Central eating in the summer...

Sometimes I feel that life is just too short to write a blog. The effect of puffy white clouds, which pose seemingly stationary, on a clear blue infinity, house shutters closed against the afternoon sun and the indolence created by the lazy intense heat turns a phrase such as “dog day afternoon”into a lucid description of the moment, as opposed to a forgotten movie title. The last few days have been such “dies caniculares” which is the reason that my keyboard looks like a relic from Miss Haversham’s computer room. Never have its expectations been less great. Having given up the thought of writing I gave myself up to the joys of summer eating. Simple, well run hotel restaurants have a hallowed place in the pantheon of French eating, sometimes with good reason. Over the last few days my faith in them has been renewed, luckily without flames dancing above my head. “Formules” or set menus at varying prices are part of the eating landscape in France and at the suitably named, Le Rabelais, I took the opportunity of choosing an option that allowed me free rein at  a buffet of hors d’oeuvres  followed by access to a similar buffet of desserts displaying a plethora of tiny jewel like creations confirming that  the pâtissiers’ skills are alive and well in Fontenay le Comte. All this on a sunlit terrace overlooking well kept gardens with the azure blue of the summer essential, a cooling pool, showing through the white picket fence that now must legally surround it. I can’t imagine that the now obligatory fences have reduced drownings but they certainly save on legal fees. The variety offered by the French bureaucracy buffet is as varied and imaginative as any restaurant, though only offering pleasure to the creators rather than the consumers. However, in spite of the bureaucrats’ efforts, lunch on a sunlit garden terrace is hard to beat particularly when the eye is as pleased as the palate. I have read recently that certain chefs in France are enraged that their customers seem to be more interested in photographing the dishes served to them than in eating them. We may well have to “check in” cameras and phones before being seated in the future. The pleasure of the al fresco lunch was equalled by that afforded by lunch in the dining room of “Le Central” in Coulon, a small village in the Marais Poitevin. The specialities of the Marais are eels, frogs and snails which are not universal crowd pleasers. However, although the very good kitchen at “Le Central” offers a raft of dishes starring these unloved creatures, the menu is stuffed with good things that will bring joy to those not yearning for a plate of strangeness. A very good veal chop or perfectly pink carré d’agneau might follow an entrée of quails and langoustines or half a dozen perfect Marennes oysters served with dark bread and Echiré butter. This is calm, friendly cuisine bourgeoise  served in an unstuffy atmosphere by young people – this is “correcte”. Days like these are the other side of the card from our normal rustic domesticity. In the final analysis I prefer the latter although there are moments, when I appear to have three pots doing different things on the hob whilst the oven is also working away on a different mission, when I could happily sit down at the white linen and wait for something delicious to appear on the table in front of me,  served by the kitchen burnt hand of another for a change.

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