Finally I get to taste a nun's fart.
This is not the result of some sort of bizarre sound of music fixation, but an encounter with an elusive French sweetmeat, pets de nonne _ squashball-sized spheres of choux pastry designed to melt in the mouth with an explosion of airy sweetness.
I'd long heard about this mystical dessert, but Chez Francis in the rustic town of Brive-le-Gaillarde was the first restaurant I'd found that served them up -- accompanied by a glass of vin paille _ a sweet wine given its apricot hues and sugary intensity by leaving the grapes to dry for months on beds of straw.
This is not the result of some sort of bizarre sound of music fixation, but an encounter with an elusive French sweetmeat, pets de nonne _ squashball-sized spheres of choux pastry designed to melt in the mouth with an explosion of airy sweetness.
I'd long heard about this mystical dessert, but Chez Francis in the rustic town of Brive-le-Gaillarde was the first restaurant I'd found that served them up -- accompanied by a glass of vin paille _ a sweet wine given its apricot hues and sugary intensity by leaving the grapes to dry for months on beds of straw.
Francis is just about the perfect small town bistro, on the edge of the perfect French small town that itself is surrounded by a patch of rolling pasture land _ the Correze, a green and rugged land that produces legendary veal, formidable rugby players and archetypal Frenchmen as Georges Brassans and Jacques Chirac.Brive is centered on the 12th-century St-Martins church, a towering pile of gothic and Romanesque that forms a hub for the web of narrow lanes forming the old town. Solid bourgeois facades of powder gray stone contain little stores selling jars of rillettes and fois gras, homemade chocolate, herby liquors or home-crafted, walnut handled pocket knifes.
The rural lifestyle of the region is captured in "La terre qui demeure" and other novels by local writer Claude Michelet.
We hit town on a sweltering July weekend. Built in a depression among the grassy hills, Brive traps the sunshine and thermometers were souring towards 40C. Fortunately we found refuge at Chez Francis just as a thunderstorm rolled down the Avenue de Paris battering shutters, bending plane trees and sending torrents cascading down the mansarded slate roofs.
Francis is a welcoming place, cool and cozy with great local food, arty bric-a-brac decor, a bunch of literary connections and bubbly blond hostess keen to chat about the famous Parisians who make this a de riguer dining spot when attending the Brive book fair and cover the walls in gushing graffiti to mark their appreciation.
The chef himself escaped from the capital 20 years ago to open the bistrot and bring a touch of big city sophistication to a menu thoroughly rooted in regional tradition.
He serves crispy flat bread and the first glass of vin paille while we check the menu.
There's a starter selection which turns out to be a fabulous little tour around the midi and beyond: a bloc of buttery fois gras, red-pepper-rich gaspacho with forcaccia, a chartrelle salad, a mi-cuit of salmon, aubergine tempura and barbagiuan _ the stuffed ravioli of Monaco (courtesy of the sous-chef's recent stage on the Cote d'Azur).
Right back to the Correzian heart of things for the main course _ veau de lait with gros frittes and giroles. Touch-tender baby veal with fat, salty chips and sauteed wild mushrooms - gorgeous. Then a slice of fourme de Valciviene _ a Stilton-like blue cheese _ produced up the road. All this accompanied by a happy red wine from the nearby Perigord _ Domaine de la Valette.
To end up along come those ecclesiastical trumps to round of a classic meal.
They are kid friendly too, producing a fine menu d'enfant featuring a big bowl of chilled gaspacho, a steak-frite of junior size but grown up quality and cherry clafotis.
Brive's cooks don't have to look far for their ingredients. The town has two great food markets.
Overlooked by the cheap and cheerful, Hotel Chapon Fin, the little open air farmers' market in the Place de Lattre de Tassigny has a great selection of fruit and veg - peaches, pears, golden Limousin apples, fresh walnuts and wild mushrooms but is just an aperitif to the vast covered halls of the Marche Georges Brassens _ once immortalized by the acerbic songwriter.
