Chez Poirier - be very hungry

Chez Poirier - ah, an experience. My friend Kathy M. is here from Tucson. Kathy is curious, energetic, incredibly good-hearted, she is bold and she loves food. She once made us a meal entirely based on Tequila - it was so good - we still think about her Tequila enchiladas and the Tequila bread pudding - yum! So, this to say that she is a great person to take to a restaurant where you need an appetite and where embracing new experience is an asset.

Monday morning: Chalais market. Chalais (www.chalais.net) is in the Charente (the next door département)  and has a population of less than 2,000, four butchers, a lingerie shop, two grocers, several bar/restaurants, a bookshop/newsstand, five bakers, a large supermarket, DIY store, printer, antiques etc.etc. Market day is Monday, when half the town is closed to traffic, just so that you can buy anything from corsets (not the sexy kind) to foie gras (then you need the corset). We arrived late because we were planning to have lunch out. Chalais is famous for its veal raised outdoors, with the mother cow. Veal here is dark pink and tasty. Calves are never kept in crates. In our village, the small farmers earn their living by raising calves. Chalais also has a huge and rather ugly castle which was bequeathed to the town (a poisoned chalice), a lovely Romanesque church with cloisters and, like many small towns around here, a retirement home with a tremendous view.

The market is very different from that in Ribérac, partly because it takes place in the streets rather than in open spaces. Also it is a much more countrified affair - lots of elderly men wearing tweed caps and speaking patois. And it's in the Charente which is a foreign country. There were snails because the Charente is famous for its snails - I don't eat them myself but they sit stylishly in net bags gleaming in the sun! I met several friends and acquaintances, smelt the rotisserie chicken and we bought greengages for Kathy - the vendor kindly picked out a handful of ripe ones. Kathy has been racking up first tastes: fresh fig, many different phases of duck product, greengage, Roquefort, Pineau, Armagnac, Kir, orange tomatoes warm from the plant, ripe pears off the tree ...

Chez Poirier in Bardenac (population 232) is a traditional restaurant (which means lots of food) and unlike many restaurants around, it is open on Mondays - because of the market. It is often full to bursting, so we got there early. In rural France, working people eat promptly at 12 noon. You sit down and don't ask what's for lunch because you're going to get what's for lunch. And if you're lucky the waitress will tease you - I am very, very lucky. We sat in the warm on the terrace so that we could watch dogs sniffing one another and see who came in and out. Kathy M. took the photos because I still don't have a discreet camera with which to take photos of food and I am a bit reluctant to do it, so I forget. Rules for eating  at Chez Poirier - taste everything and pace yourself.


First Course: soup - carrot & potato with vermicelli and maybe some tomato. Kathy was so excited she forgot to take a picture


Second Course: roasted beetroot salad with couscous salad - looked gorgeous and tasted amazingly good. The beetroot had some raw onion in it and the couscous a light cider vinegar based dressing - so simple, so very moreish. We had to beg the nice lady to come and take it away.
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 Third Course:  charcuterie. Andouille (intestines & tripe made into sausage) - I didn't even bother with this because I know I don't like it but KM ate it like a good sport, also the mortadella-like salami with olives - pallid and revolting and in any case I knew that the star of the show was the terrine. A home made pork terrine - so delicious it was difficult to stop eating it. Topped with ham and lovely yellow fat. The small pats of butter are there to eat with the nasty pale stuff, because one is allowed to have butter with certain kinds of charcuterie. The rules are abstruse.      

Fourth course: the nice lady came up and asked in a  whisper if we liked roast lamb. With lots of garlic. Oh yes. Perfectly cooked - and so much of it. We did not eat it all but we tried. With the lamb came beans. Fresh white beans - it's the season. Maman and the Blacksmith bought 20 kgs of beans in two large sacks - I had to load them into the car. These beans were cooked with savory, we think, and a little tomato and some carrot, possibly a little ham - so tasty and we ate relatively so few of them. But we wanted more, however...

Fifth course: green salad. In the Charente, salad is typically served wilted, i.e. dressed well ahead of serving, with a neutral oil such as sunflower and a white wine vinegar, so that it cooks slightly in the dressing. Then when it comes to table the cook slices a shallot into the salad bowl and mixes that in too.The result is fresh and delightful and you don't taste raw shallot all afternoon, which is surprising. We thought there was way too much salad in the bowl and we were wrong because the tradition in the Charente is to eat your salad with the...

