France: November 7 -- The Pope Himself had no idea...

Tuesday was the day to visit my biggest supplier, Elie-Arnaud Denoix. This distillery makes the mustards, jams, vinegars and other condiments that I sell. I must say that I am extremely happy with the quality, the beauty of the packaging, and the fact that they sell quite well! What I didn't know was how great a guy Mr. Denoix was.

We got to the small factory early in the town of Turenne-Gare. This is just a bit aways from the medieval and touristy town of Turenne, which is an impressive site. It sits atop a hill with a big castle with huge turrets (hence the name, I guess) high up which give a great view of the entire area. Turenne-Gare is, on the other hand, where the train station is. And our factory.

My regular contact was on sick-leave, unfortunately, but a man came to greet us and this turned out to be Mr. Elie-Arnaud Denoix himself. He was not what I expected of a president of a successful company -- he was very kind, accessible, and interested in exactly what it was I was doing. Many times he referred to the fact that he had started out like me, and that felt pretty good to hear.

Denoix started about 30 years ago, after splitting with the Maison Denoix in Brive, which can today cause perhaps some confusion, but the products are quite distinct. He started in the lovely village of Collognes-la-Rouge (where all the building are made of a red mason found very locally), where he made liqueurs and spirits. He later expanded to mustards, vinegars and other products. Common to all his products is his skill in extracting flavors from fruits, spices, or other foodstuffs (he told us of his Camembert liqueur experiment), and adding it to spirits, oils, vinegars, mustards and chutneys. Product development was obviously very important and we got to taste top secret new products!!

The flavor extraction, as we saw in the factory, was done in different ways, but always naturally. Some products were macerated, for example we saw big bags of spices floating in vats of balsamic vinegar, and could smell the aromas clearly. Other flavors were actually distilled, like anis, lemon and lime. He had a still, not for concentrating alcohol, as he started with a 96% solution that he bought elsewhere, but instead for distilling the mixture of the alcohol with the flavor components, resulting in a liquid where the volatile elements of the flavor was well integrated in the spirit, which was actually less strong.

And we had to ask him about his most famous product, moutarde violette. For those who don't know this product (shame -- go buy in the store now...) it is a mustard made with 50% concentrated grape juice, which gives it a distinct sweetness which balances the sharp acidity of the mustard paste. The story goes that many hundred years ago, there was a Pope (one of them) in Avignon, France, who had come from Brive in the South-West. He had missed this mustard which was traditionally made there, and asked his nephew to go there to find the recipe and reproduce the mustard. He did, and the nephew became the first official Papal Mustardier.

Mr. Denoix had started development on this mustard many years ago as a part of Maison Denoix, to reproduce this historic recipe. Later when he stared Elie-Arnaud Denoix (or Domaine des Terres Rouges as the mustard is branded today), he reformulated it, and to my mind, improved its mustardyness and spiciness. He had then written a letter to the Vatican asking about the authenticity of the legend of the Papal Mustard, and got a reply stating that the Pope knew absolutely nothing about this. So much for stories. The mustard is good anyway, and we do know it was used long ago because some cookbooks have survived with recipes using it in local cooking.

We were invited to the tasting room, always my favorite room, and tasted many kinds of flavored balsamic vinegars. Before lunch this added a bit of zest to ones stomach acids, but they were good, and we followed them with a few of his liqueurs and wine drinks. He has an especially good "Christmas wine" (gløgg in Norwegian) which was less sweet and more fresh than these drinks usually are, quite tasty.

We were invited out to lunch, so of course we accepted, and chauffeured off to Turenne proper where we met a Dutch restaurant owner who serves us paté baked in a crust and a lovely warming "Dutch pot-au-feu", sort of a pea-soup with bits of ham and sausage in it. All accompanied by a lovely Cahors.

The weather was fine and we headed off to Brive for some errands. Stig went shopping for wine and I got to translate everything the very-fast-talking wine merchant said. And I checked out a honey supplier I had seen earlier. Then we headed home, a bit tired and very willing to mosey down to La Bonne Famille again to be served dinner.

The main point of the dinner now was also Moutarde Violette. The place serves a beef steak with Moutarde Violette sauce, so we had to try it. First, though, we got an open-faces sandwich (smørbrød) with pigs' feet and fat liver (tartine des pied de cochon et foie gras de canard). Sounds better in french. It was weird but amazingly good. The pigs' feet were kind of meaty and gelatinous, and chopped together with duck liver, lentils, and a warm vinaigrette. The steak was good, too, and the sauce a creamy one that I will try to reverse engineer so I can give the recipe to my customers. A word of warning: when you order steak in France they have a different perception of "rare", "medium", and "well done". Everything is less cooked. I was in the mood for a rare steak, so I ordered "bleu". It came on the plate sizzling and brown, yet the insides were so little cooked they were hardly warmed through. Yet it was delicious meat, if a bit chewy. An enormous profiterole for dessert finished us off, so we died and went to bed, ready for another day.