a taste of savoie

Katie Bear's rustic loaf

2011-02-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

Most days during the week, my alarm goes off at 7 a.m. and I lurch into three layers of clothing (in this freezing weather at any rate) and go for a run. But today my running partner cancelled, so there I was, basking under the duvet at 8 a.m., reminiscing about running along the white-hot sand in Western Australia - young and tanned and lissom of limb - when into this reverie burst BB with: "Get up. There's a sale on. We're going shopping for cupboard doors."

Cupboard. Doors. Can you imagine anything less tempting, anything less likely to lure you away from the kaleidoscope of memories of your 22-year old self under a relentless antipodean blue sky; terraced pub lawns overlooking the Indian Ocean; sun cream and salt; the pounding of the surf; jazz notes; the clinking of cold beer glasses?

So I rolled over and continued daydreaming and playing with my cat's ears, making them point sideyways like a gremlin, until BB reappeared and said: "If you don't get up now, I'll go on my own - and buy formica doors."

Eek! The "f" word. That got me up sharpish.

***

Bread. For years I've been making it in a machine, with dramatically bad results, until Katie Bear (aka Bread Queen) despairingly said I should try making it by hand. Well, what a success. It's a completely different beast to that flat brick that emerges from the bread machine, looking like an offensive weapon and requiring one to cut it with. Ebay for the machine.

Katie Bear's rustic loaf

Ingredients

650 g bread flour (I use a mix of plain and cereal)

2 generous tsp salt

1 x 8 g sachet dried yeast

1 tsp sugar

water

1. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in a cup of warm water. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Pour the dissolved yeast mixture into the centre and using a knife, bring in the dry ingredients until the yeast mixture is all soaked up. Then add warm water a little at a time and keep mixing until all the flour has been incorporated and you have a moist dough.

2. Knead the dough for 5 minutes, folding and pushing, then place the dough in a clean bowl with a little flour sprinkled in the bottom, cover with greased clingfilm and leave in a warm place to prove.

3. When the dough has doubled in size, knock it back by punching it to knock all the air out for about a minute then shape the dough to whatever you like, sprinkle the top with a little flour and re-cover with clingfilm. Leave in a warm place to double in size again. Preheat the oven to 425°F/225°C.

4. When the dough has doubled in size again, gently place it in the oven and leave for about 25 - 30 minutes until cooked (if it sounds hollow when you tap the bottom it's cooked). Leave to cool on a wire rack.

♫ Cook along to: Bread Guitar Man

pickled walnuts

2010-11-23T12:55:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed how the French have a tendency to make exaggerated Stan Laurel expressions of disgust at the mention of British food? They must imagine we eat unspeakably vile things, for they aren't able to articulate what they are when challenged.

Which is a bit rich considering they eat tête de veau and rognons blancs and where all manner of things that could have been pulled from a vet's bucket are on display in supermarkets and boucheries.

Back by popular demand

But I have to admit, even I was reluctant to try these pickled walnuts, a traditional English accompaniment to strong cheese and cold meat, especially after seeing them at the drying-out stage, when they resembled cremated golf balls. But once they're placed in spice-infused vinegar and left to mature for a bit, they wheeze back into life.

These are last year's vintage, so the harsh vinegary taste has been replaced with a top note of oriental spices. Even my French amis enjoyed them - begrudgingly.

Ingredients

2 kg young green walnuts (you should be able to slice through them easily with a knife)

brine to cover (150 g of salt per litre of water)

1 litre malt vinegar

400 g brown sugar

1 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp cloves

2 whole cinnamon sticks

1 tsp coriander seeds

1. Prick the green walnuts a few times with a fork. (Be careful: the juice stains any porous surface dark brown and you may want to wear rubber gloves.) Place the walnuts in a bucket and fill with enough water to cover. Stir in the salt. Soak for 1 week, then drain and make the brine again. Soak for 1 more week.

2. After the second week, drain the walnuts and lay them out on trays to dry in an airy place. In 3-5 days they will turn black. Once they have all turned black, they are ready to pickle.

3. In a large pot, stir together the malt vinegar, brown sugar, allspice, cloves and cinnamon. Bring to the boil and then add the walnuts. Simmer over medium heat for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

4. Spoon the walnuts into sterile jars and fill with the syrup to within 1 cm of the top. Seal with lids and rings. Store in the refrigerator or sterilise in a hot water bath for 10 minutes before cooling to room temperature and storing in a cool dark cupboard.

chou-rave gratin

2010-11-08T11:28:00.000-08:00

This is not Ann Widdecombe. I lied. It's a chou-rave (kohlrabi or cabbage turnip in English) and I'd never seen one until Nainbo gave me some from his garden last week. The bulbous part looks like a small white cabbage, but it peels like a turnip and has the same texture and firmness; and it tastes like cabbage and turnip but slightly sweeter and milder than both. The leaves can also be eaten -raw in salad or cooked in the same way as spinach.

You're supposed to pick them when they're golf ball-sized or they can be woody, but here in the mountains they like to wait until their vegetables are growing bark, so this one was a little past its prime.

But like the plucky Ann, I set about making a meal of it - and made a potato and chou-rave gratin.

You want equal quantities of chou-rave and potato. Peel and thinly slice the veg and cook in boiling salted water for 10 minutes. Drain and place the veg in a shallow ovenproof dish and cover with single cream, a couple of handfuls of grated cheese and top with seasoned breadcrumbs. Place in the oven on a medium heat for about 25 minutes, until the breadcrumbs are crispy and the veg is cooked.

♫ Cook along to: The Troggs Wild Thing

Ann Widdecombe and Anton Chou-Rave Gratin

2010-11-07T11:15:00.000-08:00

Is it a vegetable - or Ann Widdecombe doing the paso doble? That's what I wondered when I saw this:

Funny looking thing, isn't it?

For those of you not in the know, Ann Widdecombe is a former British cabinet minister (shadow home secretary) who's currently appearing on Strictly Come Dancing - the UK version of Dancing with the Stars. And what a star she is!

I'm sure it's Ann in that photo. The fabulous fiery silk confection she wore may have been toned down using Photoshop, but there's no mistaking that thin desperate arm (on the right) hanging on to Anton Du Beke as he drags her round the dance floor like the Statue of Liberty.

It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen on telly.

To be continued ...

fennel remoulade

2010-11-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

My copy of Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook finally arrived today. I've been on postie alert for days now because the book doesn't have a hard cover and I feared the post lady might try to wrestle it into the mailbox in the manner of my monthly magazine and other bulky items, rather than exerting herself by getting out of the post van and taking a couple of steps to our front door.

As it turned out, it arrived by courier (DHL), but they seem to have the same attitude to customer service. At least the postie comes to within a few feet of the door; when the DHL guy phoned up, he said our little village was too far out of his way (read: wanted to slope off work early) and that he'd leave my package in the newsagents 12 km away.

The joys of living in the mountains!

This is where I should segue into a recipe from the book (which is full of anecdotes accompanying great recipes from around the world - she said, shamelessly promoting it), but I'm not going to because this week I've been in a remoulade groove.

Remoulade is a mayonnaise-based sauce flavoured with mustard and lemon juice generally, but it can also include capers, anchovies, herbs etc. Here in France it's commonly used in céleri rémoulade - grated celeriac in a mustard-flavored remoulade - which we had at the beginning of the week, but today I made it with two fennel bulbs I found lurking in the bottom of the fridge. It's a great way to eat raw veg - as a starter or with fish.

Fennel remoulade

Ingredients

Serves 2

2 fennel bulbs

mayonnaise

lemon juice

grain mustard

salt

1. Remove the outer leaves of the fennel and thinly slice the remaining leaves.

2. Combine the lemon juice with the mayonnaise, mustard and salt and adjust to your taste (I used 1 dsp mayo, the juice of half a lemon and a tsp of mustard).

3. Add the sauce to the sliced fennel a little at a time and toss until the fennel is lightly coated.

♫ Cook along to: Ben Folds Gracie

wild mushroom, hazelnut and parmesan tarts

2010-10-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

I'm having a freezer clear-out at the moment and what do you imagine I should find in the bottom drawer? Yep - those PC dinners I made for BB before I left for Paris. One even has a note on it saying: I bet this is still here when I get back - next to the one that says: Don't forget to feed Flippo.

They all happen to be fish pie, so I'm not sure whether it was due to BB's aversion to bending down or the fact that he'd gone off fish pie for some reason. Guilty associations with Flippo (deceased), perhaps!

I thought it best not to ask.

Anyway - the day before yesterday I took out a piece of venison (shot by Roquin last month) and a bag of chanterelles (picked by me in July) and left the meat to marinade overnight in a little white wine with some chopped carrot, onion and a couple of bay leaves. Normally at this point I would reach for Anthony Bourdain or Elizabeth David for ideas on what to do next - which would invariably involve straining and browning and caramelizing - but this time I simply heated the whole lot up on the stove, added a little of my precious veal stock, a heaped tsp of tomato paste, some seasoning and placed in the oven on a very low heat for 3 hours.

Meanwhile, I made the pastry for the wild mushroom tarts and sautéed the chanterelles in butter, before adding some chopped hazelnuts and a generous handful of grated parmesan. Then baked in the oven for 15 minutes - voilà.

Well, at lunch yesterday, we ate in a pocket of silence, save for the odd small animal noise of contentment. It was the best meal I've cooked this year - and the most simple.

And now I'm having to justify three side-cars' worth of cookery lessons!

♫ Cook along to: Brian Wilson Heroes And Villains

the American dream and sweet & sour pork

2010-10-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

Many of my childhood summer holidays were spent on the west coast of Scotland, in a place called Kilchoan in Ardnamurchan - the most westerly point of mainland Great Britain - where every day for a week, the six of us would squish into our little yellow Mini and bump six miles down a single track road until we hit the deserted beach at Sanna.

Here, we kids would leap into the dunes and race towards the sea while Mum settled in the soft white sand with Woman's Weekly and Dad rolled up his shirt sleeves and went to work under the bonnet of the car.

I'm thinking about the summer of 1976 in particular, when Candi Staton was singing about young hearts running free and the Bee Gees were telling us we should be dancing (yeah!) - when we had a heatwave in Scotland.

Imagine! Heatwave and Scotland co-existing in the same sentence!

When we weren't racing around under those high blue skies, panting in the heat, we were swimming in the sea or poking around in rock pools, collecting shells and dead sea urchins and writing messages in the sand - or just marvelling at our nut brown toes, thanks to Mum's liberal application of Ambre Solaire SPF1. The only time Dad ever ventured onto the beach, in his socks and shoes, was to help with the construction of our dam, which had to slope at a 30 degree angel and have a stone-lined slipway for controlled overspill. On one of these rare forays onto the sand, Dad pointed out over the turquoise sea and said: America is straight over there.

I dropped my bucket and spade and followed his gaze, open-mouthed, hoping to catch a glimpse of America, an alien land I'd learned all about from watching Starsky and Hutch, where they spoke with funny accents and called "chips" "fries" and the women had hair like an Alpine ski chalet.

That night when I flopped into bed and pulled the thin cotton sheet over my sunburnt body (thanks to Mum's liberal application of Ambre Solaire SPF1), I dreamed of going to America - and did so for many years to come.

Years later I did go to America - many times - and on the last occasion I had the best pork dumplings I've ever tasted, at Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown, New York. This restaurant is famous for them and as soon as you're seated, the waiter asks: do you want regular dumplings or crab? We ordered regular (pork) and a bamboo steamer arrived nestling eight plump pagoda-shaped buns containing little pork meatballs surrounded by a scalding meaty broth. They were utterly delicious.

I've never made pork dumplings, but the other day I made the next best thing: sweet and sour pork balls. This is based on a Ken Hom recipe.

Ingredients
Serves 4
450 g /1 lb fatty minced pork
1 egg white
4 tbsp water
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp rice wine
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 carrots, thinly sliced on the diagonal
½ green pepper, cut into squares
½ red pepper, cut into squares
4 spring onions, sliced on the diagonal
cornflour for dusting
groundnut oil for frying

For the sauce
150 ml / 5 fl oz home-made chicken stock
1 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
½ tsp salt
½ white pepper
1½ tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tsp cornflour, blended with 1 tbsp water
fresh coriander leaves to garnish

1. Mix the pork with the egg white and water using your hands then add the soy sauces, rice wine, sugar and salt and pepper. Shape into balls and dust with cornflour.

2. In a pan of boiling water, blanch the carrots and pepper until nearly tender (about 3 minutes). Drain and set aside.

3. Heat the oil in a wok and fry the pork balls until crisp and golden (3-4 minutes). Remove and drain on kitchen paper.

4. Combine all the sauce ingredients except the cornflour mixture in a large pan and bring to the boil. Add the carrots, pepper and spring onions, then stir in the cornflour mixture and simmer gently for 2 minutes. Add the pork balls and warm through and serve with chopped corander leaves.

♫ Cook along to: Rogue Wave California

Azorean dreams and corned beef hash

2010-10-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

It's normally around this time that I make my annual pilgrimage to Flores in the Azores to see my old friends Carol (aka Mung) and Neil.

But what with one thing (three months in Paris) and another (a trip to Scotland last month), I didn't think it fair to leave BB slaving away at the coalface while I disappeared off again on a jolly.

I'm sad not to be going this year. There's something about the peaceful rhythms of this tiny island, its savage beauty, the luminous sea, that makes me resolve to do - and be - something different.

Last year I started writing a book while I was there; the year before that I vowed to swim naked in the sea every morning and weave baskets (not simultaneously, you understand - that would be unsightly); the year before that I was going to make jewellery and other tat from brown leathery things washed up on the beach; and the year before that I worked on developing particle accelerators.

Ok - just kidding about the brown leathery things, but you get my drift.

Flores, Azores

But living in a little pocket of paradise bang in the middle of the Atlantic has its drawbacks; for one thing, you can't buy a tin of corned beef. The Mung and I have a great affinity for corned beef. In fact, it was over a corned beef and Branston Pickle filled roll that we first bonded, in a little caf opposite Edinburgh Sheriff Court not long after we met.

And we both agree that the tastiest thing to do with corned beef is corned beef hash with a fried egg on top.

Ingredients

Serves 2

tin of corned beef (the best quality you can find)

10 oz / 275 g waxy potatoes

1 large onion

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tbsp grain mustard

2 eggs

2 - 3 tbsp oil for frying

salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Cut the corned beef into chunks and mix in a bowl with the Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and grain mustard and set aside. In the meantime, peel and cut the potatoes into chunks and steam until nearly tender. Finely slice the onion.

2. Fry the onion in the oil until soft and browned at the edges. Add the potatoes and corned beef, some salt and pepper and heat through. Fry the eggs in a separate pan and serve on top of the hash.

veal stock

2010-09-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to keep harping on about Gordon Blue, as BB calls it, but the longer I'm back from Paris the more I realise how much I learnt there. I am no longer intimidated by pastry, I can deftly fillet any fish you care to slap me in the belly with, bone fowl, turn vegetables and make pretentious swirls of ketchup round a crisp sandwich.

One thing I had yet to tackle was veal stock.

In the past I'd been put off by words like "simmer for 12 hours", assuming that if it took that long to cook then it must be time-consuming for the cook. But at Gordon Blue we were taught how to make a decent brown veal stock in under four hours - so it seemed rude not to try.

I ordered 3 kilos of veal bones from my butcher, wildly guessing that they would cost me no more than €10, but when I went to collect them four days later, he said: That will be one hundred euros please Madame.

One. Hundred. Euros.

There was a split second (after I regained consciousness) where one half of my brain said: What the ....? while the other half was reaching for my wallet - the half that appreciates the value of veal stock, no matter what the price. But then he gave me a wink, pushed his pencil stub behind his ear with the two remaining stubby fingers on his right hand and said: Just kidding. For you, gratuit.

Well, I left that butcher's with a melon-slice smile splitting my face, feeling - absurdly - doubly lucky (if you can work that one out). If there's one price we like in these parts it's gratuit, and factoring in veg from my garden, it was looking like a very good price indeed for some delicious velvety home-made veal stock.

Back at home, I tipped all the bones into two lightly oiled baking trays, mixed through some tomato paste and left them to roast in the oven until browned. While the bones were roasting I peeled and roughly chopped 2 carrots, 2 onions and a celery stalk and roasted these in another oiled baking tray until evenly browned and caramelized. Then I threw everything into my biggest stock pot, covered with 5 litres of cold water, added some sprigs of thyme, a couple of bay leaves and a few whole black peppercorns and left to simmer for three and a half hours, skimming from time to time.

So far, so on course for my 4-hour cheap veal stock.

But I hadn't reckoned on that most extreme of kitchen sports - straining.

The recipe instructed me to do this as many times as I could stand (up?) and I was disappointed, given my diligent skimming, to see thick legs of grease running down the sides of the empty pot after my first straining manoeuvre. I washed the pot (using industrial quantities of washing-up liquid to dissolve the fat) and repeated the process eight times, cursing the still lardy pot - which by this time was nearly running out the door - and the diminishing returns of my precious liquid. At this point I gave up and decided just to bag the damn stuff and be damned, divided what was left (precious little!) into poly bags and went to put them in the freezer...

... when, whoosh, the bottom of one of the bags split open and the contents splattered all over the floor and down the kitchen units.

So, to summarize. The cost (in terms of money and time) of 4 eggcupfuls of home-made veal stock:

Cost (euros)
€0.00 - veal bones
€0.00 - veg
€0.20 - tomato paste
€2.30 - washing-up liquid
€0.50 - 1 roll kitchen paper (mopping-up purposes)
€150.00 - emergency plumber (to unblock the sink because BB was away in Italy sourcing floor tiles)

Total: €153.00

Cost (time)
30 mins - roasting bones and veg
3 hrs 30 - cooking time and skimming
2 hrs - straining and washing up
30 mins - washing kitchen floor
2 hrs - attempting to unblock kitchen sink
4 hrs - waiting for emergency plumber

Total: 12 hrs 30

Veal stock. Don't try this at home!

yippee

2010-09-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

All my badgering of friends, family and you, my readers, paid off because my vegetarian Scotch egg recipe has been voted a winner in the Foodista cookbook competition and will feature in the Foodista Best of Blogs Cookbook.

You can read reviews and/or pre-order a copy from Amazon here. It's out on 19 October 2010.

A huge thanks to everyone who voted.