Sixth course: cheese. In the Charente they care about cheese, unlike in the Dordogne. Milk production was something they came to after the dreaded Phylloxera decimated the vines of the Cognac region. The butter from the Charente is a protected trademark and it is very good. So there were many cheeses on offer - some industrial and some local. Amongst the good ones: a good Roquefort (all Roqueforts are not equal), a hard goat's cheese, a soft-rind goat's cheese, brie, local soft goat and a divine Brillat Savarin, so creamy and perfect with the salad that I had thirds and I was not alone, which is why there was almost not enough salad.

At this point there were still a couple of slices of bread left but we petitioned for the cheese to be removed forthwith and Kathy said it was probably the best restaurant meal she had ever had at that point. The lady said as there wasn't far to go now, there was a good chance it would turn out alright. I was frankly pessimistic that the dessert would live up to the rest but...

Seventh course: I was wrong!! I am not a huge fan of desserts but this Tiramisu was exceptional. A chocolate génoise (that's posh for sponge cake), a coffee cream that oozed caffeine and a top layer of cream beaten with egg whites, light and airy and hardly sweet at all. Kathy had to sit on her hands to stop herself snagging further portions as they wafted by the table. I left her some of my cream though. Then I had a coffee which is often disappointing and it was, except that it got Kathy excited again because it is served thus:

All this, my friends, and a bottle of wine, for 12.50 Euros on an ordinary sunny Monday lunchtime in rural France. We were full and we had left food on our plates. It is even better on Sunday lunchtime...

Culinary London – travel the world in 4 days

January 2010

Culinary London – for those that say there is no good food in England. 

In January, I spent 4 days in UK visiting a friend and seeing the daughter. Incidentally also seeing Matthew Bourne’s  Swan Lake at Sadler’s Wells, about which I am  still speechless. I know!... (Lovely Sadler’s Wells – home of some fantastic dance performances, and where my family used to go every year to see Gilbert & Sullivan operetta – often rushing up the stairs at the very last minute. The décor and comfort have changed and we have seen some fantastic dance performances of many varieties here  - www.sadlerswells.com).

We ate:

1. England: pub food – a so-so lamb shank with rather damp roasted veg – but hugely copious and I was only there for the beer anyway. My favourite London beer is London Pride from Fuller’s (www.fullers.co.uk) – an eminently quaffable English bitter. The first half pint goes down before you even notice.

2. Italy: coffee and pastries – a hazelnut croissant – utterly delicious, the perfect croissant and the filling was more of a light spread – just hazelnuts. The “coffee” made with espresso, chocolate and whipped cream – to die for. The daughter ate a hazelnut tart which had no observable pastry but was delicious and drank a Monte Bianco coffee – espresso with crème de marrons and candied chestnuts – oh boy! Oh and whipped cream of course. This at Ca’puccino (have to forgive the naff name because of the excellent quality).

3. India: What my hostess refers to as Indian chuckaway – too good to be true – really excellent lamb something or other, chicken with almonds – all fragrant and tender, sag aloo with what looked and tasted like real spinach, the indispensible but usually disappointing popadum (the anticipation is always better…) and a lentil thingy which was also truly excellent. What a great luxury to have such wonderful takeaway food just around the corner. I know that my region of France has the best food but we are light on takeaways of any kind – 40 minutes round trip to get a pizza, Lebanese food or a Thai takeaway plus waiting time. Why would you bother when duck confit is so easy and relatively cheap. So I enjoy the Indian takeaway with movie scenario, enormously. Can’t remember the movie of course, but the food was great.

4. Morocco: On Sunday morning, somewhere near the Portobello Road, feeling tired and in need of sustenance, we went into a Moroccan restaurant to have a coffee and ended up drinking mint tea and eating lovely Moroccan pastries – all on the theme of almonds.  We were then seduced by the aroma of grilled lamb from the next table – there has been a lamb theme, I feel. Lamb kebab with a serviceable salad and chips of course – the lamb, succulent, rosy and perfectly cooked – large pieces of tender, spicy meat with a home-made harissa. Delight! And lovely people – also a very clean loo – not to be despised.

