Joyeux Anniversaire

Joyeux Anniversaire, Happy Birthday...to me! Yesterday was my 22nd birthday and it was a day full of celebration and good food! Within minutes of meeting Albert a month ago at the airport, he told me he made a mean paella, as long as he had the reason to make it. I thought it was a match made in heaven, blending my love for Spanish food on my birthday in France! So the plans were set and we sent out invitations to some of their closest friends to come celebrate. It was more then my birthday, but a celebration of summer, a celebration for the end of the tourist season, and a celebration of good food.

Not a bad place for a birthday party!

We started out with Gazpacho, a cold tomato soup and also Spanish! It has origins in Andalusia, in the 18th century, to feed the field hands.  It is a raw soup, nice and crisp for a hot summer day!

Gazpacho for 15!

You can find the Epicurious recipe we used here. The only change is the addition of cumin to give it an extra little kick!

Paella is a traditional Spanish dish, created in Valencia sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. There are many variations, with all meat, all seafood, all vegetable, green, red, and a combination of it all! The Paella that we made was a mixture, with shrimp, mussels, scallops, chorizo, chicken, onions, tomatoes, peppers, and green beans. The secret ingredient to all Paellas is the saffron and smoked paprika. Yum!

Below, is a picture step by step of how we prepared our Anniversaire Paella!

Browning the Chicken

Adding the Stock, Spices and Rice

Seafood!

Add back the chicken and chorizo on top

And ENJOY!

This is the basic recipe we used, adapted off of The Spanish Table's recipe. Make it however you want, just a suggested preparation!
1/2 Cup uncooked Valencia Rice per person
1 Cup chicken stock, per every 1/2 cup rice used
5 threads Saffron per person, dissolved in 1/2 cup white wine
4 tablespoons or more olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan
1 peice of chicken (thigh for example) per person
1/2-1 soft chorizo per person
1 teaspoon smoked paprika per person
1 clove garlic minced per person
1/4 cup chopped onion per person
1/8 cup grated tomato (cut in half and grate, discard skin) per person
2 shrimp/prawns per person
2-4 small mussles and/or clams per person
3-5 small scallops per person
red peppers cut in strips
artichoke hearts, green beans and/or peas
lemon wedges for garnish

heat stock and keep warm. Toast the saffron gently in a small pan, when aroma is released, add the white wine. Allow to come to boil and remove the heat.
Heat the paella pan over medium heat, add olive oil and fry the chicken. When the chicken is golden, add garlic, onion and saute till translucent. Add chorizo and cook until heated the remove the chicken and chorizo.
Add the rice and stir until well coated with oil (about a minute), add the paprika and grated tomato, stir in saffron flavored wine and hot stock, being all to a boil, then add the red pepper, artichoke heart, green beans and peas.
Adjust the heat to a slow boil, after five minutes, add seafood then place the chicken and chorizo  back on top of the paella mix
Cover, and cook about 15 minutes or until the rice is done. Don't ever stir!! The goal is to get a caramelized layer of rice on the bottom of the pan. If doing it on a BBQ, the fire should start to die down as the rice is cooking. On a stove, you may have to stir the paella or move the pan around over the burner(s) to not burn in one place.


So delicious! The full dinner included lots of wine, and fresh tomato and zucchini salads from another guest's gardens, and of course, a lot of vino!

bon appetite!

They got me a lovely cake for dessert, complete with Joyuex Anniversiare Duck-Girl written across the front.

Paired with champagne, what more could a girl want?

The cake was caramel flan on top, with a layer of thin slices pears both perched over a walnut crumble base, officially called the Louvre Cake. Amazing!

I could not have asked for more for my first birthday outside of California, away from my friends and family. The food was amazing and the people were lovely, and it put a perfect start to my 22nd year.

Like a Local

As my third full in week France, I am starting to fell more and more like a local everyday, minus the speaking the language issue as my French is an utter disaster. But, I am learning the land, knowing my way around, venturing off by myself, and even getting the names of the Chateau's straight as we drive (or kayak) by. Even when we venture to the markets and brocantes I know people by names and can say bonjour!

