le moulin

new blog address

2010-01-01T21:32:00.000+01:00

Happy new year!

New year, new blog. I've moved because there are far too many other Le Moulins. The blog is the same, only the name and url have changed. I hope existing followers will subscribe to the new one. The address is:

http://atasteofsavoie.blogspot.com/

Please feel free to leave comments. I love getting comments - more than I love crispy duck pancakes - and that's saying something. I know some of you have been having problems posting a comment, but all you have to do, if you don't have a Google account, is check the round box next to "Name/URL" under "Choose an identity" and type in a name. Or check "Anonymous" if you wish to go down that route. You don't have to have a Google account to leave a comment. See you in the next blog!

spiced nuts, stuffed dates, joyeuses fêtes

2009-12-23T18:58:00.012+01:00

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. The only thing 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

2009-12-19T15:30:00.005+01:00

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 going to live in Paris for three months. How good does that sound? I'm going to live in Paris!

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 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

2009-12-16T13:50:00.005+01:00

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

2009-12-13T16:45:00.009+01:00

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 setting sun was striking the snowy peaks of the mountains turning them a dark-fissured dramatic tangerine and I fell asleep in the car making little snuffling noises of contentment.

the law is a (horse's) ass

2009-12-04T13:55:00.017+01:00

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

2009-12-02T14:13:00.017+01:00

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 blunt pizza wheel cutter 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

2009-11-25T10:40:00.000+01:00

le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!

2009-11-21T15:15:00.012+01:00

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

2009-11-20T16:26:00.029+01:00

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. 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 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

2009-11-18T14:59:00.019+01:00

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

2009-11-07T17:47:00.011+01:00

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

2009-10-25T19:43:00.021+01:00

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)

2009-10-23T15:10:00.028+02:00

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

2009-10-22T19:11:00.021+02:00

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

2009-10-19T15:40:00.035+02:00

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

2009-10-15T21:01:00.017+02:00

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

2009-10-14T23:57:00.014+02:00

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

2009-10-09T15:50:00.030+02:00

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

2009-10-04T13:40:00.011+02:00

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

2009-09-28T20:46:00.008+02:00

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

2009-09-23T16:17:00.027+02:00

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

2009-09-20T18:04:00.017+02:00

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

2009-09-18T18:01:00.015+02:00

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

2009-09-15T19:09:00.012+02:00

Brrrr. It's cold. I'm wearing socks for the first time since April and I'm seriously thinking about 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...

2009-09-11T01:21:00.001+02:00

...don't you just love it!

♫ Snap along to: David Bowie Starman

kite flying

2009-09-09T10:15:00.001+02:00

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

2009-09-07T17:07:00.015+02:00

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

2009-09-03T18:10:00.014+02:00

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

2009-09-01T18:59:00.015+02:00

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

2009-08-29T17:31:00.005+02:00

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

2009-08-28T14:02:00.017+02:00

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

2009-08-21T16:58:00.004+02:00

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

2009-08-19T16:58:00.014+02:00

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

2009-08-17T20:27:00.013+02:00

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

2009-08-16T09:59:00.007+02:00

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

2009-08-12T09:52:00.019+02:00

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

2009-08-08T14:42:00.001+02:00

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

2009-08-07T14:48:00.010+02:00

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 silent-movie 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 white 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

2009-08-01T15:58:00.014+02:00

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

2009-07-28T14:17:00.021+02:00

"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!

courgette and mint soup

2009-07-25T17:19:00.008+02:00

It's safe to go over to the mill at the moment because Top Modèl is here holding things - which is nice (he's not called Top Modèl for nothing). He's helping BB on the roof for two weeks and this morning he turned up with eight other friends to move the final truss (weighing 500 kg) onto the road to within reach of the crane.

When the heavy lifting was over, I descended from my lookout post in the bedroom and stood at the kitchen window, fishwife-style, serving pastis to the workers, listening to them bicker about the price of cheese and trying to offload their courgettes on one another. I've come up with a use for my football-sized ones - soup tureens. Whilst I was hollowing one out the other day, the previous mayor arrived to return some of BB's tools (funnily enough, BB was out) and spotting the gargantuan courgettes on the windowsill, asked why I had picked them so early! As I removed the spongy insides - the texture of a damp pillow and probably just as tasty - I made a mental note to be washing my hair if he ever invites us for dinner.

Courgette and mint soup

Ingredients
Serves 6
2 oz/50 g butter
2 medium onions, chopped
2 lbs/900 g courgettes, chopped into chunks
24 fl oz/700 ml home made chicken stock
2 handfuls mint leaves plus extra for garnishing
salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Melt the butter in a large pan and fry the onions on a low heat until soft - about 10 minutes. Add the courgettes and cook for a further 5 minutes.

2. Add the chicken stock, 1 handful of mint leaves and salt and pepper and simmer for 30 minutes. Leave to cool.

3. Blend in a food processor with the remaining handful of mint leaves.

4. Serve chilled, garnished with the extra mint finely chopped.

♫ Cook along to: AC/DC Rock 'N' Roll Train

l'amour en cage

2009-07-21T11:35:00.018+02:00

Saturday we went out for lunch for our wedding anniversary and against my better judgement, I was persuaded by the patron to try some terrine de pied de veau vinaigrette - terrine of calf's foot. (You may recall that the last time I was in the same room as tête de veau my upper body had to remain alfresco.)

A slice of the terrine arrived with a curl of lettuce and, at first glance, it didn't look too bad - no obvious signs of hoof - so I pluckily put a forkful in my mouth. First impression: a taste of vinegar and shallots in the gelatine, nothing too vile. But as the gelatine dissolved whilst I was dissecting the untouched remains, the full horror of what was left in my mouth revealed itself on the plate - pieces of finely chopped skin (with hairs still attached thereto) and tendon and other stuff that's generally sent to the glue factory. Gag!

This is where a cheap napkin dispenser on the table would have come in handy, but in its absence, I had to spit into my linen napkin, which remained under the table for the rest of the meal. I still feel slightly queasy at the memory.

On the way home we stopped at a farmers' market where I spotted a box of physalis. I can't resist these ethereal-looking fruits the colour of sunshine with their fragile papery wings. In France they're called l'amour en cage (love in a cage), presumably because once the outer husks become skeletonized, they look like cages. Much more attractive than the STD-sounding English name!

the perfect 10

2009-07-17T14:46:00.026+02:00

We set off for the shops today with - for the first time in my 21 (+) years on this planet - "cheap napkin holder" on the shopping list. We're in the midst of a mini canicule (heatwave) at the moment (37°C today) and the little puddles of water left every time a chilled beverage is set down between sips (three per 125 ml glass on average) are starting to warp the wooden surfaces. Solution: serve drinks with cheap disposable napkins - those recycled, single-ply jobbies that stick to the undercarriage of the receptacle - to mop up residual condensation.

I had in mind a classic, 50's-style, chrome-look, stainless steel dispenser, and this being mainland Europe (and not a tiny little island in the middle of the Atlantic), I assumed that I would be spoilt for choice. But after visiting four shops (avoiding Bos Equipement Hôtelier - too soon to go back there, although they probably have an entire room devoted to napkin dispensers), we were left with one option. (Note the word "option" not "choice", the latter denoting a variety of things available for choosing between.)

This is what we ended up with …

frosted glass, nice shape, easy on the eye. And when the napkins were inserted it looked like this - all shipshape and Bristol fashion …

but after five minutes …

napkins flopping about all over the place in a sluttish fashion and displeasing to the eye.

So, applying our minds to the "perkiness" factor of the napkins, we considered the following options:

1. Air flow: Two hairdryers, one blowing from either side, would keep the napkins upright. The simplicity of this appealed to BB until I pointed out that the hairdryers would clutter up the table leaving little room for condiments. Marks out of 10: 5

2. Varnishing: Varnish the napkins. Stroke of genius. Until we remembered the primary function of the napkins was absorption. Ok for dislodging a piece of tzatziki cucumber from between your front teeth but not good for mopping up a glass of wine spilt in your guest's lap. Marks out of 10: 2

3. Gravity-driven wedges: (illustrated here by BB on the back of a proverbial envelope) ...

Now we're talking! A wooden wedge placed either side to stop residual flapping about. Sounded impressive but after a couple of trial runs we found that it was tricky to extract the napkins because, for once, it did what it said on the tin and they were "wedged in" and applying force ripped the cheap paper. Marks out of 10: 0

4. Adjustable cramp-based solution: Do away with the glass holder altogether and substitute two book ends with a bungee cord wrapped round to imitate expensive "spring-loaded" model advertised on Amazon ("Customers who bought this also bought Bill Haley Rock Around The Clock"). I liked this cavalier, thinking-outside-the-box solution but concluded that the whole ensemble would clash with my Wedgwood fine bone china. Marks out of 10: 6

5. Catenary: (where y = a * cos (x/a))

Again dispensing with the holder, hang the napkins up in a catenary by stapling them all together and attaching the ends to the ceiling with drawing-pins. Not practical for outdoor dining and once you'd extracted one napkin the whole lot would fall down. Marks out of 10: 1 (because I was impressed by the word "catenary").

So - no perfect 10. Suggestions/comments welcome.

almond and lavender biscuits

2009-07-11T11:59:00.018+02:00

One of my favourite screen savers is a bewitching photograph of lavender fields in Provence - armies of pale purple flowers marching over rolling hills as far as the horizon. Not only is lavender gorgeous to look at and great for scenting linen but being a herb (it's a member of the mint family), it's incredibly versatile in cooking too.

