Paris Time

With the trip to Paris nearly upon us, I have been looking through the photographs from my last trip. There are snaps of my friend's apartment where we will stay, an "I-want-to-take-it-home" marble basin at the Sunday market we always visit, an early morning espresso while writing cards, a stained glass window from my favorite museum, the amazing Musée National du Moyen Âge and a visual reminder of the goodies to come from the patiserie. And while my dyslexia is rampant, (I have good days and bad weeks!) I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Saint-Émilion with Pastels

Another workout with my new pastels. I'm trying to explore what's possible in this medium both in stylistic and practical terms. Saint-Émilion is another preferred stop on our journeys through France, not only for the charm of the village, but of course, for it's fabulous product, it's wine. Saint-Émilion's history goes back to prehistoric times and is a World Heritage site. It has fascinating churches and old, ruinous buildings stretching along steep and narrow streets. Since Roman times there were vineyards on it's slopes. The photograph, from which I have taken this image, was taken near a lovely bistro/cave called L'Envers du Décor, where you can take your meal and your glass of Grand Cru Classé Château Soutard wine in the troglodyte garden, a small outside space at the back of the cafe overshadowed and enclosed by the 8th Century carved hermitage. The poster was a gift from the proprietor, I admired the design and loved the "English spoken with a French accent" finish.

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Nunc est bibendum - Now we must drink. (Horace)

The room that sealed the deal when we were reconnoitring our present house to buy, was the butler’s pantry. Just a small room off the dining room, designed to catch the cool northerly breeze though vents in the wall, a cold room or larder. Nick, however, realised at once, he could use it as his ‘cave’. The alcoholic equivalent of the garden shed.
It immediately became a shrine to Ricard, Pastis 51, Gauloises, Gitanes and his best vintage, laying down wines. He can trace this addiction for all things French and Bar, to his first days on tour in France on the road in the 1960’s, when the advertising was hand painted on the sides of houses. (Most have now disappeared, see a couple of survivors we snapped along the Loire, below.) There was a need in him to drink the drink of the French movies of Jean-Pierre Melville and smoke the smoke of ‘À bout de soufflé’;-)
In trying to re-live a lost age of La Belle France we scoured the flea markets and bricolage, to find the advertising ashtrays, glasses and water carafes to set the scene. Then there are the bottles of aperitifs bought, seduced by their old world labels. Of course, one needed the appropriate glass for each and every drink. All French bar memorabilia found it’s way to Nick’s ‘cave’.
With the Euro rapidly becoming equal to the Pound, trips, 'en vacance' in the camper van, buying ‘produit de région’ is fast becoming a bygone age in itself.

Inherited Memory of the Basque Country?

The first time I visited the Basque, I both astounded and irritated my husband and son, in equal measure, by my oft-repeated mantra “I know this place”. As we journeyed about highways and byways of the Basque country the landscape seemed just shockingly familiar to me, a strong feeling of déjà vu or more correctly déjâ vécu (roughly translated as ‘having already lived through’) or could it have been inherited memory? Whether I believe in ancestral memories or not, and after this experience I am leaning towards belief, the consequence of this feeling was to make me believe I had returned to a long forgotten home.
The Basques say when God created Adam, he got his bones from a Basque cemetery, certainly the question of their heritage and genetics is still being researched, but all agree they are amongst the oldest Europeans with a language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with any other living language. Basques have a close attachment to their homes and the family house names have transmuted in to Basque surnames, much the same as my own family who took the name ‘woodhouse’ or ‘wodehouse’ from the ancestral home in Wombourne, Staffordshire in the 13th century.
I love the Basque country and long to return for another psychic fix.