Earlier this week, I biked to a nearby town Beynac, known for the giant chateau on the cliffs over the town,  its quaint charming streets featured in films such as Chocolat, and its prestige as being labeled "es plus  beaux villages de France"  (one of the most beautiful villages in France).  This trip to Beynac was to tour the beautiful, though dominating chateau.

The chateau was built in the 12th century and has had several additions added to it since. It is a real treat to tour and anyone in the area should head up there. The restoration process that began in the 1960s has done a great job keeping the integrity of this historical landmark. My favorite original idea? A kitchen with a moat entrance!! Would definitely keep people out of the kitchen until dinner was served!

But after a bike ride there and back, a climb up the hill to the chateau, and a tour around the castle, I was ready for dinner. Luckily we were heading to another friends house in Saint Cyprien for a delightful meal.

Dinner with a View

Dinner Party!

It was a fully vegetarian meal, but you would never guess it. The hosts, who were Australian used Asian spices and sauces to create a lovely meal, full of fresh vegetables from the markets, rice seasoned with whole coriander pods, tofu, and a lovely homemade crisp with local berries, yum!

First Course-Kebabs of Fresh Veggies and Tofu with a Honey and Soy Sauce Glaze

Second Course-Green Curry with the Coriander Rice and Green Beans with Sesame Seed

Dinner was delicious and the sunset over the valley really reminded me how wonderful this area truly is.

Romantic, non?

After such an enjoyable and filling meal, it only seemed appropriate that we go kayaking the next morning. Greeted by a cool river breeze and the blazing summer sun, we set off at 10 in the morning for a leisurely paddle down the Dordogne. The river runs through some of the most beautiful villages I have ever seen, and its amazing that they are all right in my own backyard.

La Roque Gageac

Castelnaud

Beynac

If that doesn't convinced anyone to come here, I don't know what will. If you like, I can be your own personal river guide...

Queen of the Dordogne

While floating down the river, I made friends with some British boys and girl.  I joined them after for a few drinks and was invited to their wine tasting trip to Bergerac the next day.We visited Chateau Monbazillac, a chateau built in the 16th century that is surrounded by vineyards and rolling hills, and known for its very sweet white wines. The vineyard is much like a  Napa or Sonoma Valley vineyard with tasting rooms and a staff, not like most around here where the farmer himself comes out of the field to pour your taste. But they do a superb job in not only promoting their own wines, but the other wines and products of the Bergerac and Perigord area.

Chateau Monbazillac

New Friends to taste wines with

The Montbazillac AOC is about 5,000 acres of vineyards, that consist of Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle vines that have been affected by the noble rot. Its higher percentage of Muscadelle, with over 10% of it in the blend, lends it to be sweeter then the Sauternes wine from the Bordeaux region. The Montbazillac label is so specific that not only do the grapes have to be picked by hand, any dry wine that might be produced in the same vineyard must be labeled under the Bergerac AOC instead. And for those wondering what AOC is, it means Appellation d’origine contrôlée, which translates as "controlled designation of origin", that the French certification labelling process to ensure you are getting what you think you are getting. Not only limited to wines, as there are AOC labels for cheese and honey etc, it ensures that proper techniques in the cultivation of the product are used.

Clear Bottle White Wine means sweet, like this Monbazillac. Dry white wines come in green bottles

All in all a fabulous week, and with my birthday just looming just days ahead, I'm sure there is plenty more fun to come!

Cheers!

Draggin' Daglan

So I didn't mean to post so quickly again,  but this was too good not to share, and it doesn't even involve food!Yesterday, Daglan, a town about 8 km away, had its annual summer parade. I had heard a little about it-there's a theme, tractors, really cute-so for those of you have been to the annual Fourth of July Parade in Penngrove, that's what I was expecting since it is those three things. However, I was greatly mistaken. Starting off & finishing with different brass bands, the parade held six floats that all where some sort of "music". Beginning with Mariachi Men, it only got weirder as the men started looking more and more like women...decked out in Cabernet and Disco gear. I'll let the pictures do the talking, but the town of Daglan really "dragged" last night ;)

cancan Mariachi

Le Disco

More Disco

Manly men

le Daglan Rouge

Unaware of his new hardware

Human Disco ball + 100 degrees F = SUNBURN

Reggae

Confetti! From the Reggae kids. Much like Santa Barbara's Fiesta

Of course, I could show you much more pictures of the debauchery. Each float had buckets of some sort of rum punch that they would give the crowd, all the while drinking a lot of it themselves. At the end of the parade route, each float parked while the dressed up "floatees" laid down in the road to do this passing over the head game they seem to love so much. Much more interesting with men in drag...

