dandelion salad

The belot lunch took place this weekend. During the winter BB and his cronies play a card game called belot (a bit like poker) with the losers paying a cent per point lost into a lunch fund until there's enough to go for a slap-up meal.

On Sunday a dozen of us went down to the ferme d'ambrune et polalye - the duck farm here in the village. Monsieur used to have a restaurant in Haute Savoie and now opens his dining-room three times a week to the public sur command. Everything from the meat to the fruit and veg and the bread is reared/grown/made on the farm. We started with a vegetable broth followed by rillettes of duck with dandelion salad (dandelion leaves are perfect for salad at this time of year when they're young and tender, but you have to be quick here as the meadows are usually full of people foraging for the young greens). Then there was a first class confit de canard with polente, finishing with cheese then a light, fluffy raspberry mousse. Formidable!

Afterwards, we sat on the terrace in the sun facing the snowy mountains drinking coffee and genepi.