My fleeting Moment with Floyd

I am in the Dordogne, the foie gras crazed area of France that worships the goose and the duck like some sort of Somerset pagan cult. I feel stuffed like a liver stuck in a ducks ass.
We had foie gras stuffed, rolled, fingered around  sturgeon, prunes, you name it. Other Périgord gastro wetdreams feature wine, walnut oil and truffles. If you can possibly eat any more, I dare you to knock yourself out with cheeses or walnut tart and tarte tatin.
Just when I thought things can’t get worse my mother in law Jan came out with a very odd book. Floyd on France. Being of Germanic origin I missed his series first time round and was horrified by this grinning drunkard in a bow tie. I wasn’t having any of him around my French foodie  haven. I expected crappy canapés and psychotic cocks drowned in white wine. I was wrong.

Two weeks  and 28 meals of cross-referencing our  posh glossy Ripailles cookbook by Stephane Reynaud (height 11cm/ weight 4,5 kg) on Traditional French Cuisine to the weathered Floyd on France (height 0,5cm/weight 300g)  – I warm to this guy.

He threatens me not to deviate from the original Beef Bourginion recipe. He only cooks in ‘cold’, ‘warm’ or ‘hot’ ovens. No faffing with temperature. And after having viewed his anarcho-cooking show on Youtube, I can assure you he was never sober. Julia Child’s key to French cooking was butter, his a vat of Armaniac. His show a middle class gastro gonzo version of  Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

“The church clock chimes seven. I sip the strong coffee and Leo splashes a dash of rum into the cup. I then visit my friend Eva and have tapenade for breakfast, good with the scented red wine that she says is the best for miles. We chat sipping pastis.
I go for a stroll and enter a bar, the proprietor hands me a diabolically strong pastis before wiping the table and crashes down a foaming demi of iced beer.” (Floyd on France 1987, BBC Books)

It’s Monday morning and I am warming to his irreverent style – Getting sloshed while trying to cook makes things much ‘jollier’ – Then  I hear he died.

“fuck it…. RIP …
You better then all those sweet faced fuckers on TV these days” obituary on Youtube by ” magic mushroom 22″

Blackpudding with Apples, Périgord walnuts and Argent prunes

(Boudin noir aux pommes). We had many heavy stews, oeufs, beefs and livers of many a creature.
But tonight we are cooking a simple peasant dish. Retro-cuisine as Floyd called it in 87.
In honour of Floyd and keeping with the theme, Sam adds a Floyd size splash of Sauternes. We try a crisp white Sancerre and open 2 bottles of red, a 2003 Pecharment and a 2005 St. Emilion just to add to the Floyd Ian spirit.

“Fry the boudin in oil until cooked through. Add the apples to the pan and oss until golden brown and tender. Serve the boudin on a bed of apples.” We add prunes soaked in Sauternes and walnuts foraged from the nearby farm.

• Boudin noir (Blood sausage)
• 2 apples, cored and roughly chopped
• 5 prunes, soaked for 2 hours
• 6 walnuts
• shallots

“Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.” (Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s, 1988 Hunter S. Thompson)

This entry was posted on September 18th, 2009 and is filed under nice places. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.