Tour de France Food and Wine Plans

When I can, I drink the local wine and eat the regional cusine of each stage, whether I'm in France or not.

Last year I posted an entire tour menu:
http://www.epicski.com/forum/thread/70809/tour-de-france-food-and-wine-plans


This year I'm building a house and leaving for a bike trip in Canada soon, but I'll post a few.  Here's a starter:

Stage 1

Monaco TT:

Monaco is really close to Italy.  Anyone who cooks, serves, or for
that matter, does any kind of work there is Italian.  If we were in
Monaco we'd be crazy to eat some faux French thing when there is
perfectly good Italian food available.

  I like this quote:
 
 
“Monoco has, so far as I know, added nothing to the Riviera repertoire, in spite of the fact that a couple of not very exceptional soups bear the name of Monaco… 
At least Monte Carlo has several rather good restaurants.”
 
The Food of France
Waverly Root, 1958

STAGE 2  Momaco -Brignoles:

Now this stage is one I can get excited about.  We try to go to a small town just north of Brignoles every fall   They race right around the Lac de Carces, one of our favorite routes.

I'll serve this with a Rose' from Chateau Miraval, a winery just north of the finish line,  Brad and Angelina rent the Chateau there, and they closed the tasting room but they still sell the wine. Their kids go to a school in Brignoles, right on the finish line.  Look for Cavandish to win in a sprint.

Here's what we're cooking, an English and a French version:

Bundles of Rabbit Brignolaise
Lapins en Paquests Brigonles
 
4-pound rabbit
Bacon
Garlic
3 tomatoes
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper
 
Cut up the rabbit, and free the leg tendons if the butcher has not already done so.  Wrap each piece around with strips of bacon, tucking a sliver of garlic into each.
 
Separately, peel, seed, and crush the tomatoes.  Put them into a skillet with 3 tablespoons of olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Cook over medium heat until the tomatoes are about half done, then transfer them, with their juices, to a baking dish.  Place the rabbit bundles on top and bake, covered, at 350° for 30 minutes, then lower the heat to 325° and bake for another 30 minutes, uncovering the disch fro the last 10 minutes of cooking.
 
From
The Wonderful Food of Provence
Jean Noël escudier and Peta J. Fuller
 

Ballotins de lapin brignolais

Ingrédients :

1 lapin de 1,5 kg
autant de bardes de lard que de morceaux de lapin
4 gousses d'ail
1 kg de tomates
sel, poivre
3 c. à soupe d'huile d'olive
quelques brins de romarin

Préparation :

Sur chaque barde de lard, étaler 3 brins de romarin, 3 lamelles d'ail,
et un morceau de lapin.
Ficelez chaque barde en formant un petit paquet.
Faites revenir dans de l'huile chaude les tomates pelées et épépinées.
A mi-cuisson, salez, poivrez, et versez-les dans un plat à gratin
assez profond. Posez dessus tous les ballotins de lapin.
Cuire 45 mn à four moyen.
Servez avec des pommes de terre rôties ou des haricots verts.

Informations complémentaires :

Pour 6 personnes
20 mn de préparation
1 heure de cuisson

 Great idea.  I am going to use that recipe.  My daughters love rabbit.

When I am in Bend in a few weeks to watch my daughter race at nationals I'll follow you lead and drink Oregon Pinot and enjoy some local cusine.  You'll have to share some of you favorites with me.

When are you coming?  I may be gone but I'll pm some ideas to you.

I'm trying to paste in a Pinot Gris suggestion but it keeps bombing me off line.

Weird....couldn't paste from Word.  Emailed it, then copied and pasted.



Oregon wine has been described a two Pinots….gris, and noir.

The Gris  are very good with salmon, and Pinot Noir, it has been said,
is French for “goes with everything”

This year’s Tour skips the Burgundy, so we won’t do the Oregon vs
France taste off.  We’ll could do the Alsace vs Oregon Pinot Gris test
we did in 2001 when they were in Colmar.  We usually find we prefer
the Oregon wine to drink alone, the French with food.  Our favorites
include King Estate, St. Innocent, and Silvan Ridge.

 The Tour will revisit Colmar July 17-18:

 

Colmar is home to an Alsacian Wine and Gastronomy festival.  We’ll
cook up a Salmon with crisp potato cakes and once again compare an
Oregon Pinot Gris with one from Alsace.

