Category Archives: Personal Stuff

Chinese Food, Isle of Man, Oysters, Personal Stuff, Seafood

France again (for a few weeks!)

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We got the work done on the house in Peel and ended up with a stripy stair carpet like a beach towel! (M-D can get a bit daring when the mood hits her!). Mind you, it suits the theme of the house which is intentionally “seaside” (we’re only three minutes walk from the beach). All the bedroom floors are now down to the original pine boards with a grey stain and a coat or two of matt sealer, so hopefully we can have a peaceful summer without too much disruption!

The trip back to France was uneventful. Since we came by car, we had two boat trips and a couple of long drives, but it gives us the chance to import and export stuff that’s not available in the other country. For example, when going from France to the Isle of Man, we took lots of Saucisson Sec because my mate Ken eats it till he bursts! We also took a couple of nice Jambon de Bayonne (an air dried salted ham that takes its name from the ancient port city of Bayonne in the far South West of France). In addition, there were lots of easy-to-find cooking ingredients and tins like Confit de Canard (prepared in a centuries-old process of preservation that consists of salt curing duck thighs and then poaching them in their own fat). We also took Foie Gras which is a fraction of the price in France than in GB. We get it delivered (along with the Confit de Canard) by Godard, an excellent producer in the South-West of France.

Coming back to France, we transport interesting stuff like Manx Kippers from Moore’s Kipper factory the last remaining traditional kipper curers. Moore’s produce traditional, oak fired, chimney smoked Manx kippers that taste like nothing else you will ever taste – 100% delicious (partucularly with Warm Potato Salad). We also bring curiosities for the family like Jelly Babies, Caramac, Chocolate Oranges and Custard – none of which are available in France.

So now our French grandchildren, Clémence and Eléonore, are impatiently waiting for a visit to The Island. We just booked their flights for mid April, so we’ll only be here in France for about four weeks before heading back! They’ll be expecting all the non-French lunch ingredients (like Pork Pie, Scotch Egg, Scallions etc.). Undoubtedly they will also hold us ransom for a visit to the Chinese Restaurant. In France, Chinese restaurants serve food that is more Vietnamese than anything else (Vietnam being a former French colony). So to get the more aromatic Cantonese food is a rare treat for our French visitors.

Last night, I had no doubt we were back in France. For dinner we had dozen oysters each with Pain Poilâne bread and salted butter followed by strawberries and cream. All washed down with a glass or two of chilled Edelzwicker from Alsace. Oysters in GB are at least twice the price than here (and generally don’t have the same quality and succulent taste). So there’s good and bad on both sides of the Channel. We’re fortunate in being able to get the best of both worlds… long may it last!

Pain Poilâne, incidentally, is produced in the Latin Quarter of Paris where it is sold at the original boulangerie on rue du Cherche-Midi. The worldwide demand for Poilâne bread is met in a facility located in Bièvres which produces around 15,000 loaves per day in 24 wood-burning ovens that are exact replicas of the ovens used at the Paris locations. These loaves are shipped worldwide – but it’s lovely getting the bread fresh the same day!

One day, Ramsey Bakery’s finest sliced dough – the next, proper bread using hand-crafted stone-ground flour, natural fermentation and a wood-fired oven. One day, the finest kippers in the universe, the next, hardly-smoked commercial herring in shrink-wrapped sauce!! Just kidding, but it does demonstrate how lucky we are to be able to reap the best of both.

Fish, Isle of Man, Personal Stuff, Salmon

The Rock awaits us

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We’re heading back to The Isle of Man in a few days. We’ll be there for a couple of months, but we probably won’t get much relaxation! We bought a three story Victorian town house in August 2011 and it came complete with ivory-coloured fluffy carpets throughout! We have replaced the ground floor with parquet but the stairs and two floors of bedrooms still need to have something done to get rid of the ghastly dust trap underfoot! Our plan is to dump the carpets, strip the pine boards back to original state, tint them just to help the colour a little, then apply a matt varnish. On the stairs and landings, we’ll get new carpet runners and paint the edges white (a bit like it would have been originally except maybe the colour).

When we looked at the cost of hiring an industrial sander, we found it was about £55 a day (plus another £45 for the edging sander). So we took a look on eBay and found we could buy both for about £600. If we sell them again for a loss at the end of the job it still will have only cost about £100 in total, so that seemed like the way to go. The edging sander was OK in the post, but the main sander is big and heavy and would need a courier.

