The Day of the Triffids

Earlier in the year Fiona and the kids planted some Snake Gourds. The pack of seeds showed some nice twisty gourds painted all zigg zag and pretty like snakes. That'll be fun.

Our neighbour Jean-Marie called us to show us the gourds.

We hadn't noticed them because they had grown over the wall and were hanging down in his garden.

What the hell is going on? Snake gourds? Bloody Python gourds, Anaconda gourds more like. They've taken over his wall and there's tons of these beasts.

The Minister for phallic references was unavailable for comment.

Jesus' less famous brother, Charles

Legend has it that Joseph of Aramathea took the Holy Grail and Mary Magdalene to France. The Magdalene was said to have been married to the Christ, and the Holy Grail is said to symbolise their blood line, rather than being a physical object.
I now have firm evidence that members of Jesus' family did indeed make it to France, in order to found a cornichon preserving business.

Charles Christ, part of the SOCIETE CHRIST (web address www.christ.fr) is a family business. The business motto is "de père en fils" or "from father to son". I rest my case.

Friday's Favorite French Things

Back on the booze theme again.
Picon.
Classed as a bitters, and containing extracts of gentiane (see my entry on Suze) quinine and orange bark, Picon was invented in 1873 by Gaétan Picon.
According to the French Wiki entry:
Born in 1809, he was apprenticed in distileries in Aix-en-Provence, Toulon et Marseille. In 1837, While serving in Algeria with the French army, he invented Picon.
Gaétan Picon created his first distillery to produce the African bitters in an Algerian village, he then followed with a number of others: Constantine, Bône and Algiers. In 1872, he returned to France, he created his first factory at Marseille. From this time on, the bitters were named Picon.
Since 1995, Picon has diversified and there are now 2 different types: The original, called Picon bière and Picon club, for mixing with white wine.
Originally at 21°, since 1989 it has been produced at 18° provoking the ire of its devoted fans.
In 2003, 70% of sales were in the North and East of France. Total production for that year was 4 million bottles.

I was introduced to Picon beer at our café when, getting bored of lager I asked Michel for something different. He served me a Picon beer, and the caramel flavours reminded me of English winter ales. It immediately made the blond lager more complex and refreshing.

Hairy Bar Snacks

How to make save mony on supermarket pork promos and make Pork Scratchings along the way.
It's this time of year that the supermarkets start having their pork promos. You can pick up a whole, or half a pig for about 1.20Euro a kilo. And the supermarket will cut it up for you free of charge.
We didn't have tons of dosh last week, thanks to all the end of year fetes so we bought a shoulder (again).

If you zoom in on the label you'll see that this baby was 1.40 per kg and cost 11.21 so it was 8 kilos of shoulder.
Step one is to drink the beer, and step two is to sharpen the knives. My attitude to all this is that I'm not a trained butcher so I don't expect the results to be pretty. I'm sure the more I do it, the better I'll get.
I took the wrist end (do pigs have wrists? I'll bet there's a butcher's term for the joint) off and will use that as a little roast. Kept the skin and fat on it. I then removed te one from the shoulder and gave it to the dogs. Who were well pleased.
I then trimmed off the skin (to be used for the pork scratchings later) and cut out the biggest, neatest, least scraggy bit of meat which rolled up nicely for another roast.
the rest of the meat I cutt into stewing sized cubes and packed in freezer bags at about 1lb 500g each. I got five bags out. So that should make five meals for 11 euros. A bargain. Here are the finished portions.

Now, the Pork Scratchings. The last time I did this with a promo shoulder I threw the skin and fat away. This time I wanted no waste so I did a bit of research on the net and found that Pork Scratchings are very popular, but recipes are few and far between. I cut the skin into big chunks and put it into the heavy cast-irone cocotte, with a bit of olive oil.

I put this, with its lid on, into the wood burning stove which was alight anyway, as it heats the kitchen. I left it for about an hour, in a hot oven, and I could hear it banging, popping and hissing.
I took it out when it was golden, threw in a handfull of coarse salt and lit it cook a bit more. The skin was crispy, the fat crunchy and there was about 500ml of fat.
The scratchings drained overnight and were a success.

