Author Archives: Anna Pannacotta

Guinea Fowl – the new Christmas Chicken

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guinea-fowlWe’re celebrating a mid winter wedding at the chateau this afternoon. Chef is starting with a roast garlic and herb consommé and continues with beautifully puffed up and light goat cheese soufflés. Then there’s a little ginger sorbet before the guinea fowl arrives. Chef has deliberately ordered small birds and will serve each guest a confit leg and a pan fried breast, with a Banyols Jus.

Chef did a dry run last week which was tortuous. It was just 11 in the morning when he brought out each course for a tasting and I was expected to take just one spoon or forkful of each, comment and leave the rest. How unfair. It was all utterly divine particularly the guinea fowl which I describe as a super tasty chicken. The difference is subtle but definitely worth the extra effort. It’s served with a carrot and swede puree infused with onion and cloves - the seasonal twist since this gives essence of bread sauce.  I could happily have devoured the lot, even at 11am. It’s tough, this chateau life.

Guinea Fowl is definitely the new chicken. Just as the Bauduc Semillion is my new Chardonnay. So that’s our Christmas lunch sorted out then.

The Bordeaux Camper Van

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I’m forever bemoaning the partisan nature of the French psyche, particularly when it comes to regional cuisine. You’ll struggle to locate a raclette outside of the Haute Savoie, cassoulet rarely features on a menu far from the Gers and the delicious Confit de Canard that we take for granted here is absent from the menus of Brittany. It’s fine for the tourists who immerse themselves in duck fat for a week then move on but it’s shame that the best of all regional cuisine doesn’t travel just a little further.  The same problem extends to the wine shelves in the local supermarkets and wine merchants. We have aisle upon aisle of Bordeaux blends but try to find a decent selection of white Burgundy and you’re limited to a mighty fine Montrachet at sixty Euros and perhaps an entry level Chablis but that’s your lot. There’s literally just ONE label from New Zealand, Chili and California respectively.

We found the funniest example of how far this regional view extends in the cupboard of our camper van. We bought the camper locally of course. The previous owners had cut some handy holes in the work top to accommodate a few wine bottles without them falling in transit. The system works very well just as long as you stick to the long narrow Bordeaux bottles. Try and take a wide bodied bottle from Cotes du Rhone on holiday and it won’t fit the hole. Pah! Gallic shrug, “But why would you?”

Conversion of a self confessed Chardonnay Drinker

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bauduc-image1I can hardly claim Chateau Bauduc as a personal discovery since Gordon Ramsay, Rick Stein and an oak barrel full of wine writers have recommended this English owned Bordeaux estate before me. But they all seem to focus on the Sauvigon Blanc which has made the house white in the Ramsay restaurants for the past five years (and is also the house white at Chateau Rigaud as it happens!). What they don’t seem to mention is the utterly delicious, nutty, rounded, Trois Hectares Semillion.

I’m deeply unfashionable I know but I just don’t like all that grassy, gooseberries, cats pee stuff and I never have. Fabian and Alex, our wine tour tutors would both explain it all in better terms but I find it spikey whereas a good chardonnay is soft and round and doesn’t give me “Squinty Eye”.

So the Trois Hectares is a good bit more expensive than the Bauduc Sauvignon Blanc but worth the extra money. I think it drinks like a wine which has cost twice as much. Semillion is definitely the “new” Chardonnay for me and it features in my Christmas stocking this year.

Bordeaux business opportunity

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mistletoeDriving around the Bordeaux vines at this time of year always brings flashing pound signs before my eyes. The trees are filled with gold, or might as well be, in the shape of the mistletoe. The trees are brimming with the white berries, which are just begging to be taken down and whisked off a smart UK farmers market. At £10 for a healthy bunch there’s probably enough profit in it to justify driving a van to the UK and the van could come back laden with mince pies and Christmas puddings for selling to the Bordeaux ex pat community. Of course the Mistletoe seems to favour only the really high and difficult to access branches. It’s not that the lower down stuff is already taken since the French are just not bothered about it. It’s just that it likes to grow up high where the wind has planted the seed. So short of investing in a cherry picker it’s going to have to sit there and I will continue to drive around the vines looking at dollars in the trees!

Lunch before the airport?

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saintjames-bouliac-larotisseriecafedelesperance-cotedecoetambiance-photo03-fr21Just a twenty minutes easy drive from Merignac Airport is the Cafe de L’Esperance in the village of Bouliac. We like to send our house party guests here for lunch if they’re flying from Merignac in the afternoon. If you set out to create a cafe to match the bar in Allo Allo then you’d do well to start here. Expect Rene to walk through the door at any moment, hotly followed by a string of stocking clad well rouged waitresses . If you’re going to be disappointed not to catch a glimpse of thigh then take consolation in the fabulous horsd’ouvre table. Why don’t more places embrace the horsd’ouvre concept? I think we should start one at the chateau. This week they had the most delicious Coronation Chicken, (yes, here in France!), plus some very mustardy remoulade, lentils, cucumber in creme fraiche, marinated feta, oh the list goes on and on, leaving very little room for their main act here which is the steak. Take it easy on the steak front though because for dessert they revert to something like the horsd’ouvre approach and you choose as many of the minature portions of tart and mousse as you like. It’s dangerous stuff. If you’re in the area for a wine tour then you’ll be pleased to hear that they offer an impressive wine list with an excellant range of wines by the glass. http://www.saintjames-bouliac.com/fr/index.php

Turning clutter into cash – the Rauzan Brocante

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The autumn brocante takes place in Rauzan next weekend (10th – 13th October) which makes me feel worse than ever about the mountains of spare furniture in our barns. I really should be turning all this “stuff” into hard currency and the brocante is the perfect opportunity.

Brocante is a strange concept somewhere between a jumble sale and antiques market. Until recently I’ve always laughed at just how much the French will charge for what can appear to you or me as total rubbish – rusty clothes stands, incomplete chess sets, on one occasion the Badger found an Amstrad word processor, not even a PC, which was marked up at 60 euros. Maybe it has antique value now? And these gems sit alongside 17th Century mirrors at 3000 euros a go.

There are no particular categories and the exhibitors seem more interested in setting out and eating an extravagant picnic lunch which stretches from the “apero” at about 11.30 right through the day until about 4pm. It makes you feel exceedingly awkward about interrupting their meal to ask after the price of anything. I have a feeling that anyone who tried active sales techniques could clean up.

I’m thinking that we should have a rummage through Badger’s barn and see what we find in there that we could sell. I wonder what the local community would pay for a four poster bed from Lombok. And how scratchy the Badger will be if after setting it up at the Brocante it doesn’t then sell? Unless I make him a decent picnic and let him lie on the bed and model it all day?

This needs some thinking out!