Quand la passion devient école

Sunrise over the Loire this morning

A few snaps taken this morning while dog walking along the river at Le Thoureil.

Profiteroles today!

I don't know why people are scared of choux pastry.  It's not hard to make but does require plenty of elbow grease particularly if you beat in the eggs by hand.  There is a slightly heart stopping moment the first time you make it perhaps when it comes to adding the eggs as the mixture splits and looks like it's a complete disaster.  Persevere and it all comes right again quickly.  

Basically you bring some water, milk and butter to the boil in a pan and then shower in some flour all in one go.  After a minute or two of manic mixing with a wooden spoon it forms a dough like mixture that leaves the sides of the pan and forms a ball - you continue to cook it for a couple of minutes to 'cook out' the flour and then add your eggs one at a time until you have a lovely shiny mixture. 

 Here they are - little crispy choux buns ready to be filled with crème patissière.

You can fill them with whipped cream or ice cream but I prefer a rich vanilla crème patissière.

A dark chocolate sauce in the business so here I melted 70% cocoa chocolate with some unsalted butter and then added a couple of tablespoons of golden syrup, some caster sugar and milk.  It gives a rich shiny sauce that doesn't go hard when it cools down.

Et voila - here they are - filled and drowned in chocolate sauce.  

Yes, there are a few different processes involved but the great thing is that you can make a batch of the choux buns and put them in the freezer.  Bring them out and pop them in the oven for a couple of minutes to crisp up and then continue with whatever filling you prefer.  

It's a classic and rightly so - bon appetit!

A good jelly stock is the business.

Continuing on my theme of soup (as the weather is still pretty chilly here in Anjou), I wanted to shout out the virtues of decent stock.  Of course I realise that a lot of the time life is too short to be fiddling around in the kitchen making stock and a decent quality stock cube/powder can be absolutely fine but, it does make a difference when you use the real thing.

I'm sure many of you will look at the picture and think it looks pretty disgusting but this is my home made chicken stock that I used today to liven up a simple leek and carrot soup. Earlier in the week I served up a poached chicken for dinner.  This old fashioned dish is something that takes me back to my childhood and is real comfort food.  You place a whole chicken in a large saucepan and cover with cold water.  Add a couple of bay leaves, a sprinkle of sea salt and some whole black peppercorns and then slowly bring to the boil - turn down to a gentle simmer.  Depending upon your chicken it takes between an hour and an hour and a half to poach.  About 30 minutes before it's done I add little turnips, large chunks of carrot, a whole onion per person (peeled) and leave them poaching alongside the chicken until everything is tender.  I then take out the cooked veg and keep it warm, remove the chicken and keep that warm and then make a sauce by reducing some of the cooking stock to concentrate its flavour, adding double cream and a little cornflour to thicken. I season generously with ground black pepper and some sea salt and it's done.  Served with some buttery mashed potatoes it makes a simple dinner that is creamy and gentle in flavour and is just delicious. 

Back to the stock.  The great thing about poaching a chicken in this way is that you have a large pot of ready made stock as a by-product.   I removed the meat from the carcass and returned the bones to the pot after dinner and then reduced the stock by about half.  At this point you could almost use it as a soup on its own it has so much flavour but it's also fantastic for risottos or for adding to sauces.  It keeps in the fridge for a few days or can be popped in the freezer for use another time.  

There's something very satisfying about creating something delicious for nothing and as unappetizing as you may think it looks - trust me, a good jelly stock is the business. 

It has to be soup when there's snow on the ground

There's something very comforting about a big bowl of steaming soup when you look outside and see snow on the ground.  The thought of a cold sandwich fills me with dread - it has to be hot and nourishing.

Soup is so easy to make and takes little time.  Today I just had a root around in the veggie basket and finely chopped a bit of everything in there.  I sweated finely diced onion, carrot, cauliflower and curly cabbage along with a fat clove of garlic in a saucepan with a large chunk of butter and a little oil to stop it burning.  When everything had softened up a bit I added some shredded chorizo, a can of tomatoes and finally topped up with vegetable stock that I made up using a stock cube.  20 minutes of bubbling on the top of the stove it was ready.  I seasoned it with a little more sea salt and ground black pepper, added some fresh basil and served it up in big bowls with some chunky croutons that I made using old bread and grated parmesan.  

How easy was that?  

