Down in the market that morning I had managed to procure a good bunch of broom, no mistletoe though.  I wasn’t sorry really, this is France after all, and although Frenchmen rarely need an excuse, if one arises they are more than happy to take full advantage.  I’d been caught out more than once!  I was thinking these thoughts as I wandered through the wilderness, when the vast silence was broken by an unfamiliar trudging sound.  It wasn’t heavy enough for another human, and since I’d never seen another human on this walk such an occurrence would be extremely unlikely anyway.  This was a heavy rustle, certainly not light enough for deer.  I stopped dead in my tracks.  I don’t like noises in the woods when I’m alone and armed only with a pair of secateurs.  Every nerve and vibe in my body strained and shivered, every sense was on red alert.  Vague thoughts of bear and wolf darted into my fevered consciousness as I scanned the immediate surroundings for the source of my mounting panic.  A grunt and a huge scraping sound just a few metres to my right made me drop the basket and stand four square, boots rooted in the mud, secateurs at the ready.  Right in front of my startled eyes trotted a large group of black, bristly wild boar.  They looked at me, I looked at them and we agreed to go our separate ways as fast as possible. I’d walked another five hundred metres, at a very brisk pace, before my heartbeat returned to anything approaching normal.  I always carry a mobile when I’m out in the woods, for if one were to slip and break an ankle it would be a useful tool.  However there really wouldn’t be much point, I decided – a trifle tardily you may think – in phoning the local pompiers eight kilometres away and shouting,
‘Au secours, I’m being eaten by a wolf/bear/boar.’
Not that a boar would have the least intention of eating me, being a snuffly sort of vegetarian, but a frightened or disturbed boar could inflict very serious damage indeed.

I looked down at my basket, glowing berries in plenty, and damp handfuls of moss, trails of ivy and honeysuckle and some good, whippy sticks.  Time to head home to a warm kitchen, a blazing fire and a huge cup of hot chocolate sprinkled with seasonal cinnamon.

Safely back in my cosy haven, I laid the precious harvest out on my scrubbed kitchen table, to admire from all angles, and discovered that the beloved had also been out, for his early morning run, and had brought me a present.  It was laid carefully on my place at the table – beside a pair of wringing wet, smelly socks, but you can’t have everything can you?
It was a leaf.  A particularly pretty golden leaf, it was true, but just a leaf.  I turned it over and puzzled over it for a minute or two, but there was no getting away from the facts of the case.  I popped my head round the study door and asked for enlightenment.
‘Oh yes, it’s just a leaf.’  My knight replied. ‘But as I was running along it was lying on a floor of brown oak leaves, golden and shining and exactly the shape of a heart.  I put it in my pocket and brought it home for you.’

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

© Amanda Lawrence

Radishes In The Market

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and as the church bells pealed in solemn remembrance I stood in twenty-two degrees of glorious sunshine in the market square watching the parade on one side and negotiating half a kilo of Bleu des Causses on the other. Even for south-western France, it was incredibly warm. Normally by mid-November the fires are lit, every chimney is smoking, sales of haricots blancs have rocketed and I am holed up in my warm kitchen for the winter. Not so this year.

Down in the markets summer lingers on with delectable consequences. Late tomatoes adorn most country stalls adding a splash of shiny scarlet to the otherwise more earthy autumn hues. Vast piles of damp lettuces stand side by side with pumpkins and squashes, whilst delicate combinations of pink, white and red long-legged radishes dance before the eyes. I can’t resist a bunch of the pink variety; I will serve them for lunch, thinly sliced into a green salad and dressed with lemon and walnut oil with just a sprinkling of the new season’s walnuts. Next door on the organic stall bunches of salsify and scorzonera have appeared and I dither enjoyably between the two, eventually settling in favour of the less common scorzonera. I find these slender, succulent roots are a perfect accompaniment to a bird for Sunday lunch. A guinea fowl maybe? I wander over to the boucherie van to see what he has. Sure enough there are a couple of splendid guinea fowl there, both hens, so I take the larger of the two.

‘Madame we have the tenderest pheasant today,’ the wily old stall holder urges me, recognising an English woman at a glance and hoping for an easy sale. But I’ve been here eight years now and I’m no pushover. Pheasants are delicious and I dearly love them, but coming from an English county where I could pick them up at the side of the road every few hundred metres, I’m not going to pay upwards of fifteen euros for one. I smile sweetly and let him down as gently as possible. I need half a dozen duck eggs and a whole rabbit, jointed. Mollified, he perks up, swings his hachoir around in flamboyant style and presents me with two damp, cold parcels and a home-made egg box, bursting at the seams with delicately tinted pale blue treasures.