My lavender bushes are in full bloom right now and flush from the success of the stuffed courgette flowers, I searched for lavender recipes on the internet and found hundreds. It can be added to salads; candied to use as cake decorations; used to make 'lavender sugar' (pulverize the flower heads with sugar in a liquidizer) to use in baked goods or custards or to scatter over ricotta to eat with strawberries or peaches; used to flavour ice-creams, sorbets and jellies; popped in a glass of champagne; used in stews or sauces; added to bread recipes or herbal teas. In fact its uses are only limited by your imagination.

The addition of lavender buds to these almond biscuits gave them a distinctive sweet floral flavour. But use judiciously or it can be over-powering (especially dried lavender which is more potent than fresh.) This is taken from Nigel Slater's almond and lavender biscuits.

Ingredients
125 g butter
50 g castor sugar
100g plain flour
100 g ground almonds
2 level tsp lavender buds

1. Put all the ingredients in a food processor and whiz until you have a dough-like consistency. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

2. Pre-heat oven to 300°F/150°C. Roll out the dough on a floured surface, cut out biscuits with a biscuit cutter and place on a greased baking tray.

3. Bake for 25-30 minutes until pale gold in colour.

chicken noodle soup

2009-07-07T13:55:00.020+02:00

Last week (the second week of Wimbledon) was so hot and clammy and reminiscent of travels in Asia that all I wanted to eat was spicy food, and flicking through Ken Hom's Foolproof Thai Cookery, I came upon this sublime recipe for Northern Thai chicken noodle soup. Ken says to use 2 tablespoons of Madras curry paste or powder, but I thought that seemed a bit excessive so I only used a teaspoon. (I could still taste the subtle lemon grass and coconut flavours so I think I was right to do so - but who am I to argue with the Homster.)

Ingredients

serves 4-6

175 g/6 oz fresh or dried egg noodles

175 g/6 oz boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 tbsp coarsely chopped garlic

1.2 litres/2 pints home made chicken or vegetable stock

1 x 400 ml/14 fl oz tin coconut milk

2 small red or green chillies, seeded and finely shredded

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp dark soy sauce

1 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp Madras curry paste or powder

1 tsp salt

½ tsp freshly ground black pepper

2 tbsp lime juice

fresh coriander and basil leaves to serve

1. Cook the noodles in a pan of boiling water according to the instructions. Drain and set aside.

2. Trim the lemon grass to the tender whitish centre, cut into 7.5 cm/3 inch pieces and crush with the flat of a knife. Cut the chicken into strips.

3. Heat the oil in a large pan until very hot then add the onion, garlic and lemon grass and stir-fry for about 3 minutes. Stir in the stock and coconut milk and simmer on a low heat for 10 minutes.

4. Add the chillies, chicken, fish sauce, sugar, curry paste, salt and pepper and stir well. Add the noodles, cover and simmer for 5 minutes.

5. Remove the lemon grass. Stir in the lime juice and serve garnished with coriander and basil leaves.

♫ Cook along to: James Taylor Something in the Way She Moves

Talking of Wimbledon: We watched the final on Sunday and I had the luxury of not caring who won, Murray having lost in the semis. (Note how quickly he went from "Great British Hope" to "Scottish Loser"!) What a match - but we were more captivated by what was going on at the far end of the rogues' gallery, aka the Royal Box, where Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver and Illie Nastase appeared to be having a flutter. Twice, between games, we saw Borg peel off a note from a wad of cash that could have choked a horse and pass it discreetly (with 12 BBC cameras on him) to Nastase. Classy!

chap door (leave your courgettes and) run

2009-07-04T19:33:00.006+02:00

It's that time of year when BB asks, "what's for lunch?", followed tentatively by, "it's not courgettes again is it?". I swear if you look at a courgette plant for ten minutes you can practically see the fruit growing and it's a challenge to pick them before they measure less than 10 cm - turn your back and they're as big as seal pups.

At the height of summer you can't give them away and you often see little courgette stalls set up along the road-side with chicken scratched signs inviting - nae imploring - passers-by to help themselves. When that fails, some people resort to that adolescent game of Chap Door Run, where you dared your friend to ring a stranger's doorbell then run away. Only in the grown-up version, they ring the doorbell, leave courgettes on your doorstep then run like hell.

Last year, some of mine (actually a lot of mine) rotted on the plant because I couldn't be bothered to pick any more, self-seeded and are now taking over a considerable portion of the garden, John Wyndham style. This year I've promised myself I'm going to deal with the glut by harvesting them early and making soup (with mint - also in abundance in the garden) to freeze for the winter, and chutney.

One thing I'd never tried before was stuffed courgette flowers, which I did yesterday - and boy were they a hit. If you can get your hands on some courgette flowers I urge you to try this recipe. I'd expected the gossamer thin petals to be very fragile and to fall apart when I tried to open them but they were surprisingly elastic, like cling-film, and quickly returned to their original shape after stuffing.

After trawling the internet and perusing my cook books, I opted for this recipe (although there are many more I intend to try) by Lucas Hollweg from Timesonline.

Stuffed courgette flowers

Ingredients
Serves 4
For the stuffing
250 g ricotta
25 g grated parmesan
zest of half a lemon
12 mint leaves, shredded
salt and pepper

12 courgette flowers
vegetable oil
150 g self raising flour
260 ml fizzy water

1. Mix together the ingredients for the stuffing. Remove the stigma from the inside of the flowers and carefully fill with stuffing then twist closed.

2. Heat 2 cm of vegetable oil in a wok or frying pan.

3. Mix the self-raising flour and fizzy water to make a light batter. It should be the consistency of thin double cream. Dip the stuffed flowers in the batter, being careful that they remain closed, then fry in the hot oil, 3-4 at a time, depending on the size of your pan. Make sure that both sides cook, turning them if necessary. It should take 2-3 minutes for the batter to become crisp and the palest gold.

4. Drain on kitchen paper and season with sea salt and a squeeze of lemon before eating.

♫ Cook along to: JJ Cale After Midnight

vin de noix

2009-07-01T18:56:00.020+02:00

Now that I'm able to type without my fingers blundering all over the keyboard in a series of false-starts I can report that the BBQ was a huge success. Having been put in charge, I delegated most of the tricky stuff tout de suite to my 'Operations Manager' BB, leaving him to work out how to get all that stuff up the mountain. In the end, it turned into a Top Gear-style challenge, with two battered old C15s fighting it out to get as far up the steep rutted goat track and as close to the cabane as possible - which they managed to do to within a short distance, but not without the loss of an exhaust pipe.

Despite having agreed the menu in advance, everyone turned up bearing a little something of their own. So, to the already groaning table - sausages stuffed with apples and onions, tranches de gigot d'agneau (slices of leg of lamb) marinated in fresh mint and olive oil, giant crevettes the size of baby lobsters, bruschetta, tomato and red onion salad, corn on the cob with lemon and garlic - was added little bouquets of parsley, a jar of pickled wild mushrooms, fingers of courgettes, new red wispy-skinned potatoes still covered in damp soil, a creamy blue cheese dressing, griottes, fresh raspberries, a bottle of walnut wine and a goats' cheese.

After lunch some of us played boules, while others (me) went for an (involuntary) dip in the fountain or sat on the grass drinking wine and admiring the snow-covered peaks of Mont Blanc in the distance.

Roquin brought along a bag of green walnuts for me - smooth husked, like an unripe pear, with a sharp clean astringent smell - since we no longer have our own walnut tree. It's the time of year to make vin de noix (walnut wine) which is drunk as an apéro. I use the 40/40/40 recipe, used by everyone round here - 40 nuts, 40 spoonfuls of sugar (about 1 kg) and leave for 40 days. This year I'm going to add some cloves, cinnamon and lemon peel.

Vin de noix
40 green walnuts, quartered
5 litres red wine
1 litre gnole (or pure alcohol)
1 kg sugar

Place all the ingredients in a container and leave for 40 days in a cool dark place. Strain and bottle.

quiet please

2009-06-29T02:33:00.002+02:00

If I could take a picture of the inside of my head, it would have looked like this yesterday before the BBQ - like a fresh Alpine meadow ...

and this morning ...

I was glad I'd bottled some of that precious spring water last night because when I awoke, my mouth was as dry as an Arab's sandal. And then I was assaulted by the smell of ripe cheese when I came downstairs to find Mini-B (who hadn't been home for three days!) asleep on the sofa. After I had dispatched him (tsk tsk begone and beshowered), I repaired to a darkened room to watch the tennis.

Quiet please.

bruschetta

2009-06-25T19:55:00.040+02:00

I have a vivid memory from my time working in Courchevel, of another seasonaire coming into the bar mid-shift and asking for a glass of water. As she drained the glass, her eyes rolled back in her head and, wiping her mouth with her sleeve, she said, "that was delicious". At the time, it struck me as a very kooky way to describe water (delicious is a ripe peach or a Gariguette strawberry) - but now I know exactly what she meant.

I mention this because on Sunday, a group of us are going up into the mountains towards the col for a BBQ, and next to the little cabane de chasse there's a spring that's been piped a short distance down into a hollowed-out tree trunk, where during the steamy summer months I often dream of going just to taste the delicious cold mountain water.

The BBQ is a team belot affair, paid for out of the remaining kitty, and I have been put in charge. You'd think a barbie would be a very casual, stress-free event to organise, with everyone standing around sipping wine and helping themselves to another crevette from the grill. Not so here. Our French amis insist on sitting down at a table to eat and for said table to be properly set with table cloth, china plates and proper cutlery (no paper plates or plastic knives and forks please!) and to eat a four course meal comme d'hab. All fine and dandy, but a bit of a mare to arrange 1600 metres up a mountain where the nearest parking spot is 30 minutes' walk away!

