On the Move - La Combe en Perigord
Nov. 11th, 2001 12:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillibetAfter less than a week at home together after our October travels, it was
time to head out again for France. Several months ago Beckie pointed me to
an article in the Boston Globe's travel section about this place called La
Combe en Perigord and it sounded so wonderful that we decided to visit.
Most of the weeks in their season are structured as cooking classes, with
visiting American chefs teaching courses focusing on the special ingredients
of the region. That sounded interesting, but we were unable to fit any of
those weeks into our schedule, so instead we chose one of their non-class
weeks entitled "La Vie en Perigord" (Life in Perigord) and were very glad to
have the opportunity to explore an area new to both of us with such pleasant
guides.
The proprietors, Wendeley Harvey and Robert Cave-Rogers, are a lovely
couple. She's originally from Australia, while he's English and grew up in
Wales. They have both lived all over the world--London, Hong Kong, Bangkok,
etc.-- but met in San Francisco, where they were both working in
publishing. They married three years ago and bought this place about the
same time. They are a fun couple and obviously extremely fond of each
other, but they do tend to bicker and pick on each other at times in ways
that can be a bit awkward. Robert is much more interested in the history of
the area, while Wendeley is more inclined to tell stories of the present day
and the way of life in the region. They have no other full-time staff,
although they employ two people part-time, a local woman named Marie Therese
who reminded me of my third-grade teacher, and a Belgian woman named Bib,
whose bibulous habits make her somewhat careless with the china, but she's
such a hard worker, Wendeley finds her help invaluable during the season.
There is also a gardener and an extra driver, Fred, whom we didn't see after
the first day.
La Combe is located in a small valley outside the town of Les Eyzies de
Tayac. They've done some major renovation and reconstruction of the farm
and have created a very lovely place. The main house has their living space
and a couple on extra rooms upstairs and a lovely great room with a
fireplace separated by furnishings into a living room and dining area. The
original kitchen has become a library, with a wine cellar under construction
beneath it. The building at the other end of the house, which was the pig
barn, is now a huge, gorgeous, homey kitchen. The former barn, across a
small courtyard from the main house, now serves as guest quarters. Our room
was beautiful, with a large bathroom and sitting room downstairs (with a
single day bed) and a lovely queen-sized sleigh bed up in the loft under the
original, exposed beams. The amenities included little bowls of dried
roses, honeysuckle soap and lovely lavender bath salts. They provided
bottles of wine and water in the rooms and we were encouraged to serve
ourselves from the fridge as we liked. The overall effect was a very
comfortable elegance that made an extremely pleasant home for our week.
We had thought of splitting our journey with a night in Paris either coming
or going, but with all the travelling we've been doing, we decided not to
extend our stay. We departed on the Eurostar from Waterloo--fortunately we
arrived early, since Jason had forgotten his passport and had to make a
quick roundtrip cab ride to collect it. We took a cab across Paris from
Gare du Nord to Montparnasse--after standing in line for half an hour for
Metro tickets before giving that up as a bad idea--and were just in time to
catch the TGV for Angouleme. Robert met us at the station in Angouleme and
we had a two-hour drive back to La Combe through the beautiful countryside
on a lovely day. La Combe has two mini-vans and usually we were split
between them, but sometimes Wendeley would beg off to get things done back
at the farm and we would all pile into the larger 7-seater. We would have
preferred to do that all the time, rather than splitting up the group, as it
made for an odd dynamic of who-goes-with-whom. It was wonderful to be
driven around by people who know the area, rather than having to navigate
our own way and try to figure out what is open and worth seeing.
The Perigord region, around the town of Perigeux, is also known as the
Dordogne region, since that's the major river running through it. There are
several smaller rivers that flow into the Dordogne in this area and the
landscape tends to be made up of small valleys between rolling hills. It's
some of the prettiest countryside I've visited, with fields and woods dotted
with isolated old farmhouses ranging from newly restored to picturesquely
dilapidated and a fine assortment of castles and chateaux from various
periods. There are walnut groves and cornfields and lots of livestock. The
primary breeds of cattle are the russet Limousins and the beige cows called
"Les Blondes d'Angouleme," although we also saw some black & white
Holsteins. There are sheep and goats and an endless variety of poultry:
ducks, geese and chickens.
There are lots of dogs around, though we didn't see many cats. Wendeley and
Robert have two dogs: a terrier/shepherd mix named Rufus and Tattoo, whose
papers from the local humane society had something under "breed" that
sounded exotic, but turned out to be French for "mongrel cur." We liked
Rufus a lot; he had a charming trick of begging by sitting up on his
haunches and crossing his front paws. Tatty was less endearing, her main
trick being a liking for walnuts, which she would crush up and leave the
shells on the rug once she'd extracted the meat.
We had expected good food during the week and got it in spades, but the best
meals tended to be those that Wendeley prepared for us at La Combe. On our
first night she welcomed us with a salad of lettuces and walnuts dressed
with vinaigrette and topped with baked cabecou (the local goat cheeses),
followed by an excellent roast lamb served with roasted figs, onions and
black trumpet mushrooms, with white beans and garlic and spicy tomatoes on
the side. Every meal included a platter of a variety of French cheeses that
she carefully identified for us. That first night we tried Banon (a creamy
cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves), Cantal (a local cheese sold young,
medium and old and ranging from mild and soft to quite sharp and hard),
Epoisse (one of the strong, creamy cheeses so typical of France), and
Roquefort, among others. Dinner that night was rounded out with a tasty
apple cake served with creme fraiche. Each morning Wendeley prepared a
simple breakfast buffet of muesli, yogurt, fruit (fresh raspberries or
strawberries and dried apricots and prunes), pastry, juice and coffee. It
was good, although by the end of the week we were ready for more variety.
La Combe can accommodate up to twelve people besides the hosts, but they
typically have eight guests at a time. This week, the last of their season,
there were only five of us. Scott was a gentleman in his fifties from Santa
Fe, although his Long Island roots were very clear. At our first stop on
Sunday he bought a beret that suited him perfectly and made him look like
the stereotypical Frenchman. His companion, Alice, is a fund-raiser for
Kenyon College in Ohio and has spent quite a bit of time in France over the
last twenty years and had the best French of our group--including our hosts.
Robert's command of the language is stronger than Wendeley's, but neither of
them is fluent. The other member of our group, Ellen, is a fascinating
woman from Brookline, MA, who spent seven years working as an archeological
photographer for the University of Tel Aviv before attending the Cordon
Bleu's pastry course and working as a chef in the Boston area for ten years.
Carpal tunnel problems forced her to give up pastry and she is now a
paralegal for an immigration lawyer.
Ellen did treat us to a display of her talents in the form of an almond cake
with strawberries and whipped cream on Monday night after another wonderful
home-cooked meal starting with a tray of smoked salmon served with blinis,
sour cream, capers, onions and lemon, followed by chicken thighs roasted
with lemon and garlic, served with couscous and some very tasty green
beans cooked with hazelnut oil and fresh nuts. And, of course, some cheese.
During the day we made excursions from La Combe to see some of the many
interesting landmarks of the region. As we were told a bit too often, many
of the usual attractions are closed for the season by this time, but we had
a busy week and managed to take in a lot of the history and culture of the
area, past and present.
It was very interesting to see where the food we were eating came from. We
saw three different local markets, two small ones in St. Cyprien and Le
Bugue and a larger, somewhat more tourist-oriented market day in the larger
town of Sarlat. Wendeley did a very good job of making the markets
interesting to us, pointing out local delicacies and unusual products and
introducing us to some of the vendors. There was a tall, blonde Dutch woman
selling gouda and honey wafer cookies that we ran into at all the markets
and a goat cheese vendor who closely resembles Al Gore. The sausage vendors
were very aggressive, encouraging passersby to try their wares--delicious
concoctions of duck, donkey, stag and boar as well as varieties of pork
sausage and cured hams. We saw a wider range of squashes than we usually
get in the States and live chickens and ducks. In Sarlat there were more
permanent stores selling the high quality local knives and other goods as
well as endless amounts of fois gras--much of which we purchased. In Le
Bugue we were shown to a pottery vendor down at the very end of the market
with wonderful ramekins and casserole sets for astonishing prices. We
bought a set of six ramekins together with a salamander for making creme
brulee, all for about $10.
