Pork Belly, Pommes Dauphinoise & a note about the Morteau Sausage

It's hard to believe that it's the end of the seven-week summer holidays. The children are back to school tomorrow and I'm back to work, although I haven't had anything like the whole seven weeks off that they've enjoyed, sadly. Getting back into the routine tomorrow morning could be something of a shock. Anyway, we made the most of our last day and cooked a great Sunday lunch of roast belly pork (the pork was bought at our local farmshop), cabbage and runner beans which I picked up at a country fair yesterday and pommes dauphinoise. To go with it, and very well it drank too, a 2001 Pinot Noir from Pommard, just south of Beaune in Burgundy. The lunch was a fitting and filling end to the holidays (great crackling!) and the next activity on our agenda was a very long walk.

If you remember the Morteau smoked sausage I picked up in Poligny on the way home from the Jura, just a short note about what I did with it: I cooked it a couple of weeks ago in white wine, garlic, carrots and herbs and served it on a bed of puy lentils. It was pretty tasty - I liked the smokiness of the sausage - but the earth didn't move. We drank another red Burgundy with it, an Hautes Côtes de Beaune 2006, which coped admirably.