Stage 21: Étampes --> Paris Champs-Élysées

Brunch at 11:

• Mimosas (tangarine juice and a sparkling wine from the Limosin region)
• Eggs baked in ham crisps, with a base of mushrooms, shallots, creme fraiche, and tarragon
• Asparagus with hollandaise sauce
• Blackberries and melon

If I have the energy, maybe a cherry clafoutis also :)

Stage 17: Embrun --> L'Alpe-d'Huez

Today the stage ended in the Hautes-Alps. I have a late afternoon/early evening meeting, so we'll be eating leftover, along with a carrot soup that now is simmering on my stove top:

• Carrot soup, perhaps with tarragon and a dollop of creme fraiche
• Halibut with a black-olive crust, bread
  
• Green salad with walnuts, roquefort, and Sungold tomatoes from the garden
• Melon and cherries

N and I ate leftover apricot flan for breakfast. We both like this dish, which is heavy on almonds, eggs, and butter, but refreshingly scant on sugar and honey. The apricots melt deliciously into the custardy base.

Stage 16: Cuneo --> Jausiers

Today's stage ended in the Alpes-Maritimes. Here is a tentative menu for dinner:

• Crudites with anchoiade
• Halibut with a black olive crust, green beans with garlic and anchovy, bread
  
• Green salad with walnuts
  
• Apricot flan

E is joining us for the first time :)

Post-dinner update: We all enjoyed the food. The recipes for the fish and the dessert came from Diane Holugue, Savoring Provence, and we drank a bottle of Cote de Provence Blanc 2007, from Domaine Pinchinat, courtesy of Wine Authorities.

Rest day

Last night's food left us all moaning and licking the plates. We ate:

• Salmon in cream and muscadet sauce, haricot verts
  
• Green salad
• Brillat-Savarin with slices of baguette and olive bread
• Roasted figs with creme fraiche

Recipes for the fish and dessert came once again from Georgeanne Brennan's Savoring France. The food didn't match the current location of the Tour -- the main course was evocative of the Pays de la Loire -- but it certainly pleased us. I had been wanting to cook this salmon recipe ever since the Tour was in Nantes, but I waited until an evening when B was away; he doesn't eat salmon.

I. asked about the cheese; here is some information garnered from Steven Jenkins' Cheese Primer. Brillat-Savarin (bree-YAH sah-vah-RAN) is a triple-creme cheese from Normandy. Jenkins describes it as a " 'cheese confection' that has hot, rich cream added to its milk to achieve a butterfact content (matiere grasse) above 75%. ... Brillat is made for dessert, a cheese that is crying out for the sweetest, most delectable, in-season fruits such as peaches, rasberries, apricots, and strawberries ..."

The Brillat-Savarin that we ate last night was over-ripe, unfortunately. We enjoyed it, but it certainly had a sharp edge. I'm going to begin asking to taste cheeses before I purchase them, especially for imported, infrequently-sold types.

Stage 13: Narbonne --> Nîmes

We had leftover vegetables and couscous from last night, with the new addition of a Susan Hermann Loomis recipe for "Basque chicken." B was playing at a dance and we wanted to go hear him, so not much time for cooking.

The chicken was browned and then set to bake in a 400F oven under a mound of sauted onions.

Later, the leftover chicken and onions made great sandwiches on whole wheat with some mayonnaise to bind everything together.

Stage 12: Lavelanet --> Narbonne

We had a vegetarian guest last night and so defaulted to food now common to most of France:

• Tapenade, green beans, and croutes
• North African vegetables and Harissa
  
• Couscous
• Chapel Hill Creamery farmers' cheese with brown bread
• Cherries

W drank a lovely wine from Wine Authorities with the cheese: a 2006 Corbieres Rouge from Chateau Gasparets. Seth and Craig describe it as "An international style with sweet red fruit, vanilla, clove and essence of garrigue (wild herbs). The vineyards are way up high and very rocky lending to a style that shows black tar and earth under the fruit. Oak barrel aging adds the smoke and all together you get a dynamic, friendly red with polished fruit and amazing drinkability." They only have 19 bottles ($9.99) left as of this morning, so I think I'll make a trip there today to pick up a bottle or two.

