Loire Food and Wine - “Simply Delicious”
FOOD AND WINE OF THE LOIRE
Joanna Simon writes in Wine With Food: “Gourmet and gourmand, the two extremes (though not opposites of good food) can find contentment in the… Loire region.” Stretching as it does from Nantes almost to the Ardèche it would be foolish to generalise about the food from the Loire, but the region, if we may call it so, has an exhilarating gastronomic heritage. Flavours tend to be fresh and subtle rather than heavy and rich. Dishes are cooked simply to highlight the quality of the ingredient. The white wines are pungent from the brine-scented Muscadet to the intensely flavoured (but never heavy) Chenin and Sauvignon to sapid light reds from Cabernet Franc, Gamay or Pinot Noir. Then, of course, there are the fabulous sweet wines…
Beurre Blanc
This is a “nantaise” specialty. People from Nantes attribute its creation to Mère Clémence (a restaurant on the levee called the “Divatte”). Its reputation grew quickly and it began to be served at all the fine tables in Anjou, Tours and all the way to Orléans. Beurre Blanc accompanies pike, salmon, turbot, and even scallops marvellously. The sauce is an emulsion of melted salted butter thickened with a reduction of shallots and vinegar (muscadet wine vinegar for purists).
Fish & Shellfish
The wild salmon fished in the Loire has now become a part of legend. It is now as rare as truffles would be on the daily lunch table and has been replaced with imported salmon or salmon from fish farms. The salmon is cut into steaks which are then grilled or served in fillet with sauce. Wild salmon should be drunk with Savennières, the muscularity of the noble fish pierced by the harpoon of the wine’s natural acidity, the natural oils of the fish softening and enriching the angularity of the Chenin, a true regenerative mutuality. Pike is a very savoury fish that is gorgeous with beurre blanc, but may also be served roasted – as it is in Sologne. Loire River pikeperch fillet in Vouvray wine with asparagus and morel mushrooms is a classic rendering (with Vouvray, naturally). On a similar theme grilled shad with wild mushrooms and sorrel, or braised with white wine with beurre blanc are particularly good hosed down by a nippy Anjou or Saumur Blanc. Friture de Loire is composed of bleak fish and gudgeon and is prepared with garlic butter. Muscadet is a good bet here. Muscadet and oysters are another happy marriage and for the skyscraper fruits de mer platter good quantity as well as good quality is a prerequisite! You can even try Gros Plant (or maybe not). Anguille (eel) is prepared in matelote sauce with red wine, cut into chunks, stewed in red wine with mushrooms, small white onions and lardons and sometimes served with fresh pasta and local truffles. Local chefs will cook their eel in Chinon or Bourgueil; these reds have an earthiness that respects this hearty rustic dish. More elaborate dishes might include: sautéed scallops served with vegetable parmentière, whipped cardamom sauce and beetroot butter or John Dory fillets served with ginger butter and garden vegetables or roasted langoustines set around a creamy risotto made with local andouillette (sausage made of chitterlings) seasoned with shellfish vinaigrette. One of Henri Bourgeois’ oak-aged white Sancerres would fit the bill beautifully here; even a red Sancerre would do.
Charcuterie, Snails, Poultry and Prunes
As you travel through the region, fish dishes give way to meat and game, pork with plums and cream, stuffed cabbage with hare, partridge with wild mushrooms. Vegetables are used in abundance, a variety of salads and charcuterie, potato cake, duckling with tiny fresh peas and baby turnips, pumpkin pie, asparagus. The rillettes from Tours and Vouvray are just as renowned as those from Mans. Rillons are delicious served warm, not hot. According to Balzac they look like “pork residue sautéed in fat which looks like cooked truffles.” Uncork that bottle of Gamay de Touraine from Henry Marionnet which has been cooling in the fridge and gulp with extreme prejudice. That opposition of sweet fat with the hint of bitter cherry and damson makes a happy marriage. The rustic flavours of a casserole of snails from the St. Nicolas de Bourgueil area, Touraine high quality free-range chicken, Bresse pigeon or calf’s sweetbreads braised perhaps with candied lemon and cumin and served with turnip-rooted chervil attract a chunky Anjou-Villages (they don’t come chunkier than those from Ogereau) or an earthy Saumur-Champigny. “Potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism are very good for the lips: especially prunes and prism, “ quoth Mrs General in Little Dorrit. Cooked with pork, rabbit, chicken and fish, prunes feature heavily in Loire gastronomy – prisms are noticeably absent. A good Bourgueil, such as the one from Domaine Bel–Air, is a tremendously adaptable red; its soothing gravelly flavours, ripe tannins and refreshing acidity, neither dominate nor are dominated, but flow, swirl and eddy like a river around the constituent parts of the dish.
Goat’s cheese etc.
The area along the Loire is known for the diversity of goats’ cheese. The “Chèvres”, as goats’ cheeses are called in France, are available in pyramids, rolls or conical shapes. Some of the varieties are coated with ash or depending on the degree of maturity, covered with a fine mould rind. The Crottin de Chavignol is most noteworthy; others such Sainte-Maure de Touraine, Selles sur Cher, and Pouligny Saint-Pierre are worth seeking out. Gourmets respect these goat’s cheeses which have been produced according to an old tradition in the places they are named after. Take a mature piece of goat’s cheese and put a little on the tip of your tongue and drink some fine Sancerre and take in the interplay of chalkiness, creaminess and tangy gooseberry as the cheese crumbles on your taste buds. Keep those cheeses coming? With pleasure! How about Bondaroy au Foin, a soft cows milk cheese with a tangy flavour, cured in hay, Frinot, from Orléanais, is a soft lightly cured cheese with a strong flavour, sometimes coated with ashes, or Valençay, a pyramid-shaped goat’s cheese with a mild nutty flavour, Olivet Bleu, is a rich blue cheese, wrapped in plane tree leaves, and there are others too numerous to mention.