Villefranche sur mer - Fall 2024-2

Dear Friends,

We continue to enjoy our time here in Villefranche.  We try to walk the beach each evening before dinner, but are not always successful.  We occasionally see some different sights.  These birds which I think are cormorants decided they had the right to enjoy the beach just as much as anybody else.

    

We don't just see birds on our walks.  The flowers are beautiful and plentiful.

Of course we also get to see the full moon over the bay.

We took that picture of the full moon as we were heading out for a quick dinner at our favorite restaurant, Le Serre.  It is a casual family restaurant that caters to locals and tourists alike.  This night it was even more family than usual since the owner's 12 ish year old son was helping out.  Here he is giving me an extra big helping of whipped cream on my mousse au chocolat, as directed by me, but with his mother's approval.

It is an unusual fall in that it has been raining a lot.  The schools have closed at least twice in the last two weeks due to the storms and resulting flooding.  Villefranche is not in particular danger but up in the hills with huge rains and small rivers that can flood to say nothing of trying to navigate small roads full of hairpin turns in a downpour, it is a different story.

Last Friday we decided we would go to Nice to do some shopping, get money and have lunch.  The forecast called for cloudy weather and a 30-40% chance of rain.  It rained a little during our breakfast but then cleared up.  Here is a picture of the sky, including a rainbow, as we were walking to the bus.

Nice is just a 15 minute bus ride away, but by the time we got there it had started to rain, but not hard.  We used our best brains and decided we should stop at a really good patisserie for a coffee and almond croissant to wait out the rain.  So we did.

The almond croissant looks small and harmless, but it is not small and cannot be good for us.  Nevertheless it is incredibly delicious.  The rain didn't let up but didn't really get worse so we started to walk through the old town.  After a while it really started to rain, and we took shelter under a store awning.  There were a couple of Australians there.  They were good sports about the rain, but it certainly was not a good time if you only had a few days in Nice.  

After waiting quite awhile we decided to head for a restaurant to get some lunch.  Unbelievably it started raining even harder.  When we got to Le Tire Bouchon, here is what it looked like.

Fortunately the food was good.

Unfortunately, we were still soggy even after a relaxed and enjoyable lunch.  By the time we finished lunch the rain had stopped and the sky was blue.  

Today, we finally walked to Beaulieu and had lunch at one of our favorite places Maison de Beaulieu.  The company, the wine and the tuna were all fantastic.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashedliberal

 

Villefranche-sur-mer 2022 - 6 A Dinner Party

 Dear Friends,

During the time that we have been coming to Villefranche, we have met many wonderful people whom we are lucky to call our friends.  Even though we have a healthy fear of COVID, we try to meet with these friends outside or in small groups.  The other day, we had a dinner party to which we invited 4 friends.  We had a wonderful time.  

One of the fun parts of having a dinner party is planning, buying the food for and cooking the dinner.  Readers of this blog may remember an ill-fated dinner party a couple of years ago that is now universally referred to as the flying chicken dinner party when I let the chicken provençal fly out of the oven and onto the floor.  That history is recorded here.  Since this was our first dinner party since the fly chicken dinner party, we wanted it to be successful.

After planning the meal, we headed to Nice to do the shopping.  Our first stop was the Cours Saleya.  It is a wonderful market in Nice, known for its produce as well as flowers.

The only problem is which of the many stands, you should buy from.  They are all fantastic.  If you try to figure out which one has the best tomatoes that day at the best price and then who has the best artichokes at the best price and then who has the best raspberries at the best price, you will go crazy.  Unlike the much smaller Saturday market in Villefranche where we go every Saturday and have our favorite vendors, we are just occasional visitors to Cours Saleya, so we have no favorite vendors.  You really cannot go wrong.

After we got all the produce we needed, we headed off to find cheeses for the cheese course.  We came upon a fromagerie that we think was fairly new because we had not seen it before.  

The owner was very welcoming and professional.  He took time with us, both by speaking French all the time and by explaining our different choices.  We told him we wanted three cheeses for a cheese course.  He suggested a creaming cow cheese (Saint Félicien fermier lait cru), a less creamy chèvre (Rouelle) and a hard cheese (comté).  We also got some roquefort too because you can't really stop in a cheese shop and not get some roquefort.  Here is a photo of the owner explaining our choices to us.

Our next stop was a wine shop.  There is plenty of wine for sale in Villefranche but no real wine shop.  So we stopped at a Nicolas shop in Nice.  It is a chain wine shop in France, but very good.

