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~ A fairy-tale cottage by the Seine in Normandy

chaumierelesiris

Monthly Archives: November 2012

Pont-l’Évêque Market Day

25 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Food, France, Normandy, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

calvados, chestnuts, Flowers, Food, France, Market, Normandy, Pont-l'Évêque

One of the joys of spending time in Normandy is visiting the area’s bountiful food markets. Our local market, held on a Friday, never disappoints: but in those weeks when we’re traveling or otherwise occupied on a Friday, a close second best is exploring the other markets of Upper Normandy and Calvados. This month we made our way to Pont-l’Évêque, where the weekly market is held on a Monday. It’s home to the eponymous cheese, and to a lovely church which survived wartime bombing.Church, Pont L'Eveque

The point of local markets is they change every time. You go for the seasonal produce and for the individual sellers. It’s the opposite of supermarkets, where it’s downright inconvenient when the aisles are changed around adding a precious few minutes to your already too-long shopping time.

In the first week of November, there were chestnuts, quinces, and the alien-fabulous chou romanesco. I’ve never cooked any of these, although the guests at our cottage the week before had collected chestnuts in the forest and roasted them over the open hearth. I’ll have to try that, and here’s how.Chestnuts, NormandyQuinces, Normandy marketChou romanesco, Normandy

I love these pre-prepared bundles of meat: so lovely and neat and easy, the original, organic, guilt-free ready meal.Pont L'Eveque Market

And the chrysanthemums were flying: you could see them lining the village streets, and all around around the cemeteries where families were marking November 1st, a day of remembrance. We left some by the cottage gateposts: I wonder how far into the winter they’ll last.chrysanthemums, Normandy

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A Luncheon on Le Toussaint

20 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Food, France, Normandy

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

All Saints Day, Cookbooks, family, Food, France, friends, holidays, Recipes, table setting, Toussaint

The significance of November 1st may be all but forgotten, little more than a hangover after the revelry of Halloween, in many places. But in France–where Halloween is observed as a holiday only for children—it’s Le Toussaint, All Saints Day on November 1st, that is widely marked. As one blogger explains, it’s a holiday when everyone goes home to be with their family and remember their loved ones who have died.

So it felt just right to mark 1st November this year with a family meal. We were joined by friends we’d not seen much in recent years, since they moved away from our London neighbourhood back to Paris with their four children. To mark the occasion I made Susan Loomis’s hearty lamb stew from her memoir-cookbook about moving to Normandy, On Rue Tatin: The Simple Pleasures of Life in a Small French Town, followed by David Lebovitz’s ever reliable Chocolate Mousse I from The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious–And Perplexing–City.

Table, Normandy

Something dreadful happened in the village this year. I’m not ready to write about it yet, may never be. It gave some peace and much-needed pleasure to prepare and then eat together at the cheerful looking table; to take a postpandrial walk in the woods together; to share with friends the downs and ups of busy lives in our different cities. It was indeed a day to remember, as well as to celebrate the lives we have.

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Autumn Colours on Two Continents

15 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France

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Tags

autumn, France, Halloween, New Jersey, pumpkins

I was lucky enough recently to spend a few days in New Jersey, before the hurricane hit.  The trees were magnificent in their autumn colours. I had forgotten how heartbreakingly beautiful an East Coast autumn can be, all flame red trees and bright blue skies.The town I stayed in (home to a lifetime friend and writer who blogs wonderfully at New Jersey Seoul) was dressed for the season, all orange pumpkins against white clapboard, as New England as you can get.

Large pumpkin

Autumn, New Jersey

Autumn day, PrincetonRed Tree, PrincetonHalloween, New Jersey

I then spent two days in the trendiest part of Brooklyn which was, in its own way, dressed for Halloween.

Halloween House, BrooklynHalloween Shop, Brooklyn

This delighted me, because I would spend the following week, including Halloween, in Normandy. What kind of Halloween could you expect in a rural village that’s about as far away as you can get from a Starbucks in the developed world?

Halloween in FranceHalloween in the village, Normandy

In fact: a very normal Halloween. The houses were dressed for Halloween. There were even pumpkins. I should have known. Which country, after all, did Cinderella come from.

There were few differences. First, it’s for the little children. There’s none of the adult-dressing-up stuff, and none of the wild tricking you get with teenagers in the US. (Although just after I left New Jersey it wasn’t the teenagers, it was Hurricane Sandy that played the worst possible trick, was the Grinch that stole Halloween for a million candy-laden, powerless towns across the midlantic states).

Halloween, NormandyTrick or Treating, Normandy, France

Second, it’s a village-managed event, coordinated and strictly regulated. It happens on a day that’s convenient for the village (it may not even be 31 October!). The children are invited to gather at the Mairie (town hall). They will then progress around the village to collect their candy, politely thanking the householders and closely monitored by a legion of parents who afterwards gather for a reconstituting glass of wine in the village hall.

I was sneaky, I confess. I had brought back from the US a bag of American candy: Taffy and Nerds and Sweet Tarts. What’s this? cried the children, seemingly disgusted. But the basket was nearly emptied, and my children told me that it was the American candy (below right), not the beautiful French candy (below left) that went first as the children gorged themselves afterwards.

Some things remain the same, wherever they happen.

French Halloween CandyAmerican Halloween Candy

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Wild Mushrooms

05 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Food, France

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Books, Food, France, recipe, wild mushrooms

The mushrooms are late in Normandy this year. So late that our village cancelled its usual foraging expedition in October and couldn’t find a date to reschedule on account of the Beaujolais Nouveau tasting event in November – which can’t possibly be delayed.

And so, in the last week of October, we encountered more mushrooms than usual along the forest paths around the cottage. I took these pictures in the hope that someone can tell me if any are edible. I reckon they aren’t: I reckon all the good ones have been plucked.

wild mushrooms
wild mushrooms
wild mushrooms

wild mushrooms
wild mushrooms
wild mushrooms

wild mushrooms and tree stump
wild mushrooms
wild mushrooms

I did cook with mushrooms, beautiful chanterelles from the market which were practically free and so flavourful. Milk-fed veal with giroles (replacing the giroles with chanterelles), pan-fried escalopes with cider and oodles of dollopy Norman cream, from Jane Webster’s luscious memoir-cookbook, At My French Table: Food, Family and Joie De Vivre in a Corner of Normandy. So easy and last minute, and all from market ingredients.

I’d like to try it with mushrooms I’ve picked myself. In France you can take your found mushrooms to the pharmacy, and the pharmacist tells you if they’re alright to eat. At first I didn’t believe this. But everyone – people I hardly knew, who couldn’t possibly be pulling my leg – insisted it was true.

Just as I was building up the confidence to do it, I had lunch with my pharmacist friend and her family on Toussaint. She explained to me that on the pharmacist course of study you can choose one of several tracks – hospital, industrial and so on. On the track she chose, she didn’t have to take the mushroom course. Later, she had a job in a pharmacy near Paris. People would bring in their mushrooms. She hated when that happened, because she couldn’t help them. She didn’t guess – but what if she had?

I don’t think I’ll be picking mushrooms this year. Not yet.

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