I've decided to do bruschetta with chopped tomatoes and basil as a starter. This is one of my summer staples when the tomatoes and basil are growing rampantly in the garden. Just place slices of good quality bread in a griddle pan or on the BBQ and toast on both sides. Rub with a clove of garlic, pile on some chopped tomatoes, season with salt and pepper, top with torn basil and drizzle with olive oil.

le Moulin - June update

2009-06-25T11:26:00.012+02:00

I promised you some pictures of the mill, so here goes. Click on the photos to enlarge.

This was the view at 9.00 am two days ago ...

and then at 2.00 pm yesterday ...

(N.B. All that ugly concrete block work will eventually be covered with nice douglas wood.)

And just to remind you of what it looked like before, this was in December last year (brrrrr) ...

and October, not long after work started ...

imagine

2009-06-22T14:07:00.022+02:00

I've just been over to check on progress on the mill (I usually observe from afar, i.e. the upstairs bedroom window, in case I'm asked to hold something for about 10 hours) and there are now internal walls on the ground floor: I have a kitchen, a sitting-room and a laundry room into which I can fit myself and the laundry basket simultaneously, and a long wide balcony where I'm going to sling my hammock and lie and contemplate the mountains.

My favourite bit of the house is the staircase going down into the cellar. I've always dreamed of a house with a cellar - a creaky old wooden door opening into a dark secret passage - but in my wildest imaginings, I never envisaged myself descending into that dark secret place and being confronted with one door into a wine cellar and another into an indoor swimming pool!

After I'd held a measuring tape for about 10 hours, I practised walking up and down the stairs for a bit then stood on the spot in the wine cellar where the mill wheel should be (actually where it still is, only it's buried under two inches of concrete), picturing rows of dusty bottles of wine (that really is a wild imagining) and shelves of jams and jellies and preserves and compotes, of dried herbs and infused oils and candied fruit and crystallised violets, of pâtés and confits and soused herrings, pickled cucumbers, cured hams and sun-dried tomatoes and wild mushrooms.

After all that imagining I felt like lying down - but there's veg to be planted (Roquin's donated leeks, cabbages and caulis), grass to be cut, geraniums to be re-potted, jams to be made, mushrooms to be dried, oranges to be candied ......

champagne supernova jellies

2009-06-21T22:09:00.034+02:00

These tiny fraises des bois are blushing all over the wilder parts of the garden, and in places where they've newly sprung up, their perfume reaches me before I spot them. I'm sure I can detect an infinitesimal scent of pink 'Bazooka Joe' bubble gum in amongst all that heady fruit aroma too, and they taste a bit like their smell.

You need such large quantities to do anything culinary with them that they're best eaten au naturel in my view (little bursts of 1970's summer disco on your tongue) or added to salads (with cucumber and feta cheese) or fromage frais. I like to stick bunches of them in a jam jar, downy foliage and fruit drooping on long slender stalks, to gaze at like an exotic plant.

A new crop has appeared along the bank of the stream below the sitting-room window where I've been doing a bit of tidying-up - restoring parts of the original stone wall and trying to eradicate the last of the dreaded invasive Japanese knotweed. So before Poire arrives tomorrow with his mini-digger to level the ground (and the Jk) I picked all the fruit and made champagne jellies.

I don't think the French do "jelly" (as in "jelly and ice cream"). Our friend and ex-neighbour, M. Souffleur De Verre, who lived in England for three years, loved it but said he couldn't get it in France - so I became his jelly mule. Every time I went back to Scotland I'd return with a suitcase full of Rowntree's jelly. I tried it out on Poire this evening (the jelly) and as he polished off the last perfect photo opportunity he stared at me in wonderment and said, "What was that? I've never had anything like that before."

Champagne jellies with wild strawberries

Ingredients
Serves 6
handful of wild strawberries (or small garden variety), saving 6 for decoration
8 sheets leaf gelatine, plus cold water to cover
1 x 750ml/1¼ pint pink champagne or sparkling rosé wine
juice of 1 lemon
100g/3½oz caster sugar
icing sugar to dust

1. Divide the de-stalked strawberries between glasses.

2. Place the gelatine sheets in a bowl and cover with cold water.

3. Put 150ml/5fl oz of the champagne/wine in a pan with the lemon juice and sugar and heat gently, until the sugar dissolves.

4. Remove the gelatine from the cold water and add to the pan, whisking until dissolved. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a bowl and allow to cool slightly.

5. Add the remaining champagne and leave until the jelly is cold and just on the point of setting then pour gently into the glasses.

6. When the jellies have cooled, place in the fridge until completely set. To serve, dust the remaining 6 strawberries with icing sugar and put one on top of each jelly.

♫ Cook along to: Miles Davis Summertime

salad days

2009-06-16T19:17:00.020+02:00

BB was called upon to help Mini-B put a plaster cast on a calf's broken leg the other morning (honestly, talk about playing at vets!) and in return we won half a dozen lettuces - to add to the dozen that are ready to pick in my garden - so we're eating a lot of salad at the moment.

I can't eat salad without vinaigrette but mine never seems to taste as good as other people's for some reason. It's a matter of personal taste what you put in it and the ratio of oil to vinegar and so on (I prefer more vinegar than recommended and I use a mixture of olive oil and sunflower oil), but here are some ideas from Jamie Oliver. Just mix all the ingredients together. They all serve 4.

Herb and Red Wine

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

5 tbsp olive oil

1 level tsp salt

1 level tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 heaped tbsp chopped fresh marjoram

1 heaped tbsp chopped fresh basil

1 heaped tbsp chopped fresh parsley

3 tbsp finely chopped shallots

Olive Oil and Lemon Juice
2 tbsp lemon juice
5 tbsp olive oil
1 level tsp salt

1 level tsp freshly ground black pepper

Marjoram and Balsamic Vinegar

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

5 tbsp olive oil

1 level tsp freshly ground black pepper

3 heaped tbsp chopped fresh marjoram

Mustard

1 heaped tbsp Dijon or wholegrain mustard

2 tbsp lemon juice or balsamic vinegar

5 tbsp olive oil

1 level tsp salt
1 level tsp freshly ground black pepper

Anchovy and Caper

2 tbsp lemon juice

5 tbsp olive oil

1 level tsp freshly ground black pepper

6 anchovy fillets, chopped or pounded

1 tbsp small capers, chopped or pounded

Honey, Wholegrain Mustard and Garlic

½ tsp chopped garlic

1 tbsp of your favourite honey

1 tbsp wholegrain mustard

2 tbsp lemon juice
5 tbsp olive oil

the long bad Thursday

2009-06-11T20:31:00.036+02:00

Things didn't get off to a particularly good start today when I was awoken at 4 am by the rain tap-dancing on the roof then I couldn't get back to sleep. For BB's birthday today I planned on making a Black Forest Gâteau as per his request the other day, but as it's years since I last baked a cake, when I went to write a shopping list for the missing ingredients I found that I was also missing some vital equipment - such as cake tin and electric whisk. This discovery actually made my heart leap because it meant that I had an excuse to drive 130 km round trip to my favourite shop, Bos Equipement Hôtelier, in Moutiers. This is kitchen shop heaven - a ginormous warehouse filled with everything you could ever imagine or wish for in your kitchen/dining room/restaurant, and where it is rumoured that culinary colossus, Gordon Ramsay, buys all his kitchen and restaurant equipment.

However, my joy at shopping there was diluted, first when I got stuck in a traffic jam for two hours just outside Moutiers, and then when I went to take a picture inside the shop to show you how huge it is. This is the finger bowl section tucked away in a corner ....

As I was taking the picture I was approached by a member of staff who asked me what I thought I was doing - as if I was some Russian crockery spy - and all I could think of to say was, "je suis un bloggeur", before shuffling out of the shop (empty-handed) with my face like a beetroot. (Not only was this an embarrassing retort but it was also grammatically incorrect because I used (a) the indefinite article and (b) the masculine form!)

Back home, determined I was going to make the damn cake, I improvised using a flan tin and then cut circles out of the sponge with a scone cutter. The recipe then called for kirsch to be drizzled, cherry jam to be spread and double cream to be whipped to soft peaks.

Now, I can't seem to find double cream, as I know it, in France. The closest I've found is crème fleurette (whipping cream), which after I'd whisked by hand using a balloon whisk for 20 minutes - my arm going up and down like a fiddler's elbow - resembled something like cottage cheese. By this time I was thinking less of the photo opportunity and more about putting something edible on a plate, so as I finished off plating and sprinkling and topping, I went to set up to take a photo, slipped in some cat sick and dropped the plate. Et voilà!

cherries in booze

2009-06-09T18:38:00.027+02:00

There's not much to report on the building front I'm afraid because we've had a lot of rain recently which has stopped play. BB's in the middle of building five timber-framed panels (to support the purlins and the ridge beam) which will go up in the next few days - depending on the weather - so I shall be able to post some pictures soon. The rain has also prevented me from working in the garden as much as I would like which means that the weeds will be taking over again. Last year someone actually stopped and asked if I was growing grass, the weeds were so bad! Nobody else seems to have this problem so I can only assume they cheat and use chemicals.

One of my favourite things I like to do with cherries is cherries in booze - cherries preserved in sweetened gnole (hooch). I get my gnole from Roquin who makes it by distilling the marc (dregs) of the grapes after he's made his wine. Traditionally, griottes (sour cherries) are used for this but sweet cherries work just as well I think (although they shouldn't be too ripe) and go down very well with guests. Just fill sterilized jars with cherries still on their stalks and cover with hooch (you can use brandy or alcohol for preserving fruit) and add some sugar. You can keep adding sugar over time until you get the preferred sweetness. I bring them out at the end of a meal after expressos and serve in the same cup with the coffee dregs.

chimps' tea party

2009-06-08T18:26:00.008+02:00

Mini-B and Nainbo came for lunch yesterday after the Sunday Club where I suspect a few pastises had been imbibed judging by the ensuing chimps' tea party. Mini-B arrived, kicked off his boots and promptly took a nap on the sofa, only deigning to join us mid-way through the main course when he elected to use his hands instead of the cutlery and managed to throw most of his food all over the floor.

