anywhere. Oh well. The herbs are Rosemary, chives, thyme, chevril, parsley, and sage (2 bunches, it looked good and it dries well) I'm off to Les Halles! Bye!

It snowed last night and the morning sun was melting it away. The air was damp but thankfully there was not a breath of wind. It seemed balmy and warm in comparison to the cold biting wind that's been sweeping down the Rhone Valley. I went to the market concentrating on keeping tucked in and alert, calm, still. Looking for pretty things for the table. The market is smaller and more intimate on Friday mornings. Eggs for the various dishes that will require them from Madame Monterrat's farm. Some time ago, in a quest for good eggs, I got samples of the typical eggs sold regularly by several of my regular vendors at the market and broke them open and took a good look at them side by side. I found that on average her eggs' yolks are consistently about 15% larger when considering the ratio of egg to white, and the yolks have a much deeper color. Now I always get my eggs from her if I can. I had lunch at the Ke de Pecherie, which has nice lunch specials for 8€50. Today the special was a Blanquette de Veau. I was quite pleased with it because it was seasoned in an interesting way with cloves and juniper berries, and I loved the rice mix it was served over. They gave me more than I could eat but I did my best! I felt that the glass of Macon went with it really nicely. I finished the meal with a cup of coffee. I had a nice view of one of the many famous Fresques of Lyon. The theme of this one is famous writers that come from Lyon.

Degreasing the stock to make room for the turkey in the fridge yielded a whole bowl of fat. I think I may put some shallots in it and leave it in the oven for a couple of hours while I run my errands. I have a nice braid of little shallots. This morning I will go to les Halles to pick up a few things.

You guys are going to laugh about this for years. The story will grow with every pumkin pie you share with this group of friends. Hilarious! Was she expelled from the table?

Hey thanks y'all! Dinner tonight basically was on the phone with all of my relatives, so I had to make it last. I started with what was left of the celery root. I chopped that up nice and even like, and got that going in duck fat. Then I added some pine nuts. At that point I called my niece, who is in France and pretty much had a bad day, her first Thanksgiving abroad. I reminisced a funny story about my first Thanksgiving away from home we commiserated a bit. She recounted her Mexican dinner with her British friends and when we hung up I was pretty sure whe was ok. She'll be coming by train for Saturday's feast and asked if she can bring an American friend. I agreed as long as he can stay at the the youth hostel, since we have more than a full house that evening. I then called Bonnie, my best American friend here in France, and she recounted her day. She had a question about how she could express the English term 'gracious' in French. She wanted it to match specifically a situation she'd seen that day, and even though she's pretty good with words she still had a hard time pinning this one down. I poured myself a glass of whiskey and we talked about what 'grace' means to all kinds of folks. It was a nice conversation. She got things narrowed down to a bunch of terms but still wasn't quite settled on the exact way to express it when things in the pan started looking like they needed an addition of some sorts. I thought of that nice bottle of rabbit stock I had in the fridge and added a good pint. Letting that simmer awhile, I called my sister Serena, an added some thyme to the mix. I just took a half dried bunch of thyme and squeezed it over the pan and let the dried leaves fall over the mix. I also added some of henny penny's good meat to the brew. We chatted for awhile. I made a little roux on the side and mixed that in and called my Mother. We talked about everything and nothing at the same time as I got some pasta on. She was was with other relatives, and I got the chance to hear about their great feast and at the same time as I pinched some of those crisp fresh beans in, the very last of the season. I was supposed to call my nephew who was going to be leaving for Thailand and share some thoughts about traveling and scholarships and things but somehow time escaped me and I missed him. We keep in touch by e-mail so I'm not too concerned. It was, at that point, time for dinner.

Lunch today was this scrumptious henny penny salad. I was quite pleasantly suprised by meat coming off the old hen, which was slowly simmered for a long time, especially the breast. This old hen gives and gives. She was cheap too. The first thing I noticed as I carefully removed the good parts was that this particular bird was quite fat - she must have been one of the priority birds in the barnyard - she had meaty legs with dark red meat, she was large for a hen, and strong, but also a thick layer of fat all over, so the flesh coming from the boiled bird definitely stayed moist and velvety in texture. The soup itself is chilling in the frigo and will be carefully degreased, in accordance with Jack Lang's instructions in his eGCI class, On Consommé. I prepared Jack's consommé last year with an old Bresse hen as a first course for Thanksgiving and it was simply shocking its beauty. Since the truffle ravioli (I purchased it from an italian caterer) was, I felt, a bit overwhelming with the cheeses, this year I will prepare my own fois gras ravioli at home so I can control the ingredients. The salad was just lettuce, olives, meat, a crumble of some feta, with good olive oil in which I had soaked some chopped garlic overnight and strained over the salad, and some freshly mashed assorted peppercorns. The pepper mix doesn't show in the photo because I applied it before tossing, something I regret because since the flavor was so perfect in my salad, I wished it was prevalent in the photo too. A glass of wine with lunch, 10cl of Domaine de Cibadiès Chardonnay 2004. It won the prize this year at the Foire des Vignerons Independents in Lyon. I thought it was pretty good for a Chardonnay, but also a bit suprising because I expected something a bit higher on the palate. It would go very well with game birds or even Turkey! I decided after the first sip to first enjoy my salad and then savor the rich and flavorful wine on its own. A chunk of pain aux noix as well.

