GourmandeMom™

Outstanding in the Field Farm Dinner - A Day, and a Meal, in a Field in Brenham (and unexpected realizations)

I had been looking forward to this for months.  

A beautifully sited dinner table winding into a vast landscape of rocks, fields, cliffs or even coves for an Outstanding in the Field dinner out in the middle of nowhere.  

Outstanding in the Field is a series of "farm dinners" - getting people out into the land, the landscape, a farm ... the earth.  Then getting a great local chef onto that land - and a team of cooks, servers and organizers - to prepare a multi-course feast for well over 150 people.  Through this setting and the people and the food, you are reconnected with where your food comes from.  This was Jim's founding vision.  And it took years to catch on.

(Jim, the founder, talking about the tough beginnings, how a Range Rover commercial saved the concept (by providing a revenue stream for him)  and kept him in it to try one more time ;  years later, here we are)

Whatever.  What I was looking forward to was a beautiful meal, in a simple, beautiful, tranquil setting with friends.  And a lot of nice wine.

From Austin, we drive, and drive and drive.  Finally there, at Jolie Vue Farms, the site for the dinner - and in not Brenham actually - but Independence, Texas.   And our gracious hosts, who have developed this property into the organic farm and ranch it is today, are Glenn and Honey Ann Boudreaux.  

The land was a mess when they got it.  Torn up and dried out, worn down and out from decades of fertilizer, pesticides -- all the stuff of modern agri-business.  They didn't want any of that.  If God thought the sun and the earth were good enough to make food, why bother with all that extra stuff.  So Honey said, or something like that.

So they brought the earth back to life.  No more chemicals.  No more artificial fertilizers.  And the land rewarded them for the efforts.  So many natural grasses came back to fill the fields they had to summon folks from Texas A&M to make sense of it all. All told, 16 native grasses: all gone before, all brought back to life now.

(Honey talking in the field of natural grasses about the history of the farm, farm/ranching life, and telling us about heffers and steers and what not)

We learn where the pigs roll around, and how the animals get rotated to different pastures to let the earth rebound in one pasture over enough time; how this summer and last summer went for them and how they and the livestock survived (barely);how the new water tanks/troughs for the pigs save water and waste less of this precious resource; how smart the pigs are, how they rolled around in the summer with the rain shower waterheads and made giant pools of mud that you can still see dented into the earth; how the water hole is so low now - but it used to be so much more and used for the kids' fishing and swimming - and for helping to catch their own food.  Some weekends, the kids would be tasked with making do on their own: if you don't catch or find your own food, you don't eat.

Thus prepped with the idea of working for your food, we have to work to reach our food.  The table, the hallmark table of these Outstanding in the Field farm dinners, is way up high on another hill.  We would have to walk up there.  

Clearly this is part of Jim's founding vision.  

Jim surely wants us to walk up and honor the table as part of the earth we are walking on, earth that literally did produce some of the very food we would be eating. 

Another ritual, or tradition, is the bringing of your own plate.  You drop it off with the organizer upon entering the farm.  

You retrieve it later up the hill, as you get closer to the table.  There also was a pile of plates for those who had forgotten to bring a plate, a pile made up of plates forgotten at previous farm dinners.  And then, the table.

 

Just out there.  In a field.  Just as they say.    And then some food.

(the first course - including among other things scrapple, blue corn grits, a 63C egg, which I expertly, so proud of self, identified as sous-vide prepared and the 63C was the temperature, in celsius; on my blue Sasaki wedding gift plate (1 of 10) that I brought for the event)

And more food.   And then more food.  The bycatch fish - looking all prehistoric.  I loved that the best perhaps.

And by now, with wine at each course, and the sun setting ever so slightly, and the chill of these cooler days descending, we start to get a little feisty in our well-fed comfort zone pf this community of a long long table.  

We get up.  We walk out and around and out into the vast field.  The moon is starting to rise, just as the sun is setting.  

Dessert comes. 

Then it is over.  

On the ride home, we talk a lot to stay awake.  But back here, and even while there, I realize that what I expected was not what I got.  Not exactly at least.  

I expected a super high-end gorgeous meal, with exquisite wine, and maybe more than a little bit of food snobbery at the table, with carefree chatter of friends all around you.  It was sort of that, and there were glitches to be sure.  We almost got forgotten entirely, our group of 8, on that first course.   The wine was a little skimpy on the serving sizes I thought at first.  The courses came slowly. I almost had to whip out a protein bar. 

