Chicken cooked with sage, cinnamon bark, lemon zest, whole garlic cloves in their paper and  ….. milk.

Yes it sounds rather strange but it works.  Indeed it works.  

The chicken was a sublime concoction of light lemon, rich whole garlic, reduced milk and that cinnamon.  Oh the cinnamon.   Very impressed indeed.  If I were to fully evaluate,  I would say  it can take a little more lemon zest, a hint of heat (I used lots of black pepper, it could also use a touch of cayenne) , some strained local yoghurt.  Andy suggested small currents and pine nuts, sweet and creamy rich.  Yes it would work beautifully.  This can take acid and flavour.  The only reason I comment is for myself and note to self it’s a bloody phenomenal dish that can handle even more.   Yum yum yummity yum. 

Jamie Oliver I do not study you but you have the most incredible ideas and this is the product of one. An Italian symphony.  oh that sounds so naff but it's true!

Beef slow cooked with star anise consume

I have had this dish in my head for some time. Slow cooked beef shank, using the stock to make a beautiful clean consume, then to wrap the slow cooked beef in Serrano ham and cook it again for the sweet salty carmalised effect.  Served with sort of a salad (beetroot, tomato, coriander leaf, onion and teeny cubes of feta). 

The beef had been cooked for 3 hours in a spice mix of star anise, chinese 5 spice, chilli, sherry vinegar, onion, garlic.  Then removed from it’s stock sauce (after sitting overnight in the fridge).  The beef itself was wrapped in Serrano ham and cooked until caramalised.  The stock sauce was clarified with egg white to produce a beautiful clean clear beef stock star anise taste.

Beetroot, little cubes of feta cheese, slow cooked beetroot, very good quality cherry tomatoes, lightly pickled onion, a touch of fresh coriander leaf.  Fine.  Very fine indeed.  Elegant, light but rich and heady at the same time. 

Where would this dish originate?  Well mainly middle east in flavour so I’ll say it’s a middle eastern dish non halal and very very delicious.

Andy suggested duck and yes he's right.  The same technique applied (I'd change the veg) with a beautiful crispy piece of duck leg on duck stock consume would be utterly divine.   Next time!!

Fish vindaloo with salad - yes it's delicious but how do you make it look pretty?

Indian salads and chutneys are lovely accompanyments to curry dishes.  They give vibrancy and piquancy but how to make the whole thing look good and taste good is some what more difficult.

I made the most divine proper vindaloo sauce using an Atul Kocchar recipe.  A descent Goan recipe with plenty of spice and vinegar - all in balance and designed to go with fish.

I did a salad of pomegranate, tomato, cucumber and onion.  I did a fresh mint and coriander yoghurt chutney and served it with crispy skinned salmon.  I am pleased to say it tasted as good as it looks.

Goan Spiced Trout (Salmon) with Lentil Salad

I have recreated Vivek Singh's recipe four times and it is a beautiful recipe.  Goan spiced trout (I used salmon filet).  The recipe comes from the book Cinnamon Club, Indian Cuisine Reinvented.

It is one of the few books (and therefore chefs) that even comes close to Vineet Bhatia's Rasio, New Indian Kitchen cook book.  Thanks again Tim and Sandra for giving me this gift of Rasio that keeps on giving  and will do so forever in my life.  It changed, singlehandedly my approach to cooking, whether Indian or classical French.

Back to this book and this recipe though.  The Goan spice mix for Mr Singh's trout dish is heady.  Coconut vinegar, cloves, black (i.e. smoked) cardamon pods, black peppercorns. chilli, star anise, coriander seeds.  Toasted and ground with fresh ginger and garlic.  Then you have the separate marinade of garlic and chilli pastes with Kashmiri chilli powder.  As it is a Goan recipe which stands out in the high acidity levels to complement fish.  Goa uses cloves and vinegar in careful, considered abundance.  If the balance is right it's a knockout.  A head scratcher as to how so many spices come together in unity.  This is a recipe I do exactly as per the instruction.  Any spice out of balance would throw the whole thing into disarray, it's so complex.  It is imperative by the way, when using spices to dry roast them off first.  It's not a step to be skipped and only takes a sec.  Without this step there's a sort of harsh taste and feel in the back of the throat from raw spice.  It might be a reason people find Indian dishes too harsh in flavour because there is a significant difference to the taste of a finished dish when spices have been dry roasted before grinding to those that have not.

The salad is a mix of raw lentils that are soaked for 6 hours, rinsed and drained.  Not cooked.  Finished with lemon juice, salt and tempered mustard seeds and curry leaf.  (Tempering is heating and then cooling.  You heat the mustard seeds in oil till they crackle, add the curry leaf and immediately mix it through the raw lentils.  This forms the dressing and gives the whole dish a lovely toasty note from the curry leaf.)

Apart from the sheer delight of flavour which is uncompromisingly complex, the raw lentil salad gives the freshness and textural component.  The lentils - I used red dal, (masoor dal) and red dal (moong dal) along with some dried and peeled broad beans.  They peel easily once soaked.

I added pomegranate seeds, a fresh yoghurt coriander chutney, fresh coriander and a little pickled onion.  Two versions are below.  One with onion one without.  One with broad beans, one without.  Both entirely delicious.  Light, fresh, incredibly complex in spice but sitting harmoniously.  Not for those who are against complex spice.  Definitely not a dish to fiddle around with regarding amounts of spice unless you seriously know what you're doing.  I will be making this dish again and again over the years.