5. Thailand: Before the ballet: surprisingly aromatic Thai soups in a tiny restaurant near Sadler’s Wells after our timing got out of hand and we had to eat NOW! The fried food was not as good but the Tom Ka Ghai and Pad Thai bordered on excellent. The soup, delicately fragrant with the right balance of coconut milk and spices – plenty of kaffir lime. Later, in the interval (having cunningly ordered ahead), the daughter and I drank  champagne which was then an essential medicament because we were so shocked and delighted by the ballet. And afterwards being still shocked and almost speechless, we had to go trot round the corner and have a beer – Timothy Taylor’s Landlord (www.timothytaylor.co.uk). The daughter’s favourite. We eventually recovered the power of speech and critical thought, though not much criticism was going on – but it took a while.

6. Malaya: Monday – Malaysian food in a local mall – I say a mall but this is West London’s mega mall opened just in time for the financial crisis and doing very well apparently. In order to get to the supermarket, you have to walk through the entire mall, unless you come by car – very good planning but exhausting – all those lights and sounds and smells. I became quickly allergic to listening to music someone else had chosen. It’s not like that in Petit Bersac! We were astounded to hear teenage screaming – apparently some 15 year-old teen idol that nobody else had ever heard of was appearing at HMV records – very odd. That painful, hysterical, super-soprano sound like parachute silk tearing. Anyway, we had spotted this restaurant during the Italian coffee and cake episode and since both of us used to live in Indonesia and she had just returned from Singapore we decided to investigate. It was excellent – we had fried chicken pieces and potato cakes – unexceptional with a sambal that resembled the real thing, very good pepper-coated fried squid, rendang – oooh yummy, the beef tender and not quite dry but spicy and delicious, and prawns in coconut of a deliciousness and complexity that made me want more with nasi lemak (rice cooked with coconut milk and kaffir lime leaves), gado gado – a lightly steamed vegetable salad perfectly spiced with a peanut sauce. We scorned the Hungarian waitress’ offer of sate – we know about sate thank you and if it isn’t being made on a tiny charcoal brazier fanned by a small man squatting in the road and wielding a pandan, fan we food snobs aren’t interested. But we would go back to Jom Makan (www.jommakan.co.uk) one of two restaurants in London started two years ago. The produce used was of very good quality.

7. Italy again: Tuesday – we finally made it to my favourite Italian restaurant in London – the Spaghetti House in Goodge Street – the original Spaghetti House which smells of Italian cooking and where the waiters are Italian and sometimes sexy. Where we had our 18 birthday meals before or after going to the theatre and where KK had to cut me out of my Sarsparillas with an enormous chef’s knife to the enormous appreciation and amusement of the kitchen staff. Apparently they had no scissors… My hostess had never been there. We drank Prosecco, and I tried the chick peas and spicy sausage – not bad and the cannelloni were delicious, except that I prefer the meaty version they used to serve and which lives in my memory as a rival to the perfect cannelloni once eaten in San Francisco with the daughter and KK’s parents. Ah well – such is life! My hostess had a grilled vegetable starter and an innovative roasted squash, grilled chicken and melted goats’ cheese assemblage that was really good. The food at the Spaghetti House makes the daughter cry – I think it’s the roundness of the flavours and the appropriateness of the textures. It was a veal dish that did for her the first time. A word of warning – this was the first Spaghetti House – the others are faint simulacra  (only my opinion). The other authentic one was the one of the infamous Spaghetti House siege in Knightsbridge in 1975. Earlier in the day, we had a mid-shopping restorative beer and plate of chips in a lovely pub just off Oxford Street – all Victorian mahogany, dark red, embossed ceilings and etched glass snuggeries. Pint of London Pride, please. Cath thinks she should learn to like beer but she didn’t like that.

8. Somewhere in Asia: On Wednesday, just before I left on the Eurostar (what a civilised way to travel), we ate a cheap lunch at St Pancras (or Pancreas as I like to call it – it’ll be interesting to see what they’ve done to the hotel when it’s finally done) – large pot of coconut and salmon soup (actually enormous) in which there were glass noodles and freshly, thin sliced raw savoy cabbage and carrots, a slice of artisan bread (walnut with oat and rye with walnut) and a fruit for under £5.00. I forgot to get myself a sandwich at Pâtisserie Paul just outside the Eurostar terminal, so on arrival at Lille had to go to the Irish pub in the station and eat rare steak and chips (I think the chips are a theme too!) with salad and a Grimbergen beer – bit heavy and sweet for my taste. The food was fine but I object to then having to pay to go the loo. Lille station is an architectural aberration – ugly, uncomfortable and cold. Even the Irish pub (Irish pub in France???!!) is badly designed.

Home and nothing in the fridge.


So  much excellent food at reasonable prices!