A fat little piggy

Les Gastronomades, Angouleme

This morning I am feeling like a fat little piggy having spent the whole weekend celebrating all that is good about French food and social eating.

On Friday morning I set out for the regular airport run to collect Ade, but we found ourselves diverted from our usual drive home, firstly by the coffee stop that has become our routine and then by Les Gastronomades, an annual food festival in Angouleme that we have visited before (see here). Held in a selection of marquees throughout the town, the festival promotes the local Poitou-Charentes produce, holds a huge market where producers from all over France come to sell their products, puts on displays and demonstrations by top chefs and more importantly encourages everyone, young and not so young to learn more about food and where it comes from. From snails to saucisson, wine to walnuts, fromage to foie gras and breads to Bio (organic) products, we tasted the best of flavours from Brittany in the north to the Pays Basque in the south.

Some of our purchases from Les Gastronomades, Angouleme

There were increased security measures following the recent events in Paris, but I’m delighted it was still able to go ahead and not only that but Friday is the day the event normally welcomes around 2000 school children and this year was no exception. It was lovely to see them tasting, learning and trying their hand at making too. That’s the spirit France, allons-y!

Les Gastronomades, Angouleme

French village pork fest

On Saturday evening we joined over a hundred others to eat a pig feast in the salle des fêtes (village hall), where a small team of experienced family cooks had spent three days preparing lots of different pork dishes. The smell of cooking pork had been lingering over the village and even tempted me to take a peek in the kitchen on Thursday afternoon. The cooked meat from the pig’s head was being mixed together with vegetables and parsley before being poured into plastic water bottles with a homemade gelatinous pork stock. Once set, the plastic bottle was cut away leaving cylindrical blocks of fromage du tête (pig’s head cheese or brawn) that was sliced and served. There were many firsts for me, including the first time attending this annual event despite having lived here for 11 years. The pig’s head cheese was certainly a first as was the boudin noir, a black pudding type of blood sausage and the gigouri a local speciality made using cooked pig skin, belly fat, seasoning and blood. The boudin noir was delicious, the brawn ok but I think I’ll pass on the gigouri in the future. I was always a very fussy eater when I was a kid, so I think I did very well to try what I did. The main course was roast pork, studded with garlic and served with beans, then there was cheese and to top it off (at about 11.30pm) a tasty homemade apple tart. I rolled into bed after midnight feeling happy but very tired and very full.

Rillettes, pate and gigouri

Roast pork with garlic

Sunday dawned and despite not really needing to eat, a Sunday isn’t a Sunday without a breakfast of coffee and croissants from the village boulangerie, so I somehow found room. Thankfully my diary is showing no major eating events until next weekend and I’m back to enjoying my simple vegetable soups, the perfect winter detox.  

French Brasserie Cookbook Terrine de Porc

When we buy a half pig (which we did last week) we get certain cuts of meat that wouldn’t normally feature on our regular supermarket shopping list but we don’t like to waste them. With a fridge full of pig liver and the excess fat trimmed off the casserole/mince cuts, we needed to consult the recipe books for some ideas. Thankfully the French Brasserie Cookbook: the Heart of French Home Cooking by Daniel Galmiche has a recipe for a Terrine de Porc that I was able to adjust slightly (as is my way) and put all our excesses to good use and even throw in a few homegrown ingredients.

I enjoy flipping through any recipe book, but this one is an especially good read with it’s informative wordy bits and easily achievable recipes. Brasserie cooking is probably the best style/type of French cooking to try in the home, as it is not tricky or pretentious, but is wholesome and comforting. This book covers all the basics like stocks, vinaigrettes, mayonnaise, dressings and the various types of pastry. It is illustrated with great photos and as well as finding all the usual French regional delights: Ratatouille, Tarte Tatin (although I did like the twist of rosemary and almonds), Clafoutis, Crêpes, Bouillabaisse, Cassoulet and Beef Bourguignon, there are also some more unusual recipes; Lime Risotto, Vegetable and Chickpea couscous and one of our favourites, a delicious wild garlic soup.

Here is my slightly adapted version of the Terrine de Porc recipe.

Using our new mincer

600g pork shoulder/neck, coarsely minced (note a true terrine would have some meat left cubed, but we prefer a smoother texture).

300g pork liver, minced

300g pork belly fat, minced

3 tbsp Cognac

½ tsp grated nutmeg

100ml dry white wine

¾ tsp salt

½ tsp ground white pepper

12 slices of streaky bacon

2 eggs

100ml double cream

35g shelled, chopped walnuts

2 sprigs of thyme

Mince all the meat, liver and fat, combine with the Cognac, wine, nutmeg, salt and pepper and mix, then cover with cling film and leave to marinate in the fridge overnight.

Pre-heat the oven to Gas mark 1/130 degrees and remove meat from fridge. Cover the base and sides of a terrine mould with the bacon, allowing it to hang over the sides.

Whisk eggs and cream together and gradually add to meat mix, then add the walnuts. Pack the mix into the mould and push down firmly with a spatula. Place the thyme sprigs on top and cover with the bacon. Place in a deep oven dish and fill dish with hot water to reach two-thirds of the way up the terrine mould. Bake for about 2 hours. It is done when a thermometer inserted into the centre reaches 68 degrees.

Ready to wrap and bake

Leave to cool completely at room temperature with a 1-2kg weight on top. Place a sheet of greaseproof paper between the terrine and the weight. Once cold, cover and place in the fridge for two days to allow the flavours to develop. We always serve on bread or toast with cornichons.

French Brasserie Cookbook: the Heart of French Home Cooking by Daniel Galmiche is published by Duncan Baird Publishers and available in hardback and ebook formats.

Terrine de Porc with Cognac and Walnuts

Food Glorious Food

My Sunday morning breakfast

It would be true to say food is a very important thing in my life. I wake up thinking of breakfast, can’t wait for the mid-morning delight that is my espresso coffee and square of dark chocolate that bridges the gap to lunch and if I get to mid afternoon without planning dinner I’m in a panic. Today has been a real delight for my taste buds that started with my early morning walk to the boulangerie, the smell of freshly baked bread wafting around the almost empty village. It is my weekly foodie treat to make a Sunday morning pilgrimage to buy fresh croissants for our breakfast and a forêt noire (black forest gateau) for Ed’s lunch dessert. There is nothing quite like the disappointment of getting there too late and finding no croissants left, so I aim to be there before the eight o’clock Angelus has rung out from the church bells.

My neighbour, who is an early riser, stopped me for a quick chat where we thanked each other, me for the locally picked and home cooked snails she had given us, her for the goose eggs we had given them. Food is never far from our conversations and she was glad we had enjoyed the snails and described in detail how she had prepared the eggs. I mentioned to her that we were off to collect a butchered half pig to fill our freezer for the coming year. She immediately recounted a childhood memory of joining her Father on a Sunday (the only day he wasn’t at work) and taking the pony and trap to a nearby village where they would collect a whole, live pig from the farmer. She pointed to the corner of the yard where it would have been slaughtered and then shared between the extended family. As freezers were a long way off, certain cuts would be preserved in salt and stored in large terracotta jars in their cool, dark store cupboards to see them through the winter.

Some of our half pig

Our morning was then spent bagging up the ten joints, 36 chops and 26 steaks ready for freezing. We browned off some of the belly pork and the ribs and put them in the slow cooker with onions, carrots, garlic and bay leaves for a tender casserole this evening. We will be making use of the new meat mincer Ade bought me for Christmas and mincing the off cuts for meatballs and adding the kidney to some for paté.

Today is also Candlemas Day or La Chandeleur in France. I wrote about this last year, see here, but French tradition says we must cook pancakes today, toss them with a coin held in our writing hand and if we catch them the family will be prosperous all year. We will have our pancakes for pudding tonight, smothered in a delicious homemade raspberry jam given by another French neighbour in exchange for one of our pumpkins. 

La Chandeleur

Talking of food and France, Rick Stein's hardcover book Rick Stein's French Odyssey is currently available on Amazon for only £5 (please note this price is unlikely to stay for too long). With narrative from the canal barge trip he took from Bordeaux to The Mediterranean, snippets of his travels in France to accompany each of the 100 plus recipes and lots of beautiful photos, this book has had pride of place in my kitchen for many years.

The pig, the mouse and the swallow

Yesterday we took delivery of our pig. Or to be more accurate our half pig, nicely packaged into freezer bags, all 32 chops, 24 steaks, 16 joints, 2 packs of ribs, 1 fillet, 1 kidney, 5kgs of casserole/sausage meat and 4 trotters (must have been a freak of nature). We knew the piggy before he met his destiny, so are happy he lived a free-range life and has travelled very few miles. I’m not sure total self-sufficiency is something we could ever achieve, but this is the next best thing. If anyone has any great recipes for the trotters do please let me know – Ade is keen to try them as they are a delicacy, but I confess to never having eaten or cooked them before, thank you. I may have been a squirrel in a previous life as I am never more content than when my food cupboards and freezers are chock full, plus I am a real hoarder. We shouldn’t need to buy meat, except the occasional free-range chicken for quite a while now.

Hello piggy

What did slightly spoil my good mood was finding our walnut store had been broken into. I do appreciate it has been a particularly cold, wet and horrid winter, but I was one unhappy bunny to find Mr Mouse had found our walnut crates. Thankfully this has been the first time in eight years that we have had this problem, but I will admit to setting a trap (or rather getting Ade to set it) last night. Live and let live – so long as you are not invading my space and my food storage! Having never set one before we wondered what food to bait it with, cheese – everyone knows mice love cheese, or chocolate – I was sure I had read this was good? In the end Ade used a shelled walnut and Mr greedy tempted by the fact he didn’t have to crack the shell himself fell for it – gotcha! The trap has been reset just in case word had got out to the village mice that our bumper crop of 2012 walnuts was up for grabs.

These walnuts are all mine. Thieves will be prosecuted.

Now for something extremely exciting that happened this morning, while sipping our coffee in the garden the first swallow swooped overhead – yes! I wish you could have seen the silly, happy dance I performed up and down the garden; as for me this really does mark a turning point in the seasons. Nature is so much cleverer than we are and if the swallows feel now is the right time to return then it can only mean spring will again return and the weather will get better. Now to walk the dog – in the drizzle, oh well!