For starters I made chicken liver pâté by whizzing up some chicken livers, which I'd gently fried in butter for 4-5 minutes, in a food processor along with a clove of garlic, some chopped fresh thyme, a couple of tablespoons of brandy and some melted butter. This was followed by whole roasted trout stuffed with fresh thyme (there's a surfeit of it in the garden at the moment) served with roasted lemons and sauté potatoes.

♫ Cook along to: Jeff Beck Line Dancing with Monkeys

home again home again

2009-06-06T20:38:00.035+02:00

May isn't the best time to go away on a jolly. In my absence everything in the garden has shot up and burst forth - the roses and lupins and hostas, the wild strawberries and cherries and vines and herbs - but also the weeds, so I've spent the last few days hoeing and strimming to get the garden looking respectable again. (BB had a sick note from his - eh - vet, due to his gored hand so wasn't able to carry out gardening duties. It was the vet who stapled his hand back together after the 'running with the bulls' incident and subsequently removed the staples at the veterinary clinic down at the market last week!)

Our cherry tree, which only had tiny hard green fruit when I left, is now groaning under the weight of plump black berries which need to be harvested quickly before the birds get to them. I picked about 10 lbs today and BB suggested that I make a Black Forest Gâteau to follow that old standard fall-back fare available in all British restaurants circa 1970 - prawn cocktail and steak and chips. Unfortunately I didn't have all the ingredients to make the BFG today but I made the prawn cocktail and steak with home-made oven chips.

Classic prawn cocktail

Ingredients

Serves 2

12 large prawns in their shells

1 Cos lettuce

paprika

lemon wedges

For the sauce

1 tbsp mayonnaise

1 tbsp tomato ketchup

few dashes Worcestershire sauce

few dashes Tabasco sauce

juice of half a lemon

♫ Cook along to: Aphrodite's Child The Four Horsemen (To HC in Glasgow - who's the singer? There's a clue in the recipe.)

1. Make the cocktail sauce by mixing all the sauce ingredients together.

2. Shred the lettuce and place in a glass with the peeled prawns, top with some sauce and sprinkle with paprika. Serve with lemon wedges.

'one lovely blog' award

2009-06-03T21:42:00.001+02:00

I've just returned from sunny Scotland (and for once it really was sunny) to find I have been awarded a One Lovely Blog award by Jen from Haute Whimsy. By accepting the One Lovely Blog award, I must also post the Rules of Blog Award Acceptance:

1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.

2. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you've newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Le Moulin proudly passes the One Lovely Blog award on to:

Hidden in France
The French Fork
Eggbeater
64 sq ft kitchen
Mother's kitchen
Fruitcake or nuts
Nami-Nami
Vic's recipes
The Polkadot pantry
Pro Bono Baker
pictures & pancakes
seven spoons
eat drink and be merry
Tuna Toast
mattatouille

holiday time

2009-05-17T10:25:00.001+02:00

We were invited round for apéros last night chez La Blonde and JP and on the way there we passed Mini-B trying to move two horses into a neighbouring field. Now, running after farm animals waving a big stick shouting "allez!" will normally have the desired effect and they will run away from you. In fact you could shout anything: "albuminoid!" or "albatross!" or "alberkerky!" but you wouldn't really consider shouting "stop!" if that's what you really meant because that would be stupid. But for 40 minutes we watched Mini-B's head bobbing up and down in the long grass as he ran after the horses with a stick shouting "arrête!" - and quelle surprise, they kept running. When he finally gave up and approached us panting, his face the colour of a radish, BB casually removed a stale baguette from the car (as you do), approached the perimeter of the field and made some clucking noises whereupon the horses arrived and were happily trotted off to the next field.

The apéros continued until the wee small hours so a hearty breakfast/lunch was required today. Brunch in the pub with friends and the Sunday papers is one of the things I miss about the UK, but I shall be able to do it next week because I'm leaving for Scotland tomorrow for 10 days!

Scrambled eggs with smoked trout
Ingredients
Serves 2
4 large eggs
½ oz/10g butter
4½ oz/125 g smoked trout trimmings, cut into small pieces
salt and freshly ground black pepper
snipped chives

♫ Cook along to: Hildegard Knef Holiday Time

1. Break the eggs into a pan, add the butter and place on a low heat. Stir continuously with a wooden spoon, moving the pan on and off the heat so the eggs don't burn.

2. As the mixture begins to set, fold in the smoked trout and chives and continue stirring until the eggs are soft and creamy. Season at the last minute.

stuff

2009-05-13T15:03:00.023+02:00

I don't know what you'd call these red peppers: they're not "stuffed" exactly - more roasted with stuff in them. This is something I had in Italy once and it's very simple and very tasty. You'll need lots of crusty bread for mopping up.

Ingredients
Serves 2
2 red peppers, halved and seeds removed
1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced
2 medium tomatoes, quartered
4 anchovy fillets
olive oil
freshly ground black pepper

♫ Cook along to: Oleta Adams Rhythm of Life

Place 2 tomato quarters in each pepper half and tuck in some slices of garlic and an anchovy fillet. Season with pepper, drizzle with olive oil and roast in the oven for 1 hour at 350°F/180°C.

running with the bulls

2009-05-12T16:49:00.052+02:00

BB was helping Mini-B vaccinate his livestock this morning. Anything involving Mini-B and animals usually entails a lot of running around in fields shouting "allez!" and invariably spells drama - and today was no exception, because when they returned at lunchtime, BB's hand was lacerated where he'd been gored by a bull and they were both covered in cow shit up to their necks.

Now, if I was paying a vet €100 an hour to come and stick needles in my cows' bums I might have thought about rounding them up first, preferably somewhere secure where they couldn't run away, like the milking parlour for instance (and maybe switched on the milking machine for some soothing background music). But instead they spent four frantic hours running around in fields shouting "allez!" with a hypodermic needle, which to a casual passer-by must have looked a bit like a Benny Hill sketch as the vet ran after the bull with BB and Mini-B attached to its horns being dragged through the cowpats. Honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up!

Carrot and coriander - what a great pairing - which up until today I had only ever married in a soup, but in this salad it's fantastic, especially to accompany fish such as sea bass coated with breadcrumbs and chopped coriander. This is adapted from Jamie Oliver's carrot and coriander treat for all.

Ingredients

2 large handfuls of fresh coriander leaves

1 large carrot, cut into thin matchsticks

1 tbsp sesame seeds

For the dressing
zest and juice of 1 orange

juice of 1 lemon

olive oil

salt and freshly ground pepper

♫ Cook along to: Randy Crawford Secret Combination

1. Put the coriander, carrots and sesame seeds in a salad bowl.

2. Finely grate the zest of the orange into another bowl and add the orange juice and lemon juice and 4 times that amount of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and use to dress the salad.

strawberry and cream dreaming days

2009-05-10T09:54:00.032+02:00

It was like a summer's day today - one of those long, blue, strawberry and cream dreaming days when you want to lie in the grass staring up at the sky - and I did briefly, until I remembered my meringues were in the oven!

This has to be the best summer dessert of all time - Delia's Eton Mess.

Ingredients
Serves 6
6 oz/175 g castor sugar
3 large egg whites
1 lb/450 g fresh strawberries, hulled
1 tbsp icing sugar
1 pint/570 ml double cream

♫ Cook along to: Minnie Riperton Lovin' You

1. Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Add the sugar a tablespoon at a time until thoroughly whisked in. Take rounded dessertspoonfuls of the mixture and place in rows on a lined baking tray. Place in the oven at 275°F/140°C for an hour. After that, turn the oven off and leave the meringues in the oven to dry out overnight, or until the oven is completely cold.

2. When you're ready to go, chop half the strawberries and place in a blender with the icing sugar. Whiz to a purée and pass through a sieve to remove the seeds. Chop up the rest of the strawberries and whip up the cream to the floppy stage.

3. Break up the meringues, place in a bowl with the chopped strawberries and fold in the cream and the purée.

friture

2009-05-08T18:00:00.003+02:00

I went up to the col this morning into the forest to collect some sphagnum moss for my hanging baskets. I love sphagnum moss - the earthy smell and the spongy texture just make me want to lie down in it and go to sleep.

This year I'm planting tomatoes in my baskets. I ordered tumbler seeds on the internet which are supposed to produce "attractive clusters of fruit on trusses that trail down from all sides" and yield over 4 lbs of small, cherry-sized fruit. I line the baskets with the moss first then add a plastic liner cut out of an old compost sack, some broken-up terracotta pots for water retention (plenty of them around here since the builders' rampage!) and fill up with compost. All being well, I shall be in tomato heaven this summer.

At this point I should segue into a recipe featuring tomatoes ... but today friture was on the menu - fresh whitebait dusted with seasoned flour and fried in corn oil until just crispy. Don't overcook them or they'll taste like dried-out, burnt chips (fries) and not taste of fish at all. Serve with lemon/mayo/chopped parsley/garlic oil and eat with your fingers.

egg soldier skirmishes

2009-05-07T10:26:00.022+02:00

Egg soldiers - the top dog, the Colonel of the breakfast table chez nous. There's something so simple and comforting about a soft-boiled egg with hot buttered toast cut into fingers the way your Mum used to make, to mop up the rivers of yolk spilling onto the plate.

