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Recipes from Le Tasting Room’s kitchen – spicy fish soup with potatoes and harissa
Inspired by a Rich Stein recipe Nigel cooked this for dinner last night but cut a few corners to make it more simple. It’s spicy and delicious.
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Recipes for Christmas – mince pies
For us Brits, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without mince pies. Perceived as something rather strange by the French that doesn’t deter me!
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What’s on the cheeseboard this month? Trèfle du Perche
Trèfle du Perche is a relatively ‘new’ cheese from the Loire valley. Created by 7 cheese making goat farmers, it has the shape of a four leaf clover.
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Recipes from Le Tasting Room’s kitchen – super easy chicken marinade
For a really easy dinner try this really simple marinade. It works well on chicken thighs or breasts and is healthy and quick to prepare.
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Wine education – flowering in the vineyard (a little more detail)
Flowering is an important stage in the vineyard year. Vines further east have flowered and the fruit has set whereas here in Anjou, our vines are in full flower.
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Tips from Le Tasting Room’s kitchen – freezing egg whites
Egg whites freeze really well and it’s very useful to have them on hand. When I make a recipe that requires just the yolks, I pop the whites into a bag, note the number of whites and pop them in the freezer.
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Recipes from Le Tasting Room’s kitchen – pastry for quiches and savoury dishes
You can buy pastry in any French supermarket and I certainly don’t judge anyone for using it as it saves time, comes rolled and is ready to slide into a tin. But, it’s not quite as good as homemade. Probably because when I make my own I use rather large quantities of really good fresh butter
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Recipes from Le Tasting Room’s kitchen – Lieu Noir with chilli, marjoram and garlic
I posted a brief resumé of this recipe on Instagram. This is a really easy recipe that really peps up a large fillet of fish. I used Lieu Noir (Coley) which is much cheaper than Cod and just as delicious.
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News from the Loire – Fête du Thoureil 5/6 May 2018
It’s the annual Fête du Thoureil this weekend, the 5th and 6th May. The forecast is for 23°C on Saturday and 27°C on Sunday, sunny and bright so fantastic news for the organisers of this lovely local event on the river Loire.
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Technical wine & vineyard vocabulary de-mystified – décavaillonnage
There are a number of vineyard practices that are routinely done in the Springtime and in recent years we have seen more and more growers working their soil mechanically instead of using chemicals. So what exactly is décavaillonnage?
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What are Les Saints de Glace?
Dating back to around 500 AC farmers prayed to the ice saints (les Saints de Glace) to protect their crops from damage. As we approach May, growers are holding their breath and hoping that we’ll not have an episode of late frost this year.
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What are we drinking this week? Chateau Yvonne 2012
We’ve been working with Mathieu Vallée of Chateau Yvonne for the past 8 years and love his wines. A former engineer, Mathieu took over Chateau Yvonne in 2007. He has 28 small parcels dotted around the Saumur Champigny appellation (3ha of Chenin and 8ha of Cabernet Franc).