France - wintertime images

We really did strike great weather over the Christmas week.  We were able to run to Andelot and back which is a great little run.  Gets the heart pumping with a bit of a climb back but a nice 6.5km distance.  Not too far, just enough for us at the moment.  I have hardly done any running for a couple of years, I just get plagued with injury so it’s a real delight being able to do a little bit.

We walked down the farm land below us on Christmas day before dinner to the river.  There must have been a bit of rain, the river had broken away a bit but it’s a lovely river and apparently full of trout during season.  You need a license from the Maire (Mayor) to fish for trout.  Maybe we’ll try getting one in a couple of years.

Our spot looked rather bare compared to the last time we were there in October.  The seasons had done their thing.  The leaves were no longer fully there (however there were still some which was surprising, probably due to the unseasonably late starting and warm winter). 

To us it’s a pretty spot even in winter.  I can only imagine how it would look cloaked in snow.  I hope one day we get to see that.  With our church all cloaked, the sight of that from our house would be impressive.

Looking up at our house from the bottom (Church is to the right of me, village above, fields behind me)

If you look close you can just see our christmas stockings (packed with the kids)

Our house front, barn etc behind.  It's on a road this side of the house, we have seen one group of motorcyclists, very very very lost but no other traffic.  It's on the road to nowhere!  Perfect.

Our church

River at the bottom of the neighbouring farmland with trout in season

These photos were all taken Christmas afternoon

And the light starts to fade, time to pop that Pintade in the oven!  Merry Christmas.

Moules, pigeon, bread, wine.....

I always thought NZ was the king of the mussels with it's lovely green lipped jobs.  But the French ones are so sweet.  They are small yes but sweet as sweet comes and utterly delectable.  They also come very very handily packed so that you just pick up a pack for around 3 euros (a big pack this is) already debearded, scrubbed, or maybe these little ones just don't have time to get the beards and whatnot.  And they keep in the fridge all packed up for a few days.  Yay.  Mussels made easy.

Andy did this mussel dish.  It was a BEAUTY! Finely chopped shallots and garlic, a little chopped tomato, pernod, white wine, a little leek sweated down and the mussels in at the end for a few secs.  Oh lord, yum!!!

Pigeon is one of those birds that is so unique in flavour that you simply cannot substitute another bird for it.   We find it increasingly difficult to get here in Dubai.  But in France it's abundant and glorious too.  Yay!  I deboned it, leaving the little wing tip bones and leg bones in, cooking the breast on the crown to make sure it didn't over cook and made a sauce with the bones, lardons, chanterelles, port etc....

And bread, yes I know the French are renowned for the stuff but in fact it's not always that good.  It depends on the village you are in as to whether the bread is good or not.  The local boulangerie of a particular area might have plain blah baguette.  I was so relieved to see the stuff sitting in our local.  Whew.  It's the good stuff and even in the supermarket it's the good stuff.  A relief for a complete bread lover like me.  In my opinion Germany is the best place for bread not France.  They have bread completely and utterly sussed.  France, no but in our area a resounding YES!!

Then there's the wine, we're still learning.  The regions whites are well known and phenomenal.  The regions reds can be rather underwhelming until we tried a bottle of Volnay our friendly real estate agent dropped by (he wasn't much on the real estate front but really did know his wines as a trained sommelier and is ever so convivial we forgive immediately all his shortcomings on the actual business side of things).   Volnay is a gorgeous wine.  A fruity light red - pinot noir grape - but sort of more fruit driven than the pinots I've tried in the past.  A gloriously feminine wine which is just as Virgille our agent described it to be.

Apple cake will always be my all time favourite and I enjoy knocking them up particularly in France. Dunno why, I just do.  For this version I popped in a centre of blackberry jam.

Moules - and damn good ones at that.  Thank you Andy!!

The pot of moules

Pigeon, pigeon sauce with lardons and chanterelles, roasted leek and fennel, baked purple potato

Bread with foie gras (warmed through) and chablis.  A lunch of divinity.  

Vin

Apple cake

Our First Proper French Christmas

Chrissy in Signeville....was a delightful experience.  We actually finally officially owned this place on  December 18th.  I was stressing we wouldn't own it by Chrissy but we did by the skin of our teeth.

We had managed to prearrange a new fireplace to be installed the day after we arrived (i.e. on the morning of the 24th as we arrived late on the 23rd).  All went perfectly well.....the guys turned up on time, we popped into Chaumont to do our shopping and came back just as they were finishing.

We liked our pervious fireplace for it's antique nature but it was just not practical.  It burned through the wood like nothing on earth, the flue needed fixing (as we found out previously when the bloody thing came off- when the fire was in full swing - and thankfully the previous owners had left oven gloves!  Andy is a trooper when it comes to times of crisis.  I panicked as usual!).

We sort of hoped for snow but definitely didn't want drizzle, fog, low cloud etc all of which is more normal than snow for this time of year.  So no snow.  But we got the sun. It was the sunniest, warmest weather I think on record for Christmas in France and made for a rather awesome Christmas I must say.  We started off Christmas day with a run to Andelot Blanchville and back.  A treat at this time of year.

We decided on a Pintade for our Christmas dinner.  We cooked up Rabbit on our arrival night (with prunes, chorizo, mushrooms, very yummy), Pigeon on the 24th and Pintade (and a great bird at that, nicely hung.  Dry skin, dark meat).

A rather convivial start to our first Christmas experience in our newly owned place in France.

Family meeting come reunion

New fireplace

The best Pintade euros can buy (it was the same price per kg as a Bresse chicken!)

Pintade, roasted parsnips, roasted fennel and roasted prunes (with stuffing under the skin)