Welcoming the rooster

The Chinese zodiac year of the Fire Rooster started on January 28, 2017.  Together with a few friends I decided to welcome the year of the rooster, by cooking a Chinese meal.  Our host had selected the dishes for us to cook and done all the shopping!

As you can tell, we started proceedings with a glass of bubbly – just one glass though, there was work to be done yet!!  We cooked five dishes in total:

Simple Thai-style Lemongrass Shrimp Soup:

The soup only required two ingredients which might not be in your cupboard:  fish sauce and chili paste with garlic.  You should be able to find both of them at an Asian grocery store or in the speciality section of a larger supermarket.  The remaining ingredients are easy to find.

The finished soup was delicious, wonderful flavours of ginger and lemongrass.  Definitely one I will make again!

Duck pancakes with hoisin sauce:

Preparing that dish was fairly straightforward, but different to the classic way of using crispy duck.  In this recipe, skinless duck breast was cut into strips, then stir fried and finished off with hoisin sauce.  We decided to substitute lettuce leaves for the pancakes, which made the dish lighter and gave it a bit of a crunch.

King prawn and scallop stir fry:

The king prawn and scallop stir fry required a fair amount of preparation, but it was very quick to cook!  We substituted sherry for the rice wine, and there were some asparagus spears, so they went in as well! :).

It tasted every bit as good as it looked!

Chicken and cashew nut stir-fry:

The chicken and cashew nut stir fry is an old favourite, which was easy to make.  It was great in that it required no special ingredients.

Once all the vegetables and ingredients were prepared, the cooking was very quick!  Another delicious dish!

Mandarin Oranges with Grand Marnier and Mascarpone:

We finished our celebratory meal with a light and refreshing dessert.  It was a perfect ending to a delicious meal!

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Heritage of rememberance

I recently participated in a guided visit of the Cimetiere Vieux, the old cemetery in Beziers.  I’ve always been fascinated by the cemeteries in France, they have a very different look to the cemeteries of other countries that I have visited.

The old cemetery in Beziers was established following an imperial decree of 1804, which stipulated that cemeteries must be located outside the walls of a town.  Before that, burial grounds were located next to the churches, and people would also have been buried inside the churches (in crypts or under the floor) – it probably all became a little too crowded!

The town planners of Beziers chose land north of the city walls, which formed part of the plateau on which the town was built.  The cemetery was built in two sections, the first opened in 1812, with an extension opening in 1863.  When finished, the Cimetiere Vieux covered 5 hectares – just over 12 acres.

Entrance to the Cimetiere Vieux, Beziers

The establishment of the cemetery coincided with a growing prosperity of the town and its citizens.  The same people who built elaborate town and country houses to display their new wealth also built elaborate tombs, often employing the same architects!    The nouveaux riches wanted to show off both in the here-and-now AND in the ever-after.  They went to great lengths to build beautiful monuments, which have been passed down the generations.

The guided visit was very interesting, although it felt a little haphazard at times.  There were nearly 100 visitors, so the crowd was split into four groups, who all started in different directions!  At the end of the visit, our guide handed out a plan of the cemetery, which showed the locations of over 130 tombs, remarkable in one way or another.

Shhh!  Detail from the tomb of the Guy-Lanneluc family in the Cimetiere Vieux in Beziers

There are over 3900 burial plots in the cemetery, and they were sold off as concessions en perpetuite, the burial plot being held in perpetuity.  Once a plot was bought, the owner could build the tomb to their taste and means, within certain limits.  Those who could afford to, would engage the services of fashionable architects and sculptors.

Beziers was birthplace and/or home to several well-known sculptors, whose work adorns many tombs.  Beziers’ most famous sculptor was Antonin Injalbert (1845 – 1933), whose work is exhibited at the Musee Fayet in Beziers (I’ll be writing about that museum at some point).  He was a prolific artist, and you can find a good many of his works in the cemetery:

The work of Jean Magrou (1869 – 1945), is also well represented:

Jacques Villeneuve (1865 – 1933) sculpted this reclining statue:

The painter, sculptor and ceramicist Louis Paul (1854 – 1922) created several sepulchres.

