“C’est l’heure du dejeuner! Mangeons!”
(“It’s lunch time! Let’s eat!”)
We’re in the beautiful little town of Annecy. We’ve had a look around, and we can attest to Annecy being as beautiful as the calendar photos would have one believe. It’s really a special place.
We worked up an appetite getting here and then walking around town. The lunch hour had arrived, so our top priority became selecting a place to have lunch. We ended up at a place that had a protected area where people were eating outside. They were busy – always a good sign — and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. We decided to join them.
We started off by ordering a bottle of vino. A bottle of vino for lunch? Yes! We’re on vacation, after all. We’re in this beautiful part of the world, far from home. We’re nearing the end of our vacation, and we weren’t driving. And besides, we we’re thirsty! The vino we ordered was a rosé. Rosés in this part of the world are crisp, dry, and tasty. Perfect for a warm day like today.
The menus were huge, and full of lots of mouth-watering dishes. It was tough to decide, but my Better Half ordered risotto with scallops. I ordered the house specialty — an assortment of cured meats and cheeses from the local area and a salad. . They’re big on cheese and cured meats in this neck of the woods.
The cheese on my charcuterie board was a kind called “Reblochon.” The French verb, “blocher” means “to pinch.” It would follow, then, that to “reblocher” would mean to “re-pinch,” or pinch a second time. In the case of Reblochon cheese, the thing being pinched is a cow’s udder.
The story goes like this… Back in the day, landowners taxed their tenant farmers on the milk they produced. When farmers got word that the tax man was coming for a visit, they’d hold some back for later. (That’s where the pinching comes in, eh?) Later, maybe a couple of hours after the taxman had gone down the road, they’d go back for the rest of the milk.
Well, it turned out that the milk they’d get when they came back for the second milking was richer than the regular stuff, and REALLY good for making cheese. That’s the story, anyway.
Reblochon is a soft cheese. It’s gonna be extra soft in what I ordered, though, because it comes encrusted in breadcrumbs and then baked until the cheese inside is melted. Mmmmmm. Does that sound good, or what?
But the risotto should be good, too. Both of us always like risotto. In case you’re not up to speed on risotto, it’s a staple of Northern Italy, which is close to where we are now. It’s a rice dish that’s prepared in a way that makes it creamy. Want to know how to make it? Well…. OK.
Let’s Make some Risotto
To make risotto, you need to have two pots going. In one pot, heat up some stock or broth that you’re going to use later. It needs to be hot when you’re ready to use it. It can be any kind of stock, but for today’s scallop risotto, I bet they’ll make their own stock out of clams, shrimp shells, fish heads, and stuff like that. That might not sound very good, but a lot of good flavors come out of those parts.
Now that you have your stock heating up in one pot, in the other pot, sauté an onion in butter and olive oil. When the onions are nice and soft, add the rice. Rice used for risotto is always a short-grained variety (like Arborio) because that’s the kind that absorbs the most liquid.
Put your rice in the pot and stir it up with the onions so that each of the individual rice grains gets a coating of butter/oil. You almost want to get them a little toasty. Then toss in a glass of white wine. In a few minutes it will be absorbed into the rice and will disappear like magic. We already have some good flavors going here, eh?
When the vino is gone, put in one or two ladles-full of the hot stock from the other pot. Give things a stir or two while the stock is absorbed into the rice. When all of the stock you put in has been absorbed, add another ladle-full of stock into the rice. Now the rice is starting to get nice and plump.
Keep stirring and adding stock when the already-added stock has been absorbed. Pretty soon the rice won’t absorb much more. By that time, it will have made sort of a creamy sauce from the stuff you put in there and from the starches that came out of the rice.
In a lot of risotto’s, now is when you would add a bunch of grated parmesan cheese and some butter, which would all melt together into the finished risotto. But for today’s scallop risotto, they’ll skip the cheese, (I think), and just add butter.
Le Déjeuner Arrive!
Meanwhile, let’s get back to our lunch today. When the risotto showed up, it was a beautiful thing. They must have seared the scallops and then arranged them on top of the risotto. I think the little things that look like candy canes are some kind of radish, mainly just there for decoration. The presentation was nice, but the taste was even better. It was over-the-top good. Mmm… mmm… mmm.
My lunch arrived, served on a wooden cutting board that took up half the table. There was salad on one side, potatoes and bread crumb-encrusted Reblochon cheese on the other side, and all kinds of cured meats – ham, salami, and who-knows-what-else in the middle. A fine feast!
The meats were indescribably delicious. No wonder they like this stuff so much around here – it’s really good! The salad and the potatoes were your basic salad and potatoes. — Something nice to round out the meal.
But the cheese – oooooo – it was extra good. I took a picture of the cheese before I dug in, but I guess after I took the first bite, I forgot I had a camera until after everything had been devoured. Had I had my wits about me, I would have taken a picture after I had cut into it, so you could see the melted reblochon cheese oozing out from the bread crumb crust.
Oh, man. After eating all of mine and half of the risotto, I was probably the fullest I’ve ever been in my life. Lucky for me that it wasn’t real heavy stuff. Well, that cheese might have been a touch on the heavy side. And I think they used a good chuck of butter when they made that bread crumb crust. Oh well!
(See the Travel Notes Page for more Info about this restaurant in Annecy).
After lunch we walked back to the train station and caught the train back to Lyon. The walk to the train station was just what we needed. Tonight will be our last night in Lyon. Tomorrow we head to Charles DeGaulle airport, where we’ll spend one night in a hotel so we’ll be ready to catch a plane to come back home bright and early the next day. Maybe by then I’ll be hungry again.
To be continued…
