Les Graineteries RIP

One of the features of Le Grand Pressigny is the Graineterie in the Grande Rue, where you could buy anything in the "growing it / killing it" line from a hosta to a hen (point of lay) to a hunting knife. We've blogged about it previously here. We have bought many a plant there, and it was possible to buy young lettuces or cabbages by the half dozen, a most convenient quantity for the two of us when an individual cabbage weighs in at over a kilo.

Savoy cabbage (Chou Milan) from a Graineterie seedling

The store was run by a man-and-wife couple and at times their children, and she was their Interflora florist, Tim earned the gratitude, and hence recognition, of the proprietor by rescuing a bidon (jerry can) that fell off the back of his truck and returning it to him.

Then not long ago a sign went up indicating that the shop was closed for refurbishment.

Alas, now the graineterie windows are whitewashed, with a sign announcing "fermeture définitive" (closed for good and all). According to the rumour mill, there has been a family bust-up, someone has done something unforgiveable which they now regret bitterly. Everyone hopes it may reopen under new management, but meanwhile it's yet another empty shop.

Fermeture définitive

I can find no pictures showing the graineterie in better days, though thanks to Susan I did locate two postcards of Grande Rue, one showing a beast market in the Market Place in about 1906, and another from about 1950 judging by the clothes and the car. Both show goods outside the graineterie, in the older probably hunting clothing and chicken coops. The double doors in the archway post-date both postcards - they show an archway leading to a loading yard. Does anyone else have any pictures? I'd love to see them!

The sad fact is that the big garden centre chains, such as Jardiland in France and Notcutts in the UK, are killing off their rivals with a larger range of products (tho less quirky) and longer opening hours. These stores are in both countries at the forefront of the Sunday Opening movement, now almost the norm in the UK and increasing in pressure in France.

One of the highlights of my journey to and from Primary School four times a day was passing The Corn & Seed Stores, at the Yew Tree, Yardley, Birmingham. The array of brightly coloured flowers almost always on display played no small part in my love of gardening. That store is mentioned by name in Kelly's Directory of 1950 and must go back to days when "this was all fields" i.e. before the 1930s when the estates of semi-detached houses were built. No sign of cornfields nowadays for miles in any direction.

The former Corn & Seed Stores

It became the Pets & Garden Centre while my Dad was still living in Yardley and was still flourishing in July 2012 according to Google Earth. I idly googled it and found that it too had gone under, sold by auction at Aston Villa Football Ground with vacant possession on 23 October 2012. It feels like I've lost another old friend.

It's an apple year

When we bought the house, we spotted the old fruit trees in the back garden - several neglected plums and a big apple tree, almost swamped by tamarisk.

Jerry under the apple tree

The Touraine Apple Munchers Association (les Croquers de pommes de Touraine) identified our apples as Reinette Blanche, an old variety suitable for both eating and cooking.  The ripe fruit is a lovely primrose yellow, sometimes flushed with pink, and with russet patches and/or nets of fine speckles. According to Orangepippin.com, it is also known as Reinette Blanche du Canada, Reinette du Canada and even just "Canada", and it is widely grown in France.

A windfall

Unfortunately, it's not a great keeper thanks to the birds and insects that constantly attack the fruit. No sprays, of course - even if we wanted to spray, the tree is next to the millstream and sprays are banned close to a watercourse (not that it stops the farmers mutter mutter....)

Last year, the year of no fruit, it bore nothing at all because an ill-timed frost wiped out the flowers here and in almost every orchard in the district. The tree is making up for it this year - the fruit are not overly numerous but they are extremely large, some specimens weighing over 350 grammes. Let's say 200 apples at 250 grammes apiece, about 50 kilos, that's a lot of compote. So far, only those apples receiving direct sunlight are ready to pick. One low-hanging fruit, sheltered by leaves and branches, is my barometer. I keep giving it the twist and flip treatment but it's holding on tight at the moment.

Low-hanging fruit

So far I have made and bottled mincemeat, three flavours of compote (plain, with grapefruit marmalade, and with honey), made cake, baked apples, eaten the things raw, grated with cereal, in slaw... Can't even give them away as everyone with an apple tree is doing the same. People seeing you approaching with a bag of apples tend to turn smartish in the opposite direction, or pretend not to be at home. One approach is to hang the bag from a door handle (house or car) and run for it. Could just work... bother, they spotted me!

Apple whisky citrus mincemeat

A British Christmas wouldn't be the same without mince pies. Once upon a time these would actually have contained minced meat, with fruit and spices to disguise the fact that it was salted months earlier. Today mincemeat still contains suet, which is fat from around the kidneys of a cow (there is a vegetarian version, ptui). It is possible to buy fresh suet in France, which comes in lumps from the butcher (if he knows you he will keep some) for nuppence and can be grated. This is fine for a suet-crust pudding but I wouldn't like to use it for mincemeat.

Apple whisky citrus mincemeat ready for potting

Here's a recipe from Hilaire Walden's Sensational Preserves which combines a whole lot of lovely flavours. It needs at least six weeks to mature, so make it now in time for Christmas. These quantities yield five jars of standard jampot size, though where the pack size of the ingredient meant that there was only a little left, I lobbed the lot in. And of course I used our own filberts and apples.

At the beginning...Reinettes blanches

Ingredients
550g/1¼lb cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped
15g/½oz unsalted butter
4 tablespoons water
85g/3oz almonds, blanched and chopped
85g/3oz hazelnuts, blanched and chopped
115g/4oz currants
115g/4oz cut mixed peel (aiguilles de citron /d'orange, chopped)
115/4oz dried apricots, chopped
225g/8oz raisins (I used jumbo golden raisins, which are gorgeous)
225g/8oz sultanas
115g/4oz suet
225g/8oz dark muscovado sugar
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
A pinch of nutmeg
150ml/5 fl oz whisky

Method
Put the apples in a pan with the water and butter. Cook gently with the lid on for 20 minutes then stir to make sure there are no lumps. If the resulting purée is runny (i.e. you've used Bramleys), turn up the heat and cook, stirring all the time, until the mixture is quite stiff and all free liquid is gone. Allow to cool completely.

Mix all the other ingredients together in a large non-metallic bowl then stir in the apples. Mix until thoroughly blended and leave, covered of course, overnight.  At this stage, a gadget! The lid of this plastic bowl projects over the lip, sealing it completely. Thanks again LIDL!

Not that terrifying, surely?

Pack into clean dry jars, ramming down well to avoid air bubbles, and seal in the usual way. Store for at least six weeks before using.

What's the post called again?

Serve as a dessert with poached orange slices, or in pastries.

Nuts in May

Here we go gathering nuts in May?  I wouldn't think that's a particularly good time of the year to guarantee success, in the Northern Hemisphere at least! Yet another highly suspect nursery rhyme.

The recipe, for Apple Cake in a Nutshell as blogged about by Jean in Baking in Franglais, required four ounces of blanched hazelnuts. We have filberts, fresh from the tree. This calls for - a gadget!

What is it?

My dad's wonderful nutcracker, with its tiny ship's wheel that you wind to extend the clamp as gently as you please, guaranteeing an undamaged kernel. Four ounces is quite a lot of cracking, even with giant filberts, so that was an evening's entertainment.

Cracking a filbert with precision

Now blanching - the method I learned for almonds - three minutes in boiling water - just didn't work. After five minutes futile scraping I gave up. The internet came up with the addition of baking soda (Bicarb) to the water in the proportion of three tablespoons to two US quarts. I used two teaspoons to a UK pint, again boiling for three minutes, then rinsed them in cold water. The method then said to rub the skins off in a teatowel. I'm sure that would work, particularly with more than my four ounces, but having seen the rich pink colour the water had turned, the subsequent cleaning of the teatowel struck me as a problem. So I rubbed the skins off with my fingers, dipping occasionally in a finger bowl. Success! Clean as a whistle. Not so clean Tim's hankie with which he experimented on the liquid as a dye.

Going...

Almost gone....

 Finally, how to coarsely chop them... the blender just chipped a few bits off them... we gave away our hachoir because we never used it... drat... Tim chopped them with a ceramic-bladed knife. Somewhere no more than a mile from here, a prehistoric woman or man did the same thing, with a flint blade like the ones we dig up in the potager. I don't suppose they bothered skinning them. Sometimes the old ways are the best.

The finished cake - cooked for 20 minutes longer than the recipe said, with foil on top

Beans, beans, good for the heart

Sunday was a gloriously sunny autumn day - a fine day for harvesting! We were greeted by the vanguard of our winter visitors - the lapwings, flying overhead. First a couple of trays of "Reinette Blanche" apples from our venerable tree - many almost too big to fit in the bag of the apple picker, and unfortunately many damaged by sharp little beaks. More compote de pommes (stewed apple) coming up, I expect! This is a prime opportunity to try different flavourings and sweetenings - the first batch was straight apple and a little sugar, the second batch apple and honey, for the third there's some grapefruit marmalade that didn't set...

Next, on to the beans! We grow most of our beans from our own saved seed for winter use, in soups, cassoulets, chilis etc. This means they have to be bone dry when they go into their storage jars. Due to the late spring, they were planted late and have only just begun to get that papery texture in the pods that tells us they are ready. The bean frame is presently flaming with Borlotti "Lingua di Fuoco" (fire tongue) climbing beans, just starting to turn the dull red and then indigo of the fully ripe bean.

The bean frame, an idea copied from Majorca

Firetongue

Borlottis with Nun's Belly Button below (naturally)

Surrounding the base of the bean frame, Tim planted a load of another favourite - the dwarf bean "Nun's belly button". The French name is "nombril de bonne soeur" - an exact translation, although the same bean is known in French as "Saint Esprit" and in English as "Soldier".

Nun's Belly Button beans

William Skyvington, an Australian expatriate in France, has blogged about them here, although as his post is dated April 1, I'm unsure how much of his tale is a leg-pull. Be that as it may, I see the nun, or the part of her visible, as definitely a redhead, and very hairy.

Whereas Tim sees the whole nun, the other way up. That's the soldier, an English redcoat.

Spot the nun (or soldier)

Spot the soldier (or nun)

In the immortal words of my old friend Liam D'Arcy Brown (no, not the Sinologist, the other one),

Beans, beans, good for the heart,
Beans, beans, they make you f*rt,
The more you f*rt, the better you feel,
Beans, beans, with every meal!