I was busy cooking yesterday to make it all easier today.
Mini verrines, brochettes, préfou and nibbles for apero. Fizz of course.
Velouté de potimarron, épaule d’agneau confit 7 heures, green beans and creamy gratin dauphinois.
Bûche de Noël from the patisserie. Easy !
Up at 6am today and agneau in the oven at 7am.
2 Likes
Schwarzwälderkirschtorte and Zylinderkopfdichtung are two of my favourite German words. Oh, and Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän.
2 Likes
Toad in the hole this Christmas day and last year we had pizza.
Christmas dinner will be next week when more family arrive.
One Christmas dinner per year is enough.
1 Like
Raclette for us with lots of different veggies.
1 Like
We always have a poularde, last night it was done to perfection and I have just done the carcass soup ready for tomorrow. Absolutely stuffed so we had chocolate mousse praline bouche for breakfast earlier and really enjoyed it with lots of coffee. Couldn’t even look at it last night. Just finished washing the floors, getting the spare bedding washed and clearing up in general. So many toys again too!
2 Likes
last night was the ‘german dinner for Heiligabend’ Potato Salad and sausages…
today: starter of blinis sour cream & smoked salmon, followed by surf n’turf orf lobster tail & entrecote, pommes frites & salad, followed by some sort of frozen dessert…
tomorrow: venison roast, cranberry sauce, red cabbage and potato dumplings
2 Likes
How do you eat it? With potatoes or noodles 
With plenty of oil and stuff that looks like mayonnaise. That’s how ADAC presented it to me…
Well actually Italian! That where the grape came from originally. - place calked Tramin.
2 Likes
SO full! 
Snap, stuffed to the gunnels 
So your hat’s a gasket Brian? Your picture looks awfully like the literal German translation of that 2nd word 
I’m sure you can see how my ‘silly hat’ provides an impermeable interface between my inner thoughts and the world outside. Those ADAC techniciens had a greater degree of insight than I realised when my Poire expired on the A49 near Kassel …
2 Likes
We (or rather I) had a Gewurtraminer with our duck breasts this evening, unfortunately my wife has gastro so could only cautiously sip an already opened cremant de Loire. As you can imagine this also reduced the length of today’s planned 13km hike, instead it became a quick walk around a couple of fields alongside the Lot and straight back home - but good vigorous exercise I’m sure). Keep telling her that if she ate more red meat and potatoes and drank more alcohol, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. But will she listen? No does bloody yoga instead!
Nevertheless, she managed to get through a duck breast served with a bitter Seville orange sauce (freeze a load every January) with roast beetroot and sweet potato wedges, plus assorted greens (simple but good) We followed it with an Aveyronnais cheeseboard (apart from the Brie de Mieux, which is from somewhere up north where they also have cows) washed down with a moderately priced good value wine from our local co-op’s oldest vines. Was pleased with the meal, simple to prepare and good local stuff (apart from te Gewurtztraminer oh and that Brie) but most importantly modestly satisfying…
3 Likes
The historian in you may find research into French cépages interesting, starting from before the devastating phylloxéra period (many only had local names) then reintroduction of some of these cépages from South America. Also the crossing and cloning of to give us new cépages ‘Merlot’ for example.
We have a wine conservatoire fairly near, with a cépage garden with big range, including some ancients. Interesting.
Our property and our surrounding cliffs(!) (I’d never owned a cliff before) are covered with wild, or feral vines. The cépage is the traditional fer servadou or mansois of the SW and I often wonder if it is pre-phylloxera.
The role of Chile has always interested me and the differences between our local Cahors and Chilean malbec. Another local grape I’m partial to is negrette, which is also very dark, but more liquoricey though not stridently so.
Having lived in S Africa I’ve had many Stellenbosch wines from pre-phylloxera C18th former Huguenot vineyards on the Simonsberg and in Constantia - they’re some of the prettiest wine estates, but not as spectacular those of our local Entraygues et le Fel, high above the Lot. These vignerons, although in the south are growing at 600m+ on the edge of cultivation, and despite global warming, in recent years a lot of the harvest has been lost to late frost. Virtually all the wine is only available locally, but I’d argue that the whites, mainly chenin are amongst the best in SW France.
3 Likes
Well, the fondue (Swiss, bought rather than made, foolishly) was OK instead of great, but the christmas pud afterwards, stored for 2 years, then fed with whisky before cooking, was really excellent.
The Gerwurztraminer was a fairly robust 14% alcohol, and my lips are still a little numb from just 2 glasses.
1 Like