Despite a few days respite about a week ago, the temperatures have been falling steadily along with our stock of wood so when the alarm clock's hands turned to 8.00 this morning I knew it was going to be a face numbing cycle ride down to our local boulangerie.
The boulangerie Lakanal in Ribérac
The need to be getting out of bed at this time on Christmas morning was not driven by excited children or grandchildren running about the place creating gentle havoc but because we had b&b guests in attendance chez nous. We found ourselves filling a gap for a local family whose house was too small to accomodate all of the family this festive season, so in order to provide our promised 'fresh baguettes every morning' claim on our website it was time to mount the trusty steed and head off to the Boulangerie Lakarnal. As I sped through the Place Nationale I glanced up at the electronic sign which hangs outside the pharmacy. It read -8 degrees. I thought of the coffee percolating in the warmth of our kitchen behind me and pressed on.
After breakfast and the departure of our guests for the day Lesley and I set about organising and preparing our Christmas lunch. We had decided to follow a recipe found in 'The Cordon Bleu Cookery Book' by Rosemary Humes & Muriel Downes published in 1963.
On page 260 the ladies presented a recipe called Pheasant Périgord. We had decided upon cooking our pintade the pheasant way after we had read Elizabeth David's view on pintade. She describes guinea fowl thus "The flavour of guinea fowl is mid-way between that of the chicken and the pheasant. It can be an excellent bird when well cooked but tends to be rather dry. So it is best cooked according to pheasant rather than chicken recipes". As usual Lesley and I added our own ideas. The Cordon Bleu recipe suggests adding two glasses of sherry to the stock. We decided on a slight variation to this, adding the equivalent amount of Saussignac, a sweet white wine from a little known Bergerac apellation, but distinctly less sweet than its more well-known neighbour, Monbazillac, so in it went.
The mushroom and shallot based sauce being prepared, this is soaked in Saussignac before cooking in the oven
Next, after unwrapping our stuffing bought from our local boucherie de l'abattoir, we added some freshly cracked walnuts and a small piment d'antillaise to the mix just to spice things up, a case of The West Indies meets Ribérac. Finally at about 4.00 pm we were ready to eat. I had already uncorked and chambrefied a 2007 Margaux Château Notton sourced from our local Aldi for under a tenner and we found this to be the perfect accompianament to the pintade which is fairly gamey.
The cooked pintade with the usual and somewhat unusual trimmings
For dessert we tucked into a fruit rouges tarte bought that morning from Boulangerie Lakanal. To accompany this we drank a glass of Clairette de Die. For those that don't know, this sparkling wine made from Muscat blanc and Clairette grapes hails from the Rhône valley and was truly delightful as a dessert wine.
Tarte fruits rouges, sublime with Clairette de Die
The late afternoon turned to evening and after all the shutters had been firmly closed we settled down in front of the fire to watch a DVD entitled 'A Comedy of Power' starring Isabelle Huppert. A perfect end to a very relaxed and civilised day.
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