Rural Life

A gastronomic weekend in St Malo

Last weekend we went up to St Malo as a bit of a city break.  It is a wonderful city, rebuilt after being pretty well destroyed in 1944, when the Germans settled in and tried to hold out against the Allies.  The rebuilding work was done amazingly well and the IntraMuros is wonderful.  Here is St Malo.

On the Friday night, we went out in search of dinner and a Beaujolais Nouveau.  We tried this place first, but they had no Beaujolais and no oysters and no food that didn't have a trace of mussel - which I can't eat.  So after being stung for a single beer, we left.  They had only just opened after a few days closed, but not having half the menu was not a good idea!

Instead we went two doors down (you don't have to go far in St Malo to find a bar or restaurant), who did have the required Beaujolais (very fruity, very silly, just as you would expect).  John had moules mariniere and I had oysters, then John had the fish of the day which had a mussel sauce, while I had brandade morue and salad - very good indeed.  Our afters were a plate of well cared for cheeses for me and apple crumble for John - all very good, 20 euros a head plus wine and infusions.

It being November and because we didn't really fancy sandwiches and there aren't many real food shops in St Malo (though biscuits and sweets are well catered for), we ate out for Saturday lunch.  John needed more moules, so we went to the Lion D'Or for moules frites for John and a massive goat's cheese and lardons salad for me, washed down with Chardonnay.  Again very good and at 15 euros or so each for the food, quite affordable.  Our lunch neighbours on one side were charming, but I wanted to smack the girl on the other side of me as she picked at her food until it was cold and made sure she finished the rice but the scallop casserole was another matter!

On Saturday night, I needed Mont St Michel pre-sale lamb from the salt marshes, so in order to ensure we got the real MacCoy, we went to the Hotel de France et Chateaubriand (named after the poet, who also gave his name to the steak).  Our 22 euro menu included fish soup with all the trimmings for John and a seafood platter for me, then our pre-sale lamb with beans and carrots, and then a dessert of baked pineapple, washed down with half a bottle of Muscadet and a bottle of Cotes de Rhone.  The restaurant is very elegant and art deco and the service is impeccable and the chef is a genius.  Another wonderful meal.

We went home on Sunday, but as we had done so much walking on the Friday and Saturday, we didn't put on a pound despite our greedy excesses - the wonders of French cooking and sea air!

 

The loveliest villages in France

About 10 days ago, we went travelling to visit our favourite hotel and restaurant in Brive la Gaillarde in the Correze.  La Cremailliere is as wonderful as ever, although as the patron said to us, "this is a recession against the middle classes and those of us who supply to the middle classes are suffering".  I hope things pick up for him, and if you are in the Brive area for rugby, this is a good place to stay/get fed (particularly if you are a carnivore, but his fish dishes are wonderful too).

We took the opportunity to visit a few of the plus beaux villages de France while we were there.  This nomination is hard won, and we think entitles you to grants for ensuring things are restored well, but also seems to inflate property prices and make maintaining buildings once purchased very expensive even with grant assistance.

Collonges la Rouge was our first stop - stunning in red sandstone and a stop for pilgrims to Compostella, but buildings were either chichi shops, restaurants or shuttered up.

Our second village was Turenne - quite wonderful and a bit more lived in than Collonges, and the view from the top of the tower was amazing.

Finally, on our way back up to la Loire, and therefore probably not in the Correze but jolly close to it, was Segur le Chateau (no relation to Montsegur as far as we could tell).  This village was for sale piecemeal it seemed to us and there was no way to enjoy the chateau other than from the river bank.

We also saw lots of other pretty but not classified villages and became quite blase by the time we got home to our own very lovely village in France.  While ours does not have the appellation, it is very lovely and perhaps a bit more alive than those we saw further south.  All of them were lovely out of season, but between June and September would be full of tourists, and between November and March/April would be cold, difficult to access, and mostly closed.

 

Restaurant Reviews: Angers and Saumur

I'll admit I am slacking a bit and John has threatened not to take me out to lunch until I write up the restaurants we have been to recently.

First off on September 12th we had to go into Angers for various official bits and pieces - never the nicest visits.  To make up for that, we generally have lunch out and had hoped to go to our chum Dominique's new gaff Bar O'Lices or similar in the Rue des Lices, but Dominique doesn't do Mondays.  Instead we went to the Cafe des Orfeves which is joined to the Musee des Beaux Arts.  As well as a menu of salads and staples, they do a menu of the day at 11,50 for a starter and main or main and desert, or 15,50 for all three.  We went with the menu of the day, and rather unusally for us, ignored the starter (there is only so much cucumber salad you can eat), and had the main and pudding.

The main course was a slow braised, slightly oriental pork stew with mash and a salad garnish - very good indeed with totally melting pork.  The pudding was tarte tatin with special vanilla icecream, and in this instance, special was not an underestimate - it was fab.  We washed that down with a bottle of Perrier and had a coffee after (extra), which did the required smack round the head to get you fit to drive after a good meal.

This is cheaper than the big brasseries in the Place de Ralliement, better value and a very nice setting.  If we have to go to Angers again on a Monday, we will go back!

 

The second meal out was because we had to get the windscreen replaced and Saumur was the place to do it.  We went there on Tuesday 20th September, just as the weather was warming up for the Indian Summer.  As ever we ended up in the Place St Pierre, and chose the Restaurant Les Forges de St Pierre.  Prices are a bit higher in Saumur than round us, so the dish of the day (choice of three) was 8,90.  John had moules frites and I had steak frites (for those who obsess about these things, the exact steak cut was hampe or skirt).  The frites were very good, the picher of rose was very generous, and my steak was very flavoursome although to English tastes, it could have hung for a further week.  The moules were also good, albeit a tad salty (perhaps someone used salted butter in the mix?), but having said that, not a scrap was left on either plate, other than shells!

The winning point about this restaurant is that they understand the concept of one pudding but two spoons - we had the profiteroles and we couldn't have eaten a whole portion each.  They were rich and lovely.  The coffee didn't quite have enough punch to keep us moving through the afternoon.  The setting was lovely and the food was fine, and the wine was good, but we still haven't cracked eating out in Saumur I think.

Now can I be taken out to lunch again, please John?

 

Comice 2011 Vaulandry Day Two

Day two of the Comice sees the less serious side of the ploughing matches, though no less competitive.  Here are the Vieil Bauge heros working as a team.

 
Clefs had to show off and do it with a horse, but actually apart for frequent stops for chats, seemed to be just as good as those using the old tractors.

 
Of course the big event for the Sunday of a Comice is the procession of decorated floats - the Pontigne line up for example was shown in all its glory here!  The theme this year was farming in days gone by, which brought out all the traditional skills you would expect.  Fougere opted for the forge.

 
Bauge introduced the first of two dairies, this one complete with cow and milk maid.

 

Situated as it is by the majestic Foret de Chandelais, it was inevitable that le Guedenieu would show forestry skills.

 
Singing as they went (as usual), Chevire showed off their threshing skills.  They also showed off by having a double trailer!

 
Next up was St Martin d'Arce with a wheelwright.

 
The village of Clefs is home to the best shop around for the needs of bee keepers, and this was emphasised in their bee keeping themed float.

 
Echimire had a theme of the butchering of the family pig - fortunately the float was very sanitised or this one could have been a bit yukky (and smelly given that it was 32 degrees in the shade).

 
Cuon was the first of two villages to have chosen a theme of milling.  The float was really good, and there was occasional community singing (Meunier tu dors), but there were also harpies around chucking large quantities of chaff down people's shirts.  As a victim, I was not impressed.

 
Looking again at my photo of the Montpollin float, I think they too must have had a forestry theme, but I can't remember what it was.

 
St Quentin de Beaurepaire was the second village with a milling theme, and thinking about EU subsidies, it was perhaps fitting that the tractor was driven by the Mayor of St Quentin who is also MEP for the Pays de la Loire.  Nice bloke too, and a very fine vintage Farmall tractor.

 
Pontigne worked hard to give a very full view of village life in olden days.

 
Patricia Leroy pulled out the stops once again for Vieil Bauge this year and taking the theme of the grape harvest, there used to be vinyards all around about a hundred years ago, produced a wonderful float, manned by village children and driven by Robert Letaire.  Two pictures of this one, but it is my village!

 
 
Then there was Boce with the second dairy theme, this time the co-operative of milk producers, and a very fine vintage Citroen van.

 
And finally, Vaulandry as the hosts came through.  They chose to represent the Marquis of Turbilly, founder of the Comice movement, communing with one of his peasants.  It should be noted that Marquis and Peasant were both portrayed by Brits!!

 
Soon the theme of the next Comice, at Fougere, will be announced and then we can all get going on making the next batch of paper flowers for the Comice 2012.

Well done Vaulandry however, as the only issue I have was that the press coverage of the event was awful, and there wasn't a lot they could do about that.

 

Comice 2011 Vaulandry Day One

Yes, it is Comice time again - that season when the preparations by the Comites des Fetes of the local villages are displayed for all to see.  This year it was the turn of Vaulandry to host the event and this meant that the Comice movement went back to its roots, as the whole event goes back to the agrarian Marquis of Turbilly, who wanted to improve the quality of farm outputs on his land, and thought that competition might be the answer (we are talking 18th century here).

The theme for the weekend was Agriculture in Days Gone By, and it was also one of the hottest weekends of the year, so we were pleased to find that part of the Comice area was in a poplar plantation and therefore shaded.  The Saturday was as ever devoted to the serious ploughing matches in the morning and in the afternoon to the Inter-village games.  This year the Games were done in two parts - a song/choreography following the theme of the Comice and a Fil Rouge or obstacle course.  Prizes were distributed on the basis of the times in the obstacle course.

Vieil Bauge did Old MacDonald as its song this year, but translated into French for the comfort of the audience.  Jim McKomisky of the local band Out of Time played guitar and sang (cow), and the other singers were Valentin Devanne (chicken), Antonin Morrisset (dog), Perine Pele (duck) and yours truly (sheep), with John sitting in for Old Mac himself.

 

 
 
Then the obstacle course team took over - the process was that a child (Valentin Devanne in our case) did a sack race effort in a slalom through cones to where a man (Pauline Morrisset - don't ask) picked him up and carried him back down the slalom course to the waiting woman (Florian Morrisset, who may never live it down), who pushed the child back up the slalom in a wheelbarrow, before all three had to fight their way through a rope maze and get over the finish line, against the clock.

 
Our amazing, if unconventional, team bashed the previous winning time by a whole 6 seconds and therefore won the day, and Vieil Bauge were the proud winners of a really nasty cup.

It is a bit sad that it was only young Pauline Morrisset who was prepared to heft little Valentin over her shoulder for that part of the race, but all the chaps around from Vieil Bauge got a sudden rash of bad backs - too much time spent at the beer tent perhaps?  Still, if she hadn't stepped up, I don't think we would have won - they were through that rope maze like greased lightening, so well done all.

Day Two and the Mayoral ploughing match and procession of floats will follow.

 

 

Restaurant Review: Le Relais at Auverse

Auverse is on the main (but not Autoroute) road between Angers and Tours and boasts two restaurants, facing each other across the road.  We have already reviewed the Oeil de Boeuf, so this time it was the turn of Le Relais.  This is very much a lorry truck stop, and as well as a restaurant, is also a bar and tabac, so you can get ciggies and lottery tickets there too.

We went on August 19th - a hot, sunny day, when the Oeil de Boeuf was closed and it was heaving - I have never seen waiting staff work so hard over a lunch period.  We turned up at about 12:45 and were seated in the bar area (as my two lunch companions were large and took up too much standing space in an intimidating fashion as both are over 6 foot tall)).  Our unusual placement was a disadvantage in the end, but I will come on to that.

There is was a buffet of starters, and very good they were too - nice eggs, good mayonnaise and a very fine herring salad among other things.  The choice was a bit limited due to the number of people who had been through before us.  For main, there was a choice of veal with carrots, grilled gammon and steak, and with a choice of side order too.  Two of us went for the gammon and one for the steak, all with chips.  This took about 40 minutes to arrive (probably due to table placement and the numbers of people, including a party of pensioners), but was good when it all arrived.  There was then a small cheese board of well kept cheeses and finally a choice of flavours of cornetto style ice cream cones.  There was wine and water with the meal and coffee after, and the waitress did not bat an eyelid about the need for milk with one of the coffees.  It was 11,50 Euros all in per head.

The food was good and simple and the staff very pleasant, but note that it gets full quickly (lorries park up from 11:30am).  Somewhere we need to try again, when it is not so rushed!

 

Summer Storms

Last weekend for the Comice (story to follow), the weather was hot, really hot - like 32 degrees in the shade.  That sort of hot spell ends with a bang, and sure enough on Monday 22nd there were storms rumbling around.  We were on the edge of three during the day, but could see the major clouds tracking to the north west of us.  Angers got a hammering (40mm in two hours), as did La Fleche, and up near the Belgian borders, things were very unpleasant we heard.

Since then, the weather has been gently cooling down a bit, but that doesn't stop Atlantic depressions sending in more storms and we got hit last night.  It started to rumble around at about midnight, and eventually cleared off at about 3am, but not after freaking out the normally quite mellow cats, and completely trashing our garden abri.  We heard the thunder and rain and some distant knocking so John got up at about 1:30am to see if he could see the problem, and said he could see through the roof of the abri.  The following pictures show what was left of it this morning.

 

 

Dramatic stuff, wouldn't you say?  I would also add: what numpty thought that plastic sacking that wasn't up to being exposed to direct sunlight would be suitable for a summer shelter?  The stuff disintegrated, and disintegrated further when I was picking it up off the lawn to tidy up this morning - if anything was ever not fit for purpose, this was it!!  Next year I think we will have to invest finally in a decent summer shelter, after all, it is up for about 5 months of the year.

Restaurant Review: Le Belem at Savigny sous le Lude

As today was a special day, we went out for lunch, but a Monday in August is not always the easiest of days for this.  Our first thought was to try the workers' menu in Genneteil, but that is closed until the 22nd August we found.  Next stop was Savigny sous le Lude, where Le Belem was open - Plan C was Buffalo Grill at La Fleche!!

Le Belem is also a superette, and must be a lifeline for those living in this small and rather remote community on the border between Maine et Loire and Sarthe.  They do outside catering (traiteur), but we were interested in their menu ouvrier - 10,50 including wine, coffee extra.  They do have an outside terrace at the back, but the clouds were just a little too threatening, and there is a bar area in front, but the restaurant is laid out with a number of tables and a maritime theme - le Belem was a famous French sailing ship.

For your 10,50 Euros, you get a choice of wine, cider or mineral water, and naturally there is a carafe of tap water available (chilled and very palatable), while the red is perfectly pleasant.  There is a buffet of starters - this had a good mix of things with and without mayonnaise, the hard boiled eggs were without the black rim to the yolk, there was only one starter with fish, and the rillettes tasted home made and were fabulous.  There was a choice of main, including beefburger, andouillettes (and therefore not to British tastes in general), but we chose the roast sucking pig.  You also get to choose your vegetable, and while there was a healthy option (green beans), and a sporting option (pasta), we had to try the house style chips.  These turned out to be crinkle cut wedges of fried potato and were wonderful - and the pork was melting and the light sauce on it with garlic and thyme was the perfect compliment.  It was one of the best main courses we have ever had in our researches on the menus ouvrier.  There was a limited cheese board and a choice of puddings.  There were rich and sticky things, but we opted for iles flottant and lemon ice cream, both of which were very good.  The coffee has ensured we stay awake into the afternoon, if you know what I mean!

We were the only clients, and the music selection was a bit eclectic (les Pretres, Viennese waltzes and some form of celtic/country mix), but if complaining about the muzak is the only bad mark, I think you will agree, this has to be good!  Of course, first you have to find Savigny sous le Lude!

 

La pluie au Vieil Bauge - or a bit of a wash out!

Currently Maine et Loire is facing severe water restrictions due to the drought - since March we have had perhaps an inch of rain in total, which is not enough to get grass, grains and maize growing well, while the market gardens near La Loire are having a difficult and expensive time of it.  Bauge itself had magnificent weather for their Millenium celebrations on the 13th and 14th July, so why did the much needed rain have to fall on Saturday when Vieil Bauge had its own village fun day?

There were a good number of hardy folk at the petanque competition that started at 1:30pm, so that although the semi finals and final were played out under torrential rain, the participants were too involved (and too well lubricated) to care all that much.  The dog obedience and agility show, that was the novelty this year, ran in front of a hardy few who got soaked while appreciating that all the dogs would have been eliminated in proper competition as they went the wrong way round jumps or generally misbehaved - it was a wonderful demonstration.

Many had pre-booked their dinners so from about 6pm people started to converge on the party site.

 

Until we re-arranged the catering tent, they were not prepared to approach for their drinks however, but once that was sorted, they came.

 
I can be a bit acerbic about the Cadets de Baugois, but this jolly band made the best of things by cramming themselves into the trailer we had hired for the dance band (who had relocated to the Community Centre), and instead of marching and playing, just played.  They did jolly well and were more in tune than usual.  Of course the challenge was to find a place for the conductor.

 

This didn't work entirely well, so he tried another option, where he could use both hands.

 
He did end up in the trailer with the band in the end, but UK Health and Safety would probably have been horrified.  People took it all in good part, and some thought about dancing.

 
But in the end, as the fireworks were cancelled, people either drifted off home or went to the Community Centre to dance, while we got to eat our dinners and then dismantled some of the shelters and put away the vulnerable or valuable goods.

 
It was a shame the party was rained on, but at least we were able to ensure that a large part of the day's festivities carried on.  Durtal's River Festival had to be cancelled completely, and the decorated boats will not be seen at all this year, which must be very frustrating for the many volunteers who put in hours of work creating them.

 

Good things in the garden

There are all sorts of good things in the garden at the moment.  Looking among the foliage I found this pumpkin starting up.

 
While in among another bunch of leaves I found this cucumber that will be a nice addition to salads next week.

 
The fruit is doing well again this year (although we won't talk about the disaster that was the apricot crop) and the pear tree will need to be supported soon for this weight of good things.

 
But this fig has my name on it for this weekend - it looks wonderful!

 
Peach leaf curl can be a real problem, but an old "astuce" over here is to hang egg shells in your peach and nectarine trees to reduce its worst effects.  There has been so little rain this year, I can't really comment, but anything is worth a try as chemical remedies are withdrawn and not really advisable if you have roaming chickens.

 
And finally - compare these two pots with chilli plants in.  All plants come from the same batch bought for me last week by John when Pepper the chicken went on a destructive rampage in the well protected pepper and chilli bed (now even better protected).  The ones on the left were potted on to the big pot on Thursday last week, the ones on the right were potted on today and are the colour the whole batch were on purchase.  It goes to show that some good quality compost can turn round a weedy looking performer!