Credit for the title of this post goes to the Pork Scratchings web site. We used to call them "turkey scabs" or "Pommy biltong"

Friday's Favorite French Things

Galette des Rois
January 6 was Epiphany, the day the catholic & orthodox churches celebrate the "shining forth" or revelation of God in human form, to the Gentiles, in the person of Jesus.
Whatever.
Two things take place in France during Epiphany:
1. All the Christmas decorations come down
2. Galettes de Rois make an appearance. These either look like the photo below:

and are filled with an almond paste and a "fève", or are in a ring or crown shape and made of brioche. The fève is a little ceramic thingy that used to have a religious theme, but these days can be anything from a Smurf to a St Mary to Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean.
When the galette is cut up, the person who gets the piece with the fève is king (or queen) and gets to wear the crown. In bars/cafes or work, the person with the fève gets to buy the next round. Children have been known to get violent over the fève and will resort to prodding the entire galette with their grubby little fingers until they locate the fève.
For lunch today Fi & I made a savoury galette, and it was bloody delicious.

Easy to make - here is the recipe
Galette Nicoise
Pre-heat oven at 200C
2 tins of Croissante pastry. Get these in the refigerated section at your supermarche. It comes in little tins and there are 4 croissants each tin.
2 chicken breasts
1 onion
handful of lardons
feta cheese
emmental cheese (optional)
black olives
red pepper
Cook the onion and lardons with a bit of garlic and herbes de provence. Set aside.
Cut the chicken into small pieces and fry, with some salt, black pepper & a squeeze of lemon juice.
chop half the red pepper & cook in the empty pan
In a bowl, mix the chicken, onion/lardons pepper, black olives and cheese. The emmental will make the mixture more melty and moist.
In a buttered baking tray, place the triangles of croissante pastry, pointy sides outwards so that the bases overlap. To get them even try starting with the 4 poles like in a compass and then put in 4 more overlapping pieces in between.
spoon the chicken mixture onto the widest parts of the triangles and then fold the points over the mixture towards the middle. Zoom in on the photo above and you'll get the idea.
Place it in the oven and cook for about 10-15 mins until the pastry is golden. Careful to not burn the underneath.

Easy peasy - spectacular looking and tasty. We called it "Galette Nicoise" or "Couronne Nicoise" to fool our chauvanistic french guests who wn't eat anything that isn't french. They fell for it.

Reveillon nouvel an

The New Year's Eve celebrations caused agonies of decision making because of the price. Every year the owners of the cafe over the road do a New year's Eve bash in the Salle des Fetes. And this year they were charging 45 Euros a head.
Now in actual fact 45 Euros is not a lot when you consider the menu (later) and the wine included and the music. But with 4 adults (my in-laws are currently staying with us) and 2 kids it meant stumping up a bill of over 200 Euros, and after all the money spent on Chrimbo, that was quite an amount.
The Salles des Fetes is also over the road from us and last year we stayed at home and I could hear the noise of the people partying while we were Johnny-no-mates. I determined then that I was going to party New Year there come hell or high water.
After showing everyobody that other reveillons were costing up to 90 Euros each and after itemising the menu, everybody decided it was good value for money after all.
Kick off was 8:30, on a very cold and foggy night. Michel (cafe proprieter) had been teasing me that we would be seated next the village drunk and his companion. She plucks out all her eyebrows and then draws in new ones that make her look like a very suprised wasp (and paints her eyelids bright shiny blue).
I was relieved to find we were nowhere near them, and surrounded by french folk. the hall was undecorated but the tables nicely laid. The room smelled of delicious food and the band were already playing.
The menu:
Soup de Poisson
Fruits de mer (Oysters, prawns, bulots and half a langouste)
Melon & Foie Gras
Queues de Langoustinea a l'ail & cepes
Civet de ChevreuilPause Charentaise
Ostrich steak
Salade a Noix
Buche de Noel & Glace
Champagne
Cafe

The Band

First - whatever I may say to the contrary, the band was excellent. They were called Pha Si La Danser. Typical french play on words. The "Pha Si La" part is to do with french musical notation. They don't do ABCDEF like us they do Do Ray Me So like in Sound of Music. The whole name sounds like "Facile a Danser" or easy to dance.
Look at those splendid shiny shirts and pants with a stripe. They boy on sax was also the singer. he had heavily accnted french and a warbly voice that couldn't hold a note. He was brilliant. They played between every course of the meal and everybody danced. Waltzes and polkas and stuff. It was the only way to get through a meal of those proportions.
The fish soup was superb, and there was a nice Alcase white to go with it. (Did I mention that all the wine was included in the price?), and the next course, the fruits de mer was very generous. There were oysters and prawns, and big whelk-like things called bulots and a langouste cut in half. This had a tail bigger than a prawn, but smaller than a crayfish, and a claw about 10cm long. The claw was already cracked and contained delicious salmon-red meat. Many of my neighbours didn't like their whelks which were a bit rubbery, but had a peppery kick to them. They all ended up on my plate and I must have had more than 20 of the things.
Below is my father-in-law Byron and my son Callan busy with oysters.


