Month: June 2019

Bordeaux and the Dordogne

I could start by writing about the famous wine region and the world heritage city often called “Petit Paris.”

But this is my space and I’m most eager to tell you about Bruno.

For the uninitiated, Bruno is Benoît Courrèges, and he doesn’t really exist. Bruno is the chief of police of the fictional village of St. Denis in the lovely Dordogne Valley area of France. He’s Andy Griffith with a French accent, and he never lets solving the crime get in the way of a good meal.

Bruno is the creation of Martin Walker, a retired journalist turned mystery novelist. Mr. Walker and I shared the same employer (United Press International), although not at the same time. He is an Englishman who has a holiday home in the Dordogne and, according to a New York Times profile, modeled his hero after a real local police chief.

I’ve been so enthralled with Bruno and his lovely country that I had pegged the Dordogne as our main destination on our family trip to France last year. But then April happened in Michigan, with unrelenting blizzards (yes, really), just as we were making reservations, and we had a family consensus that we needed to go as far south as possible. The Mediterranean won out over the Dordogne.

In my part-time bookseller gig, I often recommend the Bruno books to fans of Louise Penny, who also writes a mystery series with recurring characters and a village setting. I don’t know which charming town has a higher murder rate, Louise Penny’s Three Pines or Martin Walker’s St. Denis, but I would happily take my chances as a resident of either, if they existed.

For those who want to visit Bruno-land, sometimes called Dordogneshire for its popularity among the British, Mr. Walker proposes a seven-day itinerary on his website.

This week’s video

The relationship between England and this region of France, also known as Le Périgord, is a long one. Several centuries long. The English had claims to the land from Alienor d’Aquitaine (remember her from two weeks ago?), and it was a bone of contention during the medieval Hundred Years’ War. The legacy of this period of conflict is the stunning, picturesque landscape known as the Valley of 1000 Castles.

Beynac Chateau. BY KRZYSZTOF GOLIK – OWN WORK, CC BY-SA 4.0, HTTPS://COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG/W/INDEX.PHP?CURID=65604631

Another prime attraction of the region predates castles and feuding monarchs by many millennia. Paleolithic humans left a substantial legacy. The Vézère Valley in the Dordogne region has 147 prehistoric sites and 25 decorated caves that are a UNESCO World Heritage site. The most famous are the Lascaux cave paintings, which had to be closed to tourists to prevent damage; a replica site nearby is open to the public.

I also must mention that one of our favorite movies was filmed in the Dordogne. Ever After, a feminist retelling of the Cinderella story starring Drew Barrymore, is a fun way to get a look at the place from afar.

Finally, Bordeaux. The sixth-largest city in France, affectionately nicknamed “Little Paris,” boasts a stunning center of historic architecture that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s also a port of entry for exploring the famous wine region, which we will do next week.

Cognac and cake

Last week, we obsessed a little about Eleanor of Aquitaine (Alienor d’Aquitaine) and mostly ignored any other attraction of Poitou-Charentes. With Eleanor dead for some eight centuries now, some updating of the region’s charms may be in order.

Mais alors, non. Even the Wiki travel page for Poitiers notes “there isn’t a lot to do” in this pleasant, small city. It is the opposite of the tourist town lament, “a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” Poitiers and other towns in Poitou-Charentes, such as La Rochelle, may be great places to live, but they don’t attract many tourists.

If one lived there, what would one eat? What did Eleanor eat? Likely she dined on some of the same delicacies still served in the region today. With a long Atlantic coastline, the Poitevins have long relied on les fruits de mer for sustenance. Oysters, mussels cooked in wine or cream, fish, eels and cuisses de grenouilles (frogs’ legs). The region also is rich in agriculture, so animal meats, cheeses and produce are fresh and plentiful.

This week’s video

Poitou-Charentes’ most celebrated contributed to world gastronomy is cognac, the exquisite brandy made from white grapes. It is not an ancient spirit; Eleanor almost certainly did not know it. Although wine historians say cognac may have been produced and consumed locally in the early 15th century, it didn’t really get going until the 16th century when Dutch merchants sought a better method of preserving wine for their long journeys home. Enter distillation, then later a double distillation, and the discovery that the resulting product was quite delicious before being diluted with water as the Dutch had intended.

Cognac is aged in oak barrels from the Limousin province directly to the east of Poitou-Charentes. Both Poitou-Charentes and Limousin are now part of the administrative region called Nouvelle Aquitaine, and as I think we’re unlikely to revisit Limousin on this tour, we’ll make a brief mention now. Limousin is a forested region renowned for timber, beef cattle and chestnuts. It also gets promoted frequently to British people as a cheaper alternative to the neighboring Dordogne region, sometimes called Dordogneshire due to its popularity for cross-channel second homes. The English have been in this region for centuries, ever since Eleanor’s days!

Back to cognac. Victor Hugo called it “the liquor of the gods.” Napoleon liked it, too. We have a bottle of Courvoisier, which claims to have been the emperor’s favorite.

Today, cognac is enjoyed worldwide, mostly in China where it is a symbol of luxury, and also by American rappers. According to a recent e-magazine feature, cognac is currently experience a resurgence of popularity – perhaps thanks to Jay-Z and P. Diddy – although not in France. The French protect it with an appellation d’origine contrôlée but only keep about 3 percent for their own consumption, unlike armagnac, a brandy from the Gascogne which is hard to find outside of France. (We have a bottle of armagnac, but we’ll get to that in a few weeks.)

