Alsatian Livin'

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and unfortunately it went by much too quickly as I didn't even have time to take as many pictures as I'd hoped! So, to tide you over until the next adventure, I've put together a 'potpourri' of recent happenings, including a VIDEO of some fine Alsatian movin' and groovin' (i.e. polka).


La Cuisine: The Kitchen. Look - there's O's laptop, which just so happens to be where I am sitting at this very moment. Cool. We eat most of our meals here, though when we have visitors (which actually happens about every other day), we move to the dining area...






As seen here! Complete with a piano that is, for the most part, in tune. I'm really honing my Chopsticks skills out here. To the left of the dining area is...






The living room! Not too much to see here - E sleeps on the futon in a sleeping bag. I'm not sure the television works for television purposes, but I do think movies have been watched here.

For now, that ends the tour of the house (that's really all there is on the first floor). I haven't taken a picture yet of our bedroom/office in the basement. But I've got to keep you coming back for more somehow, haven't I?






Here's a lovely dinner spread: foie gras mousse, munster, apple butter, bone marrow... yep, it's a tough life, but somebody's got to do it.

And now, a scarce scattering of Thanksgiving pictures!

Many thanks to Alison for sending me a LOVELY tarte tatin recipe with a creme fraiche crust. Above, I've spread out my peeled/cored/quartered apples in a cast iron-esque pan that had some butter and sugar bubbling away in it.



Then, I cooked down the apples until the sauce became a nice caramel color with a gooey texture. NOTE: This picture was the SECOND time I attempted to do this - the first time, I turned away from the apples for about 5 minutes and when I turned back, they had completely burned on the bottom. While the top was a tasty mushy appley mess (that went quite well with our home made yogurt for dessert), the bottom was black and sad. Needless to say - KEEP AN EYE ON THE APPLES! Depending on the pan/heat/weather/your astrological sign, they could take anywhere from 20-45 minutes to cook properly.



Ta-Da! After the apples finished, I topped with the home-made creme fraiche crust and put the whole kit and kaboodle in the oven. Of course, we eventually flipped it over and onto a plate and ate the living bejesus out of it! Thanks again, Alison, for the great recipe!

















Another baking masterpiece: Walnut Tart. We have at least two walnut trees across the street that give us loads of 'em. Crack 'em, de-nut 'em, chop 'em - add all the good things like butter and brown sugar, and bake! Easy peasy, and G commented that once we finish eating this tart, I am ordered to make another one.





Gobble, gobble - there she is! O did a phenomenal job cooking this bird - stuffed with rosemary garlic butter. Mmm, mmm, mmm. Not pictured but also devoured: my famous mashed potatoes (with caramelized onions), veg medley of green beans, carrots and leeks, leafy salad with mandarin oranges and toasted almonds, O's amazing stuffing - sourdough, walnuts, smoked sausage, onions and apples, and some home-made cranberry sauce. There were also two more desserts (not pictured, damn!) - an apple-walnut bread and an apple butter-pumpkin pie. Grand Slam!







"Les Jeunes Agriculteurs" 2nd Annual Dinner - held in a big convention hall-esque kind of place. Proceeds help out young farmers who are just getting started. Tasty local food, booze, and dancing = a hell of a night!








First course - pork/prune terrine, coleslaw type stuff, and some local cured ham. Oh, and a local Alsatian beer with Picon!






Then, obviously, you have to digest. The best way to work off a charcuterie-filled stomach? Dancing, of course!








Main course: "Spaetzle maison" (house spaetzle, mmmm) with "Emince de porc eleve en pleine air" (the pork had been raised outside). Carrots. Salad. While the meat was a little over-cooked - who cares? Just sop it up with some spaeztle and gravy and you're good to go. (not pictured - the bottomless glass of Alsatian pinot noir)





There they are! G & E ... E isn't a big fan of the pictures (obvi) but G was happy to ham it up for the camera!