In addition to the markets, we followed three local products further
upstream. We stopped briefly at a goose farm one afternoon to watch the
twice-daily "gavage" or force-feeding of the geese as their livers are
engorged for fois gras d'oie. They are herded into pens from their usually
territory outside. A machine moves down the central aisle, with a tube
attached. The farmer moves into a pen, herding the geese against the wall,
grabs each one, sticks the machine's tube down the bird's gullet and dispenses
a dose of corn mashed with goose fat, then releases the bird to the other
end of the pen. Goose droppings aren't the most pleasant-smelling manure
and it's not exactly a pretty process, but I wasn't horrified by it. Robert
mentioned that the geese don't seem to actually like it as the ducks do, but
they don't seem traumatized by the experience.
We also visited a nut mill. It has been operating since the 16th century on
the same site with very few changes to the process. Power is provided by a
water wheel turning a drive shaft connected to the three machines involved.
The shelled nuts are loaded into the grinding trough 30 kilos at a time.
The millstone takes about 45 minutes to mash the nutmeats into a fine paste
that is then transferred to a griddle heated by woodfire below to a
temperature of approximately 100F. Stirred constantly for another 45
minutes, the oil in the nut paste is liquified by the heat. The warm mash
is then shoveled into a burlap-lined iron sieve and twenty tons of pressure
is applied to force the oil out of the nutmeat. The resulting dry walnut
flour used to be a staple of the region, but is now used almost exclusively
as animal feed. The oil is filtered and then aged for several weeks before
being sold. In addition to walnuts, they also grind hazelnuts and almonds.
The mill is still a community resource in much the same way it would have
been in centuries past; anyone can bring in a pile of nuts to be processed,
and can pay either in cash or in kind, by leaving 20% of their oil for the
mill to sell. The mill is a tiny, dark, warm room and the smell is so thick
in the air that our clothes smelled of walnuts for hours afterwards. We
sampled a variety of their products and got some walnut mustard and walnut
oil, having gotten hazelnut oil earlier in the week. I look forward to
experimenting with nutty vinaigrettes and marinades.
The third visit to a local producer was one of our favorites of the whole
trip. We drove up to winery about an hour from La Combe, near Montbazillac.
Located within the area of the Bergerac appellation, Chateau Belingard can
lay claim to a history stretching back 3000 years to the days of the druids
who left evidence of their ceremonies on the land. Bergerac was the largest
wine-growing and exporting region in France until the Wars of Religion, when
the king decided to destroy the economic power of the mainly-Protestant area
by levying a 100% excise tax on their wine. It was at that point that the
neighboring Bordeaux region started to pick up the slack and took over the
lucrative wine trade with England. Our guide, Laurent, Le Comte de
Belingard, was very talkative as he showed us around the estate and
explained their wine-making process in detail. It is somewhat different
from the process we knew in California and that and the very different
growing conditions make for wines with very different qualities. In
general, the California wines are sweeter and stronger, with less tannin,
and suitable for drinking quite young, while most of the Bergeracs are less
alcoholic and not as sweet, with richer tannins and will be at their best
several years after bottling. We enjoyed talking with Laurent and tasting
his excellent wines and were so stunned by their prices (the red we liked,
which we would have expected to pay at least $20 for in Napa, was only $7
per bottle--it has a wonderful, round flavor of black cherries) that we
bought a case of six: three of the red, two of a citrusy white and one of a
sweet Monbazillac that made both of us think of applesauce.
Two of Robert and Wendeley's closest friends, Nick and Veronica Hudson, were
along for that excursion and joined us afterwards for lunch at L'Imparfait
("The Dwarf," meaning Toulouse-Lautrec, apparently) in Bergerac itself. I
think we had all had a bit much of each other by that point in the week and
it was a relief to have new people to talk to, but it would have been fun to
meet the Hudsons in any case. They ran a restaurant in Barbados for years
before retiring a few years ago to live in Limeuil, not far from La Combe.
We had a great time talking to them while I had an excellent meal (duck
rillettes (spam-like coarse paste), puff pastry with seared scallops and red
snapper, and a good entrecote steak smothered in sauteed shallots) and Jason
struck out (bland cured salmon and lamb chops served too rare to be tender).
Dessert there was the same for all of us: a plate of small dabs of parfait
and ice cream in various pastry shells.
That day was the worst weather of our trip and it was pouring as we ran back
to the van. A visit to Chateau Monbazillac was on the schedule, but it was
already late in the day and we weren't inspired to go dashing about in the
downpour any more than necessary. Our weather over the week was mixed.
When we arrived it was about 70F and sunny, which continued through the next
day. In the middle of the week it became foggy, then misty, then finally
rainy, before clearing up again and getting quite bitterly cold.
Travelling up and down the valleys of the Vezere and Dordogne rivers, we
visited several of the tiny towns of the region, with their buildings in the
local honey-colored stone with red tile roofs. Each town has a covered
colonnade marketplace that made me think of the basilicae in the fora of
Rome. In St. Avit de Seigneur we visited one of the abbeys that served as a
fortified shelter for the pilgrims to Compostela and had lunch next door at
the Relais de Compostela. Many of the restaurants our guides usually use
are closed for the season by this point, so this was a bit of an experiment
for all of us and the proprietor was really showing off for us, serving us
her homemade fois gras--the best we had on the whole trip--as well as her
version of the local traditional garlic soup and a choice of either roast
guinea fowl or poached salmon fillet with a sorrel cream sauce. At some of
the restaurants we were free to order from the whole menu, but at many of
our stops our hosts had consulted with the chef in advance to plan a menu
for us, always with at least a choice of main courses. The planned dessert
at the relais was an incredibly rich chocolate mousse--the bite I had
reminded me of pure ganache--but I talked them into giving me raspberry
sorbet intead.
I doubt we would ever have found some of the smaller chapels Robert had
discovered by roaming over the countryside. Several times we passed one of
the four chapels that Richard the Lionheart built in the area as part of his
family's penance for his father's role in the murder of Thomas Becket. We
actually got inside two chapels that have fresco cycles painted in the 12th
century. One has a remarkably Byzantine Christ on its ceiling and a very
lively depiction of St. Luke's bull symbol. That one was surrounded by a
small churchyard with large family tombs still covered in chrysanthemums,
which have become the flower of All Saints Day. The tombs were also
cluttered with little granite plaques bearing brass lettering saying "A
notre chere cousine," or "Mi grand-pere," or simply "Souvenir et Regrets."
The other chapel, in St. Genies, stood alone on a hill and its walls,
decorated in the same period, focused on the martyrdoms of various saints.
The town of Cadouin was another stop on the Compostela route and also a
pilgrimage destination in its own right, for people wanting to see the
shroud that was said to bear the image of Christ--like the more famous one
in Turin--until its provenance was questioned in the 18th century by someone
who noticed the embroidery on the cloth mentioned the Egyptian rulers of the
11th century. The abbey there is now a very nice youth hostel, with a big
oven in the courtyard that must make a great place to congregate in the
evenings. Lunch at the Relais de l'Abbaye across the street included more
of the garlic soup, a salad with smoked duck breast and cabecou, grilled
lamb for me and duck breast in peppercorn sauce for Jason. Wendeley
promoted their ice cream heavily, so Jason and I shared delicious pear and
cassis glacee.
This whole section of France was disputed territory between the French and
English during the Hundred Years' War and then the Wars of Religion
continued to make fortifications a very good idea up through the 17th
century. We visited a couple of "bastide" or fortified towns. Montpazier
has a lovely central square, surrounded by antique shops. Wendeley took us
by a shop selling local pottery products and we got a couple of soup bowls
and plates and a pretty blue pitcher that will serve as a utensil bin, vase
or pitcher as needed. Everything in Domme was closed up for the season, but
the gates in the standing walls are fun to drive through and the town is up
on a promontory with wonderful views of the surrounding valley.