To the boulangerie. It’s re-enforced on a market morning by the boulanger himself. He’s an elderly gentleman, more at home kneading his dough than behind that complicated cash register he’s never quite got the hang of, so he tends to limit his activities to retrieving the bread from the shelves and chatting to the more vociferous customers, thus freeing his extremely competent shop assistant for the business end of things. I need a flute de compagne and a boule, tranché. Unfortunately I’m late, so there are no boules left which causes the poor man to turn in slight panic to his smooth assistant. As always (I’m often late) she suggests half a gros pain, which answers perfectly. I ponder and manage to resist a tarte aux pruneaux, and flushed with triumphant virtue wander down to the café for a quick coffee before heading home for lunch.

Dumping the flute on the table I mixed a luscious salad, dripping with walnut oil and liberally laced with the crunchy radishes. My lemon trees yielded a good crop this year. A good squeeze from a prize specimen just finished it off. And so I sat down on the sunny terrace to a veritable feast. An excellent terrine de sanglier paired with good bread and a tangy salad is about as good as it gets. I gazed thoughtfully out between the still flowering oleanders to the distant horizon. A pair of buzzards wheeled effortlessly over the still green forest canopy. It has been a long, hot summer, we have had no significant rain for nearly six months and the countryside is parched. But the oaks of the Quercy are used to drought. Their deep roots seek every crack and crevice in the mountains that support them, draining every drop of moisture. Thus they keep their green longer than any other living thing in these parts. Looking out over the rolling vista that afternoon you could easily have imagined yourself in mid-August rather than mid-November.

Every house in the district has its winter supply of wood, neatly stacked in vast piles within easy reach of the kitchen door. Down in the cellar there will be stores of pork and paté, jars of preserves and sacks of beans, side by side with sack after sack of pine cones for lighting recalcitrant wood burners. We have the same. But it seems that after all the preparation there is to be no winter. Already the spring bulbs are appearing, there are buds on the lilacs and out by the pool my tender bougainvillea is still tenaciously in bloom.

It has been the warmest autumn the Quercy has known in living memory.

Gariguette Strawberries

Glorious sunshine gilds the drab landscape as spring finally makes her debut.

In the forest glades dark carpets of leaves are punctuated by a scattering of violets, like a stolen hoard of amethysts, hurriedly discarded. And every now and then the paler daisy-shaped jewel of an anemone blanda, so charming, so delicate and as tough as old tree roots. Overhead the first green has begun to appear, long lines of chartreuse willow and tangles of hawthorn and honeysuckle, complemented perfectly by a froth of blossom from the early blushing brides, wild cherry, almond and blackthorn. A triple wedding – a promise of good times to come.

Down in the market everything had changed. The last of the winter vegetables stepped back and the spring beauties flounced into the limelight. The first asparagus had appeared, outrageously expensive and stealing the show. Huge crates of bitter greens and boxes of emerald watercress jostled the colourful chorus line; the earliest garriguette strawberries. They came from the hothouses of the Lot and Garonne but they were delightfully welcome nevertheless. Next door an impromptu stall had been set up by the jonquil sellers. Their tight bouquets of golden blooms light up the scene and lure unwary tourists, as in days gone by they lured me. I love them, but I no longer buy them, they are fully out and will be dead within forty-eight hours. However across the cobbled market square was a stall that was far more to my taste, primroses, primulas, polyanthus and cowslips. I knew I shouldn’t, I didn’t actually need any, but I could never resist this advance on the seasons.

‘Eh bonjour Madame!’ Pascal the stall holder greeted me, scooping up three of the palest primroses and tucking them inside my basket before I could catch my breath. ‘Les tetes-a-tetes aussi?’ he asked optimistically, trying to flog me a couple of pots of tiny bulbs. They too were in full bloom, but they would come back year after year and in the chilly depths of my garden, they would last for at least two weeks. All the same I already have about two hundred bulbs adorning the little corner of the wilderness I call my woodland garden, I really don’t need any more. I shook my head firmly, paid him for the primroses, from which there seemed no escape, and slipped away to treat myself a poulet roti for lunch. What is it about the wonderful aroma from a market roasted chicken? The scent pervades the busy scene until eventually you can’t bear it any longer, especially if you’re running late and lunch approaches. ‘Peu de jus?’ He asked laconically, ladle poised.
‘Bien sur.’ He touched his fingers to his lips and wished me bon appétit as he tucked the warm, steamy parcel at one end of my basket, well away from the fragile primroses. I arranged a Berlin wall of greens between the two and glanced up at the church clock. It was midday. I still needed a warm loaf from the boulangerie in my village and then I really would have to get home, tout de suite.

