eG Foodblog: bleudauvergne

[Pam R]

Lucy: I've been catching up on some of the foodblogs I missed before becoming a member (how did I not know about this thing before last fall?) and I just finished up your first blog. I enjoyed it so much I was left wanting more and... ta-dah! Thanks... so far I'm enjoying this one just as much.

or use an immersion blender if you're rich

Eh? Rich? You can buy a workable one for less than $10 CND ...and a not so bad one for less than $20 ... worth every penny!

Edited March 22, 2005 by Pam R (log)

[Ducky]

A wonderful blog(s) Lucy! May I be so pedantic as to inquire what camera you are using for those brilliant photos?

[petite tête de chou]

Hi Lucy,

I'm curious about the tin pots outside of your window. Do you use them for herbs or flowers?

And it looks like you're forcing a bulb of some sort in a glass jar. What is it?

[Pan]

or use an immersion blender if you're rich

Eh? Rich? You can buy a workable one for less than $10 CND ...and a not so bad one for less than $20 ... worth every penny!

←

What's an immersion blender and how is it different from a regular one? (Please address this elsewhere if it's not an appropriate question for this blog.)

[Pam R]

What's an immersion blender and how is it different from a regular one? (Please address this elsewhere if it's not an appropriate question for this blog.)

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Not sure where else to answer this: Also known as a stick or a hand blender... you can see a few here or here. You immerse the blade into the food and blend it in the pot or bowl. Very useful.. much easier to clean and I use it for almost any soup I puree.

[canucklehead]

Just wanted to chime in and say what a beautiful and fantastic blog. The food looks fantastic and what a civilized way to live.

Just great.

[Daddy-A]

I'm rooting for you Lucy!

Not only do I now know the anguish of uploading picture after picture (THANK YOU for the effort btw), but with the time difference, you'll be waking up to a mountain of questions .

Then again, you'll also be waking up in Lyon, and to a breakast that would put my Raisin Bran to shame

I'm really looking forward to this!

A.

[Laksa]

I hate to parrot what everyone has already said, but everything I've seen here is simply gorgeous

Yes it is a beautiful plate. Lucy takes photographs like an Italian painter.

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chefzadi, I am quite prepared to agree with you... but I've never seen any photographs taken by Italian painters.

[chefzadi]

I hate to parrot what everyone has already said, but everything I've seen here is simply gorgeous

Yes it is a beautiful plate. Lucy takes photographs like an Italian painter.

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chefzadi, I am quite prepared to agree with you... but I've never seen any photographs taken by Italian painters.

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I wrote LIKE! METAPHOR alert.

Or is that a simile in English?

Let's call them tropes.

I hate thes ($*#)&$ emoticons.

[chefzadi]

What's an immersion blender and how is it different from a regular one? (Please address this elsewhere if it's not an appropriate question for this blog.)

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Not sure where else to answer this: Also known as a stick or a hand blender... you can see a few here or here. You immerse the blade into the food and blend it in the pot or bowl. Very useful.. much easier to clean and I use it for almost any soup I puree.

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It's good for purees. Worthwhile to purchase, depending on the percentage of purees in your diet.

[docsconz]

I knew this would be difficult to keep up with.

[fou de Bassan]

Lucy, I am looking forward to reading your blog. As an aside we almost named our firstborn Loic but went with something much harder to spell!

[Jensen]

Lucy,

I am thrilled that you are blogging again. Your last blog was so inspiring to me, in a number of different ways. I know that you will inspire me again.

PS I can see the difference in weather in the lighting of your photos. You truly capture your home environs beautifully.

[snowangel]

Lucy, as a fellow blogger, I'm intimidated by all of the others much greater than moi.

If I can ask a question, which you may need to ask of our friends. What do the kids eat for lunch on school days? Just curious, and I know this is OT since it has nothing to do with your eating habits.

[handmc]

Yeah cooking school is back in session! New dishes, I can't wait to see what comes next.

[bleudauvergne]

I'm unfamiliar with salsify. Is there anything else its taste or texture compares to? Is it a starchy root? Is it crunchy and watery like jicama?

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Pan, You just have to try it.

I wanted to note a story I heard somewhere about aperitifs. A young American woman was meeting a friend at a cafe in Paris for dinner. Arriving early, she was seated and when the waiter asked if she would like a drink, she ordered a glass of wine. It was delievered rather haughtily and soon her friend arrived. Oh no, you didn't order wine did you, her friend exclaimed. She explained that it was customary to have aperitifs first, and wine was only drunk with the meal. The young woman, having learned her lesson, has been enjoying kirs and other such concoctions ever since.

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Thank you M. Lucia, for your encouraging words. Although people don't normally have wine as an aperetif, they do from time to time nonetheless. It depends on where you are and what your restaurant has, I do know French people who have wine from time to time, especially wines like Macon.

Do you usually have such a wide variety of cheeses for your cheese course?

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Chefzadi, we normally have a lot of cheeses, and we eat it daily. I buy what looks good and sometimes I'll search out recipes for cooking with it if it looks like we won't finish it while it's in its prime.

fond de volaille - fond blanc - chicken stock, right?

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Oui oui, madame.

or use an immersion blender if you're rich

Eh? Rich? You can buy a workable one for less than $10 CND ...and a not so bad one for less than $20 ... worth every penny!

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Rich. They cost a fortune over here. I wish I could afford one.

A wonderful blog(s) Lucy! May I be so pedantic as to inquire what camera you are using for those brilliant photos?

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Cheap Canon Powershot A30.

I'm curious about the tin pots outside of your window. Do you use them for herbs or flowers?

And it looks like you're forcing a bulb of some sort in a glass jar. What is it?

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I usually grow herbs in those pots. I hope you can tell me the name of the flower that's coming up, when it blooms!

If I can ask a question, which you may need to ask of our friends.  What do the kids eat for lunch on school days?  Just curious, and I know this is OT since it has nothing to do with your eating habits.

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I'll ask some co-workers today.

Whew, you guys stay up all night!

[Pan]

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Good morning, Lucy. I missed you.

What flavor is that beautiful confiture?

[bleudauvergne]

It's a compote, apple / raspberry. This is served with yougert and musili. I am leaving now for work so I'll be checking in later.

[Boris_A]

I do know French people who have wine from time to time, especially wines like Macon. 

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Some other wines like Muscat d' Alsace (dry or semi-sweet), Chasselas (Alsatian or Swiss), Sherry-like Côte-de-Jura, German Kabinett Rieslings (sometimes verly low in alcohol) or Burgundian/Alsatian bubblers make for great aperitifs.

Thanks for the poire eau-de-vie / apple juice suggestion, Lucy. I'm going to try this.

[bleudauvergne]

I do know French people who have wine from time to time, especially wines like Macon. 

←

Some other wines like Muscat d' Alsace (dry or semi-sweet), Chasselas (Alsatian or Swiss), Sherry-like Côte-de-Jura, German Kabinett Rieslings (sometimes verly low in alcohol) or Burgundian/Alsatian bubblers make for great aperitifs.

Thanks for the poire eau-de-vie / apple juice suggestion, Lucy. I'm going to try this.

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Good, tell me how it comes out. It is also very good with fresh pear juice, in fact I think it's best with that, but clean clear pear juice is hard to find. You must try and get the clear kind or make your own with a juicer, not the sludge they sometimes sell as juice which is just ground pears, because with the eau de vie somehow curdles the grains in the pears come out and settle on the bottom.

[SuzySushi]

Such beautiful produce!

I'm unfamiliar with salsify. Is there anything else its taste or texture compares to? Is it a starchy root? Is it crunchy and watery like jicama?

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Pan,

The closest "other" vegetable to salsify is burdock root (gobo in Japanese). Salsify has a somewhat more delicate flavor. It's sometimes called "oyster plant" because of its flavor. Both salsify and burdock are crunchy, but dense rather than watery or juicy.

[albiston]

Fantastic blog Lucy. I was an avid reader of your first installment and will follow this one with the same anticipation .

I'm curious about the butcher's paper under the duck breast (at least I think). Nice picture of a horse. Would I be right in assuming it is there because equine meat is on sale there? If yes, is it a commonly sold meat in France or is it a mainly regional specialty? Thanks.

[bleudauvergne]

This morning I take stock of what yesterday brought in the blog. After my first day, I come to realize that there have been many other changes in my food world since last years blog.

One of the biggest has been my loss of my butcher, Mr. Thermoz, who is mentioned periodically in the last blog.

This is the man that I wrote a kind of scary story about in the Daily Gullet. To read the story, click here.

What happened? I think I sensed he wasn't going to be around forever and one of my ways of dealing with my feelings last year was to write that story, to fantasize that he was immortal. It’s no big deal, right? Loss of a butcher? Well, let me say he played a really important role in the life of our community. He was the man that supplied hundreds of families with all of their meat, for decades. I only knew him for about a year and a half of daily slicings chops and grindings. This man would stand in his shop and carve an entire carcass of a cow by hand for the world to see. By the time I was really a solid client, I would not consider ever seeking viande elsewhere.

He and his wife not only sold me the product of their lifelong vocation, but they dispensed advice about how to prepare it, listened to my ideas, sourced special things, sometimes even made me feel guilty, encouraged me to try new things, were sensitive to my plight, they were friendly and they cared. It was Mr. Thermoz who encouraged me to prepare the Tete de Veau. They took my orders by phone without even asking my name, Mr. Thermoz used to call out to me on the street to tell me that he’d just given my husband “a package”, with a smile. He didn’t tell anyone when he retired. He simply disappeared.

One day right around Christmas the shop didn’t open and the sign with his name was covered. I was sincerely worried. Thank goodness my husband ran into him on the street one afternoon soon afterwards, so we knew he was alright, but my husband did not get a chance to not talk to him at all because there was someone working a jackhammer just next to them. They had just shaken hands, Loic says he looked like everything was alright. I was quizzing him about every nuance of the exchange - "I want you to describe what he looked like he was thinking, Lolo. I want you to tell me how many times he blinked, and did he look you straight in the eye while he shook your hand? How about his grip? Strong as ever? Tell me if he continued in the same direction after your encounter or if he walked off in another? Details, my dear. We must know." Loic blandly refused to add any information to his initial "he looked alright". He's such a scientist sometimes.

Of course the neighbors began to discuss what happened to Mr. Thermoz, was his wife okay? We got the story from the upstairs neighbor when the men went back to inspect the grate in the courtyard behind the building which we suspect the garage is using to dispose of their used oil. The men were talking about setting up a watch, and our upstairs neighbor, a man who smokes cigars and leaves a trail of cigar smoke lingering behind him wherever he goes, recounted his experience. Apparently the just before closing his doors for the last time, the evening before he retired, Mr. Thermoz said to our cigar smoking upstairs neighbor that if we wanted something for the next day, he’d better get it that day because ‘tomorrow, we won’t be here’. In my mind I imagine that his wife had smiled and nodded in her pink angora sweater, and that was it.

He deserves a golden watch. He deserves a historic plaque on the building, actually. Since he left, I have been sort of drifting. I’m a drifter in the local viande scene. I haven’t established a relationship with any one butcher in the neighborhood, and in my neighborhood, there are at least a half dozen. None of them offer offal like he did. I just blow like a leaf on the wind among them, and not one has done anything that especially impels me to become a cliente fidele.

Today I am going to stop by one butcher and tomorrow another. I’m trying to make a decision. It’s not so easy. There are a lot of factors to consider. It's not like a cheesemonger, you know. For the cheese I can pick and choose product freely among a dozen, depending on what they do well. It's the way of getting the best cheeses. With butchers it's different, somehow.

This is a photo of the same scene that the butcher story was based on, I took the photo yesterday.

For comparison:

[bleudauvergne]

I'm curious about the butcher's paper under the duck breast (at least I think). Nice picture of a horse. Would I be right in assuming it is there because equine meat is on sale there? If yes, is it a commonly sold meat in France or is it a mainly regional specialty? Thanks.

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Hmm, we were on the same wavelength just now ...(twilight zone music)... I'll visit this butcher this evening. He is a purveyor of cheval. His shop is located on my square.

[Pan]

Such beautiful produce!

I'm unfamiliar with salsify. Is there anything else its taste or texture compares to? Is it a starchy root? Is it crunchy and watery like jicama?

←

Pan,

The closest "other" vegetable to salsify is burdock root (gobo in Japanese). Salsify has a somewhat more delicate flavor. It's sometimes called "oyster plant" because of its flavor. Both salsify and burdock are crunchy, but dense rather than watery or juicy.

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I'm not that familiar with burdock root, either. Lucy's right: I'll have to try it myself.