Coming soon: How not to make veal stock.

spicy pomelo salad

2010-08-26T05:42:00.000-07:00

I started writing this post on 14th July, when we were going through a mini heatwave, when the average daily temperature was 36 degrees. And it's now past 15th August, the end of summer according to the Savoyards, because the temperature always noticeably drops after this date. Already I'm reminiscing about red fruit stains on picnic linen and sausages sizzling on the BBQ and swimming capers in the lake - and my favourite Ray-Ban sunglasses, now lying on the lake bottom, seeing and seeing while the fish slip past.

We ate a lot of this spicy pomelo salad when it was hot. The pomelo is similar to a grapefruit but bigger, with a thicker skin and a milder sweeter taste. If you can't find pomelos, use pink grapefruit instead. A lovely refreshing summer salad.

Ingredients

1 large pomelo

2 tbsp vegetable oil

2 shallots, finely sliced

2 garlic cloves, finely sliced

1 or 2 small red chillies, seeded and chopped

3 spring onions, finely sliced

3 tbsp chopped peanuts

2 tbsp lime juice

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 tsp sugar

fresh coriander leaves to garnish

1. Peel the pomelo and separate into segments, removing the membrane. Break each segment into 3 or 4 pieces.

2. Heat the oil in a wok and fry the shallots and garlic until golden brown and crispy and drain on kitchen paper.

3. Mix the lime juice, fish sauce and sugar and pour over all the other ingredients which have been gently mixed together. Garnish with fresh coriander leaves.

curry magic

2010-07-24T06:36:00.000-07:00

From sublime Joël Robuchon recipes to the ridiculous: curry that looks like fish food in a poly bag.

But I have to share this with you because it's the best curry, outside India, that I've ever tasted - and I'm a bit of a curry aficionado. I would estimate that 80% of non home-cooked meals (restaurants and take-aways) I had when I lived in Scotland were curries. An ex-boyfriend (and fellow aficionado) and I would scour Edinburgh for the wettest curry - because a curry has to be wet, you see.

Sadly, every curry I've had since I've been in France (including Paris, disappointingly) has been revolting: dry cloying sauces tasting predominantly of curry paste from a jar, kicking to death any other flavour threatening to make itself known. There's been nothing fresh or fragrant about any of them. The worst was in Méribel, where the chicken pieces had been coated in a torrid desiccated paste then heated in the oven.

So imagine my joy when this little bag arrived (from my Aunt Hils) and it turned out to be so good.

At first glance the contents look like wood shavings and bark and other detritus swept up off the forest floor, but when you add water and cook for five minutes, some strange kind of alchemy takes place and you're left with the most amazing wet curry sauce, to which you simply add your meat/fish of choice. It's made by a company called Curry Magic - and they deliver to France.

I'm going to decorate the kitchen with flock wallpaper and pictures of the Taj Mahal that light up and play sitar music - so it will just be like sitting in my favourite Indian restaurant in Scotland.

Aubergine fondant with tomato confit and avocado coulis - the recipe

2010-07-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

Serves 4

Tomato confit

4 ripe tomatoes (ideally plum tomatoes)

sugar

salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 sprigs of thyme

1 clove of garlic, peeled

olive oil

Preheat the oven to 80° C/160° F. Place the tomatoes in a pan of boiling water for 60 seconds. Remove and refresh in cold water for a few seconds then remove the skins. (LCB Top Tip: if you remove the cores first using a small sharp knife and make an "X" incision in the opposite end with a knife, they are much easier to peel).

Quarter the tomatoes and remove the seeds. Place the quarters on a baking tray and sprinkle each one with a pinch each of salt, pepper and sugar, some thyme leaves and some chopped garlic. Drizzle with olive oil and cook in the oven for 2 hours. When cooled, place in the fridge until required.

Aubergine fondant

6 medium aubergines

6 cloves of garlic

45 g black Niçoise olives, roughly chopped

olive oil

a pinch of curry powder

juice of 1 lemon

salt and freshly ground black pepper

10 mint leaves, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 180° C/350° F. Cut the ends off the aubergines and prick all over with a fork. Make a couple of incisions in each aubergine with a small sharp knife and insert ½ a garlic clove in each. (LCB Top Tip: unless you are lucky enough to have new summer garlic, it's recommended you remove the germ in the centre of the garlic clove. When garlic is young, the germ is pale small and tender. As the garlic ages, the germ turns green, grows larger, and develops an unpleasant bitter taste.)

Place the aubergines in the oven for 40-50 minutes until the skins are charred and the insides feel soft. Cut the aubergines in half and scoop out the flesh using a spoon. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and fry the aubergine flesh for a couple of minutes to dry out a bit. Transfer to a blender, add the curry powder, salt and pepper, lemon juice, chopped olives and mint and blend to a purée. Place in the fridge until required.

Avocado coulis

1 ripe avocado

1 egg yolk

juice of ½ a lemon

a pinch of curry powder

a pinch of sugar

salt and white pepper

15 g crème fraîche

1 tbsp olive oil

Mash the avocado flesh with a fork, mix in the other ingredients then pass through a sieve. Place in the fridge until required.

To serve

Divide the tomatoes between 4 glasses then add a layer of aubergine fondant and top with a layer of avocado coulis. Leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before serving then sprinkle with curry powder and chopped chives or sprigs of mint. Eat with a spoon.

aubergine fondant with tomato confit and avocado coulis

2010-07-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

I used to wonder why celebrity chefs with award-winning restaurants would write cookery books disclosing all their secrets. The answer is, of course, that they don't. The recipes in these books are vague approximations of their Michelin starred creations and turn out looking nothing like the accompanying photos. Some ingredient or technique has been omitted (unlike Delia's "take a brown, free-range egg weighing 25.5 g in your left hand ..." approach. I came across one of her vinaigrette recipes the other day and she actually tells you to put the lid on the screw-top jar before shaking! - lest you should forget).

Joël Robuchon is one such chef, but his ideas (using paper-thin slices of turnip instead of pasta in the ravioli of langoustine), not to mention his presentation (a vegetarian Scotch egg pierced with a miniature pipette of chorizo oil), are inspired, but I have to do a lot of experimenting to arrive at a good result.

The method for aubergine fondant with tomato confit and avocado coulis failed to tell me when to sieve or liquidize or use white pepper instead of black (you don't want black specks spoiling the aesthetic of your silky smooth avocado coulis), but I got there in the end.

This is a stonker - yet so simple. It's the marriage of different textures, flavours and colours that's genius. I promise I'll post the recipe tomorrow.

fine food

2010-07-07T13:51:00.000-07:00

I've been getting a lot of stick about the crisp sandwich and the burgers. After all my banging on about "Cordon Bleu this" and "Cordon Bleu that", you expected more from me.

So I give you ...

langoustes en fines ravioles.

I bet they don't serve these down your local chippy.

This is based on a Joël Robuchon recipe from his book Robuchon Facile - and it really is easy, yet could conceivably feature on the menu of one of his Michelin starred restaurants.

The ravioli are made with layers of paper-thin slices of blanched turnip, their strong peppery flavour perfectly balancing the sweetness of the langoustines and the red pepper sauce. One to impress your dinner party guests with.

To make the ravioli sandwiches

Slice a small turnip very finely using a mandolin and cut into circles (about 7 cm) using a pastry cutter. Blanche the turnip slices in boiling salted water for 15 seconds, refresh in cold water and pat dry with kitchen roll. On top of 2 turnip discs, place 2 or 3 cooked langoustines, some very finely sliced fresh ginger and a flat parsley leaf and top with another disc of turnip. Stack a ravioli sandwich on top of another and serve with red pepper sauce.

Red pepper sauce

50 g onions

100 g red pepper

15 g fresh ginger

½ garlic clove, crushed with the flat side of a knife

45 g butter
pinch of paprika

100 cl fish stock

11 cl crème fraîche

salt and pepper

1. Peel and finely chop the onions. Peel the red pepper, remove the seeds and cut into big chunks. Peel and finely slice the ginger.

2. Melt 30 g of butter in a pan and add the garlic and onions and sweat for a couple of minutes. Add the paprika, salt and pepper, ginger, red pepper and fish stock and cook on a low heat for 20 minutes.

3. Add the crème fraîche and set aside for 5 minutes then add 15 g of chilled butter and sieve.

earthquakes, pillow talk and the great American burger

2010-06-30T11:54:00.000-07:00

We had an earthquake here today. I was working on my laptop after lunch when the whole house started shaking and making shifting sounds, as if someone was moving furniture around. I thought I'd imagined it but when I checked on the Centre Sismologique Euro-Méditerranéen website, it was mentioned as having a magnitude of 4.2. Not exactly a force majeure, I grant you, but disconcerting none the less.

In Savoie, new builds and renovations have to be constructed to zone 2 seismic standards, or "elastically", to quote BB tonight, and regretting it instantly, I asked him what that meant:

"Do you understand the difference between elastic deformation and plastic deformation (here we go). Take an elastic band and a plastic ring pack on a pack of beer (I'm not listening. Look! I've got my hands over my ears and I'm humming loudly. La la la la). If you pull the elastic band, bla bla bla ..."

After the miserable wet start to the summer, we're into our fourth consecutive week of glorious BBQ weather and my recipe de l'été is this, from Jamie Oliver: great American burgers. The pre-cooked translucent red onions keep them moist and the addition of breadcrumbs and parmesan stops them from shrivelling up to half their size the way most home-made burgers do. An absolute must for the barbie season.

Ingredients
olive oil
2 medium red onions, peeled and finely chopped
breadcrumbs from 4 slices of bread, crusts removed
500g (1lb 2oz) good-quality lean minced beef
1tsp sea salt
1 heaped tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 large egg, preferably free-range or organic, beaten
handful of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1. Fry the onions in some olive oil until softened (about 10 minutes) and leave to cool.

2. Put the cooled onions into a large bowl with the rest of the burger ingredients. Use clean hands to mix everything together really well, then divide into 6 equal balls for burgers and 18 equal balls for smaller sliders. Roll into burger-shaped patties about 2cm thick.

3. Cook on a BBQ or in a griddle pan - about 3-4 minutes each side.

quick message part 2

2010-06-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

That was a pretty feeble re-entry into the blogosphere, I know. About as impressive as a dull thud. But I just needed to get the ball rolling again. And talking of balls: I've been glued to Wimbledon, but I have a small window of opportunity before Federer v Bozoljac, so here goes.

I got back from Paris after three months away and BB looked as if he'd been dining on dry crusts, he was so thin. I had omitted to leave instructions on what to do when the frozen dinners run out! So what tasty Cordon Bleu repast do you suppose I whipped up for him? Sea scallop carpaccio with cauliflower cream and Imperial caviar? Herb-encrusted breast of plover with a red wine and elderberry reduction? Blue lobster stew with sage, caramelized onions and young leeks?

Nope. A crisp sandwich.

What you do is: take yesterday's bread, spread it with some unsalted butter and sprinkle on a packet of salt and vinegar crisps which you've bashed up with a rolling pin. Oh, the irony!

quick message

2010-06-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

So sorry about the hiatus, but I just didn't feel inspired to blog in Paris, stuck as I was in my studio with that racket going on upstairs. Eventually it just sucked all the creativity out of me.

Anyway, the suffering wasn't in vain because I received a distinction and came 4th in the class.

To be continued ...

this little piggy went to market

2010-05-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

I've had some great food experiences recently: dinner chez my Dutch friend Sjoerd (from superior class); dinner at Le Hide - a fabulous restaurant in the 17th run by a Japanese chef who trained under Joël Robuchon; dinner round at H's for her birthday last week; a fondue night at Le Refuge des Fondues in Montmartre where they serve wine in baby bottles; several market trips; and a visit to the world-famous Poilâne bakery where you can buy a very cool bread box for a cool 244€.

Our class dinner at L'Atelier Maître Albert however - "a restaurant with Guy Savoy" - was disappointing. The amuse bouche of tiny grilled mussels on cocktail sticks had bits of shell and dirt in them and the chilled tomato soup tasted just like Heinz. The cod with herb mash was very good, if a bit basic, and the lamb shanks, while perfectly cooked, could have done with some figs or prunes or similar to sex up the sauce. Not really what you'd expect from a restaurant with links to a Michelin starred chef (actually, chefs aren't awarded Michelin stars, their restaurants are, but let's not split mussel beards).

***

H is determined to be fluent in French by the time she leaves Paris in five weeks - which for someone starting from scratch and who sounds as if she's convulsing when she speaks it - will require a miracle of biblical proportions. She's started reading children's books, the French equivalent of Janet and John, and she likes someone, anyone - me, J, waiters, shop assistants, unsuspecting passengers on the Metro - to read words out to her to help her with the pronunciation. So I spent an excruciating 20 minutes in a posh coffee shop in chic St-Germain-des-Prés last week, reading Jeanette et Jean: Allons-y jouer (let's go and play) aloud.

This badgering even continues in class. I'm pretty focused in our practicals and don't like to engage in idle chitchat, so I'll be concentrating on filleting a lemon sole or making a brunoise of carrots when I'll look round and see H through a haze of smoke, leaning casually against the wall admiring her nails, and she'll say: "Mate, how do you say in French, my saucepan's on fire?"

Strewth!

We have our written exam in just under two weeks so I'm going to have to knuckle down and start studying - which means no time for frivolous blogging I'm afraid.

a busman's holiday

2010-04-24T03:20:00.000-07:00

When I arrived home last weekend I was surprised, in a Samuel Johnson 'dog walking on its hind legs' kind of way, to find that BB had cleaned the house. Not that it had been done well; but that it had been done at all!

It was great to be home. Before I came to Paris I was afraid I would love it so much I would never want to leave, but it transpires I'm a simple country girl at heart. I miss the mountains and the wide-open spaces ...

... and not having neighbours. I left my building here in Paris yesterday at the same time as my hobnailed-booted upstairs neighbour (who turns out to be a Little Old Lady!) and found myself tailing her, trying to check out her footwear. I reckon she's a European size 36 so I'm going to send her a pair of soft slippers.

On Saturday the usual suspects turned up at Nainbo's for apéros and we watched with amusement as he went round the garden scattering grass seed, closely followed by La Blonde, scattering weedkiller. Bit of a communication problem going on there I think.

Everyone wanted to know about my course and after a lengthy discussion about recipes there was a long expectant pause, at the end of which I tried to say: "I'm going skiing tomorrow", but it came out all funny and sounded like: "Why don't you all come round for lunch tomorrow?"

So instead of hitting the slopes or just lounging in bed with my cats, a cup of green tea and a good cookery book, Sunday morning was spent in the kitchen.

Now that the frost's gone my leeks are ready for pulling up so we started with leeks gribiche - braised leeks smothered in a smooth sharp caper-laden vinaigrette with a generous handful of snipped chives. Then we had pot roasted rabbit with rosemary sage and lemon served with turned artichokes and roast potatoes with saffron, followed by home-made vanilla ice-cream. Mium.

Since I'm struggling to find time to blog, a friend suggested I sign up to Twitter, so you can follow me at twitter.com/atasteofsavoie.

vegetable turning and nasty chefs

2010-04-14T04:51:00.000-07:00

We're into week four and already a third of the way through the course - I can't believe it.

To give you some background info on the school: Le Cordon Bleu offers certificate courses in cuisine and patisserie with students progressing through basic, intermediate and superior levels, after which they gain Le Diplôme de Cuisine, Le Diplôme de Patisserie or Le Grand Diplôme (if you do both cuisine and patisserie at the same time). I enrolled for the basic cuisine course only (as did J and H) but we're loving it so much that the three of us are thinking of coming back in the autumn to do the intermediate course.

We had our first blip last week when we were set upon by 'Gordon Ramsay' Chef. We have nicknames for all the Chefs, so there's 'Mr Bean' Chef (our favourite, who looks like, er, Mr Bean), 'Blackberry' Chef (who plays on his Blackberry when he should be supervising us in practicals), 'Hot' Chef (no explanation needed), 'Short' Chef (ditto) - and now 'Gordon Ramsay' Chef. Not only is he thoroughly unpleasant in a shouting and bullying way but he's plainly never heard of sexual harassment in the workplace (maybe it's not against the law in France - I wouldn't be surprised) as evidenced by his unwelcome and unnecessary physical contact with female students. Hopefull we won't see too much of him because he's a patisserie chef.

We're on to stuffings and tournage de légumes (vegetable turning) now - when you spend an hour paring down a carrot into a small barrel shape with seven sides. It's very traditional and very French, but extremely slow and repetitive and Paris is full of restaurants where dishwashers and commis spend hours a day locked in this seven-sided-servitude hell.

I'm going back to Savoie on Friday for three days. I actually made a surprise flying visit at Easter - only it was me who got the surprise when I saw the state of the house, so BB's been warned. He's just called to say he's down to the last of the beef stew PC dinners "which is a result" - and I don't think he meant that in a kind way!

puff pastry with leeks, poached eggs and albufera sauce

2010-04-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

We had a nice civilized 12.30 p.m. start today - after our group photo at midday. In today's demonstration the Chef showed us how to make puff pastry with leeks and poached eggs with albufera sauce and pear and raspberry tarts with almond butter and an apricot glaze. We actually made the puff pastry in our last practical - or rather, we started it off. I've never made puff pastry before and I don't think I will, through choice, again because it's quite a lengthy process and it's very hard to source the main ingredient (even here in Paris!) - beurre sec ("dry" butter) - so called because it has a low moisture content and high fat content which helps to keep the flour from turning into a greasy mess.

You start off by making your basic pastry in the same way that you would choux pastry - by adding melted butter, water and salt to flour - then leaving to rest in the fridge for 20 minutes. After that you roll out the pastry in a cross shape and place a heart-stoppingly large pat of beurre sec in the middle and then fold and roll and fold, flip over and do the same all over again, six times - or six "turns", to give it it's technical term (resting in the fridge for 20 minutes after every two turns) . My Canadian friend J, says she only gives her puff pastry one turn - she jumps in her car, turns the key in the ignition and goes to the shop to buy it! She has a point though because we were all agreed that Chef's puff pastry wasn't so earth-shatteringly different to bought stuff - so why bother?

The leeks and poached eggs in puff pastry recipe was sublime. You gently cook julienne of leeks with a little bit of butter and water until there's no liquid left, add some cream and seasoning and fill your vol-au-vents with this mixture and a poached egg then drizzle with albufera sauce (reduced chicken stock, cream, lemon juice and brunoise of red pepper). I think this is one that I'll be cooking over and over again once I get home.

