Dave Hatfield

Lindsey Ann - Nice to see you back & still eating lots of cheese. Don't know if you can find it in the states, but if you can try Chaource. Think you'll like it. I like to pair it with St Felicien.

As per my previous post you might try here. within sight of Mont St Michael Doesn't look too shabby or expensive. Try the draft cider while you're in that area. Delicious!

Should have included this link in my first response. Silence Hotels. Typical French name, but this is an independent group of hotels located all over France. They tend to be better than the Logis, but cheaper than the Chateau et ... We've stayed at them for years and never been disappointed. edited to correct typo

Bordeaux via TGV. Can't go wrong, Great food, great wine & probably better weather than Burgundy this time of year. The Beaune suggestion is also a good one as is Dijon. Strasbourg it you like those kind of wines or Rheims supposedly has a bit of bubbly around it. Now's not the season, but later in the year you'll have more fun just meandering in your car. Make a dash somewhere on the Autoroute(s) then get off and just potter around. Amazing things are there to be found.

I have to admit that I'm addicted to Burger King double whoppers with cheese. I find them hard to resist. Fortunately for my waistline, here in France there are no Burger Kings. Lots of Mac's which I hate, but no Whoppers. This saves me from my addiction except when we visit England. Last time we lived in the states two had two big standard poodles, Polly & Kuno, who adored Burger King. As we stopped by the take out window two large heads would poke out the rear window listening intently for the words " Two Junior burgers, hold the mustard & pickles." Many a server jumped at the sight. edited to correct typos

Nibor, Said community consists of a fairly large group of mainly British expats who spend most of their time either drunk or high. They live off of unemployment money from the Uk plus what they can make doing casual labor. They are joined by a similarly sized group of French dole recipients who behave similarly. They are very unpleasant to be around. This is a real shame as otherwise St Antonin is a beautiful village. A little touristy these days as I mentioned. The market is good though so crowded as to be almost impossible in July & August. We normally only go during the winter months and even then only occasionally. Limogne, also on Sunday, market is not as large, but far more pleasant. My personal favorite is the Caussade market on Monday. Villefranche de Rouergue on Thursday is also excellent. You will find much information scattered through my blog including a list of local restaurants. There is also quite a lot of area information to be found at one of our websites It lists and talks about many of the nearby outstanding villages.

Since I have lived about 20 minutes away from St Antonin for the past 8 years I can echo Abra's recommendation for the area if not St Antonin itself. We find the town very beautiful, but too touristy and out of season there is a an undesirable expat community. The area, however, is delightful with much to see & do. Cordes, Albi, Brunequelle, St Cirq, Cahors, Puy lecici and on & on. The food is good and, relatively, inexpensive. The markets are just great; our favorite is the Monday market in Caussade. Villefranche de Rouergue on Thursday is also an excellent regional market. In our village a great place to meet & talk to the locals is the little summer bar/restaurant at our local lake. Everybody goes there for a drink in the evening. You could do worse (here comes my commercial) than look at www.camp-del-mas.com. as a place to stay.

I've been making confit for many years and so far no problems. To be safe I recommend the following steps: 1) Make sure your jars are very well sterilized. 2) Make sure that the duck fat fully covers all of the meat. 3) Check that the jars are well sealed. 4) Store at 'cellar' temperature. To me this means something less than 50 degrees F. If you have a spare fridge with room storing your confit there can't hurt. It will age a bit more slowly, but last a bit longer. Another tip; if you don't use all of a jar at one time make sure that the remaining confit in the jar is fully covered by fat. Simple, motherhood & apply pie advice, but following these precautions has served me well for many years.

Our hamper is just about finished. You can see what we ended up with over on my blog. Too many pictures to post here. All we need is to find some packaging for the biscotti & then we can actually pack everything in the hamper. Thanks for all the suggestions & good items to add. Its still not too late to put together your very own hamper. Enjoy!

Bra is so highly over rated that I can hardly believe it. Last time we went it was a carnival of unacceptable errors given that this is supposed to be a 3 star restaurant. - Friends who arrived slightly before the rest of our party were camped in the reception area and not even offered a drink. - They presented us with the most over priced wine list I've ever seen. - The service was sloppy. OK for a local place, but not up to the expected standard. - Although the food was good it was not memorable. A day later nobody in our party of 6 could remember a single dish. Sorry guys, but this is opinion of those of us who live in France in this area. We've gone to every Michelin starred restaurant within a couple of hundred miles and, believe me, we wouldn't go back to Bra's. Its just not worth it. PS: The ladies did think the loos were cool.

Kerry, good ideas. I'm not a great fan of Vin de noix (if you are ever this way I have several bottles you can have.) The idea did, however, make me think that I should add some walnut oil which is another of out local things. I'm counting on Louise for the fruitcake, but I'd certainly include it if I didn't think I could count on her. And, thanks for the concern, but there are no real difficulties taking thing between France & the UK. Taking food items into the states is a whole different ball game & a right pain!

