Comfort food and a stripy aubergine

The weather is no definitely colder and winter is coming… some days. Yesterday it hammered down with rain, thick black clouds sliding down off the Pyrenees like a great wet blanket. The fire was on all day, the dogs spent most of the day next to it only sticking their noses out of the door every few hours to see if it had stopped and retreating to the rug when their noses got wet. The cats barely ventured to the window and we could see the poor bedraggled looking chickens sheltering under the table on the terrace… I’d invite them in the house if they could be house trained! But today is sunny again and autumn seems to have returned. The air is cold and mountains are clear but the sun is highlighting the autumn coloured leaves that are still clinging to the trees, a feast of orange, red, yellow and bright green.

It’s a time for comfort food, things to warm you up and keep you going. Yummy autumn coloured Pumpkin Soup, here in France (you can buy pumpkin in the market by the section rather than having to buy the whole thing, this week they hacked off a quarter from a delicious, huge, green skinned, orange fleshed specimen). You need stewed for three hours Boef Bourguignon (Beef in Burgundy) with Boulanger Potatoes, mashed swede and crunchy greens. Thick and creamy baked rice pudding with a liberal grating of nutmeg and dollop of syrup.

I’ve never made rice pudding before but ‘he who loves playing outside’ adores stodgy puddings and has been going on about his mother’s rice pudding for as long as I’ve known him. It was always something that came out of an Ambrosia tin when I was growing up, gloopy stuff that was a mystery to me and therefore I imagined that it was difficult to make… oh how wrong – it’s the easiest, cheapest winter warmer you can imagine. You can make it as rich and calorific as you want using full cream milk or a mixture of milk and cream but I think it would work as well if you were watching the calories with skimmed milk… (not something I’m fond of doing but probably should - France has been fantastic for my spirit but not the expanding waistline!!!). It also has less sugar than I imagined, just 1oz in a generous bowl full that easily served two with leftovers. I served it the second day with figs in syrup which worked very well indeed.

The last of the figs from the garden are small things, with thickish skins and a little harder than I like them but apparently they won’t get any bigger or riper now that the weather is colder and the days are so much shorter. Rather than waste them I picked all of those that were beginning to soften and turned to Pam Corbin’s River Cottage Preserving book (mentioned before I know). A book which has now become my bible of preserving and using up all manner of stuff from the garden, the hedge row and the cut price bit of the veg market. I decided to turn these little figs into ‘Figpote’ by poaching them till they are soft in earl grey syrup and bottling them to keep through the winter. In an inspired deviation from the recipe I spiced it up a bit with some brandy, cloves and cinnamon perfect to give you a warm glow if you eat them as a winter breakfast; a gorgeous and quite sophisticated desert if served warm with homemade vanilla ice cream; very nice strained and served with strong cheese; and scrummy as a fruity snack after a long walk with the hooligan dogs…

Oh and the stripy Aubergine… apparently just like the deep purple ones in flavour but I fell in love with the beautiful colour when I saw it in the green grocer this week and just had to buy it… will now have to make ratatouille just to use it up, or perhaps stuff it with mince and tomato and bake it in the oven…. choices, choices!

Pumpkin Soup
I don’t follow a recipe when making vegetable soups, quantities are usually based on what’s available but these are a good rule of thumb. I always make a big batch and freeze what’s left to enjoy as an easy lunch later.

This recipe works equally well with any squashes including butternut; you get a great variety of shapes and sizes in the French markets.

1 small pumpkin or a ¼ of a large one
1 large red onion
1 medium carrot
1 clove garlic
Vegetable stock or water
Olive oil
Salt & pepper
Cream (optional)

Peel the Pumpkin and discard the seeds and membrane from the centre. Roughly chop the pumpkin into pieces about 1inch square. Peel and roughly chop the carrot, dice the onion and garlic.

Heat the oil gently in a large heavy based saucepan. Add the onion to the oil and soften it gently until it becomes translucent, don’t brown it. Add the garlic and onion and fry gently for a further few minutes. Add the pumpkin and toss in the hot oil, fry gently for another couple of minutes. Add enough water or stock to cover the pumpkin and bring to simmering point. Add salt and pepper to taste, cover and continue to simmer for 25minutes or until the pumpkin is soft.