It is enough just to make the right choices where we can. I understand that everyone has their own local circumstance... Time spent, efforts, eveyone and every place has limits. There are certain choices that Loic and I have made based on what we see and what is available to us. I am going out now to see if I can show you some of the people who make this possible for us here.

It being Thanksgiving and me on vacation, I'm going be able to take some time to answer this question, Lori - Part of the reason is that one of the great things about living in the city in France, or in Europe, is that it is very easy to get by without a car. We walk a lot, we take advantage of the public transportation here. We do have a car but it stays parked most of the time, mainly because sometimes it's easier and faster to get somewhere by bus, tram, metro, or one of the city bike rentals than it is to drive somewhere and find a parking spot. Gas is expensive, traffic is slow during peak hours, so we just choose to stick to the public transport. Although there are exceptions to the rule, supermarkets here in metropolitan areas in France are attached to shopping malls, as an 'Anchor Store'. You go to the Mall, walk a certain distance to get to the supermarket, if you can find cart you provide a euro coin deposit to get one (which is refunded when you return the cart), etc. Once we've gone down to wherever the approved entrance is located and the security guard has stared us down and perhaps stapled the tops of our bags of any other purchases together, we find the products are rather homogenous. The produce for instance, even when it's the season for some reason the supermarkets don't seem to get vegetables with any flavor. That's the first thing. The second thing is that once I learned about simple technique and processes of cooking, the more I realize when I go into a supermarket that the asiles and asiles of 'convenience products' just aren't worth the effort of purchasing. Why go? The more time I spend in my own kitchen, the more I just stare in disbelief at those 'magic mystery packets' of powders and chemicals that produce many things that many people have never made from scratch but believe it is their duty to prepare - These packets do not resemble the truth of food at all. Why buy a jar of mayonnaise, hollandaise, etc? What is in that mix? The flavor of these things are not even close to the real thing, and making the real thing actually is not difficult nor does it take any special magic skill once you know the recipe. I promise. There was a time when I didn't have faith enough in my own cooking to make a cake with eggs, butter, milk, flour, salt, and whatever fruit or spices I like, and that was basically because magical mystery box of cake mix convinced me from a young age that making a cake was a long arduous task - not worth the risk of messing up. Suddenly I open my eyes and see that a cake is just as easy to make from scratch as it is from the box, fresher, cheaper, and tasting much better! We are talking about a measuring of ingredients which takes a mere couple of minutes. My life experiences have given me a close up look at the process of world trade, when I was in China I used to work on the physical end of trading. I also have worked in the development of packaging for products, having seen close up the process of product and package development. It was fun interesting work, and doing it you see how simple it is. Pick up the jar of faded orange powder and think. Logic takes me to the distant day when it appeared as thousands of points of light on the screens of trading markets for sale by the metric tonne as soft commodities, sales hedged and timed along with world events to maximize profits, loaded and shipped by train, sea, and truck in shipping containers, divvied up, stored and bought over and over, and along the merchants path through to the factory where it is conditioned. These little number coded additives and colorants we see on the label are agents that enable it to maintain the appearance of freshness no matter how long ago it blipped across the screens. The supermarkets here in France are just like the ones back home, and I find that I can find better fresher basic products right here on my block. I don't check the expiration date on fresh goods because I smell, look, feel, and make judgements for myself. It is not a mystery, choosing freshness. The meat section is my butcher, real fresh meat that never touches styrofoam. The truck arrives with the whole animal hanging on a hook, head and feet included, and it goes directly to his block, if he is a real butcher. The produce section is the daily market, dry goods are found in local shops 'vrac' directly cutting out the 'shelf life' treatment, or if we're lucky, available through more direct routes from the producers in the new equitable commerce shops - the products are real, they're not cut with silica and the likes. The products are fresh so we'll choose them. We're now starting to see some equitabe commerce and it is is beginning to make some good strides here thanks to changes in logistics and communication and plain honest logic of people who are making a difference. I am so thankful for that! As far as wine and bread, we taste and we buy it daily in the neighborhood. Our baker literally has devoted his life in choosing to follow his vocation and provide his part in delivering us our daily bread. In France, they have Fromage sections in the supermarkets and in my neighborhood they have the fromagerie. So basically, well, we stay near home. And we give thanks. Today being Thanksgiving, I'm really thinking about my local commerce. There is no sacrafice in mindfully making these decisions. I will do everything I can to keep this local commerce alive, and that means even with products that are the same at the supermarket as in a local shop - the flour, the sugar, lightbulbs, scotch tape, etc. I will choose the local commerce in my neighborhood because not to do so would sacrafice, in the long run, not only our access to fresh good food where we live, but our quality of life and choices we have. These people have devoted their lives to something good. -edited to fix a bunch of typos and for clarity of the ideas