We ate lunch on the terrace, the first of the year. Chicken and fresh salad from the market, doused in olive oil. There was a little wine from our neighbour, in the old terracotta jug, fresh bread, ripe goat’s cheese and olives – a feast. We sat back, lazily enjoying the warmth after the bitter months, casually throwing olive stones over the balcony and reflecting on the coming summer.

The future did indeed seem promising.

© Amanda Lawrence 2011

Chocolate Cranberry Tart

All Christmassed out?  Up to your ears in leftovers?  Turn them to stunningly good account.

Cold turkey is of course old hat nowadays – to mix my metaphors thoroughly – and recipes for big bird leftovers ooze from every TV chef’s repertoire like icing from a bag.  But what on earth do you do with all those cranberries?  Are you one of those who makes three times as much as required – just in case – and ends up with half a kilo of delicious cranberry and orange relish that you can’t even sell with a roast chicken?  Or maybe you buy yours readymade, two jars – just in case – and end up using half a jar?

And then on New Year’s Eve your daughter drops a bombshell of nuclear proportions.  She’s off for a sleepover, everybody is taking a dish and she – which means you, in code – has been detailed to provide a pudding.  You have two hours and the shops are closed.  Got a couple of eggs?  Then this, my dear gastronomes, is for you.

The thing about meringue is that it’s really too sweet, it needs toning down with some sharp fruit and maybe lots of cream, which is why the magnificent pavlova works so well.  But pies can be equally good, as long as the filling is tart enough, and the tarty old lemon has held centre stage for far too long…

Ingredients

400g Cranberry and Orange Relish or Cranberry Sauce or whatever you have – the zestier the better.

For the Chocolate Pastry

200g Flour
50g Cocoa Powder
50g Caster Sugar
150g Cold Butter, in small pieces
Yolk of 1 Large Egg – you may need just a little of the second yolk.

For the Meringue

Whites of two Large Eggs
150g Caster Sugar

Of course if you wish you can increase the amount of eggs and sugar and really pile the meringue on high!  This is the economy version and this is yummy enough.

Method

Simplicity itself, I promise you.

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C.  Grease and line a 23 cm fluted tart tin.

Now chuck all the pastry ingredients, except the eggs, into a processor and whizz carefully until it resembles breadcrumbs.  Add the egg yolk and whizz until the pastry comes miraculously together.  If it looks a little sticky add a handful of flour.  Take the pastry out, wrap in some clingfilm and throw it in the fridge for a few minutes.  Dust your board with flour, take your pastry, roll it out and line your tin.  It will break easily, but don’t worry, squash it all in with your fingers, there will be some excess, but you don’t want it too thin, it’s delicious enough to eat on its own.  Now prick the base all over with a fork and put it in the oven for twenty minutes to pre-cook.

Make yourself a coffee and point out to your daughter that despite your brilliance a little more notice would be appreciated next time.

Take the tart out of the oven, and whilst it cools slightly whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks, then spoon by spoon gradually add the sugar.  I do all this with a slow whisk, which is absolutely against the rules, and if I were making a pav, I would abide by them.  But meringue for a tart is more forgiving, it needs to be soft and squidgy and you can cheat a bit.

Turn the oven down to 150 degrees C.

Fill the tart case with your lovely cranberry leftovers and spoon the meringue on top, taking it right to the very edges.  Give it a few decorative swirls and put the tart back in the oven for 40 minutes.

And that is it.  A delectable dinner party dish, out of leftovers, store cupboard ingredients and a couple of eggs.  Too good for the children really!

Bon Appetit!

Game Pie

Serves eight hungry hunters

Boxing Day, and despite your massive efforts in the kitchen during the previous twenty-four hours, more food is required to feed your healthy-walking, out-hunting, let’s-all-get-fit outdoor types.  Game pie is the answer.  It is filling, beautiful, utterly delicious and makes a jaw-dropping centrepiece for the cold table.  You can – indeed you should – make it two or three days in advance.  Fill in the spaces with salad, chutneys and some baked potatoes and you’re all set.

Of course all game pies are made with that mysteriously tricky-sounding pastry, a hot water crust.  Well I’ll let you into a secret, it’s a doddle.  Follow the rules and you can’t go wrong.  Just one pointer – there is no substitute for lard.  It’s not common here in southern France, so I have to trot along to the butcher and winkle some out of him.  What a sweetie, he spent a good five minutes digging some out, putting it in a tub, sealing it, wrapping it and then asked if I wanted anything else… I didn’t of course.  He charged me sixty cents and I felt an absolute heel!

These quantities make a 15cm, 6 inch pie, for which I use a deep loose base cake tin.  You could also use a proper 22cm French game pie mould, if you can find one.

Ingredients

For the pastry

175g lard
500g plain flour
large pinch salt
I egg to glaze and seal

For the filling

200g pork (any cut will do, but you need some fat on it, as a last resort you can even use sausage meat)
200g veal
100g streaky bacon
breasts from one pheasant, skinned and cut into fairly large strips (you can use any game, of course, about 200g of meat should do the trick)
12 fresh juniper berries (optional)
1 teaspoon mustard
a teaspoon of chopped fresh herbs, I use thyme or rosemary
a good grind of black pepper
1 teaspoon of salt

For the jellied stock

200ml pheasant stock
a good slosh of red wine
1 teaspoon salt
2 level teaspoons or two leaves gelatine

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C

Grease and line the tin.  This is a precaution and not strictly necessary.  If you are using a proper game pie mould I wouldn’t bother.

Chuck the pork, veal, bacon, salt, pepper, mustard, herbs and red wine into the processor and whizz until you have a fairly coarse mixture.

Put the mixture in a bowl in the fridge, with your pheasant breasts and rinse out the processor ready for the pastry.

Put 200mls water and the lard in a saucepan and bring gently to the boil, pour it into the processor and add the flour and salt whizz until you have a smooth, pliable dough.  Put it in a bowl, cover it and let it rest for a minute or so.

Cut a quarter of the pastry off for the lid, keep it covered and warm while you make the pie.  Roll out the pastry and line the tin, pushing it up and round the sides with your hands until it hangs over the top.  Trim, carefully and begin to fill.  Add a third of the pie filling, push in four junipers and lay half the pheasant breasts on top, repeat, finishing with the final third.  Smooth the top and quickly roll out the lid.  Stretch it to fit and crimp it firmly round the edges.  Cut a cross in the centre and fold back the edges.  Decorate with the scraps of pastry and glaze the lid with the beaten egg.  Bake for 30 mins at 200 degrees, then turn the oven down to 170 degrees and bake for a further 1 hour 30 mins.

Make the jellied stock.  Put all the ingredients in a jug in the microwave and heat.  Stir until all the gelatine has dissolved.

Take your gloriously golden pie out of the oven and leave to cool for half an hour.  Very carefully remove the tin and sit it on its final resting plate.  I inherited a fabulous pheasant encrusted meat platter, just the thing.  Now wait another half hour and pour in about a third of the cooling stock.  If it won’t go down give the filling a poke with a skewer.  Leave the pie for a good hour to set, then fill a little further, repeat until you can’t get any more in.  Now wrap the whole affair in cling film and put it in a cold place until needed.

On Boxing Day, lay your table with the best you have and proudly place your triumphant pie in the centre in all its seasonal splendour.  It knocks spots off a boring old ham, I promise you.

Cenac In The Snow

Dawn revealed a sparkling scene. The huge pines at the bottom of the valley were veiled in a delicate frost, junipers shook the icing sugar from their needle sharp leaves, oaks bowed under the weight of their snow overcoats and forest animals creeping ever closer to the warmth of human habitation. It was Christmas Eve in the Quercy.

Early that morning I visited the age-old Christmas market in Cahors, standing at the edge of the cobbled square I wondered how many Christmases have rolled by in that ancient place, how many market scenes almost identical to the one I was witnessing. Birds of every kind were laid out in thrilling abundance, delicate quail, boned and stuffed, caponed guinea fowl, half-plucked turkeys of every breed imaginable, hung head-down over the counters, wings spread to prove their breed, and of course the ubiquitous duck. But the goose has always been king here, and it is still. A fat Toulouse goose is the perfect centre piece for the Christmas table.

