Le Figou et les figues

While our usual fromagerie was closed in August I bought our cheese, milk, butter, and eggs from a stand in the covered market in our neighborhood.  One of our favorite finds from the stand in the market was a raw goat’s milk cheese called Le Figou.  It is shaped like a fig and has a fig preserves tucked into the center of the piece of cheese.  The cheese has a fluffy, light texture and a faintly sweet flavor.  It was amazing, especially with some of the Sancerre wine we bought on our trip to the Loire Valley.

After having fresh figs at a dinner party, I decided to go for a fig-themed wine and cheese dinner one night and paired the fig goat cheese with fresh figs.  The figs were delicious with the goat cheese and it was fun to try out a fruit that neither of us has eaten much in the past.

Sancerre

I realized this week that I had not shared any of the pictures we took while visiting other small villages around the Loire Valley back in July.  We spent one of the days that we were in the area being driven around the Pouilly-Fumé and Sancerre wine regions by a guide and went back to the town of Sancerre for a second day after seeing how gorgeous it was.

Producer of J's favorite Pouilly-Fumé

Sancerre from afar (it's the town on top of the hill)

Garden at the Maison des Sancerre

Note the tractor cab in the garden: they had a game where you had to pretend to drive the tractor to trim the grapevines.  J was not great at it, but I was so spectacularly bad that if I had been driving a real tractor I would have tipped it over.  Twice.

Chateau de Tracy

Tasting room at François Crochet.  This was one of my favorite tastings.  I really liked both their red and white Sancerres and the owners were very friendly.  They gave us the name of a wine shop that sells their wine and a few favorite restaurants in Paris.

A few more pictures from in and around the town of Sancerre:

Picnic dinner

Our condo in Chicago had a good-sized deck facing west.  The building is one of the taller ones in the neighborhood and we were on the top floor, so the view from the deck stretched across the city.  While I saw more sunsets than I would have liked from my office window instead of from our deck, we loved any chance we had to eat dinner outside while watching the sun go down.

When we were apartment hunting in Paris we hoped we would end up in a place with a little balcony, but were not lucky enough to find one.  Without a deck or balcony, we’ve tried using the city as our unofficial backyard by finding restaurants with outdoor seating, taking long walks, and having the occasional picnic.

J wanted to try to fit in at least one more picnic before the weather cools down, so I met him on the Pont des Arts one evening this week.  We sat on the bridge and had a simple dinner of fresh strawberries, some baguette from our favorite bakery, white wine and a lentil salad with goat cheese and walnuts.  

All over the bridge there were people out for a walk and having picnics.  As we ate, the sun dipped lower in the sky and bathed the scene with a rosy glow.  It was not the same as our dinners on the deck in Chicago, but was just as fun.

Le mais frais

I had been bemoaning the lack of corn on the cob in Paris to a friend before we went to Sweden, but since we’ve been back it seems like corn is everywhere I turn.  I’ve seen it at the market, my friend mentioned that it was all over her market, and we received a few ears in our panier this past Friday.

I used our two ears of corn in a zucchini, corn and basil risotto and in a salad with the greens, tomatoes and the red pepper from our panier as well as chicken (cooked in this sauce), black beans, jalapeños (from Stockholm) and a chili-spiked cheese (also from Stockholm).  

Though I've found fresh jalapeños in London and Stockholm, I have yet to find any of the fresh chili peppers typically used in Mexican food (habañeros, jalapeños, poblanos, serranos, etc.) in Paris.  I also have been unable to find fresh tomatillos here and resisted the temptation of buying one of the dusty 7-euro cans of tomatillos that I saw in a shop one time. Needless to say, one of the reasons I am excited about our upcoming trip to Chicago is having access to ingredients that I've missed.  Until then, I’ll keep using the dried chiles that my sister gave me for my birthday and enjoying the fresh corn while I can find it.

Things I learned in Stockholm

People drink a lot of coffee and there are a lot of good coffee shops.

7-11 stores are everywhere.  They sell bus tickets, postage stamps and bulk candy.

7-11 on the street where we were staying

There really are Swedish fish candies in Sweden, but they are just called pastellfiskar (pastel fish).

It’s not the pickling of pickled herring that I object to, it’s the herring.

Temperature is relative.  People were dressed in shorts and tank tops in Stockholm’s 70-degree weather and in jeans and long-sleeved shirts in Paris’s 99-degree weather.

As delicious as lingonsylt (lingonberry jam) is, rårörda lingon (fresh lingonberries stirred with a little sugar) is even better.

Everyone speaks English beautifully.  I know about 100 words of Swedish, but the only ones I used were hej and tack (hello and thank you). On the other hand, J frequently spoke Swedish with people and I found it highly entertaining to see him speaking Swedish with people other than his family.