I know something about French wines, but I have no idea about which vineyard, etc.  The person who helped us was perfect, he understood what we wanted, didn't try to sell us anything grossly expensive and spoke french too.  We got some champagne that was bottled under the Nicolas name.  It was great.  We then got some Chablis and some red Burgundy.  Both were on sale which put them in our price range.  All of them were great.  It is so nice when the people helping you are trying to get you what you want and can afford.  

That concluded our shopping for Nice.  We were hungry, and it was close to lunch time, so we decided to have a quick lunch at Chez Papa, one of our favorites for lunch in Nice.  Unfortunately, it was closed; but as is often the case there is a suitable alternative nearby.   We saw Posto 17 just down the block and thought we would give it a try.

They weren't quite open yet, but the owner welcomed us.  The only menu for food was on the blackboard.  You can see the prices are quite reasonable.

Jane and I each ordered the rigatoni sauce tomate maison - burrata.  It was perfect for a quick lunch.  When Jane asked him what was in the homemade tomato sauce, he almost gave her the entire recipe.

There was a separate menu for drinks.  I only include it here because from time to time we come across translations or the use of English words that are not quite right.  If you look under Cocktails, the next to the last drink is "Sex on the Beatch".  We thought that was a unique spelling.

Jane finished with a noisette (espresso with a small amount (a nut) of milk).  At this restaurant it came with a small cookie which served to keep the drink warm - another cute touch.

We felt a little like pack horses as we made our way home.  When we arrived we were faced with the issue of where to put everything that we had acquired.

We found room for everything although the refrigerator was overflowing.

All of that shopping was on a Sunday.  The party was Monday night.  On Monday morning, we headed to Beaulieu to get the chicken.  Yes, we were trying chicken again, but this time it was chicken Lucia on the grill with less chance of flying chicken.  The final stop on for our shopping was at our favorite boulangerie, Chez Marie-Claire.  Chez Marie-Claire is not far from our apartment.  She has of course bread, baguettes and pastries.  But she also has wine, eggs, butter and sandwiches.  Here is a picture of Marie-Claire as she was packaging the cake we had bought for the party.

The cake was absolutely beautiful, but we forgot to take a picture of it.  The taste of the cake was even better than its beautiful presentation.  This picture of the last piece shows what a perfect cake it was.  

The crust is a light chocolate graham cracker.  The light brown filling is a chocolate pots de creme (only lighter than what we usually make), the next comes a thin layer of something like blueberry syrup that is the consistency of jam, followed by a layer of a light, fluffy layer of blueberry pots de creme and a top layer of blueberry icing.  The great thing was that all the calories had been removed.

We finished the meal with a small glass of "menthe".  The best way to describe what we refer to as menthe is to think of limoncello only made with mint.  Our favorite local restaurant here, Le Serre, offers limoncello after dinner, but sometimes if Marie has had a good crop of mint, Sylvie will turn it into menthe.  Fortunately for us Marie had a good crop of mint, so we were able to buy a bottle of menthe from her to serve at the dinner party.  While we made a pretty good dent in it we did not finish it off so we can have some for ourselves from time to time.

                                                       

In the end a good time was had by all, and thankfully our French lesson for Tuesday morning was cancelled.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

For the chicken we went to our favorite butcher in Beaulieu.  He is a young man and takes his time with us and is a true butcher.  Unfortunately, I did not get a photo.

The last thing on our list was bread and dessert.  For that we had to go to our favorite baker in Villefranche.  We got a couple of baguettes for the cheese course and a beautiful chocolate and blueberry cake. 

Villefranche-sur-mer 2020 - 4 Flying Chicken Dinner

Dear Friends,

We have been enjoying our time here in Villefranche as usual.  We have had a couple of unusual adventures, though.  One Saturday, we took a cooking class in Nice from Rosa Jackson.  She has a school in the old town of Nice called, Les Petit Farcis.  She has a variety of courses including many trips.  You can learn more here.

We met Rosa at the Liberation Market.  We had never been there and were blown away by its size and the scope of the food products.  Our goal was to purchase the ingredients for the lunch we were going to make for ourselves (with lots of help from Rosa and her assistant), but we also got a great feel for the market.  We had our choice of many different fish including all of these.

Sea Urchin

Skate Cheeks

Turbo

Sea Bass

We decided on the sea bass, and the seller filleted it for us immediately.

The market also had an incredible assortment of vegetables and herbs.

With our bags and bags of supplies, we took the tram to the old town of Nice where Rosa's kitchen is located.  Everything was ready for us to begin our lesson and our preparations.