The Cimetiere Vieux is famous for its pleureuses, its statues of weeping women:

 

Architectural styles were varied, and presumably followed the prevailing fashions of whenever they were built.

There are many more pictures I could add to this post, but I don’t want to bore you.  The best thing is for you to visit the Cimetiere Vieux and see for yourself!!  I’ll finish the post with one last picture of a statue which is my favourite out of all the ones I photographed – I think it has a wonderful style and elegance to it.  Somehow I was so taken with the statue that I failed to note who the sculptor was – that gives me a good excuse to go back to the Cimetiere Vieux, to find out!

The Cimetiere Vieux is located on Avenue du Cimetiere Vieux, and is open daily from 8am to 6pm.  You may want to check with the tourist office in Beziers, to see if they offer any guided visits.

 

 

A winter walk

Winter is as good a time as any to go for a walk in or around Saint-Chinian. The days are often sunny and mild, and I always try to wear layers, in case I need to shed some clothes as I work up a sweat!  Today I’d like to show you a walk just up the road from Saint-Chinian.  The official starting point for this walk is on Avenue de Villespassans, but sometimes I make it easier for myself by taking the car up the hill, to the car park across the road from the windmill!. 🙂

The Pays Haut Languedoc et Vignobles, a federation of local councils, published a collection of 73 marked walks, which are available either individually or as a pack from the tourist office in Saint-Chinian.

The walk I’m writing about is called Les clapas.  Clapas is the name for the impressive mounds of limestones which have been cleared from the fields and piled up by successive generations of shepherds and farmers.

The leaflets for each walk give details of the walk as well as points of interest along the way.  Because of copyright issues, I’ll not reproduce the inside of the leaflet, but I’ve found a link to details of the walk here.

Most of the Les clapas walk is fairly gentle, especially as I avoided the steep climb out of the village by using the car and parking near the windmill – naughty I know! 😸   The countryside “up on the hill” is a mixture of vineyards and friches, which is the name for abandoned agricultural land.  In some cases the land has been abandoned for some time, but there can still be signs of the passage of humans.  Below is a piece of wood from an old shutter, with the hinge still attached – barely!

A lot of the vineyards had already been pruned at the time of my visit.  Hard work, but it’s got to be done if there are to be grapes (and wine)!

Even in the middle of winter, there is still interesting vegetation to be seen.  The plant below is commonly known as butcher’s broom (ruscus aculeatus).  The tips of the leaves are quite spiny!  I believe this plant is used in dried flower arrangements – I wouldn’t want to have to work with it!

There were still a few olives on some trees – this one was probably missed when the rest of the olives on the tree were harvested.

The limestone rocks were impressive!  But no, I didn’t have to climb up there!!

Here was another vestige of humankind, in the middle of nowhere – an old car!!

This was on the edge of a former friche – I guess the car wreck and the rocks were pushed there by a big digger when the land was cleared! The car must have sat in the wilderness for some time, by the looks of it!!

The itinerary took me through the hamlet of Fontjun, where I spotted another old vehicle from a bygone age!

And just around the corner there was second one!  It was painted the same blue colour, and somewhat better preserved.  These carts would have been used for work in the vineyards.

I saw this beautiful doorway in Fontjun …

… and a few steps away I spotted this sliding door.  I loved the colour and patina!

The piece of rusty old steel in the picture below was part of an old garden gate – wonderful detailing and patina!

Along the path, in the middle of nowhere, I came across an abandoned hut.  It had had a fireplace once, and someone had left the bellows to get the fire going, but the chimney had long gone.

Towards the end of the walk, I took this picture of a capitelle, a stone hut built without any mortar!  This one was very picturesque against the blue sky.