Here's G with his pal, Nicole. I apologize for the blurriness - - did I mention the bottomless glass of pinot noir?








Here we are - O & I, right before I got up to cut a rug (did you know that "cutting a rug" is an actual dance? I did not)...







E & I digesting our food.

Best. Dancer. Ever.

If you look closely, you'll find E & G bustin' a move.

After which, G promptly grabbed ahold of me and started twirling me around the dance floor!
















It was exhausting.

Not Pictured - the huge hunk of local munster that occured somewhere in between Best. Dancer. Ever. and E & G's moment on the dance floor.
And finally, dessert - ice cream! The top was a velvety vanilla and the bottom a crisp berry (raspberry, perhaps?). Of course, also not pictured were the copious shots of schnapps we took, followed by a somewhat frightening off-roading experience in the 1980's death trap (Land Rover)... but perhaps those experiences are best remembered in our own heads rather than the brutally honest (and probably slightly embarrassing) story.

In conclusion - life is still grand out here in France. It's been almost a month and we can't believe how fast time has flown by! We are very much looking forward to the Christmas season - the towns and villages all around us are known for their markets and decorations, and we plan on taking more than just one or two day trips to see as much as we can!

Oh, and one final note: the other day, we realized that the name of our blog and the description is all cheese-oriented! We promise to get some pictures taken soon of the cheese process - it is very detailed and one must pay great attention to every step when doing it, so it hasn't been easy to remember to grab the camera during our lessons. I know, I know - no excuses! Just stay tuned, keep your pants on, hold the phone - it'll be well worth the wait. Until then - cyber high-fives all around - we miss you guys!

Thanks

O's helpin' G in the barn for the morning session, since we'll be busy in the kitchen during the evening session. E's in the cheese room, gonna join her soon - she's going to have her hands full on Saturday so she'll need some extra help then from me. Two out of the four desserts were completed last night, two more to go. Turkey's in the brine. Cutting it close on how much butter we've got (believe it or not), but we think we'll make it work.

Thanksgiving!

Thankful for (so far) having a wonderful WWOOF-ing experience. Not having loonies as our host family. A heated room with a real mattress and hot water for showers. 3 meals a day, including unlimited coffee and cheese. Happy animals and plenty of supplies to care for them.

Thankful for our families across the States. Sending us love and support all the way across the Atlantic (and sometimes even further). Sea salt caramels that have been snuck into a package of forgotten items left behind. Apricot chewies. Places to crash when we get home. Smokey treats on the back porch. Witty remarks via facebook.

Thankful for our friends, near and far. Dance parties and double whiskey smashes and football pools and drive-ins and mystery books in the mail and last call at Wally's. For missing us and thinking about us and always having the ability to make us smile.

...And that's not even covering everything!

Thanks, everyone. We'll be sure to share some Turkey Day pictures later on in the week. We miss and love you!

An Apple (or twelve) A Day...

Pommes, Pommes, everywhere! O & I spent about 3 days total picking (or rather, gathering) apples from various apple trees in our 'hood. I couldn't come close to telling you how many apples that amounted to, but let's just say A LOT!

After picking/gathering/hoisting all the apples back to the farm (in either the scary '80s Land Rover deathtrap or the equally tricky wheelbarrow), we sorted them. Really gross ones for the pigs, decent ones for the grind, and lovely ones for our direct eating pleasure.
What's 'the grind,' you ask? Well, let's start off by pointing out a couple of things in the picture above. First and foremost: me. Man, I am stunning in that dirty-overalls/manure-covered-wellies/bandana-to-hide-my-greasy-hair kind of way, aren't I? Alright, enough kidding around: the apples. In the basket are the ones we sorted out for us to use (keep your pants on, more on that later). And I just so happen to be sitting on a huge barrel of crushed apples - to produce SCHNAPPS (booze, baby). One of those huge barrels will ferment down to about 2.5litres of liquor. Behind me (the green triangle-esque thing) is the very high-tech machine we used to grind the apples.