The Relais de Bonnezeaux

The Relais de Bonnezeaux changed owners in November 2012 and was taken over by a new young team.  We called in for lunch yesterday with clients as it's located in a very good spot perched high amongst the hills of the Layon and with lovely views of the surrounding vineyards.  Naturally quiet at this time of year, we were one of 3 tables lunching on the menu which is available from Monday to Friday.  With 2 choices in each category it's good value at 15€ for entrée/plat or plat/dessert.

Service was incredibly slow bearing in mind there were so few of us eating - I dread to think how long we'd have been kept waiting if the restaurant was full.  Thankfully, armed with a glass of local Crémant we were able to while away the three quarters of an hour until our entrée arrived.  Unfortunately half of the party had opted for entrée plat while the other half plat dessert.  This meant those choosing the dessert option were waiting for a whole hour before receiving anything to eat.  

That said my entrée was really really good.  A giant ravioli containing a whole egg yolk was served on a bed of intensely flavoured wild mushrooms and a moussey foie gras foam.  It looked like a fried egg except the white was paper thin pasta and the yolk perfectly runny.  Nigel had a soup of tiny vegetables served façon 'pot au feu'.  Baby carrots, turnips and potatoes in the bowl with a broth of light but intensely flavoured stock poured over the top.  So far so good despite the hunger of our co-diners.

I opted for the Merlan - whiting, which was stuffed with a confit of red onions and served with a simple creamy risotto flavoured with butter and parmesan. It was tasty.  Others opted for the chicken stuffed with fromage frais and served with tagliatelle.  Unfortunately one portion was completely raw in the centre so had to be returned to the kitchen.  It was replaced with apologies and we continued.  Desserts were good - a religieuse served with a caramel au beurre salé centre and pistachio particularly nice.

We had no time for coffee so had to rush off to our next appointment.  We arrived at 12h45 and left at 14h45 - too long for a 2 course menu style lunch - the service certainly needs to speed up a lot.  We were hoping to take a walk around the vineyards before our next stop with this was ruled out.

Final thoughts - nice spot, lovely location especially in the summer when they can open up the sliding doors, service slow, moments of triumph with the food but real low points too.  No further apologies were given when we paid the bill for serving up raw food - the chef was too busy having a glass of wine with 2 other guests who'd been eating alongside us - clearly friends or contacts.  I think they thought we were tourists.  

What a shame. We take clients out to lunch on a regular basis and it's well located.  Maybe some of these are just teething problems and they'll find their feet in a little while.  

What is falun?

On a recent visit to see Domaine Leduc-Frouhin in Anjou recently we took the time to have a close look at the 'falun'.  A sedimentary rock formed from marine deposits laid down during the Caenozoic era (up to 60 million years old), it contains thousands of tiny shells, sometimes crushed, sometimes whole and is generally friable (being mixed with sand and clay). 

Falun was quarried in times gone by to correct the pH of highly acid agricultural soils and is common in Touraine and Anjou.  It looks quite different to tufa (here called tuffeau), the local limestone that dominates our landscape and was used to build all the houses and chateau along the Loire. 

A couple of 79's

We had the pleasure of sharing these two old bottles with our neighbours yesterday over a very long lazy lunch.  Chateau Chalon is a beautiful village in the Jura which is famous for it's fabulous 'vins jaunes' made from the Savagnin grape variety.  We had the Chateau Chalon 1979 as an aperitif with a few nibbles - sherry-like in aroma and taste it was hazlenutty, yeasty and toasty with a caramelised note and with hints of cinnamon.  These wines have amazing staying power with a capacity to age gracefully for decades.  

With some home prepared gravadlax we enjoyed a bottle of La Coulée de Serrant 1979.  This Chenin Blanc wine from the famous estate of Nicolas Joly was produced before his biodynamic days and was a real surprise.  Straw coloured (not amber or golden), it had the appearance of a much younger wine.  Honeyed on the nose and with striking aromas of waxy white flowers, fresh as a daisy with a touch of wet wool and a slightly Riesling style note at the end.  The palate was soft and creamy with a seam of floral limeyness running through it.  Acidity was low - a slight criticism but for a wine of this age it was incredible.  We were at the Coulée de Serrant only last week with clients and it was interesting to see how the winemaking style today is clearly quite different. No hints of stewed apple on the 79 that are already evident on the 2010's and no searingly high alcohol either (15.5 on the 2010).  That the wine showed no real sign of fading away after more than 30 years is an incredible testament to the staying power of Chenin Blanc.  I imagine that levels of sulphur at bottling were relatively high compared with those used today.  

Our thanks have to go to our neighbours who kindly shared these bottles with us.  Not only do they have troglodyte caves that are more beautiful than ours, they seem to have a more interesting cellar too!! 