Big exciting day tomorrow. You know my favourite shop - kitchen shop heaven in Moutiers? - well tomorrow, J (who's lived here for more than three years and knows all the really cool places to go) is taking H (our Australian friend) and I to kitchen shop nirvana - more than four kitchen shops even bigger than the one in Moutiers on the same street. I shall be like a kid in a sweetie shop!

Quiche Lorraine

2010-03-31T13:19:00.000-07:00

After fish we moved on to chicken and poularde pochée sauce suprême (poached chicken with sauce suprême) last week, and in our practical we had to truss a chicken after we'd burned off all the tiny feathers with a chef's torch - which was quite scary. We've all been taught how to correctly pass a knife to someone (yes?), but few in our class had logically transposed that rule to the blow torch, so when I turned round to accept it from a Chinese girl with singed eyebrows, the blue flame licked all the hairs off my arm.

As I looked down the marble-topped work station at the poulardes flambées (the chickens on fire), the smell of burning hair in my nostrils, I realised just how dangerous a place a kitchen full of 14 wannabe chefs can be.

This week it's pastry and some of you will know that I'm a wee bit scared of pastry - but not as scared as I am of getting third degree burns from holding a hot tray of Quiches Lorraines whilst waiting for someone to shimmy past me as if they were moving from their office chair to the coffee machine.

The cooking's the easy part - so far.

filets de limande bercy

2010-03-26T03:03:00.000-07:00

Where to start? It's all a bit mental - and I have so little time to write.

There are 44 of us in basic cuisine from over 15 countries (you can tell who's just jetted in from California or Brazil or Taiwan because they're the ones with creased faces, like old maps that have been folded and refolded a thousand times, from jet lag) and after three days we're all starting to find our own little clique. I'm in with an Australian and a Canadian - and surprisingly, I'm the only Brit.

Yesterday I was in school from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., caught the Métro home, had a quick chat with BB on Skype, then went to bed. The French have an expression: "Métro, boulot, dodo" (commute, work, sleep) and that pretty much sums up yesterday and how many of my days are going to be for the next few weeks.

We've been given a full set of Wüsthof kitchen knives (dangerously sharp) and the first practical lesson yesterday was learning different ways to cut vegetables without cutting your fingers off. So, there was mirepoix - cutting the veg into 1 cm cubes; brunoise - 2 mm cubes; julienne - very thin strips, 1 mm thick and 5 cm long; and paysanne - 1 cm triangles. The recipe we had to create was rustic vegetable soup using the paysanne technique - which I thought was a bit ironic. I can't imagine Mini-B's Mum spending an hour cutting veg into tiny triangles for soup - or BB noticing for that matter.

Anyway, Chef said my soup was "très bien" (very good) and I was able to hold up 10 whole fingers when BB asked to see them on Skype.

Today's lesson was on stocks and how to fillet fish, so in our practical we made filets de limande bercy (lemon sole fillets in white wine sauce) using fish stock (after filleting our own fish of course). I'm afraid the recipes are LCB copyright and we're not allowed to reproduce them but this is a common French recipe which involves poaching lemon sole fillets in white wine and fish stock with some chopped shallots and then reducing the sauce and adding butter and parsley.

There are so many things to remember - what to wear in which classes, what to take to practicals and we're all battling for space in the tiny locker rooms - but I'm loving it. Most of the photos will be taken using a flash so they won't be up to the usual standard. Must dash to school now. Later.

lessons

2010-03-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

These are the lessons I've learned so far, after three days in Paris:

Some Metro stations require you to insert your ticket again to exit - so hold on to it. On Sunday, when I went to wave BB off at Gare de Lyon (sniffle), I threw my ticket away before the exit barrier and then had to rummage around in the bin like a plankton to retrieve it - which was rather embarrassing.

Don't walk around staring up at buildings admiring the architecture. It's true what they say about Paris and dog merde! Keep your eyes on the ground.

When viewing apartments for the first time, if the landlord says, "it's very quiet here", he is lying. I have a sideways neighbour who plays the piano (well) which is acceptable, but an upstairs neighbour who clops around in hobnailed boots on bare wooden floors which isn't. But I've found a solution - leave the extractor fan on in the bathroom to create white noise (which I'm used to at home with the sound of the river) and drown out everything else. Sorted.

I have my first lesson tomorrow morning. My school bag is packed (with a tarte tatin for the teacher!), my uniform ironed - and I'm just a little bit nervous.

Groundhog Day

2010-03-19T16:10:00.000-07:00

It's 2 a.m. and I can't sleep. Strewth - it's Groundhog Day!

We're off on the train to Paris in the morning. BB's coming with me because he thinks I'll have trouble getting the WiFi and the telly to work in my studio (duh!) but I'm happy to play along because I need him to carry my bags after I knackered my back at step class on Monday!

But seriously, I'm glad he's coming with me, to help shoe me in to my new (albeit brief) life in Paris. It's a huge comfort.

School starts on Monday - so until then.

P.S. I made a chicken and sweetcorn pie for lunch today which BB said tasted like a pile of cack! (a bit uncharitable I thought!), so instead of the unsavoury cack pie, here are some pictures of fragrant spring flowers from my garden.

the cat is a hat

2010-03-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

It's 2 a.m. and I can't sleep so I've just extracted myself from a cat sandwich and come downstairs to write. The cats aren't allowed in the bedroom (BB's rule) but occasionally I accidentally on purpose leave the door open and as soon as they don't hear it closing, all three shoot up the stairs like rats up a drainpipe and assume their positions on the bed. Always the same positions - all three giving BB a wide berth.

If I've just washed my hair before going to bed, Loti lies on my head with her face buried in my hair - but only if it's just been washed. She's fussy that way. Otherwise she lies at my feet. (And when I say on my head, I mean literally on my head, like a hat. Once I sat up and she was attached, gripping on with her claws to stay on board - which smarted a bit - and nearly broke my neck as she's quite a big girl.) The other two take port and starboard, leaning in to achieve maximum body heat, making it impossible for me to turn over.

As I lay there, wedged in, staring up at the exposed beams, BB shouted out in his sleep: TWENTY FIVE KILOS! MINI-B! and fearing another one of his somnattacks, I decided to get up.

Only three days to departure.

We've been away a lot the last few days (hence my lack of blogging), visiting our 'winter' friends in Courchevel and Meribel for the last time this season and getting in as much skiing as possible.

The freezer is full to bursting with PC dinners, each one with a little bon mot scribbled on the lid. I know how BB operates - he will take the path of least bending down until he absolutely has to - so he'll start in the top freezer drawer (even if it contains 14 chicken curries - which it doesn't because I've mixed them all up for a bit of variety) and work his way down. Accordingly, the notes in the top drawer are gentle reminders such as: Remember to water the plants and Don't forget to feed Flippo (the goldfish) because he won't flip his bowl over to remind you like the cats do.

Then further down, round about drawer three and week six, they become slightly more pleading: PLEASE change the sheets and You REALLY OUGHT to hoover until finally, in the bottom drawer: Call an industrial cleaner NOW! and Buy new plants! and Replace Flippo!

To make space in the freezer I've had to use up all of last year's garden produce, including about 10 kilos of green beans. Green beans with mustard and garlic is a very tasty way to spice up the plain old French bean. For 4-6 people, place 1 lb/450 g French beans in boiling salted water and simmer until al dente. Drain and mix in 1-2 cloves of finely chopped garlic and 1 heaped tbsp of Dijon mustard and serve immediately.

country life

2010-03-10T14:56:00.000-08:00

BB borrowed a scary bit of kit from Poire last week called a Spit Pulsa (a cordless nail gun that allows you to fix directly into concrete and steel without the need to drill, plug and screw), to nail plasterboard rails to the concrete floor in the new house. I won't bore you with the finer details of its workings except to say that it involves a gas cartridge, a combustion chamber, sparks and explosions - oh, and nails, obviously. Just reading all those words in the same sentence makes me want to call an ambulance.

BB is using the 'shotgun' version which takes ¾ inch nails, but the other week, a roofer we know was using the 'bazooka' version (for 6 inch nails) and when he tried to nail a rafter to a purlin (a piece of wood to another piece of wood basically) the nail hit something hard, deflected and went right through his knee, impaling him to the roof!

I've mentioned this before, about the dangers of living in the country, about the accidents with circular saws and axes and forestry equipment - and then just this week, three houses in our village burned down after a chimney caught fire. Thankfully, no-one was injured, but what a horrendous thing to happen!

Life in the country - in our country village anyway - isn't quite the tranquil pastoral image exuding from the glossy pages of Country Living magazine. Paris will seem like a trip to Disneyland in comparison.

celery soup and 21st century existentialism

2010-03-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

So there I was in Montmartre, sitting in this fabulous three-storey artist's "studio" sipping green tea with said artist and two musicians - one of whom is my new landlord. Ok, we weren't discussing existentialism exactly (more the latest Porsche 911, which one of them was about to take delivery of!) and there wasn't a ruffled floral skirt in sight, but it was pretty close to my romantic notion of living in Paris.

Yes, I've found a little studio - small but perfectly formed - in a lovely old building on a quiet cobbled street in Montmartre. This was my last appointment yesterday, having viewed beforehand: a squat above a Chinese restaurant in the 15th, a window-less cat's coffin in the 4th and an apartment with a fireman's pole in the living-room in the 16th! So when the Montmartre musician asked if I was interested in his studio, I was like: Helloooo? Take this cheque as a deposit toot sweet! And then we went off and had tea with his friends.

I'm back home now, exhausted after all that zipping around (and relieved to have found somewhere to stay), about to tuck into a bowl of celery soup. Bonne nuit.

Ingredients
Serves 2-3
6 sticks of celery, chopped fairly thinly (reserve some leaves to garnish)
2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 oz/50 g butter
1½ pints/850 ml vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt the butter in a pan and add the onion, celery and potato and stir to coat everything with butter. Put a lid on the pan and allow the vegetables to sweat for about 10 minutes on a low heat. Add the stock and some seasoning, cover and simmer gently for about 30 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked. Remove from the heat and blend the soup in a liquidiser or food processor then pass through a sieve to remove any fibrous bits. Return to the pan to reheat and taste to check the seasoning. Garnish with the celery leaves.

spiced lamb ragout

2010-03-01T07:01:00.000-08:00

The berger brought round some lamb for us the other day, all neatly bagged (in brand-new poly bags) and labelled: épaule, côtelettes, côtes baronnes, ragout. It was a million miles away from Mini-B's rustic presentation, when he delivers his goat meat wrapped in a bit of old bed sheet, probably off his own bed, which I doubt he sleeps in very much given the number of times he crashes on our sofa or in the field behind the salle des fêtes. That guy can sleep anywhere. Last summer a few of us spent the night in a hunting cabin way up in the mountains and as we all set about bedding down - unfurling camping mats and sleeping bags and plumping up pillows sultan's divan-style - Mini-B just curled up under the table on the concrete floor and went to sleep like a dog.

I'm off to Paris tomorrow for a couple of days to sort out accommodation so I leave you with this very tasty recipe for spiced lamb ragout which uses relatively inexpensive neck of lamb. It's even better reheated the following day.

Ingredients
Serves 4
2 lb (900 g) neck of lamb
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 medium onions, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 heaped tablespoon flour
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 dried red chilli
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
12 oz (350 g) potatoes, larger ones cut in half
1 tin tomatoes (without the juice)
salt and freshly milled black pepper

Smash up the coriander seeds and chilli and mix with the oregano and rosemary. Roll the lamb pieces in this mixture. Heat the oil in a flameproof casserole dish and brown the meat a few pieces at a time then remove from the pan. Fry the onions in the fat left in the pan for about 10 minutes until softened and browned round the edges, add the garlic.

Next stir in the flour and gradually pour in 1 pint (570 ml) boiling water then return the pieces of meat to the casserole and season. As soon as it comes back to simmering point, put the lid on and transfer the casserole to the oven and cook for about an hour at 275°F/140°C. After an hour add the potatoes and tinned tomatoes and return to the oven for another hour.

Foodista Food Blogs Cookbook - please vote

2010-02-23T06:43:00.000-08:00

I was recently contacted by Foodista.com, the online cooking encyclopedia, saying they were looking for recipes to feature in their upcoming Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook and would I like to enter some. So I have submitted the following four and I would be very, very chuffed if you could all vote. You can vote for each one by clicking on the Foodista button beneath each photo below - and you can rate all four.

The site is jaw-droppingly user-unfriendly but I've outlined the quickest way to do it at the end of this post. Voting ends on Sunday 28 February and I've got a lot of catching up to do since the competition has been open since the beginning of December - so I'm relying on you, my trusty readers. Yours, grovellingly!

To vote for Vegetarian Scotch Eggs:

To vote for Raspberry Mousse and Summer Berries:

To vote for Roasted Red Peppers with Tomatoes, Anchovy and Garlic:

To vote for Egg Mayo:

How to vote:

Go to www.foodista.com and go to "sign up" at the top of the page.
Enter your name, email and password and click "sign up".
You will be taken to a "Taste Profile" page. Click on "skip step" bottom right.
You will then be taken to a "Tell us more about yourself" page. Don't put anything in and click save profile.
Leaving that window open, open another tab/window and open my blog http://atasteofsavoie.blogspot.com/
Click on the first recipe to vote. You will still be signed in to Foodista so just click on the star ratings below the recipe heading and it will say "Rating Saved".
Then back-click and click on the next recipe and repeat etc.

the way to a girl's heart ...

2010-02-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

The snow is beginning to melt and Spring is just around the corner. Spring and Paris. It's only four weeks now until I leave (yikes - and still no apartment!) so I've started stocking up the freezer with PC dinners for BB so that he can concentrate on building work while I'm away.

He's actually not a bad cook, BB, but boy, what a drama queen in the kitchen. On the rare occasion that he does cook, when I should be reclining on tasselled cushions with my feet up, sipping a G&T and unfolding my latest copy of Country Living, instead I'm up and down like a fiddler's elbow, digging out kitchen utensils, peeling vegetables (it hurts his thumbs!), mopping up spillages and applying band-aids - all to a Gordon Ramsay-esque soundtrack.

But it wasn't like that in the beginning - not when he was trying to woo me.

The first meal he ever cooked for me was seared encrusted tuna steak with fresh coriander and basil served with braised puy lentils with rosemary and garlic. This was not long after we first met in France (where I was working in a ski chalet), when I went back to England to visit him.

As I sat in the kitchen of his little cottage in Surrey, calf-eyed, watching him smash up dried chilli and coriander seeds and deftly chopping fresh herbs, I thought that this was a sign of great things to come. And when I reach back for memories of our early romance, I remember that meal - for that meal sealed the deal.

But as soon as I said "I do", he said "Do you mind if I don't cook anymore?"!

This is the lentil recipe he made, from Jamie Oliver's Naked Chef. I'm a big fan of lentils, particularly puy, which have a lovely peppery flavour. Any left-overs are great served cold in a salad with feta cheese and veggies can leave out the bacon and substitute vegetable stock.

Ingredients

Serves 6

2 oz/55 g pancetta or smoked bacon, cut into matchsticks

12 oz/340 g puy lentils

1 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary

2 shallots, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 ½ pints/850 ml chicken stock

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

½ tbsp red wine vinegar

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil and fry the bacon until slightly coloured then add the rosemary, shallots and garlic. Cook for a further 2 minutes then add the lentils and coat in the oil. Add the stock, bring to the boil, cover and simmer in the oven for 1 hour at 160°C/310°F. Remove from the oven and add 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and the red wine vinegar and season.

pancakes with honey and summer berries

2010-02-16T08:35:00.000-08:00

We don't tend to eat too many sweet things chez nous, preferring to end a meal with some cheese and a piece of fruit, but when I do get a sugar urge, a crêpe - which is quick and easy to make - served with a sprinkling of sugar and a squeeze of lemon usually hits the spot.

Today, as it's Pancake Day, I made these thin pancakes served with a drizzle of honey and summer berries. They can be made in advance and stored between sheets of greaseproof paper in the fridge then reheated in a moderate oven for 10-15 minutes. Pancakes freeze well, stacked as above then placed in freezer bags. If frozen, it's best to defrost the pancakes before reheating.

Basic pancake mix
Makes 12-14 in a 7 inch/18 cm pan
4 oz/110 g plain flour
pinch of salt
2 eggs
7 fl oz/200 ml milk mixed with 3 fl oz/75 ml water
2 oz/50 g butter

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl, make a well in the centre and add the eggs. Begin whisking the eggs then gradually add small quantities of the milk and water mixture, still whisking, making sure the flour is well mixed in. Continue until the batter is smooth (pass through a sieve if need be) and the consistency of single cream.

Melt the butter, add 2 tablespoons of it to the batter and blend for a few more seconds, then pour the rest into a bowl and use to grease the pan using kitchen paper between each pancake.

Heat a 7 inch/18 cm pan and add 2 tablespoons of the batter using a ladle, quickly lifting, tilting and swirling the batter evenly over the pan. Cook over a medium heat for a minute or so until the surface is set and the base golden. Toss or turn with a spatula and cook the other side for a few more seconds.

Stack the pancakes as you make them between sheets of greaseproof paper on a plate fitted over simmering water, to keep them warm while you make the rest.

raclette

2010-02-11T07:51:00.000-08:00

The busiest time of year for us, guest-wise, is during the ski season. Why pay a fortune to stay in a ski resort when you can stay with your sister/friend for free? That's what sisters/friends are for, right? There are some weeks in winter when one set of guests is departing as the next arrives. This week a couple of friends from Courchevel were here for two days and my brother and three friends arrive today (in the midst of which I thought I was going to have to dash off to Paris to view an apartment! but that fell through at the last minute).

One of the things I like to do for dinner, which guests love, is raclette. It's a winter staple here in Savoie and very popular in mountain restaurants.

Raclette is essentially melted cheese (the name comes from the French verb "racler", to scrape, because of the way the melted cheese is scraped out of the pan or off the block, depending on the type of machine used) served over boiled potatoes, accompanied by assorted meats (such as ham, prosciutto, salami) and pickled onions and/or gherkins. The only cooking involved is steaming some potatoes, after which everyone just melts some cheese in their own little pan under the raclette grill. Yum.

crispy aromatic duck - a last request

2010-02-05T03:56:00.000-08:00

I've read that chefs often discuss, over a drink late at night, what their last meal would be, as a way of finding out some essential truth about each other. Apparently the majority pick something simple and homely and reminiscent of their mothers: Spanish chef, Ferran Adrià, of famed El Bulli restaurant, would go for pan-fried green asparagus with olive oil and sea salt; English chef Jamie Oliver, a big bowl of spaghetti; and acclaimed French chef, Jacques Pépin, a good piece of bread and some good butter. Good bread and butter has to be pretty high up on my list too. We are fortunate to have two excellent artisan boulangeries close by (one of which makes arguably the best baguette in France) and when we bring the bread home in the morning, still warm and squishy and spread it with a bit of unsalted butter, there is something so satisfying and soothing and uncomplicated about it that it's hard to imagine anything better.