On the way home, winding slowly through silent pine woods, heavy with snow – eerie and fascinating – I passed a stag posing majestically at the side of the narrow road. He eyed me with distain; his beautiful liquid eyes just feet from my window, then turned and stepped quietly back into the cover of the frozen forest. He wasn’t the only animal I passed. This road is an old one that follows the natural contours of the hills, and it was their road long before it was ours. The higher I climbed, the thicker the snow, and by the time I reached the heights, it was falling fast again and I could no longer distinguish the road from the verge.

Game Pie

Safely back home and inside my cosy kitchen, all was merry, bright and decidedly food orientated. Cruella had held a constant 170 degrees for well over two hours – which is pretty good going for a woodburner. She’d been watched like a hawk because she had a fabulous game pie tucked away inside. Pork and veal, pheasant and juniper were the stars of the show, and the gloriously glazed concoction was almost ready. Pheasants are rare in this little corner of the world, you catch glimpses of them in the forests of course, but they are not bred for game as they were in my native Sussex, so to come across one is a bit of a treat and not to be wasted. Juniper, the natural companion to any sort of game, thrives on these wild, arid hillsides, I do battle with it in my garden all year round, but some of these wonderfully resilient shrubs must be retained, not only do they yield highly perfumed berries, bright as a blackbird’s eye, but they belong here and will grow where little else could.

A faint whiff of their aromatic presence pervaded the room as I opened the oven door. My pie was gloriously golden and ready to come out. I stood it in pride of place in the middle of the scrubbed kitchen table – where I could admire it for the rest of the day – before finally giving it the finishing touches and pouring in the aspic. The deliciously golden scent of the pie mingled enticingly with the heady perfume of Armagnac, roast walnuts and prunes in my mincemeat.
It’s the aroma of Christmas in the Quercy.

Merry Christmas and a very happy, prosperous New Year.

Cenac Through The Mist

Mists drift past the dripping hills, shrouding the oaks and walnuts in their delicate, damp veils.  As they shift and part shafts of topaz light pierce the scene and a breathtaking world emerges.  The countryside is spiced with cinnamon and saffron, peppered with cayenne. Autumn has finally arrived in all her blazing glory.  I drive down through the valley passing gilded vineyards of breathtaking beauty, line upon line of flame haired maidens swaying to the rustle and rhythm of the leaves in a vast Celtic dance.

The end of the year is a dramatic time in this land.  October is warm, fruitful and summery, but November ushers in the first hard frosts and heralds the march of delectable seasonal treats, thousands of glossy chestnuts, walnuts all over the roads, mushrooms to be foraged and of course the legendary truffle. By the time the month is out winter will have set in and the log piles that surround every house will be gradually diminishing.  Our world shrinks in November.  It’s that transitory month between the outdoor, easygoing life that visitors adore and presume we live all the time, to the lesser known but equally precious time of warmth and solitude, strictly behind closed doors and stone walls, holed up in front of roaring log fires.  There is time in the winter months, time for reflection, time for a little indulgence in the kitchen and time to change the menus.  Winter in the Quercy means duck and sticky onion confit, farm-reared pork spiked with fresh truffles, new walnuts, wine from our own hillsides and of course mountains of mushrooms

Wild mushrooms are a bit like home-made puddings, you get to know a few really well and whenever you’re put on the line it’s safest to stick to those half dozen or so well-tried stalwarts.  For me the well-tried stalwarts are ceps, girolles, parasol mushrooms, field mushrooms, shaggy ink caps and a little grey specimen that grows on a patch of moss in my front garden and whose name I’ve entirely forgotten.  I fry it every other morning for breakfast.  Everything else is considered but usually rejected.  I find parasol mushrooms frequently, field mushrooms too, but ceps are becoming a little rare.  Not, I suspect, because there are fewer of them, but because one has to be quick off the mark.  They are not only delicious, they are fatally fashionable and the stall holders will go to unprecedented lengths to get their hands on a goodly haul for market day. As a general rule this means plundering the countryside on a regular basis.  And one can’t blame them, ceps can fetch up to €25 a kilo, as much as fillet steak, but it means pickings are slim for the rest of us.  The other little treasure trove that any paysan-with-a-van and possibly a trained hound, will be after from now on, is the truffle hoard.  I have never found one myself, though I’ve accompanied those who have. It’s an exciting business unearthing a truffle, but it’s undoubtedly a bit hit and miss.  So for me the best way to acquire a good fresh truffle is to attend the weekly truffle market at Lalbenque, held every Tuesday from November to March.

