Category: food and drink

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Les Six Régals

Oh dear, it seems that I’m getting a reputation in my industry for always knowing where the very best restaurants are in the towns and cities around Europe that are centres for horticulture. Well, I suppose that there are worse things to have a reputation for.

So, note to self and to others – I’d like to publicly recommend Aux Six Régals (no website) as the finest eating establishment that I know in Angers. I’ve just eaten there and to say that the experience was both sublime and good value would be an understatement. The salade périgourdine is possibly one of the best dishes I know anywhere (this isn’t a bad recipe, but not as good as the restaurant’s version).

If you’re lucky, I may come up with a few more tips for other parts of Europe (it’s not a long list really).

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Not quite full of beans

We’ve just had our first harvest from our runner beans in the garden. However, one bean does not a meal make.

Still, it was very fresh and tasty. And there are more coming.

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Poulet basquiase

Last night, we had good company in the form of my sister-in-law and her husband. Stepping off our diet for one evening (you knew that we are both dieting, didn’t you? Perhaps I haven’t mentioned that. In five-and-a-half weeks, I’ve lost 12lb and H has lost 10lb, about which we are very pleased.), I prepared poulet basquaise with a rice pilaf whilst H made a chocolate meringue and summer fruit dessert. If ever H gets a blog (incredibly unlikely), she can describe the making of the dessert for you, but I thought I’d share the poulet with you here.

The recipe was from Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook, which is one of my favourite cookbooks for meat recipes – lots of rustic French and Mediterranean style cooking with rich reduced sauces. I found I needed slightly more fluid than the recipe suggested, so here is my interpretation:

Ingredients (serves 4 generously):

  • chicken (The recipe calls for a whole chicken cut into eight pieces. I found it simpler to use two breasts, halved; four drumsticks, skin-on; four thighs, skin-on – you need meat on the bone as the dark meat works best, and you want about 1.5kg in total);
  • two red peppers, cut into long thin strips;
  • two green peppers, similarly cut;
  • one onion, thinly sliced;
  • 450g tin of Italian tomatoes;
  • salt and pepper;
  • a pinch of cayenne;
  • a little olive oil (about two tablespoons);
  • a knob of butter (about 15g);
  • 150ml white wine;
  • 200ml chicken stock;
  • fresh parsley, chopped (note: this is real parsley usage – for flavour, not for useless garnish).
  1. Heat the oil on a medium-high heat in a large heavy pan with a lid. When it is hot, add the butter. Wait for the butter to melt and foam.
  2. Meanwhile, thoroughly season the chicken with salt, pepper and cayenne.
  3. Add the chicken, skin side down and brown it on this side only. Remove it to a plate and set aside.
  4. Add the peppers and onion and cook on a medium heat for about ten minutes.
  5. Add the tomatoes and cook until the juices are reduced by about a third.
  6. Add the wine and cook for a further few minutes to reduce the wine by about half, being sure to scrape the bottom of your pan to get up that slightly burnt stuff from the peppers and onion.
  7. Add the stock and cook for a minute or two.
  8. Add the chicken, including any juices left on the plate. Cover the pan and leave on a low heat for at least 30 minutes, if not longer (mine was simmering for nearly an hour).
  9. Whilst this is going on, drink the rest of the bottle of wine and prepare the rice pilaf (I made mine with chicken stock, finely chopped shallots and peas – the peas give a good contrast to the poulet). Warm the oven to 75 Celsius.
  10. Remove the chicken from the pan and keep warm in the oven. (You might want to warm some plates too – I always forget that).
  11. Add salt and pepper to the sauce, as well as the chopped parsley. Crank up the heat to the max, remove the lid and reduce the sauce by half – this takes around ten minutes.
  12. Serve the chicken on a bed of rice pilaf, pouring over a generous amount of the pepper and onion sauce. Sit back, take the credit. Open another bottle of wine.

I would have taken photos, but we were too concerned with eating it! If you want photos of food, check out Fraser’s site.

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Just not cricket

Last night, we took Tom to his first ever cricket match, the Twenty20 fixture between Sussex and Hampshire at the gorgeously beautiful ground at Arundel. It looked like we (Sussex) were going to lose for most of our innings, but a late flurry of boundaries soon put paid to the opposition. Tom clearly is a lucky person to take along – maybe I should take him to a few Seagulls fixtures next season. He took the whole thing in his stride, as he tends to do, although he was a little alarmed by the shouts from the crowd and the loud music as Luke Wright and Yasir Arafat (insert joke about dishdash here) swiped umpteen boundaries in the last three overs to wrap it up.

One thing the BBC report doesn’t mention is the way in which Matt Prior was dismissed. Chris Adams was batting at the other end and was caught from a no-ball. He started to walk but then people in the crowd shouted that it was a no-ball. By this point, the Hampshire players were together celebrating and Matt Prior was still half way down the strip. Everyone looked to the umpire, who confirmed that the batsman was not out, at which point the Hampshire fielders realised that Prior was out of his crease and threw down the stumps. Prior briefly protested to the umpire (he clearly hadn’t realised that it was a no-ball) before walking. Is there a Law on how a no-ball should be called by the umpire? In any case, it was certainly pretty unsporting on the part of the Hampshire players.

We topped the night out with a cup of tea with the bikers at the Hikers café at Whiteways on the way home. Frankly, if ever you think that a bunch of bikers makes you feel threatened, you should go and see the bikers there – mostly middle-aged men (some women too), standing around drinking tea and discussing health issues and the correct daily fluid intake (presumably in the form of tea), as far as I could make out.

