À Bientôt, Poitiers

Poitiers' impressive town hall

I’m sitting in La Rochelle airport as I write this, waiting for my flight home to Southampton, still in shock that my ERASMUS year is now officially over. While it doesn’t quite feel like it was only yesterday that I pitched up in Poitiers and dealt with a flooded flat within the first week, it certainly doesn’t feel like it was nine months ago!

The river that meanders alongside Poitiers

In between packing and avoiding the May showers, I took some photos so that you could all see where I’ve been living. I’m going to miss the fantastic markets when it comes to finding good, and cheap, produce but I won’t miss the cobble stones around town when they're slick with rain. 

The Last Month (Time Has Flown)

Last Sunday it was the first anniversary of this blog and I realised I hadn’t posted for a while due to a busy summer. Well, I’m going to rectify this today with  a catch up of my holidays. This might not be posted for a few days as I currently don’t have reliable internet but as soon as I can I promise to upload this! 

I last posted when I was in Sweden. We had a fantastic two weeks there and the food, well, it was brilliant. If you ever go to Stockholm then I recommend you eat at Oaxen Slip, which is on the same island as the ABBA museum (also worth a visit for the hilarity of it all. And the chance to pretend you’re part of the band). The menu is intended to be shared but you could quite easily have a plate each and just share the sides. We each chose a dish and then tried each others’. I had pork with spring onion butter and a charred lemon, so simple yet full of flavour. My family chose cod with hazelnuts, Swedish beef sausage, and a steak. All tasted fantastic. For me, the anticipated dessert, and the reason I chose the restaurant, having spotted it on Rocket and Squash’s instagram, was a salted caramel brownie with ice cream and sour cream. Boy, did it live up to expectations! The warm brownie was light and gooey with the sour cream being a perfect, if unusual, foil to the chocolate sweetness. 

Don't Say Never Trust A Skinny Cook: Boeuf Bourguignon (No Mushrooms!)

So, the title says no mushrooms but you can add 250g of button mushrooms (according to my mother chestnut mushrooms would be wrong). You're probably also wondering how Boeuf Bourguignon can be healthy, well that is because (again, according to my mother) the only bad bits in it are the flour and red wine! Whilst you don't use much of one you do use a lot of the latter (no prizes for guessing which) and it makes it taste so good. I was sceptical about making this as I don't really like stews but Liam wanted it and I said I'd give a mushroom free recipe a go. I'm glad I did - it was filling and yummy in equal measures. The recipe is based off Olive magazine's Skinny Beef Bourguignon, which apparently only has 281 calories per portion, though I suspect that doesn't include the potatoes they suggest you serve with it.

Obviously, you're probably dubious about making this on a weeknight, and I'm not going to suggest you make it to eat tonight, rather that you make it tonight and eat it tomorrow as the flavour will only get better. It's probably 40 minutes in total of hands on work and it just sits is the oven for a couple of hours, which is where the magic happens and the beef becomes meltingly tender and the flavours meld together in perfect harmony. It might look slightly odd when you take it out of the fridge tomorrow (beef stock tends to do that) but pop in back in the oven and it'll sort itself out.