Bouillabaisse!

Katie and I have started a tradition of riding our bikes down to the riverside on Sundays and buy food from the market to eat lunch and hang out by the river. Today, we decided to splurge and buy some Bouillabaisse. I had read about this fish stew in a Peter Mayle book and had it on my list of food to try since I got here. It originated in the Provençal city of Marseille and is a stew of numerous fishes, vegetables, and spices. Here is what is in the classic Marseille Bouillabaisse: fish (sea robin, scorpionfish, red Gurnard, conger, lotte or monkfish, John Dory), live octopus, sea urchins, potatoes, garlic, onions, ripe tomatoes, olive oil, garni, fennel, saffron, salt and Cayenne pepper.

Good stuff but the fish was a little chewy, you must have to go to Marseille to get the real stuff. (Also, in case you are wondering, that white smudge on my hat is flour from the baguette, not bird poop.)

Bon Appétit, girl!

The lunch. The cheese on the left was really good and local from the Basque region of France. Unfortunately, the blue cheese was a little to earthy and fungus-tasting for us. All in all, not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Cahors (Part 1)

For the first week of our Février (February) vacation, we decided to stay closer to home. We wanted to explore some cities around Bordeaux. Since it was still too cold to head southwest to the beach towns of Aquitaine, we decided to head east along the Dordogne and Lot River to the city of Cahors and the surrounding towns.

Here is a picture of the of the medieval cathedral, Cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Cahors, and the market in which we picked up some food for later in the day. Everything was much cheaper than we were used to. Give it up for small towns!

OK...part of the reason we chose Cahors was because of the AOC (appellation d'origine contrôlée or in other words, Cahors and the surrounding region) are known for their wines...the black wine...the malbec grape! We have had many malbec wines from the "new world" such as Chile and Argentina and loved the wines that we tasted. The price vs. quality were also good deals. Many of the new world malbecs, we found to be spicy and peppery. We wanted to see what the "old world" had to offer and the difference in taste. We caught the bus to the next town of Douelle. This is where we originally we were going to rent bikes and ride around to vineyards, but in the town, we found many small wineries that were happy to let us try their wines without an appointment! This is big for France and for us, since we are more spur of the moment planners and a majority of wineries here require you have to have an appointment which can entail many phone calls or emails to nail down the right person you need to talk to make an appointment. Anyways, here is a picture in front of the first place that we stopped.

Cahors wines and the malbec grape are known to be powerful and tannic wines so they need time to settle down a little bit. Most of the wines that we tasted were anywhere from 5-10 years old which was really interesting to taste. These are much older wine than we are used in terms of the "new world" wines. Much of the spiciness was much more subtle and you get more dried fruits as opposed to fresh fruits. At this place, the man was friendly and talkative, we liked this bottle and offered to buy one but the man just gave it to us, for free!!! A good, free bottle of wine, can't beat that!

Cahors - The legend of Malbec. A picture of the chai - the wine cellar.

Here is a picture of the outside.

The road leading to the next stop.

A picture of the famous black wine with the official glass of the Cahors region.

After some tastings, we had a picnic lunch at the bus stop with some food we picked up at the market in front of the church in Cahors. Rocamadour cheese was a specialty of the region. Made from young goats milk. Not our favorite but glad we tasted it.

Some dried sausage and the bleu de brebis cheese that started our love affair with these types of blue cheeses. Not sure what it was about this cheese but it was so unbelievably good!!! My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Hold on a sec, I am going to run to the store and get some right now...
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...still here? Cool. Ever since we had this cheese, we have steadily been buying different kinds of blue cheeses, Roquefort is still the favorite, St. Agur is a close second.

I wish we would have gotten a picture of the lady that helped us with the tasting here. She was so nice and excited to see us. She spoke great broken english to us and I tried to speak French in return. It was a great time. I love supporting small businesses like this!!!

A tabac/restaurant that we grabbed a café to warm up. I thought the ambiance was awesome and truly european. Stone walls, cat on the bar, to the right was a huge fireplace where wood logs crackled & kept us warm and an old lady with a warm smile ran the place.

A view of a small river filled with fish that ran through Douelle. The church steeple in the background.

The bridge that led to the town.
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That night, after wandering around all day, we were tired and hungry. We walked around the whole city trying to find a place to eat. We ended up eating at a crêperie that offered crêpes as well as a regular menu too.

We made the right choice! Here is my appetizer of mussels in a safron cream sauce.

Katie's appetizer of pâté...not bad, but I shared my mussels with her.

Happy travelers.

For a digestif, we tried another regional specialty, pruneaux d'Armagnac. We THOUGHT we were just getting a drink- usually a digestif is a very small and strong drink, but this turned out to be a glass of prunes in a liquor. The verdict: delicious.

Yum. How do you know that you are getting old?? You start to eat and love the taste of prunes. If that is true than Katie and I are well beyond our years because we do love them especially the Pruneaux d'Agen (prunes from the region of Agen)

Another angle.