Further up the Dordogne we visited Castelnaud, a castle whose foundations
date back to the 12th century. It was built up over the next four hundred
years and now houses a large collection of arms and armour, as well as
several trebuchets and other siege engines. A shop at its foot sells
miniature models of various castles and chateaux of the region. I got a
cookbook at the gift shop that Robert and Wendeley recommended as having
good histories and pictures of the local chateaux as well as some
interesting period recipes. We also stopped at Chateau de Cluzeau, a
"maison forte" or "strong house" built on a bedrock outcropping ("cluzeau")
and now housing an antique shop--where we were all a bit nervous to watch
the owners' Great Dane, Jaffa, wandering around like the proverbial
bull--and a wine "cave" where we bought some of the local chestnut liqueur.
The night before we had been served a dash of the liqueur in a glass of
sparkling wine as an appertif at a lovely restaurant called L'Oustalou ("The
Gazebo"). Our meal there started with a plate of mises en bouche ("put it
in your mouth") for the table including skewers of prunes and bacon, olives
and miniature quiches. Then there was a plate for each of us with a couple
of bites of delicious smoked salmon, followed by a another bowl of garlic
soup-- this one had sorrel in it, which added a lovely lemony flavor to the
mix. Jason chose the fillet of dorade (sea bream) in a light black bean
sauce for his main, while I had the duck breast in elderberry sauce. Once
again I got them to substitute a non-chocolate dessert (ginger creme brulee,
in this case) for the chocolate cake filled with cherries in chocolate sauce
that Jason enjoyed. Several people chose to join me for the creme brulee,
since they'd already had the thick chocolate mousse that afternoon.
Too much food was a problem on the days that we ate both lunch and dinner
away from home. Sitting through a three hour, four course lunch, followed
by a couple hours of sightseeing, doesn't leave much room for a four hour,
five course dinner. The whole area shuts down at noon and nothing is open
again until 2:30 or 3:00pm. So a long lunch accomplishes not only getting us
fed, but also entertaining us until the local sights re-open for the
afternoon.
One of the best lunches we had in that regard was at Sarlat, where we ate
family style, sharing plates of a variety of cured hams and sausages, a nice
salad with artichoke hearts and hard-boiled eggs, big rounds of bread
covered with meats and cheeses like rustic pizzas, and a lovely
"tartiflette," like potatoes au gratin with ham and Reblochon cheese. That
place, Chez Le Gaulois, always puts on Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra when
Robert and Wendeley come in, which suits their 1950's decor. The finishing
touch are the shells and carved wooden coconuts in which they serve their
famous ice cream sundae desserts. Jason had a black cherry sundae--tasted
like Robitussin to me--while I had a bit of vanilla on a tart of autumn
fruits that was quite delicious. Best of all, we could manage our own
portions and leave ourselves with room to appreciate dinner.
In general, that was also true when we ate at La Combe and days when one of
our meals was there were easier. One night Wendeley served us pumpkin soup
with a dollop of Roquefort melting in it, followed by a wonderful osso buco
(braised veal, unusually in white wine with no tomatoes, since Ellen didn't
eat them) on pasta baked with bread crumbs and parmesan, with roasted endive
as our vegetable. With the ubiquitous cheese course and a lovely fruit tart
for dessert, that was one of the best meals we had. Wendeley was very
willing to adapt her menus to our tastes and curiosities. After we all
noticed a very odd, pointy green cauliflower in the marketplace, she
prepared it for us in a cheese sauce as the side to a dinner of sliced
roasted duck breast and pasta with mushrooms. We started that meal off with
a tutorial on searing fois gras, which we enjoyed with a walnut salad, and
ended it up with a traditional cake made of walnut flour, served with a
compote of dried fruits.
Roasted duck breast is Robert's favorite dinner in the Perigord, since he
doesn't like the way steaks are cut there and it's the closest thing to a
good steak. Fortunately for him, it's on almost every menu, along with
confit of duck, the leg of duck with its skin made crispy. I enjoyed that
for lunch on Tuesday at Le Meynardie in Paulin, a wonderfully cosy old inn
with a roaring fire. Jason and I both started with their veloute (soup) of
pureed winter vegetables, but he chose the roast lamb as his main--another
ubiquitous menu item--and found it poorly cut and too rare. Their excellent
tarte tatin (apple tarte with creme fraiche) almost made up for the
disappointment, while I sampled their goat cheese served with honey. I am
always surprised at how well some cheeses are suited to sweet treatments.
I had a wonderful fraises gratinees (strawberries baked with sweet cheese)
for dessert at La Veuille Cure ("The Old Parsonage") in St. Chamassy on
Tuesday night. My starter there was a nice plate of local delicacies,
including smoked duck breast and a passable fois gras with salad. This was
the only place that escargot were on offer, so Jason tried those and while
he had a bit of trouble wrestling with the shells, the snails were tender
and there was enough garlic butter to make them quite palatable. This
restaurant grills all their meats over grapevine wood and I had thought I
might try their steak after all, but then the proprietor admitted to
Wendeley that the lamb was probably better and the five of us thinking of
steak all switched. I generally had better luck with the lamb than Jason
did, by ordering it cooked medium rare. Jason chose the duck again
there--he is a recent and enthusiastic convert to duck--and was very pleased
with it. Sticking with the tarte tatin was a less successful choice; it was
good, but couldn't match my fraises gratins.
We spent the intervening hours of that afternoon touring Les Jardin de
Manoir d'Eyrignac. The manor house--not open to the public--was built on
the site of an earlier castle that had been burned down. Some of the
toasted stones were used in the reconstruction and can easily be detected in
the facade. The estate's extensive gardens were first laid out in the 18th
century in the formal French style by an Italian designer. They were
remodeled during the 19th century in the seemingly haphazard English style
and gradually abandoned. Forty years ago the current lord of the manor
undertook the re-landscaping of the gardens and had them re-built in the
original French style, with Italian elements. The gardens are mainly
composed of greenery, with many carefully pruned hedges of yew, boxwood, and
hornbeam, punctuated by the vertical shafts of different varieties of
cypress. We were led through them by a young, red-headed woman--the
daughter of one of La Combe's neighbors--who apologized profusely for her
perfectly adequate English. She let us go into the new "white garden" in
which white roses and begonias were still blooming beautifully amid the
hedges surrounding a fountain--identical to the ones at Versailles, she
said--with frogs spouting water into the pool from its lip. The gate is a
Japanese tori, which is echoed by a Japanese-style balcony at the opposite
end of the garden, overlooking a panoramic view of the valley.
Moving further back in history, we visited two of the sites identified with
prehistoric cultures. Research into pre-historic times was pioneered in
France and Cro-Magnon man was discovered just down the road from Les Eyzies,
which is currently completing what is intended to be one of the best museums
in the world on the subject. The area has been inhabited for thousands of
years and there are many sites dating from the Upper Paleolithic period.
The most famous is the Lascaux cave complex with its over 1500 drawings and
engravings dated to the period between 17,000 and 15,000 years ago.
Rediscovered in 1940 and opened to the public in 1948, the original cave is
so vulnerable to the ravages of tourism that it had to be closed in 1963 and
now only a tiny number of people--mainly researchers--are allowed in each
day. In 1983 a replica of the main sections of the cave, called Lascaux II,
was opened about 200 yards from the original. It may not be the real thing,
but it is pretty nifty. Several hundred of the paintings were recreated by
an artist, Monique Peytral, using the techniques as the original artists.
All the pictures I had seen of the figures gave me no idea how enormous many
of them are. Our guide turned off the lights at one point and looking at
the paintings by flashlight they take on a majesty and mystery that is truly
awesome.
The other prehistoric site we visited has a history more contiguous with the
recent past. The cliffside of La Roque-St. Christophe, along the Vezere
river, was inhabited since the Neanderthals started using it around 15,000
years ago. The cliff-face is divided into five terraces or levels, each
hollowed out by the Vezere as it worked its way down through the rock over
millennia. In each one, starting at the bottom, people carved holes into
the rock to use it as an impregnable back wall for their shelters. In the
10th century a fortress was built to protect the local population from
Viking raids and a network of lookout sites was constructed to transmit
horncalls up the river from the coast to give an early warning of attacks.
The fortress and the town that grew up on the terraces above it, survived
through the Hundred Years War, but were destroyed at the end of the 16th
century during the Wars of Religion. Climbing up through the levels--which
are said to be reminiscent of the Anasazi towns of the American
Southwest--there are holes in the walls and floors used as water catchments,
storage cabinets, shelves and suspension points. There's even the remains
of a church, complete with a bell tower carved further up the cliffside. It
was a really fascinating place.
