For the second anniversary party at O Panier Local, we made a community-sized pot of garbure to offer to our friends and neighbors.  Like all good soups, we started our garbure the day before the fête, and let it simmer slowly for hours.  Yummy!

If you are not familiar with garbure, it is an emblematic dish of the Béarn, sort of like a cassoulet but more soup-like, without the tomatoes found in cassoulet and with a lot of seasonal veggies added.  Cabbage and potatoes are a must, and root vegetables like turnips, carrots and rutabaga are often included. Depending on your budget, garbure can include a ham bone (from the famous jambon de Bayonne preferably), pork, sausages or duck confit. I like to make it with confit duck neck and gizzards. Check out this post (from 2011!) for a longer discussion of garbure.

Purchased this Tuesday at the farmer’s market in Orthez:  organic butter from the farm Leit de Brunas.  In Béarnais, the name means “milk from the Brunes”, which is fitting for this family-run farm located south of Pau that raises the Brunes des Alps breed of dairy cows.  In addition to butter, their tiny stand in the market hall sells fresh milk, cow’s milk cheeses (their 16 month cow’s milk tomme is excellent) and riz au lait, a traditional rice pudding. And the little molded butters are too adorable!

Poule au pot Henri IV

Wednesday June 6, 2018

 MENU

Poireaux vinaigrette aux coques et aux croutons
Penn Cove clams marinated with spring garlic and thyme, served cold with poached leeks, shellfish vinaigrette and butter fried croutons

Bouillon de poule, pâtes fraiches et beurre aux foies de volaille
Chicken-poaching bouillon served as a soup course with fava beans, peas, fresh noodles, tarragon and chicken liver butter

 La vraie poule au pot façon Henri Quatre
Farm chicken with bread-pork sausage-spinach stuffing poached in bouillon, served with sauce verte

 Fromage de brebis de vallée d’Aspe et sa salade aux cerises noires
Sheep’s milk tome from the Vallee d’Aspe, salad of bitter greens, Bing cherries and piment d’Espelette vinaigrette

Pastis landais et ses fraises de notre région
Orange scented yeasted cake from the region of les Landes, served with local strawberries and Armagnac crème anglais

Dinner including beverage* $75
*paired wines or non-alcoholic beverage

For this special event, No Substitutions Please.
Reservations by phone only at 206.709.7674
Price does not include Service Charge and WA State tax

Poule au pot Henri IV

Nearly everyone has heard the famous story of King Henri IV who promised “a chicken in every pot“. What most people don’t know is that Henri IV came from the Bèarn and that his name is still attached to one of the region’s most famous dishes. Join us for a special chef’s dinner centered around a traditional Poule au pot Henri IV, celebrating the local farm produce of early summer.

In May of 2017, I wrote a post about a wonderful visit we had to Domaine les Pentes de Barène in Tursan, an tiny wine growing region in the SW of France.  I mentioned that our host, Gaelle Vergnes, had given us two bottles from their first ever bottling of a sweet wine, which they make uniquely from the petit manseng grape.  They call this wine “M de Pentes de Barène” and the entire 2016 production was only 250 bottles.

Sweet wines from this region have the capability to age for a number of years, so, accordingly, one of those bottles is currently slumbering peacefully in a cool spot in our house in Orthez. The other made the trip back to Seattle with us.

Madame Vergnes recommended that this wine not be tasted before August of 2017, so we obediently resisted the temptation to crack it open until this month.  We had our first taste in the company of a platter of the Jambon de Bayonne, the iconic ham from the SW of France.  Délicieux!

If these bottles look familiar to you, it may be because you have ordered one before at Le Pichet or Cafe Presse, where this white wine from the Tursan region in  southwest France is one of our favorites.  I have certainly drunk more than my fair share of this versatile, mouth filling wine recently.  Domaine les Pentes de Barène is a white that has dry acidity to pair well with seafood but also the body and richness to be a great match with a roasted chicken or even pork.

I recently had a chance to visit the Domaine les Pentes de Barène and was surprised to find out just how tiny it is.  At just over 1.5 hectares (about 3.7 acres), les Pentes de Barène is officially the smallest domaine in the Tursan AOC. Owners Daniel and Gaelle Vergnes are the entire staff and together produce about 5000 bottles a year, with nearly every step done by hand.  That includes hand harvesting in multiple passes through the vines to insure that only mature grape bundles are included, and even hand filling, corking and labeling every bottle.

In case you think that merely turning out 5000 bottles of wine a year is light work, consider that Gaelle and Daniel have two children, and in addition to the time they spend working on the domaine, Daniel also works as a vineyard and wine making consultant for other winemakers in the area and Gaelle turns out finely stitched napkins, handkerchiefs and doilies that she offers for sale to visitors. And, by reservation only, they also prepare vineyard dinners for groups of up to 12, served from a table set amid the vines.  Kinda makes me wonder what I do with all my time!

I was thankful for the  detailed instructions Gaelle sent for finding the domaine, because even in it’s tiny town of Pimbo (population 202 souls), you could drive right by the 300 year old barn that houses the Pentes de Barène tasting room if you weren’t looking for it.

The vines themselves cling to a steep south-facing hill with a magnificent view on to  the Pyrenees, but, as they are hidden between a stand of old oaks and a long row of fruit trees. it is hard to get a look at them until you are right among the vines. On this day in early May, the cherry tree was full of ripe red fruit and the noise from the bees busy in the fig, pear, quince and peach trees was palpable.

The vineyards include four varieties of grapes, all used to produce white wine:  gros manseng, petit manseng, sauvignon blanc and baroque.  Gros and petit manseng are the well know white wine grapes of the southwest, most notably in the wines of Jurancon.  Baroque is a local variety that Gaelle said is only grown in Tursan. Daniel and Gaelle turn most of their yield into dry whites, but as of 2016, they also make a limited number for bottles of sweet white wine exclusively from petit manseng…I was lucky enough to receive 2 of the only 250 bottles of sweet wine produced in 2016 as a gift at the end of our visit, with the proviso that it cannot be tasted until after July 2017.

Les Pentes de Barène is not certified organic;  being so small, the costs of certification are outside their budget. However, in practices they are completely organic.  As Gaelle explained, they feel that their primary job is to act as stewards of the land.  If they get that job right, the vines will take care of themselves.  The vineyard is knee deep in grass, wild flowers and clover, which helps the vines stay cool in the summer heat.  The surrounding trees and forest provide wind breaks and habitat for the biodiversity that keep pests to a minimum.  Compared to many vineyards I have visited, where the soil is bare and the landscape is grape vines as far as the eye can see, les Pentes vineyards seem like an idyllic paradise.

As for what happens in the cave, the same philosophy dominates:  let the wine do what it wants without trying to impose a style.  The vinification is in stainless tanks without any time spent on wood.  The result wines that are both lively and mouth filling at the same time. Rich and pale golden, they differ greatly from the leaner wines of neighboring Jurançon and Cotes-de-Gascogne.

After our tour of the vineyards and the cave, as we tasted wine, I couldn’t help but do a little quick math:  With an annual  production of 5000 bottles, I estimate that our guests at Cafe Presse and Le Pichet drank about 15% of last year’s total.  And I  must have drunk .5% of their yield just on my own!  I asked Gaelle if she thought it strange that there could be such a connection between her tiny piece of land in Tursan and my two restaurants in Seattle.  She just smiled and offered another glass.

In anticipation of a number or social engagements at our place in Orthez, I though I would make a little pâté.  A fat terrine full of county-style pâté is the perfect thing to have on hand to go with aperitifs.  It has long shelf life, and in fact gets better with a bit of age (I worked for a chef in Paris who claimed that to reach its peak flavor, a pâté should not be served until 28 days after it is made.  This put him in a bit of a bind, as the Paris health department had just decreed as a measure of hygene, that pâté could not be served if it was more than 30 days old,  a rule that my chef bitterly condemned.  When Paris outlawed beurre noir or black butter, which is the classic sauce with sauteed calves brains, on the basis that blackened butter is carsinogenic, he was ready to take to the barricades).

Pâté is also inexpensive and in theory, at least,  is easy to make, especially if you 1) plan to bake and serve it in a terrine and thus avoid any need for wrapping the forcemeat in caulfat or fatback – check- and 2) you have access to good quality ingredients – check also…or so I thought.  Which is where the above “in theory” comes in.

The problem is that  the ingredients for a country pâté, along with almost all abats or specialty meats as we call them in the U.S., are not available from the boucher, but from the tripier.  And in Orthez, the tripier is only in town on Tuesdays, when the town hosts the largest marché fermier in the area.  The butcher we visited looked very sad to tell me definitively that he could not provide the cuts of pork that I was asking for.

In the French system of butchery, strictly speaking, the job of selling meat is shared by four different professionals:  le boucher, who sells fresh meat and poultry but not pork;  le charcutier, who sells fresh pork as well as charcuterie, meaning cured meats, terrines, pâtés, sausages and the like;  le tripier, who sells tripes, organ meats, feet, ears and other odds and ends, and le boucher chevaline, who sells horse meat (that’s a whole other story).  This division of labor dates back to the old system of guilds, that also regulated what restaurants could sell to the public, for example.

In practice nowdays, there is a lot of ambiguity and overlap among these groups (we are taking about France, right?) as well as with le traiteur, who sells prepared dishes.  You often find bouchers who sell pork, as well as charcutiers who have a fresh chicken and a bit of meat and some prepared dishes all on display.  But for some reasons, organ meats are almost always on their own.  Go figure.

Fortunatly, there is a full-time tripier not far away in Pau.  I include a photo of his wrapping paper which makes it clear what bits of what animal he sells.

Anyway, back to pâté.  A quick conversation with Monsieur le tripier happily confirmed that he could provide everything I needed and that he shared my opinion as to the proper cuts of pork to use for country pâté.  Without a doubt, these are pork liver and pork gorge.  Gorge, which literally translates as “throat”, is a cut that is hard to find in the Seattle and consists of the fatty piece of flesh that covers the throat.  Officially part of the pigs head, from the point of view of a French butcher (see diagram above), gorge is roughly 50/50 lean to fat and has a strong, piggy taste, ideal for pâté.   I suspect that it is because of this strong flavor that it does’nt en up in an American butcher counter.

As I said, the recipe for a good pâté de campagne is pretty straight forward and everyone has their own variations.  Suffice it to say that you want about about one third each liver, fat and lean pork, so using gorge, you would use 1 part liver to 2 parts gorge.  Sounds fatty, but the reality is that you dont want to risk ending up with a dry, over-lean pâté.  If you are avoiding fat (why again?) I recommend smaller portions or choosing another project.

The other ingredients are some wine or brandy to marinate, some aromatics like onion, garlic or shallot, a few herbs, thyme is classic but other choices work as well, salt (figure about 1 oz for every 5# of meat) and spices (follow your own taste) and a few large eggs (I use 2 for every 5# of meat).

I don’t think a more specific recipe is helpful or authentic.  We are, after all, talking about a dish that started as a way to use up the left-over bits when a pig was killed.  Stick to the basic ratios of liver/fat/lean and you will be pleased with the result.

A few other tips:

The pâté will be better if you cut up your ingredients and leave them to marinate overnight with the alcohol (for this batch I used some cognac and some white wine) and aromatics.  Just put it all together in a shallow dish and cover with plastic.

I ground by hand (I love a challenge) but for larger batches, many butchers will grind for you; our friendly tripier in Pau offered.  For a country pate, the grind should not be too fine especially for the liver.  I like to grind the liver with a lean 1/2″ die and fat a bit smaller, say 3/8″.

The aromatics should be ground and sauteed in a bit of oil or fat before adding to the ground meat.  If added raw, they can have a raw, bitter flavor in the finished pâté.

Always fry off and taste a little of the finished pâté mixture before baking and remember that seasoning, including saltiness, is more pronounced in hot preparations than in cold.  Meaning that when you taste the hot sample, it should be on the salty side so that when you serve the pâté cold, it will be properly seasoned.

The pâté is cooked in a waterbath in a medium oven to an internal temperature of about 140 deg F.  It should then be cooled with a moderate weight on top so that the finished pâté is tight and not crumbly like a meatloaf (like my meatloaf anyway…never could make a very good meatloaf).

That’s all there is to it.  The next day the pâté is ready to serve, and will get better with time.  Serve with crusty bread, cornichons, mustards and your apero of choice.  I think that the liver in this pâté is complimented by a sweet wine like Jurancon  but light reds work well also (Beaujolais anyone?).  I have even tried it with a glass of Ricard, and found it pretty good.

Here is a photo of a very simple dinner we recently enjoyed:  poule au pot.  Not only is this one of the archetypical dishes of the southwest (remember the story of King Henry who promised “a chicken in every pot”?  This dish is often called poule au pot Henri IV in honor of that famous pledge.  Before he was Henri IV of France , he was Henri king of the then independent realms of Navarre and Béarn).

In its simplest incarnation, poule au pot is a chicken poached with seasonal vegetables and served moistened with its cooking broth, sometimes enriches with a spoonful of duckfat.  Its sort of the chicken version of a pot au feu.  More elaborate versions involve stuffing a boiling chicken with a bread farce that may be combined with chestnuts, herbs, garlic, the heart, gizzard and liver of the chicken and bound with eggs.

At the high end, truffles are slipped under the chicken’s skin and the stuffing is made richer with the addition of foie gras.  In this case, the dish is often served in two courses, the first a soup of the clear broth, the second, the meat of the chicken, its cooking vegetables and rich slices of the stuffing served with a velouté sauce of the broth thickened with egg yolk and a spoonful of creme fraiche.  This is how poule au pot is (was?  Its been years since I’ve been) at the family run auberge “Le Coq de la Maison Blanche” in St.-Ouen outside of Paris, where I worked after completing my training in Paris.  Depending on the season, the soup might include a delicate chiffonade of sorrel or tiny fava beans or, in winter, a brunoise of celery root and black truffle.

Back in Orthez and returning to the real world, dinner is nothing like so fancy.  Just a farm chicken, its fat golden yellow from its diet of corn and garden bugs, poached with carrots.   A earthy dinner that also has the side benefit of creating a lot of rich yellow chicken broth to use later.

With aperitifs before dinner, we enjoyed this jar of hure pure porc  from Ferme Abotia located near St.-Jean Pied de Port in the French Basque countries.   It was tasty.  Ferme Abotia is a producer of wines from Irouleguy who  also happens to make some very good basque-style charcuterie.  Thanks to Jason and Adrienne of Barrique Imports, who import the wines of Abotia into Seattle and who also left this jar at the house when they stayed last January.

Hure is a terrine of pork head, similar to fromage de tete…see this earlier post for a discussion of the different uses that the French put a pig’s head to.

 When: Three different sessions of this class will be offered:
  Saturday January 24, 2015, 12:noon to 3:30pm
or
Tuesday January 27, 2015, 6pm to 9:30pm
or
Saturday January 31, 2015, 4pm to 7:30pm

Location:  the Kitchen at Mallet, 2700 4^th Ave S. Suite C, Seattle WA  (free parking available), in Seattle’s SODO neighborhood.

Price:  $130 per student, which includes a hands-on learning, snacks while we work, garbure supper, 1 pint of garbure to take home, wine, and a recipe packet (does not include sales tax).

There are few dishes as central to the cooking of Southwestern France as garbure.  Like its close cousin cassoulet, garbure is, at base, a peasant soup of white beans simmered with a ham end and seasonal vegetables, which in the Béarnaise winter, often means cabbage, onions, and root vegetables.  But, depending on the means and ambition of the household, it can also include pork, rustic local sausages and confit of pork, duck and goose, including heart, gizzard and neck.  And when prepared by an expert, it is a one of the grand classics of French country cooking.

In this class, we will undertake the preparation of a classic garbure as the point of departure for learning some very important kitchen skills, including the preparation of duck and pork confits and making fresh sausages.  When the garbure is finished, we will all gather round for a hearty supper including the rustic wines of the region.  Finally, at the end of class, take home a pint of garbure to enjoy with your family.

Says Chef Drohman: “I am very excited to have the opportunity to share with you my love of the home-style cooking and simple, simply delicious wines of France.  The class will be a mix of demonstration, hands on learning and communal eating.”

If you are interested in receiving more details and sign-up information about this class, please email Jim at jdrohman@lepichetseattle.com