France's (frozen) Cultural Heritage

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There are many facets of the French dream....chic women sipping mineral water in pavement cafes, old men in berets playing boules in sunlit southern squares, a glass of pink wine on the terrace as the sun sets over the  fields of lavender behind your holiday home, quaint villages silent in the heat of noon, the wine...and the food.

Yes, the food.

UNESCO evidently shares the dream as it listed French gastronomy as part of its intangible heritage programme in 2010, together with gingerbread making in northern Croatia and the technique of making leak proof joints for Chinese junks, which makes the hype about this in the French press somewhat overblown...but,there, if it is not overblown it could not be hype.

Following the earlier jacking down of the VAT rate on restaurant meals from 19.6% to 5.5% all should have been plain sailing in the world of fruits de mer and vol au vents, but someone has thrown a (frozen?) baguette in the roues.

The National Assembly is debating a proposition to oblige restaurateurs to mark with an asterisk items on their menus which are made from fresh produce, as opposed to those  using frozen or pre prepared products.

Panic in the dove cotes!

Why should this be?

After all, according to UNESCO's Paris press office one of the factors influencing the listing was
'The choice of good products, mainly rural, the assembling of dishes and wines, the decoration of the table and the gestures of smelling and tasting what has been served on the table.'

All right, you have to depend on the customers for the smelling and tasting bit...but the rest, the 'choice of good products, mainly rural' etc  is under the control of the restaurateur, so where is the problem?

One does not imagine, does one, that all this stuff that comes to your table under silver domes, lifted in unison by waiters rejected by the national synchronised swimming team, is anything but the result of' 'the choice of good products, mainly rural'?

No imagination is needed.
One knows.

Madame Cuistot will be seen in Leclerc loading up with special offer charcuterie and bags of mixed salad for her lunchtime buffet menu at the local caff..

The Argel delivery van will be unloading frozen cassoulet at the back street restaurant in Chiottes la Gare...

The Brake delivery van will be doing likewise with civet of hare at the market place restaurant in Benitierville...

While Monsieur Tourne-Fric, owner of Chateau Blanchelinge, has taken his own refrigerated van to the branch of Picard in the next big town but one to avoid
A. Frozen food delivery vans being seen to drive up to his restaurant...
and
B. Being seen by any of his clients in the car park of  the nearest branch.

I was not a great fan of eating out while in France...too many examples of 'le gastro' afterwards, but there is no doubt that good food is to be had...just look at Sarah Hague's evening out at La Reserve Rimbaud....it's just that it is not as prevalent as the French dream would have you believe.

I used to find that a fair clue was the length of the menu.
If it was more than a page long and promising everything from pike in yellow sauce to veal kidneys flamande then you could take a fair bet that the training of the kitchen staff owed more to smart co ordination of freezer and microwave than to co ordination between stove and table.
How would it be possible to offer so much if everything was cooked from scratch?
The waste bins would be overflowing with goodies and the night would be peopled with frugally minded British expats in balaclavas filling their carrier bags.

Good places have small menus..and that goes for the top of the range place right down to the caff, though there is a caveat with the caff....the menu is so small it might just be the 'plat du jour' and when that 'plat du jour' is andouillette it might be preferable to retire before hostilities commence.

How will you know if the 'plat du jour' is andouillette?
Because as you open the door of the caff a smell resembling the Calais sewers in an August heatwave will hit you.
That's how.

There was a brasserie in Angers which I used to like when in the area...it was big, busy and bustling and had a few staple items plus one or two specials, so the kitchen could concentrate on getting things right.
It wasn't cheap, but it was good.

Not cheap either and generally not so good used to be the 'chateau' restaurants where a lot of emphasis was laid on the decor, the gardens, the lighting...but not so much on the food which was either straight from the freezer with a bit of decor or the chef owner's interpretation of 'fusion'.
Fission might have been a better description of some of the combinations on offer.
And nuclear my reaction on seeing the prices!


We occasionally stepped into these hallowed palaces of hype when we had had visitors who would persist on wanting to take us out as a thank you....though we felt that it should have been the other way round for all the pleasure and laughter they gave us, not to speak of the shopping, the cooking and the washing up!
It would have been more than churlish to refuse, however....the ladies had packed frocks and intended to wear them.