But all logistical glitches faded - soon.   And the most I got out of it was something entirely unexpected.  

As Honey Ann was talking, without judgment for our wasteful ways in the city at all, I realized, as if a cow patty had been thrown at my head to wake me up, was how much my life affects what I eat.  Duh.  

The water I use to water my lawn is water that is not going to help keep the animals alive that are being fed on thriving native grasses nourished in only the old-fashioned ways.  My choices to eat fruits and vegetables out of season only encourages the food system machine to spend more resources to produce an artificial food cycle that knows none of the ebb and flow of nature.  

  

In the heat of the moment, on that farm among the people helping to bring back a more natural and normal way of living and eating, I vowed I would stop watering my yard.  I hate doing it anyway - the cost, the waste.

I am back in Austin, and as it is fall I am not tested on the no watering rule.  I only watered one a week anyway when I did water.  But the farm dinner worked for me, and in this awakening way I never imagined.  

Outstanding in the Field takes its show on the road - in Asia and South America, for example. It was in Brazil recently.  But never France. Almost one time, but it did not work out. So I learned from Jim during the farm tour.

They wash all the plates by hand when everyone is done with the last meat course.   It is there for you to pick up as you leave the table for your walk back down the hill and through the farm.  

I chose to leave my blue Sasaki plate.  I like the idea of it being used by some other haggard single working mom who barely got her act together to get her ticket and get to the farm site for the dinner and so forgot she was supposed to bring a plate.  

I also like the idea of seeing my plate again someday at another Outstanding in the Field dinner...maybe in France.

(A bientot my blue Sasaki plate! ...Bon voyage, safe travels, and see you in France!)

Le Marche des Lices - Rennes - and why I need yet another picture of a pile of radishes??

(Le Marche des Lices, Rennes, France)

From my extremely comfortable bed in the surprisingly well-appointed-for-the-price Hotel Mercure in Rennes, I heard the bells of a nearby church ring.  It would have been easy to stay there for another couple of hours in that delightful state of cozy semi-consciousness.  But the lure of a market proved too much.  Despite jet lag still weighing me down, everything I had read kept nagging at me that I just had to get up and get the tired self over to the Marche des Lices.   The market is said to host some 300 products from all over Brittany.  Rennes is the capital of Bretagne, or Brittany en anglais, and this, the Marche des Lices, is the second largest market in all of France.   How could I lounge in bed when the second largest market in all of France was but a 12-minute walk away....

I couldn't, and I didn't. I got up and got over there.

 

It did not disappoint.

The first assault on the senses was all saliva-inducing savory stuff: sausage and chicken dripping with butter and fat.  Waffles, or gauffres, steaming hot just off the waffle iron.  

The next assault is a visual one.  A mass of people.  Organized.  Focused.  Intent on the food, comparing the food.  This mass of people was organized in that there were vague yet well-defined lines moving slowly, deliberately.  And most had shopping baskets--real baskets, the woven kind, not the kind made of metal with 4 wheels and a coffee cup holder and a hook for the purse--winding up and down and up and down the many aisles of produce piled high and stretching, at some point, literally as far as the eye could see.

I have pictures of vegetable and fruit stands and fish markets and oyster stands from all over France dating back to my high school trips.

And there have been others like me, though not so much here at the Marche des Lices which is very not tourist-y at all despite its gorgeousness, but in other market strolls, who are snapping pictures just as insanely as I am.  And of nothing but giant piles of radishes, romaine, cabbages and garlic.

Why do we do this?  

I have an inkling why I do it.  We eat with our eyes so the pleasure of seeing the earth's voluptuous bounty piled riotously high has to be part of the visceral joy of eating ... Whole Foods Market gets this.  Their produce displays evoke this - even under artifical light - where we can indulge in a little fantasy life of market shopping in a charming old-school back-to-the-earth way. 

"Flowers, as everyone knows, are among the freshest, most perishable objects on earth. Which is why fresh flowers are placed right up front--to "prime" us to think of freshness the moment we enter the store. Consider the opposite--what if we entered the store and were greeted with stacks of canned tuna and plastic flowers? Having been primed at the outset, we continue to carry that association, albeit subconsciously, with us as we shop.

