Life in the Deep South of France

How to cook duck magret.

2012-01-07T17:30:00.000+01:00

   Since coming to France, we've become huge gluttons for magret de canard, the huge duck breasts that are a delicious by-product of the ducks raised for foie gras.
   In the summer, you can grill magrets outdoors. This time of year, I pan-fry them, scoring their fat first in a criss-cross pattern, and seasoning it with salt and pepper. Into a hot frypan, skin side down. After about six minutes, the magret will have released buckets of melted fat. Pour it off into a jar or, even easier, siphon it off with a turkey baster. Turn the magret over, cover the pan and let it keep cooking for another couple of minutes. About eight minutes in total gives you medium-rare results.
   Move it to a warm plate, and tent it with foil, then carve in thick slices. We find one magret is enough for the two of us. Trust me, it's better than steak.
   Magret is fantastic with sliced par-boiled potatoes fried in duck fat, or with a gutsily-dressed salad of roquette or frisée, with hunks of baguette as the starch component.
   The other night I cooked Puy lentils for 25 minutes, then mixed in chopped onion, garlic, carrot and celery that I'd sautéed till soft in butter.

The sauce on the side is simply some homemade plum chutney warmed up in a pan. You need something to balance the richness of the duck.

An evil goat, red berries and other New Year snapshots.

2012-01-04T16:56:00.002+01:00

In The City of Falling Angels, his excellent book about Venice, author John Berendt describes how he once set out to take a photograph every minute as he walked around Venice and found he couldn't find anything that wasn't beautiful.
So, a few days ago on a sunny and warm-for-January afternoon, we set out for our usual little saunter along the river bank out to the edge of the village, along past the chateau, and back through the streets. Right, I thought, I'll see if I can do a Berendt, snap away and see what happens.

With those satanic slit eyes, goats look inherently evil. This one was. As soon as I'd got him perfectly framed, he stared straight at me, squatted, smiled (I swear) and I don't have to tell you what he did next.

I don't know the correct botanical name but, when I was growing up in the UK, we used to call these "spindleberries."

I love the lines and proportions of this farmhouse. See that central archway? I imagine more than a few horses and carts have passed through it in their time.

A cathedral of plane trees, long late afternoon shadows and the prospect of a pot of tea and a slice of pain d'épice when we get home. Makes me happy.

A Look back at 2011...September to December

2012-01-01T19:50:00.003+01:00

September

Because what was meant to be the final Marché Gourmand had been rained out, we got a bonus one at the start of September

Here we all are trooping through the streets to the outskirts of the village...

...to watch the fireworks.

September is the beginning of the hunting, gathering and preserving season. Windfall pears and plums made a year's worth of chutney.
This is probably the best month to visit--and we had friends around for almost the entire month. Lots of candle-lit dinners outside, much popping of corks, loads of fun, and many days out.

On this particular day, we drove east to the Canal du Midi, and then on to the ancient village of Minerve, which was besieged by Simon de Montfort in 1210.

Some of our friends even timed their trip so they wouldn't miss the annual hazelnut festival in Lavelanet.

The big lunch always takes place in the halles that are normally home to part of the Friday market.

And the first course is always an indecently large serving of foie gras.

Meanwhile, very large quantities of meat roast on a spit...

Foie gras out of the way, you line up outside for your portion, return to your table (where you find big pots of the local version of cassoulet) and continue eating and drinking. Pace yourself. There's still cheese, dessert, bottles of bubbly and coffee to come.

A member of the confrérie in official garb. I'm a member too but, so far, all I have is a small scarf and a medallion.

October

One week in Paris hadn't been enough so, in October, we went there for two, staying in a couple of different apartments.

Here's the view from the first one we stayed in on the top floor. I suspect it had originally been a maid's room.

And here's the elevator/lift that took us there. You know those spiral stairways that wind round and round and round (often seen in European films with someone chasing someone else down them)? Well, in this apartment building, there was just room--but only just--to retrofit the smallest elevator imaginable in between the banisters. I'm not exaggerating. All you could shoehorn into it was one person and one piece of modestly-sized luggage.
Our first weekend in Paris coincided with the fête des vendanges in Montmartre, which celebrates the harvest of locally-grown grapes.

As with any festival, there was plenty to eat, and even more to drink.

October can be a wicked month for weather. It was raining chats et chiens a few days later so we scuttled over to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, the closest place to escape the downpour.

What we hadn't anticipated were the incredibly beautiful scientific instruments on display.

Back in Léran, we watched the transhumance, the movement of flocks or, in this case, a herd, from their summer pasturage in the mountains to lower ground, part of the village's first foire agriculturelle.

November

A month of walks and a day of remembrance.

The start of one of the walks we take most often begins with this "cathedral" of plane trees that passes past the grounds of the chateau.

Soon after, you get a fantastic view of the village--and a sense of how it's surrounded by green--and the mountains.

This time of year, you're really conscious of the continuity of the seasons, of how new growth like this will be ploughed under come spring to feed next year's crops.

And how the remains of the harvest are also dug back into the earth to feed it. Cattle make their own contribution.

Remembrance Day in France is marked with great solemnity in every community, and by everyone, however young they are.

The littlest kids of Léran sang the Marseillaise and later laid their posies and bouquets on the war memorial,

The firefighters from Laroque d'Olmes were there too.

Our mayor made a speech and then named every one of the 44 soldiers from the village who had died during the first World War, and those who had fallen in the second. After each name was read, an elderly former combatant intoned "mort pour la France" -- "died for France." Wreaths and posies were set around the memorial and then...

...courtesy of the mairie, kids, firefighters, everyone, we all trooped into the village hall for aperos and snacks.

December

Another walk, this time about half an hour's drive from Léran, just east of Lavelanet, at the village of Roquefixade, which is dominated by a vast cliff and a ruined chateau.

Scenery around here is jaw-droppingly magnificent with wave upon wave of mountains stretching to the horizon.
Christmas was coming. Our village choir sang indoors in Mirepoix cathedral, and outside in one of the village's squares.

Supermarkets were groaning with foie gras, oysters, champagne and all the other necessities for a traditional French Christmas. I really, truly, deeply loved this arc des oignons (and other alliums) in Carrefour in Pamiers.

Now we're into 2012. Hope this past year was as good as ours. A belated Happy New Year to everyone. May you live long and prosper.

A look back at 2011...June to August

2012-01-01T17:12:00.002+01:00

June

A week in Paris to binge ourselves silly on art exhibits, people-watching-from-sidewalk-cafés and--the view I never get tired of--the rooftops.

This giant head-and-hand sculpture is close to the Pompidou Centre--and to two of my favourite shops. Dehillerin is the go-to source for the best omelette pans you can find (and just about every other variety of pot and cooking tool). Have a browse at www.e-dehillerin.fr/en/index.php . (The English translation is as quirky as the store. I love it that they note they close on "off-days.") A minute away, La Droguerie carries its own line of knitting yarns in pure cashmere and alpaca, big glass jars of beads, embroidered ribbons, feathers, faux flowers, and much, much more.

Each time I go to Paris, I try to explore somewhere I've never been before. On this trip, it was the botanical gardens. Now, those are what I call greenhouses!

July
Summer starts officially in Léran with the launch of the Marché Gourmand at the start of July. Every Friday until the end of August, the main street is blocked to traffic by 6 p.m. Instead, long wooden tables and benches stretch from one end to the other.

Set up each side of the street, food stalls sell escargots, cheese, baguettes, bottles of wine, Asian dishes, vegetarian Indian food, various salads, Nutella and other crèpes, and artisanal ice cream.

You can also choose a steak, a pork chop or merguez or Toulouse sausages from a butcher's truck and have it grilled to your taste over charcoal. Naturellement, you can buy frites, and serve yourself to ketchup and mayonnaise.
Although the stall-holders do give you plastic dishes and forks, the experienced bring their own plates and cutlery. You squeeze in beside friends, neighbours or people you've never met until now, table-hop as the night grows dark and, once the wine really starts flowing, volunteer to sing in front of the karaoke screen--assuming this is a night for karaoke and not a professional band.

July...when the markets are bursting with ripe red tomatoes...

...and every weekend, there's a different vide-grenier for browsing, bargaining and buying.

August

Soon we were off to the annual Marionette Festival in Mirepoix. Now in its 23rd year, this is a big deal among string-pullers, drawing artistes from all over the world.

Live shows take place in a number of venues with plenty of free entertainment on the streets.

I was completely beguiled by this quiet young performer who, with his understated gestures and black clothing, almost disappeared into the background.

We weren't the only ones to feel the magic...

It was a lively month. One Sunday, we drove over to the town of Esparaza and roamed around its hat museum.

A long lunch on a broiling day in the shade of a large barn.

The sunflowers in the garden grew taller and taller.

Our friend, the hugely talented singer/songwriter Fraser Anderson gave an outdoor concert. http://monochrome-records.co.uk/ His wife, Grace, often sings backup.

At some point in August, we drove off to Albi for the day. It's a city of rosy-red brick with the cathedral dominating everything. Religion rules, okay? That was the message it was meant to convey.

Outside, the cathedral is like a fortress except for its entrance which is lacy and beautiful. If you take the péage, Albi is only a couple of hours from Léran. So we were there in time for a coffee in the square opposite the cathedral and a preliminary look at the Toulouse-Lautrec museum. That's the enormous building in front of the cathedral.

Restoration continues on it making it less museum-y and more multimedia than it used to be. But, oh joy, they still have Toulouse-Lautrec's hollowed walking stick that he used to stash his absinthe in. At the entrance to each room, you can pick up a laminated information sheet in French, Spanish, English--s or Occitan, which used to be the everyday dialect around here.

A look back at 2011...January to May

2012-01-01T13:30:00.005+01:00

Everyone does it at this time of year, looks back at what they got up to and--in my case--uses the first post of 2012 to share the crème de la crème of memories, not to mention photos that I forgot to include at the time. Settle back, glass of wine or cup of coffee at hand, and enjoy.
January
Midnight on December 31, 2010 found Peter, Kate and I in Chiang Mai, along with my long-lost cousin and his wife (who now live in Thailand) releasing paper lanterns into the night sky and watching a magnificent fireworks display.

Back in Bangkok, I interviewed Australian chef and ultimate Thai food expert, David Thompson. Here's just part of the extraordinary dinner he cooked for us at Nahm. http://www.metropolitan.bangkok.como.bz/eat-and-drink/nahm

After a return trip to Chiang Mai, a city I have to be dragged away from, we flew to Luang Prabang in Laos. After the kind of taxi ride that takes as many hours to describe as it did in reality (and in reality, it should have taken half an hour) we arrived at the Golden Lotus Guesthouse. It's located on a narrow laneway and, the next morning, when I went outside, I was met by the vivid colours, smells and chat of a street market.

More evenings than not, we'd head down to one of the many restaurants along the Mekong, order a couple of beers and watch the sun go down.

February

This year's wanderings around Asia ended back in Thailand and a week or so on Koh Chang--Elephant Island.

Fresh seafood and noodles at a little café right on the beach.

The view from our deck along the lagoon--a boardwalk leads to the beach, which you can just make out in the distance.

On Valentine's Day, we tuktuk-ed to the end of the island, to where the fishing boats come in...

March
Back in Léran, I began my annual knock-down-drag-out fight against the weeds--except that, rather than cursing them, I now gather dandelion leaves for salads.

One by one, all the daffodils I'd planted burst in bloom...

...while violets showed up of their own accord.

April

One sign of warming weather was the annual deluge of asparagus at the market.

Meanwhile, back in the garden, the Angelique tulips (no prizes for guessing why I chose those) burst into flower.

Kate came to visit, and we threw a huge party to celebrate Peter's birthday.

And Léran had the first of its annual vide-greniers.

May
Our walking group, the Lérandonneurs ventured across the countryside (and through the mud).

The garden came into bloom, the perennial herbs (at the bottom of the photo) pushed up new shoots and the roquette/rocket/arugula seeded itself all over the place. A note about those white dots to the right of the path. These are the tops of concrete posts which once marked the boundary between the two gardens--our house was originally two houses. I dug down about 40 cm and, as far as I could make out, the posts went much deeper. A friend had a go. Same thing. Eventually, he bashed the tops in with a hammer, we covered them with earth and there they will remain.

Loads and loads of geraniums go in the window boxes, and in pots on the terrace. As well as buying new plants each season, I've also managed to save geraniums through the winter by keeping them in the attic and treating them with benign neglect.

This is not a shot from an Ingmar Bergman film but some of us trudging past the cross just outside the village....

...to where we planted dozens of rosemary, thyme, sage and other plants. Probably the only water from a watering can that they will ever get...The water here came from garbage cans-ful driven up in the back of someone's truck.

Another walk, this time to learn about--and draw--the landscape.

Meadows crammed with a wild flowers, a picnic lunch under a tree, and a view of the village of Lieurac to go with it.

Good friends came to stay. Here's a photo of one of many, many, many meals we ate outdoors over the course of the year. The main terrace faces north so, however hot the day is, we stay relatively cool. The smaller terrace, just visible midway at the top of the shot, gets sun year-round. As the seasons move towards winter and the sunlight moves down the garden, we move a little table out on to the lawn.

Love the savage red of poppies.

Lettuce seedlings all ready to plant in the garden. I buy them half a dozen at a time, and hope that we can eat them before the snails and slugs do.

The annual rose festival in the village of Camon about 15 minutes away. Every single house here has a rose bush planted beside its front door.

We'll travel hours for a festival. This one, in the Pyrenean town of Céret, celebrates cherries. In fact, Céret is famous France-wide for its cerises. We ate in this lovely little square both nights we were here.

Crimson, blushing pink, scarlet, yellow, we gorged on cherries.

Stalls lined the main streets. A merry-go-round kept the kids happy. Dancers danced. Singers sang. We watched a calligraphist at work, ate an impromptu lunch of goat's cheese and fruit, and eventually drove home.

Christmas in Mirepoix

2011-12-28T11:18:00.001+01:00

We plan our weeks around trips to our two favourite local markets and we're especially delighted when a visit from friends includes a Monday--and we can take them over to Mirepoix.
Because last Monday was the day after Christmas, stalls were fewer than usual but there was still plenty going on, the cafés were filled with people warming up with crèmes or hot chocolate, and inside the cathedral...