It was a lovely walk, and I hope you enjoyed it!  I’ll be doing it again before too long – do let me know if you’d like to join me!

A feast of taste

It’s high time I wrote another food related post!  Luckily, I discovered a new restaurant last weekend, with the help of Charlotte and Phil from Languedoc Living!  I met Charlotte and Phil last fall, through mutual friends.  We immediately got to talking about food and restaurants, and agreed to go together to L’Ortensia in Saint-Gervais-sur-Marer!  Charlotte booked a table for last Saturday lunchtime, and so I drove to Saint-Gervais-sur-Mare on a grey and rainy day, along the beautiful Orb valley and over a mountain, to reach the village where L’Ortensia is located.

The restaurant is in a late 19th century mansion (set in a park), which had been bought by the local council some time ago.  The mansion sits high above the village, and it’s park was once a hydrangea nursery.  In 2013, after years of complete renovation, the property opened its doors to the public once more.  The kitchen is run by Eric Balan, who has worked with Alain Ducasse and Marc Veyrat.  His partner, Patricia Rochette, looks after the front of house.

The first impression was one of stark modernity.  A modern glass and metal conservatory extension to the main building serves as the entrance from the car park.  Stairs and a lift go down to the restaurant, which is two floors below.  However, Patricia’s warm welcome immediately broke the ice, and we were soon seated at a round table near the fireplace, where a lovely fire warmed us all.

Once we’d had a chance to catch up with Charlotte and Phil, we turned to the menus and decided to go for the Menu Plaisir – and a pleasure it definitely was!

The meal started with a Prelude Gourmand, something to get us in the mood for what was to come!   First, we were served a tray of wonderful little morsels, to accompany our aperitif:  Roquefort macarons, crisp linseed “sails”, prunes wrapped in bacon, chorizo madeleines, and in the beaker four straws made with air-dried ham and filo pastry.  All incredibly delicious!!

Then came an amuse bouche, a small bowl of mussel soup, very delicate, with tiny mussels and a sprinkling of pungent spring onions.

The starter was pan-fried foie gras, served with quince puree and cranberries.  The foie gras was perfectly cooked and the flavour combination worked really well.  The red cabbage sprouts added an earthy note, which paired very well with the foie gras and the quince.

After a little interlude, our fish course arrived.  Seared scallops were served on a bed of salsify puree, and garnished with pink grapefruit and bergamot lemon zest.  The citrus fruit in combination with the scallops was very delicious!  And the pretty looking baby leaves were of course edible too!

Pigeon breast in a gingerbread crust was the main course, accompanied by different members of the brassica tribe: romanesco, kohlrabi, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cress, and thin slices of radish.  Someone in the kitchen was having fun, and we enjoyed eating it!! 🙂

Our dessert had a very sculpted look – two curved biscuits were holding a delicious “blond” chocolate cream, topped with pears poached in red wine, cubes of pear jelly, and citrus sorbet.  It was a sublime combination of flavours, and a dessert which had been very carefully constructed.  The “blond” chocolate used for the cream was Valrhona’s Orelys; the poached pear was a poire martin sec, an old (and mostly forgotten)  French variety of pear which is perfect cooked in red wine; the citrus sorbet was made with calamondines, a hybrid between a kumquat and a mandarin orange.  The sorbet was sharp with an incredible citrus flavour, a perfect foil for the sweetness of the chocolate cream.

After dessert came coffee, and with it Les Mignardises – a beautiful selection of treats to round off this wonderful meal.  The beaker held a coffee foam;  the chocolate lollipop was flavoured with pear, and the madeleine with rhubarb.

What a fantastic meal – wonderful food AND great company!

On the way back I stopped at Colombieres sur Orb to take a picture of the rather spectacular waterfall.

Just by the waterfall is the starting point for a marked walk, up the Gorges de Colombieres – it looks like a really interesting hike, and I’ve earmarked it for the spring!