A Surprise Sunday Lunch

I'm sure most of you will by now have heard about the problems in the skies above Northern Europe and the resulting no fly zone which has been in place, more or less continuously since it's imposition on Thursday.  The zone covers much of Northern Europe and is the result of  a volcano erupting in Iceland.

Hundreds of thousands of passengers are finding themselves stranded in the wrong place as air travel plans fall apart.  There is, as yet, no real sign of the situation abating and many experts are now suggesting that nothing will fly in the affected areas until the middle or end of the coming week or even later.

One unexpected aside that has arisen out of this situation was a very pleasant Sunday lunch which I have just enjoyed with five friends.  All of the friends should have been in the UK, having left France yesterday afternoon for the short flight to Bristol.  But they are all still here.   Two of them live here and have cancelled their short break and the other three have been offered replacement flights next Saturday afternoon, a week after they should have returned from their holiday.

As a result of this, I offered all five of them Sunday lunch "Chez Moi" and prepared a simple meal.

For starter I mixed several leaves from the garden and prepared a small salad with cucumber.  I then turned it into a Perigordine Salad by making a bacon and crouton mix, stirring it into the salad leaves and then dressing with a garlic and herb vinaigrette.   I served it with a sliced tomato salad dressed in a tomato vinaigrette.

For the main course I prepared Pork in Cider to my own recipe.  It takes it's inspiration from a Porc de Normandie recipe but has been developed over the years.

• Coarsely chop a whole onion
• Peal and thinly slice several garlic cloves
• add a good quantity of herbes de Provence
• Fry the onion, garlic and herbs in a little olive oil until tender then line a large ovenproof dish with them
• Lightly fry pork chops in a little olive oil in the same pan until they are just slightly browned on both sides. (They don't need to be cooked through) I use one large chop per person.
• Arrange the chops in the dish on top of the onions and garlic
• In the same pan,mix about 50ml of cider vinegar and a 75cl bottle of light cider, (I use a sparkling cider)
• Cut an apple into  large pieces, (cored but not peeled) and add to the cider
• Bring the cider, vinegar and apple gently to the boil.
• Arrange the apple pieces around the chops and pour the liquid over to completely cover
• Add lots of freshly ground pepper and some salt
• Bake in the middle of an oven at 180 C for about 1 hour
• Check midway through cooking and add more cider if the chops are showing above the liquid
• Remove from oven after 1 hour and add a good tablespoon or two of fromage blanc to the top of each chop
• return to oven for about 15 to 20 minutes
• Serve the chops and apple and thicken the juice to make a delicious gravy

I served this dish with cous cous.

I simply measured the amount of cous cous I need, (2 cups for 6 people) into a serving basin.  In a sauce pan I put the same amount of water, a handful of dried sultanas and some macedoine of vegetables and added just a dribble of olive oil.  I brought the saucepan to the boil and as soon as the vegetables were cooked I poured the whole lot on to the couscous and left to stand for exactly 3 minutes

Fluff up the mixture and serve immediately.

Three or four french cheese and the remains of the fromage blanc made up the cheese board and for dessert, one of the guests brought a wonderful peach and apple tart which we devoured!  As always there was a big basket of french bread and several bottles of red wine on the table from the start.

It was a surprise meal for my surprise guests.  I'm sorry I don't have any photographs but maybe this is one of those occasions when the words will leave enough to your imagination to let you savour the flavours and dream of the occasion.   My guests don't seem to be too upset about being stranded in France!