Yes, I packed all that cheese in!
I think I bought a little too much cheese yesterday. Well, the thing is, I haven't been to the store in over two weeks now, and I realized that I'm leaving to go to another château on Friday, where I'm pretty sure I won't be cooking (well I might actually get to assist cook, or cook somedays, but I have a feeling I'll be living with the family again...a feeling, not an expectation, remember my viewpoint on expectations right now). Therefore I feel that it is my duty, an a United States citizen that cannot transport frommage (cheese) back to the US, or is going to have much difficulty transporting wine (and found out she can't ship it either), and who's bags are already too heavy to bring anything else of that matter back, that the only souvinirs will be the ones in my head (unfortunately, I think it they will also appear in my gut). But whatever, the frommage is incredible, and I'm basically training myself on how to recognize and tell the nuances between the different varieties, as well as how to cook with them. I also bought six sticks of butter, a bottle of oil, three pastry crusts from quiches and tarts, beef cubes (for my 'french' onion soup), vanilla ice cream (I need this item to go with my tarts), creme fraîche, and more eggs. Don't ask me how much I spent on dairy last night, but all I can tell you is that it would have been WAY more expensive in the states, where the same cheese is 4x the price!
After a few days of moaning and groaning to myself because I didn't have the butter necessary to make all these recipes in Alix's book, or the french cook book I found in the kitchen, I decided to just suck it up and try doing other things that could utilize the walnut oil (Heule de Noix is apparently a thing here). I stuffed a zucchini with rice, tomatoes, garlic, and onions yesterday (and in the process learned that I don't know the correct way to actually spell zucchini when trying to search recipes on epicurious.com (my favorite cooking website, thank you Lindsey). The stuffed zucchini or courgette farche, as I am trying to remember it in French (it's good to remember farche, because it's quicker to say than «jay preparay cou-cour-courg….et evec beaucoup shows…legumes, eea pleu» (it actually sounds a lot worse than that, but everyone here is still really proud of me and my progress in French anyway;) I stuffed the grande courgette with sautéed onions, garlic, zucchini flesh and basmati rice.
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| courgette farche |
I added some parsley and basil to the mix, as well as giroflier, that I just realized (when going to look it up online to translate, that it's CLOVES!!! It makes so much sense now how Alix was explaining the spice to me after I bought it on Sunday because I noticed it in her garden and wanted to experiment cooking with a new spice…ha, it's cloves. Well I like it, a lot, especially with the rice. The stuffed zucchini was fine on its own, but it became much better in the evening when I added emmental and parmesan ;) I think life is just better with cheese. I'm so grateful that I'm not so lactose intolerant anymore because than I'd be just like Meg Ryan on the train in 'French Kiss'!
This weekend was actually a very eventful one for me, because after spending about a day and a half glued to my computer emailing people either back or for my Fulbright application I decided to go out Saturday afternoon in the garden to try my hand at drawing a little (I'm practicing different techniques because I'm trying to figure out what I like best, and therefore all my quick little drawings or paintings are coming out awful but I don't care, I refuse to be a perfectionist right now and just really that it's okay to be not the best at something all the time…big revelation for me ;) As I was sitting in the garden, drawing some haystacks, I noticed a group of people come in and start speaking to this woman in English that was down drawing in the moat area below me (it's dried out now and planted, refer to 'marshmallow fluff' post, view from my kitchen window). And when I saw one of the guys that had been in this group come over to my area, this time instead of saying bonjour! I said hello, and we spoke in English. It turned out that he was Italian, on a water coloring vacation. He was in a week long course with about ten other people, mostly from Paris, and there was one other woman from Los Angeles. Nicolas, the Italian, lent me his watercolors and I started to practice using them. Later I went out with him and three of the other members of the group in Amboise, the cute little village nearby on the Loire. (I'm going to Amboise again tonight, and I think that'll make it the 8th time in three weeks). Dinner was really nice, and I tried frog (which was basically cooked in the same method as escargot with a oil, garlic, basil sauce. And I also tried shark. I preferred the frogs legs because the shark sauce was just too spicy (I'm very critical, remember). But dinner was especially nice because I drank and therefore practiced more of my French (ha ha, alcohol really DOES help you learn a language) and it was just nice to go out.
On Sunday, Emeline and I went to the famous Château de Chenonceau (for history, go here: http://www.chenonceau.com/media/gb/histoire_present.php) and we explored the whole castle together and since she was a French history and heritage major in college, I learned a lot from her tour. We spent a lot of time in the Château so I didn't have enough time as I wanted to explore the gardens but I realized that these gardens were built to be admired from the castle, not as much when walking in the gardens. I thought that I was just having a bad photographing day, but after talking about it with Alix later, I realized that it was the design that left much to be desired while 'in' the gardens, not my photos.
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| kitchen utensils in Chenonceau |
In the afternoon Alix and I returned to Clos Lucé, the château Leonardo da Vinci lived in for the last three years of his life. In the park they had life-size replications of his inventions set up (which turned me off a little bit, because it's just all very cheesy (and not like good frommage either) to me. So I tried to imagine the place sans all the inventions, because the landscape was very beautiful.
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| Alix's newest book, I think I was the first one anywhere to have a copy ;) |
Since I had done this entire exploration four days prior I decided to go back into the main village (while Alix and the artist of her cookbook did a book signing for four hours) and I walked around for a while, bought a very cute scarf, a nice bracelet, some brut from Samour (the village Emeline is from) and sat down at the famous 'Bigot' Chocoletier/Pattiserie for and hour and a half and had the most expensive dessert option on the menu, Stracciatella ice cream, with a giant macaroon, specially chocolates, and whipped cream. It was…amazing. (Charlene can vouch for that).
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| Dessert from Bigot «oo la la!» |
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I had my café au lait, all the meanwhile writing in my journal and sketching. And then, out of the blue walks by the Parisian art teacher, I say hi, because I decide 'why not' (even though this could have been a bad move because I wasn't sure if he was 'stalkerish' or not and I've already had problems with guys not going away from me when I say goodbye.) He was all excited to see me though, sat down next to me after which proceeded to get dessert as well, and then pet me. At this point I told him, you know, actually I really don't like to be touched, or petted. Afterwards, when I declined his offer to walk on the beach with him (he was cute and nice but I just wasn't interested) he gave up without a big deal and I continued back to Leonardo's château to meet Alix.
Last night, Emeline gave me the recipe for and taught me how to make her family's crêpes, they were so delicious. We ate them with nutella and whipped cream and ice cream and butter and sugar! Who wants to be my guinea pig when I return to the states and need to practice my French culinary skills? My rule is you buy the food, and I'll cook it ;) Tonight Emeline and I are going out to dinner in Amboise, and then we're going to meet her family to walk around the night open air market (oh no, they'll be more cheese there, ha ha).
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| Emeline whipping up a crêpe storm |
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| the table set with brut from a château close to Samure, and neufchâtel cheese that I just had to try because it came in the shape of a heart, très mignon! |
Today I started cooking a lot of things, since I only have three days left to cook. I started with the French Onion soup, here's a link to the recipe (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/French-Onion-Soup-236714) I halved the recipe, used about 5 medium size onions, because I don't really know what a pound of onions is exactly, couldn't find thyme or bay leaves and used lemon basil and sage instead. Also replaced the dry wine which dry champagne (leftover from last night), and used beef bullion cubes instead of broth. I spent over an hour caramelizing the onions, and then about another 45 minutes finishing the soup part. Tomorrow I'll just pour the soup into a large ramekin, toast the bread into a crouton and broil it with cheese on top (this will go nicely with the strawberry-orange-rhubarb tart I plan to make as well!) In the meantime I made a leek-garlic-onion quiche in which I burned the crust again…more practice necessary on this, I need more mouths to feed! Alix suggests that I try parchment paper until the crust to prolong it from burning.
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| my latest quiche (not AS burnt as the last one) |
I also cooked a recipe that I really liked, and want to share with the beets and haricots verts from her garden. Basically all I did was clean the beets, slice them up into 'french fry' size strips, toss them with oil and salt and then baked them in the oven for about 20 minutes covered with aluminum foil until tender. After I sautéed a little butter with a little lemon juice and rind, I added the haricot verts I had blanched a few days ago. That, heated through with a handful of chopped parsley, came out really well! (with a refreshing crunch).
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| Beets and Haricort Verts in Lemon Parsley Butter Sauce |
And below is the most ingenious way for me to learn culinary vocabulary!
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Isn't it fantastic, postcards with pictures and the words in French ;)
á bientôt! |
After a few days of moaning and groaning to myself because I didn't have the butter necessary to make all these recipes in Alix's book, or the french cook book I found in the kitchen, I decided to just suck it up and try doing other things that could utilize the walnut oil (Heule de Noix is apparently a thing here). I stuffed a zucchini with rice, tomatoes, garlic, and onions yesterday (and in the process learned that I don't know the correct way to actually spell zucchini when trying to search recipes on epicurious.com (my favorite cooking website, thank you Lindsey). The stuffed zucchini or courgette farche, as I am trying to remember it in French (it's good to remember farche, because it's quicker to say than «jay preparay cou-cour-courg….et evec beaucoup shows…legumes, eea pleu» (it actually sounds a lot worse than that, but everyone here is still really proud of me and my progress in French anyway;) I stuffed the grande courgette with sautéed onions, garlic, zucchini flesh and basmati rice. 