Row upon row of stalls groaning under strings of garlic, gleaming salad greens, bunches of sunflowers, jars of honey, pungent rocamadour goats cheese, crates of apricot and melon. Venture a little deeper into the maze of goodies and there cages of ducklings rabbits and pigeons, jars of foie gras and slabs of confit de canard.
Strangely enough for a town hundreds of kilometres from the sea, there's a lighthouse overlooking the market bustle, actually it's a water tower disguised as a lighthouse for reasons nobody was able to explain.
No sea, but when the sun really begins to bake, the people of Brive can head out to the Lac de Causse, just 10 kilometers away which boasts freshwater beaches for swimming and watersports.
The hills around Brive are dotted with picturesque stone villages like Turenne, Curemonte and Saint-Robert which are members of the exclusive "plus beaux villages de France" association.
Built on a ridge Curemont has not less than three castles and a 12th century church; Turenne, clustered on a hillside beneath the ruins of its fortress was an independent state until Louis XV brought in into the French kingdom in 1738; the stone manor houses of Saint-Robert were built around a Bendictine monestry.
Collonges-la-Rouge stands out thanks to the vivid red stone used to build it in the Middle Ages. Tracing its history back to the 8th century, Collonges cobbled streets have been largely untouched since a 19th century outbreak of phylloxera devastated its thriving vinyards and forced almost half the population to emigrate. The gothic church of Saint-Pierre has an ornately carved doorway arch, there are renaiseance noble houses, an ancient covered market and a museum housed in a 16th century home decorated with a carving of a mysterious mermaid.
In days gone by Collonges lived on sales of geese and walnuts, now on summer days it's a bit overwhelmed by tourists winding round the alleys and filling the cafe terraces and there's a fair ammount of tacky souveniers for sale among the bottles of nut licqour and foie gras on offer in the village's low-walled boutiques. It can be bit of a relief to head down the hillside back to Brive's unpretentious charms.
Correze's eastern neighbour is the is the département of Dordogne, or Dordogneshire, as it's become known for the hundreds of British immigrants who have flocked there attracted by the landscape of riverside villages and storybook castles as well as the renowned cuisine.
If you want a castle of your own without paying a king's ransom the Château de la Fleunie, in Condat-sur-Vézère, has rooms starting from €65 in a Templers' fortress built between the 12th and 15th centuries. Here you can live out your lord-of-the-manor fantasy surrounded by over 100 hectares of meadow and parkland, with its own flock of deer. The best rooms are in the four massive turrets with walls built to withstand a siege, oak-beamed ceillings and antique furniture drapped with flowered tapestries.
For all its fairy tale ambiance, the hotel has all mod cons. There's a gym in the dungeons, saunas and bar beside the pool were you can sip cocktails overlooking the Vézère valley. Not surprising the food's great too.
We hit town on a sweltering July weekend. Built in a depression among the grassy hills, Brive traps the sunshine and thermometers were souring towards 40C. Fortunately we found refuge at Chez Francis just as a thunderstorm rolled down the Avenue de Paris battering shutters, bending plane trees and sending torrents cascading down the mansarded slate roofs.
Francis is a welcoming place, cool and cozy with great local food, arty bric-a-brac decor, a bunch of literary connections and bubbly blond hostess keen to chat about the famous Parisians who make this a de riguer dining spot when attending the Brive book fair and cover the walls in gushing graffiti to mark their appreciation.
The chef himself escaped from the capital 20 years ago to open the bistrot and bring a touch of big city sophistication to a menu thoroughly rooted in regional tradition.
He serves crispy flat bread and the first glass of vin paille while we check the menu.
There's a starter selection which turns out to be a fabulous little tour around the midi and beyond: a bloc of buttery fois gras, red-pepper-rich gaspacho with forcaccia, a chartrelle salad, a mi-cuit of salmon, aubergine tempura and barbagiuan _ the stuffed ravioli of Monaco (courtesy of the sous-chef's recent stage on the Cote d'Azur).