The sun is low in the sky at this time of year, low enough to shine through the stained glass and fling all those ruby reds, sapphires, greens, amethysts and other gum-drop colours on to the ancient stone. God's Christmas slide slow. The effect was quite magical.

Christmas Wrap-Up

2011-12-28T10:40:00.000+01:00

The carcass of the chapon is in the big green enamel pot burbling away into soup. The Brussels sprouts, parsnip purée, roast potatoes, stuffing--the chopped celery and onion mixed in with lots of leftover baguette plus sage, rosemary and thyme from the garden--and gravy are all gone, reheated for a last dinner with Karen and Rob, our friends who stayed here for Christmas. The last of the bûche de Noël went while we watched Love, Actually, an annual tradition guaranteed to leave you teary-eyed.

Here we are getting into the spirit on Christmas morning with glasses of bubbly before we sat down to scrambled eggs and smoked salmon.

Brunch over, it was time to start peeling, chopping and mixing--and discovering "oh, ****, the chapon still has its head on." I hadn't thought to check but at least the innards were gone. What we needed was a chicken guillotine. Instead, Peter used our huge Asian cleaver. Stuffing into the bird. Bird into the oven. It all gradually came together.

More friends arrived at 3:30 p..m., the foie gras and more bubbly came out, and then the bird and all its trimmings.

Next came cheeses from Spain, and some considerable time later found Isabelle in the kitchen adding a little dusting of icing sugar to the individual desserts she'd made.

In fact, she'd brought along two desserts. Even though we didn't think we could, we all managed a slice of her luscious chestnut-cream bûche de Noël.

Most friends left a bit after 11 p.m. and then the rest of us snuggled in to the sofas, threw another log on the fire, and caught the AbFab Christmas special on BBC.

...And it's almost Christmas....

2011-12-24T17:07:00.006+01:00

   I'm not going to waffle on about the long silence between blog posts. Just know that my New Year's resolution is to post more often. It's late afternoon on Christmas Eve, there's a cup of tea at hand, a nap in the offing, friends coming for aperos at 6:30 p.m., a table booked at the café for an hour later--and all the ingredients for the Christmas feast in the fridge, or in the making.
   I'm in the middle of foie gras preparation. It's been deveined, sprinkled with salt, pepper and some of Alain's legendary eau de vie. This morning, I wrapped it into a roll, and wrapped it in plastic. Next, I'll wrap it in cloth, poach it for 90 seconds, chill it, and rewrap it even more tightly with a second layer of cloth. This is the "torchon" method as spelled out by Michael Ruhlman. http://ruhlman.com/2011/05/how-to-make-torchon-recipe/
     Yesterday, we were on the road before 9 a.m. and at Lavelanet market soon after. What a magical drive there with thick mist covering the fields, and steaming away into invisibility as we watched.

With the mist gone, the sky was as blue as heaven.
The town was bustling, everyone in a convivial mood as they went about collecting their Christmas orders. I'd ordered a chapon--a capon--from the butcher's so we picked that up first and took it back to the car after the moment of terror when the butcher ran his finger down the hand-written list of names and couldn't find mine...

A corner of the butcher's shop. Note the silver Christmas candelabra on the counter, and the row of cups awarded to "best butcher..." on the top of the sausage display case. Carcasses hang behind the wooden doors to the left.

Chapon out of the way, it was time to whizz down the length of the market to the halles--and my favourite produce stall.

The family who run this have a farm about half an hour away. Everything they sell, they grow. Can you make out the bright pink and red stalks of the chard? We got through a few kilos of that at a meal with friends earlier this week.
No chard needed today but Brussels sprouts, parsnips, parsley, carrots, leeks, shallots, onions and garlic...the bags were getting heavy by now. I walked back outside on this bitingly cold day, and spotted Peter queueing to buy oysters which, like foie gras, are traditional at Christmas.

   While he waits patiently, I want to tell you about the profusion of seafood at this time of year. Earlier this week, we drove over to Pamiers where, among other places, we trawled the Carrefour supermarket. As well as the usual fish counter, pretty impressive at any time of year, there were two huge displays of oysters in wooden boxes, and a central table covered in seaweed, and heaped with live lobsters, crabs, langoustines, mussels and clams. (Next to it was a cooler the size of a bus filled with foie gras in various forms: pale beige lobes, vacuum-packed to be prepared at home, tins of different dimensions, slices...a colossal amount.)
   The other essentials in the Christmas triumvirate are champagne and Sauternes (or some other sweet wine) to sip with your foie gras.

A bûche de Noël --a Christmas log--is the traditional dessert. So what's it to be? The Black Forest version? The "white lady" kind with vanilla and chocolate? Or a Norwegian omelette which, for reasons unknown, is the French name for Baked Alaska. Our friend Isabelle is bringing dessert so I can't tell you what we'll be eating....
Merry Christmas to all--and to all a good night.

Vide grenier find spotted on TV!!

2011-11-08T18:42:00.000+01:00

Sometime this past summer, we spent a wonderful morning at the annual mega-vide-grenier in Fanjeaux, a hilltop village midway between Léran and Carcassonne. The best stall of all was a lady selling all kinds of linens and I spent a happy time, along with other bargain-hunters, rummaging through a giant mountain of them, all priced at a euro.
But my prize find was folded neatly on her table where things climbed to astronomical prices--like five euros. Age unknown, this pure linen night-dress has the most beautiful hand-crocheted yoke. Last night, I spotted its twin on the BBC series Downton Abbey worn by the rather dreary Lavinia (spoiler alert: she dies of Spanish flu). Now I can date my purchase to around 1919.

Mine

Hers

Foie gras season is upon us...

2011-11-08T18:32:00.000+01:00

   In addition to knitting patterns, "before" and "after" home decor stories and a beauty column--"oups, une ride!": "Oops, a wrinkle"--the November issue of Modes & Travaux also promises to deliver (in the largest type on the cover) recipes for jams, terrines and foie gras.
   To be honest, there are only two recipes for foie gras inside, one simply coated in salt, the other for foie gras poché au vin rouge. And the ingredients for that are in the photo. One vacuum-packed foie gras and one bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône, as specified by the recipe. It didn't say to wrap the foie gras in cheesecloth but I thought it might be a good idea. Finding it was a different matter. I eventually ended up with a sac à jambon--a ham bag. You can buy these anywhere at this time of year, also entire legs of pork at ridiculously cheap prices. I'm tempted, I'm tempted....
   I turned the gauze sac into a designer ham bag by cutting off one end and wrapping it tightly around the foie gras. That was after I'd denervé-d it by letting it come to room temperature, feeling around inside it for anything vein-y and pulling it out with my treasured Spencer-Wells artery forceps (an insanely useful kitchen tool when you really need to get a grip).
   Once it had been very, very gently poached, the foie gras was left in the wine overnight. Not a pretty sight and the next morning, it looked so thoroughly disgusting that I started thinking about what else I could serve as a first course that night.
   Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I fished the foie gras out of its winy bath, pressed it hard on to paper towels, and repeated the process until most of the wine had gone. Then I left the foie gras to firm up in the fridge. In the end, it was delicious. Baguette and/or pain d'épices, and fig jam went with it, and glasses of rich amber Loupiac. Then we had salmon with lentils and leeks, various cheeses and a lemon and chocolate mousse. Let me know if you'd like the recipes for either and I'll post them.

Prizes for guessing what this is...

2011-11-08T18:30:00.000+01:00

  Desolé for the long silence and a quick catch-up since my last post. We arrived back from Paris late on the Wednesday and my sister and her family arrived on the Friday at lunchtime for a few days stay. In between then and now, one of the things we've been doing is readying the house for the cooler weather. Our downstairs has two doors and one large window at the front (two doors because we live in what was originally two houses). The goal this year is to find or make thick curtains that will add to the visual coziness and keep the cold out. We do have shutters on one door and the window but you have to open both to open and close them. A drafty job.
  The previous owner left net curtains behind but they're decorative rather than functional. What I'm leaning towards are velvet curtains lined with fleece (not sheep's fleece but that faux stuff used to make sportswear). That way, we should be super snug.
  The wood-burning stove throws off an astonishing amount of heat. We buy our wood by the stere, the equivalent of one cubic metre, and have it cut in 50 cm lengths--the width of the stove. The house came equipped with a central heating system but we try to use it just as a back-up, oil prices being what they are.
  Seasonal cooking really starts to make sense at this time of year. Cassoulet, duck, pork belly, daubes, all those dishes you really don't want to think about in the summer but love to eat once the temperature drops.
  Vide greniers (attic-emptyings) continue well into the chilly weather. Léran had its own the other weekend, and here's my prize find.
   If you've been to our house, you know that it features more than its fair share of chipped French enamel. Coffee-pots, candlesticks, things for hanging drying cloths on, but we didn't own one of these

Aren't those little birds adorable? I was delighted to pick this up for a mere five euros. Anyone like to guess what it is?

Two favourite restaurants in one day.

2011-10-19T21:06:00.003+02:00

   At the beginning, a fortnight in Paris sounded like a lavish amount of time. Now, as we get ready to take the train south, we think it's not enough.
   Not that it was a "tick off the boxes" sort of thing, but we woke up yesterday to realize that, shock horror, we hadn't yet been to two of the restaurants we always eat at.
   I only took a few photos at both (and most of them were really bad for whatever reason--er, maybe the red wine) but I've posted about them before if you're curious. First, we had lunch at Le Reminet on the left bank, just across the Seine from the rear end of Notre Dame, up a little side street. Their three-course menu has crept up to...all of 14.50 euros since we were here in June. It's got to be one of the biggest bargains in Paris.

   Three courses, two choices in each. We both picked lentils with marinated salmon to start. The salmon is cru--raw--and its rich, fleshy texture works well with the mineral notes in the lentils, the sharpness of the vinaigrette and the pungency of the salad greens. A keeper. Peter had braised lamb with white beans to follow. I went for the daurade (bream), a good-sized fillet, perfectly cooked with a little timbale of buttery carrots and courgettes on the side. Cheese to finish, or fromage blanc with fruits rouges--black currants, blackberries and raspberries (should have been "fruits noirs").
   All sneaking looks at each other in the gilt-framed mirrors, Parisians crammed the tiny room, making the most of their two-hour lunch "hour," all of us having a marvellous time as we watched the umbrella-bearing less fortunate race by outside. When we left, the rain had stopped so we walked and walked, to start to build up the appetite we'd need for dinner.
   Robert et Louise is another one that's always on the list.

You go there for the steak, a great raw primal bloody hunk pulled out of the cooler just across from your table, flung on to the grill over the open wood fire and served, in my case, saignant. With it comes roasted potatoes and salad. With it you drink red wine. A bottle of Chateau Lastours Gaillac this time (and the last time we were there). Got seats at the communal table too!

Superbe moments in Paris....

2011-10-18T21:13:00.005+02:00

   When I'm old and grey and full of sleep and sitting there, clutching a glass of red wine, these are the moment that I will flashback to in the brain file labelled "Paris, October 2011." In no particular order, no, I lie, the first one is definitely number one.
   1. Browsing through the second-hand books outside Shakespeare & Company and, as three American women walked past, hearing one of them say to the others as she looked up at the sign...oh joy, you couldn't make this up.... "So, is this is, like, where Shakespeare...wuz?"
   2. Ambling around the Marais on the last morning and suddenly finding myself in Place des Vosges. What an incredible place to live, I thought. How nice to have a little pied à terre here. Don't hold your breath. Apartments start at about one million euros--and that's for something quite modest.

3. Discovering the extraordinary joy of window-shopping in Paris ("licking the windows" is what we say in French). I don't mean the undeniable pleasure of seeing famous names like Chanel, Hermès and basically everyone else who runs double-page ads in French Vogue, but the sheer shock value of what's in one window--and the next.

A bath with integral book-shelves. How clever is that?

A shop selling reproductions of exquisite antique board games.

A florist's. You just want to buy armloads of flowers here.

Feather-covered skulls. An exhibition, I think.

4. The sheer, unbelievable cheekiness of Parisian parking. Given its dimensions, we reckoned that this tiny Smart car earned multiple points for simultaneously blocking two zebra crossings AND the wheelchair-accessible ramp to the sidewalk. Now that took skill.

Pre-Sunday lunch...

2011-10-18T18:23:00.002+02:00

"We'll bring dessert." Friends visiting from overseas had invited us to their rented apartment for Sunday lunch. Amazing as one of them had done the dreaded Vancouver to Paris flight the day before.
Patisseries are everywhere in Paris but we wanted something special so, as one does, I Googled and found this article. http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/may/06/top-10-french-rench-patisseries-paris Blé Sucré was only three metro stops away so that's where we went.

It was a gorgeous sunny day, just right for wandering into a little tree-filled square with a park and bandstand in the middle--and buying sweet things to eat. Word has got around about patissier Fabrice Le Bourdat and the queue for the pastries and bread stretched out on to the pavement.
Here are two of the four we bought:

Tarte Tatin for one. Don't you just love that wee dot of gold leaf on the end of the apple's "stem"?

Another single serving classic. This screamingly rich little treat is a miniature Mont Blanc, completely covered in fine noodles of chestnut purée and adorned with a gold-dusted square of chocolate.

On the topic of chocolate, we left with our four little pastries, beautifully boxed, and a paper bag holding two supremely flaky and buttery pains au chocolat, which we ate at the corner café across from this one. A crossroads with cafés on three of its four corners, could it get any better? Well, yes, because, just down the street is one of the city's best street markets. On this bright Sunday morning, it was jammed solid with Parisians buying heirloom tomatoes, chanterelles...

....and any one of these three pork roasts. The mille feuille appears to be layered with cheese and ham, the prune version (which I'm definitely going to try) is self-explanatory. A la diable? Mustard is spread on the pork and then it's wrapped in caul fat.

Three bottles of olive oil, three variations on salt and "where do you think they keep the non-stick spatula?"....

2011-10-15T23:24:00.000+02:00

   Renting an apartment instead of staying in a hotel has lots and lots of advantages. If you've walked your feet off, you don't have to go out to dinner. If you've had an enormous three-hour lunch, same thing. If you find yourself sighing whenever you pass a market, you can go in and buy that hunk of duck pâté, or gloriously mature cheese, then pop in the next boulangerie you see for a fresh baguette, and take it all to your temporary home. So far, so good but more complicated if you want something other than takeout. You may have to stock up on the basics before you can start cooking--or even making a simple vinaigrette. Obviously, everyone who has stayed in the apartment we're in now has mixed their own salad dressing. Including the one we brought with us, we can choose from three different olive oils. For salt, there's sel de Guerande, sel de Camargue and the sel de mer you see everywhere in the blue container with the whale on it. We have three sources of pepper.
   In rented apartments, cooking is always an adventure as you discover what your kitchen is equipped with. Or not. Lateral thinking becomes the norm. No water pitcher? Use the thermos jug. No carafe for the coffee machine? Balance filter-lined funnel on the top of the thermos jug. And so on.
   A typical Parisian kitchen is so tiny that you can basically stand in one spot and reach fridge, sink and stove without moving. When I say stove, I mean two electric hot-plates and a microwave (the microwave, in our case, is outside the kitchen area, beside the piano). Where we're staying now is typical. The cooktop segues seamlessly into the draining board, and the only other work surface is the top of the waist-high fridge. But, while I wouldn't scream with joy at having to cook a traditional Christmas dinner here, I can produce a decent four-course lunch, as we proved today.
   Minuscule kitchens and tiny fridges mean that Parisians eat out a lot, and shop more often too. One lemon, not a bag of four. Six eggs not a dozen. Back and forth they trundle, towing their purchases in shopping bags on wheels. There's one here in the apartment but I left it behind this morning believing, foolishly, that a carrybag would be enough. Which is how I came back balancing one bulging carrybag, a bag holding a rotisserie chicken, another bag containing a big bunch of parsley, and two baguettes.
   Most of it was bought just up the street at the Marché des Enfants Rouges. Quite small and packed with unutterably tempting foods, it's the city's oldest market, built in 1615. To put it in perspective, this place had already been going for well over a century when the French revolution took place.

Off with their heads, or rather the ends of their stalks. Prep work in process. Here's a look at the main, what am I saying? the only work surface.

Lardons crisped and draining (those little thingies at bottom right). Mushrooms, onions and garlic cooking in much too much butter.

A dish towel doubles as table cloth. Parsley instead of flowers... Are we chic or what?

   The finished plate. The warm mushroom mixture piled on two slices of toasted baguette. A little salad on the side.
   And then we had the roasted chicken, accompanied by basmati rice and ratatouille. Impressed? I've got to be honest here. Both were frozen and came from an incredible French store called Picard that's so highly respected that the BBC recently devoted an entire half-hour Food Programme to it. There's one three streets away. I'd never been in Picard before so I had a quick look round there yesterday and was amazed, amazed, by the choice. (If you can read French, have a roam around www.picard.fr ). Enough to say that Picard saved the day when we got to the main course.
   From then on it was easy-cheesy. A lovely, ripe, heart-shaped raw milk Neufchatel, followed by sections of pomegranate and "wife cookies," both of which I picked up yesterday at Tang Frères.

A mixed day--in the best sense of the word: Part 2

2011-10-15T23:16:00.000+02:00

What I really want to blog about is some of the other stuff we've been up to but (favourite French expression alert) tant pis, I've written myself into a corner by titling the previous post "Part 1."
Refueled on Vietnamese sandwiches, Peter and I set off in different directions, him to sketch, me to visit the Musée de Carnavalet and to swing by the Petit Bateau store to replace the Petit Bateau black T-shirt that has vanished into some other dimension. P.S. I didn't buy one after all, as I know that damn T-shirt's somewhere back in Léran.

Long shadows, back-lit hair...the low, mid-afternoon light turned every narrow street into something visually wonderful. Invariably slim, everyone out on the streets looked like a model. Speaking of which, the fashion buzzwords right now are black, jeans, boots, anything oatmeal-coloured, a scarf of course, and flashes of scarlet or orange.

Glad I'd worn my jeans and black jacket for the umpteenth time, I sped over to the Musée de Carnavalet which, on my list of Paris museums, is definitely in the top three. For a start, it's free. It also feels friendlier than most museums. I'm thinking of the attendant who, seeing me preparing to take a photo through a partially opened window, opened it all the way.

Mind you, the views are delightful even when the windows are closed. Don't you love those pale gum-drop colours in the glass? What also makes this museum special is that its collection is housed in a couple of magnificent mansions linked by very formal gardens.

Grand staircases, over-the-top murals, wrought iron banisters... I'd be happy to wander around here for hours because you really do get a feel for what like must have been like for the French aristocracy in past centuries. I especially like the patterned wood floors. You can imagine all kinds of naughtinesses in the night being betrayed by a sudden squeak.

Think how these old shop signs must have looked when they hung out over the narrow streets of Paris.

What's on display is a real mix. Models of Paris, detailed room settings, paintings, sculptures....do add this one to your list the next time you're in Paris.

A mixed day--in the best sense of the word: Part 1

2011-10-14T18:37:00.000+02:00

   Feet killing me, hair needs a wash and we have a rendezvous with a friend at a bistro at 8 p.m. which means leaving here a half hour before. I know, I KNOW, it's only a couple of stops on the Metro but we do keep leaving by the wrong sortie, and not knowing which way to turn when we do emerge, mole-like, at ground level. One side of a boulevard looks very much like the other when you're on new ground.
   Anyway, today. I wanted to visit a certain shop over near the Halles so set off ten-ish with the understanding that I'd be back around 1:30 p.m., bearing lunch.
   Even dreary weather can't spoil being in Paris but it was rather wonderful to go out on the street and see blue skies.

Don't know if you're familiar with the modern Halles--the godawful Forum des Halles shopping complex that moved into the area where the original, famous food market once stood. A massive reno is underway, and I can't work out if they're destroying the old one or building a new one. Maybe both.

Old and new can live together happily. Here's proof just along the street where the late 16th/early 17th century church of St. Eustache is the backdrop to this modern sculpture.
From there, I headed south to the Metro station that was the start of my journey to Porte d'Ivry in southern Paris. Who knew that that pink Metro line split up at some point and went in two different directions. I had a 50 percent chance of being right, but wasn't, so off I jumped, backtracked, eventually reached the correct station and emerged to find myself staring at modern Paris.

I'd come here because this quartier is home to a huge Asian supermarket called Tang Frères. Stocked with rice wrappers, hoi sin sauce and other necessities that are hard to find in our part of France, I joined the queue at a little Vietnamese sandwich shop, and left with a warm bag that, as I rode home on the Metro, emitted petite gusts of spice and savouriness.
And that was only the morning.

Dinner at BAM

2011-10-13T10:44:00.000+02:00

Set down a tiny side street between Rue de Rivoli and the Seine, BAM stands for "bar à manger"-- "a bar that you eat at" would be the literal translation, although this is about as far from "bar" food as you can get. Dinner here a couple of nights back was one of the most intriguing and imaginative meals we've had in Paris at this price level. BAM can definitely hold its head up and boast that it's a "proper" restaurant. http://www.bar-a-manger.fr

Diners can't. Hold their heads up, I mean. We turned down the offer of the table right under the bar (where those two chaps are sitting), climbed the narrow, steep, spiral stairs to the mezzanine and found ourselves a better table. To call the ceiling "low"....let's just say that anyone approaching six feet has to assume a Quasimodo-like crouch to avoid smashing their head.
The service was super-friendly but scattered. Our two menus somehow ended up as a shared entrée and plat (but separate desserts!!) with the rectagonal platters positioned so we could each start at one end and meet in the middle. We didn't leave hungry either.

"Cube de queue de boeuf confite, pissenlit, carottes croquantes, vinaigrette carotte," it says on the menu. You could cut those cubes of confited oxtail with a fork and the Jackson Pollock-esque splashes of carrot vinaigrette had just the right kick. Another entrée I'd like to play around with at home is the soupe glacée de petits pois à la menthe, sorbet pamplemousse rose, mikado à la coppa. Fresh peas, mint, grapefruit and something bacon-y? Sounds okay by me.

"Magret de canard au piment d’espelette, aubergines rôties à l’ail & basilic, oignons rouges confits au porto"
We eat so much duck at home that I rarely order it when we're outside the deep south. But this dish sounded startlingly different--in a good way. I couldn't really taste the espelette pepper on the grilled duck but there was enough going on on anyway in hte flavour department. Halved eggplants roasted so long that they'd collapsed on themselves, glorious red onions sweet from their bath of port and the surprise of a basil leaf of garnish. Might try this one at home too.

Dessert porn. Think of the traditional banoffee pie. Now destructure it and arrange all the elements separately.

Roasted figs, cream, etc. etc. A half-litre of a sturdy Rioja. Coffees. Out, smiling, into the night.

Thinking of roof-tops in Paris...

2011-10-09T22:36:00.000+02:00

...I suddenly remembered the ending of that heart-rending mid-1950s film, The Red Balloon. Briefly, a little boy living in Paris has a red balloon that accompanies him everywhere until the day when a bunch of evil boys shoot it down. As le petit garcon mourns his lost friend, here's what happens (have the box of mouchoirs handy).

Street food in Montmartre

2011-10-09T21:52:00.002+02:00

Held each October, the Fête des Vendanges in Montmartre celebrates the very small amount of wine actually produced right here in Paris. The harvest, of course, is just another excuse for a helluva street party. Much of it happens around the base of Sacré Coeur, the white onion-domed church that's one of the city's best-known landmarks. The view from the top is staggering, and so are you after ascending hundreds of stone steps. Rather than climbing on foot (or probably on knees by the time we'd made it there) to the base of Sacré Coeur, we queued with dozens of other party-goers and took the funiculaire, a cable car that, for the price of a metro ticket, whisks you from base camp to summit in about a minute.
Wine, wine, wine, champagne, champagne, champagne. Sample it, buy it by the glass or by the bottle and ask for it to be opened and supplied with a few plastic glasses. Then go find a convenient spot to enjoy.

Then stack your empties alongside all the others.

It's not all drinking of course. There's also food, food, food. This year's theme is France's various tropical islands. Spicy smells met us as we climbed towards the main exhibition area.

This stall sold sandwiches filled with foie gras--and your choice of fig chutney of confit of onions--or goose rillettes.

Bad mistiming. It was too late for lunch, and too early for dinner, so we ruined our appetites about 6 p.m. with a barquette of potatoes and cepes, then funiculaire-d back to ground level, metro-d back to the Marais and, a couple of hours later, still found ourselves too stuffed for anything more than a bowl of Vietnamese noodles.

I love Paris every moment...

2011-10-06T22:26:00.000+02:00

   You can keep London or New York. Nowhere beats Paris, and I go into a total fizz of delight the moment we climb off the train. We arrived here yesterday after a sleepy race through the French countryside: sleepy because, as usual, we'd left tons of stuff to do till the last minute and consequently had little sleep; a race because we took the TGV, which rampages across the country at hundreds of kilometres an hour.
   Two weeks equals two different apartments, both in Le Marais. The first is on the sixth floor of an ancient building. The smallest elevator in the world takes us as far as the fifth floor so we only have to climb one flight of wide, polished stairs. If I can find the tape measure that I may, or may not, have packed, I'll measure the elevator next time we use it. Small? Let's just say that if you stand facing the door, your shoulders touch the walls on both sides. Two people and two suitcases were out of the question, so we rode up in shifts.
   Large by Paris standards (about 40 square metres) this little apartment has sloping ceilings and four oval windows, which make you feel as though you're coming in to land....

Here's the apartment I'd buy if we won the Euro lottery.

No prizes for guessing that it's the one with all the geraniums. That pipe-covered building in the distance is the Pompidou Centre.

When we were here in June, we stayed just down the street so we came to know the quartier fairly well. One block over is a little street crammed with Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, which is where we ate last night. Nems, squid, chicken with cashew nuts, and a couple of grande Tsing Taos to wash it all down...we can eat French food anytime but we do occasionally crave Asian flavours.

Excuses, excuses...and a look at salades composées.

2011-10-06T19:48:00.000+02:00

   Over a month of blog-silence needs explaining so here goes. First, I twisted my ankle. Okay, I don't write with my foot but it slowed me down so that everything took longer and blogging took longer. Then, a head cold. Same reason. Then family and friends staying with us, which was all huge fun but, in the midst of all the days out, lengthy and wonderful dinners, and many, many bottles of wine, something had to give--and that was blogging time.
   Now, we're in Paris for a couple of weeks and, before I get into the heart-stopping delights of being here, I'm determined to finish off a number of partially written posts and write on a few topics that have been kicking around at the back of my brain.
   Have I ever written about French salads? At length? A simple salade verte is just that, often just lettuce (by the way, lettuce here is called "salade"). Once you get into salade composée country, anything goes. A "composed salade"-- literal translation--sounds like a prim and proper dish, something out of the French equivalent of Jane Austen. Au contraire, these are often lusty Rabelaisian assemblages that fling together vegetables, meats, and even fruits.
   We often order them if we go out for lunch. The usual basket of bread, a jug of water, a pichet of rosé, and a big healthy-looking plateful of salad. What else do you want when the temperature is in the high twenties?
   At home, especially in the summer, we eat the following at least once a month:
   1) Salade Lyonnaise. Salad greens, preferably frisée, sometimes dandelion greens from the garden, crisped warm lardons, tomato wedges, chopped onion, chopped chives sometimes, a mustard-y dressing and, added at the last moment, to sit shakily on top, ready to burst and lavish its warm yolk over everything else, a just-poached egg. God, the poetry. I mustn't forget to tell you that I also ring the salad bowls with croutons and warm cooked cubes of potato to turn it into a meal.
   2) Salade Niçoise, and you know what goes into that. Tuna, hard-boiled egg criss-crossed with anchovies and decorated with a blob of mayonnaise, black olives, scarlet rings of red pepper, cold potatoes, haricots verts, wedges of tomato, sliced green or red onion, all on a bed of whatever lettuce takes your fancy.

For the life of me, I can't remember what this particular salad was called. Place: a little outdoor restaurant in Minerve. Accompaniment: a pizza garnished with chorizo, anchovies, peppers... But to return to the salad. Talk about an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza. What you see here are only some of the components. What the menu described as "lardons" were in fact entire slices of bacon (or smoked pork belly as it's known here). A hard-boiled egg, tomato wedges, lettuce, so far, so normale...Black olives, marinated green and red peppers...now we were moving into uncharted seas. In there too was a little savoury dollop of onion confit and and entire fruit section consisting of grapes, a cantaloupe slice, and a few slices of kiwi fruit.

A slice of creamy, funky goat cheese on a slice of baguette, popped in the oven long enough for the cheese to soften, warm and take on a golden crust. Elsewhere, you can see a slice of mountain ham, garnet-coloured and chewy, and a heap of lardons.

Lardons, cubes of Roquefort, walnuts, hard-boiled egg, tomato and lettuce.

No unrecognizable ingredients here apart from those deep pink thingies at three o'clock. They're called gésiers, which is French for "gizzards," either chicken or, more likely in this part of the world, duck. Don't knock them till you've tried them. Utterly delicious, as is anything confit-ed in duck fat. I buy confited gésiers in tins from SuperU or Intermarché.

Last of the summer wine...

2011-09-05T15:17:00.000+02:00

   Each Friday night during July and August, our village holds a marché gourmand. The best way to think of it is as a large street party. What started out as a small local event several years ago now takes up a major section of the main rue and attracts crowds, sometimes of literally hundreds, from several kilometres around.
   Midway through Friday afternoon, barriers are set up to divert the traffic and long trestle tables and benches are put in place. No plates or cutlery or glasses. You either bring your own or rely on the food truck you're buying from to supply them. Lately, we've been eating Asian food made by a lady who lives in nearby Regat but is originally from Vientiane in Laos. She and her family work incredibly hard. I'd already seen her in Lavelanet market that morning selling her noodle stir fry, spring rolls, shrimp beignets and samosas. (The French for chopsticks, by the way, is "baguettes" and, while I'm at it, baguette is also a word for what the conductor conducts the orchestra with.)
   Riiiight, back on to the main topic. You can buy pork chops, merguez, chorizo and regular saucisse, steaks of various kinds, slabs of ribs...from the butcher and have them grilled over charcoal.

To the right of the butcher's truck, cut off by my inept photography, is a mother lode of spitting, hissing, finger-burning frites with ample dispensers of mayonnaise and ketchup to squirt over them. Elsewhere you can take away escargots, paella, magrets-frites-and-persillade and more Asian food. All of which says something about modern French tastes, at least in our part of the country.

You sit down where you can with old friends, and with people you've just met. There's bread from the boulangerie. Bottles of wine. A lot of sharing goes on. Here's what the street looks like when the night market's at its peak. This one was less crowded than usual. Because it's September, most visitors had gone home so the night had a friendly local feel to it.

Dessert was locally-made ewe's milk ice cream. The sharp-eyed amongst you will be able to make out some of the flavours on the list, which includes violet and rose-petal. Peter had chocolate. I licked away at a boule of caramel flecked with sel de Gruissan.

The weather the previous Friday had been so abysmal that the planned fireworks display was rained out. Not this week. So, just before the scheduled starting time of 10:30 p.m., we all trooped through the streets to the rugby pitch on the outskirts of Léran.

Bonne nuit.

A retro approach to air-conditioning

2011-08-24T22:29:00.000+02:00

   Have I told you how swelteringly hot it's been here recently? How we cope with it is by closing all the shutters during the day time to keep the house cool and opening them at night to let the colder night air pour in.
   Also, I've started carrying a fan around in my handbag and, the more I use it, the more it makes sense. Think about it for a moment. Here's a device that folds up to nothing, is as "green" as it's possible to be (the only energy you're using is your own) and really, really works. And then there's the whole language of the fan.
   Here are the three fans I currently own. Two I use, the first one's simply to look at.

My absolute favourite--and one of my best vide-grenier finds ever. I spied this lovely little fan a year or so ago on an insanely hot day and it cost me all of one euro. It's made of paper, a bit tattered as you can see, and was originally a promotional item for a champagne company. Strapless black cocktail dress, scarlet lips...isn't she gorgeous?

My latest purchase happened at last Sunday's vide-grenier in La Bastide-de-Boussignac, a village not far from ours. This fan is creamy-white and--I don't know if you can make the name out--looks as though it was a souvenir from Bali. I paid 50 centimes for it.

This is the first fan I owned. It was given to me by the lady who ran the hotel in Béziers where I stayed in, I think it was, 2001. It's basic black so it goes with everything.

Non-designer details.

2011-08-24T16:04:00.000+02:00

I must have walked past Mirepoix's cathedral hundreds of times--and the building and formal garden beside it but I only noticed this (see picture above) last Monday. Apart from a gorgeous "shabby chic" paint job that interior designers would charge thousands to do, don't you love those little heart cutouts in the window shutters--and the stained glass window over the door?

High summer indeed.

2011-08-22T18:11:00.000+02:00

   The question I ask myself is "what would have happened if the mercury had reached the 50 degree mark?" Yesterday, when I put the thermometer out in the full sun, this is what it read. Forty-eight degrees or, to put it another way, 18 degrees hotter than the water we use in the washing machine's eco-cycle.
   We've had incredibly hot weather for the past few days, made to feel hotter by the humidity. Cooler temperatures are forecast for tomorrow, and rain, which will be something of a blessing. Digging holes this morning in the garden to plant a cutting that was on its last legs (should that be stems?)--at 7:45 a.m., exclamation point--I found that, despite trailing up and down the path with the hose, and liberal pourings from watering cans, the earth is bone dry.
   Rain would be good.
   In the meantime, there are tiled floors to walk on in bare feet, chilled Muscadet (even rosé seems too "warm" at the moment) and crisp salads--tonight's is a Niçoise--that are as lightly dressed as I am.

Eating locally...

2011-08-17T18:13:00.000+02:00

Here's a peek at last Friday's lunch, some of it sourced from the market we'd just been to in Lavelanet, some of it from our, and our neighbour's, garden.

Starting at 12 noon and going round the clock, the hunk of bread is off the half a couronne we bought. This is real gutsy peasant stuff, crusty, chewy, and meant to last a week. If we ever do have leftovers, they make terrific croutons All that arugula/rocket/roquette comes from the garden. It self-seeded itself to make a small forest that grows about two metres from where we were eating it. The more I cut it, the more it grows. I love its pepperiness and often team it with walnuts, and a dressing of lemon juice and walnut oil. I picked those sweet little yellow cherry tomatoes, and the green one further down the garden. The red ones are from next-door. My neighbour has been away for a few weeks and gave me free run of her vegetable patch.

Finally, the protein element. We bought two roasted quail from the rotisserie van at the market. Still warm when we ate them, they only cost 2.50 euros each, and we nibbled every last little bit of meat off them. The rotisserie man also sells whole chickens, chicken legs, chicken thighs, roasted pork, big fat sausages, and potatoes that sit in a trough at the bottom of the rotisserie and catch all the juices that drip from the various meats.

Finally, a pot of redcurrant relish made by a friend--and very delicious it is. Last, but not least, the little blue-handled spoon was made by our neighbour, David Hilton, maker of beautiful tableware. Go and have a browse around his on-line shop. http://www.davidhiltontableware.co.uk/

The Eye of the Needle

2011-08-13T18:11:00.000+02:00

In Carcassone for the day, we walked down this street and came upon...

At first, we thought she was a painter. Then, as we got closer, we saw that she was "drawing" with needle and thread. It looked as though she was doing it freehand too.

One of her completed works--a "Salvador Dali". Attached to it is a note saying that it's not for sale but for the world to look at. In case you're wondering how she made a living, there was a hat on the ground if you wanted to throw in a euro or two.

To give you some idea of the intricacy of her work, here's a closeup of the thumb just underneath the egg.

And moving in even closer, you can see the incredible fineness of her work. I can't begin to imagine how many thousands of hours she must spend on one piece of work. All I know is that she was there when we walked towards the main square, and there several hours later when we left.

A Tip of the Chapeau...

2011-08-11T19:02:00.003+02:00

Because we'd heard that its Sunday market was well worth a visit, we drove to Esperaza last weekend, a town on the Aude river. It's also a town on the tourist trail, I suspect, because the place was rock-solid with accents other than French and folk carrying Nikons rather than shopping bags. Still, it was fun to stroll around in the sunshine. It always is, and it was pleasant sitting in the sun drinking coffee. Later, we crossed the bridge, admiring the floral boxes and wondering "what do these people feed their plants?"

By now it was lunchtime but we didn't really feel like the full meal that's the usual Sunday lunch in France, so we picked up a pizza and ate it outdoors by the now-defunct railway station, talking about how great it must have been when even small communities were linked by le train. Some of the old stations have been converted into houses. Others into exhibition spaces. Our local "green way"--a 34 km trail for walkers, bikes and horses--to a large extent follows the route of the old railway that used to link nearby villages.

Lunch done, pizza box folded and thrown in the waste bin, I wandered over to one of Esperaza's top attractions. The other is a dinosaur museum and both it, and the hat museum--the star attraction as far as I'm concerned--are housed in the same building.

This whole area used to be famed for its textile manufacturing and related industries like glove-making and hat-making. Our village used to make jet jewelry and not far away, to this day, is a little factory that makes combs out of cow horn.

So, a hundred years ago, you tidied your hair, and then you put on a hat, probably made in Esperaza.

Antique equipment, vintage photos of proud hat-makers, hats of course...all in all, the museum was huge fun. I love seeing how everyday objects are made, and here they took you right through the hat-making process from raw wool to finished chapeaux.

The life cycle of the classic French beret.

If you've ever been unlucky enough to inadvertently send a wool sweater or socks through a hot wash...the same principle applies to berets. Once it's been steamed, this very large floppy thing will be transformed.

Brute force creates another classic shape.

Isn't this medieval hat wonderful?

A hut for a musketeer.

Time-Tripping Back to Paris: Part 1:

2011-07-25T17:16:00.000+02:00

How long has it been since we last went to the Sunday morning flea market in Pamiers? Must be months. The sun came out yesterday morning, so we drove over, downed café crèmes and had a leisurely browse around the stalls. Did I really need an Yves St. Laurent olive green cape? If I did, I could have nabbed one for 25 euros. As always, the folks who profit most at flea markets and vide-greniers are parents of small kids. If I had a euro for every Barbie doll or action figure, I'd be rich. This time, nothing caught my fancy. Even the DVD stall failed to deliver. But it wasn't all weeping and moaning as we left because, tucked in my purse, were two small but wonderful finds.

The story of the items I uncovered in a box under a stall has its beginnings in the hands of a local man--"very cultured" said the lady who sold them to me for two euros. Whoever he was, he obviously hung on to programs from shows he saw. They ended up in an attic somewhere and, from there, had made their way to a flea market stall

I've always been a huge fan of American-born chanteuse Josephine Baker who had a heart as big as her international reputation. Here she is dancing her bananas off (or nearly) around 1927....

Three years after she filmed this, she appeared in a show at the Casino de Paris along with "400 artistes, Girls et Boys". Paris qui Remue was billed as a "super spectacle." This revue had it all. Towering feather head-dresses (and we'll come to more of those later in this post), magnificent toe-tapping dance routines, glamour galore and Baker belting out one of her most famous songs:

It all happened back in 1930 and one of my discoveries in Pamiers was this little promotional pamphlet. Here's its front cover:

Completely unfolded, it displays the show's highlights.

As famous around that time as Josephine Baker--the two were fierce rivals--was French star Mistinguett who was born with the somewhat bourgeois name of Jeanne Bourgeois. Her stage name came from a friend who wrote a song called "Miss Tinguette."
In 1920 (see how we're sliding further and further back in time) Mistinguett starred in a revue, also at the Casino de Paris. Its name was.....dim the lights, raise the curtain....Parikiri!!!

   This little program--my second flea market find--details the 42 scenes starting with "Un roof-garden à New-York" and including "The Magic Stairs Case." I couldn't find any footage from the show but you can bet that the costumes were jaw-droppingly magnificent.
   Allegedly the first performer to do that 'watch me walk down the staircase' routine, Mistinguett once wore a feathered head-dress so spectacularly tall that, when she took her last curtain call, the plumes stretched right out over the orchestra pit and touched the audience in the front row. Check out the costume she's wearing in this clip and that's not hard to picture. I just love how she sparkles in every sense of the word.



Mistinguett - Oui je suis de Paris par le-pere-de-colombe

  More French vintage trivia: Also appearing with Mistinguett in Parikiri was a dapper young boulevardier called Maurice Chevalier, her lover for many years.
   Finally, my favourite quote from her: "A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point. That's basic spelling that every woman ought to know."
   Expect longer, and more frequent, posts as rain continues to sweep across Europe and the temperature stays in the unseasonal mid-teens.

The Monday morning routine.

2011-07-25T11:43:00.000+02:00

Not saying that the occasional supermarket pork chop doesn't find its way into our fridge but most weeks we try to do almost all of our meat and veg shopping at the markets in Lavalenet and Mirepoix, the two small towns that are each about a 15-minute drive from our village. Lavelanet's is on Fridays--and it's by far the better one in terms of the number and variety of producers, and general mood of joie de vivre. Mirepoix's on a Monday is still good but its historical setting does mean that, summertime especially, it's rife with visitors who are there to gaze not rummage through the courgettes and aubergines.
Never easy any time, finding a place to park the car can be horrendous in July and August. We do have a secret spot where we can usually guarantee success but it's a five-minute walk from the market stalls. Most Mondays, Peter drops me off just beyond the post office so I can make a start on shopping. But before I stroll into the square, I cross the road and go in here.

Here's the boulangerie where I get out of the car with my basket, back-up plastic bag, and list. We usually arrange to meet about 20 minutes later in the presse. That way, if either of us is late, the waiting one can browse through the new issue of Cuisine Actuelle and Paris-Match.

Those multicoloured thingies on the middle and upper shelves are pears, apples, mice and Sponge-Bob Square Pants (!!) made of marzipan. Approaching nirvana...

...with a brief stop to gaze at these.

Almost there. The pains aux raisins are on the top shelf on the right--and there are only two left, but that doesn't matter.

I should have put a euro coin beside this so you could see its colossal size. It's easily big enough for the two of us. The best part is the sugary, buttery, raisin-laden middle.

Celebrating Bastille Day in the Garden...

2011-07-14T18:10:00.000+02:00

Promise I'll do a major post sometime soon to show you all the corners of our garden. In the meantime, let's celebrate today, Bastille Day, with red, white and blue flowers.
Top to bottom, the reds are a nasturtium (in the edible flowers container), a hanging geranium, a normal geranium, and a scarlet runner bean flower.
Whites are cosmos, roses and feverfew, blues some pansies that have hung on and on and on, and borage that self-seeds itself everywhere.

Dinner at the Chateau.

2011-07-13T18:22:00.001+02:00

   Our wedding anniversary a few weeks ago was a June day as gloriously sunny as it was the day we were married. A fine excuse to go out to dinner.
   The Abbaye-Chateau in Camon is only about 10 minutes away but, although we'd met the owners (and I'd written a story about them) we'd never eaten there. Now was as good a time as any to do it.
   Camon is a storybook village, set in a green bowl of countryside and ancient beyond belief with some of its original stone walls still intact., quite literally "one of the most beautiful villages in France."
   You can read all about the Abbaye-Chateau at  http://www.chateaudecamon.com

The stunning entrance hall is tiled in every shade of russet, rust and tawny brown.

   Dinner is un menu--no decisions, and personally, I love it when I have to do is sit there and be brought plate after plate of delicious things.
   We began with drinks on the terrace, a special cocktail. Guess the mystery ingredient and the drink's on the house, owner Peter Lawton told us. I did actually guess it but then thought "nah..."
   Into the main courtyard for dinner where tables were set up on the edge of a lawn. Somewhere buried in the clutter on my desk is the menu....aaah, found it.

The first course--a light but substantial salad of quail, peeled white grapes and walnuts.

Gazpacho and a croute spread with tapenade.

I wanted to show you the table which manages, like the abbey itself, to be a comfortable blend of casual and formal. Isn't that simple wreath of ivy round the candle holder an effective idea?

Filet de rascasse, salicorne et sauce poivron rouge. I could easily have eaten two of these. I forgot to photograph the next course: lamb, with creamed spinach, ratte potatoes, and a caper and shallot sauce. Chef Tom Sleigh works with what he finds locally and in season. His style is unfussy (it's that same mix of casual and formal). He simply picks the best ingredients he can and lets them do the talking.

Three desserts. A tarte au citron, pear poached in red wine and pear ice cream.

Time to go home.

The Mainstays of Summer

2011-07-04T17:52:00.000+02:00

   Summertime and the living should be as easy as you can make it. All the more time to spend out in the garden. Who wants to slave away for hours in the kitchen on a hot day? Me neither.
   By mainstays, I mean dead-simple, tasty dishes that get along comfortably with others, or exist happily on their own. Like the best kind of people, in fact.
   Stop reading here if I've written about the tortilla before. My mind is foggy partly because of the gorgeous 27 degree heat out there and partly due to the glass of chilled muscadet I'm rapidly downing.
   When I say "tortilla," don't even think of the Mexican variety. This is the Spanish version, more of a hefty fat omelette like the one I first tasted getting off a train in Barcelona, starving, and finding tortilla served in a split baguette (or whatever the Spanish is for baguette). Crusty bread full of golden-y goodness. I've made tortilla so often now that I can do it from memory. It's definitely not fancy but it has two enormous things in its favour:
  Firstly, you don't need to make a special trip to the shops. You've almost certainly got all the ingredients on hand (which makes it useful when aperos turn into supper, or someone shows up unexpectedly).
  Secondly, it's good straight from the pan, at room temperature, or the next day. Even, as we discovered this lunchtime, sliced and jammed in a split baguette along with grainy mustard, ham, lettuce and tomato.
   You start by slicing one pound of potatoes about 1 cm thick (and I know I'm mixing weights and measures. Sooooorry). Boil them for five minutes and drain.
   During that five minutes, gently soften a sliced onion and several cloves of sliced garlic in a quarter cup of olive oil, in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat.
   Add your potatoes, as well as a generous handful of chopped parsley. Press everything down with a spatula.
   Finally add six eggs beaten together with a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of pepper.
   Cover the pan, turn the heat to medium-low and let the tortilla cook for 20 minutes.
   Serve it in wedges with salads and bread, or cut in cubes, a tooth-pick in each, for an apero snack. This is the tortilla at its most basic. Little cubes of ham or chorizo, chopped green onion, snippets of sun-dried tomato, feel free to improvise.
   I love my tortillas. One of those around and pulling drinks, supper or a light dinner together takes minutes. (Real minutes too, not the TV food show ten-minions-have-been-chopping-away-for-half-an-hour-kind-of-"quick-dish"). As you can see from the photo below, it's not really a "wow" visual moment although it does have an honest, rustic look that I rather like.

   On to the next mainstay.
   You can buy black, pungent tapenade everywhere in France but personally I find it far more satisfying to go through all the little plastic containers in the fridge containing a dozen olives each, and the one with the few remaining anchovies in it, and make something that--like the tortilla--equals more than the sum of its parts.
   Recipes are everywhere. Just Google. But basically olives, anchovies (or not, if you're vegetarian), capers, garlic and olive oil get whizzed together in a food processor, and that's it. One night recently, we'd run out of fresh bread and the boulangerie was inexplicably shut, so I sliced stale baguette, brushed it lightly with olive oil, toasted it under the grill, turned it, added more olive oil and repeated the process. Then I spread the wee toasts with tapenade. Delish. We had it with grilled something or other.

All the tapenade ingredients together at last.

Third and last mainstay. Well, last one for today. For this, you just have to have ripe tomatoes, fresh basil and a fresh mozzarella around. Slice tomatoes and cheese, arrange in a pretty circle, one red, one white, one red, one white, drizzle with olive oil, and tear up basil leaves to sprinkle over the top.
Bon appétit. And do let me know if you'd like me to blog more ways to make your summer eating easy.

Terrine de Boeuf en Gelée: Part Deux

2011-07-02T15:28:00.002+02:00

Thought you might like to see some "before" and "after" shots of last Sunday's supper. Here are all the all the ingredients I used in the beef terrine (I hadn't noticed till now that the veg look like a fat little stomach with orange legs).

And, ta-da!-- here it is, all cooked in its tin. I didn't even try to turn it out. Just as well as the end result was a little "looser" than I wanted. Next time, I'll use all the couennes (or a calf's foot). I'd also add more seasoning. It was tasty but could have used a bit more flavour. Wandering off, the cold remains were delicious, and the very last bits and pieces, and all the leftover stock have now been simmered and simmered with a tin of tomatoes to make what should be a damn delicious pasta sauce.
Back to the beef in its first appearance. I cooked fried potatoes to go with it, boiled earlier so it was simply a matter of heating some olive oil and popping them in the pan. Salad of course and this one came completely from the garden. The mustardy zip of the nasturtium and roquette leaves worked well with the beef.

Another "before" shot. Here's what those nasturtium and borage plants looked like not that long ago.

Terrine de Boeuf en Gelée

2011-06-25T18:36:00.000+02:00

   My French still isn't fluent enough to hold a deep conversation about politics or the finer points of rugby (but then, my English isn't either) but I can definitely read and follow recipes.
   This one had been drifting around the edges of my brain ever since the weather turned warm. High temperatures and the idea of a shimmery jellied dish sounds just what you need as a main course. Not too ethereal--although that's fine for a starter or dessert--but something with meat to it. In this case, beef.
   Just in time, I found the copy of Elle à Table that went missing some months ago. Like all the Elle magazine spin-offs, it's beautiful to look at, and the recipes are always exactly in lock-step with the season. Our unusually hot late spring has pushed everything forward by about three weeks so last year's July/August issue reflects everything you'll see in the markets right now.
   But back to the recipe for terrine de boeuf en gelée. This could be a lengthy post because what I want to do is take you through the ingredients, one by one. I'll put these in bold face, with notes underneath.

   1 kg de boeuf (paleron, gite, joue). These cuts are, respectively, chuck, topside and cheek--all good for braising. I bought mine yesterday at Lavelanet market from the butcher's van. In fact I bought close to a kilo and a half because it's reassuring to know there's enough beef in the freezer to make a daube for two.
   1 pied de veau. A calf's foot. The butcher told me he had none because there's no demand. I explained what it was for. He said couennes would do. To digress a bit--and there will likely be more than a few digressions in this post--couennes are strips of pork skin. Usually they come with the underlying layer of fat attached, and they are one of the elements that make cassoulet so rich and filling. I said to the butcher that couennes might be too fatty. He turned round, opened the door to the refrigerator and produced a handful of fatless couennes. No charge. "Un cadeau." These travelling butchers' vans are one of the joys of being in France. This butcher comes from St. Quentin, a village about 5 km from our house. Every Wednesday morning, another butcher parks his van at the end of the Impasse where we live. That's even closer. It is very, very pleasant on a brisk fall day to have quail stuffed with wild mushrooms and wrapped in bacon brought almost to your door.
   Yesterday, I also bought a length of sausage from the boeuf and couennes butcher. This is destined to go into the stuffing for a round little courgette that I'd bought earlier. Market shopping works like this. You buy something, quickly think what you're going to do with it and then pick up the meat or olives or other veggies you need. Every week I write a shopping list. Nine weeks out of ten, I never even look at it.
   2 carottes. That's easy. Carrots here are often so fresh that juice spurts if you snap one in half. They also turn moldy in a moment. I've discovered the way to keep them fresh is to peel and trim them, and store them covered in water in the fridge. Provided you change the water occasionally, they keep for weeks.
   1 bouquet garni (persil, thym, vert de poireau, céleri, laurier). Parsley (also bought at the market), some sprigs of thyme from the garden, some celery, a bay leaf that my friend Grace gave me. Actually she gave me a bagful. Everything wrapped in the green leaf of a leek and tied with string. A word about that string. A couple of years ago, I bought a roll of butcher's string, and a couple of balls of hemp string at a vide grenier. I have enough string to last several lifetimes.
   4 oignons frais et 1 gros oignon piqué d'un clou de girofle. Four green/spring onions and one big onion (the usual kind) stuck with a clove. The green onions are used later. French recipes don't necessarily list ingredients in the order they're used. And they're not always that precise about quantities.

I think there's a deeper understanding in France of how to cook. For instance, last week, the local supermarket had a special on quarters of lamb. We bought a front quarter which, as far as I can make out, breaks down into a shoulder (with a bit of front leg attached), miscellaneous chops, some odds and ends that I think will do nicely in a curry or a tagine and a breast of lamb. No handy labels, no explanation, you obviously have to be able to identify, and know how to cook, each cut.
   2 gousses d'ail. Garlic cloves.
   1 petit piment frais. I forgot to buy this. But I did have some dried ones left from a bunch I bought in Lavelanet last summer.
   1 c. a soupe de gros sel de mer. A tablespoon of coarse sea salt.
   10 grains de poivre. Ten peppercorns.
   Persil plat. Flat-leaf parsley.
   1 c. a café de graines de coriandre. A teaspoon of coriander seeds.

Couennes. I used about half of these as I reckoned that would add up to about the same as one calf's foot. The dish can go three ways: A) It'll be perfect, B) It'll collapse all over the plates because the jelly isn't stiff enough to hold it together. C) It'll be so rigid that slices will bounce. Three guesses as to the outcome I'm hoping for.

Make it today, eat it tomorrow--which is what we'll do.

Vide grenier season again....

2011-06-25T18:21:00.000+02:00

   Call me "Second-hand Rose". Very few items in our home came to us via the normal retail route. Almost everything here has a story behind it and, more often than not, that story began in a depot-vente (secondhand store) or vide-grenier (car boot sale, yard sale...).
   Recently, we drove to Dun to take in an art and crafts exhibition and, er, a vide-grenier. Slim pickings this time, as sometimes happens. Loads of kids' clothes, Barbie dolls, plastic whatevers, which is great for parents of little ones and, even if you're not, good to know that dear ole Barbie isn't going to end up, plastic legs akimbo, on the town dump. But on to objets that I do want:
   I've got the technique down by now. If I see something interesting, I never grab it with great shouts of joy. Better to sidle around it, looking at other objects, even asking the price of an elderly ash-tray that I have no interest in whatsoever. Then, almost offhandedly, I pick up object of my desire and see what the owner wants for it.
   She wanted eight euros for this little art nouveau jug. Hmmm. Don't need another jug (although "need" rarely has anything to do with what we buy at vide greniers) and eight euros is sort of at the tipping point. I walked back to the car, thinking about the jug, and picturing it holding pink roses. When I got to the car, I thought some more, and walked back to the stall. The stallholder immediately knew why I was there.
   "Eight euros," she said, "but you can have it for seven". Score.

Floral Notes from Paris.

2011-06-25T18:08:00.002+02:00

   When I was growing up in Bury St. Edmunds, a favourite treat (as an under-five) was a visit to the Abbey Gardens to feed the ducks. Once you'd gone through the magnificent Abbey Gate, you followed a wide path between very formal flower beds. Flawlessly geometric, they were the absolute opposite of my parents' rambunctious herbaceous borders. These were gardens to be looked at, not played in, with "Please Keep Off the Grass" signs everywhere . The inspiration behind these were probably the formal gardens of France such as you see at Versailles.
   When we go to Paris, I'm always fascinated at what the gardeners have planted in the numerous public gardens. One day I'd like the meet the brains behind those in the enchanting little park just east of Notre-Dame cathedral. Scouting through the x thousand photos I've saved on iPhoto, I found these that I took a few years ago. Poppies, wallflowers and foxgloves wouldn't be the first combination you'd think of but it's enchantingly pretty.

Here's what you'll see at the moment in the same gardens. Much more formal, minimalist even, with bamboo and white-painted branches used as decoration. It's still all constrained by tidy lawns and little fences but, behind those stand-offish exteriors it's time to have fun and break all the rules. Somewhere there's a doctoral thesis to be written on this.

   On to the next garden. Even though the Jardin des Plantes is right beside the Gare d'Austerlitz, the station we arrive at/leave from is we don't take the TGV, we've never been inside its gates. Possibly because we're always towing luggage. This time, I was determined to go there, so I metro-ed over to the main station, and made my way outside, just across from the Seine, and into the gardens.
   They are huuuumungous. To wander off for a moment, Paris is a glorious mix of intimate narrow streets and grand, colossal spaces. France's largest, the garden is a grand enormous space and then some, with a pathway that seemed to go on for miles. Museums, a plant school, a zoo, vast greenhouses, you could easily spend a day here. The National History Museum's web site calls the collections the "archives of the planet," possibly because they have over 60 million stones, bones, meteorites and plants. That's for next time.
   I only had a couple of hours so all I can give you is a little taste.

You walk and you walk and you walk and you walk. You're so close to the city but the only sounds you hear are birdsong and schoolchildren.

All plants are identified.

Four men went to mow....I think this scene has an Alice and Wonderland feel to it. You almost expect the Red Queen to appear suddenly.

Every French garden has a potager. The one here is quite small and tucked away in a corner.

If I ever grow raspberries, I'm going to train them like this rather than straight up. I'm sure they get more sun this way.

Really big greenhouses. Really large numbers of schoolchildren.

A demonstration meadow shows how beautiful wild flowers can be.

Parisian Style.

2011-06-19T17:57:00.001+02:00

Drink of your choice at your elbow, you can settle in at a sidewalk café for hours and just gaze at the people strolling by. A few observations, in no particular order, if you're planning to visit and want to fit in:
1) Anyone wearing running shoes meant for running is almost certainly not French. On the other hand, if the running shoes are silver or gold or otherwise metallic, or embellished with sparkles, or patterned with flowers, they were bought for style not function, which probably means the pieds in them are Parisian.
2) Aged denim and anything smart and black in almost any combination always look good.
3) Ballet shoes and ankle boots. No flip-flops, no heavy-duty hiking sandals. And, pleeeeeease, no sandals with socks (as seen on one gent who paired them with shorts and a tailored jacket).
4) A scarf, of course. What do you mean, it's 28 degrees?

Black sweater, white mini-skirt, ankle boots, Chanel-style shoulder bag, minimal makeup and unfussy hair. No prizes for guessing where she lives.

We'll Always Have Paris...

2011-06-19T17:46:00.000+02:00

   To quote Humphrey Bogart. I really did mean to write while we were in Paris earlier this month but... hope these posts will make up for it.
   Anyway, this time, for our week-long stay, we made our home in a different quartier--Le Marais--just north of the Pompidou Centre. The apartment was on the first floor accessible by kindly (as in not too steep) stairs or an elevator so minuscule that the two of us and our luggage couldn't fit in at the same time.
   The apartment was tiny too with a kitchen the size of a shower stall. You could literally stand in the middle and cook or do the washing-up without moving. I think, in total, we lived in about 24 square meters, and that's not the smallest apartment I've seen advertised--that was around 130 square feet.

We took the train there and back, abandoning the Renault at Pamiers station, catching the train to Toulouse, and then whooshing across a large chunk of France on the TGV. It always fascinates me how, travelling north, as the scenery flattens out, the rooftops do too, changing from russet-y tiles to slates. Gare Montparnasse is where you land and I'd sort of forgotten that it's a 30-minute hike underground to the Montparnasse Metro station. You would think they'd have had the decency to give them different names!
Our major reason for heading off to Paris when we did were the various art exhibitions we wanted to see. In no particular order, we took in the giant Manet exhibit at the Musée d'Orsay, works by one of the Fauvists, Kees Van Dongen at the Musée d'Art Modene. Finally, we saw a fantastic exhibition at Le Grand Palais of drawings, lithographs, paintings and--Odilon Redon was a versatile chap--designs for carpets and upholstered chairs. I love the intense gaze of the young man in the Manet above (and the waiter looking on). Put that one on my Christmas lists and, if I were a squintillionaire, here are a couple of other works I would hang on my walls.

I just loved Van Dongen's great slabs of primary colours.

Odilon Redon's malevolent Smiling Spider. Isn't this wonderfully creepy? A companion drawing--"The Crying Spider"--is in a private collection but, sadly, wasn't included in the exhibition.

And then we ate...(miscellaneous Céret food vignettes)

2011-06-02T19:39:00.002+02:00

To be honest, I initially called this post "miscellaneous Céret food stuff" but doesn't "vignettes" sound un peu posher? What it boils down to are some food moments that didn't seem to fit in the cherry festival post.

Sunday, the town was even more packed than it had been on Saturday. Every single café was jammed. We hung around eyeing groups who appeared to be finishing up their coffees but even giving them the evil eye didn't work--"move, you spawn of Satan"--we couldn't land a table anywhere. In the end we bought a ficelle from a boulangerie that, miracle of miracles, was still open, picked up this delicious little pear-shaped goat cheese at one of the street stalls and ate apricots that a vendor had given to Peter as a "cadeau" to make up for parking their van in front of the scene he was sketching. A couple of rousquilles for dessert.

Doughnut shaped, light and crumbly, these little cakes are a Catalan specialty....that's icing sugar on top and, you're right, they're sweet enough to make your teeth squeak.

Needless to say, the cherry variety was one of the first to sell out.

Both nights, we ate in this enchanting little square. The first night, we settled into the restaurant you can see just to the right of the fountain. One order of steak frites, one order of lamb chops frites.

Here's the same scene by day. Now you have to imagine live, light jazz as the background music.

Cherries in Céret

2011-06-02T19:34:00.002+02:00

And another mono-ingredient festival to add to your list. For years, we've been meaning to go to the annual fête des cerises in Céret, a small town just west of Perpignan. Problem is, it's the same weekend as the gypsy festival in the Camargue so a hard call but, because it was closer, the cherries won out this year.
We took the scenic route there, a series of dramatic switchbacks across vineyards that eventually spun us into the edge of the town. Parking was going to be a challenge, we knew that, so we grabbed the first space we saw, on a residential street, and set off for the Hotel Vidal, suitcase in tow.

Here's the hotel entrance. What you can't see is the colossal jasmine bush that climbs up beside you. The scent's enough to make you swoon.

Cheerful noise from the street woke me the next morning as vendors set up their stalls and began to arrange their wares. We went out, had pains aux raisins and crèmes and, by the time we headed back to the hotel to pack, the street was humming with action. Before we get into that, some background:

Over the decades, many big name artists have lived in, or stayed in, Céret. Picasso, Dufy and Soutine were just some of the painters seduced by the Mediterranean light. Here are a couple of photos to give you an idea.

The light is just plain lovely here. All southern French towns have plane trees casting shade in the summer. Most communities severely prune the trees but Céret lets them grow tall so, as well as welcome patches of shadow, you get dappled light on the creamy-yellow and pink façades of the houses. No wonder painters continue to flock here.
See those musicians? This wasn't only a fête des cerises, it was a fête des bandas as well. Brass bands!

...and dance too with the famous Catalan sardana.

   The hotel was already completely booked for Saturday night, so I'd found us a room at Poppy's B and B, which was literally just over the road. Their rooms were all full too when I rang but the owners suggested we stay in their adjacent apartment--two bedrooms with its own lounge, and we had the run of the entire place. An enormous breakfast, loaded bookshelves, delightful terrace, and warm people. Definitely recommended if you ever stay in Céret.

   And finally--ta-da!--the Cherry Festival:

Fête des Cerises translates as "everything cherry"... Anything you could do with cherries, the cherry vendors did. This is a bottle of cherry beer, not the least bit sweet, and don't you love the label?
Everywhere you looked, people were selling cherries.

All hail the cherry! Cherry banners hung between the treetops, and even decorated windows and doors. Although the reason for this is a little less celebratory.

Flies are a real curse in the summer. We've tried every method of attack from the good, old-fashioned swatter, to those nasty sticky rolls of paper that hang from the ceiling and attach themselves to the hair of tall people and, my personal favourite, "sunflowers of death"--little stickies impregnated with fly-killer that you stick on the window. Houses and small stores often have curtains at the entrance. Plain ones, patterned ones, and in Céret, ones with a bunch of cherries on them. We actually came across the store where you can order these. They're made of chain-link in different colours and you can order any design you like, including family photos. Have a look at the web site www.torremer.fr and you realize this company does far more than help keep the flies out.

Polenta Made Pretty.

2011-05-31T20:30:00.000+02:00

Along with lentils, rice, noodles in various forms and potatoes, polenta is one of the staples that fills out the carbohydrate part of the plate. Often I make up a batch, keep it on hand, and grill or fry it as needed to warm up the inside and crisp the outside.
A couple of Sundays ago, we had lunch at Le Moulin in Rivel, and this was the starter that some of us went for. Wedge of blue cheese on greens, squiggle of balsamic, nothing too hard about that. But what I did like was the finger of polenta speckled with microscopic bits of black olive, and topped with cherry tomatoes. Think I might copy that one....

What a weekend of vide grenier-ing and exotic dancing!

2011-05-24T13:56:00.001+02:00

   We were desolés that the friends from Vancouver who stayed with us for the latter part of the week before last had to leave on the Saturday afternoon, thereby missing the flood of attic-emptying that would find its way on to local stalls on Sunday (more of that later).
   So, we were all chuffed to see that the Lavelanet vide grenier was scheduled for Saturday, starting at 6 a.m. We didn't make it that early but we were there around 9 a.m. Not a huge number of participants as the day was grey and chilly. But we did find finds.
   A stack of very old documents covered all over in brown spidery writing were only available as "le lot"--and that was 100 euros. Vintage postcards, on the other hand, were a reasonable 50 centimes. Don't you love this flapper from 1922? Fur stole, feather in her hat, flagrantly red lips, come-hither eyes: she's got the lot.

I also left with a tiny hand-embroidered pin-cushion...

....and a Princess Grace and Prince Rainier tea-cup. Having second thoughts about this one already...

********

A further wealth of possibilities faced us on Sunday, starting right under our noses in Léran. The sun shone, stalls were laden and, rooting through a box of postcards, I chose these--details below each one.

Feel free to contribute guesses as to what's going on here. All I can tell you is that the card is addressed to a Monsieur Joseph Joulin who lived in Narbonne, and the message simply reads: "Paris. 4/2/1914" and a question mark.

This one's more for family consumption, but it was never sent to anyone. A stamp on the back advertises Maison Labau, a clothing store for "hommes et garçonnets", Isn't "garçonnet" a sweet word? It's old French for "a little boy."

I bought this one because of the vintage car and its occupants.

Barcelona--in the old days. Apologies but I can't make out the date on the postmark.

Turin at night. This is almost my favourite one of the bunch because of its cinéma noir-ish feel.

I also nabbed an enormous piece of red checked fabric, fibres unknown to me to the stall lady (who also sold me these postcards). A picnic blanket?
Purchases went back to the house before we jumped in the car and drove to Manses, a little village just north of Mirepoix.

Books, DVDs and videocassettes, chinaware, glasses, a lamp, vases, pictures...

Lunch first. Hot dogs on baguette, cheese on baguette or ham on baguette. And frites.

Inside the village hall, you could buy wine, pastis, beer, soft drinks or coffee.

The buy of the day that had me jumping up and down was a copper watering can. I wasn't even going to bother to ask the price, reckoning it would be in the 40 to 50 euro range. Then, the man selling it told me I should buy it because it went with my outfit (only in France!), said the price was five euros (yes, yes) and threw in"un petit Jésus"(one of those tiny china models that hide in French Christmas cakes) for free.

On my second trawl of the market, I spotted a magnificent jug shaped like a bunch of grapes, two euros for this, another gift, and then a third one later of a pre-Euro-era Italian coin. I gave him a 100 baht coin from Thailand that had wiggled its way to the bottom of my handbag.
Later, the same day: our homeward route took us through Mirepoix anyway so we parked on a side street, and walked into the square to watch a promised exhibit of South American dancing. I'd envisaged live musicians, frilly frocks and tight trousers. Got none of those but the shoes definitely made up for it.

Learning to Look at the Landscape.

2011-05-22T10:41:00.028+02:00

Our friend Adriaan Luijk occasionally leads walks through the local countryside. These aren't the usual kind of walks where you stride along clocking up the kilometres. What Adriaan does is really make you look at and analyze your surroundings. (Wander off for a while and read about the fascinating courses he leads: http://regarding-landscapes.com)
A couple of Sunday mornings ago, three of us drove to the village of Le Sautel (where we go every September to see the sheep brought down from the mountain--see"transhumance" for applicable posts). There we met up with Adriaan and a friend of his. The day was beyond glorious, the sky like blue porcelain, the sun beating down, fields thick with pink, purple and blue wild flowers, the air almost sparkling.

   Our first stop was along a small track just beyond the village where we paused to look at a series of dry stone walls that run parallel down the hillside. Small shelters had been built at intervals. What were they used for? Sheep shelters? Were these open-ended pens for various flocks? Turns out, we learned from a local man, that they once housed lepers.
   Another small digression. Doing some research, I found that the nearby spa town of Ax-les-Thermes originated in the 13th century when the Count of Foix developed its hot springs to give relief to returning crusaders afflicted with leprosy. If you soak your feet in free pool in the town centre, know that it's called Le Bassin des Ladres (the basin of the lepers).
   We got out our sketchbooks--and let me tell you, drawing an object really makes you look at it.

From there, we drove close to the village of Lieurac where Adriaan and Andie, his wife, live. (Andie is a natural dyer who sells the most beautiful yarns for hand-knitting and embroidery. www.renaissancedyeing.com ) A picnic lunch under a tree, more sketching, this time of the view opposite...

... and then a climb up into Lieurac itself with its church at one end and what was once a fort at the other. Set on a south-facing slope, the village blazed with poppies, roses and other flowers, all out earlier this year because of the long hot spell we're still experiencing.
On the long hot trek back to Le Sautel, we stopped to look at wild orchids, and up at the sky where raptors circled. A man was ploughing so we think the birds were hanging around to snap up hapless field mice.
What we brought home, beside memories, were sketches and, in my case, seed. As we walked through Lieurac, Andie pointed out what looked like a twiggy necklace of sparsely strung white pearls, seeds of what I'd learned that day is the Purple Gromwell plant. I pocketed some and am waiting for them to sprout.

Greed Times Two.

2011-05-18T23:15:00.000+02:00

I usually hate coming up with titles for these posts but this one was a simple case of every-picture-tells-a-story.