But beware of skirmishes. You may be ambushed for that last finger of toast if your other half has charged ahead and finished his before the mopping-up manoeuvre. In these circumstances I recommend a counter attack using a teaspoon over the knuckles, tapping continuously until he has withdrawn and unconditionally surrendered. Alternatively, launch a pre-emptive strike and nick his first!

For the perfect soft-boiled egg where the white is just set and the yolk is runny, place your eggs in a pan and cover with cold water by about ½ inch/1 cm. Place over a high heat and as soon as the water is boiling, reduce the heat and simmer for 4 minutes. Serve with fingers of buttered toast, lined up in single file on the plate.

chocolate mousse

2009-05-05T17:47:00.022+02:00

The principal structure for the mill is finished and BB is now putting in the joists for the first floor which will act as the launching pad (technical engineering term) for the roof. He spent all day adjusting the top surfaces of the joists to make them level (BB works to within 1 mm, the builders 10 mm) and hammering 10 inch nails into oak beams. This, after rotavating my vegetable garden - so I figured he deserved a treat.

This is taken from Delia Smith's very chocolatey mousse recipe.

Ingredients

Serves 6

7 oz/200 g dark chocolate (75% cocoa solids)

4 fl oz/120 ml warm water

3 large eggs separated

1½ oz/40 g castor sugar

1. Place the broken-up chocolate and water in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, making sure the bowl doesn't touch the water. When the chocolate has melted, remove from the heat and give it a good stir until smooth and glossy then cool for 2-3 minutes before stirring in the egg yolks.

2. In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites to a soft peak, then whisk in the sugar one third at a time until the whites are glossy. Using a metal spoon, carefully fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, divide between ramekins and chill for at least 2 hours - after licking the bowl!

asparagus and prosciutto rolls

2009-05-02T14:02:00.038+02:00

I made these little asparagus and prosciutto rolls today, which don't look too tempting in the picture (bad light!) but BB said were delicious and made up for his (imagined) hemlock poisoning. This is a lovely combination of textures and flavours - melted cheese and salty ham, contrasting with crunchy asparagus and crispy garlic pastry.

Ingredients
2 garlic cloves
2 oz/55 g butter
8 thin asparagus spears
2 oz/55 g parmesan cheese, grated
8 sheets filo pastry
8 thin slices of prosciutto
1 lemon to serve

1. Crush and finely chop the garlic, add to the butter in a pan and melt over a low heat. Remove from the heat and leave for 10 minutes to allow the garlic flavour to infuse then pass through a sieve. Trim the asparagus.

2. Brush each filo sheet with the garlic butter and double over. Sprinkle with the cheese then lay a slice of ham and an asparagus spear across and roll up. Brush with more garlic butter. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden at 230°C/450°F. Cut into 2 inch/5 cm lengths and serve with lemon.

mayday mayday mayday

2009-05-01T15:41:00.025+02:00

May 1st - a public holiday known as la fête du muguet in France - which I'd completely forgotten about when I went shopping for ingredients for wild garlic recipes and found everything shut. Muguet (lily of the valley) is traditionally sold in little bouquets all over France today and given to loved ones as a token of good luck and to celebrate the arrival of spring.

Coincidentally, the leaves of wild garlic look a bit like the leaves of lily of the valley, and the white flowers, according to BB, a bit like hemlock (they don't - see below) - so he refused to finish my salad of wild garlic after he became convinced that his mouth had become anaesthetized and he'd been poisoned. He'll do anything to get out of eating his greens!

happy chickens

2009-04-30T10:28:00.014+02:00

The France Géothermie man came back today and after offering us all manner of inducements, bribes, funny handshakes, his granny and a nod and a wink, we've decided to go with geothermal heating. To gain a tax credit we have to pay the whole fee this year, even though work may not start until next year - which is taking a bit of a risk.

The sun's back again (and there's fresh snow on the mountains down to about 1000 m) so I'm going out foraging for wild garlic. The man at the duck farm told me you can put it in olive oil and it's very good for cooking with.

I've just made a leek and goats' cheese tart with Roquin's still warm eggs he dropped off. Look how yellow they are in the picture - happy chickens' eggs.

Ingredients

Enough shortcrust pastry to line a 7½ inch/9 cm non-stick quiche tin

1 tbsp grain mustard

3 leeks, cleaned and sliced

6 oz/175 g goats' cheese, cut into rounds or crumbled

½ oz/10 g butter

3 eggs beaten

7 fl oz/200 ml cream

2 spring onions, finely sliced

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Line the tin with the pastry and spread the mustard over the base. Fry the leeks gently in the butter until just soft. Drain off any excess liquid and arrange over the mustard base. Combine the eggs, cream and spring onions, season and pour over the leeks. Top with the goats' cheese and cook in the oven for 25-30 minutes at 375°F/190°C until golden.

comfort food

2009-04-29T14:24:00.033+02:00

Oh my giddy aunt! It's blowing a gale and the crane is spinning round like a weathervane, which makes me slightly nervous, but BB assures me there's only a 10% chance of it falling over! I had to light the wood burner this morning, it was so chilly. Comfort food was in order. I've still got three sacks of last year's potatoes and what better CF combination than potatoes and cheese - gratin dauphinois it was then - again.

We're trying to decide on the heating system for the mill at the moment and geothermal is looking like the best option. A representative from France Géothermie came to the house today to explain how it works and what it involves (drilling a 120 m bore hole and parting with a large capital sum). The alternative is wood, which we use in our present house, but it's very labour intensive. We have to cut down the tree, split it into 1.08 m lengths and leave to dry out for at least a year. Then it has to be chopped into smaller lengths and stacked and collected from the wood shed twice a day in winter. With geothermal we can have cosy under-floor heating at the flick of a switch - and be eco friendly. Tough decision.

Gratin dauphinois

Ingredients

Serves 4

8 waxy potatoes, peeled and cut into ¼ inch/6 mm slices

16 fl oz/450 ml cream

5 garlic cloves

Sprig each of rosemary and thyme

4 oz/112 g Gruyère cheese

Salt and pepper

Put the potatoes, cream, 4 lightly crushed garlic cloves and herbs in a pot, season, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Transfer into a gratin dish (after discarding the garlic and herbs - but I like to keep them in) that has been rubbed with the remaining garlic clove, sprinkle with grated cheese and cook in the oven until brown - about 40 minutes at 350°F/180°C.

belote lunch

2009-04-28T19:56:00.021+02:00

We went back to the ferme d'ambrune et polalye (duck farm) on Sunday for our annual belote lunch. This is the home of a guy in the village who has turned an old barn into a restaurant where he also keeps ducks and grows fruit - so duck and red berries make more than a guest appearance on the menu.

A platter of rillettes of duck arrived with our apéros - small squares of home-made bread topped with fine shreds of moist duck meat. Then there was an asparagus mousse followed by a medley of duck en salade: slivers of smoked duck, gésiers (gizzards) and thick wedges of pâté au fois gras lounging on long stems of freshly-picked lettuce. I could happily have lounged on some lettuce myself at that point - and that was just the entrée.

After the plates were cleared, several of us repaired to the terrace with the smokers in a bid to put some distance between courses. When we came back, there was breast of chicken and girolles mushrooms with gratin dauphinois (potatoes cooked with cream and Gruyère cheese), then cheese, and at the final hurdle, sponge cake with raspberry cream.

Top Modèl's girlfriend (who has about as much padding as a swivel chair) must have doubled her weight!

lemon chicken

2009-04-25T16:21:00.043+02:00

While BB and Poire were ploughing the potager (vegetable garden) this morning, I went up to the salle des fêtes to claim some free compost. One of the members of our local council (who is always banging on about compost bins and how we should all have one - cue smug look because we have two) had arranged an evènement exceptionnel where you could collect free compost and order a bin. It's the first time in seven years that I've been to something organised by the commune and there hasn't been a buvett (bar). Even at events involving physical endurance (mountain marathons, potato picking) there's always wine or pastis on offer! It worked in my favour however, because due to the poor turn-out I was able to claim six sacks rather than the allotted one per household.

Lemons were on special offer in the supermarket yesterday - 79 cents for half a dozen - so I made one of my favourite Chinese dishes - Ken Hom's classic lemon chicken.

Ingredients
Serves 4
1 lb/450 g boneless chicken cut into strips
1 egg white
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp cornflour
10 fl oz/300ml groundnut oil or water
2 tbsp chopped spring onions

For the sauce
2½ fl oz/65 ml chicken stock
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1½ tbsp rice wine or dry sherry
1½ tbsp chopped garlic
1-2 tsp dried chilli
1 tsp cornflour blended with 1 tsp water2 tsp sesame oil

1. Put the chicken in a bowl and combine with the egg white, salt, sesame oil and cornflour.

2. If you are using oil for velveting the chicken, heat a wok until very hot and then add the oil. When very hot, remove from the heat and add the chicken. After about 2 minutes, when the chicken turns white, drain and discard the oil. If using water, do the same but bring the water to the boil in a pan before adding the chicken. It will take about 4 minutes to turn white in the water.

3. Heat the wok and add all the sauce ingredients except the cornflour mixture and sesame oil. Bring to the boil and then add the cornflour mixture and simmer for 1 minute.

4. Return the chicken to the wok and coat with the sauce. Mix in the sesame oil. Serve with the spring onions.

leeks gribiche

2009-04-24T13:02:00.023+02:00

Ah ... bliss. It's 8.00 a.m. and all I can hear is bird song (and a strimmer and maybe a distant chainsaw) - but no cement mixer, no kango hammer, no-one banging on the door asking to use les toilettes. The builders have finished. Hooray!

Roquin gave me some leeks from his garden today so we had them for lunch with sauce gribiche. Boil your trimmed leeks for 10-12 minutes until tender and pour over the vinaigrette.