The whole afternoon before the evening reservation, every bathroom and most of the bedrooms would be occupied by ladies undergoing titivation while the men anaesthetised themselves on the balcony with a few cold bottles, only to disappear into the garden for something or other the moment the ladies emerged, primped and preening.
By the time whippers in had been sent to gather the men, all the bathrooms and bedrooms would be occupied again by men being pushed unwillingly into something more formal than shorts and polo shirts and the whippers in re titivating themselves.
You needed a pack of collies to keep that lot under control.

The GPS would be confiscated and we would set off in convoy travelling dark country lanes which seemed to become narrower at every turning until the back end of the convoy would start flashing headlights to signal alarm and despondency.
It was fatal to stop and go back to reassure them that yes, you did know where you were...yes, you did know where the chateau was...because inevitably the driver of the last car had a concealed GPS about his person which was intent on sending him to the destination via two motorways and a grass track.
It was safer just to drive on until reaching the chateau gates, where a lighted drive led you to the car park which was usually some distance from the restaurant area so that views of the gardens could be preserved.

High heels scrunching on the gravel...and the party stops for the man who managed to evade his wife's surveillance and kept on his sandals who now has gravel under his socks and will not go a step further until it is removed.
Wife displeased and vocal.
The man holding open the doors of the restaurant puzzled.

Arriving in the bar to a sotto voce argument about sandals going on in the background, the whole farce would swing into action....aperitifs and nibbles.....ordering, requests for translation followed by disbelief...'foie gras and hibiscus jelly?!.... 35 euros for a bit of pollock?!....more aperitifs, male muttering about enough of these whiff-whaffs and where was the grub?...and we're in the dining room, all chandeliers, table linen in strange pastel colours guaranteed to clash with the food and the inevitable wonky table.

I'm not sure whether it was because it was a party of foreigners or whether the serving staff were picked on the basis of looking as though there was a bad smell under their noses but almost inevitably there was an air of condescension about the service which would degenerate into downright disapproval as one member of the party, having become disgruntled at the wine waiter's practice of keeping the table's wine at a distance and going into a trance whenever one tried to catch his eye, got up and brought the wine coolers to the table where the party served itself.

Rosbifs......no idea how to behave...

It was fun to dress up and go out, but I think I had more pleasure in some of the little places we dropped into by accident, coming back later than expected and in no mood for cooking.

One such was on the edge of a hunting property, a cottage with long tables and benches, where Madame served pate, stew and cheese.
Take it or leave it.

We took it....and so did a big party coming in shortly afterwards, led by an ex President of France.
We ate pate, stew and cheese, drank wine from the store kept by for the Ex's parties and finished the evening to a chorus of trompes de chasse playing out in the road with half the village gathered to enjoy it.

Forget the lilac table linen and the chandeliers...that was real ambience.

And that was one place that would have had no problems with the asterisks.

Food is in the air for St.Valentine's Day

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There are a number of ways in which Costa Rica falls short of being an earthly paradise, and availability of wine is one of them.
Hideously expensive if imported, thanks to tariffs and taxes...a situation not likely to be amended even under the new free trade treaty with the European Union because, as remarked solemnly by a national daily paper, the reduction of tariffs on wine imports from the EU is a good thing as it will allow shops to make a bigger profit on selling it....
If produced in Costa Rica, then it is one of those tastes I have no wish whatsoever to acquire.
If I want warm, sickly stuff that fizzes then I'll just leave the Coca Cola out of the fridge.

So seeing a new brand of wine in the box on sale at Pali...Walmart's supposedly low price outlet...at about a euro cheaper than the usual brand.... I thought I'd try it, but it was an experiment doomed from the start.

Firstly, I managed to drop it on the floor and, clearly being made from low price cardboard, it burst.
I then had to balance the remains between my feet while driving home down gravel roads which would give the Big Dipper a run for its money in the thrills stakes...luckily the car is an automatic.
After all that I stuck it in the fridge to give it a chance to show what it could do...and it did.
It took the enamel off my teeth.
Examination of the box showed that it was a red wine from Spain...which claimed to be a world best seller.
As paint stripper, they might be right.

Whatever it was sold for, it certainly shouldn't be for drinking, so, flying in the face of all the advice that a lousy wine will make a lousy sauce, I made a beef stew with it...and the stew was brilliant!

Food was in the air that day.....The Return of the Native had been blogging about a curry competition at her local....then a friend told me about a chilli cook-off at a gringo cafe the other side of the Central Valley...so after all this I felt like going out to eat that evening.

But there was nowhere to go.

To be more accurate, there was nowhere that I would have wanted to go to closer than the capital, forty five minutes away, where there is a great choice of good places to eat, and I didn't feel like driving that far only to be obliged to go without wine because of the new drink driving laws.
That's why we go to restaurants at lunchtime...and travel on the bus.

Still, even though I had to settle for a home made stew that evening, it was not one of the things which count against Costa Rica as an earthly paradise.....there was nowhere to eat out in the evenings when we lived in rural France either...and there we didn't have the option of getting a bus!

I've always thought the French reputation for gastronomy over rated.....there were a few good places and a lot more for which 'pedestrian' would have been a compliment (here) and because I've usually lived out in the sticks it had to be good to get me to drive there and back.

Mark you, I was visiting my dear friend the Old Biddie, when last in France and she has a restaurant nearby which would have had me driving down there once a week...even if it took me all day to get there and all night to get back!
Food beautifully cooked and presented, a sensible wine list and good service. A real pleasure to go there.
I believe it is run by foreigners....
Why couldn 't they have taken over while I still lived in France!

Twice I've lived near enough to a village to walk down to the cafe in the square....the first time when I'd just moved to France and it was a steak frites sort of place, friendly and good value: the second time many years later in another village, another steak frites type of place, whose doorway I never darkened.

I had met the proprietor before in his previous establishment where he dished out the pork chop and frites that his wife cooked and then, having secured his prey, started moaning on about his hard life and times.
The story was not gripping and the pork chop was not fresh.

However, he clearly gripped someone.

A Dutch couple had been spending their holidays at the campsite at that village for years. The husband's hobby was star photography and apparently there was no loom of lights in that area to spoil his exposure...or whatever it was.
They must have been unusual for Dutch in that they did not bring all their provisions with them to France, but used to go to the pork chop dispenser for their evening meals and became quite friendly with him.
When an order was served on him to retile his kitchen and bring everything up to the norms for establishments serving food they offered to finance him, but then, on getting the estimates, decided it would be better to buy a cafe elsewhere and set him up in business, paying them a small rent.

Thus he arrived in my village.

He must have had a talent for making foreign friends, for an English couple living down the road from me were also friendly with him, and not only recommended him but also took their friends there. Frequently.
They must have been especially fond of pork chops.

French villages being what they are, events are kept local....so he was in line for everything from the old age pensioners lunch to the chasseurs' banquet. Captive trade as it were.
The OAP event passed off pretty well.. Delays in service don't worry the OAPs  as long as there is wine on the table and the room is warm.
The chasseurs' banquet was not a success, however. They supplied the venison and he forgot to marinade it.
Those with false teeth found it hard going. The offer of pork chops instead did not meet with the appreciation he had expected..

Still, heartened by his experiences, he decided to offer a St. Valentine's Day evening...if you see what I mean.
The set menu went up in the window, and he even put an advertisement in the local rag.
Such was the response that he had to open up the second dining room....and by seven o'clock on  the fourteenth of February the joint was jumping.
In honour of the occasion he had drafted in supplementary waiting staff and the aperitifs circulated rapidly...no delays this time!

His customers were seated and the first course was served...all was still going well.....it was by then eight o'clock and there was a happy buzz throughout the two rooms as people awaited their main course.

Let it just be said that the buzz became less happy as by nine o'clock only a fraction of the clients had been served.....and my English neighbour said that their party had finally been served at eleven o'clock, by which time the wine had been looked on when it was red and things were getting decidedly noisy.

Guy had not attended the St. Valentine's Day  event...he always considered that the man must be allergic to dust and that the slow service was accounted for by his fear of raising any by some swift movement....but he did have all the gossip.

So what went wrong? He'd taken on extra staff after all.

Ah! In the dining room, yes, but not in the kitchen. He had over one hundred people there for his set menu.

Yes, but with a set menu it must have been arranged to be easy for the kitchen, surely?

