Every Saturday and Sunday, Vanessa Zhâ and Marion Sauveur make us discover some nuggets of French heritage.

Today we head for Eure and Eure et Loire to discover gardens and learn how to cook Rubarbe. 

We are going to breathe "green" this morning for a walk at the crossroads of Eure and Eure et Loire, Vanessa.

And especially over the gardens and the water. It's a beautiful, inspiring ride. And we start with the Seine Valley, with the essential site in terms of inspiration, the land of the Impressionists par excellence: Giverny with its Museum of the Impressionists and an exhibition dedicated to gardens: Côté Jardin de Monet à Bonnard.

And with La Fondation Claude Monet a good shoot of Chlorophyll with its thousands of plant spaces, especially these famous Water Lilies. Water lilies that Monet first discovered in 1889 in the water gardens of the Trocadéro, at the same time as the Eiffel Tower, moreover, on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition. They were exhibited by the great water lily nurseryman Latour Marliac. Nursery that still exists. And that's when Monet decided to create his aquatic garden, which he will paint at all hours of the day and year.

Would you like to learn to paint on water?

or even take pictures on a boat?

But not just any attention: the Waterlily is an identical reproduction of Monet's floating workshop boat.

That's on the Vernon side, it's a great project carried by the Cercle du Bateau Atelier. 

And after that you take us to the Eure side, to the south, about twenty kilometers.

And even in the Eure, at the Domaine de Primard, which opened this weekend: it is the youngest in the collection of the domains of Fontenille. The new owners, Guillaume Foucher and Fréderic Biousse were keen to respect the soul of this old family home, with a more contemporary decor. For them, it is a house on the water. Wherever you look the Eure is there. But Primard is above all a garden of 20 hectares. And they absolutely wanted to keep this living, green, romantic and elegant painting to which the former owner remains attached. It was the great landscaper, Jacques Wirtz, who staged the gardens like a play. His first creation, it is Guillaume who tells us about it:

"The majority of these boxwoods are wild trees, old trees. In the Primard forest, there are plenty of boxwoods which are two or three hundred years old and which have been for 30 years, shaped, pruned to create these volumes and which for some, reach ten meters in height. Suddenly, we have this height and this richness. We are also lucky to have a garden that is intact and box trees that are in full health ", explains Guillaume. 

Gerard has been the gardener for 15 years, "the Edward in the silver hands of Primard", and he continues the story by maintaining the other little hidden treasures of wirtz: the rose garden, the greenhouse, the orchard.

But he has also created a vegetable garden, hand in hand with the chef, who cooks from the ground up to the plate.

Eric Frechon, already three restaurants and soon there will be tables in the vegetable garden.

You choose your product, which the chef will prepare in front of you.

We are on an ultra-short circuit.

Here at Primard, we can not get closer to nature: side activities also Canoe, horse riding, boat in the middle of ducks, horses, donkeys and cows and finally you can land on decks with your feet in the Eure.

Marion Sauveur, what seasonal product do you suggest we taste? 

Rhubarb!

This stem with a tangy taste which can reach up to a meter in height, and which is hidden under its slightly embossed leaf.

It's a vegetable.

An ancient vegetable native to Asia and brought back by explorer Marco Polo to Europe but which only arrived in the 19th century in France.

It is cultivated today almost everywhere, but especially in the north of the Loire.

She needs water and not too much sun otherwise she is toasting, so she feels good in Normandy. 

 It is only its stem that is eaten, since its leaf is poisonous.

Depending on the variety, the stem may be green, slightly pinkish or red.

The greener it is like the Goliaths, Mira, Victoria, the more acidic it is.

The redder it is like Framboozen rod, Monarch Red or Valentine, the softer and sweeter it is. 

How do you cook this rhubarb? 

It can be eaten as an accompaniment to a salty dish such as fish, as a compote for example or as a dessert.

It goes very well with strawberries.

Since today we are in Normandy, I cannot resist a Norman tart… where rhubarb will replace apples. 

First of all, you have to choose the right rhubarb: a very firm stem, unblemished and as fresh as possible.

It has to crack when you break it.

The ideal is to use the Mira which holds well during cooking. 

Ingredients 

  • 1 egg

  • 200g flour

  • 100g sugar

  • 100 g butter

  • 1 pinch of salt

For garnish

  • 150 g caster sugar

  • 2 sachets of vanilla sugar

  • 6 rhubarb sticks

  • 2 eggs

  • 50 g salted butter

  • 20 cl of liquid cream

Start with the dough: beat the egg with a fork, mix with salt and sugar before suddenly adding the flour.

Crumble the dough between your fingers before incorporating the butter into small pieces.

Leave it in the fridge, the time to prepare the garnish. 

 Then we take care of the rhubarb, no need to peel it unless it seems really stringy to you.

But if it is fresh, it is not necessary.

It is cut into sections of one cm, and we brown the rhubarb in a pan with the butter, 100 g of sugar and the vanilla sugar, over low heat, 4 to 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs with the rest of the sugar.

And we add the crème fraîche.

Place the spread dough in the tart pan, which has been buttered and floured.

Pour the rhubarb over it and cover with the liquid preparation.

Leave to cook for 45 minutes at 180 degrees.

It must be golden. 

Vanessa: another idea for using rhubarb when you have a lot of it? 

Jam of course!

So you can enjoy it all year round.

I asked the specialist in this field for the recipe, it's Véronique Dufrenne who is called Dame rhubarb… She cultivates her rhubarb and transforms it into wonders on the rhubarb farm in Haussez in Seine-Maritime.

Listen to his tips. 

"I do my picking, I wash my stems, I cut them in 1 to 2 cm sections. I macerate all my unpeeled rhubarb - I specify well - with sugar. So me it's beet sugar. J 'alternate a layer of rhubarb, a layer of sugar, a layer of rhubarb, a layer of sugar, and I always end with the layer of sugar. And the next morning, I put the juice that was extracted from the fruit as well as the rhubarb in the basin and I cook. The equivalent of 8 minutes approximately. I heat very slowly and afterwards when I see that it comes to medium boil, I heat very hard after I foam. The foam c "is all the impurities in the fruit. And then I pour it into my little jars", explains Véronique Dufrenne.

You must not cook your jam for too long otherwise the fruit will become saturated with sugar.

There, we have a jam very rich in fruit, with the real flavor of rhubarb like the jams of our grandmothers.

A real pleasure in the mouth.

Véronique Dufrenne makes plain rhubarb jams, but also associated with other fruits: currently strawberries, soon raspberries and apricots. 

Which Normandy addresses do you recommend to taste rhubarb? 

  • The Rhubarb Farm of course, in Haussez in Seine-Maritime… to discover jams, compotes or other fruit pastes with rhubarb… but also milk jams. 

  • At the Jardin des plumes, in Giverny, last year's Top Chef winner David Gallienne cooks rhubarb confit with sugar, with liquorice juice… and it accompanies sweetbreads.

    Reopening on June 23.

  • One last address in Saint-Lô, in Manche.

    Chef Mickaël Marion works the rhubarb in chutney and serves it in foie gras… and for dessert, in a tartlet with elderflower.

    To find in his brewery from Friday.