Home Made Liqueurs, Sgroppino and Bas-Armagnac

Oh joy, all the liqueurs we made in the summer and autumn are maturing around now. I always make sloe gin if there are sloes to be picked, usually around the end October but this year yielded a poor harvest and what few there were disappeared quickly. So I had to raid my sister’s freezer for some 2007 berries. However, freezing seems to help in this case and the finished drink is indistinguishable from previous vintages. By the way, if you are put off by the idea of using a needle to prick each and every berry before adding the sugar and gin, forget it, use the prickly side of a cheese grater to run over the berries on a baking tray, works a treat and saves hours of time. In fact, it’s the only use I ever found for that side of the grater! I thought I’d try plum gin as well, as usual one of our plum trees, an Early Rivers type, produced more plums than we could eat, jam, pickle, bottle, cook and give away. The drink produced is less strong as the plums are juicer, which dilutes the alcohol, but the advantage is you can place a plum in the bottom of the glass to eat.
Also, I like to make limoncello, as I use it as an ingredient in Sgroppino (dialect in Venice for a lemon sherbet digestif) along with prosecco, vodka, lemon ice cream. Like sorbet it cleans the palette, but this concoction sends you to the stratosphere. I make my limoncello by using the rind only (no pith) of 10 large, unwaxed, organic lemons, placing them in a bowl with 50cl of pure grain vodka and putting the whole, covered with cling film, in full sun for 7-10 days, not easy to forecast in the UK, to bleach out the aromatic lemon oils. Then add sugar to taste and bottle.
We inherited four blackcurrant bushes when we took over our plot at the allotment, so maybe we could try cassis this year or morello cherries in armagnac, which we made once in more prosperous times. Nick and I have been dreaming and plotting about revisiting La Bastide d’ Armagnac and calling into see the delightful and educational M. le Baron, Philippe de Bouglon at the Chateau du Prada, who makes dam fine Bas-Armagnac in the most glorious surroundings. He is most generous with his time and will take you though the many vintages, while tasting using a glass vial he keeps attached to a ribbon around his neck to dip in the huge oak barrels. You can see the baron’s pad at
http://leprada.com/bienvenue.htm and le Baron himself at http://www.vinoteca.ru/en/about/ChateauxDuPrada/a man, I think you’d agree, who looks as if he enjoys his own products.

Crème Brulée a La Maison de la Truffe

I’m planning another trip to Paris to stay with my dear friend Helene. In 2006 I stayed in her beautiful 9th arrondissement apartment near Montmartre for three weeks and roamed free each day while she worked, meeting up in the evening to eat. My days would start with a goal, a galley or museum, a market or garden to visit. Deliberately, I would take a less known route and wander off course, often finding hidden treasures and byways and maybe a hideaway restaurant or bar to while away a few hours with drawing pad and a digestif. There is something very enticing about finding your way around a foreign city on one’s own, daring to lose oneself both geographically and introspectively.
The day I took this photograph I had lunch in La Madeleine at La Maison de la Truffe, something wonderfully truffly and finished with this vanilla packed crème brulée (yes, it was difficult to stop eating it long enough to photograph it). La Madeleine is certainly not a back water, but sometimes you have see the sights and I could hardly visit Paris without joining the jostle of tourists at her most famous grocery stores Fauchon and Hediard, both now over 100 years old and cornucopias of the exotic and sensational. The other photograph was taken later that day, enjoying an early evening Campari Spritz, (alternatively known as The Venetian Spritz, indeed a drink I came to know and love in Venice) in the heady daze of a tobacco-filled bar. No smoking in Paris bars these days, of course, how I’ll miss them this time round.

Fontevraud Abbey

I’ve just finished watching Roland Joffé’s Vatel set in 1671 at the Château de Chantilly. It tells the story of François Vatel, a French chef, famous for inventing Chantilly cream during a visit from the court of Louis XIV. The kitchens in this charming film reminded me of a photograph I had taken at Fontevraud Abbey near Chinon. The abbey dates from the 11th century and contains the tombstone effigies of Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Richard the Lionheart who were buried here.
I loved the cookhouse chimneys each one denoting an oven and it’s hexagon architecture. The Abbey was unusual being both a nunnery and a monastery and to my taste has been over restored. The inner spaces tell little of the story of it’s inhabitants expect, maybe, in the nun’s ‘warming’ room off the cloisters and the kitchen, but this could be my imagination, as these two areas appear to be the only rooms that had fireplaces. Could it be that they warmed both the occupants and my opinions? Admittedly the austerity of the place was matched by the coldness of the day, however, warmth and cheer was at hand in a glass of Chinon cabernet franc wine.

