fruit – Page 7 – Myfrenchkitchen

Autumn is the time of year we eat rustic food. Finish are the dainty salads and light desserts..we now go for rustic, unadorned meals. Apples are in abundance and it will be a shame to allow the time to pass and not use them to their full. I saw these apples in pastry somewhere in a magazine and I only remember they were called by the melodious name of Bourdelots and it looked much prettier than mine. I made them just on feeling, and I can’t imagine the magazine version being tastier, because they are so delicious with the puff pastry and brown sugar and apricot jam…and don’t they look pretty rustic too..(good excuse, n’est pas)?

..Rustic apples in puff pastry..

La Recette:

Clean and peel 4 apples, remove the inner core and drizzle with lemon juice.
Unroll a sheet of puff pastry, cut into quarters. Place 4 quarters on a baking paper on a baking sheet.
Place an apple on each quarter. Fill the apples with a teaspoon of apricot jam, a knob of butter and sproinkle with brown sugar.
Wrap the pastry around the apples and brush with beaten egg.
If you have puff pastry left, cut strips and stick it around the apples from top to bottom.
Refrigerate for 2 hours.
Reheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
Remove the apples from the fridge, brush again with beaten egg. Sprinkle again with brown sugar.
Place on sprigs of rosemary and bake in the hot oven at 200°C for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 180°C and bake for another 25 minutes.
If the apples get too dark on top, cover with brown paper.
Serve warm, or at room temperature with a big dollop of whooped cream or a scoop of créme fraîche or vanilla ice cream.

Pincée de fleur de sel:

Bring the dough right up to the edge of the apples which will ensure that the apples are covered more fully with pastry.
In order for puff pastry to rise high and crispy, the dough must be cold and baked in a hot oven for the first 10- 15 minutes.
Serve the apples as a side dish with a meat roast, like pork or venison.
Fill the apples with spices of your choice or with dried fruit like raisins and nuts.

The mairie or hotel de ville is an important part of every city, town and village in France. It can be as tiny as a hamlet, but it will have a mairie and an eglise. The hotel de ville is usually bigger and houses the mairie and houses several administration departments. But they both hop-use the office of the mayor of a town and the administration offices as well as an école of the commune. So it is no strange sight to see kiddies run around at lunchtime in part of the grounds of the mairie.

The mairies of the campagne has nothing to do with the elaborate and grand hotels de ville of the cities, like Paris or Tours, Lyon. Some are so small, you even pass by it without knowing.

..the mairie in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne..

..with its administration offices around the corner..

..the little hotel de ville in Bétaille, just alongside he main road through the village..

..the very typical stone hotel de ville of Biars-sur-Cere, with its lovely surroundings,dressed each season in different vegetation..

..le mairie of Biars sur Cere.

..the mairie is still wearing its summer ballgown and pretty soon, with Toussaint at 1 November, it will change to Fall Chrysanthemes..

..In Bretenoux, the hotel de ville is obscured by lovely trees..

..and right opposite it, is the traditional memorial of the soldiers who fought in the war..

..the quaint, typically Corrézien mairie of Le Pescher where our eldest got married..

..and next to it, the mémorial of Le Pescher..

..the mairie of Marcillac la Croze is one of those you pass by without knowing..it sits up on a hill, all alone. The day I looked for this mairie I drove up to its pretty eglise, full of history and asked a gentleman who was raking the leaves, where I could find the mairie. We got caught up in a 30 minute conversation. I had to cut the motor of the car after a while, because he just couldn’t stop talking..

..Of course I can’t leave our own sweet village of Puy d’Arnac behind. Our mairie has recently had a makeover and is now a chic gathering point in the village where the mayor has her offices and I often have to drop in for keys for the garbage points or documents or this or that..

..and right next to the mairie, its école…

..in Vayrac, the hotel de ville is huge with a big spacious place in front of it..

..and to the side, village life continues..

..Altillac has a beautiful building and I pass it almost every day to buy baguette and cheese..The pride of India trees in front complement the building so beautiful in high summer…I always slow down and admire this mairie..

..the mairie of la Chapelle aux Saints, is really out in la campagne and stands all alone among green fields..

This is a prehistoric area, a very important sightseeing site in our area and the mairie forms part of the site..the ecole is at the back of the mairie..

There is still so much to show and so much to be said about the hotel de ville in France and every town’s mairie is special.. Once you have found a town’s hotel de ville, you have also found its centre ville. I will certainly explore and show more at a later stage. These ones are all in a radius of 20 minutes from home. And like the hotels de villes, there are also the fascinating eglises, which I’ll save for another time.