But my "death-row meal", as my pal Carol and I call it (and for both of us it's the same), would be crispy aromatic duck with pancakes. For this I would crawl over broken glass just to lie in the shadow of someone preparing it.

I can remember the first time I had it - in a little Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh, the guest of two hotshot lawyers and their gangster client. I was a rookie lawyer at the time and I was wearing a navy blue wool suit and dramatic red lipstick, and I don't know whether it was the fanfare with which the whole crispy fried duck arrived and was expertly shredded at the table with two forks, or the tantalising aromatic smells of ginger and spices, or the frisson of excitement (fear?) at being in the presence of a gangster - but I ate with audible relish and declared it the best thing to have ever passed my lips.

This version, by Ken Hom, calls for a long marinade and steaming but don't be put off by the long preparation process. The steps are all straightforward and can be done a day in advance. The crispy skin and moist flavoursome meat wrapped in a pancake with shredded spring onion and cucumber and a smear of Hoisin sauce is cosmic.

Crispy aromatic duck

Ingredients
Serves 4-6
1 x 6 lb/2.75 kg duck
6 slices fresh root ginger
6 spring onions
cornflour for dusting
2 pints/1.2 l groundnut oil for frying

For the spice rub
2 tbsp five-spice powder
2½ oz/65 g Sichuan peppercorns
1 oz/25 g whole black peppercorns
3 tbsp cumin seeds
7 oz/200 g rock salt

To serve
Chinese pancakes (available in Chinese supermarkets)
6 spring onions, finely shredded
½ cucumber, peeled, deseeded and finely shredded
Hoisin sauce

Rinse the duck and pat dry. Mix all the spice ingredients for the rub together in a small bowl, then rub the duck inside and out with the mixture. Wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge for 24 hours.

After this time, stuff the ginger and spring onions into the cavity and put the duck on a heatproof plate. Set up a steamer or put a rack in a wok. Fill with 2 in/5 cm of water and bring to the boil. Lower the duck and plate into the steamer and cover tightly.

Steam gently for 2 hours, pouring off excess fat from time to time. Add more water as necessary. Remove the duck from the steamer and pour off the liquid. Discard the ginger and spring onions and leave the duck in a cool place for 2 hours until dried and cooled. At this point the duck can be refrigerated.

Just before you are ready to serve, cut the duck into quarters and dust with cornflour. Heat the oil in a wok or deep-fat fryer. When almost smoking, deep-fry the duck in 2 batches. Fry the breasts for about 8-10 minutes and the thighs for 12-15 minutes, until crisp and heated through.

Drain the duck on kitchen paper and cool enough to handle. Remove the meat from the bones and shred it. Serve by smearing some Hoisin sauce on a pancake then adding some shredded duck then some shredded spring onions and cucumber and roll up.

steak pie and Cockney rhyming slang

2010-02-01T12:48:00.000-08:00

I realise I haven't reported on progress on the mill for a while. That's because - erm - there hasn't been any. Although we've been having beautiful sunny weather ...

... (first picture of snow on the new roof), it's been well below freezing - minus 10 today - and according to BB, (ahem) the tools stick to his hands! But here are our new doors and windows ...

So, in the absence of any building work, it's back to cooking.

I was a vegetarian for many years a while back and whenever the subject of what we missed from our carnivore days came up, my fellow veggies and I were unanimous that we would sell our souls for a bacon roll - or a steak pie. A steak pie can make you do crazy things you know. My sister the journo likes to remind me of the time (in my veggie days) when I cracked and bought a steak pie supper from the chip shop, devouring it like a wild animal before practically holding her at knife point until she promised not to tell anyone. More recently I've been known to drag unwilling friends round more than a dozen pubs in Edinburgh at lunchtime in search of a pie and a pint. And it featured in the weirdest reply to caution and charge I've ever heard; a client, arrested outside a chip shop for illegally possessing a gun, told police officers: "It wasn't a gun. It was a steak pie"!

I'm surprised I haven't attempted to make one before. I think the pastry puts me off - I'm intimidated by pastry - but when I saw a recipe for steak and kidney pudding on Delia's website the other day (endearingly subtitled "Kate and Sidney", if you can Adam and Eve it from the earnest Delia) I thought it was high time I tried. (Actually, Delia directed by Guy Ritchie might be a good bobble hat and scarf.)

I ended up not using Delia's recipe because it required steaming for five hours and I only had two hours before BB got in a right old two and eight from hunger, so the pastry recipe - which was lemon squeezy and turned out so well I couldn't believe my mince pies - is from Good Food magazine and the filling I just cobbled together. Jurassic.

Steak pie

Ingredients
Serves 6
560 g/1 lb 4 oz chuck steak
2 tbsp olive oil
knob of butter
2 onions, chopped roughly
2 tbsp plain flour
2 bay leaves
2 tsp dried thyme
570 ml/1 pint beef stock
1 tbsp tomato purée
salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

For the pastry
175g/6oz butter
225g/8oz plain flour
8-9 tbsp water
1 beaten egg, to glaze

Heat the oil and butter in a large pan and fry the onions for 3-4 minutes. Add the meat and fry until it loses its pink colour. Stir in the flour and tomato purée then add the herbs and stock and season. Stir until thickened and coming to the boil. Cover and place in the oven at 350°F/180°C for 2 hours until the meat is tender.

Make the pastry. Place the butter in the freezer for 45 minutes. In a bowl, mix the flour with ¼ tsp of salt. Dip the butter in the flour and grate coarsely into the bowl. Keep dipping it in the flour as you grate. Mix in the butter with a knife until evenly coated with flour. Stir in the water to form a dough and form into a ball. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes.

When the meat is cooked, remove bay leaves and cool slightly. Take half the pastry and roll out on a floured surface to 5 mm/¼ in thick. Line a 1.2 Litre/2 pint pie dish with the pastry, stir the parsley in to the meat and add to the dish. Roll out the rest of the pastry and place on top of the meat and seal to make a lid. Brush with egg and make a couple of holes in the lid with a knife. Bake in the oven at 400°F/200°C for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is golden.

red pepper pilaf and postie problems

2010-01-30T05:26:00.000-08:00

My first subscription copy of Country Living arrived this week (a Christmas present from Mum and Dad) miraculously intact - by which I mean, still in some form you could physically read, i.e. turn the pages, even if you didn't have opposable thumbs. If you can imagine the trajectory of my magazine from the printers in West Yorkshire in the UK to our little Alpine village 1500 km away, that's a lot of handling and you could forgive the odd torn or punctured packaging or dog-eared page. But the most dangerous leg of its journey, the critical stage which determines whether it arrives flat, as the publishers intended, or geometrically folded and creased like some origami composition, is the final two feet, the arm's length between the yellow Postman Pat van and our mail box.

The posties here in the country don't like to get out of the car (it's against their human rights or something), so rather than knock on your door and hand larger items to you, they bend and fold and wrestle them into the mail box. Two Christmases ago, a calendar measuring a square foot and featuring beautiful photographs of Scotland - clearly identifiable as a gift - was manhandled into a quarter of its size and forced so tightly into the mail box that it required a screwdriver to prise it out. It means having to be on postie alert on magazine days - and especially over the Christmas period.

This recipe for red pepper pilaf with chilli and cashews, featured in said mag, is a one-pot rice dish made with sweet red peppers and fiery chillis. I didn't have cashews to hand so I used peanuts (any nuts would work well I think) and I used a good squirt of Sriracha chilli sauce instead of paprika. Great as a starter or as a vegetable side dish with a main.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

4-5 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 red peppers, seeded and cut into strips

12 oz/350 g long grain rice

handful of fine spaghetti, broken into small pieces

salt

1 tbsp smoked hot pimentón or sweet hot paprika or chilli flakes

2 hot green chillies, seeded and diced

4 oz/100 g cashew nuts, toasted

3-4 large red peppers, halved lengthwise and seeded

Heat the oil in a heavy pan and fry the onion gently until caramelized and very dark. Push aside and add the pepper strips and fry until soft. Sir in the rice and pasta and turn in the oil.

Add enough water to cover to the depth of two fingers, salt, stir in the pimentón or paprika, turn down the heat and leave to simmer for about 15 minutes until the water has been absorbed and the rice is nearly tender. Stir in the diced green chilli and sprinkle with the roasted nuts. Cover with a cloth and leave for 10 minutes to settle and swell.

Arrange the pepper halves on a baking try and roast in the oven at a high heat until the flesh softens but hasn't yet collapsed. Heap the rice into the shells and place in the oven for another 5 minutes to heat through.

cabbage

2010-01-28T07:01:00.000-08:00

I don't understand why cabbage has such a bad reputation. Granted, it has a strong cooking odour, but there are many wonderful things you can do with it: raw in coleslaw, or wrapped around creamy minced chicken in Asian cabbage parcels,

braised with bacon and peas, or added to a simple bacon and egg quiche.

But the following recipe, which I saw being made on a cookery programme on the telly round at the Sunday Club last weekend, transcends all of the above and is now my recipe du jour.

Chou farci au fromage - cabbage stuffed with cheese - uses three ingredients and all it involves is: blanching some savoy cabbage, placing a slice of bacon in a ramekin (so the ends fall over the sides), then a small cabbage leaf and a cube of cheese, then repeating the layers, finishing off by folding the bacon over to make a parcel and cooking in the oven for 20 minutes at 180°C/350°F.

I had a good hunch that that combination of flavours and textures would be sensational and as soon as I got home, I recreated it using serrano ham which I had in the fridge, and it was utterly, utterly delicious - the loud salty flavours of the ham off-setting the subtle earthy flavour of the cabbage and the savoury goo of the melted cheese. Fantastic.

an alternative Burns Supper and spiced poached pears

2010-01-26T10:57:00.000-08:00

BB and some other friends were helping Mini-B vaccinate his cows yesterday (new readers of this blog could be forgiven for thinking that BB's profession involves working with animals!) after which we received an impromptu invitation to lunch chez le berger (the shepherd) and his wife, who recently moved to our village. It's such a comforting word, "shepherd", don't you think? - like a pair of elasticated-waisted trousers or a soft baby blanket with a rolled-over satin edge for drooling on.

(It's also the protagonist of one of my favourite books The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho which I've just retrieved from my bookshelves and on the back cover the publicity spiel says: "Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever" - and as implausible and Disneyesque as that sounds, it did for me. It was after reading this book that I sat down and revisited my Great Ambitions and directly ended up living in a foreign country, doing up an old watermill with BB.)

BB called and gave me two minutes' warning before coming to pick me up - enough time to apply a slick of SPF 20 Piz Buin and pull on my wellies and a ski hat - and we were off, bottle of wine and a saucisson (won in the belote competition on Saturday night) in hand. When we got to the little wooden chalet, down a deep-rutted goat track rendered almost impassable by snow, eight of us sat down in the cosy kitchen at the ancient pine table - nicked and scarred like a thousand criss-crossing railway tracks - and mucked in peeling apples, chopping vegetables, slicing sausage, jiggling their cute seven month-old baby and keeping the tiny Border Collie pups away from the food.

While we were peeling chopping and jiggling we nibbled on thin slices of locally-made spicy saucisson flavoured with beetroot with our apéros - that cured, often horse-shoe-shaped sausage much beloved of the French. Then lunch began with a homemade pâté de campagne with big hunks of rustic bread and cornichons, followed by aromatic vegetable lasagne spiced with turmeric, cardamom, fresh ginger and garlic and then in an inadvertent (and for me nostalgic) nod to the fact it was Burns Night, boudin noir aux pommes - black pudding served with caramelized apple wedges.

After cheese, coffee and digestives, we waddled off home, our cheeks suffused with the warm rosy glow of contentment.

I made these spiced poached pears the other day with some pears I found lurking at the bottom of the fridge, which BB said tasted "just as good, if not better, than tinned pears" - which I think was a complement.
Spiced poached pears

These are based on a Delia recipe for spiced pickled pears but I used red wine and more spices. These are delicious served cold, with crème fraîche.

Ingredients
For 6
6 hard pears
12 fl oz/330 ml cider vinegar
12 fl oz/330 ml red wine
4 oz/110 g sugar
1 tsp whole cloves
1 tsp juniper berries crushed

Peel the pears, leaving the stalks intact and place all the other ingredients in a flameproof casserole and simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Place the pears in the liquid on their side and cover with a lid and place in the oven for 30 minutes at 375°F/190°C.

After 30 minutes turn the pears over and cook for another 30 minutes. Remove and cool in the liquid until required.

smoked mackerel rillettes

2010-01-21T10:12:00.000-08:00

Our skis are in for a service otherwise we would have hit the slopes again today, being another perfect blue sky day, so we took ourselves off for a walk instead and who should we meet but our little homunculus friend, Mini-B, coming panting towards us through the meadow. He's reduced to running everywhere now since the ice-cream van broke down at the weekend, when the side door fell off in the middle of the road in spectacular cartoonish fashion and the engine spluttered to a very full stop in a cloud of black noxious smoke. He had to order a taxi yesterday - one of those minibus things with a roof rack for skis - to deliver hay to his animals!

He was in a bit of a state because one of his calves had got her leg stuck in a hole in the cow shed and he needed a hand lifting her out. There was a suggestion that she may have broken her leg, so I declined to go along. I can't bear to see animals suffering, it makes me too sad - as if someone's dropped a bag of marbles in my heart - but BB reported back that they had successfully lifted her out and put a cast on her leg and she was happily laying back in the hay watching repeats of Emmerdale.

It's quite hard to sex up pulverized soft tissue of mackerel for the camera - but what it lacks in the Top Modèl stakes, this pâté makes up for in robustness. A quick, no-nonsense, Hattie Jacques kind of pâté - and another one from Homes and Gardens.

Ingredients

Serves 6

5-6 smoked, peppered mackerel fillets

2 tbsp fresh lemon juice

4 tbsp horseradish sauce

2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce

handful of fresh parsley, scissor-snipped

Bend the mackerel fillets in half lengthways, skin sides in, bringing the ends together so that the flesh (on the outside) comes away easily from the skin. Discard all skin and pull the fish into chunks. Combine the fish, lemon juice, sauces and snipped parsley in a bowl. Mix, mash and blend roughly, using a fork. Smooth into a 600ml serving dish or 6 individual 100ml dishes. Smooth the top flat and chill for at least 2 hours or up to 4 days. Serve with buttered baguette slices or toasts.

egg mayo

2010-01-19T03:25:00.000-08:00

I think I may have found a little studio to rent in Paris - "little" being the operative word - in the 8th arrondissement, on the same Metro line as Le Cordon Bleu. At the moment it's a toss-up between this apartment or sharing with a French artist and his 10-year old twins. I have this whimsical notion of lolling around an artist's studio in Montmartre wearing flouncy skirts and discussing existentialism whilst sucking on a Gauloises - but the bohemian won't allow me to have guests and since most of my family and quite a few friends are lining up to come and visit, I'm going to have to pass on the boho lifestyle.

Every Sunday we get a dozen eggs from Roquin, usually still warm and flecked with little bits of straw and other detritus. I could quite happily eat an egg, in some form, every day and egg mayo is one of our favourites. I like to add some snipped chives or spring onions or serve it in the shell with a sprig of dill and some lumpfish roe.

Egg mayo

Serves 2

2 fresh eggs

1 heaped dessert spoon of mayonnaise

2 tsp lumpfish roe (or caviar if you want to push the boat out)

Sprigs of dill

Toast to serve

Place the eggs in a pan and cover completely with cold water. Heat over a high heat until boiling then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Cool in cold water, then slice off the top of the egg, being careful not to break the shell. Scoop out the egg, mash with a fork and mix with the mayonnaise. Fill the empty shell with the egg mixture and top with a tsp of lumpfish roe and a sprig of dill. Cut out rounds of toast using a pastry cutter, making a smaller hole in the centre for the egg to sit in.

help Haiti

2010-01-17T10:10:00.000-08:00

It feels frivolous blogging about food when there's so much death and destruction in Haiti - but then, is not all blogging frivolous, unless it raises awareness or money for worthy causes? Every comment left on this blog raises $10 for the Haitian relief effort - so I urge you all to visit.

churros and hot chocolate

2010-01-14T04:42:00.000-08:00

To escape the tedium of wading through crime scene-like photographs in Craigslist, we took ourselves off skiing yesterday for the first time this season. It was one of those perfect Christmas card days when everything's covered in a quilt of snow and white-embroidered trees dazzle under skies the colour of melted cornflowers, when the beauty of nature overwhelms and crushes your heart. There is no place I would rather be than on the ski slopes on such days.

After a few runs we stopped for hot chocolate. What could be more redolent of snowy mountain climes than hot chocolate moustaches? Unfortunately, what you get in mountain restaurants is an insipid watery brew made with cocoa powder, disguised with swags of canned whipped cream. So when we got home - tired and cold but euphoric - I set about making the real deal, with melted chocolate, and Spanish-style doughnuts for dipping.

This recipe comes from the February 2009 issue of Homes and Gardens and uses virgin olive oil for frying, but I found sunflower oil worked much better and I only used 2 or 3 cm in a frying pan. When the churros start to brown too quickly, turn the heat off and let the oil cool down a little so that the churros turn a lovely golden colour. I also added more chocolate to the hot chocolate to make it wickedly thick.

Churros

Ingredients

Serves 6-8

125 g salted butter in cubes

150 g plain white flour, sifted

15 g caster sugar or vanilla sugar

6 medium eggs, beaten

Virgin olive oil, for frying

Sieved icing sugar and a little cinnamon (optional) to decorate

Heat 250 ml boiling water with the butter in a deep, heavy-based saucepan for 2 minutes, uncovered, until the mixture boils, then tip in the sifted flour and sugar and beat hard over the heat for 30 seconds until it clumps together. Remove and cool for 2 minutes in a sink of cold water. Remove. With an electric, hand-held whisk, whisk in the eggs one at a time; the mixture thins, then gets thick again. Once all 6 eggs are added, spoon the mix into a piping bag with a rosette nozzle and chill for 30 minutes.

Heat 10cm oil in a medium heavy-based pan until a cube of stale bread browns in 20 seconds. Pipe straight or curly shapes of paste into the oil with one hand and chop off the paste using scissors with the other. Cook for 1 minute, then turn with tongs, cook for 1 minute more and drain. Serve, dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon if liked, with hot chocolate.

Hot chocolate

Ingredients

Serves 6-8

250 g dark chocolate, chopped (ideally 70 per cent cocoa solids or higher)

300 ml milk

1 tsp ground cinnamon, optional

Combine the chopped chocolate, milk and cinnamon, if liked, in a large heavy-based saucepan and stir over moderate heat until the chocolate has melted. Whisk the mixture till frothy and keep hot chocolate on a low heat or set over boiling water before serving.

highs and lows and chicken caesar salad

2010-01-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning began on a high when I received an email with some photos of a beautiful bijou apartment in the 1st arrondissement attached. This was in reply to an ad I'd placed in Craigslist Paris looking for somewhere to rent when I go to Le Cordon Bleu. The super-tasteful one-bedroom apartment next to the Louvre had stripped wooden floors, a marble tiled bathroom, galley kitchen with cherry wood units and granite worktops, and a beautiful arched window in the living room with French doors opening out to a wrought iron balcony with views across the Paris rooftops. All for €600 a month. I know what you're thinking - scam - and I came to the same conclusion myself pretty quickly, but I was smitten and the optimist in me said to BB: "not everyone's driven by money you know" - to which he snorted in response.

To cut a long story short, the guy couldn't provide a utility bill and the name of his (alleged) employer in London wasn't listed in the Yellow Pages, so I didn't part with any cash. No harm done you might think, but the images of that apartment were tattooed on my retina and I spent a miserable afternoon trawling through Craigslist looking at ghastly "cozy studios" with vertiginous swirly carpets, puce-coloured walls and lumpy linoleum floors. In one, you had to leap-frog over the loo to get in the shower and in another, the loo was in the kitchenette - I don't mean in a cubicle in the kitchenette, I mean the actual loo was in the kitchenette, right next to the electric plates. I've never seen anything like that before and it made me feel quite queasy. That's just a tad too "cozy" for my liking. And the starting price for these little gems: €750 a month!

I felt so deflated and unsociable that when someone came to the door, I hid by lying down on the kitchen floor so I wouldn't be spotted through the window.

It's minus 11 degrees C outside and we have snow (finally) - not exactly salad weather, but we try to eat salad every day and chicken caesar salad is BB's favourite: succulent breast of chicken atop snappy salad leaves with a snip of anchovies, slivers of parmesan and homemade crispy croutons. It always astounds me when I'm served packaged croutons in restaurants - those vile perfectly-formed cuboids flecked with bits that look like they've been picked from between someone's teeth. I mean how difficult is it to cut up some bread, toss it in olive oil and place in the oven for 10 minutes?

Ingredients
Serves 2
1 chicken breast
crisp salad leaves, such as little gem, cos/romaine or iceberg
shavings of parmesan
2 or 3 anchovies, snipped
homemade croutons
tbsp mayonnaise
juice of half a lemon
½ clove of garlic, crushed

Cook the chicken breast whole on a griddle pan until just cooked and cut into slices. Make the dressing by combining the mayonnaise with the lemon juice and crushed garlic. Toss the salad leaves in the dressing and serve with the chicken slices, snipped anchovies, parmesan shavings and croutons.

vegetarian Scotch eggs

2010-01-06T09:29:00.000-08:00

All the windows and doors for the new house have been installed. The fitter arrived for the last time yesterday with his frisky young bloodhound in tow and every time I looked out, the dog was gambolling past with some essential fixing in its mouth, closely followed by a screeching fitter guy waving a big stick. All this hollering and barking fairly set my cats a dither, who all remained inside observing the antics from the safety of the kitchen windowsill, leaving a line of tiny smudges across the window at cat nose level.

Later in the afternoon I went out to play fetch with the dog. Now, I used to have a pretty good throwing arm. In fact, I was the champion discus, javelin and shot put thrower of my year for three years at secondary school and I could throw a lamb chop past a hungry wolf. But these days it needs some work because when I tried to chuck an empty mastic cartridge into the garden it spun 90 degrees towards the house. It reminded me of the time I went bowling with some lawyer friends and one of them, a mighty fine lawyer but a rubbish bowler, forgot to let go of the ball which went whizzing right over his head, wheeeee, and landed on someone's foot behind him. How we laughed!

But no-one was laughing this time because the mastic tube hit the newly-installed window with a loud thoink and I held my breath as angry fitter guy checked it for damage.

Thankfully there was none - but the dog and I were banished to the truck and the house respectively.

I made these vegetarian Scotch eggs on Sunday. Homemade Scotch eggs are nothing like shop-bought ones which look as though they've been coated in orange sand. The egg is always over-cooked, the white rubbery and grey and the yolk anaemic and dry. This version, which looks as round and plump as a partridge, is a bit like all-in-one egg soldiers (one of my favourite things to eat) - a runny yolk encased in crispy fried fresh breadcrumbs with the addition of some fresh chopped herbs. Delicious for breakfast or brunch.

Vegetarian Scotch eggs
Ingredients
Makes 4
5 medium eggs
Flour for dusting
Fresh breadcrumbs - about 4 handfuls - enough to coat 4 eggs
1 dessert spoon of finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
1 dessert spoon of finely chopped fresh chives
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Vegetable oil for frying

Preheat the oven to 325°F/170°C. Place 4 of the eggs in a pan and cover completely with cold water. Heat over a high heat until boiling then reduce the heat and simmer for 4 minutes. Cool in cold water before peeling.

Whisk the remaining egg. Combine the chopped herbs with the breadcrumbs and season. Gently roll each boiled egg in flour, then the egg mixture then the breadcrumbs.

Put the oil in a pan to a depth of 2 inches/5 cm and heat. Fry the eggs until golden, turning so as not to burn - for about 2-3 minutes. Remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and place in the oven in an ovenproof dish to heat through for about 3-4 minutes.

raspberry mousse and birthday wishes for a special aunt

2010-01-02T07:22:00.000-08:00

That's the Christmas box packed up for another year. Party's over. Back to business. I find it mildly depressing seeing Christmas decorations still up in mid- to late-January. It's the equivalent of a comb-over or wearing white socks with black shoes - it's just a bit sad.

Two hoover bags later, I'm still finding pine needles all over the house. Mini-B (aka Mr Whippy) came round for a game of cards last night and spent a disproportionate amount of time scrabbling around beneath the kitchen table looking for the cards he'd dropped and each time he resurfaced he looked more and more like a porcupine.

After all the rich festive food we've been eating I fancied something lighter, more delicate - something with a little burst of summer. So I made these raspberry mousses topped with wild raspberries and bilberries I picked last summer.

To save my precious supply of little wild raspberry jewels, I used tinned raspberries - I know, I know - but they work well in this recipe because you have to sieve them to make a purée and you decorate with fresh raspberries at the end. To get the mixture into the moulds I had to pour it from the mixing bowl into a very narrow-necked jug - which resulted in rivers of mousse flowing like molten lava all over the worktop and down the kitchen cupboards. Oh, the carnage.

My new year's resolution is to think more before acting, especially in the kitchen - otherwise I shall not last five minutes at Le Cordon Bleu.

Bon anniversaire to my wonderful aunt, Hils, with whom I have just shared a glass of champagne on Skype (how great is Skype!) during the course of which she wore three different hats. She received the following missive from my six-year old niece:

Splendifourus birthday Hils.

Hope the day is as good as chocolate ice-cream

with a chocolate flake and chocolate souse and

chocolate chip and chocolate sprinkels.

With love so big it wouldn't fit in the unovers. xxx

PS You are sooo lucky to have a birthday on a Saturday.

That girl's going to go far.

Raspberry mousse and summer berries
Ingredients
15oz / 400 g tin of raspberries
1 packet raspberry jelly
6oz / 175 g double cream
1 tsp lemon juice
Fresh raspberries and bilberries to decorate

Strain the juice from the rasps into a measure jug and make up to ½ pint with water if necessary. Put the juice in a pan and bring to boiling point. Remove from the heat and add the jelly and stir until dissolved.

Leave the jelly to cool until just beginning to set. Sieve the rasps to make a purée. Put the cream and lemon juice in a bowl and whisk until it forms soft peaks. Fold in the purée and cooled jelly and mix well. Decorate with fresh rasps and bilberries.

happy new year

2010-01-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

This post was originally shown on my last blog at Le Moulin.

spiced nuts, stuffed dates, joyeuses fêtes

2009-12-23T09:58:00.000-08:00

I'm cooking Christmas dinner this year, which is traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve in this region (and called le réveillon), so I shall be up bright and early tomorrow morning for an eight-hour cooking fest: oysters, foie gras, roast turkey and bacon with sage and onion stuffing and bread sauce, sautéd sprouts with chestnuts, carrots steamed with lemon and butter, melon sorbet, cheeses and Katie Bear's Mum's Christmas pud. All that's missing is snow!

I've just made these spiced nuts (based on a recipe served in the Union Square Café in New York) and stuffed Medjool dates to serve with apéros when friends drop by. Wishing you all joyeuses fêtes!

Union Square Café bar nuts

Ingredients

1 lb / 550 g assorted unsalted nuts (brazils, hazels, walnuts, almonds)
2 tbsp coarsely chopped fresh rosemary
½ tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp dark muscovado sugar
2 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp melted unsalted butter

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F. Spread the nuts on a baking tray and toast in the oven for 10 minutes.

2. In a large bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients and toss the nuts in the spiced butter. Serve warm.

Dates stuffed with mascarpone, orange zest and walnuts

This was inspired by three things which remind me of my childhood Christmases - tangerines, dates and nuts.

Ingredients

30 large dates such as Medjool

250 g mascarpone

zest of 1 orange

a handful of walnuts, crushed

Make a slit in the side of each date and remove the pit. Mix the mascarpone with the orange zest and crushed walnuts. Place the mixture in the freezer for 10 minutes then place a quenelle of the filling in each date.

tartiflette and good news

2009-12-19T06:30:00.000-08:00

I was expecting to hear by email, this news that I've been anxiously awaiting for ten days, but it arrived by post, as I was lying on the sofa in a trance, covered in a purring cat fur coat watching the snow falling and listening to St. Paul's cathedral choir singing Christmas carols. Between ding, dong, merrily on high and silent night the post lady gave a toot toot and handed BB a thick white envelope bearing a Paris postmark. For years now I've been talking about doing a cookery course and I finally went ahead and applied to the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu cookery school in Paris last week and I've been accepted to do the basic cuisine course in March. So I'm off to live in Paris for three months. How good does that sound?

The envelope contained the usual admin stuff - terms and conditions of payment, tuition fees payment form, internal rules of the school, housing information - and a measurement sheet for my uniform. I've never worn a uniform for work before - unless you count the Batman cape I had to wear in court. BB, whilst happy for me, is sad that I'm going away for so long but I can always pop back for the odd weekend (three hours by TGV) to re-stock the freezer with PC dinners. I'm so excited.

To celebrate I made my favourite winter comfort food - tartiflette - and because I was feeling in such a generous mood, I didn't fight BB for the crusty cheese bits stuck to the sides of the (chipped) dish.

Tartiflette
Ingredients
Serves 4-6
2½ lb/1.1 kg potatoes, peeled
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, sliced
½ lb/225 g bacon, diced
½ cup white wine
1 large Reblochin cheese, cut in half horizontally
salt and pepper

1. Boil the potatoes until just cooked. Drain and cut into chunks.

2. Heat the oil in a frying-pan and fry the onion for about 5 minutes until golden brown then add the bacon and cook for another 5 minutes.

3. Place the potatoes, onion and bacon in a large ovenproof dish and season with salt and pepper. Place the cheese halves rind side up on top and pour over the wine. Bake in the oven at 350°F/175°C for 20 minutes.

rabbit stew, Fidel Castro and the ice-cream van

2009-12-16T04:50:00.000-08:00

Our freezer is fit to burst at the moment with all the meat we've been given in the last few days: wild boar from Roquin, half a goat from Mini-B, red deer from a jubilant Jean-Yves - who shot the only stag of the season* and his first in 20 years of hunting - and a rabbit from Pierre.

The goat was delivered in an old clapped-out ice-cream van that Mini-B is currently using to deliver hay to his cows now that all his tractors and his C15 are broken down. As if that wasn't ridiculous enough, he's grown a long beard that looks like a packet of dry Weetabix and taken to wearing combat gear (trousers held up with a bungee cord) and a military cap that make him look like a young Fidel Castro. He's a sight to behold driving round the village.

The rabbit from Pierre was still warm, having just been shot down by the lake, and after BB had skinned and jointed it I made a rabbit stew. Wild rabbit has a much stronger, gamier flavour than its farmed cousin and it went very well with olives in this recipe by Anthony Bourdain.

Lapin aux olives
Ingredients
Serves 4
4 rabbit legs
1 small onion, coarsely chopped
1 small carrot, coarsely chopped
1 celery stick, coarsely chopped
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs thyme
1 sprig rosemary
1 sprig flat leaf parsley
1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
1½ cups white wine
flour for dredging, plus 1 tbsp
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp tomato paste
¼ cup red wine vinegar
2 cups chicken stock
handful of pitted green olives
salt and pepper

1. Combine the rabbit with the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, bay leaves, herbs, peppercorns and wine. Marinate for 2 hours.

2. Drain the marinade and reserve the liquid and vegetables separately. Pat the rabbit dry, season with salt and pepper and dredge in flour. In a pan heat the olive oil until hot and add the butter then brown the rabbit on both sides until golden brown (about 3-4 minutes per side) and remove.

3. In the same pan, brown the vegetables from the marinade until caramelised, add tomato paste and flour then stir in the vinegar and marinade liquid. Cook until the liquid is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon then add the chicken stock and bring to the boil. Add the rabbit pieces and cook over a low heat until the meat is tender (about 1 hour).

4. Remove the rabbit and set aside. Strain the cooking liquid and return to the pan. Add the rabbit, bring to the boil, season with salt and pepper and stir in the olives.

*Gun hunting is tightly controlled in France in terms of the species and number that may be hunted and is managed at a regional level according to the ecological needs of the area and its animal life. In our commune this season, the quota is 4 red deer (one stag, one doe and two fawns) and 14 roe deer - with an unlimited number of wild boar.

Geneva: caviar, Chinese and a naked man

2009-12-13T07:45:00.000-08:00

Glimpses of tangerine skies and mountains embroidered with snow between ancient four-storey shuttered buildings; a €150 spoonful of caviar washed down with a shot of Beluga vodka; an epic Chinese banquet with perfectly formed dim sum and a naked man in the bottom of a sake glass. Oh, Geneva.

Five of us - Nainbo and his wife (who come from Geneva), Papou, BB and I - set off early on Friday morning under a clear blue sky for the one-and-a-half-hour trip to Geneva. First stop, Planet Caviar (where Nainbo's son works) - importer and exporter of some of the finest caviar and smoked salmon in the world - for a tasting.

We were extremely privileged to taste some Black Beluga from Iran - there's about 150 euros' worth shown there - which we licked straight off our hands without any kind of garnish. It tasted like a breath of fresh sea air with a note of something earthy and the eggs just melted in the mouth like butter. It was wonderful - and nothing like the cheap imitation stuff you buy in the supermarket. This was followed by a chaser of smooth Beluga vodka in these cool glasses which you'd be tempted to slip in your pocket if you were that way inclined.

Next stop, the supermarket, to stock up on Tête De Moine cheese for my Swiss Girolle cheese cutter which makes beautiful curled flowers of cheese, and Swiss chocolate.

Laden down with our purchases and still giddy (and slightly smug, it has to be said) from the tasting, we stopped off at a brasserie for an apéro before lunch, where BB and Nainbo sat staring out the window at cars playing spot-the-latest-model.

Lunch was an extravaganza, a kaleidoscope of aromas and flavours which made me briefly pine for the city and a Chinese restaurant on my doorstep: beef balls with pickled ginger; dumplings - pork, translucent shrimp, scallop and steamed vegetable; prawn spring rolls wearing a mohair coat of crispy white shavings of bread; crab balls; steamed sea bass with chilli; fried scallop with asparagus; stir fried sliced duck with pickled ginger and pineapple; chicken with black bean sauce and green pepper. I tried everything and had to loosen my jeans before I could squeeze in a miniature dessert of sponge cake sandwiched with ice-cream and red berries, rounded off with sake, which held a little surprise in the bottom of the cup.

As we left the city, the sun was setting on the snowy mountain peaks, illuminating them a dramatic tangerine and I fell asleep in the car making little snuffling noises of contentment.

sheep and chickpea salad

2009-12-09T11:39:00.000-08:00

I couldn't get to sleep last night, it was raining so hard, but I had to be up early so I started counting sheep.

The sheep of my sleep-deprived imagination are cartoon sheep, thick and white as bales of cotton wool, doing split leaps over a fence (this is apparently the stereotype - even though I've never been taught how to count sheep or discussed it with anybody else) but by number 12 my sheep was looking lightly grilled round the edges and had a sprig of rosemary in its mouth and my mind started wandering to recipes and I had to start all over again.

We're going to Geneva on Friday to do some shopping and have lunch in my favourite Chinese restaurant - so the iron and the R&B boots will get two outings this year.

I made this chickpea and carrot salad with orange vinaigrette using organic sunflower oil which added a subtle smoky flavour to the nuttiness of the chickpeas and the sweetness of the carrot and orange. Warning: You may be tempted to eat the whole lot straight out of the bowl before it reaches the table.

Ingredients
1 tin chickpeas
1 carrot, grated
Chopped flat leaf parsley
For the vinaigrette
1 dsp cider vinegar
1 dsp orange juice
2 dsp organic sunflower oil
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper

Make the vinaigrette by placing all the ingredients in a screw-top jar and shake to combine everything. Place the chickpeas and carrot in a bowl and pour over the vinaigrette. Mix well and garnish with chopped parsley.

the law is a (horse's) ass

2009-12-04T04:55:00.000-08:00

Our fireman friend Titi came round yesterday looking for some legal advice on French planning law - from me, a Scottish criminal lawyer. I'm quite often asked for advice on legal problems as varied as (French) divorce, (French) debt recovery, (French) liquidation, (French) land disputes, (Italian!) consumer law, (American!!) consumer law (I actually wrote a vague 'I know my consumer rights and will take you to court unless ...' letter on that occasion and got some money back for the boy), but they all look at me in disbelief when I try to explain that the law is completely different in every country and anyway, I'm not an expert in any of these fields in Scotland, never mind anywhere else. But they just don't get it.

Titi's being taken to court by the mairie for building an impressive wooden shelter for his beautiful new horse (unlike Nainbo's unimpressive one for his donkeys) without planning permission.

I appreciate you can't have people building willy-nilly all over the shop, but we're talking about a horse-box-sized construction in the middle of the woods to protect his animal from the harsh winter elements - not the Elysée Palace. Ultimately the mairie could allow him to leave it there but they're making him pull it down and we can't help thinking that this is an act of petty retribution for Titi resigning from the local council. (I could say a lot more here about local planning laws and how zones suddenly change from non-constructable to constructable depending on who's in office and how much land the incumbents have - but then I would probably become an (involuntary) expert in (French) libel law.)

Anyway, he's refusing to pull it down so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

BB managed to wrench himself away from the kitchen table and Adventure Rider today (it almost required medical intervention and skin grafts!) but left 25 metres of water pipe for the new house uncoiled round and round the kitchen and the sitting-room in an attempt to straighten it out. Have you ever tried balancing a hot tray of chicken kievs whilst playing Chinese Ropes with 25 mm plastic piping at knee height? Thought not.

This was a Ready Steady Cook meal because all I had in the fridge were two chicken breasts, an egg and some butter - and some two day-old bread, a clove of garlic and potatoes and herbs from the garden. So I made chicken kiev and hasselback potatoes with sage - which was very, very tasty.

Chicken Kiev

Ingredients

Serves 2

2 skinless chicken breasts

2 large knobs of butter

1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed

1 dessert spoon finely chopped herbs, such as parsley and/or chives

1 egg

Plain flour for dusting

Breadcrumbs

Olive oil

1. Place each chicken breast between clingfilm and pound using the flat side of a mallet to about ½ cm / ¼ inch thickness.

2. Mash the butter, garlic and herbs together and form into 2 log shapes.

3. Place the butter at one end of the chicken breast and roll up, folding the sides in as you go, to completely enclose the butter. Leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.

4. In a small bowl, lightly beat the egg. Coat the chicken in flour, dip in the egg mixture then coat with breadcrumbs.

5. Heat some olive oil in a frying-pan and shallow fry until the kievs are golden brown on all sides. Remove from the pan and place in a moderately hot oven for 15-20 minutes until cooked through.

Hasselback Potatoes with Sage

Peel some potatoes and make small slices ¾ of the way through each one all along it. Tuck some torn sage into each slit, brush with olive oil and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Place in a moderately hot oven for 45-60 minutes until soft in the middle.

sleeping injuries and kidneys

2009-12-02T05:13:00.000-08:00

You, dear readers, must be as sick of looking at those pictures of the crane as I was looking at the real thing for so many months. I really must try and write more frequently. So without further ado ...

BB is working on pre-plumbing and pre-electrics at the moment which would appear to involve sitting at the kitchen table in front of his laptop reading the news out loud or following the threads in the Adventure Rider Ride the World forum - when he should be swotting up on the latest French building regs. He was in the kitchen again today as I was trying to cook in peace, shrieking: "Dingy! Dingy! The man was rescued in a dingy!" (many of his few words are exclamations of disbelief at poor spelling), followed rather too gleefully I thought by: "Man walks free after strangling wife in his sleep".

Actually, I've been on the receiving end of something similar a couple of times - nothing as drastic as death by strangulation, obviously - but I've woken up with a yelp after BB has hit me in his sleep. He woke himself up the first time and said: "I'm sorry my love. I thought you were Mini-B"! As a result I've taken to sleeping turned away and as far over from him as possible and wake up looking as if someone has rolled a pizza wheel across my face, where it's been pressed into the edge of the mattress all night.

You realise things may be off to a rocky start when a recipe begins: "Soak in warm salted water for 2 hours to get rid of the vile smell." So began the recipe for rognons de porc aux tomates (pig's kidneys in tomato sauce). This is confirmed when the cat flees the house squawking like a wailing baby when you place a morsel of the offending article before him. But this turned out to be a big hit with BB, who likes his offal, and with me, who doesn't - thanks to the rich tomato sauce. For the rognon cognoscenti out there, this one's for you.

Rognons de porc aux tomates

Ingredients
Serves 2
10 oz / 275 g trimmed pig's kidneys
4 oz / 100 g chopped bacon
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 glass white wine
1 tsp sugar
A handful of fresh basil
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Soak the kidneys in warm salted water for 2 hours. Remove and pat dry.

2. Fry the bacon and kidneys gently in some olive oil for 20 minutes. Remove from the pan and brown the onion in the same pan in the remaining bacon fat. Add the tomatoes, wine, sugar, basil, seasoning and cook for 15-20 minutes until the sauce has reduced by a third. Return the bacon and kidneys to the pan and cook for a further 15 minutes. Serve with buttered toast.

going, going, gone

2009-11-25T01:40:00.001-08:00

le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!

2009-11-21T06:15:00.001-08:00

We arrived at the bar last night to find dozens of people packed into the small heaving space beneath fluttering banners proclaiming le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!

The third Thursday of November is, of course, when the barely-weeks-old Beaujolais Nouveau arrives, when bars and restaurants compete to cash in on this brilliant marketing coup by serving the new wine with local delicacies such as (here in Savoie) tête de veau, cochonnaille (pork by-products such as ears and feet - egads!) and potée (a hotpot of pork and cabbage). Framboise, my dieting friend and owner of the bar, thankfully opted for platters of garlic and herb saucisson and cornichons, salty goats' cheese with walnuts and slices of fresh baguette.

Many of our friends were there, including Mini-B, Nainbo, Papou (who was playing the accordion), Roquin, Top Modèl and the Swivel Chair, M. Boule De Billard - and old man Marcel (kleenex alert!) with his crocus-yellow teeth and slobbery basset chops.

As we jostled for space, two glasses of wine were passed to us with a: "That's from Thierry over there". Thierry is a man we've met maybe four times and on three of those occasions he's bought us a drink. This isn't an isolated incident; the generosity of the people here is overwhelming and it can be almost impossible to buy a round of drinks sometimes. But we tried and before we knew it, the last accordion note had died out, the bar was closing and we'd missed our pizzas. Instead, we stood in the kitchen when we got home eating cold vegetable curry straight out of the saucepan making farmyard noises of contentment. Yum.

Meanwhile, over in England, a musical event of an entirely different kind was taking place:

Biannual event in our small village hall is a spectacle to behold.

A Musical Evening: fiddlers, pipers, whistlers, piddlers. All hopelessly out of tune. Morris Dancers - twelve of - all thumping round the hall with their bells jangling and their sticks cracking. Two of them performed a rather inelegant dance BLINDFOLDED around 12 freshly-laid hens' eggs strategically placed 60cms apart on the floor. Yes they used a tape measure and no they didn't break one.

The best is yet to come: three morbidly obese lady clog dancers. No music. Rictus grins. Arms by their sides but feet and ample bosoms going like the clappers.

Five hours later I staggered home full of gin to find the cat had been sick on my bed. I do so look forward to these Musical Evenings.

Guest blogeuse, Miss Took, England

azure skies and cranes

2009-11-20T07:26:00.001-08:00

Oh, glorious day!

Not only was the sun shining in a cloudless azure sky, but the little Italian man who arrived exactly 15 months ago to erect the crane, returned this morning to take it down. Yes - we've sold it - and for exactly the same price as we paid for it. I thought the chances of selling it at all were between slim and non-existent - so this is a huge result.

Every time I glanced out of the window to see how things were getting on, the Italian's mouth was motoring away and BB's head was moving like a nodding donkey, politely pretending to be listening. BB is a man of few words but prefers to hear even fewer. Four hours later, job done, he staggered into the kitchen and stood, shoulders slumped and head hung like a broken sunflower, exhausted from all that ear-bashing.

The crane is now sitting folded up, like a gigantic yellow insect, waiting to be pulled up onto the plateau and thence on to the buyer's site. It's removal feels like a bigger milestone than the completion of the roof somehow - probably due to the sleepless stormy nights I spent worrying about it toppling over.

Tonight we're going out for take-away pizza and a couple of beers in that bar so I'm off to doll myself up a bit and put on my best socks and shoes.

These pork and apple meatballs with apple sauce - based on another Delia recipe - were a huge hit at lunchtime. They're quick and easy and cooked completely in the oven, sparing all that messy frying business.

Ingredients
Serves 4
1 lb/450 g minced pork
4 oz/110 g breadcrumbs
1 onion, peeled and quartered
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and quartered
1 heaped tsp dried sage (I used fresh)
Salt and freshly ground pepper

For the sauce
½ onion, peeled and chopped
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and sliced
1 oz/25 g butter
Freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp sugar

1. Pass the onion and apple through a mincer (I used my food processor) then mix with the pork, breadcrumbs and sage and season. Form into balls and place in a buttered ovenproof dish and cover with buttered foil. Place in the oven at 375°F/190°C for 45 minutes. Then remove the foil and raise the oven temperature to 400F/200C and continue to bake for a further 30 minutes, basting now and then, until the meatballs are nicely browned on top.

2. To make the sauce, soften the onion in the butter for 10 minutes, then stir in the sliced apple and 1 tablespoon water. Put a lid on and simmer till soft, then add a little freshly grated nutmeg and the sugar. Beat the sauce till fluffy and serve hot with the meatballs and mashed potatoes.

always be prepared

2009-11-18T05:59:00.001-08:00

BB's had a bug for the last few days so there's been no activity on the mill and his loss of appetite has meant that my cooking repertoire has been restricted to soup and soft-boiled eggs. On Saturday morning, convinced that he had a temperature of 120 (as men do!), he stayed in bed while I went out to buy bread.

I don't know what possessed me to do this (actually I do, it was laziness), but I left the house wearing an old pair of three-quarter-length tracky bottoms with holes in the knees, my bubble gum-pink bed socks with silver hearts on the sides (a present from BB's aunt - great for slobbing around the house but should never be worn out in public) and my old paint-spattered gardening shoes with the unstuck right sole. I figured I would park right outside the boulangerie, approach the counter where nothing below my waist would be visible, buy the bread and dash back to the car without anyone spotting me.

Only, when I parked outside the shop, I clipped the kerb and watched in dismay as the back tyre deflated like a balloon.

When I couldn't get the wheel off I had to walk down the high street, loose sole slapping the pavement beneath dayglo sock like someone needing care in the community, and into the busy bar to call BB. Oh, the embarrassment. And BB wasn't exactly thrilled at being dragged out of bed (his death bed by this time) either.

"Always be prepared", as they say in the Girl Guides.

Chestnut soup with rosemary seemed like a good use of all those sweet chestnuts I collected from our trees last month, but after an hour peeling them with a sharp knife, two puncture wounds to my hand, three broken nails and an eye injury caused by flying shell shrapnel - here's a top tip: buy ready-peeled chestnuts!

Ingredients

Serves 4

8 oz/225 g peeled sweet chestnuts

1 medium onion, chopped

1 medium carrot, chopped

1 stick celery, chopped

2 medium potatoes, chopped

2 pints/1.2 l ham bone stock

salt and freshly ground pepper

1 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary to serve

Place all the ingredients in a large saucepan, bring up to simmering point, then put a lid on and simmer very gently for 45 minutes. Transfer to a blender and purée until smooth. Serve with the chopped rosemary.

♫ Cook along to: Glen Miller & His Orchestra The Chestnut Tree

honey roast pork

2009-11-07T08:47:00.000-08:00

We've had miserable weather lately - wind and torrential rain - which has seen the stream go from the lowest we've ever seen it to the highest in a matter of hours. We finished the mill roof just in the nick of time.

There is now floor decking down upstairs (the nice oak floorboards will go down right at the end) so I can walk around planning where furniture and light switches and bathroom fittings will go and I can walk out onto the balcony outside the bedrooms. I was tempted to put my hammock up straight away until BB pointed out that, given my accident-proneness, I would in all likelihood roll out of the hammock and over the edge and fall 20 feet into the river.

(I just asked BB: What do you call the thingy you're going to put along the edge of the balcony [so I don't fall off]?

BB: Grease.

I meant balustrade! Charming!)

The windows and doors arrive on 17 December (I don't know why it takes so long for standard-sized doors and windows to arrive) and will be fitted starting from the following day, so all being well, we should have a completely weatherproof house by Christmas.

The cider is still fermenting away and the bottles have acquired a foamy scum on the surface with what looks like frogspawn floating in it. It looks evil but I'm told this is normal.

I made honey roast pork with spices the other day with some of that award-winning honey. To make a honey glaze just mix some runny honey with a little water, 3 or 4 star anise and a heaped tsp of crushed coriander seeds. Heat in a pan, pour over the pork and roast in the oven.

pasta heaven

2009-10-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

I've just made pasta for the first time and it was a huge success - a floury adventure with a happy-ever-after ending. I was nervous about making it, but Jamie Oliver whispered reassurances from the pages of his book, telling me he really wanted me to make this, that it was quick and simple and something I was going to be extremely proud of. And he was right.

The inspiration was a plate of spinach and ricotta-stuffed tortellini with chestnut sauce that I ate in Mamma Rosa, a tiny cramped pizzeria tucked away down a narrow cobbled street in Lisbon on my way back from the Azores. I watched a raisin-faced man pummelling the dough behind the counter before coaxing it into dainty tortellini shapes and as soon as it passed my lips I knew I had to recreate that pasta heaven.

I resisted the temptation to splash out immediately on a pasta machine, fearing that it would join that graveyard of 'things-I-have-bought-and-used-once' (windsurfer, roller blades, exercise bike to name but a few) and invested instead in a €4 rolling-pin - which only heightened my gratification at the end result.

I made the pasta in a food processor using Jamie's Everyday Quick Pasta Recipe and filled it with spinach, ricotta, sweet chestnuts and parmesan. Wicked (as Jamie would say).

Ravioli of spinach, ricotta and sweet chestnuts

Quick pasta
Serves 4
1 lb/500 g strong pasta flour
5 fresh eggs
semolina flour for dusting

Filling
9 oz/250 g ricotta
5 oz/150 g cooked spinach
2 oz/50 g cooked sweet chestnuts, smashed up
2 oz/50 g finely grated parmesan
salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Put the flour and eggs in a food processor and switch on. Leave until it all comes together into a ball. Take it out (the bowl should be clean) and work by hand for 2 minutes or until smooth, silky and elastic. Wrap in clingfilm and allow to rest in the fridge for 1 hour.

2. Mix all the filling ingredients together. After an hour remove the dough from the fridge and divide into 2 balls. Re-cover one of the balls and with the base of your palm, flatten the other one slightly. Lightly flour a clean surface and roll out the dough until you have a very thin sheet of pasta about 1-2 mm thick.

3. Cut the pasta sheet into circles (about 10 cm/4 inches - or whatever size you want). Place a teaspoon of filling just off centre, brush the edges of the pasta with water and fold in half. Press down the edges with a fork.

4. To cook, place in a pan of boiling salted water for 3-4 minutes.

PS: That giant chestnut in the picture is from the same tree as the tennis ball-sized chestnut that looked like a medieval spiked battle flail.

honey revisited (because I like the pictures)

2009-10-23T06:10:00.000-07:00

A dieting friend came for lunch today and it pains me to say this, but at her request and under duress we ate grilled chicken with steamed vegetables. The pleasure of food has as much to do with the preparation as the eating as far as I'm concerned, and tossing some veg in a steamer and a couple of chicken breasts under the grill doesn't quite cut the mustard. We may as well have feasted on roasted woodland troll with sautéed bladder wrack on a bed of straw for all the sensual enjoyment it gave me - but hey, there are people starving so I'll quit whingeing.

I could've joined BB in slow-cooked chevreuil (roe deer, shot last weekend by Roquin) with red wine, bacon and onions, the sticky tender meat falling off the bone like wet toast, but I didn't want my friend to feel left out. Instead I took vicarious pleasure in watching BB devour it, salivating like a dog waiting to be thrown a bone.

The garden produce that's been sitting in the kitchen for the last two weeks has been dispatched freezerwards in various incarnations and all that's left to do (for the moment anyway) is make green tomato chutney with the last of the tomatoes.

I leave you with a recipe for venison cooked in red wine à l' Elizabeth David - so simple, so slow and oh so delicious.

Ingredients

2 lb shoulder or flank of venison

4 tbsp port (or red wine)

4 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp flour

1 large onion, sliced

6 rashers of bacon

salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Tie the venison in a sausage shape and leave to marinate in a large bowl with the port (or red wine), vinegar and olive oil for 24 hours.

2. Take the meat out (reserving the marinade), roll in the flour and place in an ovenproof dish. Place a layer of onions on top and then cover with the bacon rashers. Pour over the marinade, season with salt and pepper, cover with greaseproof paper and the lid and cook in the oven at a low temperature ( 140°C/ 310°F) for 4 - 4½ hours.

3. Serve with a purée of celeriac and potatoes.

honey

2009-10-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

This gold medal-winning honey is made here in the village by the father (or rather the father's bees) of a friend of ours. It tastes like the distillation of toffee, Alpine meadows and mountain forests and looks like a liquid jewel. Perfect with fresh baguette and butter for breakfast. Lovely!

cider house rules

2009-10-19T06:40:00.000-07:00

What do Hoary Morning, Slap-Ma-Girdle, Pig Snout and Hangy Down Cluster all have in common?

The answer is: they're all varieties of apple and I know this from googling "cider making" searching for technical terms to describe how we made ours yesterday.

A few people in the village still have traditional cider making equipment and an elderly couple (relatives of Mini-B) offered to let us use theirs. This is what it looks like:

To begin with, we crushed (or 'scratted', to use the technical term) the apples in a 'scrattter' - a wooden box with two rotating drums studded with nails in the bottom resembling a medieval torture device (photo 1). This one has been fitted with an electric motor to turn the drums instead of by hand using the wheel on the left. As the apples are thrown into the box they pass between the drums and emerge underneath as a rough pulp known as the 'pomace' (or pommage) which is placed in the press (photo 2). The pomace is then covered with a layer of straw and wooden blocks, cut to fit the barrel, are placed on top which squeeze out the juice by applying equal pressure when the screw at the top is turned (photo 3). The bottled juice will now be left to ferment for three weeks au naturel.

We made cider for the first time five years ago and some of the plastic bottles we'd brought into the house from the woodshed exploded because we hadn't left the tops unscrewed. We came back from the bar one night to find every surface - walls, ceiling, floor, furniture - shining with tiny points of bright light as if the glitter fairy had been in. That time we made 150 litres of the stuff and what we didn't drink (or the house didn't wear) we turned into Calvados the following autumn.