We started by preparing the ingredients for the pumpkin soup.

While it was cooking we moved on to preparing the vegetables we would have with the aioli we also made.

Carrots

Turnips

Purple brocoli

Once those were ready to cook, we had to prepare some pancetta for the soup.

The soup tasted even better than it looked, and I think it looked great.

Then it was time for the fish course.

The preparation is easy since it was perfectly filleted when we bought it.  You coat it with coarse salt for 20 minutes, rinse the salt off, dry it, sauté it in olive oil and voilà.

You serve it with the potatoes, vegetables and saffron aioli, and everybody is delighted.

Then comes the cheese course.  The strange thing in the middle of the biggest piece of cheese is a fig.  It was great.

In our spare time as we were preparing the other ingredients, we made a fruit salad to have with the cheesecake we made.  This cheesecake was made with ricotta so it was much lighter, and it had no crust.

What a wonderful day we had.  We learned about how to go to a big market and select ingredients.  We learned how to cook a delicious meal.  We ate a fantastic lunch.  Then we had to go home and take a nap.

Thinking that our market and cooking skills were at their peak, we decided to have a dinner party for some of the friends we have met here over the years.  So we planned the meal carefully - just a small amount of cheese, crackers and olives, followed by roasted chicken with fennel and clementines accompanied by rice, and roasted romanesco and baby tomatoes; and for dessert Montana Mom's Dynamite Cheesecake with fresh berries.

The day of the party arrived.  I had forgotten during the day before that the cheesecake need to rest for 12 hours in the refrigerator before being served.  I made part of it the night before and added the topping at 7 in the morning so it could have the full 12 hours in the refrigerator.

After breakfast we had our detailed shopping list, and many bags to carry things in, so off to Nice we went.  You may know that they are having nationwide strikes over the changes that President Macron wants to make to the retirement plans.  Normally you know a day ahead if the railroad or buses are going to be on strike the next day.  We were relieved when we saw the train running in the morning.  When our bus got us to the Port of Nice, we got off to transfer to the tram.  The first sign of trouble was that people were riding their bikes on the tram roadway.  Well, there was not a strike that day, but there was a protest in the middle of Nice so the tram was not working.  It is a very long walk from the port to the Liberation market so we decided we would go to the Saleya market which is in the old town and only about a 15 minute walk away.  It is also a great market.

As we walked through the old town, we bought some spices and herbs.  Then we added a bottle of champagne and limoncello.  When we got to the market, we added the clementines, fennel, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, lemons, shallots, onions, romanesco and flowers.  On the way back to the bus, we stopped at an incredible cheese store for some wonderful cheeses.  By this time, I was feeling the weight of all our purchases which was confirmed when the cheese guy said I was a pack horse.  However, we weren't done yet.  We still needed the chicken.  So we stopped by one of the better known meat markets.  Now we were fully loaded down for our walk back to the bus.  Fortunately, there were seats on the bus, although with all the bags we were overflowing ours.

Once we arrived home, we set the table.

It looked beautiful even though we had to mix and match some napkins and silverware.  We then prepared the vegetables and the roasted chicken with fennel and clementines.  I even took time to arrange the fennel and clementine slices in an attractive manner in the big pyrex casserole.  The great thing about this chicken dish is that you put it in the oven and take it out 45 minutes later and serve it.  There is no fussing while the guests are looking.

The guests arrived.  One brought some homemade crackers (made from an old baguette) and a paste of squished olives.  Everybody smelled the delicious chicken dish so didn't eat too many hors d'oeuvres.  Finally the time came to serve dinner.  I went to the kitchen, opened the oven door and was very pleased to see that the chicken was nicely browned and the dish looked great.  I pulled the oven rack out part way, admiring my work, when all of a sudden the shelf tipped up and the casserole slide silently but unstoppably to the floor.

Notwithstanding my disappointment and embarrassment, I am proud to say that I did not utter a single bad word.  Our guests enjoyed a terrific vegetarian meal.  We finished off the hors d'oeuvres, and had a nice plate of rice, tomatoes and romanesco.  Our guests were very understanding, but one commented that the rice and vegetables would go great with chicken.  Of course we finished off the meal with the cheesecake.  I have to say it was great cheesecake despite the fact that some of the ingredients called for by the recipe were not available.  We have never found graham crackers in France.  At Jane's suggestion we substituted some ricotta for a third of the cream cheese, making it perfectly light.  Everybody enjoyed it thoroughly.

So all's well that ends well.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal