AGEN PRUNE STUFFED WITH RILLETTE AND WALNUT 

“Don’t forget to bring some rillettes”… How many times did I hear this simple phrase when we traveled abroad to see some French friends when I was a little girl ? At some point, I thought to myself that maybe “Rillettes” had been made with a magical ingredient…Then I had a boyfriend who lives in “Le Mans”,  a French town famous for its….rillettes, so I became terribly addicted to them. When I moved to London I asked exactly the same request to MY friends visiting me “Bring some rillettes please”. The day I found some at my deli, all the French community was alerted by it. So you will perfectly understand that for a buffet or an aperitif, there are ALWAYS rillettes on the table. This recipe with an Agen prune is so yummy. It came from a very old Elle magazine. 
Agen prunes come from my area : the Lot. It’s during the twelfth century, when they were back from the third crusade that the Benedictine monks of the Clairac Abbey (in the Lot valley), grafted local plums with new plants from Syria : the plum Damascus. A new variety was created then called the Prune d’Ente (Ente means graft).
In 1709, after a terrible cold in winter, only the prunes from the Villeneuvois and Agen area survived…From then, Agen prunes will be known all over the world…!
Use any other dry prunes if you cannot find the Agen ones…

Wine pairing : Cahors (Red) from The South West.