So, with the theme of hotel de ville and French admin , I want to share the Marseillaise, sung by my favorite artist…Edith of course! We celebrated her life in PAris, as she died 50 years ago this October. I just LOVE her..and the song – I sing along with her just as loud as she does! Enjoy!

..à la prochaine fois..

Ronelle

It is now time for quince, pears, apples..all the lovely fruits of autumn with their heady fragrances when baked or panfried or poached. With added spices or without, they are wonderful as desserts and even better as accompaniment to venison and the heavier winter red meats. Serving it with a duck breast is something I love to do: Sauté the quince in a pan with butter and sugar, remove, add the juices of the panfried duck and reduce with some red wine, serve with the cooked duck slices and the quince on the side and a pain de campagne to sweep up the juices on the plate.. eh oui, we do love that! Doesn’t it sound delicious?

La recette:

Wash 2 large quinces and cut in quarters. Peel(optional) and remove the seeds. Cut each quarter again in half.
In a large pan, melt a large knob of butter and about 3/4 cup sugar and some lemon juice to taste. Add the quince and pan fry for about 10 minutes or until the quinces are tender and caramelized. Remove the quinces from the pan heat before they fall apart and keep aside.
Add 1/4-1/2 cup of red wine to the caramelized quince juice and reduce for about 5-10 minutes. Add the quince slices back to the wine sauce and keep warm until needed.
Serve as accompaniment with venison or duck breast or pan fried foie gras.

Pincée de fleur de sel:

Use apples or pear instead of quince.
Add spices like star aniseed, or a cinnamon stick or juniper berries..
Use honey of your preference instead of sugar.
These quince can also be baked in the oven at 180 degrees C until the quince are tender.
Serve as a dessert with a dollop of thick cream or créme fraîche.
Use the pan fried quince for tarte tatin or use and make a topping for a crumble.

Well, back from Paris; t’was a quick there and back, but that is how I have to do Paris now with all the animals waiting back here at Coin Perdu. Not that I complain because that is exactly the way I like it. Paris is wonderful, but after a week my head hurts. All is well when you don’t have parcels and bags and cameras and bottles of water and it isn’t raining and you have enough money to be taxied around. But a week of city life is more than enough – enough shoving and pushing on buses and le métro, slipping on wet métro stairs, struggling through narrow métro gateways with parcels and umbrellas, enough garlic odours on the métro from the stranger breathing in your neck and spitting his chatting into his portable above your head.

BUT…thankfully Paris is also filled with stories and a rich history and incredible beauty and there is always a good seat and (albeit expensive) coffee at the next corner. Great lunch meals at bistros, which is cheaper and sometimes better than dinners. Great places(squares) where you can eat your sandwich jambon and read your book(given it doesn’t rain). And of course, there is always le jardin du Luxembourg.

..le jardin du Luxembourg with the Eiffel tower in the background..

..Monsieur is out with his little sailboat..

*Did you know…?

total surface of le jardin du Luxembourg: about 23 hectares

ornamental lakes: 2 800 m²
lawns: 5 400 m²
Shrub beds 17 700 m²
flower beds 6 000 m²
interior perimeter: 2km
Trees forming lanes: 2 200
trees forming shade: 740
shrubs: 35 000

(source: Sénat.fr)

..the garden is still dressed in summer attire with géraniums in the pots and will soon be replaced by the habitual chrysanthémes..

..le jardin colours later in autumn with the gay Chrysanthémes..(images from November 2009)

..Luxembourg pigeons basking in the November light..

..le palais in November with its security guard an elegant backdrop to they sunny yellow chrysanthémes..

..les chaises ..- I have always been fascinated by the chairs in le jardin and I am keeping my eyes wide open to find some for my own garden..love them, don’t you?

..sketchbook exchange: my theme for the sketchbook exchange in 2008 was the chairs of le jardin du Luxembourg..see more here of our exchange Flying pictures

..la buvette des Marinonnettes..

..le Pavillon de la Fontaine..

..Don’t forget to look upwards every now and then..

..and for thirst and directions, always some help..

..after a morning spent walking, reading, watching people, watching school kiddies run relay around the fountain, witnessing a great game of tennis, drinking coffee at le Pavillon de la fontaine, doing some tai chi with other Parisiens, I said goodbye to le jardin and left by the gate of Medici..