You would think so, wouldn't you. So what possessed the cretin to make steak with bearnaise sauce the main course.....when the only cook was his wife and the only source of heat a two burner gas stove?

Just surprised it wasn't pork chops.

Unfulfilled promises

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You are a Frenchman with a British neighbour. Her behaviour begins to intrigue you.
Night after night, all through the summer, when all honest citizens should be watching television, you see torchlight, moving methodically round the garden. Occasionally you hear her cursing. Then she goes indoors again. Night after night.

What, you ask yourself, would you be doing if you were out in your garden at night with a flashlamp?
The obvious answer is that she is burying her money so that the taxman can't get his hands on it. She obviously fears fire in the house which would destroy the traditional mattress. Chapeau, les anglais! They can learn a thing or two from us after all!
But we French can always go one better. You find the catalogue from the travelling tools van and look at the price of metal detectors.

You remember, however, that she owns a metal detector. You have seen the kids using it when the family visit in the summer. No need, then, to buy one. You can borrow hers, and nip over there when she goes shopping.

Perhaps, however, she is using it herself to try to find gold buried in the last war by the then owner, who died without heirs and was decidedly dotty by the time she passed on. Obviously, she would not want to be seen in daylight looking for treasure.
Why, then, did she let the kids try it out?

Goodness only knows with these foreigners. You return to the television.

Well, what I am actually doing, risking life and limb on the uneven ground in the dark, is snailing. And slugging, though the less said about these dreadful orangey red monsters the better. Even the ducks won't eat them.
I get buckets of the things - snails, that is - and another haul when I trawl the stone garden walls after rain.
They can decimate my veg garden in very short order and as I believe in attack being the best form of defence, since they come out at night...so do I.
It's a bit like the phrase I remember being applied  to the football player Norman 'bite your leg' Hunter.
'Get your retaliation in first.'

My idea is to feed the snails to the ducks, who think this is a great treat, but I have to be careful that I only feed as fast as the ducks can eat otherwise the snails live to eat my lettuce another day. I also have to remember to put a cover and a huge stone on top of the bucket to prevent its' occupants from doing a bunk.

Didier's idea is that I should collect the snails, so that his wife can clean them and they can be eaten.
My postlady has the same idea, only differing in that it is her grandmother who will be cleaning them.
There are more than enough for all contenders...ducks, Didier and the postlady.
However, all of them only want the big ones.
What am I supposed to do with the rest?

The postlady suggested keeping them in cages to fatten up...but I'd probably have to declare this activity as being agricultural in nature and would end up having to pay what is called the 'cotisation de solidarite'' to the Mutuelle Sociale Agricole. In other words, coughing up to contribute to farmers' pensions without touching a penny myself as I would not have contributed over enough years to qualify.

I remember receiving the first form from the MSA - the farmers' pension fund - in my second year in France. It required details of how many rabbits I kept, chickens ditto and so on ad infinitum. It demanded money.
I showed it to Monsieur Untel, seed rep extraordinaire, who said I'd got it because the land that went with my house was classed as agricultural. I needed to change its' use to leisure.
He kindly took me to the local office and sorted it out - not without difficulty, because I clearly remember him saying at one point
'Does she look like she keeps pigs?
Obviously I did not. My land was reclassified and I never saw the form again, but I have no wish to be denounced for illicit snail fattening activities at my age.

What I actually do with the small ones is to take a walk and release them near the duckstealer's place.

In France, in the summer, all sorts of villages have fetes and fairs, each featuring a particular speciality in the gastronomic line.
There is the melon fair, the giant cassoulet fair, the mussels and chips fair, the ham fair and, of course, the snail fair.
In the past it was the women related to the organisers who would prepare the snails, collected by the efforts of just about everyone who owned a bucket, and Didier's wife showed me how it was done.

The snails had to be purged of anything toxic they might have picked up and Didier's method was to put them in the drum of an old washing machine so all the muck could  drain through the holes.
After about five days, he would put the hose into the drum and wash as much muck off them as possible, and then transfer them to buckets for a more drastic wash.

His wife then took over. She would lay the snails in the huge stone trough outside the house and layer them with salt, turning them thoroughly. The snails would release the mucus, their defence mechanism, and she would keep turning them until she was satisfied that this process had been competed. She would announce that this process was  very good for softening the hands.
I am waiting for the cosmetics industry to harness this knowledge, but cannot even begin to imagine how the publicity would be phrased.