A Christmas tradition of ours is the Christmas Hamper. We'd make one up if we weren't the family members hosting Christmas dinner. All other units of the family would make up a hamper. It wasn't competitive, but there were favorite things that various relatives always made; "their special treat" One Aunt was famous for her miniature mince pies for example. (homemade mince meat of course) So, my question is: What do you put in your Christmas Hamper? Even if you'v never done one before what would you like to see in a Hamper that somebody brought to your house for Christmas? In our family you gained brownie points for a having a high content of home made or grown items. It wasn't necessary that everything be home made, but the more the better. I'm still working one the items for the Christmas Hamper we plan on taking to our daughter and her family in England this year. Its been a while since we've seen them and even longer since we celebrated Christmas with them so we're really looking forward to it. So far I'm planning on: - Walnuts. From our very own tree. Very traditional. - Hazel nuts. Also from our very own tree. - Dried figs. A friend gave m the figs and I dried them myself. - Biscotti. My favorite recipe with fennel & almonds plus my mix of spices. - Comfit de Canard. I''ll buy this as its easy to get good quality here & Louise absolutely adores it. - Lemon marmalade. My own, first effort & not bad. Not brilliant, but not bad. - Oriental plum sauce. Linda made this from plums offered by a neighbor and its absolute dynamite. - Quince chutney. This is from a friend who made it from our Japanese quinces. - 5 fruit marmalade. From another friend who makes it commercially. Delicious! That's it so far. We'll think of more as we go. There'll probably be some fresh fruits just to satisfy tradition and some cheese. We won't do Christmas pudding, mince pies or fruit cake as we know Louise will have done those. So, I'd learn what you do for a Christmas Hamper and/or have any suggestions. Also, what's your ideal hamper? Its a good time to use your imagination and, given the economic circumstances, a good time to think home made.

I would rather have people bring flowers or some other small gift than wine. As has been said I choose the wines to suit the menu. Unless a guest has called in advance to ask which wine would go with the meal, I'd rather they did something else. There is an exception, however. A few years back a large number of our friends were persuaded to buy "a row of grapes" by a young English couple just starting out. The idea was you could help in the harvesting & so forth and you then got all of the wine produced by 'your row'. This a fun idea. The problem was that for the first few years the wine was awful. Not spoiled or anything, just awful. So, people started bring this wine as a gift when invited to dinner. My revenge was to serve it! They couldn't really say anything as they'd brought it and ,usually, most of the other guests has either bought their own row or were in on the joke. Fortunately its all gone now and the English couple make quite palatable wine these days. As for those who bring something that's good, but advertise the fact- usually quite loudly. My ploy is to keep it, wait until they invite us to dinner, then take their pretentious wine back to them as a gift. What can they say? Yet another ploy is to pretend that even a good wine is only OK. I did this to my step son who is a great Burgundy fan. (I'm a Bordeaux lover) He brought increasingly superb bottles, but I kept saying that they still didn't match up to the Bordeaux. Took him a while to catch on. Great fun & games can be had messing around this way.

Don't know about the 'Les Halles' cassoulet recipe as I don't have the book, but... I used to make my cassoulet with great northern beans all the time when we last lived in the states. My method was to bring the beans to a boil then let them sit in the water for 2-3 hours before layering them into the cassole. They would still be a bit hard at this stage, but after the cooking with the meats they end up about right. Whole, but tender. I agree with doing two crusts, pushing the first one down into the pot. Given all the other fats in the cassoulet I normally just boil up some pork rind to soften it then cut it into small pieces and distribute these throughout the layers. This gives the flavor I'm looking for without adding too much fat. If you can beg, borrow, steal or find one to buy using a cassole to cook your cassoulet in is a big help. Lots of pictorial stuff about doing cassoulet on my blog, address below. Good luck!! PS: Think I'll start a business importing Tarbais beans. They cost nowhere that much here. We live less than 2 hours from Tarbes and, believe me, the French won't pay those kind of prices for beans. As far as I can tell Tarbais beans are simply good old lingots available everywhere, but with excellent marketing by the local co-op.

We've already done our Thanksgiving dinner. We did it on last Sunday. We had 25 guests including (a new high for us) 5 Americans. Everybody else was French or British. Since Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in France we celebrated early so as to not disturb the working week. You can see a pictorial of much of the meal preparation over on my blog (www.frenchfoodfocus.com) but here's the menu. - Nibbles. crisps, nuts, olives, corn nuts and home dried figs. - Curried pumpkin soup with coconut milk. - De-constructed turkey a la Julia Child. I managed to get a 25 pounder from a local winery. - Baked ham in the English manner. (that is brined in cider, salt, sugar and herbs for two weeks before roasting.) - Roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts, pureed sweet potato. - homemade cranberry sauce and forecemeat stuffing. And, of course, lots of gravy made from turkey stock. - For dessert we had pumpkin pie and carrot cake. With all that available we skipped the cheese, but over indulged on the wine. A good time was had by all. The French aren't quite sure of the occasion, but are always up for a good meal.