That was my last visit of the trip. After stopping back at La Combe, the
others went down to see the studio of a local artist, Mi Desmedt, but there
wasn't room for all of us in the car that was going and I was happy to stay
at La Combe and catch a nap. Jason tells me that her work is mainly
engraving, focusing on landscapes. The unusual aspect of her technique is a
staggered process in which she engraves a section of a work and prints it,
then adds to the engraving and prints again in a new color. Because of
this, prints created in this way are limited to the initial run. He bought
one and says it's pretty and I've carried back across France and England,
but aren't allowed to see it for another six weeks. Mi is originally from
Belgium and is the mother of the our guide to the gardens at Eyrignac.
Since she wanted us to be hungry enough to appreciate our farewell dinner,
Wendeley brought us back to La Combe for a light lunch on Friday afternoon.
She was in enough of a hurry that she actually let us help, which she
usually avoided. Together we made a green salad and heated up some pea soup
with smoked sausages from Toulouse (that looked remarkably like hot dogs) in
it. I'm usually not a big fan of pea soup, but this was very good. To our
salad we could add tomatoes, grated celeriac in mayonnaise, and shreds of
fried duck that reminded me of pulled pork.
After the others got back from Mi's studio--and I woke up from my nap--we
all got a head start on packing and changed into our finery for our final
dinner together. For this we drove up to the town of Tremolat, made famous
by Claude Chabrol's film, _The Butcher_. Le Vieux Logis is a charming inn
and restaurant there. It turned out that we were the only diners on this
off-season night and we were very grateful to the staff for showing up just
to serve us dinner. After an appertif of sparkling wine added to a dash of
Armagnac, we started with a few amuses bouches (nuts, rillettes on toast,
fresh tomato on a tiny puff pastry, and something called "Moroccan cigars"
that I think was duck meat rolled in pastry and grilled) and then a spoonful
of finely minced cauliflower served with mint sauce and marinated in a
delicious vinegary sauce that made it taste more like sashimi than the bland
vegetable. As an appetizer I chose to have the duck fois gras one last time
and it was delicious served with Monbazillac jelly, date butter and toasts.
The bread there was wonderful, a choice of sesame crusted white rolls, a
thyme baquette or slices of brown "country bread". Jason's starter was the
sauteed meat from the back of the hare and the liver, minced and sauteed,
served in a crisp pastry tube, both in a red wine sauce. We each took one
of the two offered mains, so Jason got the delicious seared scallops with
girolle mushrooms sauteed in butter with a chestnut puree and a chain of
transparent potato crisps, while I had the duckling (or "canette") roasted
and served in a red wine sauce on a tasty sweet corn cake with more of the
delicious girolles. Before dessert they cleansed our palettes with a few
sections of grapefruit and a tiny scoop of iced sweet cheese with a crisp
round of pastry on top. For dessert, both Jason and I passed up the
super-chocolate option, going instead for the sponge cake soaked in liqueur,
topped with spiced creme fraiche, with vanilla ice cream and tropical fruits
on the side. The petit fours (tiny madeleines, sugar-dusted puff pastry,
Turkish delight, and blood orange pudding) served with coffee were really
too much, but I took a bite of one of them anyway.
The chef was a very lovely gentleman, fairly new to the area. He was
brought in a year ago when the new backers demanded that the inn replace
their old chef and our hosts feel he has done a lot to enhance the
restaurant. After dinner he invited us back into the kitchen to see what
their setup looks like. During one of the cooking classes earlier in the
season he had taught one group to make a few of his signature dishes one
afternoon. He is originally from the Provencal region, but has cooked all
over Asia and the Middle East and it shows in his wider range of ingredients
than most local chefs use.
One last time we headed back to La Combe and one last time climbed into our
lovely feather-topped bed. This morning we got up, packed the last few bits
into our over-stuffed packs, had one last breakfast and hit the road.
Wendeley needed to get a jump start on the clean-up, since she is leaving on
Tuesday for two weeks in Australia, so they hired a taxi to take up the
luggage and people they didn't believe would fit into the big van. Of
course, not realizing a taxi was on the way, before it arrived I had packed
all the luggage into the van with plenty of room left for the six of us.
But since the cab was already there (and paid for), Robert off-loaded our
stuff--which was on top--and us into the cab. We were feeling a bit
ostracized, so when we stopped at the porcelain outlet they'd been using to
tempt us all week--and where we found a lovely white soup tureen at a great
price--Jason suggested a re-organization to Robert and more luggage was put
in the taxi in exchange for the two of us. The taxi headed straight for
Angouleme, while we turned off for the very picturesque town of Brantome
where we walked around a bit in the biting wind and then had a coffee at a
bar in the town square. From there it was a short hop up the road to the
train station at Angouleme. We grabbed sandwiches and boarded the TGV for
Paris. This train had more stops than the one coming down, so it was only
on the last stretch that it really got up to speed. We said goodbye to the
other members of our group at Montparnasse and took a cab over to Gare du
Nord. We were glad we had two hours in this direction, since it took almost
an hour to get across town through some atrocious traffic. It was nice to
see Notre Dame again in transit. We got to the station in plenty of time,
had another sandwich and boarded the Eurostar to Waterloo. Apart from a
brief delay at the Ashford International stop, due to a fire alarm in
Waterloo station, we buzzed right along and made it into London about 8:30pm
and home just after nine. After a week of French food, we were craving
Chinese, so we had that delivered to eat while we caught up on mail.
We're very glad to be home again and to stay for a while. We'll probably do
a couple of weekend jaunts--York, Glasgow, Paris and Brussels are all under
discussion--but we have no big trips planed until we go to Spain at the end
of March. We have guests already booked for most of December, but we're
free for much of the first quarter of 2002 and would love to see you.
Cheers!
E.
For those of you who want the chronology of the trip, here's a copy of our
schedule. The times are approximate.
SAT 03
0653 depart London Waterloo
1115 arrive Paris Nord
1215 depart Paris Montparnasse
1429 TGV arrives at Angouleme - drive to La Combe
2000 dinner at La Combe
SUN 04
1000 visit to St. Cyprien farmers' market
1230 visit to the church and abbey of St. Avit de Seigneur
1300 lunch at Relais de l'Abbaye, St. Avit de Seigneur
1500 visit to Montpazier (bastide town) and 12C chapel
1700 return to La Combe (lamb)
1930 dinner at Restaurant L'Oustalou, Le Bugue
MON 05
1000 visit to St. Genies (12C chapel)
1100 visit to Chateu de Cluzeau (maison forte w/antique & wine shop)
1215 lunch at La Meynardie, Paulin
1500 visit to Jardins de Manoir d'Eyrignac
1700 stop at La Maison d'A Cote housewares shop
1730 return to La Combe
1930 dinner at La Combe (chicken)
TUE 06
0930 visit to Le Bugue farmers' market
1200 visit to church/abbey of Cadouin
1230 lunch at Restaurant de l'Abbaye, Cadouin
1500 visit to Castelnaud
1700 return to La Combe
1930 dinner at La Vieille Cure, St. Chamassay
WED 07
0930 visit to Sarlat market
1215 lunch at Chez Le Gaulois, Sarlat
1500 stop in Montignac
1530 visit to Lascaux II
1700 stop at goose farm to see gavage
1730 return to La Combe
1930 dinner at La Combe (osso buco)
THU 08
1030 visit to Chateau Belingard winery in Pomport
1230 lunch at L'Imparfait, Bergerac
1700 return to La Combe
1930 dinner at La Combe (duck)n
FRI 09
1000 visit to Moulin de la Tour nut mill, Ste. Nathalene
1230 lunch at La Combe (soup/salad)
1430 visit to Roque-St. Christophe
1630 visit to the studio of Mi Desmedt
1700 return to La Combe
1930 dinner at Le Vieux Logis, Tremolat
SAT 10
0900 depart for Angouleme
1030 visit porcelain outlet
1130 stop in Brantome for coffee
1230 arrive at Angouleme train station
1306 TGV departs Angouleme
1345 arrive Paris Montparnasse
1743 depart Paris Nord
2025 arrive London Waterloo
time to head out again for France. Several months ago Beckie pointed me to
an article in the Boston Globe's travel section about this place called La
Combe en Perigord and it sounded so wonderful that we decided to visit.