Cahors is famous for their medieval bridge: Le Pont Valentré. The city is also littered with other medieval leftovers.

A look at the cobble stone and tower on the bridge.

Another angle.

Not a medieval remanant but a modern lock used for lowering boast between stretches of water. The reason for the picture: when I asked Katie "Do you know what this is used for?" After thinking long and hard on the possibilities, she replied "did they take a bath in it?"

Once we crossed the bridge on the other side of the river, there was a trail that we hiked up and snapped this shot of the bridge.

Some friends that joined us on the hike up.

The view from above.

A video with the panoramic view.

A view of the middle tower of the bridge and the stone devil that was added. Essentially, the story goes, the architect supposedly made a deal with the devil to help complete the bridge but just before the completion, the architect devised a way that it could not be finish. Click here for the actual story (Much better than my telling of it). When they restored the bridge, they put the stone devil to immortalize the story.

Here is the Arc de Diane part of the Gallo-Roman baths.

The tower of La Barbacane, a midieval gateway into the city.

The living quarters of the La Barbacane
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After walking around the city, we figured, why not try and walk to a few vineyards outside the city? They didn't look that far on the map, right? They were farther than we thought. We got a little outside the city and decided it was too far, getting too late and turned around. In all, I think we walked about 7-8 miles.

Here is yet another view of the bridge from another angle on the walk back into the city.

Valentine's Day Dinner

Katie and I decided to cook a nice dinner at home for dinner for Valentine's Day. We headed out to the market, where we picked up a fish and some red peppers for dinner then headed to the La Vinothèque de Bordeaux for a few bottles of wine.

We always seem to see something at the market that you just don't see in the states. Here, you can buy a chicken to go. I'm not talking about a roasted or a Kentucky Fried kind, a live chicken in a to go box. I was just as intrigued as the little boy in front of me.

I have only been fishing once or twice and unfortunately never caught anything, so I have never had the pleasure of gutting a fish. Katie and I bought a whole fish and decided to try the do-it-yourself method as opposed to buying it fileted. After looking up a few videos online on the correct method, the doctor was ready to operate. As you can see, I was a little nervous.

Start from the bottom fins and cut forward.

An unnecessary photo, but I wanted to give you the full effect. All in all, gutting a fish was pretty easy, we will probably start buying more fish this way in the future. After we had the fish in the oven, we started on the first course that Katie had prepared for us.

Salade de chèvre chaud: Lettuce, toast, tomato, slices of bûche de chèvre (goat cheese) drizzled with honey. Mouth watering delicious!

We paired it with a Bordeaux Rosé that was fantastic and was only 4-5€! It was clean and crisp with some notes of strawberry and raspberry on the nose.

For a side dish, we roasted peppers in olive oil and sprinkled them with salt. They were good but little did we know that they were as hot as habanero/jalapeño pepper, hot! We only had a bite or two and saved the rest for another meal.

The finished producted: oven roasted fish covered with butter, lemon, salt and pepper.

Reds don't usually par well with most fishes but we wanted to buy a little bit more expensive bottle for Valentine's Day and we love red wines. So, we bought a red. This is a second wine of Château Pichon Comtesse de Lalande (Second Cru Classé in the 1855 classification) called Reserve de la Comtesse 2004. It is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. It had very distinct cinnamon quality to it on the nose along with a slight hint of pine and chocolate. We were very happy with the purchase. Paulliac wines are some of the favorites that I have tasted here, unfortunately, they are also very expensive.

It was a really good meal, not much was left as you can see.

Wilco - A.M. playing in the background for dinner music.

Chocolate and Wine

Ok, so we are THAT couple who takes pictures of the food that we make. We love to cook, so why not? This was a homemade pizza that we made from scratch. The dough was hand made by yours truly and included wine in the dough. We made one pizza into three types: half was pesto for the sauce with garlic, onions, tomatoes and fresh mozzarella for the toppings. Another quarter was balsamic vinegar sauce with red onions, bleu d'Auvergne (blue cheese) and tomatoes. The final quarter was olive oil, tomatoes, and slices of bûche de chèvre (goats' cheese) drizzled with honey. Awww yeah!

After a fantastic lunch, we hopped on our bikes and went to see a Valentines chocolate display competition held at l'Hôtel de Ville (Mayor's office). Needless to say, there are some talented Chocolatiers in Bordeaux. Here are just a couple of the intricate design, all in chocolate!

The room smelled delicously good like chocolate. We didn't have to ask where the room was, we just let our noses guide us.

Later that night, we had a glass of wine at a local wine bar called Apero. Our kind of place. I liked the wine barrels as tables, nice touch. Chairs look really cool, but not the most comfortable.


Us.

Our first charcuterie plate in France which is wierd because Katie and I used to make this for dinner often in the states.