Franci Here's alinkwhich may help. Type 55 seems to be the most common variety in the Supermarkets.

When my French neighbors asked for my cassoulet recipe.

Since I know nothing about you maybe I should call you 'Mystery Chef'? In any case my idea of value for maoney when it come to dining out seems to be somewhat different to yours. I'll give you two examples of what I consider 'value for money' 1) See my blog post (address below) titles "How do They do it?" This is about a lunch we had yesterday at a modest restaurant near us. They delivered a very nice meal at an incredibly low price served in a nice ambiance by professional staff. That's value for money from my customer perspective. 2) Our favorite Michelin One star is 'Le Vieux Pont' in the French village of Belcastel. Here you get a true fine dining experience. Everything is superbly done, the food, the presentation,the decor, the service and the price.The Chef is innovative, but we could care less whether the ingredients are 'expensive' or not. What counts is the way the are combined and cooked. So, IMHO value for money can take on more than one guise. You can and we do dine well at any level.

For a pork roast or tenderloin. Its best to brine you pork for 48-72 hours first, but not essential. Its just that after brining you can roast the pork to a lower temperature keeping it moist. It only needs an internal temperature of 135 -140 degrees F. In any case mix lots of Dijon mustard with finely chopped fresh sage. Spread this mix over the top of the roast. Roast as above. When done remove the pork to rest scraping off the mustard/sage coating into the roasting pan. De glaze the pan with white wine. Stir well to mix & reduce a bit then add full cream to taste. Reduce some more. Serve the sauce either over the carved pork or separately.

Interesting. I've just started work on a ham for Thanksgiving. Its a shoulder. You can see what I've been doing on my blog, address below, there is a recipe for the brining liquid which is mostly cider. Recipe is from "the River Cottage Cookbook" from England. Its a different approach. At the end of the brining period I'll boil it, then dry it a bit and roast it. This is a very typical English approach and is really delicious. Have a look.

"Other than this I have a week wide open to plan a program that will help me learn about the cuisine of southwestern France. Aside from simply learning some cooking techniques, my primary focus will be the connection people have with their food - with farms, food artisans, butchers, etc." A suggestion is that you buy & read a copy of "Goose Fat & Garlic" by Jeanne Strang before you come. This 'cookbook' will tell you more about the cooking and way of life in SW France than anything else I can think of. You should be able to get it in paperback via Amazon. Kate might be able to arrange for you to 'do' a pig. This is where you participate in the preserving of a whole pig. These days the killing is mostly done in an abattoir so you don't have to go through the actually killing part. You do, however, help make all of the various sausages and pates that the country folk used to preserve the pig for the winter. Its a fabulous experience. You could also take a special trip down to the home of the cassole. Lots to see and eat as well as being able to make your very own authentic casoulette. Try to make estafinado. A classic SW dish. There's so much you can try & do. Just enjoy.

Trufflelover A suggestion for you and Kate. Drive just a bit further, about 20KM, and go to the truffle market in Limogne. Why? Because you are very unlikely to be able to buy a truffle in Lalbenque. The big buyers swoop in and buy everything in about 30 seconds flat. Boom! Its all over. Unless Kate knows somebody its a hard place for the novice to buy. Still great fun to go to however. In Limogne the market is much smaller and there is usually only one wholesaler. Everyone with truffles to sell goes to him and gets their findings weighed. Once all have been weighed the price/kilo will be announced by the wholesaler. If you want to buy look out for someone who only has one or two truffles to sell. Normally, they will be happy to sell to you at the same price. You can get a relative bargain. Meanwhile, pray for rain in SW France. Its been very dry so far which has been bad for the truffles and the ceps. I've only seen the cap hunters out once this fall & I haven't found any field mushrooms to date. Its just too dry.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned belly pork as a low/slow roast. Its one of our favorites. There's a pictorial over on my blog, but all you do is simply score the rind at about 1/4 inch intervals then place the belly rind side up into a 130 degree C. oven for anywhere up to 8 hours (4 is absolute minimum) I like to support the belly on peeled halves of big onions, but that's an add on. At the end just turn on the grill and crisp up the rind into crackling. Watch it like a hawk as its easy to burn it. We also like a very slow shoulder of lamb. No braising liquid, no boning just rosemary, garlic , salt & pepper. After 6-8 hours it just falls off the bone & the juices make a super gravy. This too is on the blog in detail.

Ken - Nice write ups! Very timely for us as we're planning a fall trip over to the Burgundy region in a week or two. Thanks.

Hopefully this is the right forum for this question. My wife and I have a long standing disagreement on this. This being how many people make up the 'ideal' number for a dinner party? My wife is of the opinion that the more the merrier so given her druthers she would invite anywhere from 10 to 15 (including us) as that's as many as we can seat normally. (on special occasions like Thanksgiving we can seat up to about 20, but that stretches things to their limit short of outdoor eating.) I'm of the opinion that no more than 8 is the ideal number. This number makes the cooking easier and, very importantly, makes for good table conversation. I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks.