Tour de France food and drink Stages 3 to 4; Memories of delicious things

A fairly traditional route this year

The Legatus always looks forward to following the Tour de France on TV (and in person on four occasions) but this year I will miss nearly all of it due to a two and a half week business trip to Botswana.  Grr!  So, no real opportunity to match food and wine to every stage this year. I was concerned that ITV 4 had dispensed with the mellifluous tones of classic commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen for Ned Boulting and David (drugs cheat) Millar but actually their cycling commentary is actually better than Liggett's and Sherwen's, even if it removes some of the nostalgia for past Tours.

 Green jersey for points (sprints)  Symmetrical!

 Polka dot jersey for mountains  Hippy!

A good part of the appeal of the live TV coverage is looking at the aerial shots of mountains, pretty villages and chateaux in the biggest advertisement for the French tourism industry of the year.  In fact my very first memory is of the Tour de France, in St Malo in 1962, when I was two and a half.

White jersey for the highest placed young rider  Flirty!

Red number for the most aggressive rider on the stage  Elegant!

Speaking of the acceptable faces of France; another important thing to consider every year is the standard of the Tour hostesses, who present the various jersey's and prizes on the podium at the end of each stage.   One year, unusually bowing down to pressure from feminists, the Tour organisers had a couple of podium boys but it was an experiment that was not repeated!

Yellow jersey for the overall leader  Smart!

Stage winner  Odd!

The yellow jersey podium girls are the most conservatively dressed (and have the longest hems) but some of the other outfits have been a bit strange in the past (some of the Coca-Cola sponsored mountains jersey girls' outfits were very avant garde).  Nothing too controversial this year (except perhaps for the trousers of the stage winner's girls).

 A start in Normandy (the team presentation took place in D-Day's Sainte-Mère-Eglise - with the teams being driven in in World War 2 vehicles) with the finish of Stage 1 being on Utah Beach, meant Normandy cider to accompany the coverage.  Last year when the Tour was in Normandy I managed to get a Normandy cider in Waitrose but it has disappeared this year, sadly.  I have really noticed, over the last few years,  the gradual disappearance of French produce in our supermarkets.  Even things like saucisson sec are getting harder to find (you can still get it in Waitrose)  with sliced cooked meats now only coming from Spain or Italy.  While you can get Brie and Camembert easily, other French regional cheese is more difficult to find.

Château d'Angers in 1983

It's three years since the Tour has been to the Loire but this time we have two stages there, (3 and 4).   I have always liked the wines of the Loire since a wonderful holiday there in the summer, after I finished law school, in 1983 (something of the atmosphere of this trip can be found in this post, which I wrote during 2014's Tour).  Stage 4 finished in Angers, somewhere I visited during this bucolic two weeks; which contained a lot of food, a lot of wine, a lot of chateaux and a lot of fun with young ladies.

The food was provided by the charming little hotels we stayed in, which all came from a book by Arthur Eperon.  We didn't book ahead but just rolled up in a little village at about four pm using Eperon's infallible guide.  My male friend, B, and my immediate ex-girlfriend, J,  would go for an hour's walk and explore the village, locate bakers and grocery shops etc. while my girlfriend of two months, V, (she had seamlessly followed on from the other one) and I  'relaxed' (she drove the car (she was the only one who owned a car) and I navigated - all very stressful!).

The Hotel Splendid in Montreuil-Bellay, which is still there 

We would then all meet up, let the others show us what they had discovered and have dinner at about eight. Then the other two would go for another walk after dinner while V and I 'relaxed' again.  It was a very relaxing fortnight, especially when we managed to arrange relaxing morning visits to the bathroom as well, although a surprising number of the hotels had a jug and ewer, rather than a washbasin in the room. Washing V with a sponge one morning, as she stood in an enamel metal bowl, with cold water from the jug was all very La Vie Bohème, although she squealed a lot.  She looked like the subject of a Bonnard painting.

Not having time to cook anything special this week, as I try to remember how to pack for a two week  trip, I am going for simple food like pate, cornichons and from the Loire, Port Salut cheese, which I first ate when I was small, on the way down to the house the family spent the summer in, in Roussillion.  This Pays de Loire cheese is not as old, historically, as some (it celebrates its bicentenary this year ) but was created by Trappist monks at the beginning of the nineteenth century.  It doesn't exactly have a lot of character but goes well with saucisson sec and originates in a town, Entrammes, just a few miles east of stage 3, in the north of the Loire region.  There are some fabulous regional cheeses from the Loire but you can't get them here.

Dried sausage, cheese and pate are  all very Loire anyway and their is no real signature dish for the region (although they eat quite a lot of game, often with mushroom sauces).

Probably the most characteristic dish is rillettes, which come from around Le Mans, some way east of Stage 3.  Waitrose to the rescue again, here.  It's very rich so this pot kept me going quite a few days.  They really need the acidic cornichons to offset the fattiness.  Somehow I don't think that the World Health organisation would approve.

V in the gardens of the Château d'Angers in 1983  What a splendid young woman she was

Anyway, the wine choice for Stage 3 was easy, as the race finished in Angers, somewhere we visited on our 1983 trip.  So the accompanying wine had to be a Rosé D'Anjou, a wine I have not had for many years.  It used to be quite cheap and was popular with lady friends in the eighties (until I met girls with more expensive taste in wine as the decade went on (stinky C, the paratroopers daughter springs to mind, who had a penchant for classed growth claret).  On our Loire holiday V started with quite unsophisticated taste in wine (was it my sister who called her a 'Niersteiner'?  Surely not!) so was fond of the Rosé D'Anjou but gradually, as we discovered the Loire reds, her tastes changed.  You always had to give her full marks for trying new things.

So, off to Waitrose to find a pink Anjou and they had Champteloup Rosé d'Anjou reduced from £7.99 to £6 something.  Honestly, I remember when you could get a bottle of this for £1.99!  I was expecting this to be too sweet for my tastes but it was actually really rather lovely and while still fruity, quite dry.. So nice that if it is still on offer I might get another one just in case we get a summer. As Waitrose say on their website: "a perfect match to charcuterie".  Easily the nicest pink wine I have had for a long time.

Off to Sainsbury's

Early on Stage 4 the peloton went through the little town of Montreuil-Bellay, where we had stayed 33 years ago.  While V and I had a particularly satisfying relax, B and J had made a discovery which they wanted to share with us.  For there, in the shadow of the Château, was the very producer (as we identified by the large palettes of bottles stacked outside) of Sainsbury's Rosé d'Anjou  - V's favourite!   It was a Saturday evening and we popped into the local church for a look, where we were instantly grabbed by some of the locals who wanted us to do the readings in church the next day, as they thought we were very exotic.  V, a Catholic, readily agreed on behalf of us all.  V's French was very good (A-level) whereas B did all Maths A-levels and struggled with English, and J was a nuclear physicist (despite looking like Alice in Wonderland - when people asked her what she did she used to say "a secretary" as no-one believed her real job.  She was actually the first women in the world to 'drive' a nuclear reactor and was in all the papers at the time).  My French was largely confined to culinary terms, parts of the body and words relating to wine (like terroir and remuage).  Fortunately, they wanted us to read in English.  Next morning we all performed and V read a passage in French too, much to the admiration of the locals.

Anyway, as Stage 4 started in Saumur I had a Saumur red with the (time shifted) live coverage.  Of course a sparkling Saumur might have been more appropriate but with the rise of Cava and now Prosecco there was no chance of tracking any of this down.  This was a nice, slightly smoky, herby cabernet franc.

Unlike Sainsbury's or Tesco, Waitrose still do packs of French charcuterie and this went perfectly with bread and more cornichons.  It all took me back and tasted like the lovely V (well, actually, she tasted like oysters)!

Mountain jersey podium girls Marie and Sabrina probably don't eat anything during the Tour

Hopefully, my Tivo box will have recorded the mountain stages and the highlights programmes so I can explore the cuisine and wines of some of the other stages when I return to England in a week's time.  There is a dip over the border into Spain and that means the recipe for one of my favourite dishes.

Tour de France Food and Drink Stages 4 to 9

So, leaving the Low Countries behind, the Tour headed into the heartland of French cycling: Brittany.  On the way it passed through Normandy as well, presenting a few key characteristic culinary highlights.  I looked at some Belgian fare for Stage 4 but the stage actually crossed the border and finished in France.  To accompany my second helping of stoofvlees, as I had drunk all my Leffe the night before, I had a pint of Landship beer, as what could be more appropriate for a finish ending in Cambrai?  This was produced by the Dorset Brewing Company for the Bovington Tank Museum and matched the stew perfectly.

Anyway, Normandy means Camembert.  Unlike medieval Gouda, which I looked at last time, Camembert has a rather more recent history.  Traditionally being first made in 1791 by Marie Havel, who worked at the Manor of Beaumoncel and learned the secret of soft cheese with an edible rind from Abbot Charles-Jean Bonvoust, who had been a resident of Brie.

Camembert (on the left) fuelled French troops during World War 1

Although the story may be apocryphal, Havel was a real person and her descendants certainly made Camembert the world-wide commercial success it later became.  It wasn't until 1890 that the typical wooden box was devised, by one Eugène Ridel, which enabled it to be shipped all over the globe.  Its position as a symbol of Frenchness was cemented in the Great War when Camembert formed part of the standard rations of French soldiers.

As it was in Trinity Square

I sought in vain for my favourite Normandy cheese, Livarot, especially as Stage 7 began in the town.  A cheese with  a longer history than Camembert, I remember eating it regularly with my friend HMS in Chez Gérard in Trinity Square.  At one point they had such a fetching French waitress working there that we went every week just to hear her pronounce "Livarot"; to which she managed, delightfully, to inject several extra syllables.  Fortunately, the manager ensured we were always sat at one of her tables. She earned a lot of money in tips from us.  Sadly, the chain is no more, going bust in 2011 and the eight Chez Gérard restaurants were sold to Raymond Blanc, who has re-branded them as Brasserie Blanc, in which guise the Trinity Square restaurant (overlooking the Tower of London) still exists.

Anyway, to provide some variation I added some French paté and, of course some cornichons which I first had with paté in a restaurant in Normandy on a holiday in the early eighties.

Normandy means cider, of course (I decided that buying a bottle of Calvados shortly before having a regular blood test at the doctor's was not a wise idea).  A few years ago it was relatively easy to get Normandy cider in British supermarkets but that was before the cider explosion of the last few years which has seen many more British ciders on sale but also Irish "modern" types and one ubiquitous Swedish brand.  These have all squeezed out the Normandy product. Even our local Waitrose branches didn't have it but I did get some, eventually, in the Waitrose in the basement of John Lewis in Kingston, which has a specialist wine and beer department.

Stages 7,8 and 9 were all in Brittany so I decided a nice generic Breton chicken dish was called for.  This involved cooking chicken separately in one pan and then gently sauteing cubes of apple, onion and leeks in another pan.  You then return the chicken to the pan and add enough cider to cover everything before letting it bubble away for forty five minutes or so.

Before serving, I added a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and some cream and let it simmer for five minutes.  It went very well with more cider.  Finding Breton cider really was impossible!

Next time the Tour reaches the Pyrenees, a part of France the Legatus remembers from his childhood.

Tour de France Food and Drink Stages 1 to 4

I

n the last year or so I have taken to trying to match some of the regional food and drink to the stages of the Tour de France when I watch it on TV.  This year, as I am no longer working from home, time is a little short, so my approach has been much more impressionistic (appropriately) than, say, last year when I managed a different beer or wine for every stage.  An added complication this year has been that the start of the tour has been entirely in the north of France, Belgium and the Netherlands which means no wine regions at all.  Last year, at least, after a beery start in Yourkshire and Flanders we travelled to the Champagne region and Alsace. 

Stage 1 and 2 took place in the Netherlands, a country with as interesting a cuisine as its landscape.  Try as I might I couldn't seem to find a typical Dutch recipe other than the fact they eat meat and vegetables.  Great.  No wonder the most interesting food in the Netherlands comes from Indonesia.

However Stage 2 went through the town of Gouda which, apart from Edam, is about the only Dutch food product you can buy in a UK supermarket.  Not all Gouda has to come from Gouda but Tesco's mature Gouda does and very good it is too.  A long way from the mild Edam substitute most supermarkets sell.  Strong and nutty.  Gouda was first mentioned in the twelfth century which makes it one of the oldest recorded cheeses in the world.

Getting a Dutch beer also proved quite tricky (compared with obtaining Belgian beer, for example) but I went for Amstel, not because it is particularly interesting (still better than Heineken, though) but because it has a strong link to cycling in that the brewery is a long time sponsor of the Amstel Gold classic cycle race.

Stage 3 was entirely within Belgium and here I was rescued by Tom Murrath with  a link to a Belgian recipe for stoofvlees.  This was a beef stew with beer and was a very straightforward and delicious recipe, although I simplified it somewhat.  I cooked a chopped onion (the recipe says not too finely chopped) in a casserole and browned the beef in a heavy frying pan.

Once the meat has browned (it needs to fry, not stew, so a reasonably high heat and continuous turning is called for) put it the casserole with the onions and some salt and pepper.  Belgians will add local apple-pear syrup at this point but I left it out, due to its unavailability and the sugar content.  Then deglaze the frying pan with brown Belgian beer.  I sued some Leffe, a beer, I confess, to never having had before.  Once the beer has reached boiling point, pour it into the casserole with the meat and onions.  I added a bouquet garni and topped it up with more beer.

You then need to spread mustard on two slices of dark bread (I used rye bread as I am not supposed to have too much wholemeal) and put it mustard side down on top of the mixture. Then cook on a low heat for three hours.  You can leave the lid off the casserole until the sauce gets thick enough. Belgians add a dash of vinegar at this point which, with the syrup, gives a sweet and sour effect.

In Belgium they serve this with chips and mayonnaise (inevitably) but I don't have a deep fat fryer and, anyway, I'm not really allowed chips, so it was just peas for me.  In fact the recipe is rich enough that it doesn't really need anything else.   This was a really delicious recipe which I will make again.  The meat, after three hours cooking, is really tender and absorbs the bear.  The bread disintegrates nicely and infuses the sauce with the mustard.  I drank the rest of the Leffe with it which was a very fine beer indeed, dark brown with a beige, frothy head; very malty, chocolatey and quite sweet.

Normandy and Brittany next!