The prices for the flowers, as for all the fresh fruits and vegetables, are scrawled in chalk on fragments of black slate--a tradition of outdoor European marketplaces. It's as if the farmer pulled up in front of Whole Foods just this morning, unloaded his produce, then hopped back in his flatbed truck to drive back upstate to his country farm. The dashed-off scrawl also suggests the price changes daily, just as it might at a roadside farm stand or local market. But in fact, most of the produce was flown in days ago, its price set at the Whole Foods corporate headquarters in Texas. Not only do the prices stay fixed, but what might look like chalk on the board is actually indelible; the signs have been mass-produced in a factory." 

Of course I realize, somewhere at some level, that there is a well-studied marketing scheme all behind this, playing to my senses, as the author of this article quote above notes.   The author wrote this while taking in one particularly bucolic faux market setting: the Whole Foods store in Columbus Circle in NYC.  I get it.  I'm being played.  But I go along, enjoying the fantasy, because I want to.  We just can't all be in France at the Marche des Lices all the time after all.

But here at the Marche des Lices, there there is another big difference from the pretend market experience (aside from this being the real thing).  In Rennes, the Market is set up nicely to be a spectator sport as well.  Cafes are strategically placed up on the higher elevation of this Place.   I thought hard about sitting and watching. Drinking a double espresso at 10h with that Market stretched out before me was tempting.  But how much better to just be in it.  Not just watching it.

And so it was that I said no to the cafe and yes to getting really into the Market.

Ducking into the larget metal and glass structure - an halle - full of still more foodstuffs: the local honey, breads, confits, salts and herbs and spices, charcuterie...I dived into the laughter and the chatter of these happy smiling vendors, who let me sample and compare, for example, the difference between honey made from spring flowers versus summer flowers, and let me eavesdrop for a long stretch an extremely long-winded conversation about goat milk yogurt.

I only recently unpacked my suitcase.  

I think a certain government agency that will remain unnamed (but who left a little love note in my luggage about their gentle search of my bag) may have lost an item or two I had in the suitcase while handling it....but at least I still have my goodies from the Marche des Lices in Rennes: salt, spices ... and honey made from springtime flowers.

Change is hard...especially menu changes...[but a new favorite dish at 34th Street Cafe]

(the hallmark bright green facade of 34th Street Cafe)

Just when I thought I'd matured and gotten more excited about change (change in career, family rituals, etc.) rather than sad or angry or annoyed, I had a setback last night at 34th Street Cafe.  

Ready to kick back for a relaxing time out and really good food at a close-to-home venue, Eddie Bernal's 34th Street Cafe was my pick. But I also picked it for a particular food reason: I studied the menu just that day and confirmed that what I had a hankering for--hanger steak, i.e., "flat iron steak"--was on the menu:  

FLAT IRON STEAK
Potatoes Gratin / Bacon Roasted Brussels Sprouts / Beef Jus

But upon being handed the menu, my food item is nowhere to be found.  There is instead some other fine steak cut that I do not recall.  I felt my pouty face coming on and some panic rising.  (Obviously, my supplements that are supposed to keep my hormonal rage overreactions at bay are not working at full strength.)  

"So, uh, I see no hanger steak?," I ask Grant, our waiter, with my sad desperation and dismay barely disguised.   I am hoping he will notice my sad face and offer to see if they can make it for me anyway.

"Oh, this _____ [insert what the new beef item is...sirloin something maybe?]," he says perkily, oblivious to my growing disappointment at this whole eating out experience.  "We rolled it out last night for the first time. Everyone loved it."

[Yea, WHATEVER, I am thinking.  I don't care what everyone else liked last night.  I just want the thing I came here for.  Never mind it's like pretty much the main reason we are here...]  

Me:  "So, there's, uh, no hanger steak...not tonight, not ever?"  

He:  "Oh, it's prepared the same way though."

Me:   [Heavy sigh. So not the point.  The point is the only steak I eat generally at all is a flat iron/hanger steak.]  

With annoyance that the evening out is ruined because I cannot get my nice hanger steak I came here for, and I could have gone to Gusto and gotten their hanger steak but I'm not a big fan of Gusto's decor as much as I like Eddie and his crew....I resume review of the menu for high protein dish.

I had never given the panko crusted chicken picatta a second glance on previous visits to the restaurant.  

PANKO CRUSTED CHICKEN PICATTA Mushrooms / Onions / Spinach / Saffron Rice / Capers / Beurre Blanc

Grant is telling my mom that people come from all over for it...that it's a food item that if they ever took it off the menu there would be a massive revolt.

["Oh, right, but it's ok to take my hanger steak off the menu," I say to myself.]

Fine.  I order the chicken picatta, just like mom did.

Then the wine came.  Just in time.

We had already had a little trouble here as well with ordering because Dad had stated out loud that he "hates" Bordeaux.  That was "Grant's Pick" on the wine list, a nice Bordeaux.  

Grant did a good job all around. I have to hand it to him.  He was oblivious to my pouting and graciously listened to my dad diss his pick on the wine list.  We debated the mineral-y nature of Bordeaux for about 5 seconds and settled on something pretty basic.  It was fine. It was a red wine, and that's about all that mattered at that point. Because now the son was overtly pouting.  He refuses to eat anything.  He stays on his new HTC phone playing games all through the meal except for a few minutes he does seem to show some sign of life in eating all the shoestring potatoes that would later come with Dad's gourmet ground chuck and briscuit burger.

THE BURGER
Ground Chuck and Brisket / Focaccia / Herbed Anchovy Butter / House Pickle / Shoestring Fries

But the chicken picatta.  I get what the big deal is. 

First, the panko bread crumbs, as well stated below and available here:

Panko flakes (or crumbs) are Japanese breadcrumbs; they're irregularly shaped and coarser than regular breadcrumbs. They´re dry, but at first glance they look llike fresh white breadcrumbs. When used for frying, they produce a lighter, crunchier coating that´s more tender and delicate. They seem to absorb less oil and stay crisp longer than regular crumbs. They also make a great topping for casseroles.

Exactly.  Those crumbs stayed crunchier, chewier, flakier while mixed in with the tang of lemon and butter.  Which gets us to the next part of what seems to make this so tasty:  The beurre blanc. Beurre blanc is not just melted butter with a squeeze of lemon.  I would trust Food Network Alton Brown's recipe, and here it is.  

• 1 to 2 shallots, chopped fine
• 8 ounces white wine
• 2 ounces lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream
• 12 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed
• Salt and white pepper, to taste

Makes you want to drool just thinking about it, doesn't it? 

In the end, the evening was saved.  The son insisted he was not being passive aggressive and reactionary to my choice of restaurant - he just was not hungry.  The wine hit the spot.  I survived adjusting to a menu change.  

And now, frankly, if I saw the flat iron steak back on the menu, I hate to say it after the pouty pity party last night.  I'd probably order the chicken picatta.  

   (34th street, the street itself, is finally not under construction and completely blocked off to traffic as it has been for, like, years...)

 

 

Lots of The Other White Meat and Spicy Peppers ... at the Austin Film Festival Food Party

(out on the balcony - cheese!  from Whole Foods; great presentation and fun gals with whom I could discuss the whole French/raw milk deal and my indecision of which cow to adopt in Normandie to support local (in Normandie, France) Camembert producers)

Last night I finally attended, after years of ignoring the flier I get every year, the Austin Film & Food Dinner held as part of the Austin Film Festival's week or so of films.  It was a fairly economical opportunity I figured to sample food stuffs from all the restaurants I've been meaning to try (Swift's Attic), or already like (Foreign and Domestic), or had forgotten about (Sienna; Ranch 616; Ruth's Chris) or never really seriously considered even trying as a serious food destination (Trace, at the W Hotel), or had never even heard of (Jack Allen's Kitchen, in Oak Hill).  

I had to get over the realization soon upon arriving that this was not a sit-down dinner, duh, and did so with one of the Speciality Cocktails (unclear if the spelling was for real on that), involving local Tito's Vodka and St. Germain.  I was dressed all wrong for walking through the Driskill Hotel grand lobby and foyers, going room to room, sampling foods, while balancing iPhone notepad, camera, drink in plastic cup, and plastic plates of various foods.  And that fact that my poorly chosen attire of a clutch bag and a long scarf did some damage at the Carillon table and their gorgeously plated tiny little feta cheesecakes with basil puree, apple butter, juniper streusel & candied marcona almonds did not help matters.

We finally got into the groove of things and just started eating.  First stop was Foreign and Domestic: BBQ Pulled Pork on a Bacon Cheddar Biscuit with B&B Pickles.  And a pumpkin pie macaron.  Odd combo to offer, but a lot of places had a savory and a sweet item.  Good thing we tried the macaron then and there.  One hour later, when we were sated enough to go for dessert items, they were gone.

Right after the pulled pork biscuit was a table featuring Pork Cheek Hash Empanadas, with Jalapeno Sauce.  Out of the first two items I had tried, this was my favorite.

But what's with the pork?  It did not stop there.  Over at Trace, there was pork belly.  Over at Jack Allen's Kitchen, some pulled pork.  We were obviously in the pork room, a room dedicated to The Other White Meat.  I had two helpings of what Jack Allen's Kitchen was dishing up: roasted corn salad, served alongside that pulled pork in a nice stewy sauce, alongside giant rustic chip with spicy pimento cheese. Two, yes two helpings.   

(The Jack Allen's Kitchen Team...they would later offer me a third helping, but by then I really had nothing left...so sad...really fantastic combo and served up stylishly in that brown paper box bowl.)

Worst food mistake: opting for the Frito Pie over at Ranch 616's table too soon in the evening.  Not because it was not delicious - though spicy hot with some hot pico de gallo - but because like they told us, and they were unfortunately right, it was stick to your ribs type food.  But we loved the presentation - served up in the mini-bag of Fritos corn chips and all the ingredients all coming together in that little bag - the crunch of chips, warm with chili, cooled off with spicy pico de gallo and sour cream.

Good thing that right before that our palate enjoyed the spicy fried lobster of Ruth's Chris.   They fry up the lobster pieces, then roll them around in what I could have sworn she said was a serrachi pepper mayonaise.  Like I said, balancing plates, phone, purse, that darn scarf, and trying to write down things my autocorrect on the iPhone garbled into something concerning "lepers" - it was rough.  

Over here, at the table for the Driskill, in addition to the popcorn-esque snack in the clever red Burger King-meets-Chinese-take-out packaging, they would have some ginger ice cream floats, over which they were pouring a blackberry sorghum soda. Odd tasting, still not sure if I liked it, but the ginger ice cream was just the thing for calming the tummy.

We did a decent job on the food items, but really did not do much justice at all to one entire room.  I did enough to grade, however, before the palate was overloaded.   My incomplete, totally biased and subjective list of winners and losers:

Best savory food item:   That roasted corn salad, pulled pork, etc. from Jack Allen's Kitchen.

Best sweet food item:  Pumpkin Pie Macaron from Foreign and Domestic

Best convo with chef folks:  Swift's Attic.  I loved that he prepared a separate tasting of his dish for my friend with intolerance for spicy foods.  But then, alas, it just did not taste just right.  I also loved how he was so not judging of my over-40/hate to drive at night self and was helping me understand the parking situation for those guys.  So going there.  Soon.

Biggest surprise disappointment:  Olive & June.  Love that place; right near chez moi, but that pasta was way too salty.

Best French/France-related food:  Whole Foods.

The only Camembert I have ever liked has been in France, the nicely flavored raw milk kind.  But this, this Camembert with that bit of sweet in the confiture and that touch of Marcona almonds, well done.   I may even check out the cheese counter again at Whole Foods because of this (as I am generally always typically at Antonelli's for any cheese purchases).

Will I go next year to the 11th Annual Austin Film Festival Food & Film Dinner?  Maybe.  But going with friend(s) is key, as are good walking shoes and a healthy appetite.  And your favorite stomach-soothing holistic medicine item, in the event you have been on no carbs or sweets for a week when you start eating fried lobster, frito pie, and pork belly, also is highly recommended.

(one last look at the cheery team from the Driskill and perhaps the best display of their food items)

Sunday Night Supper a/k/a Leftover Night in Paris - not your ordinary leftovers

For my last night in Paris, a Sunday, friend Maureen had wanted to treat me to a cocktail at the Plaza Athenee, which any other time would have sounded fantastic. But on this exhausting trip, and on this last night staying with a family in their large, elegant home tucked between the Quai de Montebello and the Boulevard St. Germain, what sounded fantastic to my tired self was the Sunday night dinner invitation the family had extended to me.  