Sauce gribiche
Serves 4
1 small shallot finely chopped
1 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
1 tbsp chopped capers
1 tbsp chopped gherkins
1 hard-boiled egg chopped
5 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar (or lemon juice)
a few snipped chives (optional)
a small piece of chopped lemon peel (optional)
salt and pepper

Mix all the ingredients together and season.

show time

2009-04-20T19:03:00.025+02:00

Well, the show-down wasn't exactly a show-stopper and anyone with ring-side seats would have asked for their money back. The head builder was summoned and asked to rectify the midgets' staircase, which he readily agreed to do - so another two days have been spent cutting the stairwell wall in half and chipping away at the concrete slab with a kango hammer so that you can get down them without doing the limbo.

The subject of the final bill was also broached. Most of the work has been priced by volume and area, which when BB went to measure, found had been grossly over-stated - to the tune of €7,000. But the builder just gave a Gallic shrug and said that his tape measure "couldn't have been working properly."

Feeling €7,000 richer (and happy that the words "I'll see you in court" hadn't been bandied about), we went to a restaurant to celebrate. Good restuarants are thin on the ground round here. Our favourite, Hôtel Prina 5 km away, shut down two years ago after the death of the patron and is sorely missed. There was always that reassuring buzz in the dining-room (who likes restuarants where you can hear a pin drop?) attributable mainly to lots of truck drivers en route to Italy and for €11 you could eat a well-prepared four-course meal consisting of fresh seasonal ingredients.

This time we went to a restaurant we've never been to before, which is risky, because I always enter a new restaurant with high expectations and nearly always leave bitterly disappointed. (It used to be said that you couldn't eat badly in France but either standards have slipped or I have become more discerning.) But I had a good feeling as soon as we went in because it had that "Prina vibe" - busy, noisy and an €11 menu du jour. We started with salade composeé: mixed salad of lettuce, tomatoes, warm lardons and fried potatoes topped off with fried onions (an unusual combination, we agreed, but we both loved it). Then (on a potatoe and onion roll) I opted for morue à la Lyonnaise: salt cod cooked with potatoes and onions with a generous blob of aïoli on the side. Everything was faultless - just like being back at Prina.

wild boar curry

2009-04-16T23:13:00.051+02:00

These builders could drive a woman to drink! They've been working on the staircase for the last two days, using their own cement bucket for the crane - because they've ruined ours by not cleaning it out properly so now the lid doesn't shut and the concrete spills out when it's lifted up.

It's nearly the end of the ski season so I invited a couple of our ski instructor friends from Courchevel over for dinner tonight and made wild boar curry with some sanglier I had in the freezer by adapting Delia Smith's beef curry dopiaza recipe. After dinner we all went to have a look at our new staircase and although we couldn't stand on it, it was instantly apparent from the top that there wasn't enough headroom to descend without hitting your jaw against the ceiling. BB just exploded - so now there's going to be a show-down.

Ingredients

Serves 4

2 lb/900 g chuck steak cut into 1 inch/2.5 cm pieces

1 rounded tsp cumin seeds

1 rounded tsp corinader seeds

3 cardamom pods

1 level tsp fennel seeds

1 level tsp whole (or ground) fenugreek

3 tbsp groundnut or other flavourless oil

3 tbsp onions, peeled and sliced into half-moons ½ inch/1 cm thick

3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

3 green chillies, deseeded aaaand finely chopped

1 level tbsp ground tumeric

1 level tbsp freshly grated root ginger

2 medium tomatoes, skinned and chopped

3 oz/75 g creamed coconut

5 fl oz/150 ml natural yoghurt

salt and freshly ground pepper

Juice of 1 lime and fresh chopped coriander to serve

1. First of all you need to roast the whole spices, and to do this place them in a small frying pan or saucepan over a medium heat and stir and toss them around for 1-2 minutes, or until they begin to look toasted and start to jump in the pan. Now transfer them to a pestle and mortar and crush them to a powder.

2. Next place 2 tablespoons of the oil in the casserole over a high heat and, when it is really hot, brown the pieces of meat a few at a time. Remove them to a plate, then add the rest of the oil and, when that's really hot, too, fry the onions till well browned – about 10 minutes – then add the garlic and chilli and cook for a further 2 minutes.

3. Next return the meat to the pan, add the crushed spices, fenugreek powder (if you were unable to buy it whole), turmeric, ginger and tomatoes and stir everything around. Next grate the creamed coconut into a bowl and combine it with 10 fl oz (275 ml) boiling water using a whisk, then, when it has dissolved, pour it into the casserole, followed by the yoghurt and some seasoning. Now bring the mixture up to a slow simmer, put the lid on the casserole and simmer very gently for 2 hours. Just before serving, add the lime juice and sprinkle over the chopped fresh coriander. Serve with basmati rice.

"Bernie, the bolt"

2009-04-15T08:10:00.004+02:00

I was working on the computer this morning when I looked up to see a rickety old wheelbarrow full of concrete resting on a thin wooden pallet wobble past the third storey window. I felt momentarily giddy as I tried to fathom a volley of questions such as: "why aren't they using the concrete bucket attachment for the crane?"; "why hasn't the wheelbarrow fallen off yet?"; and ultimately, "where is the wheelbarrow going to fall off?" I rushed to the window and found myself shouting: "up, up, up, left a bit, right a bit, left a bit, left a bit, LEFT A BIT! ....." in a bid to steer the barrow away from my flower garden and towards the staircase where it was supposed to be heading but before I could finish, the wheelbarrow and contents toppled over and crashed on to the lawn, narrowly missing the pergola for my wisteria.

I had to go out for a walk to calm down after that and on my way back I met Top Modèl's brother who'd been trout fishing in the stream at the bottom of our garden and very generously gave me some of his catch to cheer me up after my stressful morning.

I don't like to do too much to trout when cooking it. A whole trout stuffed with fresh thyme and roasted in the oven for 10 minutes, served with roasted lemons, is my preferred method, but when looking for other ways to cook it I found this in an Elizabeth David book, which I like as much for the poetry as the simplicity of the recipe.

les truites à la manière Alsacienne
"A trout, when it is a fairly large one, I prefer cooked au bleu, with the sole accompaniment of a few little curls of butter; but when chance - a happy chance - has filled your fishing basket with only a score or so of small trout, you can make an exquisite dish of them by cooking them in a court-bouillon in which white wine, butter, onion, salt, pepper, parsley, a clove and a little good stock have prepared, for your little fishes, a marvellously aromatic bath.

"Then, when they are cooked, which does not take very long, you simply sprinkle them with butter in which you have cooked a few breadcrumbs until they are golden.

"Here is an exquisite dish, even a naïf dish, but one in every way worthy of the learned gastronome." Gaston Thierry La Table 1932

Annie get your gun

2009-04-13T01:29:00.042+02:00

I've become accustomed to being woken at 7 a.m. and the screech of the cement mixer all day but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the acts of vandalism being perpetrated by the builders.

The glass in all the old windows and doors which we were saving to use as cold frames has been smashed and thrown all over the lawn. They've also smashed an old Godin wooden stove, all my terracotta pots which were sitting on a wall out of harm's way and the old loo. It's partly our fault that we didn't move these things to safety, but we didn't expect them to be deliberately smashed up.

They've stacked up the shuttering against the fragile wire fence where I've been trailing a vine for six years (just feet away from some iron railings where you'd expect heavy shuttering to be stacked!) and broken it, so I'll now have to cut it right back to replace the fence.

In addition to breaking the remote for the crane, they've also broken BB's chainsaw and again returned it without saying anything. And one of the builders has engraved his name on the side of the crane with a nail.

I can't sit still when they're here now and I spend all day pacing and looking out the window, waiting to spot the next act of destruction. I've just planted out my seedling sweet peas and sunflowers (which I've been growing in a propagator for the last six weeks) - dangerously close to where they're working - and if I see them being trashed I think I may just go and get Poire's gun! There's only one major job left to do - the staircase down to the basement - which should be done in the next couple of days then a bit of finishing off and they will be gone for good.

We're eating a lot of asparagus at the moment, but even in season it's expensive - €11.90 a kilo in our nearest shop. The restaurants in this region serve it with a vinaigrette sauce with chopped boiled egg on top. I like to eat it steamed, with anchovy and lemon butter (knob of butter, chopped anchovies, squeeze of lemon and some dried chilli if you like a kick) or roasted with garlic, cherry tomatoes, black olives and some olive oil.

Young's Modulus

2009-04-12T16:46:00.039+02:00

BB finished building the truss yesterday which will be a supporting beam for the floor (and roof) above. I can't get my head around how so much heavy oak timber can sit on such a thin piece of steel without touching the ground, nor how it will be able to support all that weight above. (A truss was necessary because the builders didn't make the concrete slab strong enough to take the beam.) BB demonstrated with a paper model and showed me his deflection calculations. I appreciate he has a first class honours degree in civil engineering, but by his own admission, he skipped a lot of classes, so I think I'd like someone to check his homework - just in case he missed the one on Young's Modulus.

We invited Mr and Mrs K. Bear for Easter lunch and I made Jamie Oliver's pot-roasted guinea fowl with sage, celery and blood orange. It's important to retain moisture when cooking guinea fowl (apparently) to prevent it from drying out and this recipe is ideal.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

2 x 2-2½ lb/900-1100 g guinea fowl

8 blood oranges

1 bulb celery

handful of fresh thyme

sea salt and pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

6 cloves garlic, whole and unpeeled

3 oz/85 g butter

10 sage leaves

12 fl oz/350 ml fruity dry white wine

1. Wash the birds, pat dry and rub the cavities with a little salt. Cut the ends off the oranges, remove the skin and slice into five or six rounds. Remove the tough outer sticks of celery and slice the bulb thinly. Put in a bowl with the thyme and salt and pepper and stuff the cavity of each bird with the filling.