Unfortunately, getting goods delivered to The Isle of Man is like smuggling drugs into Indonesia … it’s a death sentence! It’s all to do with the fact there’s a boat trip needed between mainland UK and The Island. So we asked my niece, Sally, and her husband, Danny, who live in Crewe in Cheshire, if they could take delivery and we would pick it up as we passed by on our way to the ferry. (“Passing by” involves spending the night there – which we often do when we take the car)

Sally and Danny used to live in splendid anonymity until a couple of months ago when Danny was imprisoned for having a gun in his possession… er, he’s an SAS Sergeant with an impeccable history and the whole world got behind him and forced a quick legal appeal where the sentence was reduced to a lighter suspended sentence – and they will be appealing the actual guilty verdict later this month. Without going into the whole story here, it’s enough to say that they are going through a really tough time at the moment and Danny is at home just waiting for justice to take its course.

What do Sally and Danny have to do with the story of my sander? Well the guy I bought it from agreed to deliver to Crewe and asked for the name and address. When I said the name, he said, “Haven’t I heard that somewhere recently?”, so I reminded him of the furor in the national press about Danny’s shameful imprisonment.

I though he had had a heart attack at the other end!

“But what happens if the sander doesn’t work?” he asked.

I replied (half-joking), “It better had, or Danny will come and sort you out!”

Had he known Danny, he wouldn’t have worried! He’s truly one of the nicest, most level-headed guys you could ever hope to meet! In fact, of course, he did meet him a couple of days later when he delivered the sander, and they shared a cup of tea and a joke together!

Hand and Trumpet, CheshireWhat has all this got to do with food … er not a lot except that, when we get to Crewe, we will go and eat in the evening at The Hand and Trumpet which is a great little gastro pub serving decent quality pub grub at decent prices. If you get an opportunity, it’s worth stopping by.

And finally, I just added a recipe to the site to make your own Smoked Salmon (without the smoke, of course!). It’s a great little recipe that M-D’s daughter, Muriel, passed on to us and it is stupidly simple. So not you can enjoy high quality smoked salmon at exceptional prices with your very own Smoked Salmon Without The Smoke

Wish us luck with the floors!

Duck, Personal Stuff, Salads, Wine

Losing weight!

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I’m supposed to be losing weight! I’ve been trying to do so for close on one year! So here we are, just a few hours away from moving the clocks back and getting an extra hour in bed (hooray!) and my weight hasn’t changed significantly for the last 6 months. It’s dreadful how time just stips by without us noticing. However, we have been gastronomically busy, so we’ve enjoyed the passing of the days.

salade gourmandeLast Saturday evening, we had a dinner for six of us. In addition to M-D and myself, there was Loius and Monique who live close by and keep an eye on the apartment here while we are on The Isle of Man, Jean-Luc who was a neighbour until recently, and is now living in Brittany and Pascale, a new neighbour who bought his apartment from him. We decided to keep it simple so I produced that gastronomic delight, Salade des Gourmets as a starter (which always goes down well, no matter what). It looks complicated, but it’s not, and was well appreciated by our guests. The use of a vinagrette made of raspberries and the fact that the scallops and prawns are served warm makes it a unique eating experience.

confit de canard duckWe followed up with a traditional French dish, Confit de Canard with Cepes and Sautée Potatoes. Of course, we’re lucky here because we can get very good quality Confit out of a tin, so no sweating over a hot stove for hours of preparation!

Of course, having a good wine to help everything down (is that a technical term??) does no harm either and we had taken a couple of bottles (well, three actually!) of Chateau Berliquet 2002 – a St Emilion – out of the cellar. Added to the two bottles of Vranken Special Brut Champagne as a little apperitif before the meal, we were all quite mellow by the time it came to serving cheese and then M-D’s famous “Orange and Lime Parfait” for a dessert. I keep trying to persuade her to put the recipe on the site, but so far I’ve not succeeded!

Tonight will be different! M-D’s daughter, Muriel, (who cooks all my favourite stuff) is bringing our grandchildren up from Orleans to stay for a few days. Muriel is stopping overnight with us, so it’s going to be a “Happy Sushi” night (little Japanese resaurant over the road). The last time we were at Muriel’s (just a couple of weeks ago) she prepared a “duck cottage pie” (that’s the nearest I can explain it!). It was the famous Confit de Canard, shredded at the bottom of a large dish and topped with mashed potato that had been cooked in their skins and then peeled. There were eight of us at the table and it disappeared in minutes! Allowing for some delightful apperitifs, a starter of foie gras, the cheeses (one of which smelt like old socks and tasted like heaven!) and Clémence’s chocolate Brownie (not to mention some excellent wines), I went home weighing about 10 pounds heavier!

Losing weight in France is, I have decided, impossible!