A long line of muddied locals stood behind a trestle table that seemed to run the length of the street.  In front of them their little baskets, carefully lined with red and white tea towels or handkerchiefs and in front of that a long rope to keep out the press of buyers.  There were the big men in their rich overcoats and gold watches, down from Paris or buying for the big foie gras companies.  Then there were the little men, buying for the local restaurants and cafes, and then there was me, littlest of all, waiting until the frenzy of activity that always starts promptly at two-thirty, had died down, biding my time, waiting my chance.  By three o ‘clock most of the business was over.  The fat cats slid into waiting and appropriately fat cars.  The restaurateurs slipped away, pleased with their bargains and my turn had arrived.  I took the initiative, fixed a little man with a wobbly beret with my very best engaging smile.  He was a bit down in the mouth anyway because his small offering hadn’t sold.  He only had four truffles and they weren’t large, not impressive enough to attract the big money.  I offered to buy two – this isn’t done, one should buy the whole lot – and he winced accordingly.   But if I bought two perhaps another like-minded gastronaut would buy the other two.
‘S’il vous plais?’  I wheedled disgracefully.  He eyed me impassively.  I tried another tack.  ‘I’ve got a whole loin of pork at home, people coming for dinner…’ His eyes lit, I had struck the usual chord, the one no true Frenchman can resist.
‘Free range pork?’  He asked me anxiously, ‘From a farm?’
‘Of course!’  I assured him.  That’s to say I actually bought it in the market in Cahors, but it’s farm-reared.  I endured a short but intensive interrogation as to the pork’s provenance and assured him I would not over-cook it.  He then demanded a rundown of the menu, satisfied himself that the truffles would be used to their best advantage and gingerly held out the two largest.  I surrendered an unholy amount of money and the deal was done.
I danced back to the car, parked in a ditch on the outskirts of the village, almost whooping with joy.  I’d done it!  I had a truffle – two truffles.  The fact that I’d paid a small fortune for them seemed totally irrelevant.

That night I conjured up my November feast.  I warmed my guests with wild mushrooms, foraged that morning and quickly fried in olive oil and garlic, then tossed with wild rocket.  The loin of pork was liberally studded with black slivers of truffle and roasted in my wood fired oven.  It was accompanied by spiced red cabbage and followed by poached pears, blue cheeses from the high causses and the new walnuts.  Just a jug or two of last year’s wine finished the menu.

The essence of autumn in the Quercy.
© Amanda Lawrence 2010

Quercy Peaches

Summertime – and the living is easy…  Okay so it’s not very original, but in countries where summers are hot, harvests are lavish and lazy rivers run full of fish, it’s so very true – nowhere more so than here in the Quercy.  The fields are dominated by harvesters, crawling across the landscape like vast locusts; the markets are full of eye-popping colour and equally full of misty-eyed tourists.

My son has spent much of his summer fishing.  The river Lot winds its serpentine course through some of the most spectacular and historic landscape in southern France and eventually passes conveniently at the feet of our own hills.  Strolling along its enticing banks in the warm, balmy evenings I glance out over the shimmering, rippling stretches.  Willows dip and bow, groves of walnuts march right down to the thirsty shore and there are so many fish dancing just below the surface, I feel I can almost reach down and scoop them out.

Up in the hill-top villages strings of flags fly, confetti fights leave the roads strewn with a tapestry of colour and local ladies compete for honours over sumptuously prepared dishes.  It’s the season of the fetes.  These are relatively exclusive affairs, of course the tourists are welcome, they are even invited, but in the smaller places they rarely appear.  It’s all a little too local, a little too like a private party.  Every village has its own – carefully timed so as not to coincide with its immediate neighbour.  The larger communities have elaborately prepared set meals, sometimes they can even afford caterers to do all the work for them.  Here we are small and poor, so the fete is a combined effort.  We all supply a savoury and a sweet dish and contribute our nominal entrance fee – not that there’s anybody to check – which pays for the bread, olives, water and wine, the biblical essentials.  And it is wonderful, truly wonderful.  Everybody is pretty intimately acquainted with everybody else of course, so a few new friendships are forged and many old bonds strengthened.  The young of the villages who spend most of their time in the cities, come back for the fetes.  These beautiful, ancient bastides may seem devoid of youth, but it’s an illusion.  The work may be in the cities, but their loyalties are with the villages of their birth and they neither forget nor abandon them, eventually, one by one, they all return.