Step One: Prop very awkward, very heavy Big Thing on two high barrels so that a lower barrel (i.e. the red one) can slide under the Big Thing and catch the apples. Also, another very technical aspect of the Big Thing: using an old brown paper bag to cover any holes, so as to prevent apple chunks from flying out the sides (and possibly at the face of any innocent bystander).









Step Two: Put Apples In Big Thing











Steph Three: Grind the Apples! Important SideNote: We found it best to work in reps of 50 per arm. Gotta make sure the guns (i.e. arm muscles) are being worked out evenly, after all. Disregard O using two hands in the picture: we admit that this is a fake action shot taken after we already ground all the apples.










Step Five: Make sure all apples are through the Big Thing and there aren't an extraneous sticks or body parts left behind. Then seal up the apples and wait about a month and a half. Not sure exactly how the distilling works, but we have learned that we need to go to Town Hall to 'check out' something that we're allowed to take for only a few hours and must then return it to Town Hall. Give us another month and we'll be able to describe it a little better... still a bit of a communication barrier and all that.

Voila! Look at all those apples! This basket represents about half of the "tasty" ones we collect - the other half lives in the 'Apple Cave' staying cool, dark, and dry. This basket also represents probably about 1/10 of the apples put through the Big Thing. There were a lot of apples, folks.

So... what to do with all these apples? We've already got about 10 jars of applesauce in the fridge. Hmm, what's for lunch? Boudin Noir? Perfect!

Peel, core, and quarter about 20 apples and place along the edges of any kind of dish you can find. Put the Boudin Noir in the middle, put some pats of butter along the apple pieces, heat until warmed through, and...










Bon Appetit!







Ok, so now we only have about 200 apples left... Apple Butter, anyone? We scoured the internet for some recipes - most of which used some sort of crock pot, which we don't have. Finally found an 'old-fashioned' recipe, luckily with lots of comments from people who had tried the recipe, so we were able to tweak it accordingly to what we had readily available to us in the house.




Obviously, the first step is to peel them. Our apples were mostly a little smaller than the average American Granny Smiths, so while the recipe called for 60, we grabbed 65 just to be safe.
We put all peels and cores in a bucket of cold water (to rinse off the dirt) and all the apple chunks into large pots.





Next, we put all the peels and cores (drained) into a cheese cloth and tied it up. We put this into the pot of apple chunks, along with a cup of water and half a cup of apple cider vinegar (per pot - we had about three). The contents of the bag contain pectin, which is responsible for getting the apple butter to be more of a spread-like substance (rather than just a creamy applesauce).






After the apples reduced down to apple sauce, we removed the cheesecloth bag and used a hand blender to de-chunkify the sauce. We also used it to mix in the sugar (1 part sugar for every 2 parts apple puree), and spices (we had cinnamon and cloves on hand, season to taste/color).

Here's the part that requires the most time and energy: simmering it down to the buttery good stuff. Luckily, O & I had no projects that afternoon, so we watched a couple of movies and took turns (every 5 minutes or so) getting up to stir the pots and scrape the bottom (to prevent burning). We were also sure not to cover the pots completely - you obviously need air to reduce/evaporate: the pot on the left is only partially covered, and the pot on the right had a mesh top to go over it. You will need to cover some of the pot, however, unless you want apple goop bubbling all over your kitchen.

After about 2.5 hours, the left pot was done (it contained a little less than the right, and was also a thinner pot), so we added it to the right pot since both mixtures had reduced significantly. Cooked about 30 minutes more, let cool about 30 minutes, and..
(insert trumpet fanfare here) Ta-Da! Now, we opted not to go for the intense canning procedure involving boiling the jars and sanitizing and sealing and all that jazz - we are a family of 5 (with visiting friends for meals every day), and have read that they should keep in the fridge for quite a few months. We've already gone through the tiny white-lidded jar and are halfway through regular-sized white-lidded jar, and it's been less than 24 hours! Our current suggestions include spreading on bread with some foie gras mousse or munster. Or mixing in with home-made yogurt and a little demerara (tasty tasty raw cane sugar).

