Hello French Market friends,
Tom
orrow sees the celebration of Youth Day in South Africa. This special day was created in memory of the Soweto uprisings led by marginalised young people, in the hope of obtaining equality with other members of society and improvement in their education services. In Cape Town tomorrow, there will be a celebration of Youth Day throughout the V&A Waterfront with lots of live music, food and fun.
And Sunday is Father’s Day. This is in celebration of all those wonderful Dad’s all around the world who do so much for their families. We have some ideas for Father’s Day treats. The most obvious is to treat your dad to wonderful meals all day long. Make your dad a breakfast of freshly baked French pastries from our shop. All you do is pop some of our French made pain au chocolat and croissants in your air fryer and they will turn out perfectly.
For lunch you can offer him a glass of Mailly Grand Cru champagne to start with. Then you can serve him a platter of French cheeses and terrines accompanied by freshly baked French baguettes (which you can cook in your air fryer). We suggest pairing this platter with a bottle of light French red wine from Bordeaux such as the Petite Sirene Bordeaux rouge. In the evening, if he still feels hungry, you can make your dad an easy French dinner with some duck confit – these are slow cooked ducks’ thighs and legs. All you have to do is to heat them up in the air fryer, serve this with some potatoes roasted in the duck fat. We suggest pairing the duck confit with a serious pinot noir from Burgundy.
I would recommend pairing the duck with a glass of the beautiful Louis Latour Perrieres Premier C
ru 2020 from the Cotes de Beaune in Burgundy. Les Perrieres vineyards are located high on steep slopes built around rocky quarries. Plough horses are used to till the ground in between vines on some of the hilly slopes, where mechanical tractors cannot be used. The wine is aged in the Louis Latour‘s own barrels of French oak, 35% new oak for up to 12 months, which brings an intensity to the taste. When you look at the wine in your glass you see a deep garnet colour. This Pinot Noir 
has an intense aroma with hints of cherry and liquorice. When you taste the wine your mouth fills with flavours, it is smooth and lingers for a long time. This wine can be drunk now, even though it is still quite young, because the heat of the 2020 season led to intense flavours in the grapes and brought the wine forward. After a while this red vintage will need to rest again in your cellar as the wine “closes in” and leave it to mature for a up to 10 years, during which time it will develop far more complexity.
After all these amazing treats we suggest you serve your dad some Armagnac to help his food to digest. This Brandy is made in the Bas Armagnac region with a single distillation. The purpose of the glass of Armagnac after dinner is to act as a digestif (an aid to digestion) of course you can also drink Armagnac at any time and you can mix it with tonic water, which makes a great cocktail.
I think that your dad will feel really spoilt with some or all of these treats. Tomorrow and Saturday we are offering a 10% Fathers’ Day discount on all our wines and spirits.
From Switze
rland this week we have received boxes of readymade cheese fondue which is very popular in this cold winter weather. All you need to do is to heat the fondue and bake some baguettes, which you can use to dip into the fondue. New cheese in stock this week from Switzerland is the unpasteurised Swiss Appenzeller, this popular cheese has a dense texture and is aged for a short period.
In our fresh produce range, we have received a small stock of rhubarb, it is quite scarce at the moment so do contact me if you want to reserve some. We also have a wide range of fresh produce from local farms and some huge free ranging chickens’ eggs from the Worcester area. These are almost “flying” off the shelf as more clients discover them, they have really golden yolks and lots of flavour.
For my recipe this week I thought I would do a traditional rhubarb crumble. This is a dish I used to make as a child, as the crumble on top is very easy for a child to do. It is one of my favourite dishes as it is very warming on a cold winter’s day especially now with our pouring rain and chilly weather. We always served it with dollops of Devonshire clotted cream but here I serve it with some crème fraiche or a slice of Delice triple cream, an interesting combination. I would pair this rich sweet dessert with a glass of La Fontan Armagnac.
I hope you have a great long weekend, enjoy Youth Day celebrations tomorrow and Happy Father’s Day for Sunday. Stay warm and out of the rain. Note Our shop will be open from 9am to 2pm tomorrow.
Regards
Suzanne and The French Market Team