Don't expect anything fancy, Anne (the multi-lingual matriarch of la Maison d'Anne) warned.  It is Sunday after all :  Sundays are very simple she said.  We'll have "une salade, des tomates...."  That sounded good to me, with my jeans almost too tight now from too much foie gras and three too many attempts (three attempts) to find the quintessential tarte tatin.  

So instead of the Plaza Athenee, friend Maureen joined me for one last glass of wine sitting on the family's terrace, crowded with potted succulents and ivy, overlooking Notre Dame.  Night fell.  Then it was time to tell Maureen good-bye. She would go to her favorite cafe down the street over on the Ile St. Louis.  I would go start packing.

At last, it is dinner time on the 4th floor.

In the kitchen there is much activity despite the alleged simplicity of this simple spread for dinner.   Anne announces what there is spread out, making herself heard over the din of her sons and her husband watching the soccer match between Paris and Marseille.  This was no ordinary leftover night.  

• Blanquette de Veau (classic French dish: veal stew; this Food and Wine recipe may be the one I try...someday)
• A dish - something like a parmentier - made with "marcassins" - which I figured out had something to do with a sanglier (boar) - and indeed it is a young (baby) wild boar.  One of the girl's boyfriend's father had shot one, and they (Anne) had made this nice casserole type dish.  Think Shepherd's Pie.  Such as this recipe here.
• Soupe de courgettes (zucchini)
• Soupe de potiron (a/k/a soupe au potiron) (pumpkin)

I had already been given the royal treatment Thursday night at dinner.  Anne tells me on this night, leftover night, to take whatever I feel like and re-heat it.   I go for the zucchini soup.  It is already nice and hot in a huge stock pot.   As I am happily slurping up soup, and using some Eric Kayser baguette chunks I had pulled off to help with that, Jean-Louis, the dad reminds me: "Sers-toi, Liz" - no one waiting on you tonight.  

I loved it.   

But those were just the main courses.  

There was also a large apple tart, still partially wrapped and mostly uneaten from the week.  One of the sons took two slices.  

And then I saw it.  Something wrapped up in that hallmark elegant grey paper of prestigious fromagier Laurent Dubois.  I unwrapped it.  I may have been too intimidated to figure out how to reheat the baby boar casserole without interrupting the menfolk watching the big game, but I had no qualms unwrapping the beautifully packaged cheese treasure within the Laurent Dubois paper.  I sliced off a piece.  I taste.  I slice off a bigger slice, and a few more slices, and include them around my second bowl of zucchini soup.  Soup, cheese, bread.   Anne insisted that the white Burgundy that night was really quite nice.  So, yes, I had that.  Just a tad.  I figure out this cheese from L. Dubois must be the well-aged Comté from the other night.

That cheese was a revelation.  Jean-Louis explained to me Thursday night that Comte could come in very much older, aged versions - this was one three years old.  See Wikipedia Entry ("Most Comté cheeses are aged from 12 to 18 months, though some are aged as little as four months and as long as 24 months. Some places, especially high-class restaurants, can carry Comtés aged for a longer time. The restaurant L'Arpège in Paris, France, is known to carry a four-year-old Comté.). It was nuttier and sharper than a more usual Gruyere, yet more subtle and interesting. And it has such an addictive quality.

They ask if I have enough: please, help yourself, Liz.  Oh, no, I am so very happy with this cheese.  I say, this is the aged Comte, yes? 

Surprised faces.  How did you know??  Did you have it here??   I think I earned some points.   I think this because Jean-Louis had carefully preserved from a previous night a certain red wine.  I tried so hard to remember exactly what it was.  I do know it was a grand cru classe from Bordeaux.  I think I saw the Chateau Margaux verbiage on there.  This was so the big time.  That I know.  He asked if I would like some [of this very special, extraordinary Bordeaux].

Uh. Yes.  

He went to get special wine glasses. Three-year-old Comté.  A fine, no great, as in grand, Bordeaux.  This is the life.  And this is leftover night?

But there was more.  Dessert.