Most of the weeks in their season are structured as cooking classes, with
visiting American chefs teaching courses focusing on the special ingredients
of the region. That sounded interesting, but we were unable to fit any of
those weeks into our schedule, so instead we chose one of their non-class
weeks entitled "La Vie en Perigord" (Life in Perigord) and were very glad to
have the opportunity to explore an area new to both of us with such pleasant
guides.
The proprietors, Wendeley Harvey and Robert Cave-Rogers, are a lovely
couple. She's originally from Australia, while he's English and grew up in
Wales. They have both lived all over the world--London, Hong Kong, Bangkok,
etc.-- but met in San Francisco, where they were both working in
publishing. They married three years ago and bought this place about the
same time. They are a fun couple and obviously extremely fond of each
other, but they do tend to bicker and pick on each other at times in ways
that can be a bit awkward. Robert is much more interested in the history of
the area, while Wendeley is more inclined to tell stories of the present day
and the way of life in the region. They have no other full-time staff,
although they employ two people part-time, a local woman named Marie Therese
who reminded me of my third-grade teacher, and a Belgian woman named Bib,
whose bibulous habits make her somewhat careless with the china, but she's
such a hard worker, Wendeley finds her help invaluable during the season.
There is also a gardener and an extra driver, Fred, whom we didn't see after
the first day.
La Combe is located in a small valley outside the town of Les Eyzies de
Tayac. They've done some major renovation and reconstruction of the farm
and have created a very lovely place. The main house has their living space
and a couple on extra rooms upstairs and a lovely great room with a
fireplace separated by furnishings into a living room and dining area. The
original kitchen has become a library, with a wine cellar under construction
beneath it. The building at the other end of the house, which was the pig
barn, is now a huge, gorgeous, homey kitchen. The former barn, across a
small courtyard from the main house, now serves as guest quarters. Our room
was beautiful, with a large bathroom and sitting room downstairs (with a
single day bed) and a lovely queen-sized sleigh bed up in the loft under the
original, exposed beams. The amenities included little bowls of dried
roses, honeysuckle soap and lovely lavender bath salts. They provided
bottles of wine and water in the rooms and we were encouraged to serve
ourselves from the fridge as we liked. The overall effect was a very
comfortable elegance that made an extremely pleasant home for our week.
We had thought of splitting our journey with a night in Paris either coming
or going, but with all the travelling we've been doing, we decided not to
extend our stay. We departed on the Eurostar from Waterloo--fortunately we
arrived early, since Jason had forgotten his passport and had to make a
quick roundtrip cab ride to collect it. We took a cab across Paris from
Gare du Nord to Montparnasse--after standing in line for half an hour for
Metro tickets before giving that up as a bad idea--and were just in time to
catch the TGV for Angouleme. Robert met us at the station in Angouleme and
we had a two-hour drive back to La Combe through the beautiful countryside
on a lovely day. La Combe has two mini-vans and usually we were split
between them, but sometimes Wendeley would beg off to get things done back
at the farm and we would all pile into the larger 7-seater. We would have
preferred to do that all the time, rather than splitting up the group, as it
made for an odd dynamic of who-goes-with-whom. It was wonderful to be
driven around by people who know the area, rather than having to navigate
our own way and try to figure out what is open and worth seeing.
The Perigord region, around the town of Perigeux, is also known as the
Dordogne region, since that's the major river running through it. There are
several smaller rivers that flow into the Dordogne in this area and the
landscape tends to be made up of small valleys between rolling hills. It's
some of the prettiest countryside I've visited, with fields and woods dotted
with isolated old farmhouses ranging from newly restored to picturesquely
dilapidated and a fine assortment of castles and chateaux from various
periods. There are walnut groves and cornfields and lots of livestock. The
primary breeds of cattle are the russet Limousins and the beige cows called
"Les Blondes d'Angouleme," although we also saw some black & white
Holsteins. There are sheep and goats and an endless variety of poultry:
ducks, geese and chickens.
There are lots of dogs around, though we didn't see many cats. Wendeley and
Robert have two dogs: a terrier/shepherd mix named Rufus and Tattoo, whose
papers from the local humane society had something under "breed" that
sounded exotic, but turned out to be French for "mongrel cur." We liked
Rufus a lot; he had a charming trick of begging by sitting up on his
haunches and crossing his front paws. Tatty was less endearing, her main
trick being a liking for walnuts, which she would crush up and leave the
shells on the rug once she'd extracted the meat.
We had expected good food during the week and got it in spades, but the best
meals tended to be those that Wendeley prepared for us at La Combe. On our
first night she welcomed us with a salad of lettuces and walnuts dressed
with vinaigrette and topped with baked cabecou (the local goat cheeses),
followed by an excellent roast lamb served with roasted figs, onions and
black trumpet mushrooms, with white beans and garlic and spicy tomatoes on
the side. Every meal included a platter of a variety of French cheeses that
she carefully identified for us. That first night we tried Banon (a creamy
cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves), Cantal (a local cheese sold young,
medium and old and ranging from mild and soft to quite sharp and hard),
Epoisse (one of the strong, creamy cheeses so typical of France), and
Roquefort, among others. Dinner that night was rounded out with a tasty
apple cake served with creme fraiche. Each morning Wendeley prepared a
simple breakfast buffet of muesli, yogurt, fruit (fresh raspberries or
strawberries and dried apricots and prunes), pastry, juice and coffee. It
was good, although by the end of the week we were ready for more variety.
La Combe can accommodate up to twelve people besides the hosts, but they
typically have eight guests at a time. This week, the last of their season,
there were only five of us. Scott was a gentleman in his fifties from Santa
Fe, although his Long Island roots were very clear. At our first stop on
Sunday he bought a beret that suited him perfectly and made him look like
the stereotypical Frenchman. His companion, Alice, is a fund-raiser for
Kenyon College in Ohio and has spent quite a bit of time in France over the
last twenty years and had the best French of our group--including our hosts.
Robert's command of the language is stronger than Wendeley's, but neither of
them is fluent. The other member of our group, Ellen, is a fascinating
woman from Brookline, MA, who spent seven years working as an archeological
photographer for the University of Tel Aviv before attending the Cordon
Bleu's pastry course and working as a chef in the Boston area for ten years.
Carpal tunnel problems forced her to give up pastry and she is now a
paralegal for an immigration lawyer.
Ellen did treat us to a display of her talents in the form of an almond cake
with strawberries and whipped cream on Monday night after another wonderful
home-cooked meal starting with a tray of smoked salmon served with blinis,
sour cream, capers, onions and lemon, followed by chicken thighs roasted
with lemon and garlic, served with couscous and some very tasty green
beans cooked with hazelnut oil and fresh nuts. And, of course, some cheese.
During the day we made excursions from La Combe to see some of the many
interesting landmarks of the region. As we were told a bit too often, many
of the usual attractions are closed for the season by this time, but we had
a busy week and managed to take in a lot of the history and culture of the
area, past and present.
It was very interesting to see where the food we were eating came from. We
saw three different local markets, two small ones in St. Cyprien and Le
Bugue and a larger, somewhat more tourist-oriented market day in the larger
town of Sarlat. Wendeley did a very good job of making the markets
interesting to us, pointing out local delicacies and unusual products and
introducing us to some of the vendors. There was a tall, blonde Dutch woman
selling gouda and honey wafer cookies that we ran into at all the markets
and a goat cheese vendor who closely resembles Al Gore. The sausage vendors
were very aggressive, encouraging passersby to try their wares--delicious
concoctions of duck, donkey, stag and boar as well as varieties of pork
sausage and cured hams. We saw a wider range of squashes than we usually
get in the States and live chickens and ducks. In Sarlat there were more
permanent stores selling the high quality local knives and other goods as
well as endless amounts of fois gras--much of which we purchased. In Le
Bugue we were shown to a pottery vendor down at the very end of the market
with wonderful ramekins and casserole sets for astonishing prices. We
bought a set of six ramekins together with a salamander for making creme
brulee, all for about $10.