Salmon with Crisp Potato Cakes and Slow Cooked Onions (from The French
Vineyard Table, Page 82).  Serves 4

4 salmon fillets with skin intact, 5 to 6 oz. each (tail pieces if possible)
Whole black peppercorns
2 medium onions, chopped
¼ cup red wine, Pinot from Alsace
2 T vinegar
2 cups water
1 T butter
2 T honey
1 large potato, peeled & grated
3 T clarified butter
Salt & pepper

For the saffron butter:
2 T minced shallots
2 sticks unsalted butter cut into small pieces
¼ cup white wine from Alsace
Salt & pepper
Pinch of saffron threads

1 to 2 T olive oil
Sea salt
Fresh chives for garnish

Embed peppercorns in fish and set aside.  Place onions & red wine in
heavy saucepan, cook over medium-high heat until all liquid has
evaporated.  Add water and cook until all water has evaporated.  Stir
in butter and honey and set aside.

Stir grated potato, butter, salt & pepper.  Coat bottom of a non-stick
skillet with 1 T or the clarified butter.  Form potato mixture into 12
patties & cook over high heat until golden brown on both sides.  Set
aside.

To prepare the saffron butter:  In a heavy saucepan, cook shallots in
1 T of butter over medium-low heat until soft and translucent.  Pour
in the white wine and reduce until 1 to 2 T liquid remain.  Add butter
piece by piece, whisking after each addition.  Season with salt &
pepper and bring almost to a boil.  Add the saffron.  Set aside

To cook the salmon:  Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium
heat.  Add the salmon fillets skin side down.  Cook for 10 to 15
minutes, cover the pan when the color changes to dull reddish orange.

Spoon saffron butter onto 4 warmed plates.  Mound 3 small spoonfuls of
onions on each plate and top each with a potato crisp.  Set a salmon
fillet in the center of each plate.  Sprinkle grated pepper, sea salt
and chives over the fish and serve

Land in Portland on the 25th.  I am going to tour the wine country on the way to Bend.  Will be in Bend from the 26th through the 2nd.  My daughter is racing on the 28th, the 31st and the 1st.

Cooked two Pintade Perpignon last night.  Here's what my sister is doing for the trip to Spain:

Catalan Cuisine calls Girona:
 
“ [Amid this] overbuilt strip of shoreline…the Costa Brava great, wild natural beauty somehow seems to keep shining through.  Beyond the inevitable chicken stands and burger bars, the area is also home to … Catalonia’s best … restaurants.”
 
There’s a local specialty—a sea cucumber that apparently is unlike the sea cucumbers of China.  Its French name is sandals de mer, because it looks a bit like a flip-flop.
 
Thanks to Doug, we’ve been eating at Barlata, a tapas place with a chef who’s friend with a lot of cyclists (www.barlata.com/cycling.html).  We really like the  Fideua negre, noodle paella with shrimp, squid, sepia, squid ink, and allioli.
 
Thanks to The Spanish Table, here in Berkeley, I’ve got some noodles and squid ink.  Here’s a recipe from Paella by Penelope Casas.  It doesn’t have the squid ink, but we’ll add it anyway.
 
Seafood Pasta Paella (Fideuá)
 
½ pound small to medium shrimp, shelled and left whole if small or cut into pieces
½ pound monkfish, grouper, or other firm fish, cut into ½-inch pieces
½ pound squid, cleaned and diced
sea salt
Alioli
7 cups fish broth
¼ teaspoon saffron
7 tablespoons olive oil
1 green pepper
16 cloves garlic, minced
2 mdeium tomatoes, finely chopped
2 tablespoons minced parsley
½ cup white wine
1 pound appropriate pasta (mine is labeled Fedeo cabelio)
2 teaspoons sweet smoked Spanish paprika
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 dozen tiny clams
2 dozen very small mussels
 
Sprinkle the shrimp, monkfish, and squid with salt and let sit at room temperature for ten minutes.  Make the alioli and transfer to a serving bowl.  Combine the broth and saffron in a pot and keep hot over the lowest heat. 
 
Preheat oven to 400°F for gas oven, 450° for electric.
 
Heat the oil in a 17-18–inch paella pan.  Sauté the shrimp, monkfish, and squid just until their surfaces turn opaque, and remove them to a warm platter.  Sauté the green pepper until slightly softened.  Add the garlic, tomatoes, parsley, and wine.  Bring to a boil, and simmer until the liquid is cooked away.
 
Add the noodles, and stir to coat.  Sauté for about two minutes.  Add the paprika, cayenne, and hot broth.  Bring to a boil, taste for salt, and continue cooking and stirring until the pasta is no longer soupy, about 10-15 minutes.
 
Return the seafood to the pan, adding the clams and shellfish.  Transfer to the oven and cook, uncovered for 7-10 minutes, until the pasta is almost al dente and most of the liquid is absorbed.
 
Remove to a warm spot, cover with foil, and let sit about 5 minutes.
 
Uncover, and run under the broiler to brown the pasta.  Serve with the alioli.