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Weekend

Quick post:

  • thanks to Charlie and The Peet for my excellent Neotropic CD.
  • thanks also to the Uborka Two for Winter Chill 2.
  • thanks to family for gifts of cash, clothing and olive oil – all appreciated.
  • thanks to Hels for Gnarls Barkley, clothing and cake.
  • spent Friday at Wakehurst Place – thoroughly enjoyable another opportunity to put the buggy through its paces (it passed with flying colours).
  • Friday evening involved a fantastic meal out – if anyone needs a recommendation for a fabulous meal in East Sussex, drop me a line.
  • Saturday was spent gardening, painting and erecting trellis for the most part.
  • Sunday was spent at Pashley Manor Gardens for the Plant Fair – not one of the best that I’ve had there, but I think some lessons were learned that will lead to changes before August.
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Ways to spend Good Friday (number 35 in a series)

  • get up early
  • study BBC online weather forecast – observe white fluffy cloud symbol and yellow sun symbol and assume the day is set fair
  • saw logs so as to make them more woodpile-friendly
  • create new border in the garden
  • go to nearby farm to purchase a sack of well rotted cow poo for said border for one of your fine English pounds
  • apply poo to new border
  • get changed from poo-ey clothes
  • welcome brother-in-law to house
  • drive to extremely nice nearby public house
  • park car
  • strap small child to chest in slightly bizarre harness device
  • walk in opposite direction to public house wiuth a view to making a large circuit, returning to said public house with hearty appetite for fine ales
  • observe rapidly deteriorating weather conditions
  • wade through mud, fight brambles, attempt to pacify child – all in steady rain and a cool breeze – whilst cheerfully reassuring one another that the weather "will blow over in a minute and surely improve"
  • reach a farm with a large barn
  • take shelter in said barn
  • change child’s nappy and then eat sandwiches whilst heavy rain continues, whilst regretting not bringing any sort of waterproof clothing for anyone other than small child – the same small child who, whilst being only 12 weeks old, has already developed the ability to laugh and point at his soaking wet father from within the warmth and dryness of his red waterproof
  • decide that the rain is not going to stop
  • run back through the mud and rain to the car, leaving brother-in-law, wife and child in barn
  • drive back to collect rest of party and then home, to glorious sunshine
  • head to the pub next door for a pint or two
  • return home, eat pie
  • search for hotel for stay in Budapest – realise that no hotel there has been renovated since 1967. Decide to seek advice from the only person I know with much experience of the Hungarian capital.
  • read the best post in ages on Parallax View – end the day contented
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Food news

Two items of food-related news (I don’t post anything like enough food news items here):

  • world’s most expensive sandwich goes on sale. I like the sound of this. Of course, it’s a splendid publicity stunt and well done to Selfridges for coming up with it, but I would like one. Or two.
  • we’ve just booked to go to Preuvenemint, (one of?) the largest food fairs in the Netherlands. This strikes me as an excellent plan – food and Maastricht in one go – hurrah! Sadly, we can’t find a decent hotel in the city – it seems that they are either all booked up or have trebled their prices in anticipation of the crowds (or both) – so we’re staying at a lovely auberge across the border in Belgium.
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Stuff in the news

Well, EURid has put the .eu domain registration process into the LandRush phase. I made my application some weeks ago (on Valentine’s Day, in fact) for a domain for my company under the Sunrise procedures (having a prior right as being a registered limited company under UK law), but have had no acknowledgement and no news. Should I be panicking? I tried to look it up on the EU WHOIS site (which is where the EURid site suggests I should go in order to track my application), but the server that runs that is clearly melting in some office somewhere in Europe. (In this case, it’s Diegem in Belgium – did you know that there is great competition to host EU offices? The French will battle with the Germans and the Spanish and all the other nations to host EU offices – which is why I spend a lot of time in communication with an EU department that resides in a rather grand converted hotel in the French city of Angers. But do you ever hear of British towns and cities battling for these honours? No, because the British tend to be happier sniping at the EU from the sidelines rather than actively getting involved, thereby missing a great opportunity for prestige and employment. Ooops. Ranting. Sorry.)

Meanwhile, north of the border, the avian flu strain H5N1 has been found in a dead swan. The police are reminding citizens to report any dead swan, goose or duck, or any three dead birds in the same place, to DEFRA. What they forget to say is that DEFRA is woefully under-resourced (it’s not health or education, so HMG doesn’t throw money at it), so I forsee a situation very soon wherein the inspection services will be under immense strain (they are already) and will draft in support from every other department within DEFRA. So my local PHSI (Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate) guys will be sent off to some dingy hotel somewhere, given a crash course in avian flu diagnosis, and sent out to farms. Of course, as plant health guys, they have no jurisdiction and no powers and can’t actually do an awful lot – they won’t even be able to impound birds. Sound implausible to you? Well, it is exactly what happened during foot and mouth a few years ago – PHSI was denuded of staff (they already are terribly under-staffed as it is) who will have to work very long hours achieving not an awful lot.

Whilst all this is going on, Mrs Housewife will stop buying chicken and eggs, spurred by horror stories in the Daily Mail, and agriculture (which is already struggling terribly – oh, sorry, that’s not newsworthy at the moment, is it? – you know, the fact that HMG has promised to pay grants to farmers who have made their business plans on that basis, but have yet to actually deliver money that was due months ago, leaving farmers with huge debts to the banks and no income) will become even more depressed. Gah.

So, this weekend – get a British chicken, have a roast with some British veg. You’ll enjoy it and you’ll help a farmer somewhere (particularly if you go to your local farmers’ market and buy direct).

UPDATE: I managed to get on to the .eu WHOIS, although it is mind-numbingly slow, and it shows my domain name as "application pending". The application and documents have been received, although they are yet to get beyond the "Initial" stage (i.e., the documents are in a filing cabinet and nobody has looked at them). The good news is that I am the only applicant for my requested name. Yay!