I made an apple cheesecake using some of the unfermented apple juice and some puréed apples which was yummy, although I have to admit it tasted more of lemon than apple.

Ingredients
2 oz/50 g butter
2 oz/50 g caster sugar
4 oz/100 g scratted digestive biscuits

Filling
8 oz/225 g full fat soft cheese
2 eggs, separated
4 oz/100 g caster sugar
grated rind and juice of ½ lemon
¼ pint/150 ml crème fraîche
½ pint/300 ml apple purée
1 x 11 g sachet powdered gelatine
8 tbsp apple juice

1. Melt the butter and sugar in a pan and stir in the biscuit crumbs. Press evenly over the bottom of a greased loose-bottomed 7-8 inch/18-20 cm round cake tin.

2. Soften the cheese in a large bowl. Beat in the egg yolks, 2 oz/50 g of the sugar, the lemon rind and juice, crème fraîche and apple purée. Put the gelatine and apple juice in a small heatproof bowl over a pan of hot water and stir until the gelatine has dissolved. Beat the gelatine into the cheese mixture and leave until on the point of setting.

3. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and whisk in the remaining sugar. Fold lightly into the cheese mixture and spoon into the tin. Chill for 3-4 hours until set.

♫ Cook along to: Divine Comedy Something For The Weekend

folders\dream house\dream on\round kitchen

2009-10-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

We're on to fun things like kitchen design now and working out where services will go. For years I've been cutting pages out of interior design mags and adding them to my "dream house" folder and these have been passed to BB for approval.

My dream house has a round kitchen in it, as per the glossy magazine article on a round house in my folder, but BB said putting a round kitchen in a square room would be like putting a round peg in a square hole - i.e. it wouldn't work - so I've had to file that particular dream in a subfolder called "dream on". There's still much remaining in the parent folder however, swimming pool and wine cellar (amongst others) having been given top-level approval.

The kitchen table is groaning under the weight of apples and sweet chestnuts from our trees, the last of the red tomatoes and green peppers from the garden, caulis and turnips from Roquin and a large wild boar casserole I made with sanglier given to us by one of our hunter friends. So there's much to do in the kitchen at the weekend - and we may have a go at making cider.

Ingredients

Serves 4

2 lbs/900 g wild boar (or beef), cut into 2 inch/5 cm cubes

1 small onion, sliced

1 small carrot, cut into chunks

1 celery stick, chopped

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 cup/225 ml plus ½ cup/110 ml red wine

salt and freshly ground pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

4 tbsp butter

1 tbsp flour

1 cup/225 ml veal stock

2 sprigs of fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

8 oz/225 g smoked bacon cut into cubes

4 oz/110 g button mushrooms fried in a tbsp butter

chopped flat leaf parsley to serve

1. Place the meat in a large bowl with the onion, carrot, celery and garlic. Cover with 1 cup/225 ml of red wine then cover with clingfilm and leave to marinate for 24 hours in the fridge.

2. Drain the liquid from the marinade and set aside to use later. Reserve the meat and vegetables separately. Pat the meat dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a large ovenproof dish and once hot, add the butter. Brown the meat in batches and set aside.

3. Add the reserved vegetables and brown over a medium heat until caramelized. Stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the the red wine vinegar and the remaining red wine and reduce by half, then add the veal stock, the reserved marinade, the herbs and the meat. Bring to the boil and season with salt and pepper. Place in the oven for 2 hours at 150°C/300°F.

4. Fry the bacon to colour slightly and set aside. Gently fry the mushrooms in the butter for 2-3 minutes. Add the bacon and mushrooms to the casserole and cook for a further hour. When ready to serve, garnish with the chopped parsley.

♫ Cook along to: Aerosmith Dream On

figs

2009-10-14T14:57:00.000-07:00

Autumn is here and it seems to have arrived with the suddenness of the guillotine. Maybe it's because I've just returned from the Azores where everything is cast in the spectrum of Dulux Paradise Green, but I'm sure there wasn't so much Ginger Glow, Flame Frenzy and Delhi Bazaar this time last year. There's frost on the car windscreen at 6 a.m. (this is hearsay obviously!) and the comforting fragrance of wood smoke with a base note of apples in the air.

We went to order the windows and doors today and it will work out cheaper to engage a professional to fit them than to do it ourselves: 5.5% TVA (VAT) as opposed to 19.6% to be exact because it's a renovation - and we can reclaim 25% on "green items" (e.g. high insulation windows - which all of ours are) against next year's tax bill. Bit of a no-brainer really.

It's not really the kind of weather for chilled puddings, but I recently acquired an ice-cream maker + a couple of kilos of figs = fig ice-cream, which was pretty amazing (I thought so anyway, for a first-time ice-cream-maker) but I used such an amalgam of recipes that I can't remember what I did - so you'll just have to make do with the picture I'm afraid.

Singaporean fish wraps

2009-10-09T06:50:00.000-07:00

Help ma boab (quelle surprise)! The roof is finished. While I've been rainbathing in the Azores, BB has been toiling under the relentless Savoyard sun, et voilà - 4,000 slates, €15,000 and three months later ...

The window problem alluded to in his brief email was this: the glass had to be removed from the Velux windows before the brackets could be fixed, then reinserted. So he had to hold the glass with one hand (weighing 70 kg - or two sacks of cement) while trying to disengage two small pins in the hinges with his other three in order to slot the glass back in. All whilst balancing at a precarious angel on the roof!

He then realised that he'd put the copper flashing on incorrectly on the first two windows and had to take all the slates off above them (200) to correct the mistake and put them all back on again. This is his fourth - and last - roof and the relief is palpable. Not bad for someone who's petrified of heights. Windows and doors next.

I came across this recipe for Singaporean fish wraps in a Homes & Gardens magazine recently which uses banana leaves. But since banana trees are hard to come by in the French Alps (unless you grow them in your front garden like Poire) I substituted vine leaves which I picked when we helped Roquin with la vendange (grape harvest) just before I left for the Azores. The result is a kind of light fluffy fish mousse with all those amazing Asian flavours - although I should have blanched the leaves first to make them more pliable because it was a bit like wrestling with live bats, the leaves were so tricky to tie up.

Ingredients
Serves 4-6
25 g fresh ginger
750 g boneless, skinless white fish cut into chunks
2 tsp ground turmeric
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp chilli oil
2 tbsp fish sauce
150 ml coconut cream
fresh banana leaves (to be used as wrapping only)
peanut or corn oil
1 kaffir lime leaf, shredded

1. Peel and finely slice the ginger and put in a food processor with the fish, turmeric, garlic, sugar, chilli oil, fish sauce and coconut cream. Blitz for 30 seconds to form a paste.

2. Brush the banana leaves with oil on one side and cut into rectangles. Place a teaspoon of paste in the centre of each rectangle and top with shreds of kaffir lime leaf. Fold the parcels and secure with string. Cook under a very hot grill for 2 minutes each side.

♫ Cook along to: Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell

Azorean diary - a quick olá

2009-10-04T04:40:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am with my chums At Flores in the Azores.

I'd like to be able to give you (and me!) an update, from afar, on the building work back home but when I emailed BB to ask how things were progressing (and to tell him that my lost luggage had turned up) I received the following chatty missive: "roof good. velux bad." Four words, leaving me to assume that there are problems putting the roof windows in. On vera.

My hosts are fellow foodies and it makes a nice change having someone else do all the (fabulous) cooking. Yesterday we gathered watercress from the riverbank and made Delia's watercress soup, which we all agreed was in our top 5 soup hits.

Ingredients

Serves 6-8

8 oz/225 g watercress, de-stalked (reserve a few leaves for garnishing)

4 oz/110 g butter

white parts of 5 leeks, chopped

4 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped

3 pints/1.75 litres stock made with vegetable bouillon powder

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Melt the butter in a large pan and add the leeks, potato and watercress. Stir around to coat with the butter.

2. Add some salt, cover with a lid and leave the vegetables to sweat for about 20 minutes.

3. Add the stock, bring to simmering point and simmer, covered, for about 15-20 minutes. Leave to cool and liquidise.

4. To serve, reheat and garnish with some watercress leaves.

state of play

2009-09-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

I'm off on my annual pilgrimage to the Azores tomorrow morning to visit my best friends so I leave you with pictures of the roof as it looked at the close of play today. It's a long shot - but it could just be finished by the time I come back in a week.

nuts

2009-09-23T07:17:00.000-07:00

Mini-B's been here the last few days helping BB with the slating - sporadically anyway, when he's not been summoned to remove his cows from someone's front garden or disappeared to exchange sackfuls of wild mushrooms for tractor tyres. Today they put up the first chimney and as BB stood back to admire their handiwork, I came along and said, "it's squint". This happens all the time and the script goes like this:

BC: That [chimney/window/door/beam/shelf] is squint.

BB: (long steely silence with much flaring of nostrils) Well it's too late to do anything about it!

BC: What do you mean it's too late? You've just this second put it [up/in/on].

BB: Well I'm not changing it!

BC: Ok. We'll just be known as the foreigners who live in the crooked house.

That works every time and he spent the next hour (huffing and puffing) trying to budge the chimney a couple of centimetres.

When I was out running earlier I thought I'd stumbled across a family of baby hedgehogs, these sweet chestnuts were so big. They were as big as tennis balls but you wouldn't want to slip one of these in your pocket for your second serve. Which brings me nicely on to bulls' testicles. Poire is just back from holiday in Alsace where rognons blancs featured on the menu in a restaurant they went to. I'll just file those with tête de veau I think.

shiny shiny roof

2009-09-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

The roof is completely waterproof now and the battens and copper edging and guttering are on. The copper was eye-wateringly expensive but it lasts forever and reacts with rainwater to keep the slates moss and lichen-free. It also looks rather grand when it first goes on but sadly it will naturally oxodise from that lustrous finish to a deep bronze and eventually to a verdigris patina.

I found this photograph (below) of the roof of the house we're in now (which I'm going to call L'Atelier because it was originally two semi-detached workshops), taken at the same stage as the mill roof and it looks tiny in comparison: 120 square metres to 232 square metres to be exact.

We didn't have a crane first time round so BB set up a pulley and winch system to get the slates up to the roof. If you look closely (click on the photo to enlarge) you can see a 'tramway' in the centre of the roof (two vertical battens close together) below which there's a rope attached to a wooden box. When BB needed more slates, he would whistle and I would trot over, carry bundles of 20 up onto the scaffolding, place them in the box and hoist them up the tramway with the rope, puffing away like a rheumatic chicken. Boy, I was keen back then (well I was in the first flush of wedded bliss) but after seven years of building work my enthusiasm has, shall we say, dulled slightly - rather like the copper.

I've added a new feature opposite where you can view a slideshow of the progress of the building work from the beginning to the present day. I'm afraid you have to set up a snapfish account to view it (I can't find a way round this) but it takes 10 seconds and only requires you to give your name, email address and a password.

♫ View along to: The Velvet Underground Venus in Furs

roasted tomato soup

2009-09-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

We're off to a Bavarian soirée tonight, advertised on the flyer as: ambiance Tyrolienne avec Magalie la Yodleuse (a Tyrolean atmosphere with Maggie the yodeller), where for €17 a head we can eat choucroute (sour cabbage) and drink bladder-deforming quantities of beer.

Things have advanced on the roof and I promise to bring you some photos in a couple of days. In the meantime, the tomatoes keep coming so here's a recipe for roasted tomato soup with basil purée.

Ingredients
Serves 4
3 lb/1.35 kg ripe tomatoes
3 garlic cloves, left whole and unpeeled
1 oz/25 g basil leaves
5 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp caster sugar
1 onion, chopped
2 celery sticks, chopped
2 tsp sundried tomato paste
25 fl oz/750 ml vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Skin the tomatoes by pouring boiling water on them, leave for 1-2 minutes then slip off the skins.

2. Cut the tomatoes in half and arrange on a baking tray, cut side up and top each half with a basil leaf. Place the garlic cloves on the tray too, leaving their skins on. Then drizzle with 1 tbsp olive oil, sprinkle on the sugar and season with salt and pepper. Roast for about 1 hour at 370°F/190°C or until the edges of the tomatoes are slightly blackened.

3. Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a pan and fry the onion and celery for 5 minutes until soft. Add the tomato paste and stock and simmer for 15 minutes.

4. Scrape the tomatoes and any juice and the garlic pulp (skins removed) into a food processor, add the stock mixture and whiz to a purée then sieve to remove the pips.

5. Just before serving make the basil purée. Strip the leaves into a mortar, sprinkle them with half a teaspoon of salt, then bash the leaves down with the pestle. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Drizzle over the reheated soup.

♫ Cook along to: Teenage Fanclub (they have a song called the cabbage but this is one of my TF faves) Start Again

la chasse

2009-09-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

Brrrr. It's cold. I'm wearing socks for the first time since April and I'm seriously thinking of lighting the fire. I'm not complaining though. We had a glorious summer - lots of sunshine and dining alfresco and swimming - and now we have skiing to look forward to. Bring on the snow.

On Sunday (the start of la chasse - the hunting season) we had lunch chez Nainbo where we arrived to find him (still, after three hours!) stuffing green beans into empty plastic Perrier bottles. "Mini-B told me this is the best way to freeze them", he said as we tittered, knowing that Mini-B was pulling his leg. I've just frozen mine the traditional way - by blanching and placing in freezer bags.

Nainbo is a very good cook, effortlessly throwing things together from the garden without any fuss. Before I moved to France, other than my good friend HC, the only men I knew who were interested in cooking were professional chefs, but here you're as likely to hear regular guys swapping bread recipes in the bar as you are to hear them discussing football - and just as fervently.

For starters we had salad of green beans, tomatoes, peppers and red onion (all from the garden) with a vinaigrette sauce, followed by roast leg of lamb accompanied by creamed sorrel with fried bread topped with sliced hard-boiled egg.

Top Modèl, who just got his permis de chasse this season, joined us for cheese and spiced pears with champagne to celebrate his first kill - three wild boar. We won't be seeing him on the roof at weekends from now on.

nature...

2009-09-10T16:21:00.000-07:00

...don't you just love it!

♫ Snap along to: David Bowie Starman

kite flying

2009-09-09T01:15:00.000-07:00

BB's having a hard time of it at the moment: he's having to put the remaining insulation panels and roofing felt on by himself because there's nobody around to help during the day. The polyurethane panels (measuring 9 feet by 4 feet) are stacked on palettes and lifted up to the roof on the crane fork but they tend to stick together. With two people, one either end, it's easy to jiggle them apart before flipping them into position but on your own with just one end to hold, it's a bit of a performance - especially when standing on wet slippery wood. And unrolling and attaching the roofing felt single-handedly is a bit like trying to fly a kite from up a tree in strong winds.

The remote for the crane broke (again) and he had to drive all the way to Lyon on Monday (2 hours away) to pick up a spare, which, when he got it back, didn't work either. So yesterday was spent waiting around all day for a phone call from the remote guy with instructions on how to fix it.

After lunch today I went out to do some things in the garden and when I passed the window five minutes later, BB was still sitting at the kitchen table gazing at his navel. The second time I passed, he was tidying out his tool belt; the third, brushing cobwebs off the ceiling; and the fourth, loading the dishwasher (for the first time ever) - anything to put off going back up on the roof!

affairs

2009-09-07T08:07:00.000-07:00

We attended our 7th annual village fête yesterday (I sent myself a sick note and took the day off today!) and as I looked around I realised that nearly every couple we've known since we moved here have split up. On the plateau just above us, one neighbour is having an affair with his next-door neighbour's best friend and his wife is having an affair with a much younger work colleague. The husband of the aforementioned next-door neighbour has just run off with his wife's sister. Their next-door neighbours, who were both previously married to other people, were having an affair before her husband was killed in a hunting accident. And their next-door neighbour (female) ran off with the baker's wife. And that's just within 200 yards of us. The mayor in the next village recently left his wife of 20 years for the waitress in their restaurant. And who should the jilted wife turn up with at the fête yesterday - but her husband's mistress! Call me old fashioned, but that seems a bit bizarre to me.

I hope all this wife swapping isn't contagious because I kind of like BB (whose take on affairs, incidentally, is: "why would you want more than one woman giving you grief"!).

I made one of my favourite veggie recipes today with hazelnuts (and last year's walnuts) from our tree - a classic nut roast.

Ingredients

40 g/1½ oz butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 sticks celery, chopped
225 g/8 oz mixed nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, brazils) coarsely chopped
225 g/8 oz tomatoes, skinned and finely chopped
175 g/6 oz wholemeal breadcrumbs
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 eggs, lightly beaten

1. Melt the butter in a large pan and fry the onions and celery for 5 minutes.

2. Add the nuts, tomatoes, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper and eggs and mix together.

3. Spoon into a greased 450 g/1 lb loaf tin, cover with oiled baking foil and bake for 50-60 minutes in the oven at 220°C/425°F.

♫ Cook along to: O'Jays Back Stabbers

Hong Kong garden

2009-09-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

We'd just finished lunch this afternoon (melon du jardin followed by another Chinese dish with green peppers) when a car crawled past the house and BB said, "that's the car of the guy who used to live here in the mill" - despite having only seen it once five years ago! BB can tell you the owner of every car in the village and beyond by the make, model, type and colour and, where there's more than one of the same (e.g. Citroen/C15/first/white - of which there are many here), the registration number. He often asks, when a car passes, "who was that?"

BC: Don't know.

BB: Well what car was it?

BC: Kind of pale yellow.

BB: What type?

BC: Mmm. Lemon chiffon maybe.

BB: No. The make?

BC: Four-door?

BB: Strewth!

Anyway, back to the car - this guy was born in the mill in 1934 and is the nephew of the previous owner, Leon Viard (or the son of Leon's brother Elie, if you like), mentioned in le moulin - a history. It was obvious they (he was with his wife) were itching for a look round so we went out to greet them and gave them a tour.

It must be strange going back to the house of your birth after 75 years to find so many changes. But he was aware of the state it was in before we even bought it (holes in the roof, major roof timbers broken or burnt, rotting principal supporting beams, floors propped and re-levelled) and seemed genuinely pleased with the work we're doing. When I asked him if he could have imagined a swimming pool in his old house he replied that he could never have imagined running water!

This Chinese chicken curry recipe by Ken Hom was brilliant.