As I have always thought of cognac as an after dinner drink, I decided to pair it with a cheesecake specialty from Poitou-Charentes. It worked well together! The cake, called tourteau fromagé, is quite simple to make, although mine did not achieve the traditional burnt crust, perhaps because I have a gas oven which is notoriously hostile to browning.

One of my favorite food writers, Clotilde of the Paris-based Chocolate & Zucchini blog, describes the history and significance of this dessert, along with a photo of what it is supposed to look like. And here is mine:

tourteau fromagé, unburnt

Despite its unburnt crust, it was delicious, and as my husband said, the lack of burning gave us more to eat.

I used a fresh local chèvre, or goat cheese, that was already quite dry and did not need to be further drained. I followed this recipe. Also, I did not have the proper mold, so I improvised with a small springform pan (for the one pictured above) and my English pudding steamer for the second one. They were equally good.

I’m also too lazy to trim my pastry crust to look pretty.

With a small glass of cognac, this was an excellent treat!

Next week: Bordeaux.

Poitou-Charentes

After another delay caused by real-world work, we’re delighted to resume our pretend tour de France. We last visited the chateaux and vineyards of the Loire Valley, one of the most popular destinations in the most touristed country in the world, and now we’re dipping slightly south to a region that gets far less attention.

This week’s video

Poitou-Charentes officially no longer exists. It was a defined region of France from 1956 to 2015, when France reorganized administratively and made it part of Nouvelle Aquitaine.

This area in central France borders the Atlantic Ocean and is mostly rural. Its two largest cities are the university town of Poitiers and the port of La Rochelle. For tourists, the chief attractions will be along the coast, particularly the Isles de Ré and Oléron. Another hotspot is the Futuroscope theme park north of Poitiers.

Eleanor of Aquitaine

We will linger in Poitiers because it is the birthplace of one of my favorite women of history, Eleanor of Aquitaine. This medieval queen of France and England continues to fascinate us centuries after her death. Her literary and artistic “Court of Love” in Poitiers during the mid-1100s is legendary for establishing the ideas of chivalry in the culture of Europe.

Eleanor was born around 1122 into an interesting family. Her grandfather, William IX, was the earliest troubadour whose work survived. He was a lyric poet in the Occitan language; he had a reputation for seducing women, and his verses tell of this prowess. One of his conquests was Dangereuse, Viscountess of Châttellerault, the wife of a vassal. His own wife, Philippa, was not pleased to have another woman installed in her home but could find no one to assist her in evicting her husband’s mistress. The church excommunicated William, but he continued to live with Dangereuse and Philippa finally retired to the Abbey of Fontevrault. The son of William and the daughter of Dangereuse, step-siblings, married and became Eleanor’s parents, so both Dangereuse and Philippa were her grandmothers.

On the death of her father, Eleanor became the duchess of Aquitaine, one of the largest and wealthiest realms in the kingdom of France. The teenager was wed almost immediately to King Louis VII of France, but the marriage was never happy. The beautiful, free-spirited granddaughter of William IX and Dangereuse was ill-suited for the plain, pious Louis. But she did have some grand adventures of Queen of France. She and her ladies-in-waiting, often dressed in full armor, shocked Europe when they joined the Second Crusade. Eleanor was furious with Louis’ refusal to heed her military advice, a strategy that many historians view as superior to Louis’ own disastrous path. The defeated Louis returned to France without his wife, who denounced him and appealed for an annulment to the marriage, which she received in 1152. Her vast estates in Aquitaine were returned to her.

Within a year of the annulment, Eleanor married the duke of Normandy, who soon became Henry II, King of England. She had eight children with Henry, including three sons who became kings. She was the mother of Richard the Lionheart and King John, the hapless villain of the Robin Hood tales. Eleanor supported her sons in revolt against their father, and for this he imprisoned her for 16 years. The 1968 film, The Lion in Winter, won Katherine Hepburn an Oscar for her portrayal of the formidable Eleanor.

Well, I could write all day about this incredible woman, but many others already have, in historical accounts and in fictionalized versions of her life., beginning with Shakespeare’s King John. Modern novels featuring Eleanor include Elizabeth Chadwick’s three-volume series.

Eleanor died in 1204 and was buried at Fontevrault Abbey near Chinon.

Fontevraud Abbey. By Pierre Mairé, PixAile.com – www.pixAile.com, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1356886

Eleanor’s home in Poitiers, le Palais de justice de Poitiers, can be visited today. One can also visit the cathedral where Eleanor attended services.

Not just Eleanor

A few other notes of interest from Poitou-Charentes:

  • Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne, defeated Muslim invaders from Spain at the Battle of Poitiers in 732.
  • Poitiers has been the home of many notables, including René Descartes, who studied law at the university, chef Joël Robuchon, and mystery novelist Georges Simenon.
  • The Acadian and Cajun populations of North America originated in Poitou.
  • The local dialect/language, Poitevin, has some interesting characteristics as a bridge between the langues d’oïl and the langues d’oc, and also to Acadian French.

Next week, we hope to resume our normal every-Monday schedule with a look at the gastronomy of Poitou-Charentes.