Good Morning! Happy Thanksgiving! Here in this blog we don't eat the head. Sorry folks! I put it in the soup for the soup - the feet too -

After this afternoon's work at the national library's ancient collection, I took the subway to the evening market at the Perrache station. There was an accident on the tramway tracks and we were forced to walk across the bridge, and man, was it cold! They had lots of yummy things at the market, though. This Wednesday evening market is limited to producers only. I tasted this cheese and had to get some. I was especially dissapointed because my the guy I normally get my Poulet de Bresse from was not there this evening. His friends didn't have any news about why he wasn't there tonight. Apparently this was not normal. I hope everything is ok. I was feeling a bit dejected and then noticed some other people had some poultry that looked pretty good. There was one place that had some very nice looking poultry. I decided to get a 2 year old hen (!) after all. These are some pretty nice looking hens, yes? These are the chickens they had, much younger birds. A hot chocolate at the Cafe de Carnot was in order once I'd finished at the market. It's really cold out there! Once home I put Henny Penny on to stew. She was a good old hen and we thank her for the two years she spent on this earth, everything that she'll give us. Dinner consisted of scraps of this and that. I kept a little bit of the veal and the salt pork and kept some of the duxelles from the terrine. Whenever I cook something I always save a little something to use later on. I minced the reserved meats up with some fresh onions, garlic, some of my creole mix, a juniper berry mashed with sea salt, some pepper, a pinch of nutmeg and stuffed a bunch of little tomatoes. I had a pound of those ratte potatoes, which I boiled in salt and then sliced up and put into the gratin pan with some smoked herring and onions, topping that off with the rest of that creme fraiche. That was dinner.

I would like to note that there is a very important game (football/soccer) happening tonight in for the Lyon team in Madrid - If there is a lag in my posting I apologize.

Lori, thank you so much for checking in with me and letting me know what kinds of questions come to mind. You can learn more about me in the other two eGullet Foodblogs I have done, Here's the first one (click), and the second one (click). I hope I'm not repeating myself when I tell you that the reason we are here (my husband is French but we did live in the US early in our marriage) was because we lived in Los Angeles and spent just about all of our time driving between point A and point B looking for various foodstuffs. This is the dead truth. Our weekends revolved around ingredient/cheese/occasional burrito quests. Loic actually started raising his own levain and making his own bread during the week since the French bakery on Westwood Blvd. (I think) was too expensive and the bread was stale by the time we could get to the bakery at the end of the day due to the extreme dryness of the air. We couldn't even pull over to the side of the road and run in for a baguette without getting towed (this happened once - we were in there five mintues I swear)! We certainly appreciated the pastries they produced - the real thing. Super. And when we ordered the Galette in January, they asked, 'with or without the santon?' We were a bit perplexed since this cake features a little figurine or a bean or something for the fete, and she responded "we ask this because we don't want to get sued if someone breaks their tooth." So Loic, a few months after the Fete des Rois, had a positition as a researcher at the ENS Lyon. I was Ok with the whole idea of living in the USA, Maybe not L.A. but anywhere, (Loic's job was at UCLA) but it was Loic who hustled his butt to make sure that we got here soon enough. He was the one who said - enough - but I was happy enough to come along! Adam, my dear. The sun - I look at your Tuscan Food Diary and ask myself what sun shines in this city Lyon? I was so inspired by that whole thread.

OK lists are made, I'm on my way out -

Breakfast was an egg cup.