If you haven't been to Wine Authorities yet, go. It's fabulous.

Stage 11: Lannemezan --> Foix

Still working away at the venison and pork. We ate a melange of sauted onions, garlic, tomato, meat, and the remnants of the vegetable puree that I made for the Piperade, mixed with a pound of whole-wheat penne and tossed with cheese. Blanched green beans from the Farmers' Market on the side.

Rest day

Tonight we needed to clean out the refrigerators, so I defaulted to making a simple starter: A Jacques Pepin recipe for tapenade. My usual recipe includes pine nuts and parsley; this one uses dried figs and mint. A very different yet pleasing effect ... and it tasted great on the semolina bread made by my neighbor Ron, who has a wood-burning bread oven in the backyard that he cranks up on the weekend.

We also ate a hash of potatoes, onions, and venison sausage, topped with parsley, tomatoes, and some grated cheddar.

Stage 9: Toulouse --> Bagnères-de-Bigorre

Sunday we actually chowed down while watching the Tour in the morning:

• Honeydew melon
• Toasted olive bread
• Pipérade (Basque-style scrambled eggs)

Pipérade should be made with les piments d'Espelette, but I had to make do with cayenne. So far, this was the least interesting dish that I have cooked; it won't make the reprise menu :(

Stage 8: Figeac --> Toulouse

It was Tom and Janice's annual Bastille Day party, so we ate lots of backyard-barbequed chicken and ribs. Yum.

Stage 7: Brioude --> Aurillac

Here is tonight's menu:

• Melon with basil cream
  
• Potato tart from the Auvergne
  
• Warm zucchini with Roquefort and walnuts
  
• Green salad
• Cheese course, accompanied by bread by Eric: Fourme d’Ambert, Cantal, Bleu d’Auvergne and Saint-Nectaire
• Blackberries

The main course and the cheese course reflect the Auvergne, while the starter looks back to Pays-de-la-Loire and the vegetable looks forward to the Midi-Pyrenees :)

Stage 6: Aigurande --> Super-Besse

Super stage -- and a super dinner. We ate the following items:

• La Truffade (a potato cake with cheese and bacon)
  
• Green salad with a walnut vinegarette
• Peach gratin

La Truffade is a traditional Auvergnat dish. The simple ingredients -- 5 oz lean bacon, 2 pounds of potato, and 8 oz of Gruyere cheese -- don't begin to hint at how delicious it is. We'll be eating it again for weekend brunch come this fall.

For those interested, the recipe is on page 226 of Anne Willan's The Country Cooking of France. The peaches and potatoes came from Lyon Farms in Creedmor, North Carolina.

Auvergne

I'm looking ahead and planning menus for Thursday and Friday; scroll down to my previous post if you are interested in what is for dinner tonight.

Stages 6 and 7 (10-11 July) both are in the region of Auvergne, which is known for the following foods:

• Cheeses: Fourme d’Ambert, Fourme du Cantal, Salers, Bleu d’Auvergne and Saint-Nectaire
• Green lentils of Le Puy
• Magnificent vegetables, including fresh-grown cabbages and potatoes
• A regional ham, Jambon d’Auvergne, and various pork sausages
• Abundant raspberries, blackberries and blueberries that grow wild in the forests of Cantal and Haute-Loire.

For an overview about this region and its cuisine, see frenchselections.com. This site also lists a handful of Auvergne recipes, but they unfortunately aren't hyperlinked.

Anne Willan's Country Cooking of France also includes a page that begins "The cooking of the Auvergne is not for picky eaters. Historically a poor region, the inhabitants were long considered the most miserable in all of France." (page 229) Here are a handful of the Auvergne recipes that caught my eye:

• La Truffade (Potato Cake with Cheese and Bacon), page 226
• Aligot (Potato and Cheese Puree), page 225
• Salad Tiede de Lentils (Warm Lentil Salad), page 253
• Omelet Auvergnate (Flat Omelet with Ham, Potato, and Cheese), page 45
  

Susan Herman Loomis's French Farmhouse Cookbook also has a few Auvergnat recipes:

• Potato Tart from the Auvergne (Pastis T Tertifle), pages 273-274
• Warm Lentil and Bacon Salad (Salade de Lentilles du Puy aux Lardons Chauds), pages 85-86
  

Stage 5: Cholet --> Châteauroux

Today the Tour is in the Pays-de-la-Loire. After my afternoon trip to the farmers' market, here's how my menu looked:

• Melon and fig salad with basil cream
• Weatherhand Farm chicken legs cooked with thyme and onions
• A green salad
• Fresh olive bread accompanied with Elodie Farms chevre rolled in crushed black pepper
• Lyon Farms peaches

The starter recipe is from Georgeanne Brennan's Savoring France, and the chicken was inspired by a recipe by Susan Hermann Loomis.

Stage 4: Individual time trials in Cholet

Today the cyclists are doing time trials, going in circles :) No progression, just like my day. But I have been working on menus for the rest of the week.

Stage 3: Saint-Malo --> Nantes

Today is the last day in Brittany. We'll be eating more Cotriade Bretonne, along with Haricots Verts Breton (Green Beans, Breton Style) and Far Breton (Batter Pudding with Prunes).

Stage 2: Auray --> Saint-Brieuc

OK, no more doubts about the menu for tonight: an Anne Willan recipe for Cotriade Bretonne, a fish stew with sorrel and leeks. It calls for two types of fish, which seems appropriate for a stage that goes from one shore town to another, as well as mussels, creme fraiche, leeks, potatoes, lemon, butter ...

Who is interested? If B and N are eating, we'll have an early dinner at my house, maybe 5:30. Otherwise the time is up for grabs.

I've been DVRing the coverage of the Tour in HDTV, and it's gorgeous.

Brunch update: I tried a different buckwheat crepe recipe. It was tastier and much easier to manage. Just about as I finished making a stack of crepes, B and E returned from a bike ride, and we ate all of the following permutations of crepes:

• Asparagus, onion, and a (unidentified) grated cheese
• Asparagus, onion, and a soft (also unidentified) French cheese
  
• Elodie Farms fig-and-honey chevre with a warm compote of peaches, apricots, and plumcots
• Shrimp, corn, hot peppers, and more of the grated cheese

Can you tell that I was using up leftovers from our various refrigerators? For me, the winner once again was the Elodie Farms chevre :)

The crepe recipe was inspired by Anne Willan's Look & Cook French Country Cooking. For 10 crepes, I used the following ingredients:

• 2 TBS butter
• 3/4 cup buckwheat flour
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/4 cup 2% milk from Maple View Farm
  

Dinner update: The fish stew was fabulous. The recipe called for one pound of a white fish (cod, haddock, hake, or whiting), one pound of a rich fillet (eel or mackerel), and 1 1/2 pound of mussels, as well as a pound of sorrel. What ended up in the soup pot was a pound of cod, a pound of bay scallops, half of a pound of Spanish mackerel, and 10 ounces of arugula ... Nonetheless, the stew was excellent: rich, flavorful, multi-faceted.

For those interested, the recipe is on pages 100-101 of The Country Cooking of France, by Anne Willan.

Stage 1: Brest --> Plumelec

The Tour started today. Both towns are in the region of Brittany, which makes the choice of today's dinner easy -- crepes. We'll start with something simple to tempt the appetite, and then move on to buckwheat crepes filled with savory ham and cheese. Then a green salad, and finally some fresh cheese and fruit from this morning's farmers' market: blackberries and flavored chevre (fig and honey) from Elodie Farms. Maybe some nice hard cider as an accompaniment.

Dinner tonight is at 7 PM. N and B are financing my cooking this month, but we'd be delighted to have other people -- just be willing to donate to cover the costs of groceries :)

Dinner update: I used the Susan Loomis recipe from pages 293-294 of French Farmhouse Cooking. The crepe batter was a bit finicky; the pan needed to be just the right temperature and the crepes needed to be cooked longer than I would have expected. The highlight was eating the Elodie Farm's chevre smeared on a baguette slice with a ripe, juicy blackberry on top. E joined us for dessert; he was feeling sociable and there was Tour coverage :)

Plans for tomorrow are up in the air: Mussels in cider? Clams? Perhaps just omelets for brunch and something luscious for for a post-dinner dessert.