In addition to the markets, we followed three local products further
upstream. We stopped briefly at a goose farm one afternoon to watch the
twice-daily "gavage" or force-feeding of the geese as their livers are
engorged for fois gras d'oie. They are herded into pens from their usually
territory outside. A machine moves down the central aisle, with a tube
attached. The farmer moves into a pen, herding the geese against the wall,
grabs each one, sticks the machine's tube down the bird's gullet and dispenses
a dose of corn mashed with goose fat, then releases the bird to the other
end of the pen. Goose droppings aren't the most pleasant-smelling manure
and it's not exactly a pretty process, but I wasn't horrified by it. Robert
mentioned that the geese don't seem to actually like it as the ducks do, but
they don't seem traumatized by the experience.
We also visited a nut mill. It has been operating since the 16th century on
the same site with very few changes to the process. Power is provided by a
water wheel turning a drive shaft connected to the three machines involved.
The shelled nuts are loaded into the grinding trough 30 kilos at a time.
The millstone takes about 45 minutes to mash the nutmeats into a fine paste
that is then transferred to a griddle heated by woodfire below to a
temperature of approximately 100F. Stirred constantly for another 45
minutes, the oil in the nut paste is liquified by the heat. The warm mash
is then shoveled into a burlap-lined iron sieve and twenty tons of pressure
is applied to force the oil out of the nutmeat. The resulting dry walnut
flour used to be a staple of the region, but is now used almost exclusively
as animal feed. The oil is filtered and then aged for several weeks before
being sold. In addition to walnuts, they also grind hazelnuts and almonds.
The mill is still a community resource in much the same way it would have
been in centuries past; anyone can bring in a pile of nuts to be processed,
and can pay either in cash or in kind, by leaving 20% of their oil for the
mill to sell. The mill is a tiny, dark, warm room and the smell is so thick
in the air that our clothes smelled of walnuts for hours afterwards. We
sampled a variety of their products and got some walnut mustard and walnut
oil, having gotten hazelnut oil earlier in the week. I look forward to
experimenting with nutty vinaigrettes and marinades.
The third visit to a local producer was one of our favorites of the whole
trip. We drove up to winery about an hour from La Combe, near Montbazillac.
Located within the area of the Bergerac appellation, Chateau Belingard can
lay claim to a history stretching back 3000 years to the days of the druids
who left evidence of their ceremonies on the land. Bergerac was the largest
wine-growing and exporting region in France until the Wars of Religion, when
the king decided to destroy the economic power of the mainly-Protestant area
by levying a 100% excise tax on their wine. It was at that point that the
neighboring Bordeaux region started to pick up the slack and took over the
lucrative wine trade with England. Our guide, Laurent, Le Comte de
Belingard, was very talkative as he showed us around the estate and
explained their wine-making process in detail. It is somewhat different
from the process we knew in California and that and the very different
growing conditions make for wines with very different qualities. In
general, the California wines are sweeter and stronger, with less tannin,
and suitable for drinking quite young, while most of the Bergeracs are less
alcoholic and not as sweet, with richer tannins and will be at their best
several years after bottling. We enjoyed talking with Laurent and tasting
his excellent wines and were so stunned by their prices (the red we liked,
which we would have expected to pay at least $20 for in Napa, was only $7
per bottle--it has a wonderful, round flavor of black cherries) that we
bought a case of six: three of the red, two of a citrusy white and one of a
sweet Monbazillac that made both of us think of applesauce.
Two of Robert and Wendeley's closest friends, Nick and Veronica Hudson, were
along for that excursion and joined us afterwards for lunch at L'Imparfait
("The Dwarf," meaning Toulouse-Lautrec, apparently) in Bergerac itself. I
think we had all had a bit much of each other by that point in the week and
it was a relief to have new people to talk to, but it would have been fun to
meet the Hudsons in any case. They ran a restaurant in Barbados for years
before retiring a few years ago to live in Limeuil, not far from La Combe.
We had a great time talking to them while I had an excellent meal (duck
rillettes (spam-like coarse paste), puff pastry with seared scallops and red
snapper, and a good entrecote steak smothered in sauteed shallots) and Jason
struck out (bland cured salmon and lamb chops served too rare to be tender).
Dessert there was the same for all of us: a plate of small dabs of parfait
and ice cream in various pastry shells.
That day was the worst weather of our trip and it was pouring as we ran back
to the van. A visit to Chateau Monbazillac was on the schedule, but it was
already late in the day and we weren't inspired to go dashing about in the
downpour any more than necessary. Our weather over the week was mixed.
When we arrived it was about 70F and sunny, which continued through the next
day. In the middle of the week it became foggy, then misty, then finally
rainy, before clearing up again and getting quite bitterly cold.
Travelling up and down the valleys of the Vezere and Dordogne rivers, we
visited several of the tiny towns of the region, with their buildings in the
local honey-colored stone with red tile roofs. Each town has a covered
colonnade marketplace that made me think of the basilicae in the fora of
Rome. In St. Avit de Seigneur we visited one of the abbeys that served as a
fortified shelter for the pilgrims to Compostela and had lunch next door at
the Relais de Compostela. Many of the restaurants our guides usually use
are closed for the season by this point, so this was a bit of an experiment
for all of us and the proprietor was really showing off for us, serving us
her homemade fois gras--the best we had on the whole trip--as well as her
version of the local traditional garlic soup and a choice of either roast
guinea fowl or poached salmon fillet with a sorrel cream sauce. At some of
the restaurants we were free to order from the whole menu, but at many of
our stops our hosts had consulted with the chef in advance to plan a menu
for us, always with at least a choice of main courses. The planned dessert
at the relais was an incredibly rich chocolate mousse--the bite I had
reminded me of pure ganache--but I talked them into giving me raspberry
sorbet intead.
I doubt we would ever have found some of the smaller chapels Robert had
discovered by roaming over the countryside. Several times we passed one of
the four chapels that Richard the Lionheart built in the area as part of his
family's penance for his father's role in the murder of Thomas Becket. We
actually got inside two chapels that have fresco cycles painted in the 12th
century. One has a remarkably Byzantine Christ on its ceiling and a very
lively depiction of St. Luke's bull symbol. That one was surrounded by a
small churchyard with large family tombs still covered in chrysanthemums,
which have become the flower of All Saints Day. The tombs were also
cluttered with little granite plaques bearing brass lettering saying "A
notre chere cousine," or "Mi grand-pere," or simply "Souvenir et Regrets."
The other chapel, in St. Genies, stood alone on a hill and its walls,
decorated in the same period, focused on the martyrdoms of various saints.
The town of Cadouin was another stop on the Compostela route and also a
pilgrimage destination in its own right, for people wanting to see the
shroud that was said to bear the image of Christ--like the more famous one
in Turin--until its provenance was questioned in the 18th century by someone
who noticed the embroidery on the cloth mentioned the Egyptian rulers of the
11th century. The abbey there is now a very nice youth hostel, with a big
oven in the courtyard that must make a great place to congregate in the
evenings. Lunch at the Relais de l'Abbaye across the street included more
of the garlic soup, a salad with smoked duck breast and cabecou, grilled
lamb for me and duck breast in peppercorn sauce for Jason. Wendeley
promoted their ice cream heavily, so Jason and I shared delicious pear and
cassis glacee.
This whole section of France was disputed territory between the French and
English during the Hundred Years' War and then the Wars of Religion
continued to make fortifications a very good idea up through the 17th
century. We visited a couple of "bastide" or fortified towns. Montpazier
has a lovely central square, surrounded by antique shops. Wendeley took us
by a shop selling local pottery products and we got a couple of soup bowls
and plates and a pretty blue pitcher that will serve as a utensil bin, vase
or pitcher as needed. Everything in Domme was closed up for the season, but
the gates in the standing walls are fun to drive through and the town is up
on a promontory with wonderful views of the surrounding valley.