I won't detail every dish, but they were all great and I would have been happy with any one of them alone for a normal meal.
At midnight balloons and streamers, hats, horns, poppers and pea-shooters were issued, and there was much kissing and good-wishing going on. Us men got to do the manly gallic kissing, the only time off the football field men are allowed to kiss each other. Briony took advantage of the red noses for a photo op.

and this is me fairly pissed, reloading a pea-shooter


We staggered home at about 3:00 am and we were in the first wave of leavers. Speaking to some of the guests afterwards, they were there dancing till after 4:00.

Pigeon Plucker

I had let the last batch of young pigeons grow for about 4 months. Now that winter is almost on us, the mating pairs are unlikely to lay any more eggs until spring, and it wouldn't make economic sense to be feeding birds all thru winter for no reason, so it was time for a cull.
The last batch of birds I had tagged with red rings so they were easy to spot. There were five of them for the chop, and so I caught them with the big net, and popped them in the box.
The axe that helps split the kindling does the job of beheading the birds, and now that I'm used to it, it is very quick and efficient. Below is the work to be done before the pigeons find their way to the deep freeze:



First stage is to plunge the bird in boiling water to help loosen the feathers. Not too long because we don't want any cooking to take place, not too short or there will be no effect.


Plucking is a tedious task and I'm not very quick. Fiona can do two birds to my one. The brest feathers come out easy, but the skin is thin and delicate so you have to take care not to tear it. The big wing and tail feathers come out easy too, but the hardest of all are the tiny feathers along the leading edge of the wing.


Below are the birds plucked and ready for gutting. Gutting pigeosn is actually quite easy and, with a bit of practice, not messy. First you cut around the vent with a pair of scissors. (most birds only have one external opening, called the vent, and the internal chamber, or cloaca, that is used for urination, defecation and reproduction. With a bit of care you cut all the way around, through the skin, fat and muscle until you find that the digestive tube is freed (but still attached to the vent) There is now enough room in the cut hole to get a finger in and gently hook all the innards out. Carefully done, nothing breaks or bursts, there is little blood and no smell. Higher up the body chamber will be the liver, heart and lungs.
It is at this point that our two cats start to go crazy because they know they are going to get these treats. They scoff them down faster that I can get them out, and the cats also go all wild and feral, growling and hiding under the table with their booty.


Last step is to get any grain and seeds out of the crop, trim of the feet and a final rince and pat dry.
Below are five young, tender tasty pigeons ready for any recipe.

Liquid Double Entendres

To go with my Arse wine I now have some Fanny Pastis:

What would they taste like mixed?
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Shit

There are two kinds of people . . .

There are two kinds of people: those who blog, and those who don't. But that's not what I'm posting about.

There are two kinds of people: those who generalise and those who don't.
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There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary and those who don't.
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No. Really. There are two kinds of people: those whose urine smells funny after eating asparagus and those whose urine doesn't. I'm not shitting you, that is the real topic of this post.
It's something I noticed years ago, when I was young. After eating asparagus - fresh/tinned/whatever, within the hour my pee would smell funny. Whenever I remarked on this phenomenon some people looked at me weird, but other people said "Yes, me too!"

Well, I was ever so pleased to discover a while ago that some serious scientific research has been done into this most important issue. A recent meal of asparagus and the subsequent visit to the toilet has reminded me to blog it.

Studies have shown that this phenomenon is genetic. 46% of 115 people tested produced the odor in one group of British citizens, according to 1989 British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, while 100% of 103 people produced it in a group of French citizens. (Go France!)
It turns out that asparagus contains a sulfur compound called mercaptan.This compound is also found in other smelly things such as rotten eggs, onions, garlic, and in what comes out of skunks. This compound cannot be smelt in the raw, unprocessed asparagus plant itself. It is only when you digest it, by-products are released that cause the funny scent. The process is so quick that your urine can develop the distinctive smell within 15 to 30 minutes of eating asparagus.
Here's a killer though - not everyone can SMELL this chemical. And this ability to smell the chemical is also genetic.
It's possible that someone may think their pee doesn't smell after eating asparagus, but it DOES, they just can't smell it. Curiouser and curiouser.
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This info from Eau D'Asparagus and You should know, you're a medic