When the pumpkin is soft use a hand held food processor to blitz the soup to a thick liquid or pass through a sieve.

Return to the heat in the pan and bring back to temperature, check for seasoning and if you want a really smooth creamy finish had a slug of single cream and mix.

(I have used recipes in the past which add a grating of nutmeg at the end or chopped ginger instead of garlic or finish with lemon juice instead of cream in the final stages. All work really well and depending on your taste or what you have available can be used to vary the basic dish.)

Beef In Burgundy – As French as they come, there are many variations of this but this one I like because even though it takes a few hours to cook its very simple. And I think the bacon added later with the mushrooms ensures that it doesn’t overwhelm the flavour.

300g beef – chuck steak or rump (what ever is cheap and available it’s cooked so long it gets very tender) the beef should be diced into 2inch-ish squares
olive oil
1 smallish onion sliced
1 heaped teaspoon flour
1 bottle Burgundy (will work with any rich red wine but Burgundy is traditional and gives the dish a very distinctive flavour – You don’t need the whole bottle for the beef but lets face it takes three hours to cook so you’re going to drink the rest while you wait for it to cook aren’t you!)
1 fat garlic clove, sliced
2 teaspoons of mixed herbs (I prefer a Provencal mix)
some pearl onions or small shallots
150g lardons if you can get them or thick cut streaky bacon cut in strips
150g mushrooms
Salt and pepper

Heat the oven to 140ºC Gas Mark 1
If you have a large flame proof casserole dish you can use this, or an oven proof saucepan with a lid; alternatively I always start it off on the hob in a large saucepan and transfer to my favourite Denby casserole pot (oven proof but not suitable for the hob) for the oven stage.

Heat a large slug of olive oil in the casserole or saucepan and get it really hot. Sear the beef in the hot fat a few cubes at a time until they are well browned on all sides. As they brown lift the cubes out of the fat and put onto a warm plate.

Add the sliced onion and the sliced garlic to the pan and brown them gently. Return the meet to the pan and sprinkle over the plain flour. Stir the flour into the pan juices and slowly add about between 1/3 & ½ of the bottle of Burgundy, keep stirring. Add the herbs and season with salt and pepper. If you are using a saucepan, transfer all into the casserole dish, cover with a lid and put into the oven for 2 hours.

In a pan add a little olive oil and fry the pearl onions and the bacon together until they have a little colour. After 2 hours take the casserole out of the oven add the onions, bacon and sliced mushrooms. Replace the lid and put it back into the oven for another hour.

Serve with anything you like it’s delicious! Can be with full potatoes and veg or just hunks of bread and a green salad.

Boulanger Potatoes – Delicious potato dish with a crusty top that can be baked in the oven at the same time as the beef.

2 large potatoes
1 small onion (or a leek)
Vegetable or Chicken stock
25g butter
Fresh thyme leaves (if available – it’s good without if you don’t have any)
Salt & pepper

Use an oven proof gratin dish and butter it generously on the bottom and sides.
Peel and slice the potatoes very thinly. Peel and slice the onion thinly.
Arrange a layer of potatoes over the base of the dish, then a sprinkling of onion, salt and pepper and thyme leaves. Continue with another layer of potato slices and repeat until all the ingredients are used finishing with a layer of potatoes. Season the potatoes on the top and press firmly down. Pour the stock over the potatoes till it reaches just under the top layer of potatoes. Put little knobs of butter over the surface. Put the tin on the top shelf of the oven - pre-heated to 180ºC Gas Mark 4 – for 45 minutes until the top layer is nicely brown and crunchy (if you are cooking the potatoes in the oven with the Beef Bourguignon make sure you put it on the highest shelf in the oven and put them in the oven at the same time you add the bacon, onion and mushroom to the beef which will give them a longer cooking time to make up for the lower temperature).

Baked Rice Pudding for 2

50g pudding rice (riz rond in France)
¾ pint / 450ml of milk or milk and cream mixed
25g caster sugar
knob of butter
freshly grated nutmeg

Pre-heat oven to 180ºC Gas Mark 4
Butter a pie or pudding dish. Wash the rice and place in the bottom of the dish. Warm the milk mixture and pour over the rice. Sprinkle the sugar over the top and gently stir in. Dot the top with butter and grate fresh nutmeg all over the top. Bake for 10 minutes then reduce the temperature to 150ºC Gas Mark 2 and bake for another 1 hour 20 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the rice beneath is rich and creamy.

Animal Wars

It must be something about the autumn air… today I spied the chickens bullying the ‘nutty dog’ out of his favourite treat – a walnut. Our chocolate Labrador is truly a ‘fruit and nut case’, I’ve mentioned before his passion for picking fruit from the trees but he also is very partial to nuts and in particular walnuts. We have two huge walnut trees in the garden and he finds the nuts that fall from the tree, caries them carefully to a sunny spot and settles down to a little feast. He breaks open the shells with just enough force from his powerful jaw to crack the hard outer layer then opens them with great skill before extracting every particle of the tender and tasty nut inside, leaving just the clean shells. He does this with the precision of a skilled craftsman.

The ‘west highland witch’ often hangs around while he does this and cadges scraps off the bigger dog, her jaws are not powerful enough to crack the nuts so if she finds them she just carries them off and buries them in the garden… leading to an explosion of walnut seedlings all over the place! But now the ‘nutty dog’ is being hounded by the chickens too. Whenever he settles down to a walnut snack, up the garden they run at the first sound of a walnut shell crack and with no fear just peck the nuts out from under his nose….

However I think the chickens should take care… yesterday our two cats were sitting in the sunshine in front of the house when the chickens came to see if there was any spare bread or cake for their afternoon tea. Refined chickens we have… between 4 and 5pm they pop up to the house where they know there will be a cup tea for me and some scraps of something from the kitchen I’m likely to share with them. Anyway as they waddled and clucked their way up to the door, the cats sat there watching them and I swear I could hear what they were thinking…

The black cat sniffed towards the chicken and put her head on one side as if considering the possibilities ‘it smells like a bird’ she says… ‘it looks like a bird’ the tabby one agrees, ‘beak, feathers, funny skinny feet, stupid expression… bigger than normal though’. ‘Think we could take them?’ the black enquires … ‘definitely’ replies the tabby ‘if we worked together we could, pincer movement, divide and conquer…’ ‘Fancy a bit of fun’ says the black cat stretching her long body and clicking her neck on both sides like a thug. The tabby stretches out first one paw then the other, considers the warm afternoon scene before replying ‘bit warm today for chasing a stupid bird… besides it’s almost supper time, why get all hot and bothered when we can have it silver service?’ ‘Fair point’ says the black jumping onto the warm windowsill ‘I can wait…’ she purrs menacingly at the chickens…

Autumn's Here

Its definitely autumn now, the days are taking longer to get started. The evenings are colder, the mornings are damp and misty and there is the scent of wood smoke on the air as everyone lights their log burners. A few houses have oil central heating or propane but there is no mains gas supply here, nobody uses coal, and many houses – including ours – have no central heating at all. We have a couple of electric heaters upstairs but they are expensive to run so we rely on the huge log burner in the main dining/family room to keep us warm. When we first moved here I thought it would be terribly cold and a pain to have to light the fire but I love it now; it creates a bit of dirt but the dry heat is really nice, it looks fab and with the thick old walls of the house it keeps us pretty toasty; if its loaded up well at night it’s still warm in the morning.

M the Cat in a warm Kitchen

Fortunately at the moment it’s only necessary to light it for a few hours in the morning and evening; the days have been bright and sunny, warming up nicely to a respectable temperature during the afternoon. Out in the garden or walking the dogs in the afternoon can still be done in a t-shirt!

autumn arrives with fresh covering of snow on the peaks of Pyrenees that you can see from the village

I know that the warm autumn probably means a wet spring again next year but I can’t help being pleased at every extra day of sunshine.

We have now been here in France for a year! It has gone so quickly I can’t quite believe it. We went back to the UK a few weekends ago to meet some friends and to celebrate two birthdays in Bath. It was lovely to visit our friends and we had a great time despite the awful weather, but for the first time it was the flight back to France and coming back to our little village in the Hautes Pyrenees that felt like coming home!