Further up the Dordogne we visited Castelnaud, a castle whose foundations
date back to the 12th century. It was built up over the next four hundred
years and now houses a large collection of arms and armour, as well as
several trebuchets and other siege engines. A shop at its foot sells
miniature models of various castles and chateaux of the region. I got a
cookbook at the gift shop that Robert and Wendeley recommended as having
good histories and pictures of the local chateaux as well as some
interesting period recipes. We also stopped at Chateau de Cluzeau, a
"maison forte" or "strong house" built on a bedrock outcropping ("cluzeau")
and now housing an antique shop--where we were all a bit nervous to watch
the owners' Great Dane, Jaffa, wandering around like the proverbial
bull--and a wine "cave" where we bought some of the local chestnut liqueur.
The night before we had been served a dash of the liqueur in a glass of
sparkling wine as an appertif at a lovely restaurant called L'Oustalou ("The
Gazebo"). Our meal there started with a plate of mises en bouche ("put it
in your mouth") for the table including skewers of prunes and bacon, olives
and miniature quiches. Then there was a plate for each of us with a couple
of bites of delicious smoked salmon, followed by a another bowl of garlic
soup-- this one had sorrel in it, which added a lovely lemony flavor to the
mix. Jason chose the fillet of dorade (sea bream) in a light black bean
sauce for his main, while I had the duck breast in elderberry sauce. Once
again I got them to substitute a non-chocolate dessert (ginger creme brulee,
in this case) for the chocolate cake filled with cherries in chocolate sauce
that Jason enjoyed. Several people chose to join me for the creme brulee,
since they'd already had the thick chocolate mousse that afternoon.
Too much food was a problem on the days that we ate both lunch and dinner
away from home. Sitting through a three hour, four course lunch, followed
by a couple hours of sightseeing, doesn't leave much room for a four hour,
five course dinner. The whole area shuts down at noon and nothing is open
again until 2:30 or 3:00pm. So a long lunch accomplishes not only getting us
fed, but also entertaining us until the local sights re-open for the
afternoon.
One of the best lunches we had in that regard was at Sarlat, where we ate
family style, sharing plates of a variety of cured hams and sausages, a nice
salad with artichoke hearts and hard-boiled eggs, big rounds of bread
covered with meats and cheeses like rustic pizzas, and a lovely
"tartiflette," like potatoes au gratin with ham and Reblochon cheese. That
place, Chez Le Gaulois, always puts on Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra when
Robert and Wendeley come in, which suits their 1950's decor. The finishing
touch are the shells and carved wooden coconuts in which they serve their
famous ice cream sundae desserts. Jason had a black cherry sundae--tasted
like Robitussin to me--while I had a bit of vanilla on a tart of autumn
fruits that was quite delicious. Best of all, we could manage our own
portions and leave ourselves with room to appreciate dinner.
In general, that was also true when we ate at La Combe and days when one of
our meals was there were easier. One night Wendeley served us pumpkin soup
with a dollop of Roquefort melting in it, followed by a wonderful osso buco
(braised veal, unusually in white wine with no tomatoes, since Ellen didn't
eat them) on pasta baked with bread crumbs and parmesan, with roasted endive
as our vegetable. With the ubiquitous cheese course and a lovely fruit tart
for dessert, that was one of the best meals we had. Wendeley was very
willing to adapt her menus to our tastes and curiosities. After we all
noticed a very odd, pointy green cauliflower in the marketplace, she
prepared it for us in a cheese sauce as the side to a dinner of sliced
roasted duck breast and pasta with mushrooms. We started that meal off with
a tutorial on searing fois gras, which we enjoyed with a walnut salad, and
ended it up with a traditional cake made of walnut flour, served with a
compote of dried fruits.
Roasted duck breast is Robert's favorite dinner in the Perigord, since he
doesn't like the way steaks are cut there and it's the closest thing to a
good steak. Fortunately for him, it's on almost every menu, along with
confit of duck, the leg of duck with its skin made crispy. I enjoyed that
for lunch on Tuesday at Le Meynardie in Paulin, a wonderfully cosy old inn
with a roaring fire. Jason and I both started with their veloute (soup) of
pureed winter vegetables, but he chose the roast lamb as his main--another
ubiquitous menu item--and found it poorly cut and too rare. Their excellent
tarte tatin (apple tarte with creme fraiche) almost made up for the
disappointment, while I sampled their goat cheese served with honey. I am
always surprised at how well some cheeses are suited to sweet treatments.
I had a wonderful fraises gratinees (strawberries baked with sweet cheese)
for dessert at La Veuille Cure ("The Old Parsonage") in St. Chamassy on
Tuesday night. My starter there was a nice plate of local delicacies,
including smoked duck breast and a passable fois gras with salad. This was
the only place that escargot were on offer, so Jason tried those and while
he had a bit of trouble wrestling with the shells, the snails were tender
and there was enough garlic butter to make them quite palatable. This
restaurant grills all their meats over grapevine wood and I had thought I
might try their steak after all, but then the proprietor admitted to
Wendeley that the lamb was probably better and the five of us thinking of
steak all switched. I generally had better luck with the lamb than Jason
did, by ordering it cooked medium rare. Jason chose the duck again
there--he is a recent and enthusiastic convert to duck--and was very pleased
with it. Sticking with the tarte tatin was a less successful choice; it was
good, but couldn't match my fraises gratins.
We spent the intervening hours of that afternoon touring Les Jardin de
Manoir d'Eyrignac. The manor house--not open to the public--was built on
the site of an earlier castle that had been burned down. Some of the
toasted stones were used in the reconstruction and can easily be detected in
the facade. The estate's extensive gardens were first laid out in the 18th
century in the formal French style by an Italian designer. They were
remodeled during the 19th century in the seemingly haphazard English style
and gradually abandoned. Forty years ago the current lord of the manor
undertook the re-landscaping of the gardens and had them re-built in the
original French style, with Italian elements. The gardens are mainly
composed of greenery, with many carefully pruned hedges of yew, boxwood, and
hornbeam, punctuated by the vertical shafts of different varieties of
cypress. We were led through them by a young, red-headed woman--the
daughter of one of La Combe's neighbors--who apologized profusely for her
perfectly adequate English. She let us go into the new "white garden" in
which white roses and begonias were still blooming beautifully amid the
hedges surrounding a fountain--identical to the ones at Versailles, she
said--with frogs spouting water into the pool from its lip. The gate is a
Japanese tori, which is echoed by a Japanese-style balcony at the opposite
end of the garden, overlooking a panoramic view of the valley.
Moving further back in history, we visited two of the sites identified with
prehistoric cultures. Research into pre-historic times was pioneered in
France and Cro-Magnon man was discovered just down the road from Les Eyzies,
which is currently completing what is intended to be one of the best museums
in the world on the subject. The area has been inhabited for thousands of
years and there are many sites dating from the Upper Paleolithic period.
The most famous is the Lascaux cave complex with its over 1500 drawings and
engravings dated to the period between 17,000 and 15,000 years ago.
Rediscovered in 1940 and opened to the public in 1948, the original cave is
so vulnerable to the ravages of tourism that it had to be closed in 1963 and
now only a tiny number of people--mainly researchers--are allowed in each
day. In 1983 a replica of the main sections of the cave, called Lascaux II,
was opened about 200 yards from the original. It may not be the real thing,
but it is pretty nifty. Several hundred of the paintings were recreated by
an artist, Monique Peytral, using the techniques as the original artists.
All the pictures I had seen of the figures gave me no idea how enormous many
of them are. Our guide turned off the lights at one point and looking at
the paintings by flashlight they take on a majesty and mystery that is truly
awesome.
The other prehistoric site we visited has a history more contiguous with the
recent past. The cliffside of La Roque-St. Christophe, along the Vezere
river, was inhabited since the Neanderthals started using it around 15,000
years ago. The cliff-face is divided into five terraces or levels, each
hollowed out by the Vezere as it worked its way down through the rock over
millennia. In each one, starting at the bottom, people carved holes into
the rock to use it as an impregnable back wall for their shelters. In the
10th century a fortress was built to protect the local population from
Viking raids and a network of lookout sites was constructed to transmit
horncalls up the river from the coast to give an early warning of attacks.
The fortress and the town that grew up on the terraces above it, survived
through the Hundred Years War, but were destroyed at the end of the 16th
century during the Wars of Religion. Climbing up through the levels--which
are said to be reminiscent of the Anasazi towns of the American
Southwest--there are holes in the walls and floors used as water catchments,
storage cabinets, shelves and suspension points. There's even the remains
of a church, complete with a bell tower carved further up the cliffside. It
was a really fascinating place.