The snails would be hosed off, then boiled for three minutes after which the process of extricating them from the shells would begin. She used a two tined fork - a bit like a pickle fork. I was fine with this part, having extracted winkles from their shells at the seaside shellfish stands in my youth.

When she cooked snails for the family, she did not return them to their shells, just reheated them in butter with a little garlic and lemon juice, but for the fair, she would wash and dry the shells, put two snails back into every shell and stuff the solid garlic butter - butter mashed with the garlic and lemon juice and chopped parsley added - into the shell.

Nowadays, the snail fair still exists, but the product is bought in, ready prepared. No more soft hands in the village.

I had never intended to eat a snail, but they do turn up on the dinner tables of rural France, and I have, accordingly, eaten them.
It is yet another of the unforeseen hazards of life in the country. I do not agree that they are better than fillet steak, as Guy proclaims - though, given the nature of some of the fillet steak I have eaten in France he might have more of a point than I think - and I do reckon that all you taste is the butter, which is why I prefer the simmered version to the in-shell option, where there is proportionally more butter and I get indigestion.
Madeleine told me never to eat snails in the evening, and, as usual, her advice was sound.
At lunchtime, I can walk off the effects...at night, never, and bending over to harvest snails after a meal of their colleagues would be fatal.

What brought about this post?
Well, you know how something becomes so familiar that you take it for granted?
I was messing about with the blog the other day and noticed that in the subtitle I had promised wine, notaires, expats, estate agents, chasseurs, maires, presidents, gendarmes...all of whom or which have appeared...but also sex and snails.
Which hadn't.
This is snails.

Is it food to die for?

A friend is arriving shortly, and I am looking forward to the Red Cross parcel she will be bringing. The Marmite, cheddar cheese and fresh indian spices are keenly anticipated, as are the golden syrup and suet. The French may make rude remarks about English cuisine, but I've never known any of them refuse a second helping of treacle tart, while the home made Christmas puddings are now not just accepted, but requested!

The big problem will be finding somewhere to have lunch. These days, I have given up going out for pleasure as I have been disappointed so often, but friends and family have the kind instinct to take out their hosts as a relief from the cooking and washing up. Give me the washing up any day over the overpriced and sub standard offerings which are the norm in my locality!
First, you have to beware of the places that announce their menu by price not by what they propose to serve. One encounter with a cow intestine sausage was enough to ensure I never entered such a place again....if they are too idle to write out their menu it doesn't hold out too much hope for the cooking! Recommendations have to be treated with caution.....a full plate cares much more weight in local opinion than the quality of what is served on it and I don't fancy tired charcuterie and salad leaves washed in bleach solution all bought in from the local supermarket. I can grate vegetables and buy cold meat myself...I can cook a steak the way I like it rather than having it ruined by a chef with his own ideas on what the customer should want and I can have a decent bottle of wine rather than paying over the odds for rubbish and risk being breathalysed on the way home. A place has to be good to overcome all these obstacles and, at the moment, I know of only one.

There is such a place in a tourist town some forty minutes' drive away and it is a great place to take visitors. On a riverside street there is a shabby courtyard surrounded by green painted railings where a brown door alongside leads you to a corridor with a toilet at the far end, a sink against the wall and another door into the bar itself. Here you have an authentic workman's caff of the 1920s, with its huge bar and mirrored display of bottles, while tables and bentwood chairs line the walls and battered iron tables lurk outside under faded umbrellas in the summer. The proprietor is now in his late seventies, a rotund, white haired gentleman in white overall, slippers and, in winter, woolly hat, who shuffles round to take the orders of his customers. The regulars are local workman and some surprisingly colourful ladies, but tourists get the same courteous attention, even if regulars on a limited lunch hour get the fastest service. He offers an unchanging menu...crudites to start, beetroot, potato salad, tomatoes and high class charcuterie - yes, I know what I said about being able to buy it myself - steak and chips, either bloody or just cooked - and I know what I said about cooks with their own ideas on steak - and the unchanging bottle of house red. Yes, I know I have just contradicted myself, but this place has one of the nicest atmospheres I know, and the chips are the best I have tasted outside Belgium. He was kind enough to tell me which brand of oil he uses and the chips on the home front have undergone a distinct improvement following his advice. The waitresses vary from visit to visit.....either delightful young things in exiguous clothing or a woman of a certain age with views on how her customers should behave. The house dog insinuates himself alongside your chair, the regulars help themselves to a drink from the bar as they chat over their newspapers and this is the only place in which, while waiting for a table, I have ever been given a drink on the house, or, come to that, discussed the merits of DAF cars.