Right back to the Correzian heart of things for the main course _ veau de lait with gros frittes and giroles. Touch-tender baby veal with fat, salty chips and sauteed wild mushrooms - gorgeous. Then a slice of fourme de Valciviene _ a Stilton-like blue cheese _ produced up the road. All this accompanied by a happy red wine from the nearby Perigord _ Domaine de la Valette.
To end up along come those ecclesiastical trumps to round of a classic meal.
They are kid friendly too, producing a fine menu d'enfant featuring a big bowl of chilled gaspacho, a steak-frite of junior size but grown up quality and cherry clafotis.
Brive's cooks don't have to look far for their ingredients. The town has two great food markets.
Overlooked by the cheap and cheerful, Hotel Chapon Fin, the little open air farmers' market in the Place de Lattre de Tassigny has a great selection of fruit and veg - peaches, pears, golden Limousin apples, fresh walnuts and wild mushrooms but is just an aperitif to the vast covered halls of the Marche Georges Brassens _ once immortalized by the acerbic songwriter.
Row upon row of stalls groaning under strings of garlic, gleaming salad greens, bunches of sunflowers, jars of honey, pungent rocamadour goats cheese, crates of apricot and melon. Venture a little deeper into the maze of goodies and there cages of ducklings rabbits and pigeons, jars of foie gras and slabs of confit de canard.
Strangely enough for a town hundreds of kilometres from the sea, there's a lighthouse overlooking the market bustle, actually it's a water tower disguised as a lighthouse for reasons nobody was able to explain.
No sea, but when the sun really begins to bake, the people of Brive can head out to the Lac de Causse, just 10 kilometers away which boasts freshwater beaches for swimming and watersports.
The hills around Brive are dotted with picturesque stone villages like Turenne, Curemonte and Saint-Robert which are members of the exclusive "plus beaux villages de France" association.
Built on a ridge Curemont has not less than three castles and a 12th century church; Turenne, clustered on a hillside beneath the ruins of its fortress was an independent state until Louis XV brought in into the French kingdom in 1738; the stone manor houses of Saint-Robert were built around a Bendictine monestry.
Collonges-la-Rouge stands out thanks to the vivid red stone used to build it in the Middle Ages. Tracing its history back to the 8th century, Collonges cobbled streets have been largely untouched since a 19th century outbreak of phylloxera devastated its thriving vinyards and forced almost half the population to emigrate. The gothic church of Saint-Pierre has an ornately carved doorway arch, there are renaiseance noble houses, an ancient covered market and a museum housed in a 16th century home decorated with a carving of a mysterious mermaid.
In days gone by Collonges lived on sales of geese and walnuts, now on summer days it's a bit overwhelmed by tourists winding round the alleys and filling the cafe terraces and there's a fair ammount of tacky souveniers for sale among the bottles of nut licqour and foie gras on offer in the village's low-walled boutiques. It can be bit of a relief to head down the hillside back to Brive's unpretentious charms.
Correze's eastern neighbour is the is the département of Dordogne, or Dordogneshire, as it's become known for the hundreds of British immigrants who have flocked there attracted by the landscape of riverside villages and storybook castles as well as the renowned cuisine.
If you want a castle of your own without paying a king's ransom the Château de la Fleunie, in Condat-sur-Vézère, has rooms starting from €65 in a Templers' fortress built between the 12th and 15th centuries. Here you can live out your lord-of-the-manor fantasy surrounded by over 100 hectares of meadow and parkland, with its own flock of deer. The best rooms are in the four massive turrets with walls built to withstand a siege, oak-beamed ceillings and antique furniture drapped with flowered tapestries.
For all its fairy tale ambiance, the hotel has all mod cons. There's a gym in the dungeons, saunas and bar beside the pool were you can sip cocktails overlooking the Vézère valley. Not surprising the food's great too.
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