Swisher wanted to go to Segur, a tiny but picturesque town
that last time we visited had been making sleepy efforts
to take advantage of its status as one of the "300 plus
beaux villages de France"; I said, why?, because as it had
been nice enough, I couldn't see visiting a second time,
plus I doubted that it would be better upon touristification.

We got there around lunchtime. The brookside development that
we'd seen starting last time had fizzled, but there was a
public restroom, clean enough and quite welcome. A brasserie
that Google said was open of course wasn't. The guy at the
tourism office said that there was a place between there and
Pompadour that he guaranteed would be open, so after poking
around the town and finding another restaurant that was
supposed to be open but wasn't, we took our leave and presently
found ourselves at Auberge de la Mandrie, halfway to Pompadour.
It's a semi-luxury hotel with a semi-luxury restaurant.

My cough was piquing me, so I ordered what I thought was a
pastis with two ice cubes, whereupon the waiter immediately
switched to heavily broken English - turns out I'd asked for a
pastis with two scoops of ice cream, What I got was in fact
what I thought I'd ordered.

There came an amuse of vichyssoise with a prune wrapped in
smoked duck breast, commercual but very nice.

Swisher and I got the plat du moment, a sous-vide pork shoulder
in a standard but porky demiglace with boiled potatoes and
boiled carrots. Quite tasty and pleasing, though the portion
could have been just a bit bigger.

To be contrary, Lilli got an omelette fines herbes, whose
fresh chives, fresh parsley, and fresh tarragon I think
were all totally tasteless. Luckily there was an additional
unadvertised fine herb, which was ham. Along with this she
got the same potatoes and a salad.

Three chocolate mousses, quite good, possibly homemade,
with an orange shortbread on the side, to finish.

Another pastis for me to soothe my throat, and we were
out of there.

We stopped at Pompadour just to look at the imposing
structures (too cheap to pay the large admission fee) and
weht through Uzerche and back home, but the GPS told us
one way and I wanted to go another, so Swisher chose the
GPS, which crapped out in the middle of the maze that is
Tulle. I had to take over and got us back to the proper
route, which the stupid GPS had told us to deviate from
twenty minutes earlier. We came back on the onramp next
to the offramp that the GPS had taken us off. Bah, GPS.

Our friend Jerry the ex-F-10x pilot is getting into the
sous-vide kick and is being tutored by Ian, who prepared
piri-piri chicken for this evening with caulirice on the
side. Now the normal way to make piri-piri chicken is to
marinate it a while in essentially Tabasco and then slam
the meat onto a hot grill and in a couple minutes, there
you have it. Ian's method involved making his own hot
sauce, marinating overnight, then cooking for double-digit
hours in the water bath, finally running the dish under the
broiler for a minute or two. Ian's way is better, sorry
Nando's. He used bone-in chicken breast, but the end
texture was though not perfect as close as health wisdom
would allow. Before making the sauce, he'd taken a vote,
as the recipe said 2 to 6 chiles per batch. All the others
voted for 6, but I demurred, saying 9 minimum and up to 15.
6 won and was adequate but not generous. The dish was pretty
tasty, though. Caulirice is a low-carb oddity - you cook
your cauliflower and put it through the ricer, then you do
a fried rice (carrots, onion, peas, ginger, eggs, and
garlic) that has all right flavors though an odd texture.

The wine was an about 10-year-old Montee de Tonnerre from
Droin, a lesser-known maker in Chablis. Back in the olden
days, when Joseph Drouhin's wines were becoming popular in
the States, some noticed that certain wine lists had the
Droin wines and figured that this was an off-brand playing
on the more famous name. Not so - this is an equally
respected house that seldom sells outside France. The wine
was pleasantly acid and citrusy opening out with oak, grass,
lime, and mango-papaya coming out as it warmed up. Pretty
special, actually.

Cheese board - pave de Correze, which is a Cantal analogue
that happens to be made just outside the appellation; a
tomme de brebis, an aged Cheddary substance but made out of
sheep's milk; a bleu d'Albussac, mild, not too salty, local
young moldy blue; and the same goaty mess that had gotten
such bad notices the previous day but seemed to go better
after this meal.

We finished with Ian's version of Nigella Lawson's recipe
for espresso ice cream, which I suspect was richer than the
original. It was well-flavored and very unctuous and even
served close to room temperature kept its shape.

We were thrifty with the after-dinner drinks so as to
encourage Jerry to drive home safely (a considerable distance).
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
* Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.FIDOSYSOP.ORG (1:123/140)