There are several lists to make this morning. I brought down the box of papers and chose a sheet of Fabriano cardstock (Leonardo). This is very good list paper for special occasions, because you can tear it into a shape and it will hold up all through the mission. It will keep in your pocket, and it won't get lost. Once a list on this paper has been in your pocket for awhile, it naturally wears at the edges. It's stiff enough that it will hold its shape and you can easily keep several lists at once on strips of it that can be dealt like playing cards or counted, like tabs. It's formidable, fancy paper. Important errands are noted on it. Sometimes I note tasks one by one on squares of this paper and count them off. Today I will make lists by errand destination. I will also use this same cardstock for the name cards for the table this morning. I have taken out the ironing board and linens. My mother said that it's best to iron the linens when the guests come. She didn't mean herself. I do fuss the most when she's going to come, she is the most honored guest even if she doesn't know it. This is something I do for my parents-in-law too since they come in first with Loic and since they don't come very often to see us. I want them to feel special. Soaps, flowers and everything. It's a way of honoring my husband. My mother will come to visit in the Spring.

Dinner: Michael, your thought of the lingonberry is genious. I'll check out availability. I don't see it in my normal routes but maybe I can find it at one of the import shops. Excellent idea, thank you. And Randi! Thank you so much for the recipe!

I would think that pintade goes much better with cornbread! She must have a good recipe! We're going to definitely make the most of what we have come to be thankful for here. Pontormo, I took lots of pictures of the diferent game birds at the market today and I'll put them up for you tomorrow morning if you're interested.

Hi Moby - I have a mission tomorrow evening to get the old bresse hen from the producers' market. I have been worried a bit lately hoping they have one since they only come in once a week. I need one for the consomme de Poulard de Bresse that I will serve (again) this year as a first course. I should call them just to make sure I get one. If not I may have to go to their farm of Thursday. If I do get a hen, I might venture to make my own ravioli this time to control what goes into them this time. Moby, do you have any ideas? Your class on pasta got me started. I wrote in my notes that the consomme is perfect plain, but this was a reaction to the truffle raviolis that I put into the soup - which had very strong cheeses and was competing with the soup. I think maybe something more complimentary would be nice. Just one or two ravioli per bowl of soup. Something like crawfish maybe... Can provide any ideas? Link to Moby's Stuffed Pasta Class in the eGCI !! The terrine: That's the duxelles just getting started and beginning to reduce the rabbits' stock. While this was going on I finished hand mincing all of the meats (to make sure they all were cut up to different sizes) and putting the forcemeat together. The two rabbits yielded 2 wine bottles full of nice flavorful rabbit stock. I reduced one to mix into a panade for the terrine: (and saved the rest for something else). Making the Panade: All of the elements of the forcemeat: The wild and farmed rabbit, the panade, the duxelles, the pistachios, which have been parboiled and peeled, a little bit of cured ham, some poitrine demi-sel, lean veal, 2 eggs, Armagnac, fresh thyme, some herbes de provence (my supply from Brigitte, my mother-in-law who lives down south), a large pinch of nutmeg, pepper, a little of my creole spice mix, salt, and pepper. I gave this a good mix with my hands and got ready to put it all together. The mustard here is a dijon which is marketed by amora as a 'demi-fort'. I like it because you never can overdose on this stuff. I am sensitive to dijon mustard overdoses. So I used the 'demi-fort' this time to make sure I didn't overdo it. I rolled that up and placed it in the terrine which I had halfway filled with the forcemeat. I decided at the last minute to reinforce the flattened haunches with a slice of ham because it seemed fragile. Ready for the oven.

Thanks for the offer Rebecca! Oh, I've done this long without them, I'll keep enjoying the real thing when I go home to visit. It was very nice to think of me, though. This afternoon I took some time to finish up a work related project and also put the terrine together. The terrine was lots of fun and didn't take a whole lot of time, but I got worried twice. One was when I realized we didn't have any Cognac. I did a Lucy and just used Armagnac. The next was when I began to have second thoughts about the dried mirabelles I'd picked out, and just went ahead full steam ahead anyway. So it's in the oven now and I'm not sure what's going to become of it. I figure if I weigh it down with enough weight and for a long enough time it'll be fine. I was worried about the mirabelles because they seemed a bit stiff. I hope the cooking juices will soften them up. A word about they day we celebrate Thanksgiving. Since we have relatives coming, and Thursday is not a holday here, we have always had the family meal on Saturday. This gives everyone a chance to travel and get here in time for dinner. So this Thursday I'll have a little celebration here between Loic and I but nothing too special. Tonight we're having steak. In France the steaks are cut a bit diferent from the ones you normally find back home. Tonight we will be eating a cut called the Aloyau, which is the muscle in the back.