They tried to pull members of the crowd but I wasn't buying it! All and all a fantastic fair, and what can I say, the men all looked FABULOUS darhhhling.

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 :)

Two Weeks

The thought of "Slow Food" encompasses more than just the notion of raising food organically. It also involves the preparation and the consumption of a meal, with good friends and family. On Tuesday, we had dinner at a friend's house, and the entire start to finish of the meal was about five hours, slow. It wasn't a ton of food by any means, but everyone was there just to enjoy-to enjoy food, to enjoy good company, have good conversation, you catch my drift.

We arrived at six to have some appetizers, and play a rousing game of Pétanque, a version of boules.

The court

In Pétanque, you roll out the first ball called the cochonnet, which means little pig, and you switch turns rolling your boule to get the closest. The person closest doesn't roll again until the opponent gets closer than your throw. The game goes till one person (team) reaches 13 and often involves some wine consumption, which can alter how long it takes for someone to actually win. We had to cut our game short when dinner was close to being ready, but I'm proud to say I am currently undefeated in Pétanque.

Dinner started with a foie gras dish, placed on a flat, hot pan for a few seconds on each side, served on a bed of lettuce with a vinaigrette over. A first course I could get used to.

The main was a delicious pork, with dijon-molasses sauce, accompanied with herb potatoes, and a refreshing zucchini salad-with pine nuts and a lemony dressing. Perhaps some good use to your abundance of zucchini crop that always seems to show up this time of year?

The dish in the front was a side dish that was brought by another guest. Craving some spiciness in the very good, but not spicy French diet, she grew her own poblano chilies in her garden, which inspired her lovely creation. The dish reminded us all of the food we all seem to crave the most when abroad-Mexican. Of the guests at the dinner party, six were from California and the other two (our lovely hosts) have lived all over the United States but now call France and the Caribbean home, and all of us seemed to miss the spice, the seasoning, the utter deliciousness of Mexican food. Apparently, there is a restaurant that actually serves decent Mexican food not too far, but I don't really want to chance it. I just know it will be one of my first meals when I'm home in November.

Lastly, was dessert, which was our responsibility to bring. We decided to make some sort of cheesecake type recipe, to try and best incorporate the wonderful strawberries that are just nearing the end of their season, yet by no means have they lost any flavor. Since there is no cream cheese in France, Caitlin found a wonderful recipe (well actually 2) to make the delectable delight, a cake called gâteau au fromage blanc, translated literally into white cheese cake. I assisted in the ingredient shopping and cleaning, but left the master chef job to Caitlin. It used fromage blanc as the main cheese filling, complete with egg yolks (3) and egg whites (4), sugar, a wee bit of flour, and the zest of a lemon. The crust was a petite buerre cookie and butter crust.

Looks like a cheese cake right? But it was better. More melt in your mouth as it was much softer and fluffier then a traditional American cheesecake. And the fresh strawberry coulie on top, magnificent. I think the strawberries were even better since I had to bike and get the last basket from the local produce stand. I found a recipe that is similar to what we had. The key however, other then don't get any egg yolk in the egg white, was to actually let the top of the cake get brown, but not burn, tricky but well worth it. A nice layer of crust to dive your fork into.

Browned Cheesy Heaven

At the conclusion of the night, I had realized that I had been in France officially for two weeks. The meal seemed all too perfect for my two week anniversary. A nice blend of French and American cuisines and cultures, starting with the pétanque, and continuing on through the foie gras, pork (BBQ'ed on a Weber!), poblano chiles, and fromage blanc. Just looking at that list, one can see the vast array of flavors on a plate, yet the fusion was perfect.