Spotted outside a restaurant in Foix. I think, I think that "gourmand" was mis-translated as "greedy".
But, so help me, I still can't work out what a "muffe" is. Feel free to contribute ideas in your comments. Oh, and I should point out that "gizzards"--usually from a duck, and confited--are really tasty. (Finally, "day dessert" is probably "dessert du jour")

The tenuous link between this and the first shot is that both feature duck. These were magrets that we bought at Lavelanet market and put on the barbecue that evening. Rosy and succulent, they're better than the best steak. Rounding out the plate: new potatoes with parsley, and salad elements. Increasingly lazy, I arrange radishes, lettuce leaves, sliced green onion etc on a large platter and let everyone assemble their own.

Monday Market Musings in Mirepoix.

2011-05-16T23:09:00.000+02:00

Let's hear it for "apt alliteration's artful aid". Anyway, just a few mental notes jotted down earlier today as we shopped.

1) Tourist season is starting up again. Check the number of cars parked in the hotel parking lot on the way in, the number of people carrying cameras but not shopping baskets, and the number of people not reading La Dépêche outside the café.

2) The commune de Mirepoix will be one vast vegetable bed come summer to judge from the hundreds of seedlings being bought.

3) I would like a summer dress in the soft garnet, cream and sharp green colours of new garlic.
4) I wish I'd bought the flowery summer dress that I saw on the friperie (secondhand clothes) stall. It was the right size and cost two euros.
5) I must stop buying clothes at the friperie in Lavelanet as the lady there now not only knows me but knows my taste to the point that she shows me things she thinks I will like. She's usually right.
6) How come I got a chocolate almond in the saucer of my crème and Peter got a small biscuit?
7) How much I love La Presse in Mirepox for playing classical music so that you listen to Bach or Vivaldi while you leaf through the food magazines.
8) How happy it makes me that we park the car in Place Marcel Pagnol, a little square named after the man who created Jean de Florette. I wish I could say that the square was lined with cafés and shaded by plane trees but it's not. It's where we go to pay our various taxes.

9) How this same group stands in the same spot every week--and everyone cheerfully walks around them.

10) How you can buy live trout, artisanal beer and handmade leather sandals from this row of stalls

11) How I purposely detour around beside the cathedral so I can sniff the amazing smells that come from these colossal pans of poulet basquaise and paella. One morning, around 10 a.m., we were there with a friend who was visiting from Canada and the smell hit her so powerfully that she had to buy a serving of bouillabaisse right there and then, and eat it on the spot.

12) How clever it is for vendors to put all the vegetables that go into ratatouille all together.

Poppies, simply poppies.

2011-05-16T19:25:00.000+02:00

As well as baguettes and berets, one of the iconic images of France is the wild poppy. The coquelicot.

Most years, they're magnificent but this year is an all-singing, all-dancing spectacular. It could be the unceasing sunshine we've had, who knows. Great swathes of scarlet by the roadside, vivid red patches in an otherwise green field, they still take my breath away. We stopped to take a shot of these on the road from Mirepoix to Manses. I've had fantasies about seeding my garden with them but evidently coquelicots only grow really well in newly ploughed soil.

Look How the Edible Flowers are Doing:

2011-05-11T16:38:00.000+02:00

Three weeks separates these two shots. I can recognize nasturtiums and a coriander plant (which you can't see) but anything else will be a surprise. That weedy little plant at four o'clock is a seedling I tried to transplant. It's looking pretty sick at this point so maybe I'll leave everything in the planter and let them all fight it out.

A Choice of Delicious Desserts...

2011-05-11T16:21:00.003+02:00

One of the plusses of eating lunch at Saveurs des Couverts is that it's a patisserie. So when it comes time for dessert, guess what you get to do. Here's what we picked:

Presentation is Everything.

2011-05-10T19:40:00.001+02:00

The other day, we had to make routine trips to the bank, the insurance agent and the optician. Lots of fun... What kept us sane was the prospect of lunch outdoors in Mirepoix. Don't you love reading menus? We wandered around the square seeing what was on the various menus du jour. A starter of duck rillettes and then a plat of beef with prunes, would have left us lying flat for days. Lunch looked lighter (or at least the start of it did) at Saveurs de Couvert in the corner of the main square.

Can you make out the old houses in all the reflections?

Anyway, this was the starter. When I saw tomato and mozzarella salad listed on the menu, I thought "same old" but this was much more imaginative than the usual discs-of-tomato-fresh-cheese-and-a sprinkle-of-torn-basil. Someone out back in the kitchen had peeled the tomato, halved and seeded it, then scooped out the inside and mixed it with little cubes of fresh cheese and a garlic-y basil vinaigrette. Those artistic smears are finely chopped tomato mixed with finely chopped almonds. But here's the inventive thing...

The tomato skin had been dried till it was crisp and used as decoration. Isn't that an idea worth stealing?

An Impressionist look at the local landscape.

2011-05-05T15:19:00.000+02:00

Do you think Monet and Manet looked at the landscape with their lens on its "macro" setting? That's how I created this Impressionist painting effect.

-----------

Earlier this week, our local walking group--the Lérandonneurs--met up outside the café, and stood there wondering if it was going to rain seriously or if the drizzle would just fade away. In the end, it did both.

First, we headed off on the road up past the chateau, then we made our way into the forest, pausing briefly so that a huge truck, laden with wood, could pass by. Huge truck = huge tyres = huge ruts = huge amounts of clay-ey mud from the rain which, by now, was falling down with enough vigour to make me wish I'd worn Peter's ancient Barbour instead of a light fleece jacket. Trudge, trudge, slip, slide, walk up on the side of the bank and hang on to what you hope is a non-functioning electric fence.

But rain stops and, soon the sun came out as on we trudged past fields of forgotten sunflowers, across the little bridge that crosses the river Touyre, and below the walls of the Château de Queille.

Dried sunflowers always remind me of shower-heads.

You'll find much better shots of the Château de Queille on its web site: http://www.queille.net/

I don't think I've ever seen such a gorgeous abundance of wild flowers. Little wild orchids of various kinds, crisp white bachelors' buttons, yellow birdsfoot trefoil and buttercups, dark purple clover, blue speedwell, scarlet poppies, pretty pink wild roses and lots more that I don't know the names of. Anyone know what this little plant is called?

Anyone for a menage à trois with their coffee?

2011-05-02T19:03:00.000+02:00

Usually, when you order a coffee here (and ordering un café means an espresso) you can depend on a little treat arriving in your saucer. Sometimes it's a tiny biscuit, other times a chocolate-covered almond and often it's a simple square of plain, dark chocolate.

Normally, I don't look twice at the wrapper (I'm that keen to get at the contents) but this one deserved a second glance--especially when I noticed there are three sets of legs under the table.

The lamb makes its final appearance

2011-05-02T08:33:00.000+02:00

This is not, repeat, not haute cuisine that I'm going to tell you about. Rather it's memories of a noodle dish I used to go crazy about in Vancouver. Dense with little nuggets of stir-fried lamb, fragrant with cumin, it was comfort food to tuck into on a rainy day.
The sun has been shining most of the week but I was still curious to see if I could recreate the flavours. More to the point, I still had a hunk of cooked lamb sitting in the fridge. In case you've got the same, here's what you can do. Chop the lamb into little pieces and reheat it with its juices (I should have said earlier that having rich, flavourful cooking juices around makes all the difference). Add a teaspoon or more of toasted cumin seeds and red chili flakes to your taste. Then let the lamb burble away while you

cook some linguine (or spaghetti). Drain it, mix with the lamb and top with lots of chopped green onion and fresh coriander. Delish. As I said, not haute cuisine but a good way of using up leftovers.

Gigot d'agneau à la cuillère.

2011-04-26T12:50:00.003+02:00

"Leg of lamb served with a spoon" is what food writer Trish Deseine calls this succulent dish in her cookbook Nobody Does It Better...Why French home cooking is still the best in the world. One glance (and you could say the same about English-speaking cookbook writers who live some, or all, of the time in France) and you know that she hasn't Anglicized her recipes for non-French residents. For one thing, Deseine doesn't stint on alcohol. Gigot d'agneau à la cuillère calls for a litre of white and an optional glass of cognac.

Here's how it looks ready to go in the oven.

You start by boning a leg of lamb with a very sharp knife and a great deal of care. Watch YouTube videos of how to do this by all means but note that it's not quite as simple as it looks. Fortunately all scrags and tags will get hidden inside once you tie the lamb into a tidy-ish bundle. Next you stud the meat liberally with slivers of garlic before you brown it on all sides. In go the chopped onions, shallots, carrots celery, bay leaves, sprigs of rosemary and thyme, wine and cognac. The pot goes in the oven for seven hours and that, my friends, is it. Take a look at it halfway through if you like to check that the wine level hasn't dropped too far, and top up with water or chicken stock if need be.
You can indeed cut this deeply flavoured lamb apart with a spoon, buttery mashed potatoes sop up the jus, and leftovers of both, as we found out last night, make a stupendously good shepherd's pie.

One a penny, two a penny....

2011-04-26T12:27:00.000+02:00

   Hot cross buns. Hard to find in France so I decided to have a bash at making a batch. Besides, on a chilly, wet Saturday afternoon, I liked the idea of filling the house with warm, spicy, yeasty smells.
   As with any recipe these days, all you need to do is Google the name and take your pick. This time, they were all much of a muchness. I didn't have currants or chopped peel around but I reckoned raisins would do the job and I'd add a little more cinnamon and nutmeg to compensate for the lack of allspice.
   I ended up with one of Delia Smith's recipes because, while I'm not a huge fan of her sometimes nanny-ish approach, you want absolute persnickety precision in measurements and technique with things like hot cross buns.

Baking has never been my forte and it's years since I've opened a package of yeast, mixed it with "hand-hot" milk and watched it turn all foamy. From then on, I had huge fun, balancing the cassole full of dough near the radiator and watching it well up into a taut little dome, punching it down and shaping it into tidy buns. While the yeastie beasties were swelling up for the second time, I made a dough of flour and water, rolled it out, cut it thinly and--when the buns were ready to go in the oven--strapped them with little dough crosses.
Here's what we ended up with... one missing because, next to making hot cross buns on a grey afternoon, there's nothing better than eating one, warm, butter-spread and straight out of the oven.

Evil filled croissants...

2011-04-22T17:23:00.004+02:00

My excuse is that the boulangerie up near the rond-point had sold all its pains aux raisins by the time we'd finished our market shopping (but, my conscience mutters, they still had regular croissants, didn't they?). Anyway here's what we walked away with:

Proceeding anti-clockwise: One Nutella-filled croissant, flaky, chocolate-y; one almond one with flaked almonds on top and an almond paste filling; and a p'tit crème.

Tiles in the Garden.

2011-04-21T11:02:00.000+02:00

The thing about stone is that it keeps going and going. Crumbling walls can be taken apart and rebuilt into houses. Stones, as we know from experience, can be salvaged from the garden and used indoors. Even French roof tiles can have a second life (I meant to take photos but didn't of how friends have used them--very effectively--as wall lights in their bathroom).

Curved and narrower at one end than the other, the traditional tile is said to have been shaped over the tile-maker's thigh. All I can say is that they must have been well-built men of remarkably similar physique.

I found a half dozen--tiles not men--behind where the chicken house used to be (another example of recycling, it now houses a friend's half-dozen chickens). Inspired by the Spring issue of Marianne Maison Jardin, I've given the tiles another life.

You need three, which you simply embed in the soil, then fill with earth and plant....

For safety's sake, I strung wire around the top. I also lined the "pot" with a bin-bag (drainage holes punched in its base) before I planted it.

Here's the result. Those tiny shoots are fleurs en cuisine-- edible flowers. I'll keep you posted on their progress.

Oh well, at least I can read about them on-line...

2011-04-19T16:31:00.000+02:00

Reading Restaurant magazine's just-released list of the World's 50 Best Restaurants at www.theworlds50best.com /, I'm happy to see that three of the top ten are considerably less than a day's drive away.

   At Number Two: El Celler de Can Roca is under three hours down the road in Girona. Swiped from their web site, this shot is part of the visual history of the cuisine. Xai amb pa amb tomaquet translates as "lamb with tomato bread,"  a variation on a rustic Catalan dish of toasted bread, tomatoes, garlic, salt and olive oil. It's eaten at breakfast and as a snack but I've never ever seen it look this elegant. www.cellercanroca.com
   Number Three on the "best" list, Mugaritz http://www.mugaritz.com/ is near San Sebastien. Very modern Basque cuisine with lots of reviews on-line. Also near San Sebastien is Arzak which holds the Number Eight position. http://www.arzak.info
   Even less than a day after the news came out, I probably don't have a hope of making a reservation at any one of them any time in the next six months.

The Good Life at the Château de Cavanac

2011-04-18T15:54:00.021+02:00

Kate, our daughter, is staying with us so, for a treat, we booked us all into the Château de Cavanac, a few clicks south of Carcassonne. I'd heard good things about this place from my cousin in Ireland and local friends so, after a morning and lunch in the old walled cité, we drove there with high expectations, parked outside tall wrought-iron gates and crunched our way across the gravel into reception.
The chateau is just plain gorgeous. Each room is decorated differently, and assigned the name of a flower. Ours overlooked this courtyard filled with palms and oleanders. http://www.chateau-de-cavanac.fr/

Dinner here is the kind of sumptuous meal that makes you glad you don't have to drive home afterwards. A five course event, complete with wine, it costs 42 euros--or a bit under $60 (US, Canadian or Australian--they're all around the same at the moment).
The long beamed room was already almost full by the time we sat down. A wood oven blazed in the background behind a glass-fronted counter laden with meats and produce. Three opened bottles of wine stood on the table (the chateau has its own vineyard) and seconds later, peach kirs arrived and a basket of small peppery pastries typical of the region. I won't walk you through the entire menu (just click on http://www.chateau-de-cavanac.fr/menuvf.pdf ) and I'll only show you one photo--my first course, one of the four variations on foie gras you could start with.

Roasted in a wood oven, the lamb was probably the best I've ever tasted, crisp and smoky outside, and meltingly tender. Next came a platter of five different kinds of local goat cheese with a pot of honey to drizzle over them. By the time we reached dessert, all I could cope with was raspberries and cream. A little glass of verveine tea and so to bed.

A look at the vineyards the next morning before we headed home.