In addition to the apple tarte, there were a couple of chocolate pots de creme left from the Thursday night dinner.  And there also was what would become my favorite: a platter of special traditional desserts of Bordeaux: "Canneles de Bourdeaux." So Anne told me.  She said they did not turn out so great.  They were so great to me.  They have a carmelized outer shell then a custardy tender soft not too sweet inside.  The contrast of that crunch on the outside and the tender inside - this too, addicting.

Before I ate 4 more of those things, I called it.  I was done.  Time to finish packing. Anne and I arrange for my timing in the morning to get to the airport.  She orders a cab for me.  Before heading back downstairs in the elevator, I thank Jean-Louis for letting me in on that extraordinary red wine.

The next morning, I tell Anne good-bye over a quick espresso - there would be les bises - and then a good-bye, until the next time. 

The following Sunday night, I am back home in Austin, Texas. I have my own leftover night, with my smaller family of two: my son and I.  We have ESPN on.  We are most definitely not watching soccer.  I make tortilla soup with some of the leftover grilled chicken from this week of my back-to-reality food life.  

And to go with it, it may not have been a legendary Bordeaux, but it was as good as I remembered: a wine I had at Barley Swine back in December and so loved I bought a bottle eventually.  Figured no good just staring at the label admiringly waiting for a special occasion.  Time to dig in. 

It was not a blanquette de veau or artisanal bread and cheese from some of the most reknowned masters of their craft: cheese and bread, from Laurent and Eric in Paris.

But I was home, reminded that leftover night really is just a good reminder of family nights and simple food. And a good enough reason to open up a new bottle of wine.

 

Foie Gras Fan Club and The French Connection with Food

(Le diner chez Sophie...yes, fine cuisine, but first, superlative munchies for the aperitif ritual, accompanied by this perky rabbit-eared gadget for serving up the toothpicks; who says the French are stuffy?!)

I am back from France.  I am back with a newfound love for foie gras, which I think I just thought I liked or pretended to like more than I did (gasp!).

I also bring back a renewed wonder at the learning process of a person growing up French in French culture.  I base these observations from a field study including pointed questions of real French people, maybe about 8-10 of them.  They include people I like to call friends in Angers - Pierre, Sophie, and Anne-Sophie; and Jean-Luc in Nantes, as well as the superb concierge/front desk man at the Hotel La Perouse in Nantes (we also talked about food) who spent some time in St. Louis, Missouri. And of course I base this on the advanced studies in French cultural/gastronomic life done in the kitchen over meals with the family in Paris, my hosts, Anne and Jean-Louis, at surely the most elegantly unique "bed and breakfast" ever. 

I fell in love with foie gras over a lovely dinner at Sophie's house outside of Angers in a village-like atmosphere of her backyard that is a grassy knoll along the water.  Along with the other elegant food items for the before-dinner aperitif time, which included Anjou specialty rillaud prepared by her husband, Sophie says she has made a foie gras.  She swears it is an easy recipe and that I could make it too.  Well, I confess I did not realize you had to "make" foie gras. I know, I should be ashamed of myself. She asks if I would like to have some.  Uh, yes.

I follow Sophie into the kitchen to check into this.

I am surprised to see her take out of the refrigerator a big fat roll of stuff in plastic wrap that looks like an on-steroids roll of refrigerated Nestle Toll House cookie dough.  This thick round of stuff in plastic has string wrapped around it.  Sophie is unwrapping.  I can't help but pick up some of the strings.  She chides me for getting my hands all greasy because - attention - it was very fatty.  And, yes, she is right.  Very slippery, fatty those strings from being wrapped around that plumped plastic wrapped foie. 

I learn that hers is made with white wine and is well cooked.  This I figure explains the lighter color for this - far lighter than I had ever seen for a foie gras (ok, have only had twice: Jeffrey's in Austin (now closed alas) and Boulevard in San Francisco (before the ban)).   This foie gras was a revelation.  Maybe it was the thinner slices.  Or the well-cooked style of it.  I had 3 slices. This is a lot in foie gras terms. Especially when dinner is not even served yet.

At Christmas time Sophie says, there may be several foie gras made to get everyone through the holidays.  Heaven forbid one run out of foie gras over the holidays.  (Yea, I hate it when that happens.) Indeed, she says, one of the most treasured holiday moments: on Christmas morning, early, one makes up with coffee and perhaps takes just a tiny smidgen of foie gras onto a piece of toast for Christmas morning breakfast.  She sighs wistfully.  Done.  I am convinced.  I will ramp up the gourmande-ness this holiday season chez moi with my very own foie gras recipe, and it would be Sophie's, and we will smear it onto Poilane bread from Paris. 