3 years of passion for 3 seconds of pleasure!

The business of raising oysters is not something that has been particularly close to my heart up until now.  They don't really 'do' it for me.  Don't get me wrong, I love seafood, adore mussels and clams but I just can't get the oyster thing.  I desperately want to love them - nothing sexier than sharing a dozen oysters sat on the sea front with a chilled bottle of something dry and white.  Low in calories, good for the libido, sensuous, what more can I say.  I've tried but I don't get the thrill of that saline hit as they slide down your throat.  So when I say I love mussels, clams etc I guess I have to come clean, it's all about the sauce for me.  Nothing better than a creamy curry flavoured mouclade with a glass of Muscadet, a bowl of steaming moules marinières with crusty bread to mop up the juices, a garlicky spagetti alla vongole.  I think you get my drift - so why the interest now then?

Well, we've just come back from a short break in Brittany and paid a visit to a very pretty little seaside village called Penerf.  Here, oysters rule the show.  The surrounding marshes used to produce ample quantities of sea salt in generations gone by but with the land reclining, the introduction of refrigeration and the need to regenerate the area in the mid 19th century the region turned it's hand to rearing oysters.  

Today there are 5 producers in this tiny village. Around the Golfe du Morbihan there are around 150 so oysters pretty much rule the roost in these parts.  We took the chance to visit the production site of Jöel Denis and see what's it's all about.

Jöel is close to retirement and he doesn't have anyone lined up to take over his business.  In the past, oyster rearing passed from generation to generation but it's exceedingly hard work and other more modern problems have recently appeared that make it financially crippling.  A virus that originated in Russia frequently attacks the young oysters when they're young.  Some years the producers will suffer a 10% loss and other years it can be up to 80%.  

Each producer effectively rents a parcel of sea from the state for a period of 35 years.  If things don't work out and the producer decides to call it quits he/she has to pay for a minimum of 10 years rent.  This is one reason why the majority of producers try to buy existing businesses from the retirement generation as otherwise they are faced with the heavy investment costs of setting up a production facility themselves and then persuading the state to rent them an area of sea. But with the virus wiping out a good proportion of the oysters before they can reach full maturity, you can see why this business is proving unattractive to the younger generation.

These tiny oysters are a few months old and have been bought in by Jöel Denis.  Young oysters like this cost 30€ per kilo (now they don't sound expensive do they?). He puts around 700 of them in large plastic mesh bags (see below on the tractor) and then these are laid out on tables in the sea.  The bags weigh about 25 kilos each and are turned and shaken on a regular basis to ensure that they don't grow attached to each other and green algae doesn't form on the bags.  When they get bigger they are transferred to bags with a larger mesh and the process continues.  On average an oyster has been handled 40 times before it reaches your mouth.  An incredible 40 times - now that's what I call a labour of love.  Come rain or shine, in wind and rain, gales and torrents, these guys are out on the sea lifting and turning and shifting and grafting for us.  

And when all is done and the oysters have spent around 2 years out at sea, they're brought in. After a time in oxygenated water to cleanse and purify them they are sorted by size (see below Jöel's old fashioned machine) and then taken to markets and distributors all over France.

A staggering 3 years for something that is popped into our mouths and disappears in 3 seconds. These guys deserve respect and I hope that the industry won't dwindle into decline over the coming years.

Seeing how hard they work and understanding how they are produced was enlightening.  We are so far removed from the food on our plate these days - I do believe that if we spent a bit more time understanding the labour of love and commitment that goes into producing high quality produce that we'd all respect it a bit more and savour every mouthful.

And yes, I'm going to have another go. They deserve it!

Catching up with Bernard Fouquet in Vouvray

Good to catch up with Bernard Fouquet in Vouvray last week and have an update from him as to the state of play in the vineyards over there.  He says it's been a tricky year so far with more treatments than normal to keep the mildew at bay.  I asked how many times he has treated at which point he offered us a tasting from barrel of his Cuvée Marigny- an excellent tactic to dodge the question!  

It's interesting to note that in years like this when weather conditions are against them the lutte raisonnée and organic growers are having to treat often to keep the vines healthy.  Last year we were blessed with such a dry period that many growers only sprayed a couple of times throughout the entire growing season.  2012 could not be more different - some growers have sprayed 11 times this year and we've not even reached veraison yet (the point at which black skinned grape varieties start to change colour from green to pink to purple).