Wash Day

2011-04-18T15:32:00.020+02:00

   French washing machines are not remotely like North American washing machines. To begin with, they're considerably smaller. Ours holds about five kilos or, to put it another way, two sheets and two pillow cases which you load from the top into a metal drum. You access this by what we call "the jaws of death," a fiendish device that snaps together with the speed and ferocity of a crocodile. I won't bore you with details of the many, many programs we can choose from. Pick coton blanc and we can drive to Mirepoix, have a look round the market, and drive home in the time it takes to wash whites at a high temperature. Normally, we use the lowest, fastest setting.
   After we'd survived an entire winter without one, we realized that we could live without an expensive-to-run, ecologically suspect clothes dryer. Instead, we dry everything on a folding rack, either indoors for part of the year or out in the garden. (We also have a little folding device designed to hook over a radiator or a balcony railing.) Today, the rack was already holding two big table cloths and I had an urge to wash white linen.
   To wander off for a moment, along with "faded denim," one of my favourite fashion phrases is "gently rumpled linen." There's something about--you can't really even call them "creases"--the soft dimples and dents in a linen shirt that captures the essence of an old-fashioned summer. Fields full of scarlet poppies, riverside picnics, sun-dappled woodland glades....et cetera, et cetera.
   So three linen blouses of mine and one linen shirt of his went into the washing machine, came out half an hour later and were soon hanging on the pergola, sandwiched between a rose bush and the wisteria.

Voluptuous Signs of Spring at the Markets

2011-04-10T19:53:00.000+02:00

It really doesn't matter what the thermometer says, March is a dreary month for fruits and vegetables if your aim is to eat whatever's grown locally. Granted, we can get salad greens almost all the year round but, by now, I've had it with root vegetables, cabbages and apples--especially since the temperatures have been in the mid to high 20s recently--which explains why the first glimpse of these 2011 crops got my juices flowing.

Mirepox market....Gorgeous amethyst-tipped asparagus.
Just steam and eat hot with butter or cold with vinaigrette.

Lavelanet market...These opulently scarlet fraises come from near Perpignan, close to the Spanish border. As with asparagus, you don't need to mess about with them. All I do is slice the strawbs, sugar them (just a little) and put a pot of crème fraîche alongside.

The Sin of Greediness

2011-04-07T13:02:00.002+02:00

   That's what "péché de gourmandise" is French for--and the name of one of my favourite blogs. It's all about food and, as a fellow blogeuse, I have huge admiration for its author who, whenever I look has cooked something new and suitably sinful.
   Thanks to her for introducing me to two words I didn't know. I could see that herb butter, hazelnuts and parmesan played roles in Praires farcies au beurre d'herbes aux noisettes et au parmesan but praires? Hard shell clams, which I sometimes see at the local SuperU. You're warned not too cook them too long in the oven or they become, second new word of the day....caoutchouteuses...rubbery.
       Butter, white wine, I suppose you could call this a mildly sinful recipe unlike the one below for Tarte chocolat-citron au mascarpone which is deep, dark evil. I believe in never doing things by halves, especially sinning.  So, for the perfect accompaniment, follow the blog's suggestion and sip a glass of Muscat de Rivesaltes while you're at it.

Go on, click on it. You know you want to....

Update on the Chocolate Biscuit Cake

2011-04-01T19:06:00.000+02:00

All you need are tiny portions as it's stupefyingly rich. Cut into small bars while it's still chilled.

With it, we sipped small glasses of homemade vin de noix--delicious, like a cream sherry.

Prince William's Royal Wedding Chocolate Biscuit Cake

2011-03-30T21:13:00.002+02:00

   As well as cutting ye olde traditional fruit cake, Prince William and Kate Middleton will offer a chocolate biscuit cake to their guests at their wedding reception. I read about this on-line in the UK newspapers. Chocolate biscuit cake? Sounded intriguing so I did some research, read some recipes and decided that this was exactly what I wanted to make for tomorrow night.
   Backing up a bit, a number of us get together for a "stitch and bitch" session every Thursday. Knitters, textile artists, French, English, ranging in age from 80something down to 30something, we meet at someone's house for a couple of hours to work on our projects, swap ideas and chat. The evening usually winds up with a pot of tea and biscuits.
   Naming no names but somehow, a while back, wine got into the act. Last week someone brought along a bottle of Normandy cider. Someone else brought along a bottle of Vin de Noix from her family's stash, and said it went very well with chocolate cake. Hence the chocolate biscuit cake to be unveiled tomorrow night.

Love the simple ingredients...chocolate, butter, golden syrup...

Throw in some squashed biscuits, hazelnuts and raisins....

   I've lost the bookmark for the recipe but I did print it out so I can tell you what goes into it. Let me know if you want precise quantities.
   You start with quitealot of butter, quitealot of chocolate and two tablespoons of golden syrup. I had no problem finding the latter as it's a constant on the "British" shelf at the local SuperU, along with jars of Marmite and sauce to make instant chicken tikka masala.
   Anyway, what you do is mix the butter, chocolate and syrup together over low heat until you have a thick chocolate sauce. Then stir in lots of biscuits that you've put in a plastic bag and bashed with a rolling pin (making sure to leave some chunks). The recipe calls for "Rich Tea" biscuits but I couldn't find those so I used "Petit Beurre" which sounded far more decadent. Also add in chopped hazelnuts and raisins. Stir everything together and spoon into a square cake tin. Let cool and put in the fridge. Immediately rinse the pan with water so that you're not tempted to scrape up and eat what's left.
   I'll report back on what it tastes like....

The New Plan de Travail...

2011-03-30T18:40:00.003+02:00

   Plan de travail is one of the many terms I've had to learn living in France. It means "countertop" and, because we couldn't decide on the exact shade of tile we wanted in the kitchen, we installed temporary tiles (left over from the floor) all of 14 months ago!
   Then, on yet another trip to Géant Carrelage in Pamiers, we both saw a colour we liked--and voila! Rather than describe them as "sort of greeny-blue-y-grey" I've realized that they are the exact shade of a couple of herbs in the garden--and a stunning contrast when you sit an ordinary orange on them.
   And there are your "art director moments" for today.

Some santolina trimmings from a rambunctious plant at the front of the house.
Dried, this is said to repel moths. We'll see...

Cuttings from a curry plant. Will they develop roots?
I hope so.

Would you call this fusion food?

2011-03-30T18:39:00.000+02:00

   You haven't lived till you've tasted my lardons fried rice, a cross-cultural dish that's hardly likely to find its way into any foodie magazine. But good, fast and cheap? Exceptionellement.
   First you need lardons, those invaluable little bacon-bit-like things that I pick up as regularly as I buy eggs, milk and bread....I was going to write this out in a classic recipe format but there's so much wiggle room in the recipe that I'll just tell you the ingredients and technique, and let you take it from there.
   Begin by browning your lardons (or chopped rashers of bacon) in a frying pan, about 50 grams per person should be enough although more doesn't hurt. Then add cold leftover rice, about a cupful for two maybe, although, to reiterate, more is fine too.
   Break up the rice with a fork as you heat it up in the bacon fat so that the grains are approaching separateness. Then beat two eggs and add those, stirring and stirring so that the eggs get cooked but don't coagulate into large eggy lumps. Almost there.
   Chop a couple of green onions, add those and heat them through. Add one or two sloshes of soy sauce.
   Stir everything together, and season with ground black pepper. Now, the French component...dish up your fried rice into a couple of bowls and strew with finely chopped chives from your potager.

Le Printemps!!!

2011-03-30T18:33:00.003+02:00

Apologies for that long digression about our Asian travels. To be honest, we returned to France in mid-February but what with jet-lag, and getting back into the swim of things, I got disgracefully behind with this blog. Just a few to do--all French ones--and I'll be all caught up.
We came back to chilly weather and the welcome sight of little green spears poking through the earth. Here's what my frantic bulb-planting in December has led to...

I can't really say that I planted these primroses. They just come back year after year.

And thanks to Nature for the following....

Wild violets.

Celandines run rampant...

And so does Honesty which grows in the woodland area of the garden. Last year, when I picked the dried seedheads, I deliberately scattered the seeds hither and yon.

Laos: Night falls on the Mekong...

2011-03-30T17:31:00.001+02:00

In the couple of weeks we were in Luang Prabang, I'd say we spent at least five evenings sipping beer as we watched the sun set over the Mekong river and the longboats cross back and forth.
And soon after that, it was time to go home to France.

Laos: Luang Prabang: How to Dry Food.

2011-03-30T17:15:00.005+02:00

In this hot climate, drying is a common way of preserving food. We came upon these ladies making small tortilla-like cakes. First they made a firm dough, then broke pieces off and roll them between their hands into small balls. These were flattened, and sandwiched between sheets of plastic wrap. Finally, they were set out on bamboo racks to dry by the roadside. They look like speckled popadoms and I think they are made with some kind of yam.

River weed is another local specialty. You can buy it at the market in thin dark green sheets speckled with sesame seeds. It's served deep-fried, and often smeared with chili paste. One afternoon, I was exploring the banks of the Mekong and found this lady using a plastic bag to harvest weed from the river.

Elsewhere it was drying on a roof.

Here it is (top right) as part of a platter along with Luang Prabang sausage, dried pork with sesame, eggplant dip with a pleasant, slightly charred, flavour, lip-burning chili sauce with bits of water buffalo skin in it and, in that bamboo container, sticky rice.

Finally, rice cakes drying in the sun. I'm guessing they're eaten as snacks.

Laos: Learning to cook Laotian dishes.

2011-03-30T12:11:00.001+02:00

   It's like anywhere in the world: a border crossing between two countries doesn't mean a complete change in what people eat. For instance, the cuisine in the French city of Nice and the Italian town of Ventimiglia just along the coast have more in common than say Nice and anywhere in Normandy.
   Northern Thailand and Laos are no exception.
   I'd done a couple of one-day courses in Thai cuisine but knew very little about cooking in Laos. So, early on in our first week in Luang Prabang, I signed up for a half-day cooking course at the Villa Santi, a boutique hotel in one of the town's old colonial buildings. The course was held at its sister property, the Santi Resort and Spa, about 5 km out in the country.
   A little bus took me there. For the first half hour I was left to my own resources so I wandered around the grounds. It was the most beautiful day with just a faint haze over the mountains.

The resort has planted a small rice paddy in its grounds.

The best thing was...I was the only student. Just me and a young chef who didn't speak a word of English and a young hotel employee so incredibly savvy that you could almost guarantee she's going to end up running some splendiferous four-star hotel. The point was, she spoke perfect English. Not that you need language skills when you're learning to cook. Watching, tasting, that's usually enough, but it is handy to know the name of a specific ingredient if it translates into English.

Kaeng pak nam is watercress soup with minced pork. Light and tasty, it only took minutes to make.

Sticky rice with mango or sangaka mamueng as it's called locally.

Once I'd finished cooking, hotel staff set up my lunch table on the terrace with its view over the rice paddy. Fresh spring rolls, a green papaya salad, the soup, sweet and sour fish. chicken curry and the sticky rice with mango.

This half-day made me greedy for more. I'd noticed a few posters tacked up on lamp posts advertising the Tamnak Lao cooking school, an adjunct to the restaurant of the same name. I signed up, showed up and got stuck in.
We began with a walk around the Phousi Market (see earlier post)) then took a tuktuk back to the kitchen. Four students, two instructors. This time, they demonstrated the dish, then left us to make it ourselves from prepped ingredients using the recipe provided.

Ingredients at the ready...cooking is so much easier when someone else does all the chopping and measuring.

On your left, a Luang Prabang salad. I found the mayonnaise-type dressing too rich (it was made with hard-boiled egg yolks), and I'd probably leave out the optional minced pork. Otherwise, a keeper.

Finished dishes. Simple garnishes of lettuce leaves, tomato and cucumber...

How to make sticky rice...

Going through the recipe book I brought back, my notes on the sauce-stained pages show the dishes I'm likely to make back home in France.

"Excellent" is how I've described feu khua: fried sticky rice noodles with chicken and vegetables. (What I really like about these recipes is that the author included lots of suggested substitutes if you can't get your hands on the exact ingredients).

Hmm, another "excellent"--this time for chicken larp, a spicy cold salad made with chopped chicken. By the way, this wasn't pre-chopped. Instead, each of us was given some raw chicken breast, a chopping board and a cleaver.

"Very good. Needs mushrooms for texture," is what I wrote about kheua sen lon--noodles with pork, vegetables and woodear fungus. The sensible substitute suggested for the fungus is green beans--far easier to get my hands on those at the local market until I make a trip to the Asian supermarket in Toulouse.

"OK but not my favourite" was a pork casserole. Let's move on...

That's more like it. "Excellent and easy" applies to khua maak kheua gap moo or fried eggplant with pork but geng phet (chilli casserole) only scored a "very good."

One of the cornerstones of Lao cooking is jeowbong, a thick chili paste. Making that and sticky rice wound up an intensive day.

Laos: Markets in Luang Prabang: the Night Market

2011-03-30T11:15:00.000+02:00

At night, this town becomes pure magic. Around dusk, motorbikes and trucks roar along the main street bearing folk who set up red tents and fill them with gleaming scarves, shawls, jewellery, and crafts of all kinds.

You can just make out the market at the end of the street. Note....no streetlights.

Embroidery typical of Laos and northern Thailand.

Pressed flowers are sandwiched between two sheets of handmade paper to create these enchanting lanterns. They fold flat so you can pack them in your luggage.

Just look at those colours--and this was one of many stalls selling silk scarves and shawls.

There's also a narrow laneway entirely filled with food stalls and, partly because of the food, and largely because of the atmosphere, that's where we ate a number of suppers.

Making salad from scratch.

Backpackers heap their plates high at the noodle and vegetable buffet.

My absolutely most favourite thing at the nightly food market were these marinated hunks of pork, sweet, spicy and sticky, grilled over charcoal --and consumed with a plate of steamed vegetables and the inevitable beer.

Laos: Markets in Luang Prabang--the one outside our guesthouse door.

2011-03-29T18:40:00.001+02:00

It's a long story...how we landed in Luang Prabang, took a taxi for the estimated 25-minute ride to the guesthouse, and how two fraught hours later, I arrived there on foot, having left Peter with the luggage and the taxi. By now it was well after dark so we had no idea that our little laneway was home to a daily food market. The first morning, I went outside and tah-dah!

Everything fresh as fresh could be. Someone who lives here told me that the farmers arrive in the wee hours, sleep in their trucks and have set up their "stalls" by 5 a.m.