Eating

This blog post is more a note to ourselves so we remember our 'on the road' recipes but some of you may also be interested!

It takes a bit of imagination to create meals on one burner but we had some memorable ones! Of course when you cycle an average of 55km a day even a 2 day old baguette tastes great so we may not have been the best judges.  Yes and a bottle of fine French red wine helps a lot.

The mainstays of the larder included herbes du Provence, garlic, onion, salt, pepper, olive oil, balsamic reduction, coffee, butter, bullion cubes, capers (Rob would argue about that one), muesli and bonne maman jam.

Often we were limited in what we could buy as we were shopping in small stores.  The larger super marches were often off major roads which we avoided.

The following recipes or variations of these were the mainstays:

Recipe 1 - Chicken Stew

The secret to this recipe was 250 ml creme fraiche (30% butter fat)!
One carrot, two small potatoes cut up small and added to a cup or so of chicken broth.  Boil until veggies are almost cooked.

One chicken breast, one small onion, a couple of garlic cloves, handful of herbes, pepper and a couple tablespoons butter, capers (we added zucchini and red pepper once and that was amazing).  Fry this until chicken is mostly cooked.

Put the two things together and add creme fraiche.  Bring to a boil and simmer until chicken is cooked. Eat with fresh baguette and lots of butter (or even an old baguette).

Recipe 2 - Boulliabaise

Aka Fish Stew
Though we only made this once it was under tough circumstances in the Mediterranean.  The mosquitoes were dreadful but we managed to take over a patio with chairs in one of the unused 'cabins' in the campground.  This got us off the ground and saved the day as did the meal.

Cut up 2 tomatoes, garlic,1 potato, small onion and fry in lots of butter.  Add herbes du Provence 1 1/2 cup vegetable broth, capers and white wine (what ever you decide you can manage without drinking).

Bring it to a boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes or however long you can stand to wait.  Having a baguette and butter with white wine helps you wait.

Add mussels, clams, shrimp etc.  Our mussel's did not open but we had 6 very large shrimp and 8 clams which were amazing!

Recipe 3 - Rice dish

This one uses a rice we found which included brown and white basmati rice and some wild rice.  This took about 40-45 minutes to cook and was best when we first fried the rice in butter and chopped onions and then cooked it in chicken or vegetable broth.

We combined the rice with chopped zucchini, tomatoes, onions, garlic and a spicy sausage which had been fried in olive oil with added red wine. If we had left over carrots we added these as well. Once we also added chicken to the mix.  Another time some steak tho it was hard to find good small cuts of steak.

Recipe 4 - Salads

This was really easy when we could shop in a larger grocery store where we could buy a bag of prewashed salad greens.  Here these bags are sized just right for two hungry cyclists.  We used a tube of French mayonnaise with mustard as the dressing and added the following variety of ingredients (though perhaps not all in the same salad):

•  Boiled eggs
• Bacon bits (you can buy precut bacon here called 'lardon', a very appropriate name)
• Smoked duck meat
• Canned tuna
• Chopped red pepper
• Shaved carrots
• Onion rings
• Chevre cheese
• Of course herbes du Provence