There is only one problem....will he still be alive?

I have had far frostier receptions in my time. There is one hotel with restaurant where you are either welcomed with open arms or receive the cold shoulder depending on four elements...if you have been able to reserve in person AND have been lucky enough to meet the chef's dogs while so doing AND like dogs AND the dogs like you, then it is the arms. If not all of the above then it is the shoulder. At least, thinking it over, I can find nothing else to account for the difference. If I am invited by a dog approved person, all goes swimmingly from the moment that Madame - wife of chef - beams as you open the door to the moment that her husband emerges from his kitchen flanked by the dogs to accept the gratitude of his customers for what has been a superb meal. If invited by those not vetted by the dogs then either it is impossible to reserve a table, or if you have slipped through the net by getting the trainee receptionist who believes in encouraging trade then while the food is still superb Madame wants to rush you through your meal, sulks if you resist and the evening is enlivened by the slam of plates hitting the table. As it is a long way off, the necessity of making two trips, one to book and one to eat, ensures that I only go if invited by someone on the dogs' list who lives nearby.

The last expedition to a local restaurant was a disaster...you sympathise with the Russians fighting on seventeen fronts when you've had this sort of experience. The site was pleasant, on decking over a lake, and the menu did not look too large to be authentic.....when it offers everything under the sun you know that the freezer and the microwave take the majority place in the kitchen. We ordered oysters. Word came from the kitchen that oysters were off. Monsieur et Mesdames did not realise that oysters had to be fresh, so they were not available, we were told, by a snooty young waitress who refused to respond to our French and insisted on using English. Since we had just seen them on sale in the local supermarket, we could only imagine that the staff were too idle to nip down and buy them. We ordered something else as a starter and ordered filet of salmon, fish gratin and steak as our main courses. The salmon was approaching raw, and the steak was an amalgam of gristle and fat, undercooked to the point of having just been defrosted in the microwave. Madame could not eat it, and asked for a doggy bag. The waitress decided at this point that she did not understand in either English or French, and the steak was whipped away. The pud was fine, in fact, good....an assortment of desserts....but the coffee was rank. The waitress was no longer in attendance, being busy patronising another table of English customers, but we finally obtained the bill and were set to leave. Where was the doggy bag? Our waitress had gone incommunicado, so Madame invaded the kitchen, where the steak was lying on the table.....had it been forgotten or was there some hope among the staff that they could palm it off on some other customer? She demanded a bag, scooped up the steak, and we were away. That afternoon, the fish gratin made itself felt with a bout of food poisoning for Monsieur. We cooked the steak before giving it to the dog. He was all right.ri

Black puddings and black cassocks

I have just had a Proustian moment. It was not a madeleine dipped in lime tisane....what a revolting combination...but a black pudding from a new butcher..well, a butcher new to me. It was disgusting...gobbets of fat, skin like a black bin bag and no noticeable flavour. It was not cheap. The neighbour's dogs are going to find themselves with something different for lunch today when they make their usual appearance. If their restaurants had customers as loyal as these, celebrity chefs would have no trouble with their banks! However, disgusting though it was, it led to thoughts of happier experiences.

Black pudding used to figure on the breakfast menu of the little caffs in London which I used to frequent when I was first working, all those years ago. Succulent and sizzling from the pan, its' earthy flavour lifted the breakfast out of the ordinary....mark you, the owners of those little caffs knew how to keep customers happy...hot plates, freshly cooked food and fast service. These days, the London business rates have pushed them out of the prime spots and probably out of business altogether to be replaced by miserable dens where waiters with attitude attempt to make you regret ever contributing to their wages.

French black pudding was different....not hard tubes like the U.K. version, but soft and squishy in the raw state and sometimes with additions, like chestnuts, onions or hot peppers. I had the choice of brand name puddings or the butcher's own...and all were different. I learned another way to cook them, too, spread on bread and toasted under the grill. The hunt for the best black pudding was on!