2. Rub the skin with salt and pepper and seal in a thick-bottomed pan in the olive oil until lightly golden on all sides, then add the garlic, butter and sage and cook for 3-4 minutes until golden brown. Add a little wine and place in the oven at 225°C/425°F/gas 7 for 45 minutes. Keep adding wine at intervals (check every 10-15 minutes) to keep the pan slightly moist at all times.

Look - no feet!

morilles

2009-04-03T17:11:00.042+02:00

The timber for the roof arrived this morning - 15 tonnes of it - which took two hours to unload even with the crane. Mini-B turned up to give a hand, with his pockets full of the first morilles (morels) of the season which he'd found in the woods.

Morilles go particularly well with veal and Anthony Bourdain has a great recipe for veal tenderloin with wild mushrooms.

Ingredients

Serves 4
1 x 2 lb/900 g veal tenderloin

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tbsp/14 ml olive oil

3 tbsp/42 g butter

4 oz/112 g fresh wild morels (or porcini)

1 shallot

4 oz/110 ml Madeira

1 garlic clove, thinly sliced

4 oz/110 ml dark chicken or veal stock

2 oz/56 ml heavy cream

1 tbsp/14 ml sherry vinegar

1 sprig flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Season the veal. Place a large ovenproof sauté pan over high heat and add the oil. Drop in 14 g of the butter. Let it foam and subside. Sear the veal on all sides until golden brown. Transfer to oven and cook for about 25 minutes.

2. Heat 14 g of butter in small sauté pan over medium-high heat. Once it has bubbled and come down again, add mushrooms and cook over medium heat until golden brown. Add the shallot and cook for another minute. Stir in 56 ml of the Madeira. Add sliced garlic and continue to cook until the wine is reduced by half. Set aside.

3. Once the veal has cooked, remove from oven and set aside. Return the pan to the stovetop over medium heat and stir in remaining 56 ml of Madeira. Add cooked mushroom mixture and the stock and bring to the boil. Let the liquid reduce by half, then add the cream. Continue to cook until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Whisk in remaining 14 g of butter and drizzle in the sherry vinegar. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

4. Cut the veal into ¼ inch/1 cm slices, pour the sauce over and garnish with chopped parsley.

tête de veau

2009-04-01T07:30:00.028+02:00

Mini B arrived this evening looking for help to deliver a calf, insisting that he needed both of us, so I went along with my camera.

The call had obviously gone out that he needed a hand because as we arrived at the écurie, more people turned up and we all went to round up the pregnant cow which was happily munching in a field, unphased by the pair of hooves sticking out its rear end. The strategy appeared to be to converge on the animal while flapping your arms around as if you were trying to park a large aircraft and shouting "allez" ("go") which it duly did - right into the stream where it flopped down and refused to budge. Who needs an inflatable birthing pool?

Fast forward ten minutes and I'm taking pictures as the calf is pulled out when Mini-B shouts, "no photos!", like he's the Max Clifford of the animal kingdom. I don't know what that was about and I didn't want to ask.

Calf's head - tête de veau - is a popular dish in France, but not one I recommend you try at home, or anywhere else for that matter. Elizabeth David in French Provincial Cooking writes that if it's served really tender and hot with a well mixed vinaigrette sauce then it's quite good - then adds, "more often it is repellent". We once had lunch at a nearby hotel with some friends who ordered it and I had to sit with my head out the window until the plates were removed to avoid throwing up just from the smell.

building at 31 March 2009

2009-03-31T15:15:00.007+02:00

the pitter-patter of concrete feet

2009-03-25T14:00:00.042+01:00

What should wake me this morning but the unexpected arrival of two cement lorries. Unexpected - and suspicious - since the weight restrictions haven't been lifted yet.

Our property is on the border of two communes and can be approached by a single-track road from either. The "barrière de dégel" sign is still in place at our commune's end, but the one at the other end (which is less conspicuous and small enough to throw into a hedge - if you were to be so inclined) has disappeared. When I asked BB if he had anything to do with this he was uncharacteristically sheepish.

Once the concrete had been dumped, the lorries then had to leave by the same route, which meant reversing back up the narrow twisty road for half a mile, clinging like goats to the side of a mountain to avoid the precipitous drop into the (newly deforested) gorge 150 feet below.

The builders spent all morning tamping and float finishing the dalle (to get "a glass-like finish reflecting the stars at night", trilled BB) and as they left at lunchtime, I realised I'd forgotten to lock the catflap - just as I saw three cats padding around in the wet concrete.

barrière de dégel

2009-03-13T14:37:00.020+01:00

After the faux pas with the millstone you'd have expected the builders to be on top of their game, but yesterday they put the void for the internal staircase in the wrong place. Why do we bother giving them plans?

The beam and block work for the first floor slab is in and ready to be filled with concrete. Because it's such a large area and has to be done quickly we need to get two cement lorries in, but last week a "barrière de dégel 12 tonne" sign went up on our road - for the first time ever. This is a weight restriction they put on some of the smaller tracks at the end of winter when the ground starts to thaw to prevent excessive damage to the roads.

So, we can't get the cement lorries in and will have to wait until the restriction is lifted - which could be weeks. In the meantime the builders will disappear again and nothing can advance.

shoot the builders

2009-03-11T12:00:00.031+01:00

We were awoken at 7.20 a.m. yesterday by the builders with their new petrol-driven cement mixer which sounds like a combine harvester cutting a field of metal straw. They are now putting in the concrete floors in the cellars.

The large millstone in the basement (weighing three tonnes and measuring over six and a half feet in diameter) was too heavy to lift out so we decided to make a feature of it by embedding it in the floor of the wine cellar - a place which will be visited not infrequently - where it could be admired. Apart from the back stone wall, the millstone is the only other original remaining feature of the mill and we were keen to incorporate it into the design of the new house somewhere. Monsieur Chatting And Having A Laugh and BB spent hours a few weeks ago moving the stone into position and getting it level in readiness for pouring the concrete around it. There is also a diagram of the stone in the cellar floor on the builders' plans so it was pretty obvious what it was to be used for.

So imagine our dismay yesterday evening when we went to inspect the work after the builders had left to discover that they'd concreted right over the top of it! It just leaves me speechless.

Belle et Sébastien

2009-03-05T18:36:00.012+01:00

The builders made a guest appearance last week after their extended Christmas break in Acapulco - brief but long enough to break the remote for the crane (which they didn't fess up to and which BB only discovered when he went to use the crane today) and litter the place with empty cigarette packets. They have still to put in the main concrete slab but we've heard they're now on another job so who knows when they'll be back.

After years of searching I have finally got my hands on the DVD of Belle et Sébastien, the original TV series about a young boy and his dog set in the French Alps which was first shown on BBC in 1967. It was my favourite programme when I was a kid and it's like watching a documentary about life in our village - so little has changed.

Just as the last of the snow was beginning to melt, it snowed again today - which is good because we are going to Méribel tomorrow to stay with Miss Fit.

recipe for disaster

2009-02-08T18:09:00.028+01:00

Ingredients
4 couples

1 bottle pastis
3 bottles white wine

16 snowshoes

snow to season

1. Mix the first 3 ingredients in a log cabin at the top of a mountain late at night. When the wine and pastis have reduced by half, add more wine and pastis. Bring the mixture to the boil by talking about politics. When the mixture has foamed and subsided, remove the couples from the chalet and reserve the right wing and the left wing supporters separately.

2. Add snowshoes and cover with waterproof wrap. Plunge into a snow storm.

3. After 2 hours return the couples to the cabin and pat dry.

re belote

2009-02-04T19:04:00.017+01:00

We didn't do too well at our local concours de belote on Saturday but we did get chatting to Fester, Madame la Mairesse's co-pilot, who told us that the modifications to our planning application are going through.

We faired better on Sunday when we were two games out of two up and only needed 15 points in the third game to qualify for the finals. We'd come from 600 points down and a crowd had gathered to watch la rosbife and her completely unfathomable random playing. Then we were 'capot'ed (when the winning team wins every trick) and it was game over.

We've been invited to go snowshoe-ing on Saturday night and then for dinner in a cabane de chasse (a log cabin used by hunters) up in the mountains - which could be interesting.

shoot the mole

2009-01-22T15:52:00.013+01:00

BB was helping Poire with his garage roof again today and came back at lunchtime to say that the gunshots I'd heard earlier (and assumed were hunters) had been Poire "de-moling".

Poire moved into a house on the plateau above us last year and spent thousands laying a new lawn (and planting various exotic flora - including banana trees - in the Alps!) which has been blighted by dozens of molehills. When his wife, Poirette, alerted him to some movement in one of the conical mounds this morning, he went out with his 12 bore and started shooting up the lawn. I was ready to go round there sporting my PETA T-shirt until I read the following on a gardening website on how to rid your garden of moles:

Trapping is often the best method for young inexperienced moles. The normal type of trap has a scissors action which to be honest is somewhat barbaric.

Fumigating is another method often used, however you are limited to how far the poisonous smoke will travel.

Baiting worms with poison is another method. This is best carried out by a professional mole catcher as the poisons used are licensed and very dangerous to other animals and birds.

Which makes shooting them sound pretty humane in comparison.

quelle jolie table

2009-01-13T14:47:00.039+01:00

The previous mayor came round yesterday to ask if he could borrow BB's van. We could probably make a living hiring it out given the number of people who've used it. In the beginning BB did the driving, until an acquaintance, Madame Pas De Mates, borrowed it for a removal and BB and I ended up hauling all her heavy white goods up six flights of stairs (while she chatted on her mobile!!) because nobody else turned up to help. Now the driver and the dogsbodies are not included.