As I write I am minding the hazelnut pastry shell in the oven.  This crumbly, buttery concoction pairs perfectly with the exquisite white peaches that are at their delectable best at this time of year.  They fit in snug, concentric rings on a smooth base of sweetened mascarpone and crème fraiche.  Mmmm, try it, it’s once-a-year-wicked!
© Amanda Lawrence 2010

The Pink Ball 2010

The dog days of high summer and the heat is on.  Cicadas scream madly from the trees and sunflowers reach for shimmering skies washed of colour.

In the markets meanwhile, colour reigns supreme.  Piles of misshapen scarlet peppers and shiny purple and mauve aubergines nudge their culinary partners, the abundant courgettes and vast, delectable Marmande tomatoes; a ratatouille dances across almost every market stall.  On the long fruit stands the star of the summer ball is making her flamboyant entrance – the beautiful, fleshy peach.  Cherries are over now, apricots are making their bow, but the lovely peach will see us through the holiday months – and for sheer voluptuous pleasure, there is nothing to touch a ripe peach.  A private pleasure of course, one wouldn’t want to be caught in the act, it can be embarrassing.

In this little corner of the simmering Quercy, we have just held our own summer ball, The Pink Ball, in aid of Breast Cancer Research and Poor Paws Dog Rescue.  The first is of course an ongoing global crusade, represented in our case by the wonderful Institut Claudius Regaud in Toulouse, to which two thirds of the proceeds are going, in order to fund cancer research of all kinds.   The second is a much more local enterprise, in constant need of funds, the Battersea of the South.
It was exhausting, exhilarating and well worth all the effort.  If you missed out this year, you can see a write-up of the glorious event and a few of the many photographs if you click on the article below.

One of the guests at the Ball happened to mention that one of our favourite village bar/restaurants – which you will recognise if you’ve read White Stone Black Wine – has a new chef.  Young and eager, I was told, the menu is miraculous.  This we had to experience for ourselves, so on Saturday night we took ourselves off to the Bahia in Prayssac and prepared to be impressed.  The Bahia is a bar, a typical French village bar, there’s nothing remotely fancy about it.  The Amstel beer sign hangs at a drunken angle, plastic chairs adorn the dusty pavement and there’s no reason to expect anything out of the ordinary, good food, perhaps, but not fancy.  Think again.

I gleaned my first warning from a relatively new outside seating area.  The chairs were still moulded plastic, but the tables were clothed and beautifully dressed and the area was curtained.  Hmmm, I thought.   More clues were picked up from the menu itself, which though still very short, suddenly looked startlingly chic.  The soused herring salad – a staple of this little place for many years – had been replaced with iced Quercy melon soup, or carpaccio de boeuf or some complicated little number involving fat prawns and wafer-thin filo.  We took our places and sat back with a pleasant sense of expectation.
The waiter arrived with the amuses bouches.  ‘A cappuccino of asparagus’, he told us, ‘bon appétit!’
Before us lay a pair of test tubes on a bed of crushed ice, slender black straws showed the way… the beloved’s face was a picture.  We sucked our way through the asparagus and it was tinglingly delicious.  Our first course arrived fairly promptly and the jaw opposite me dropped a further couple of inches.  My carpaccio looked like something out of the gastronomy glossies, as for the prawn thing – it was a work of art.  First impressions didn’t disappoint, the dishes were superbly cooked and crafted, and dinner continued as it had begun, stylish and undoubtedly delicious.  Through fillet of dorade and the most succulent rabbit, boned, elegantly presented and garnished with flowers we were continually amazed.  I concluded my dinner with a flawless fondant, but by that time I expected nothing less.
It was an education, but this sort of thing can happen in France.  All the great chefs have to start somewhere and it’s frequently in little out-of-the-way places, where they hone their skills and bide their time, and where a few discerning customers can experience their talent for a lot less than it is worth.

Fancy a taste of a future Senderens or Roux?  Try the village bar in Prayssac, you won’t be disappointed.
© Amanda Lawrence 2010