If buying from the supermarket charcuterie counter I discovered that it was safe to buy them when they were on special offer as the turnover was rapid and the product was super fresh...otherwise, forget it. If buying brand names from the ready use counter, then most were uninteresting, but a new name was worth a try. For a long time I had super black pudding with chestnuts from one of the discount supermarkets, Leader Price, until something went wrong with their supplier's mixing machine and I got alternate mouthfuls of chestnut and pudding but rarely the two together.

Butchers were another matter. Here it was a case of trying them all to see whose seasonings and assembly I liked, and there was plenty of variety. One stall on the weekly market in the nearest big town had a mealy variety like a cross with an Irish oatmeal pudding and managed to keep a consistent recipe...with most butchers, greed would creep in and what started out like a top class pudding...or should I call it a boudin? I never know what is the approved standard for writing about something in another language...would gradually acquire gristle and fat and I would have to look for another supplier. With good butchers, on black pudding day, the queue would be out of the shop, and the absence of queue was an indication that the dirty deeds were going on in the preparation area.

It was difficult, living in the country miles from anywhere, to fit black pudding day into the general round of shopping and necessary visits to offices to sort out yet another fine administrative mess....and what finally finished my black pudding mania was when one butcher, the best, let me down spectacularly by getting religion.
His black pudding day was Sunday, wonderfully timed to attract the most custom to his shop across the square from the church in a far village where I had friends. A group would meet up there for lunch from time to time, all with a previous appointment with the butcher, and Madeleine would harbour all our carefully named parcels in her 'fridge until we went home in the evening.
His black puddings were the best I had ever eaten...no lumps of fat, no gristle, plenty of soft meat in the mixture and a distinct seasoning. Monday lunch took on a whole new aspect...no more wondering whether the cold joint from Sunday would go round...the only problem now being whether the baker's bread could live up to the butcher's pudding!

France is officially a country of separation of state and religion. This means that the church pays the priests and the state pays for the upkeep of the churches and presbyteries. In some areas, anticlerical feeling was strong until a few years ago and some villages would have distinct parties...the better off and the 'deserving poor' being seen at mass, playing in the church band and attending the church amateur dramatic society, the others ostentatiously patronising the bar at the hour of mass, playing in the non church band and attending the non church amateur dramatic society. In my village, where this distinction still lived, the church ADS would be performing improving moral tales and the non church ADS Feydeau farces, all swinging doors, trousers and suggestions of immoral living. State subsidy for experimental theatre had not then hit the backwoods of France, so we still had stuff we could understand played by amateurs rather than pretentious rubbish played by conmen masquerading as actors and paid for from our taxes.
This was also a village where the one public lavatory fit for use by both sexes was placed...Clochemerle fashion...next to the church and, in a crowning act of republicanism, was firmly shut on Sundays.

It was to this village that the bishop sent his troublesome priest. Well, to this village and the four surrounding it, vocations being in short supply of recent years.

This young man had firm views on returning the godless to God...the church should once again be the centre of the village and, moreover, the worship should be traditional. In Latin. This was probably why the bishop had sent him out into the wilds, a bit like Don Camillo but for different reasons. He did indeed shake the place up. The older people liked the return of the mass in Latin and the return of ritual, even if Marie-Yvonne, entering the church on Good Friday and discovering the young priest outstretched on the floor in the crucifixion position, did run to call the doctor. He found that English chapels were closing and selling their organs, so raised funds to buy and install them in his churches and started classes in organ music for young people to try to revive a musical tradition. His churches began to fill as people from a wide radius heard of the brand of catholicism he offered, and he was to be seen everywhere, a tall young man in a black cassock on a one man evangelistic mission.

Unfortunately, his zeal took him to the butcher's shop. As far as he was concerned, the only place that should be open on Sunday was the church. The butcher capitulated, and that was the end of my Sunday black pudding hunt. It was miles away, his black pudding day was never regular, and as the anticlerical took their custom elsewhere in disgust his trade fell off.

Yesterday, for the first time for months, I was tempted by an unknown black pudding but, as I have recounted, it was inedible. To quote a quote of a quote
'Thou hast conquered, pale Galilean.'