So, back to Bernard.  His Cuvéé Marigny is a blend - one third that has been aged in 1 wine barrels, one third in 2 wine barrels and the remaining third in new barrels.  We tasted the three different components which were remarkably different.

The wine in the 2 wine barrels (we use the expression 2 wine rather than 2 year old because it's possible to have more than one wine in a barrel in a year) had a lemon and lime citric quality. Round, full and rich on the palate and not austerely dry but with great length.   The wine in the 1 wine barrels was more spicy on the nose with a tiny hint of tannin coming through on the palate. More mineral with grapefruity notes and shorter on the finish.  The new barrel wine was full of tobacco, grapefruit and spice.  A little tannin at the end, spicy and long.  Bernard was explaining that the 1 and new barrel wines have typical Chenin acidity and they tend to change dramatically in July, coming together.  The oak used is French, made from staves that have been dried in the open air for 36 months and are medium toasted before being made into barrels.  The final wine will be blended later this month and allowed to settle for around a month in cuve before bottling.  

A hive of activity on the day we were there, Bernard was in the process of disgorging his sparkling wine, a Vouvray Mousseux Brut Zero.  He's not a fan of the freeezing process that is often used for disgorging so each bottle has to be fed into the line by hand.  His Brut Zero comes from the 2007 vintage and is absolutely delicious.  

We've been fans of Bernard's Vouvrays for a few years now.  He mentioned that he has another parcel about 200m away from the winery called Le Bouchet and is going to try to make a 'real sec' this year if the weather conditions allow it.   He's also intending to make another sec in cuve from a small parcel close to the Plan de Jean called Le Petit Clos for the 2013 vintage.  This will be a true 'sec' made from very ripe grapes and with no malo - estimated production will be 5/6,000 bottles a year. We look forward to that.

Good news for those of you in the UK too.  Majestic will be stocking his 'Cuvée les Peruches' from the autumn.  It should be retailing for just under £9 a bottle.  

Sunshine at last

Drove to St Martin de la Place yesterday to take advantage of the sunny day and check out the riverside  restaurant la Croix Rouge.  From this sunny spot you can see over to the south side of the river and the pretty hotel le Prieuré dominates the hillside. It's a pricey place to stay but has some of the best views over the river and a decent restaurant too.  

La Croix Rouge is a typical 'guingette' overlooking the river.  Open 7 days a week during the summer it's well situated for cyclists and campers as well as those looking for a simple lunch by the riverside.  We enjoyed a Leffe and watched the world go by.  I can't vouch for the food as we didn't stay for lunch but we intend to give it a try.  

Manoir des Rosiers - Le Petit Pavillon

Looking for a tiny gîte that is very very French in style but with all the things that make your life comfortable?  The Manoir des Rosiers has recently renovated one bedroom gîte 'le Petit Pavillon' for two that fits the bill perfectly.  Hidden away in the Anjou countryside it has a kitchen/living room with wood burning stove for chilly nights late in the season, a contemporary bathroom and one double bedroom.  In the garden there is lovely pool for cooling off in the summer (fat chance this year but I live in hope), hot tub (no excuse for not getting the costume on even if it's chilly) plenty of secluded shady areas for hiding with a good book and a great home cinema room in a converted barn that has a massive screen for watching films.  

It's just the kind of place that we would choose to stay.  The owners, Maïa (a former tour guide) and her husband Frédéric moved to the Loire to escape the bustle of Paris and are wonderfully welcoming. Maïa can even arrange a light supper on the night of your arrival to take away the stress of having to dash out shopping on your first evening.

They also have le 'Maison du manoir' a lovely gîte with 2 bedrooms (to sleep 4).  

A perfect place for a short break in the Loire valley and only 20 minutes from us here in Cumeray so why not build in a little Loire wine discovery while you're here.

www.lemanoirdesrosiers.com

Maïa & Frédéric Moreaux
4 rue du Pavillon
49700 Noyant-la-Plaine
France
mamoreaux@yahoo.fr
00 33 (0)2 41 83 05 25
00 33 (0)6 12 17 17 00

Fete du Velo

This weekend was the annual Fête du Vélo in the Loire valley.  Miles and miles of roads along the riverside are closed to traffic and everyone from the age of 3 to 93 gets on their bike for the day. It's a lovely annual event that everyone can enjoy from the potterer to the regular cyclist.  The weather wasn't amazing this year but it was warm and breezy - in many ways better than a scorching hot day.  These pictures were taken around the bridge in Les Rosiers/Gennes.

It's something we look forward to every year.  Hats off to the organisers who make it all run smoothly.