It seems like only last week that I was working for Imation Corpn in Cergy, 20 miles North-West of Paris. While I was there, my wife’s daughter worked and lived close by. To her delight, she and her husband found they were expecting a baby. I got the news at work one day that a little girl had been born in the nearby hospital. So after work, I drove up the hill and poked my head round the door. What I saw was a perfect face and dark, questioning eyes, already interested in everything going on around her.
But that was twenty years ago. Now, a wonderful butterfly has emerged from that ball of humankind, and her name is Clémence. This weekend, we met up with Clémence at her home in Cléry-Saint-André in the Loiret department of north-central France, near Orleans. Her parents were away and her sister was in Corsica with her grandparents, so Clémence was on her own. We thought it would be a good idea to take her out for a meal somewhere, so that’s what we did. (We don’t usually drive 100 miles for a meal!)
We ended up at La Criée in Olivet, a nearby town. The restaurant was an unassuming building at the side of a busy road, but we were not disappointed either by the welcome, the service, or the food. Our butterfly decided to go for lobster and a glass of dry white wine. And why not? She’s 20 years old and worth spoiling once in a while. (And guess who ended up cracking the claws for her???) Marie-Danielle elected for a seafood platter, which left a large smile on her face too. Well worth the trip!
Of course, your fishmonger will open your scallops for you. In fact, they mostly sell just the flesh. But there is seriously nothing better than a FRESH scallop, as we discovered the other day as we went to the market. Most people are simply afraid of what’s inside a scallop and are not sure what to keep and what to throw away, but it’s drop-dead simple, and here’s how you do it…
You will now be left with just the edible muscle, though it may be a little gritty with sand, which you can easily rinse off under cold running water. Now you are free to eat them raw from the shell or create any one of a dozen delicious recipes like my favourite, 
To cut a long story short, we had a long “apperitif” with Jean-Louis and France while we waited for Christine, and then sat down to eat just before 3pm! Fortunately, the 
White wine with Crême de Cassis is known as “Kir” in France and is a popular apéritif drink named after Félix Kir (1876–1968), mayor of Dijon in Burgundy, who popularized the drink by offering it at receptions to visiting delegations. Besides treating his international guests well, he was also promoting two vital economic products of the region – blackcurrants and white wine.
The main course was the “salty” end of the recipe with 
Once the chicken has been treated with the Boursin, you build a complete casing for it using coarse salt, flour, rosemary, thyme, baies, peppercorns and egg whites. It ends up looking like a bomb, but part of the fun of this recipe (and, yes, food should be fun too!) is, prior to serving, showing your guests the cooked “bomb” and seeing if any of them can guess what’s inside. Then, of course, you take it back to the kitchen and remove the salt crust (which takes a certain amount of brute force and muscle!)
Once you have opened up the crust, you will find (every time without fail) a perfectly cooked golden brown bird, ready to be segmented and served in portions or, very simply, placed on a serving dish and carved at the table. We served ours with mini Brussels sprouts and new potatoes. No need for any sort of sauce or gravy, the moist chicken meat was more than enough – particularly when helped down with a couple of bottles of Domaine du Landetran, L’Ame des Schistes 2010 (well, come on, be fair, there were four of us!).
For the main course, we took an easy option (for us) and served 
After a selection of cheeses (with a little more St Emilion!), dessert was a Gâteau Creusois and a Carpaccio d’Oranges à la Cannelle (Orange slices with cinnamon). Together, a nice simple, refreshing and tasty way to finish the meal (particularly since it took a new bottle of Saint Emilion to help it go down!).
Meanwhile, a combination of storms and high tides has given The Island a real pounding with many of the sea walls damaged, some shops and homes flooded and everybody huddled indoors waiting for summer! Fortunately, the island is hilly, so we don’t get many places where water lays on the land for long periods such as they are experiencing in Somerset.
However, all’s well that ends well because Penny is coming round tomorrow night to help us finish the raclette ingredients that we had with Terry and Julie last week! We have just enough for three people, Steve’s away and Penny’s not on call, so it sounds like a good excuse to dig into the wine cellar and see what’s available – I love it when a plan comes together! Who cares about the weather?