I would learn the next day, from Anne-Sophie who would accompany me to the opera in Angers that sunny Sunday afternoon, that there is an ugly side to foie gras preparation.   No, not the gavage.  The actual making of it.  I learn this as we sat outside the opera house in Angers at a cafe near the small harbor, with the Chateau d'Angers to our left, the opera house with its wide open enormous 3-story tall sliding glass doors to the right, and the Maine river, a tributary of the Loire River, in front of us.  Here, over a glass of red wine and slices of wild boar sausage, I have my disenchantment.  I learn the making of foie gras requires extracting and tearing out by hand all sorts of tendons and strings of stuff.  This sounded disgusting even in French.  I am sad.  There will be no foie gras making at my house after all.  I cannot even handle touching boneless chicken breasts some days.

I also learn though from Anne-Sophie that she has a signature foie gras recipe too.  She does hers with cognac or armagnac and will do it to a mi-cuit, or less well done on the cooking time.  And so obviously families can have their own foie gras recipes and thus very strong opinions about a proper foie gras.  I asked if this is a problem when individuals marry and they are brought into a household with a conflicting foie gras philosophy.  Oh, yes, she says. Not a problem with her extended family though, where her style of foie gras is warmly welcomed.

I would have foie gras again on Monday at lunch, at a really lovely restaurant in the countryside, Le Rabelais, to break up a day full of meetings that Pierre had organized for me.  

Here, Pierre tells me about a fish on the menu, sandre, and how the wine chosen matches this local fresh fish based on how the vines grow and how the soil lends itself to a particular type of vine and a particular type of grape. 

The next day, Tuesday, I would be in Nantes, with another colleague, Jean-Luc, also hosting me for meetings.   A couple of slices of foie gras and aged ham atop greens was the special entree of the day at the hip restaurant along the Loire that was our lunch venue. 

And, yes: I said yes to the foie gras.  I tell Jean-Luc I am smitten with foie gras and share my newfound knowledge from Angers. 

But, really, I ask him--though I have been going to France for years I just want to know from the source:  how is it that everyone with whom I had dined thus far has what seems to me an elegant and high-level vocabulary and knowledge that only (very generally speaking) food magazine writers in the US have, such as the fact that the vines for a certain wine grow to a certain depth that will create a particular taste that goes so well with the fish from the river nearby, or that the aged quality of this particular cheese means it goes better with this particular wine. 

It is the French connection with their food he tells me.  They just feel connected to it.  So they want to know, and they grow up knowing about these issues, being surrounded by others who also are asking or telling where it came from, who made it, and why or how it's here.  And so agreed the concierage/front desk man at l'Hotel Perouse in Nantes, when I brought up this subject on checking out the next day from his lovely hotel.  I tell him I am intrigued by the signage at his minimalist yet delicious "buffet" about personal responsibility about the buffet to avoid waste, the local sourcing, the organic everything.  I mention my conversation the day before with Jean-Luc about this connectivity the French have with their food.

He says he did not realize he was different, as a French person, until he was in a gourmet club in St. Louis.  Not that there was anything not lovely about everyone there.  He loved St. Louis and his time there.  It just was not until then that he recognized the difference in his and his wife's profound attachment to the food and the sourcing and the ritual of the food.  I asked how: how do you get that way? Where does it come from?  He says you just grow up with this to be like this.  Your parents are like this.  Their parents were like this.  It's part of the environment.  As natural as learning the language that describes that food.

Of course many similarities can be said to exist here in the US.  There is organic produce.  There is slow food, concerns for sustainability, and community gardens to avoid sourcing from far afield.  But it's just different at the basic level.  Having said that, I myself am still so not French, though Anne in Paris described me one night as "presque française" (almost French).  I have yet to learn moderation but am getting there.  But I have learned one thing.  Again on this trip, I am told that for my French family in Tours back in my student days of 1985 to call me "gourmande" (meaning likes to eat, loosely), well, that was a huge compliment.  And it remains so. 

Or so they tell me, as I take that third/fourth/fifth slice of foie gras...