My French Holiday Diary- Day Six

One day down due to illness, but back on board with day six! Find out about these beauties here..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 6- Thursday 20^th September.

Illness prevented me from doing anything at all interesting on Wednesday. All of us really; it was a day filled with naps and nausea. Things seemed a little brighter this morning and we managed to get ourselves out of the house and drive over to Figeac, a town we visited last year on the seldom visited right hand fork of the road outside the house. The rain's let up and feeling poorly wasn’t enough to distract us all from the amazing vistas we drove through- sunny fields filled to bursting with little orange pumpkins, how amazing that no one steals them as they sleep soundly in their little patches. High and huge cliff faces, towering shade over the fields of maize, very striking and prehistoric. I’m looking forward to visiting the grottes like we did last year, there’s talk we may visit a cave with an underground lake in it, as well as paintings. Cor.

We zoomed past sunny chateaux high up on hillsides and huge sheds filled with drying tobacco and alongside shady river patches before we finally reached the outskirts of the town, all looking very industrial, dotted with an Aldi and a few other mangy looking supermarkets. The town itself is amazing, connected to the Knights Templar it’s a little maze of dark alleys and bright, sunny squares filled with coffee tables. You have to look up to get the full benefit of the place; the buildings seem about four or five storeys high, at their tops little shaded roof terraces studded with dark beams give the place a big medieval feel.

Unfortunately I began to feel pretty rough the minute we got out of the car. A walk through the cool, shaded streets sent me off into racking shivers. We had a quick peek at an antique shop we’d visited last year where I picked up a little vase before dipping into a bookshop where Mum-y shrieked with laughter at a children’s book about a wolf… A tour round the square and some more shops led me to shout angrily “That’s not fashion, that’s depression!” at the simply awful state of women’s clothes in the shops we were passing. Like I said, France doesn’t seem to have come out of the nineties yet.

We did stop somewhere without me shouting: A patisserie. Right at the end of a street, it looked like the Sprungli stores we’d visited in Zurich, the shop frontage a mixture of gold mirrors and dark brown wood. Inside, a little old lady was very carefully asking what the expensive cakes were in the window, not going to be rushed over an important decision. We decided to try three local cakes (rather than our usual glut of tarts and slices), choosing a little Lotois (appearance: dry and almond-flaked but in taste it was a moist little almond darling, with a soft chocolate macaroon and liqueur-soaked, raisin-studded middle), a tartlette pruneaux (a latticed little number that Dad-y described as a “Disney-style pie”, a big hit of soft rich prune and sweet, crumby pastry) and finally the Safranais (Saffron being a big regional number, this one too looked dry with a whiff of meringue about it but again, turned out to be a soft almond cake, layered with saffron-soaked apricot and white raisins).

On the way back through the town, we stopped off at the butcher’s in the square to sample a few wares. There’s no way that the supermarket we were off to next could make food as good as a butcher, so it seemed like a good idea to stock up. The guy was really cool, smashing a huge knife through some bones when we entered the little shop. Though the skinned rabbits with heads still on, eyes glaring furiously at us (the same goes for the ducks) looked pretty amazing, we’re still a little scared of buying plain big chunks of meat in case we somehow cook it wrong, so we focused our attention instead on all the little artisan treats the guy had made. We bought potato dauphinois in little patties, two tiny broccoli soufflés and a quarter pound of a great-looking glossy ratatouille.

After we’d bought the customary tranche of pâté de campagne, Mum-y couldn’t resist a grande tranche of mousse de canard, followed by three thick slices of rare roast beef. When we got home these delicacies were all devoured in minutes. The pate is definitely the best yet; creamy and salty with a great soft liver flavour. We were surprised that the duck mousse was very cheap, considering it was some kind of delicious duck nectar. Pâté as smooth as cream and just as rich, encircled by a protective layer of clarified butter. My god. The beef was amazing too: garlicky and salty as hell.

We left Figeac feeling poorly but pleased with our little lot, heading up the sunny hillside to a huge supermarket where we all felt a little lost and very run down. Nearly crying in a supermarket because your mother has taken the trolley too far away from you is never a good sign. In my madness I still managed to pick up three huge slices of pumpkin and a bag of grated gruyère to play with later.

We returned home at long last to the delicious lunch and cakes, before napping and regaining a bit of strength. When everyone was still asleep, I roasted my pumpkin with the aim of mashing it and mixing it with cream, cheese and beaten egg white, sort of a mixture between a tïan and a gratin. Inspired by the tatty Elizabeth David that resides in the kitchen, I couldn’t stand to see the very last pieces of cooked chicken we’d bought in the Sunday market go off, so I set about softening a shallot before making a thick white sauce. To that I added the chopped chicken and some healthy nubbins of Roquefort, along with a few pieces of mashed up pumpkin. I would have killed for some nutmeg and parsley, but never mind... I shaped the mix into some little croquettes; impatiently (and unsuccessfully) waited for them to cool, before rolling them in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and sautéing until crisp. We ate them at French ten o’clock with slices of lemon and tomato before settling down to Man vs. Food, which Dad-y has taken up with gusto.