We kicked off with a starter that our neighbours, Julie and Terry, on the Isle of Man had made for us just before we came back to France… 
Our main course was 
After the cheese, we finished off with M-D’s famous 
We decided on a 
The verrines we made were stupidly simple. The first was tomato with fresh goat’s cheese. We placed two 400g tins of chopped tomatoes into a pan, crushed in a garlic clove and a bit of salt and freshly ground pepper, then brought it to a gentle rolling boil until all the juice had evaporated and only the pulp was left. This, we left to chill. Once cold, we placed about two teaspoons of the tomato pulp into the bottom of each glass. On top of that we crumbled about 1-1½ teaspoons of fresh goat’s cheese which we had broken up with a fork. Drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil over each and dress with chopped fresh basil – and yummy … lovely as an apperitif or, as we did, with a tapas selection.
All of this, of course, was washed down with several decent-sized glasses of sangria which M-D had made three days earlier (it tastes better when it’s prepared in advance). Depending on your guests’ ability to quaff the fruit of the vine, you can change these quantities to suit yourself. This time, there were just four adults but I know that both Terry and I can manage our way to the bottom of the glass without too much difficulty! So we used 3 x 750ml bottles of 14.5% red wine (a rather palitable Bordeaux – 2010 Coteaux du Languedoc called L’Ame des Schistes). The actual recipe is as follows (ingredients below are for 1 litre of red wine. For 4 people, use at least 2 bottles, i.e. 1.5 litre – quantities of fruit etc. can then be adapted accordingly). Since the fruits in particular are going to water down the sangria, the wine used should be at least 13% volume. Never use the so-called “sangria mixes” to do this recipe, since they are already watered down.
The Isle of Man is only about 36 miles x 12 miles at its longest and widest points. Today, about 85,000 of us perch on this rock in the middle of the Irish Sea, and every summer we are subjected to hundreds of motorbikes racing through the streets of our towns and villages and around the island on the 37.7-mile Snaefell Mountain Course. Their average speed is over 130 mph and in places they exceed 200mph!
Never mind the visitors, the TT races themselves are extremely dangerous (over 250 rider deaths to date on this circuit). Imagine riding at over 200 mph on tiny, narrow, twisting streets, roads and lanes flanked by stone walls and buildings, dodging manhole covers and stray dogs! Some, including a few former competitors, have called for the race to be banned, but for the most part the riders love the TT. They know it’s dangerous, but they also know it’s the absolute pinnacle of motorcycle racing. It’s the ultimate, and if you’re good enough – and you’re brave enough – then you go for it, regardless of the risks. Personal responsibility and the love of speed triumph the desire for safety here.
Oh yeah – I almost forgot about “Mad Sunday.” One day every year at the TT, they open up the 37 mile course to the public. That means anyone on a motor bike can try his or her luck trying to match the professionals for speed (and insanity!). Imagine, if you can, a Formula 1 or NASCAR event where they let 50,000+ fans onto the track, charging around in whatever vehicle they came in. In recent years, to try and reduce the carnage (and maybe also to give the visitors even more thrills!) the roads have been made one-way for about 8 miles over the mountain section of the course. Big, powerful road bikes hitting their top speeds of 170mph-180mph is not unusual on this section.
Last Saturday evening, we invited our neighbours, Terry and Julie plus Dominic and Kate from over the road for a meal. We decided to mix the best of the Isle of Man with the best of France (as you do!) so (after polishing off a couple of bottles of Champagne with the aperitif) we started the meal with one of our favourites – beautiful fresh Manx scallops, and prepared the excellent 
As we always do, we served the meal French style (dessert last) and I dug around in M-D’s wine cooler and came up with a really nice bottle of 2008 Côtes de Bergerac. The Côtes de Bergerac is a deeply smooth sweet white wine that complimented our 
However, one place that never fails to please is 
As we were out walking the other day, we met one of the local “characters” – a lady by the name of Pauline who, it turns out, is involved in the monitoring of Basking Sharks, which are often found in the plankton-rich waters around the Isle of Man. The Basking Shark is the second biggest fish in the world (second only to the Whale Shark) but it is truly an endangered species. It is a slow moving filter feeder that has a greatly enlarged mouth and highly developed gill rakers. These enormous fish have been measured up to 12.27 metres (40.3 ft), and weighing an estimated 19 tonnes, yet these gentle giants are not aggressive and are harmless to people.
Naturally (as you do) we kicked off with a couple of bottles of fine Vranken Champagne Demoiselle Brut Premium Cuvée (it helps wash down the apperitif biscuits and olives!!)
