CRISE DE FOIE

The Empty Sea Front at Tharon Plage

Our French friend and neighbour again kindly invited us to her house at Tharon to share the New Year reveillon.  The marvellous feast began with ‘amuse bouche,’ continued with a high plate of oysters, followed by scallops, cheese, salad, and finished with a rum baba. Through it all we drank champagne.  Eating all this by candlelight took us pretty much to midnight when we put on the television and counted down the New Year.  Of course, satellite television being what it is we switched to the BBC an hour later and watched Big Ben tolling out the old year and then the lavish fireworks bringing in 2013.  Two bites of the new year cherry, as it were.  I suppose if you were really in the mood and had a big enough satellite dish you could toast the new year 24 times in a single day.  That is if there are 24 time zones, which perhaps there aren’t.  Just as well as you’d need a break every now and then, wouldn’t you,  to replenish the crackers?

In France the provenance of food receives serious attention.  On the fishmonger's stall in the market, all sorts of shrimps nestled among ferocious looking lobsters waving their minor appendages.  Some were labelled as from ‘the equator,’ others from Madagascar, both were relatively inexpensive. Others, looking much the same, were ‘local,’ but twice the price.  Nevertheless, these proved the most popular and so we bought some. Cooked with garlic and piment they were delicious. We also bought conger eel (also local!) on the grounds that I had never eaten it before; the fishmonger cut it into steaks (the original animal looked large enough to have fed the five thousand) and gave us copious culinary advice. In the end we dusted and pan fried it, and while the result was interesting I suspect the poor conger will struggle to make the grade as a gourmet fish.

In France far greater attention is given to food, buying it, preparing it, eating it than in the UK, or most other places come to that.  With the emphasis on local produce and quality, bread baked twice a day, twice weekly food markets, traceability and a strong food culture, the proportion of French GDP devoted to eating must be significant.  What effect, I wonder, does that have on the economy as a whole? Compared to other industrialised countries, does it detract from the efforts to achieve a strong economy, or strengthen them? And does it make people happier, other things being equal?

Still you can have too much of a good thing.  In the interests of internationalism we made some carbonara - an Italian dish of spaghetti in a cheese sauce with small pieces of bacon - delicious but rich.  Not wanting to waste it I heated up the leftovers, adding more cream, butter and parmesan ......but a few hours later I was in agony.  I felt I had been kicked in the stomach by a horse.  I was suffering, so my hostess said, ‘une crise de foie,’  (liver crisis) something very well known in France and caused by eating too much rich food.  I wasn’t so sure.  I thought about those lardons of bacon and wondered whether I had heated them through properly.  I had researched the symptoms of botulism poisoning for my novel ‘Boraya,’ and I wondered if this could be the initial stages of a creeping nervous paralysis that would eventually kill me. Would the hospital in Pornic have Botulinum antidote?  No, said my hostess, it was ‘crise de foie,’ and it would disappear by itself.  Which it did, of course.  I even managed a rich butter croissant for breakfast the next day.

The boulangerie is some three-quarters of a mile away, so someone has to walk or drive there to fetch the breakfast croissants. I prefer to walk for the route is along the promenade, most beautiful in the early morning when the sun is climbing over the grey winter sea.  Above you in the sky flocks of gulls ride the wind, all going in the same direction, as if they, too, are on some morning commute. Besides, the walk gives you an appetite, all that sea air and a chance to reflect.  In the middle of winter, Tharon is deserted, the houses shuttered until Easter.  Strangely this loneliness gives you a feeling of belonging, somehow, as if you and the solitary man on the beach with his metal detector were heirs to this holiday town.  I wondered whether he was also recovering from a ‘crise de foie.’

LA BONNE ANNEE

Annie and M, who were our kind hosts for New Year when we visited Tharon Plage, came over yesterday evening. For dinner, yes, but principally to watch the Claude Lelouch film La Bonne Année, which dates from 1973 and is one of my favourite films.  (Poor Lelouch, he always gets panned by the critics but I think his films are inventive, memorable and fun - sheer entertainment, which is what I go to the cinema for).  Anyway at Tharon - over New Year - (the title of the film - La Bonne Année means - literally - The Happy New Year) we sat down to watch the film but the DVD player expired after the first five minutes.  Hence, my offer to show the film on our DVD player at a suitable time when we got home again.   Which occasion was last night.

And very good it was to see the old film (which hasn't much dated) with its blend of comedy, romance and philosophy. Question: 'what is a woman?' she asks. 'A man that cries a little,' he replies.  Later she asks him what a man is and he replies that a man is someone who goes right to the end. Which may or may not advance the price of eggs but is interesting and makes you think.  The film is about a jewel robbery, incidentally, in the south of France and it stars Lino Ventura and Francoise Fabian. 

Having written last week about the chocolate mousse that Mireille Guiliano recommends I thought I would try making it.  And so I did. But something went wrong with my beating of the egg white, which refused to stiffen, I suspect because I got cream on the beaters so the mousse ended up rather solid but none the less very tasty and silky smooth and pretty enough in a little ramekin with a half strawberry on top. The recipe (or rather the ingredients) are on the blog below this and should anyone be interested I can also send you the 'method.'  

To start with I had made what has become my current signature dish 'Gambas a l'aillo' or prawns in garlic with spice. This is really very simple to make and most tasty.  You really need fresh prawns (shrimps are even better) though.  Frozen ones will do but frozen prawns always seem to contain loads of water and this rubbery (just right if you are Chinese says M) instead of being crisp and firm.

Just heat a pan of olive oil - enough to cover the shrimps - and add to it cayenne pepper or tabasco or finely chopped chilis, or a mixture.  You need quite a bit.  Don't worry, the dish won't end up tasting like a Vindaloo!  To the hot oil you add several large cloves of garlic finely chopped and let the garlic infuse into the hot oil until it starts to brown.  Now add the prawns (peeled if they are prawns - entire if they are shrimps).  Bring the oil back to its former temperature and then they are done.  Scoop out the prawns and serve on a warm plate.  Delicious.  Hot and spicy and garlicky but all rather a gentle and rounded flavour. 

So we made a good meal which was washed down with a 20 year old bottle of red Saumur from the cellar at Tharon.  Twenty years is really pushing it for a Saumur and the wine was suffering a bit but still drinkable and robust enough to take the flavour of the spicy prawns and some excellent mature Brie that we ate afterwards (before the chocolate mousse).  Not an enormous quantity of washing up either.