Ingredients

Serves 4

450 g/1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 2.5 cm/1 in chunks

1 egg white

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sesame oil

2 tsp cornflour

300 ml/10 fl oz water

1 tbsp groundnut oil

225 g/8 oz green peppers, cut into 2.5 cm/1 in pieces

1 tbsp coarsely chopped garlic

150 ml/5 fl oz home made chicken stock

1½ tbsp Madras curry paste (I only used 1 dsp - which I thought was sufficient)

2 tsp sugar

1½ tbsp rice wine or sherry vinegar

1½ tbsp light soy sauce

1 tsp cornflour, blended with 1 tbsp water

basil leaves

1. Put the chicken in a bowl with the egg white, salt, sesame oil and 2 tsp of cornflour and leave for 20 minutes in the fridge.

2. Bring the water to the boil in a pan and add the chicken and leave on a low heat for 4 minutes until the chicken turns white. Remove.

3. Heat a wok until very hot and add the oil. Add the peppers and garlic and stir-fry for 2 minutes.

4. Add the stock, curry paste, sugar, rice wine, soy sauce and cornflour mixture. Cook for 2 minutes then add the chicken and stir until heated through. Serve with torn basil leaves.

♫ Cook along to: Siouxsie and the Banshees Hong Kong Garden

stir-fried pork with green peppers

2009-09-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

I've just nipped out to the local produce shop to buy bread and a nice bottle of rosé and to pick some green peppers from the garden for a stir-fry. Poire's coming for lunch. He arrived at 7 a.m. to help on the roof and dropped off his electric tomato squeezer for me to play with. This is a serious bit of kit (with a price to match) which skins and de-seeds tomatoes in a nanosecond, leaving a pulpy juice which can be frozen for warming winter soups when you long for a little taste of summer. I prepared 5 kg this morning in 12 minutes (including time spent washing, cutting and mopping up the juice I spilt all over the floor) compared to the 30 minutes it took me to do the same by hand with 10 tomatoes for gazpacho. Poire likes his gadgets. He has all the professional 'Good Life' equipment for sterilizing, bottle drying, corking, juicing, pulping, slicing, carving, squeezing, grinding, mincing, popping, locking, boogalooing - ok, I made the last three up, but they all sound like funk-style dances. He also has a dozen remotes for assorted media entertainment, air con, heating, oven (his oven door opens at the press of a button and the shelf comes out automatically) - even his shutters are photo-activated. Pah! I have one master remote - it's called a husband.

Green peppers are very good in a stir-fry I think - especially with pork. This is my recipe for stir-fried pork with green peppers.

Ingredients
Serves 4
450 g/1 lb boneless pork, cut into smallish pieces
2 medium green peppers, cut into smallish pieces
2 medium onions, cut into chunks
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 dsp chilli sauce
1 tbsp groundnut oil
salt and freshly ground pepper

For the marinade:
1 tbsp rice wine or dry sherry
1 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp cornflour

1. Mix the marinade ingredients together and leave the pork in the marinade for 20 minutes.

2. Heat the oil in a wok and stir-fry the pork until brown (about 2-3 minutes). Remove.

3. Reheat the wok and stir-fry the onions, garlic and green peppers until the pepper skins become slightly blistered. Then add the pork and the chilli sauce and stir until heated through. Serve with rice or noodles.

♫ Cook along to: Martina Topley Bird Intro

green fingers

2009-08-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

I'm way behind with my posts on what's been happening in the garden so above is just a sneeky peek of what's to come. My fingers are green and scented from picking armfuls of basil and green tomatoes from branches broken in the storm the other night.

The far side of the roof is now waterproof and Top Modèl and M. Boule De Billard started on the near side today. Progress is much slower now that Top Modèl has returned to work and Mr Katie Bear to England. Top Modèl has a day off on Monday and has offered to come and help again. He's an apprentice roofer and when he was here with his friend Nico, a qualified roofer, a couple of weeks ago it was amazing how speedily they moved around the roof and got things done. If only we had them both for a week - the roof would be finished in a jiffy.

the rabbit & the horse

2009-08-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

Well that's the housework over for another year. (BB actually told his Mum that the clean-up operation required the use of a shovel! - which was rather ungallant, and untrue I hasten to add.)

We had a very pleasant week with our guests - picnicking in the mountains, swimming in the lake, playing boules and belot, foraging for bilberries and eating leisurely lunches out. I'd emailed BB's Mum to ask if there was anything his Aunt didn't like to eat and the reply came back: no horse or rabbit please.

So last weekend we booked to go for paella at the 'regional produce' shop in the next village. I know paella isn't regional or even French but the shop organises monthly outside-catered meals for up to 100 to get people through the door and buying - mainly wine to go with the meals. I love paella and this was about as good as I've tasted in Spain, cooked in a huge paellara outdoors with seafood and chicken. Or so we thought, until I went to chat to the chef after the meal and it transpired that the chicken was in fact, ahem, rabbit.

The day before yesterday we went for lunch in a local restaurant we used to frequent until we got fed up with the surly wife of the chef (who constantly looked like she was sooking a lemon) and her over-charging. The problem is, it's a great place to take visitors because it has a terrace with fantastic views of the mountains, the food can sometimes be very good and it's within walking distance. So we bit the bullet and booked and because it was warm and sunny, I asked if we could eat on the terrace. Well - you'd have thought I'd suggested parricide. Her lip curled up like a dead woodlouse, she huffed and puffed and complained that she was serving on her own (there were six other diners) before marching off without giving us an answer. After waiting 20 minutes for our apéros, she reluctantly set up a table on the terrace before ungraciously taking our order.

The starters were all very good: there was quiche maison with a light fluffy bacon and egg filling, excellent duck paté and a huge fresh seasonal salad. But when the steaks arrived (requested à point - medium rare), they should have been surrounded by police incident tape because what was on the plate was a crime against cooking. They looked as if they'd been forced through a wringer they were so thin and were so over-cooked it was like eating a leather glove. I couldn't eat mine and told Madame it was over-done when she came to clear the plates (she did ask why I'd left it). "No it's not", she said. "Yes it is", I said, demonstrating with exaggerated sawing movements. "No it's not". And off she huffed to the kitchen bearing my plate aloft.

When she returned she fixed me with a scary rictus smile and launched into a lecture on how steaks are cooked en France before adding, "but horse is always a bit tough". Rebelot!

By sheer coincidence, the following day Katie Bear came round with a leaflet advertising the aforementioned restaurant: "Take advantage of our terrace with panoramic views of the mountains where Madame will serve you avec un rayon de soleil - with a sunny smile!!

operation clean-up

2009-08-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

BB's parents and Aunt arrive today so I've spent this week getting the house 'mother-in-law fit' - washing windows and curtains and cleaning out kitchen cupboards (remember when I drove all the way to Moutiers to buy an electric whisk and had that embarrassing encounter in Bos Equipement Hôtelier? Well guess what I found at the back of a cupboard? Yup - one of those). I'm not the best housekeeper - the sheets are always clean and the bathrooms spotless and I'm a bit of a compulsive wiper of kitchen surfaces - but in winter you're likely to trip over ski boots and other assorted ski paraphernalia and piles of books lying around all over the place and in summer, crates of fruit and veg (no time to read in summer what with all the pickling and bottling), and there's quite often tumbleweed blowing through the house, but one can't have one's mother-in-law thinking her son is married to a slut - so the house is as bright and clean as a shiny whistling pin (or whatever the simile is).

If I'm not back in a couple of days it's because I'm busy cutting the crusts off jam sandwiches.

scorchio

2009-08-19T07:58:00.000-07:00

It's soooo hot (36°C) that my arms are sticking to the table as I type. It hasn't been this hot since the canicule in 2003 when the temperature reached 40°C and claimed nearly 15,000 lives in France. I used to think that talking about the weather was a peculiarly British occupation. Not so. Here in the village, everyone has a thermometer in their house and anyone you speak to can tell you what the temperature was when they got up and at various times throughout the day and what the forecast is for the next three days. We're lucky to have a beautiful lake less than five minutes away where I go most afternoons for a swim to cool down.

During the canicule the water was so low in the lake that you were able to get to hitherto unreachable parts away from the main beach where I liked to go for some peace and quiet. Until one day I looked up from my book to find a naked man standing in front of me who suggested I remove my bathers too so we could go for a dip together - which I thought was a bit rude.

I picked my onions last week and pickled them. I did this a couple of years ago and, even if I do say so myself, they were the best pickled onions I've ever tasted. Take some small pickling onions, trim them (not too much or they'll fall apart), blanch in boiling water for 30 seconds, pat dry, cover in salt and leave overnight (the salt draws out the moisture and makes them crunchy). The next day, rinse them and place in sterilized jars with some chillies, cloves and mustard or coriander seeds. Boil up some red/white wine vinegar and sugar for 1 minute (roughly 14 oz/400g sugar to 2 pints/1.2 litre vinegar for 3 lbs/1.3 kg onions), pour over the onions and seal.

♫ Pickle along to: Booker T. & The MG's Green Onions

gazpacho and bees

2009-08-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

When I came downstairs this morning and opened the front door to let the cat out I found a pile of tomatoes on the doorstep with a folded-up piece of A4 paper tucked among them on which Poire had written "please could you translate this for me". In any other year, off-loading your tomatoes would be akin to the Chap Door Run prank with the courgettes but because it's been so hot and dry this summer, my toms have been very late ripening so they were very welcome (particularly since I have a small forest of basil with which to make bruschetta).

The translation was headed "solar wax melter" followed by diagrams and instructions on how to make a bees' wax melter with ¾ inch lumber to handle wax rendered from 60 hives. It contained expressions like "insulating board", "thermopane lid", "cappings basket" and "expanded metal wire lath" - your everyday sort of vocabulary! I left the translating to BB who conveyed the meaning to Poire in a comical pantomime fashion with funny French accent.

Poire has offered to show me his bees (I hope this isn't the French paysan equivalent of "would you like to see my etchings?") which he keeps up in the mountains on the other side of the valley - which should make for an interesting blog post if my experiences with goats and horses are anything to go by.

I used most of the tomatoes in this recipe for gazpacho which was given to Katie Bear's sister by a Spanish friend - perfect for a summer lunch.

Ingredients
Serves 4
10 tomatoes, skinned and de-seeded
1 slice of white bread, crust removed
½ red onion
2 cloves garlic
salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
sherry vinegar
cucumber, skinned, de-seeded and diced to serve

Whizz the first 4 ingredients together in a food processor with a good glug of olive oil and some sherry vinegar and season. Serve chilled with diced cucumber.

♫ Cook along to: The Bee Gees Stayin' Alive

Princess and the pea

2009-08-16T00:59:00.000-07:00

I woke up in the middle of the night last night with a searing pain in my chest and thought I was having a heart attack - until I rolled over and dislodged a hard pea-shaped piece of jetsam which had obviously been dragged in by Loti (or Princess as BB calls her).

This is Loti in her favourite position on the arm of the sofa.

wild raspberries

2009-08-12T00:52:00.000-07:00

We were up with the lark today to go and pick Mini-B's potatoes. I'm not an early riser, so 6 a.m. felt like the middle of the night, but it was exhilarating to be working outside at that hour with the mist rolling over the fields where red deer were grazing, watching the sun come up over the mountains. Tatties picked, we all sat outside in the morning sunshine eating breakfast of sausage, cheese, bread and white wine.

On the building front: yesterday the batten BB was standing on snapped and he literally had to hang on to the roof by his fingertips - no easy feat for a man whose stomach, when restrained by a white T-shirt, resembles a giant mozzarella. Then another of our helpers, our fireman friend Titi, embedded a wood axe in his thumb and was rushed to hospital. He won't lose his thumb, thankfully, but nor will he be helping out on the roof any time soon.

I picked these tiny wild raspberries when I went walking up in the mountains this afternoon. When the sun shone on them on the bushes they looked like red jewels. The man down at the duck farm makes a gorgeous apéro with them so I've frozen them until I can get his recipe.

char-grilled peppers

2009-08-08T05:42:00.000-07:00

On the rare occasion that I run out of garlic, it's on a par with running out of moisturiser or toothpaste or losing my internet connection - I feel a bit lost without it. I use garlic generously, especially the sweet white summer garlic which is perfect for rubbing on toast to make bruschetta, or for slicing thinly and tucking between velvety char-grilled peppers or adding to steamed green beans. After the summer season the bulbs start to lose their sweetness, the flesh darkens and their bitter taste makes it impossible to use raw.

Nainbo gave me some garlic from his garden today and I made char-grilled peppers with anchovies and capers. This is based on a River Café Cook Book recipe.

Ingredients

Serves 4

3 red and 3 yellow peppers

large handful of capers

a few anchovies

2 garlic cloves thinly sliced

handful of fresh basil leaves

freshly ground black pepper

extra virgin olive oil

1. Grill the whole peppers until the skins are black then place in a plastic bag. When cool, remove the skin, de-seed and cut into strips.

2. Put the peppers in a shallow dish with the garlic, anchovies, capers, basil and black pepper and cover with a generous amount of olive oil. Serve with bruschetta.

♫ Cook along to: Brooklyn Funk Essential Big Apple Boogaloo

Asian cabbage parcels

2009-08-07T05:48:00.000-07:00

We had our first building accident yesterday when Mr Katie Bear, who's here for the summer and helping BB on the roof, fell through the rafters. There's no flooring on the upper level yet so there's a drop of two storeys but he managed to stop himself by jamming his arms either side of the floor joists. Result: he's still alive but has very purple arms. Oh how that must have stung! I'll be glad when the roof is finished because I worry like mad whenever anyone is up there.

To put some colour back in his cheeks (not his arms) I invited him and Katie Bear round for dinner last night. Katie Bear's a real foodie like me and we love laughing at telly programmes like Come Dine With Me where "amateur chefs compete for dinner party prowess". Now, "prowess" to me denotes a certain amount of skill or expertise, so if you were going to be on the telly demonstrating this (for a cash prize) would you stick a bought Swiss roll in a plastic wine glass, top it up with jelly and serve it to your guests who are marking you out of ten? Mmm - thought not. Anyway, it makes for good tittering and exaggerated smug faces.

I made these stuffed cabbage leaves with cabbages from my garden - which KB proclaimed "the best thing I've eaten for ages". The recipe's based on Jamie Oliver's Asian cabbage parcels but I used spring onions instead of cabbage in the filling and added coconut cream, fish sauce, sesame seeds and lime zest.

Ingredients
Serves 4
1 Savoy cabbage
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 fresh red chilli, halved and seeded
Small bunch coriander
Thumb-sized piece ginger, peeled
2 skinless chicken breasts (about 150g each), preferably free-range or organic, cut into large chunks
Soy sauce, to serve
1 lime, quartered
Chilli oil to serve

1. Put a large pan of salted water on to boil. Peel back the outer leaves on the cabbage. Coax and click off 8 round leaves (it doesn’t matter if they tear a little). Core the cabbage, reserving the stalk; chop cabbage into quarters and set aside. Drop the 8 leaves into the pan of boiling water for 3 minutes, or until you can pick one up and bend it easily. Remove to a tray to cool down.

2. Put your garlic, chilli, coriander, and ginger into a food processor and whiz for 30 seconds. Add a pinch of sea salt and the chopped cabbage stalk and pulse for 30 seconds to break it down a bit. Add the chicken and one quarter of the cabbage and pulse it for about 30–60 seconds so the flavours combine and you’ve got a coarse chicken mince.

3. Put a piece of clingfilm on a board and scoop the mince onto it. Divide it into 8 equal amounts. Grease a large colander with a bit of olive oil. Take a soft cabbage leaf in your hand, spoon the mince into the middle, then fold in the sides until you have a closed parcel. Lay it in the colander so the parcel holds it shape. Repeat 7 times.

4. Pour a few inches of water into a pan and put on a medium heat to boil. Place the colander on top, seal with a tight-fitting lid or some foil and steam for about 10 minutes. Don't take the lid off or you'll slow their cooking time. When the time’s up, cut one of the parcels in half and have a look – the meat will be more than cooked.

5. Serve right away with a drizzle of soy sauce, a quarter of lime and a good splurge of chilli oil.

♫ Cook along to: Cab Calloway Minnie the Moocher

This is Rhuma (above) and in the background you can see my shopping list scratched on a bit of old slate. My fellow blogger over at Designers' Block has some lovely vintage-framed chalkboards. Take a peek.

parenthesis

2009-08-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

I'm not very good at remembering names. When I'm introduced to someone, unusually for a woman I can't concentrate on a firm handshake (there's nothing worse than someone putting a limp fish in your hand - tells you so much about a person don't you think?), looking them in the eye (in France eye contact is very important - especially when clinking glasses) and take in their name all at the same time - so inevitably something has to give and it's usually the latter. As a result, when BB refers to people in the village, their various distinctions are listed in parenthesis. For example:

BB: Met so-and-so in the post office this morning.

BC: Who?

BB: (The man with the eye).

BC: Ah! Gotcha.

BB: Saw so-and-so round at Mini-B's.

BC: Who?

BB: (The woman with the beard).

BC: Ah! Gotcha.

A veritable plethora of parentheses descended upon us this afternoon and judging by the way they wobbled down the grassy slope to our patio, they had been staring at each other, gimlet-eyed, and clinking glasses well before the apéro hour. There was: (the man with the comb-over), (the man who lives in a cave), (the woman who jumped out of a window), (micro-short man), (the knitter) and Mini-B - no parenthesis needed. Who needs telly when you're living in the midst of a real life soap opera?

P.S. All the rafters are on the roof now - as you can see from the photo.

jam

2009-07-28T05:17:00.000-07:00

"Oh what is this new devilry!" I cried this morning upon spying a large crate of plums on my doorstep. I just had the glut of everything in my own garden under control when a kindly neighbour dropped off the fruit - so it was back to the jam pan.

I've taken a confiture inventory of my larder and I now have:

plum 2009 x 10
cherry 2008 x 6
peach 2008 x 10
pink peach 2008 x 6
apple & brandy jelly 2007 x 5
fig 2007 x 1
strawberry 2007 x 4
framboise, bisous Mini-B x 1 - (raspberry, love Mini-B) date unspecified - a frothy pink confection with pond life skittering about on the surface, which belongs in a Petri dish, not my larder, but I love the scrawled label.

BB and I don't really "do" jam (we're toast and Marmite-ers or egg soldier-ers) but his parents are coming to stay in three weeks' time and they'll be eating a lot of jam sandwiches (with the crusts cut off of course) and Victoria sponge cake with their cups of tea!