As the temperature rises...

The weather in France has been quite hot, and when I say hot, I mean HOT. For a girl who has never lived more than 20 miles from the coast and has always had that nice coastal breeze all her life, I am not used to real, sticky, humid heat. It is now almost 8 at night in Saint Cybranet, and it is still 93. I can only hope and pray for that cold weather I was cursing less than a week ago.

Luckily, to take my mind off the sweltering weather, we have eaten two very nice dinners, one at home and another at a marché nocturne.

Our fabulous home meal was on the first day of the heat and I was so unaware of the weather that was to come. One of the local markets has a fresh fish stand set up on certain days so we decided to take a whack at a fish dinner. After Caitlin and I looked at the fish, all lying there literally staring at us, we thought against taking a culinary leap at a new fish and settled on what looked the best-a nice filet of salmon. Simple, not scary, something we knew. To accompany, we found an interesting plant in the market's produce stand, called chou Romanesco, or Romanesco Cauliflower (or Broccoli, just depends).

Bizarre right? But it tasted just like a cooked cauliflower or broccoli as they're all the same family. We separated the heads off the plant, just like a broccoli, and steamed for about 15 minutes on the stove.

We used this amazing butter recipe that I found online, ironically from the LA Times. The recipe calls for Brussels sprouts and cauliflower but we just lessened the butter mixture to add to our Romanesco. We did substitute the marjoram with fresh oregano from the garden but it was delicious!

Also at the supermarket are these fun little radishes, which we purchased to use in some dish for the dinner. Also very ironically, I received an email from Cookstr.com with 10 recipes to do with your excess zucchini, and up pops a recipe for radishes (check!), salmon (double check!) and zucchini (not so much...) but we improvised with cucumbers and avocado, and used the vinaigrette recipe that was with it and MMmmm MMmmm Good!

 You can find the Cookstr recipe here. And, in finding the recipe again for this post I realized there was a lot that we changed, just with the ingredients that we had at the B&B. So, if you are going to try this out, here's what I suggest:

• make the vinaigrette first, then set aside to let it all meld together
• we did not have shallots so instead used a small white onion
• also, we didn't have fresh dill so we used dried instead, and it worked well
• once the vinaigrette was all made and settled a bit, we marinated the salmon in it (just a little spooned out over the top) and then put the salmon on the grill (obviously did not use smoked salmon like the recipe called for)
• once it was off the grill there was plenty of vinaigrette to put over the salmon (or dip your bread into)
• for the salad on the side (we called it a salsa for our desire for something like Mexican food) we sliced the radishes and cucumbers very thin, then cut the avocado into chunks.

So, maybe we didn't use the recipe for more than a very loose guideline, but the end result was très bon. A common theme throughout the meal was lemon, it was in the butter and in the vinaigrette so therefore was in every dish on our plate. So naturally a lovely tarte au citron was necessary!

A perfect meal for a hot summer night!

Last night, we went to another marché nocturne in Audrix. The food was the same as many of these markets, people selling foie gras, escargot, agneau (lamb), pomme frites, and the likes. What is so special about this night market is the baker on spot. In the middle of this old village is a large stone wood oven. The baker brings large tubs of dough, presumably ones that have had the yeast be active and rise all day, and sits there for nearly 10 minutes loading hundreds of loaves of bread into the oven.

Just as people are starting to get really hungry, he starts to take the first, beautifully baked loafs out of the oven. As I ran up to buy our loaf, I could smell the wonderful fresh baked dough, and clearly, so could the rest of the market as the line grew increasingly longer. After handing over the Euro for the loaf, I had to run back to the table, as it was so fresh it nearly burned my hands off being so hot. But it was worth it. There is nothing like slicing into a frshly baked loaf of bread andtaking a big bite out of it, so long as you don't burn the roof of your mouth from the heat. It was wonderful though-very yeasty tasting, chewy and spongy.

looks are always decieving

Break me off a piece of that

Cloud like

And what goes perfect with freshly baked bread? A nice plate of fromage, fresh Europe cheese!!

Down to the last strawberry, there was no better way to end the meal. If only the weather can get as good as the bread! But as I am ending the post, a nice summer rain has started falling. So maybe things are looking out :)