That was my last visit of the trip. After stopping back at La Combe, the
others went down to see the studio of a local artist, Mi Desmedt, but there
wasn't room for all of us in the car that was going and I was happy to stay
at La Combe and catch a nap. Jason tells me that her work is mainly
engraving, focusing on landscapes. The unusual aspect of her technique is a
staggered process in which she engraves a section of a work and prints it,
then adds to the engraving and prints again in a new color. Because of
this, prints created in this way are limited to the initial run. He bought
one and says it's pretty and I've carried back across France and England,
but aren't allowed to see it for another six weeks. Mi is originally from
Belgium and is the mother of the our guide to the gardens at Eyrignac.
Since she wanted us to be hungry enough to appreciate our farewell dinner,
Wendeley brought us back to La Combe for a light lunch on Friday afternoon.
She was in enough of a hurry that she actually let us help, which she
usually avoided. Together we made a green salad and heated up some pea soup
with smoked sausages from Toulouse (that looked remarkably like hot dogs) in
it. I'm usually not a big fan of pea soup, but this was very good. To our
salad we could add tomatoes, grated celeriac in mayonnaise, and shreds of
fried duck that reminded me of pulled pork.
After the others got back from Mi's studio--and I woke up from my nap--we
all got a head start on packing and changed into our finery for our final
dinner together. For this we drove up to the town of Tremolat, made famous
by Claude Chabrol's film, _The Butcher_. Le Vieux Logis is a charming inn
and restaurant there. It turned out that we were the only diners on this
off-season night and we were very grateful to the staff for showing up just
to serve us dinner. After an appertif of sparkling wine added to a dash of
Armagnac, we started with a few amuses bouches (nuts, rillettes on toast,
fresh tomato on a tiny puff pastry, and something called "Moroccan cigars"
that I think was duck meat rolled in pastry and grilled) and then a spoonful
of finely minced cauliflower served with mint sauce and marinated in a
delicious vinegary sauce that made it taste more like sashimi than the bland
vegetable. As an appetizer I chose to have the duck fois gras one last time
and it was delicious served with Monbazillac jelly, date butter and toasts.
The bread there was wonderful, a choice of sesame crusted white rolls, a
thyme baquette or slices of brown "country bread". Jason's starter was the
sauteed meat from the back of the hare and the liver, minced and sauteed,
served in a crisp pastry tube, both in a red wine sauce. We each took one
of the two offered mains, so Jason got the delicious seared scallops with
girolle mushrooms sauteed in butter with a chestnut puree and a chain of
transparent potato crisps, while I had the duckling (or "canette") roasted
and served in a red wine sauce on a tasty sweet corn cake with more of the
delicious girolles. Before dessert they cleansed our palettes with a few
sections of grapefruit and a tiny scoop of iced sweet cheese with a crisp
round of pastry on top. For dessert, both Jason and I passed up the
super-chocolate option, going instead for the sponge cake soaked in liqueur,
topped with spiced creme fraiche, with vanilla ice cream and tropical fruits
on the side. The petit fours (tiny madeleines, sugar-dusted puff pastry,
Turkish delight, and blood orange pudding) served with coffee were really
too much, but I took a bite of one of them anyway.
The chef was a very lovely gentleman, fairly new to the area. He was
brought in a year ago when the new backers demanded that the inn replace
their old chef and our hosts feel he has done a lot to enhance the
restaurant. After dinner he invited us back into the kitchen to see what
their setup looks like. During one of the cooking classes earlier in the
season he had taught one group to make a few of his signature dishes one
afternoon. He is originally from the Provencal region, but has cooked all
over Asia and the Middle East and it shows in his wider range of ingredients
than most local chefs use.
One last time we headed back to La Combe and one last time climbed into our
lovely feather-topped bed. This morning we got up, packed the last few bits
into our over-stuffed packs, had one last breakfast and hit the road.
Wendeley needed to get a jump start on the clean-up, since she is leaving on
Tuesday for two weeks in Australia, so they hired a taxi to take up the
luggage and people they didn't believe would fit into the big van. Of
course, not realizing a taxi was on the way, before it arrived I had packed
all the luggage into the van with plenty of room left for the six of us.
But since the cab was already there (and paid for), Robert off-loaded our
stuff--which was on top--and us into the cab. We were feeling a bit
ostracized, so when we stopped at the porcelain outlet they'd been using to
tempt us all week--and where we found a lovely white soup tureen at a great
price--Jason suggested a re-organization to Robert and more luggage was put
in the taxi in exchange for the two of us. The taxi headed straight for
Angouleme, while we turned off for the very picturesque town of Brantome
where we walked around a bit in the biting wind and then had a coffee at a
bar in the town square. From there it was a short hop up the road to the
train station at Angouleme. We grabbed sandwiches and boarded the TGV for
Paris. This train had more stops than the one coming down, so it was only
on the last stretch that it really got up to speed. We said goodbye to the
other members of our group at Montparnasse and took a cab over to Gare du
Nord. We were glad we had two hours in this direction, since it took almost
an hour to get across town through some atrocious traffic. It was nice to
see Notre Dame again in transit. We got to the station in plenty of time,
had another sandwich and boarded the Eurostar to Waterloo. Apart from a
brief delay at the Ashford International stop, due to a fire alarm in
Waterloo station, we buzzed right along and made it into London about 8:30pm
and home just after nine. After a week of French food, we were craving
Chinese, so we had that delivered to eat while we caught up on mail.
We're very glad to be home again and to stay for a while. We'll probably do
a couple of weekend jaunts--York, Glasgow, Paris and Brussels are all under
discussion--but we have no big trips planed until we go to Spain at the end
of March. We have guests already booked for most of December, but we're
free for much of the first quarter of 2002 and would love to see you.
Cheers!
E.
For those of you who want the chronology of the trip, here's a copy of our
schedule. The times are approximate.
SAT 03
0653 depart London Waterloo
1115 arrive Paris Nord
1215 depart Paris Montparnasse
1429 TGV arrives at Angouleme - drive to La Combe
2000 dinner at La Combe
SUN 04
1000 visit to St. Cyprien farmers' market
1230 visit to the church and abbey of St. Avit de Seigneur
1300 lunch at Relais de l'Abbaye, St. Avit de Seigneur
1500 visit to Montpazier (bastide town) and 12C chapel
1700 return to La Combe (lamb)
1930 dinner at Restaurant L'Oustalou, Le Bugue
MON 05
1000 visit to St. Genies (12C chapel)
1100 visit to Chateu de Cluzeau (maison forte w/antique & wine shop)
1215 lunch at La Meynardie, Paulin
1500 visit to Jardins de Manoir d'Eyrignac
1700 stop at La Maison d'A Cote housewares shop
1730 return to La Combe
1930 dinner at La Combe (chicken)
TUE 06
0930 visit to Le Bugue farmers' market
1200 visit to church/abbey of Cadouin
1230 lunch at Restaurant de l'Abbaye, Cadouin
1500 visit to Castelnaud
1700 return to La Combe
1930 dinner at La Vieille Cure, St. Chamassay
WED 07
0930 visit to Sarlat market
1215 lunch at Chez Le Gaulois, Sarlat
1500 stop in Montignac
1530 visit to Lascaux II
1700 stop at goose farm to see gavage
1730 return to La Combe
1930 dinner at La Combe (osso buco)
THU 08
1030 visit to Chateau Belingard winery in Pomport
1230 lunch at L'Imparfait, Bergerac
1700 return to La Combe
1930 dinner at La Combe (duck)n
FRI 09
1000 visit to Moulin de la Tour nut mill, Ste. Nathalene
1230 lunch at La Combe (soup/salad)
1430 visit to Roque-St. Christophe
1630 visit to the studio of Mi Desmedt
1700 return to La Combe
1930 dinner at Le Vieux Logis, Tremolat
SAT 10
0900 depart for Angouleme
1030 visit porcelain outlet
1130 stop in Brantome for coffee
1230 arrive at Angouleme train station
1306 TGV departs Angouleme
1345 arrive Paris Montparnasse
1743 depart Paris Nord
2025 arrive London Waterloo
