Duck with your duck

Chanterelles

Mimolette, roquefort, crottin of goat cheese, and pate

Duke's Palace in Nevers

Pied de Monton mushrooms

gargoyles in Nevers

Nevers cathedral creation window

Sylvan, Duke's Palace garden

We have officially overdosed on French food already and are cutting back today (Sunday).  Saturday night we went to Babette and Eva's in Charite sur Loire for dinner.  We got there at 7:30pm and were the only ones there except for a table of about 20 people who it turned out were participating in the weekly Philosophy gathering.   Eventually one other couple came in.  The restaurant is casual and eclectically decorated with wallpaper made of pages of 1940s fashion catalogs and a variety of paintings.  Dinner was a fixed price menu again of 3 courses.  That is our downfall!!

This restaurant though was a little more organic or healthy maybe.  We started with spinach soup and a very good salad of cauliflower and beans with sesame seeds and maybe a balsamic vinegar sesame oil dressing.  For mains, Jake ordered steak tartare and I ordered mussels with potatoes.  Both were very well prepared.  Dessert was also excellent, a dense dark chocolate torte and a raspberry cake with a coconut almond base and raspberry cream topping.  We enjoyed a nice half bottle of Sancerre with dinner.

Yesterday we explored Nevers, a small city to the south.  From our house we took lovely winding back roads.  Going by several stretches of forest, there were lots of tagged logs waiting to be taken away.  Many were cut in 5' lengths and were maybe 6" diameter.  Could they be for barrel staves?  We also passed a couple hunters and there are lots of signs warning of deer crossing roads.

Nevers is a relatively compact city built on a hilly area above the Loire.  It was bombed in WWII, so some more modern buildings are interspersed with the ancient ones.  The tourism office is built into the basement of the ducal palace and you can see the archaeological finds of a former chateau that preceeded the palace.  Nevers was a city by Roman times.   We went into the cathedral which is a curious mix of ancient and modern.  It lost its roof and windows in a bombing.  The windows have been replaced with some interesting modern stained glass depicting various biblical stories (see photos).  The upper windows look like ribbons of red and blue.

We visited the covered market and its surrounding outdoor Saturday market stalls.  All sorts of foods for sale including the "Chevallier Boucher" stand.  We bought two varieties of mushrooms to try, Chanterelle jaune and pied de something or other which appear to be small orange hydnums (toothed mushrooms) (see photos).  They also sold cepes and another vendor had black trumpet chanterelles and the more standard orange variety.

For lunch we found a place where we could just get a salad!  Of course mine came with toasted goat cheese rounds on slices of baguette, and Jake's came with smoked duck.  Everything closes between about 12 - 2pm so we decided to look for a place with free wireless to check our email.  We stopped at an phone store that was open and the saleslady gave us directions to "Macdows" - go to the fountain and turn right, keep going down the hill.  We followed the directions, but seemed to end up at a cross street, so we asked at a cute little café if they had wireless.  No, but "Macdor" does, keep going down this street and you can't miss it.  So we continue down the street to the ring road around the city and see…. yes, the golden arches of "McDonalds"!   Which does in fact have free unlimited wifi and a large sitting area on the second floor.

By mid-afternoon it was raining, so we took the highway home and hung out until dinner.  For dinner we had made reservations at "La Ferme des Barreaux", a farm on the west bank of the Loire between Charite and Pouilly sur Loire.  Our host had highly recommended it.  They specialize in duck grown on the farm.  We got there early and so were invited to hang out in the gift shop.  They sell all kinds of food, soaps, and amusing kitchen items including a mallard duck water pitcher with a cattail handle.  Dinner was in a small room with a huge fireplace.  They had only one table for four and one other couple besides us, but I think there were just two women doing all cooking and serving.   They started serving dinner around 8pm.  We started with an aperitif of kir (white wine mixed with cassis).  That turned out to be good because we tried two different vintages of a sancerre that were both off so we gave up on wine after that.  The first course was the house signature duck foie gras served with a small salad and some onions cooked in orange.  It was absolutely delicious, like a delicately flavored butter.  For the main course Jake had the duck tournedos which looked like a large duck steak, and I had the duck entrecote,  thinner slices of duck seared on both sides with herbs du Provence.  Both were perfectly cooked and for awhile we debated whether it was really beef!

Dinner was followed by the cheese course.  The waitress brought out an enormous wooden board filled with little cheeses, many of them varieties of goat cheese.  We selected several wedges but were so stuffed we just sampled a little of each one.  They ranged from really stinky to a creamy brie with peppercorns, and a milder goat cheese.  The cheese course was followed by the dessert course.  We went with chocolate again, chocolate mousse and a chocolate pave served with crème anglaise.  The pave was a little like a brownie, but both desserts were good.  A decaf expresso set us up for the drive home, but it came with four little cookies that we felt obligated to sample. 

So that explains why we have decided to eat at home today.  Of course we have cheese and pate (see photo) from the Friday market in the refrigerator and mushrooms to sample, so it's not like we'll go hungry!