Month: July 2011

Tartare de Beouf is made by taking 250 grams of raw beef mince, making a hollow in the middle of the round mound and into this, cracking a raw egg. Preparation time, 2 minutes, cooking time, nil. Sharon said the look on my face when it arrived at the table was priceless. Two nights ago I ordered steak at a restaurant and at least it was lightly singed even though the inside was absolutely raw. The juices hadn’t even had time to run! Now on the table appears a mound of raw mince, ten capers and three cherry tomatoes. I looked over to the waiter to see if he was on the phone laughing with his mate in Montsoreau who gave me the raw steak, but he was going about his business as normal. I told Sharon to stop laughing and because her chicken had a chance to go cold,  eat it before it did so. I poured copious amounts of Holbrooks sauce and Tabasco on small portions of the red meat but could not stand the sounds of the mournful lowing from the dying beast as it went down so I covered the remaining portions with a serviette and made a cross with my knife and fork on top.

When the waiter returned, he said with a smile in his eye and a hint of a grin around his mouth, “Did Monsieur enjoy his meal?”

[Sam’s Edit]
That’s a crack up Dad, I had to include this video just in case your wonderfully crafted words don’t paint the picture for everyone.  It did for me and this is exactly what I pictured… Haha

Montsoreau was lovely, the monthly markets were on yesterday with antiques, furniture, books, food and the like. It went all day so the town was very busy. We tried our French and bought lunch and dinner which I cooked. The afternoon was spent visiting the Abbey at Fontevraud where Richard the Lionheart is buried and then returned to town to rest in a bar and have a few beers, sketch and watch the Tour on French TV. Andre, our host, gave us a bottle of local red when we left. We drove to Les Sables-d’Olonne through country roads, villages and farms. This place is on the coast north of La Rochelle and has a beach which is about a kilometre long and 200metres deep. There are thousands on the sand.

We drove into Candes – St Martin, having seen it mentioned in the Charming Villages of France and that was enough to have a look around. A cobbled path led to the top of a hill for a panoramic view of where the Loire meets the Vienne River. What goes up must come down and Sharon used me as a walking stick to the bottom, where she momentarily lost her hat for the second time in the Church of Saint Martin. This town is where he died after visiting here to solve someone else’s problem.

A young man was running an interactive display of the wildlife of the area and we spoke to him for a while. He had good English. He learnt in Dorset! A table like a butcher’s block had a mason’s chisel and hammer and he asked if I’d like to try my sculptor’s hand at chipping into the local tauffur stone, which is used to make all the local buildings. It was soft and easy to work and as the rough stone already had the basic shape of a head,  I decided to turn it into a dog. Chips were flying and dust was rising and I attracted quite a following. The young man said to Sharon, “He works with confidence. Has he done this before?”

I thought I might brag about my effort with my vermiculite block, the One Hung Low that hides at home in the garden behind the bamboo,, but didn’t quite know the words to explain myself without getting into too much trouble.  I worked at the dog’s snout and thought I’d etch a groove to emphasize its nostrils. It was developing quite well until I noticed an English woman staring at my creation with a strange look. Looking again at what I’d roughly carved, I realized that perhaps my dog snout looked rather like a penis and quickly erased it with the file. The Italians were better sculptors than the French!

We found a comfortable place to stay at Monsoreau, on the river, quiet, with a garden of grape vines, mulberry tree and bananas,  caged budgerigars, cockatiels, finches and parrots. It feels like home so will stay for a couple of days to unwind.