Mangetout: which French village rejoices in kidneys for breakfast?

In Saint-Gérand-le-Puy, a village near Vichy, on a mid-June morning, the locals kick off the day with a communal Irish breakfast of fried kidneys. It is organised by the James Joyce Association, which also runs the village’s James Joyce museum.

The breakfast celebrates the ‘Jour d’Ulysse’ or ‘Bloomsday’, named after the hero of James Joyce’s Ulysses, who liked kidneys for breakfast. 

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart… fried hen-cods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys.” 

In the novel, on the morning of June 16, 1904, he sets out to the butcher where “a kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willow patterned dish: the last”. He is worried a girl in front of him will nab it, and hugely relieved when she buys a pound of sausages. 

Back home, “while he unwrapped the kidney, the cat mewed hungrily. Give her too much meat she won’t mouse. Here. He let the blood smeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce.” 

Why do they celebrate Bloom’s breakfast in this village in the depths of La France profonde? In 1940, aged 58, James Joyce fled Nazi-occupied Paris with his wife Nora, son Giorgio and grandson Stephen. Stephen’s school in Neuilly-sur-Seine, because of the war, was relocated to Château de la Chapelle just outside Saint-Gérand-le-Puy. 

Taste the delicate rognons d’agneau

Apart from Samuel Beckett visiting him twice, Joyce wasn’t a particularly happy bunny, suffering from bad health, poor sight and a perforated duodenal ulcer. He wandered round the village, went daily to the barber, sat contemplating by the village washhouse – a rare dodecagonal one that’s been lovingly restored – and he stayed much of the time in the Hôtel de la Paix. 

Kidneys for breakfast might not be the choice of all Connexion readers, so here’s a recipe for lunch or dinner. Rather than Bloom’s mutton kidney, you would be better plumping for the more delicate rognons d’agneau.

These bunches of small lambs’ kidneys have a lump of hard fat between them that needs removing. Sometimes you can get the butcher to trim them, but if you prepare them yourself, you’ll need a sharp knife and nail scissors. Separate the kidneys and cut out and discard the sinews and fat. 

The easiest way to cook them is to sauté them. Heat some oil gently in a pan, add optional sliced garlic until it starts to colour, then the kidneys and a sprinkle of salt and black pepper. 

Turn up the heat and add a teaspoonful of slightly crushed juniper berries. Sauté briskly, tossing from time to time. Shouldn’t take more than five minutes so that they’re still slightly pink inside. At the last minute, add a generous splash of gin and cook for a minute more to burn off the alcohol. 

Served with plain boiled rice and a freshly tossed salad, they’re surprisingly delicate and subtle tasting, and a fine way to honour James Joyce come mid-June.