Le Pigeonnier

It’s Saturday and the duck is ready to cook at last. (see below Can Do Canard) The legs are already tenderised and soft after the marinade, a quick rinse and dry and they are ready for the oven.
Talking poultry leads me of this beautiful pigeon house at the Château de Brézé, worth visiting alone for it’s quite amazing 12th century trogloditic basements radiating out from under the house and a bottle or two of their wine. Pigeonniers or columbiers in French, often elaborately designed and decorated, were built from the 14th century for status-conscious aristocrats and could hold up to five thousand birds producing eggs, meat and manure as well as much else. The frogblog has a wonderful chain of the consequences of pigeon keeping and diet from kidney failure through prisoners, literally, to their urine and on to glass-making, a must read! http://frogblog-lavache.blogspot.com/2005/11/pigeonniers-pigeon-roosts.html
British house-hunters in France have taken a flight of fancy to these pigeonniers and apparently are busy buying and restoring. Just writing that makes me want to sneeze, although of course, I can appreciate the attraction. The people in the photograph of the Château give some idea of the depth and scale of the dry moat.

The Dichotomy of Old France and Modern France

Near the mouth of the Loire is the tiny village of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, made famous, to film buffs, by Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot. A national treasure, you would think, but there appears to be still some resistance to Jacques Tati's work in France. Well that is according to some of the dedicated young French pilgrims we met in the renowned door-swishing/squeaking Hotel de la Plage that seems to be pretty much unchanged since filming in 1952. The problem is “the film openly lampoons several hidebound elements of French political and economic classes,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Vacances_de_Monsieur_Hulot)
which apparently made it less than popular at home although a huge international hit. I can find little proof of these sentiments in online research and could have made a grave mistake in translation, especially in the heat of flowing armagnac at the bar. (I always believe I parle français fluently when two sheets to the wind, I don’t). Tati loved the old France and mistrusted the sterile development of Modern France as he depicted so succinctly in his satire Mon Oncle, a view that probably endorsed his complete endearment to us foreigners. Treat yourself and watch some Tati this Christmas. Above Nick and Tati, together at last.

La Bonneterie

Once a year, if possible, we like to take a trip along the Loire, buying wine, drinking wine, talking wine, in our camper van. It’s a perfect way to travel, choosing the route south of the river, just wide enough for two cars, the magnificent embankment la Grande Levée built by english King Henry II. I like to think he tamed the often flooded waters to ensure his supplies of wine in winter months. This long and winding route has beautiful views of the river and the added virtue of deserted 17th century stone quays at river level to park in overnight allowing 5 star views from our mobile hotel.
We have friends who live in Henrichemont and as we near the end of our trip from Sea to Sancerre, we always drop in to see them, collecting our final wines at Menetou Salon. Our friend, (nameless as he always finds some boxes of a very good Sancerre for us that fell off the end of the bottling line sans labels, wink, wink) is a potter as is his wife. In fact there are more than 30 potters from all over the world, working in the hamlet of La Borne on the boundry of the village and it's surrounding area, wood firing and salt glazing in traditional, fearsome, homemade kilns. The earth around supplies their clay, the forests their fuel. Students come from all over the world to seek inspiration and produce their own works of art, which pushes the population of communes d' Henrichemont to about two thousand. And people have been coming and making pots for a long time, certainly since roman times.
In the huge village square, where eight roads collide, a sort of motoring free for all ensues, which makes sitting outside and sipping a Richard tres divertissement for the Henrichemontaises. I took the photograph of a graceful old haberdashers shop front before it entirely fades away, although I believe my friends have plans to save it, hope they succeed.

Winter Blues, Reds and Greens

As winter bites, it's a good time to remember last years fruits and plan for more and better next year. In September 2006 I visited Château de la Bourdaisière in the Loire for the annual Tomato Festival and come away tomato star struck with a great variety of heirloom seeds. All that winter I waited patiently for 1st April to begin to germinate the bounty. Every seed became a seedling so that by May I was giving pots of baby tomatoes to anyone who had a garden, window box or old shoe to grow them in. In the end I freecycled the last to grateful strangers. Wow and how they grew. By the end of the season I had picked over a hundred kilos. Salads, sauces, bottles, jams, pickles, ketchup you name it, we processed it. So here in memory of great harvest are some photographs. My favorite was an orange beef heart-type with a very thin skin, which tasted more like tomato than any tomato I ever ate. There were green stripped zebra types more acid and great for mixed salad de tomato. Black tomatoes from Russia rich and honey sweet. Yellow plum types to make surprisingly smooth and golden pasta sauces. Pointy ones, banana-shaped ones, tiny ones, the choice is yours. So if you fancy having a go, my advice is to look at www.kokopelli-seed-foundation.com to supply your every need, I assume they ship to the UK, or get on down to the Festival of everything Tomato, who needs an excuse to visit the Loire anyway?