Anyway, BB invited him in for a drink and imagine my surprise when he started going on about "quelle jolie table" as if he'd never set eyes on our kitchen table before. He's chased me round it often enough (funnily enough just after BB has left for the Sunday Club) but I suppose his mind wasn't on the finer points of mortise and tenon joints!

When I told BB about this "mayor trying to get wife in clinch" episode I thought he'd be outraged, but instead he said I should have "obliged" and we might have had our planning application passed quicker!

and the moral of the story

2009-01-12T19:48:00.051+01:00

The intemperate weather continues, keeping the builders away, but at least allows us to ski without feeling as if we're skiving. The head builder came round last week with an invoice for the work done so far and said he'd be back "when it gets warmer", for which read: "after I've been to Acapulco on your big fat rosbif cheque and fancy doing a bit of work again."

My new year resolutions to drink less and exercise more fizzled out when I went to a party after two weeks' abstention and passed out after a couple of glasses of wine, and then my back went during the "pump" section of Davina's "High Energy Five" fitness DVD.

Moral? Story?

santa's little helper

2008-12-11T17:25:00.006+01:00

The builders didn't turn up last week despite the weather not being as bad as predicted, but they were back on Monday and Tuesday and are absent again because it hasn't stopped snowing since Tuesday night. Over a foot and counting. The plan was to get all the masonry work (pool, supporting walls, new lintels and first floor concrete slab) done by Christmas but that's not going to happen now.

The annual battle for the most garish Christmas lights has begun and new-kid-on-the-plateau Poire looks to be in pole position, with M. Slip a close runner-up. I went up to the plateau to have a look tonight and even through the thick fog it looked like Vegas - dancing Santas climbing up the outside of the house, lit-up reindeers and sleighs all over the lawns, flashing lights on all the bushes and trees and all over the house. It's enough to bring on an epileptic fit.

Interesting fact: In 1962 a law was passed in France decreeing that all letters written to Santa would be responded to with a postcard. What an interesting job description that must be.

bear hug

2008-11-29T16:45:00.029+01:00

BB is helping Poire put the roof on his new garage and in return, Poire will help BB with the mill roof when the time comes. Snow is forecast for tonight and all next week, so I doubt much masonry work will be getting done here anyway.

With all his tractors broken down, Mini-B is also calling upon friends to help him deliver bales of hay to the snow-covered fields where his cows are - or where they should be, because for most of this week they've been wandering about all over the road again. Roquin has just dropped off some cauliflowers and reckons Mini-B will be failli (bankrupt) by next year if he carries on like this.

Roquin also told me that there used to be brown bears in the mountains here until 1913, which I never knew. (They disappeared from the French Alps altogether in 1937.) His grandfather used to tell him the story of his two friends who shot one high up in the mountains and while one guy ran down to the village to fetch a sledge (a four-hour round trip), the other guy hugged the dead animal to keep warm - and got fleas. Pah! Serves him right!

secrets and lies

2008-11-28T17:02:00.007+01:00

To mix the cement for the swimming-pool walls today, the builders had to break up the sand with a pickaxe and smash through two inches of ice on top of the water barrel. The garage tap has thawed out but we are having to keep it open to prevent it from freezing again until we can move the wood - which we can't do until the enormous pile of sand has gone.

BB spent all day wrestling with coils of armoured flexible PVC tube for the pool - which in sub-zero temperatures is extremely difficult to unroll and cut - whilst trying to avoid impaling his eyeballs on the reinforcement rods sticking up all over the place every time he bent down.

People keep stopping to ask why we're digging such a big hole in the basement so we're having to pretend it's a cave (cellar) otherwise we may have difficulties when we come to applying for planning permission. Apparently, the planning authorities can come to your house before they grant permission to make sure you haven't started the work already - and if you have, they can refuse your application. It's probably the worst-kept secret in the village right now, so we'll just have to make sure we don't fall out with anyone!

too much information

2008-11-27T10:54:00.010+01:00

The builders are back, it's -8 outside and in no particular order of severity:

a block of ice has formed in the internal workings of the crane making it inoperable

in order to thaw out the crane (and the workers) they've lit a bonfire on top of the (PVC-coated) earth pipe for the crane

the water tap in the garage has frozen

access to the water mains to turn off the water and prevent the garage from flooding is under five tonnes of wood

the toupie (cement lorry) has arrived and they are now pouring the base for the swimming-pool on to a slab of ice.

All of which is far too much information for me!

génépi

2008-11-26T22:35:00.018+01:00

The builders arrived at 7 o'clock this morning and after clearing the snow off the materials started putting in the reinforcement for the pool. Work on the foundations for our current house and the garage was delayed in previous winters because BB refused to pour concrete in cold weather because he said it would crack (setting us back months but conveniently allowing him to have very long skiing holidays) - but he doesn't seem to mind when other people are doing it!

He came back from the écurie tonight with the news that Mini-B was off out on a hot date and had spruced himself up by taking a piece of folded-up cardboard and scraping the cow shit off his jeans!

While BB was out, Roquin came round with some eggs and a bag of génépi - a rare aromatic plant that grows high up in the Alps - which I've put in la gnôle with some sugar to make a digestif. The bright green liqueur is a speciality of this region for which you pay a fortune in the ski resorts. What with the génépi and my other homemade liqueurs (vin de noix, calava, kirsch and vin d'orange), I could be on to a nice little earner. At the rate BB is paying the builders, we may need it!

set back

2008-11-24T18:01:00.004+01:00

The builders were due to start today but the materials are currently under several inches of snow!

cracking on

2008-11-20T19:47:00.009+01:00

Things are moving at a cracking pace now. Monsieur CAHAL has been here since Monday, knocking down a section of stone wall and digging out the foundations for the new internal walls and the swimming-pool (which we haven't got planning permission for yet!). Just as he finished, it started pouring with rain, so now all the foundations are full of water.

The builder, who starts on Monday, spent all afternoon dropping off materials - sand, sacks of cement, reinforcement bars - and installing a porta-cabin in front of the garage, so it appears they may be here for some time.

There are people in and out of the house all day long now and as soon as I've cleared away the pastis glasses, wiped down the table and mopped up the floor, the next lot of builders or inquisitive friends or neighbours arrive. With our house on constant public display I'm having to do far more housework than I would otherwise like!

demolition men

2008-11-15T18:46:00.007+01:00

BB has brought in an équipe (team) to help with the demolition work and after two days, the interior of the house has been completely demolished, leaving only the external stone walls, and everything not worth keeping has been burnt. There were five guys, each of whom was being paid an exorbitant daily rate, so I kept looking out the kitchen window to make sure they were earning it. (There seemed to be a lot of fighting over the remote for the crane I noticed.) I wouldn't make a very good boss: "What do you mean you have to go to the toilet? Can you not wait until you get home?"

This morning I decided to go and give them a hand and at one point, as I was fishing bits of roof timber out of the freezing cold river, I noticed that everyone else was standing around the bonfire smoking, drinking a coup de blanc and I was the only one doing any work!

budget summit

2008-11-11T00:06:00.005+01:00

By the time we arrived home last night it was pitch black (apart from the sparks flying between us) so I got the surprise of my life this morning when I came downstairs and looked outside. Not only has the rest of the roof on the mill gone but the whole landscape behind the garage has changed. Where there used to be a steep embankment covered in vegetation there is now an extensive flat area upon which you could build another house. BB has been busy.

Given the "budget issues", we sat down today to re-visit the plans (for the sixth time) to see where we can cut costs. At the moment we have a long, thin ensuite bathroom in one of the bedrooms which BB wants to make two feet shorter - not for financial reasons but because he says he would "get tired walking to the loo" and it would be "part of his life he'd wasted"! This from a man who spends many of his waking hours drinking pastis.

Elsewhere in the village: Nainbo took the opportunity of his wife's absence last week to dig up her favourite tree - so they're not speaking - and Gribouille's wife wondered why the lawnmower wasn't cutting the grass so stuck her hand underneath so see if the blades were turning - which they were - and cut her finger off!!

budget issues

2008-11-10T19:35:00.001+01:00

I'd been looking forward to seeing BB after my trip but when he met me at the airport tonight, things didn't get off to a very good start. He said he'd been working every day since I left (?!) apart from Wednesday afternoon, when he'd gone for lunch chez Nainbo, and Friday afternoon, when he'd been "chatting and having a laugh" with the guy who had taken down the old concrete lamppost in our front garden. The first five minutes in the car went like this:

BC: (incredulously) But you don't do Chatting And Having A Laugh! How much did he charge anyway? A couple of hundred?

BB: (incredulously) A couple of thou more like.

BC: (choking on my Azorean cinammon twist biscuit) No wonder he was Having A Laugh! Laughing All The Way To The Bank more like!

But that was just a taster - an amuse-bouche, a horse's h'oeuvre - of what was to come because he then dropped the bombshell that he's asked Monsieur Chatting And Having A Laugh All The Way To The Bank to do the masonry work (putting in the concrete slabs and some walls) - for a price equal to 70% of our budget! To put it into perspective, that's twice as much as we paid to completely re-do the house we're in now!

BC: (speechless - for no words were spoken) !

BB: Ok. We've got some budget issues.

BC: (fit to be tied) BUDGET ISSUES! BUDGET ISSUES!

An hour and a half of silence later.......

BC: So. Did you eat all the PC Dinners?

BB: Yep. They were great. The spag bol was hard work though because I had to transfer it into a pan and stir AND put pasta on!!!