And to end on a sentimental note: tomorrow, O is traveling to The Big SuperMarket with Emmanuelle in hopes of finding all things necessary for our Thanksgiving dinner (don't worry - blog to follow). We hope all of you have an absolutely fantastic holiday - eat, drink, and be merry. We know we will be thinking of you all on Thursday, and how grateful we truly are to have you in our lives. Awww.... oof, ok, enough gushy stuff.... Now send us some money! :)

Meat Meat Meat!

WARNING!

The following entry contains some pretty gruesome butchery pictures. They are not for the faint of heart. If you're not a fan of seeing raw meat, bones, blood, brains being taken out of skulls... do not proceed! If you are... enjoy!

Well hello, lunch. Now, we certainly don't want to make any of our animal-lovers shed any tears, so fear not! The cows pictured above were not the actual ones taken to the butcher. These lovely ladies are actually a little older than the ones we sent to the slaughterhouse. But, you get the idea. Now let's get cuttin'!






Here we have an entire side of veal, waiting to be butchered.














To the left, the leg and part of the loin have been removed from the halved side.










The loin has been removed and is now being broken into chops.

















Phillip, the butcher, hard at work!












And to the right, Gabriel (the owner) starts calculating weights and prices. He personally calls a list of potential buyers for hours a night when it's veal time.

(above) On the top is part of the loin. The ribs get broken up, perhaps for Veal Blanquette. And the leg cut is known as Osso Buco. Yum, yum, yum!

The picture on the left: on the left side is the Osso Buco. On the right is Escalope, a thin cut of meat that comes off of the leg and is typically pounded flat for Mike Nastri's favorite: Veal Parm (in Sub form, si vous plais)!











The picture on the left is probably one of the most recognizable cuts of meat - the loin. If this came from a mature cow, we'd be grilling up a Sirloin or NY Strip!

Ok, here's where it gets interesting...

Not quite sure if this head goes with the body, but you get the idea...














Sweetbreads! The thymus gland, known for its milky texture, is located near the neck and the 'armpit' of the veal.


















Ooh, it's getting good now: Phillip is removing the skin and meat from the skull, for 'Roulade de Tete.' (pardon my lack of French accents... haven't crossed that bridge yet in figuring out this whole blogging thing!)










































Now, what should we have for lunch? ...



Ok, let's be honest. Brains are not something that I would purposefully order at a restaurant. I tried them once before at Craigie, and was a little grossed out but intrigued by them. The texture is a little... different. But I was willing to give them another go, especially knowing my handsome and amazingly talented boyfriend was in the kitchen.



Step one: Soak in cold water and clean off all the gunky parts. "Gunky," by the way, is a very technical term.













Step two: poach the brains in simmering water & vinegar (or lemon juice, if you don't have any vin) for 15-20 minutes, depending on how smart the cow was.










After poaching and cooling, you can remove a thin membrane from the outer layer of the brain. From here, you can go any number of ways - Owen decided (thankfully) that the Brain McNugget would work best (especially since we had a total of 7 people eating lunch that day).







Batter 'em! Flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs. Evenly coat. Start getting some oil hot in a saucepan. Once hot, drop 'em!













About halfway through cooking (golden brown on one side), add some butter and flip. Use a spoon to spoon the buttery juice over the nuggets, adding flavor. Our nuggets took about 2-3 minutes per side.

Voila! Put the nuggets on some paper towl to drain a little. Feel free to add a few drops of lemon juice, sriracha, sweet and sour sauce, barbeque, Hidden Valley Ranch Original... whatever grills your cheese! The brains were a big success at lunch - perfectly crispy on the outside and tender and meaty (and smart) on the inside.

Don't fret - the next post will be about cooking something a little bit easier to stomach: Apple butter (and other various apple-esque activities)!