Bath was lovely, we went to watch the rugby, found a lovely restaurant and visited a number of good British pubs for a pint and a bag of crisps (it’s the one thing I miss!!). The only disappointment was our long planned trip to Demuth’s Vegetarian Restaurant in Bath. Having read good things about it for many years we thought this would be a great night out with our vegetarian friends who usually get the short straw when it comes to our many restaurant trips. There were flashes of excellence on the quite short menu but much of that on offer was very spicy food with an Indian or Moroccan theme, the rest was bland or just plain mismatched. For example a wonderfully wholesome and well executed root vegetable bake was served with cannallotti beans which just made it stodgy and hard to eat. With the range of great organic ingredients available including seasonal vegetables and fruit, local cheeses etc being used by many restaurants these days to ensure a good range of vegetarian food on many menu’s this place did not live up to its reputation for good food or the hype that it is doing something different. Oh and the staff were really off hand which wound me up from the start…!

The night before we found a fantastic little Bistro (shamefully the name of which I cant remember) round the corner from our B&B. We ate lovely food while sitting at the bar because they were so busy, drank some great wine, and chatted to the really lovely, very friendly staff that couldn’t do enough to make sure we were happy. The other culinary treat of the visit were cookies from a great little cookie shop in a tiny little street off the main shopping area. Melt in the mouth cookies baked fresh each day with just the right amount of crisp outer and soft chewy centre. Perfect.

Back in France we harvested the last of tomatoes even the green ones which are on the guest bedroom window sill ripening during the sunny afternoons. I’ll make chutney from any ones which stay green but at the moment there is enough sun and warmth to finish most of them off. And there are figs on our two fig trees... I love figs!

A fantastic present from our friends who recently visited The River Cottage to do the Bread & Jam course was a copy of the River Cottage Handbook on Preserving by Pam Corbin. What a fantastic book! Since returning from the UK I bought a lovely jam pan and a sugar thermometer and have redoubled my efforts in pickling, preserving, and learning to make fruit cheese and fruit leather. So far I have made hedgerow jelly with rosehips, elderberries and the last of the blackberries; passata with the ripening tomatoes from the garden (fantastically delicious and sweet from slowly roasting the tomatoes with shallots and garlic) recipe below; I have bottled some of the figs which are at last swelling and ripening in the garden; made compote with the famous prunes from nearby Agen and dried apricots; and fragrant quince cheese, with quinces bought from the local market where they appeared, all yellow and knobbly, for one week only!

My plans are to try making some of the flavoured vinegars and the Mulled Pears sound divine. I can’t recommend this book highly enough for anyone who likes the idea of keeping the best of the summer and autumn crops and turning them into something even more special that you can eat during the lean winter months. The book takes the mystery out of the equipment and the jargon and makes you realise how it’s all pretty straight forward if you follow some simple rules for keeping things sterile.

Having said that it’s not all plain sailing my first pan of hedgerow jelly became, fruit toffee having been allowed to get too hot when I answered the phone at the crucial moment! But it’s not put me off!

Tomato and Mascarpone Pasta

Roasted Tomato Passata
(this recipe from the Preserves book can be made and either used immediately or you can bottle it or freeze it for future use)

1kg ripe tomatoes
100g shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
A few sprigs of rosemary and thyme
Salt and pepper
½ tsp sugar
olive oil

Preheat the oven to 180º C/Gas Mark 4

Cut the tomatoes in half and place them cut side up in a single layer in a large roasting pan. Scatter the shallots, garlic, herbs, a generous pinch of salt and grind of pepper, the sugar and add a drizzle of oil all over the top. Roast for about 1 hour, or until they are well softened. Remove from the oven and rub through a nylon sieve to remove the skins, pips, herb stalks etc.

I found this made a small tub full which can be kept in the fridge for a few days.

Tomato & Marscarpone Pasta (2 servings) boil your favourite pasta till it is cooked but not soggy. Mix in half of the tub of tomato passata, add 2 large tablespoons of Mascarpone and mix over a low heat to warm through. Season with salt, pepper and ripped basil; serve with parmesan to grate over the top, a green salad and loads of garlic bread.