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.

Necessity… the mother of invention

Sunday, mid way through making supper the gas for the hob ran out! Not too much of a disaster as the fish were happily baking in the electric oven, the salad needed no cooking, just the potatoes to do. So the resourceful ‘machine nut’ husband headed out to our camper van parked on the drive and rustled up some chips for us. Fish & Chips French style… no batter just delicious fresh trout stuffed with herbs and caramelised lemons and baked in the oven.

Despite getting a new bottle of propane we couldn’t get the hob working on Monday either. Panic! All the makings of a perfect Ratatouille collected from the market and the garden but no stove to cook it; a quick re think for an oven only recipe was required. The impromptu (what’s in the French vegetable basket) make it up as I go along Sausage Casserole was a triumph… and the ‘machine nut’ has requested that the dish makes it onto my list of regular weekday supper dishes!

Made Up Sausage Casserole
(Serves 2 generously with leftovers - with a few more sausages could be stretched to serve 4 or 5)

2 Toulouse Sausages per person
(or any good butcher’s sausage with high meat content)
1 Aubergine
1 Red pepper
1 Courgette
1 Onion
1 Carrot
2 Small Leeks
6 Mushrooms
3 Big Tomatoes (dipped in boiling water and peeled)
3 Large Cloves Garlic
Large Glass Red Wine
(and a small one to drink while you are cooking… it’s the French way!!)
Fresh Herbs – small bunch of each Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano
Olive Oil

Basil Oil or other flavoured oil to serve

Brown the sausages in a little oil (I did it in a pan in the oven but normally on the hob over a high heat would be better) a just a minute on each side to give them a little colour.

Chop the Aubergine, Pepper, Courgette into largish lumps (1inch) cut the Onion into wedges and chop up the leek and carrot into thick slices, quarter the mushrooms, peel and roughly chop the tomatoes.

Squash the garlic and peel then roughly chop. Strip the herb leaves off any woody stems and roughly chop.

Put all the vegetables except the mushrooms into a large casserole dish with a lid. Put in a generous slug of olive oil, add the garlic and herbs and toss them all together. (Don’t worry if the casserole is almost over flowing with vegetables they will cook down nicely.)

Pour over the Red Wine and add the sausages. Give it a stir, put the lid on and put it into the oven on a low setting around 150/160 ºC Gas Mark 2 or 3 for 2.5 hours or so.

After 1hour give it all a stir, push the sausages down into the liquid, replace the lid and continue cooking. Half an hour before the end of cooking add the mushrooms and stir again, replace the lid and return to the oven.

When you are ready to serve take out of the oven add a little basil or other flavoured oil and give it a stir. Ladle the vegetables and juices/gravy into warmed bowls, top with a couple of the sausages and serve with crusty bread.

Purple poo, more blackberries and bartering

After several days worry about the health of my chickens I realised that the voluminous bright purple chicken poo all over the garden is not the result of some deadly chicken killer disease but is due to the vast quantity of blackberries the chickens are consuming! So I’m competing both with the dog and the chickens to try for my crop of berries.

More Blackberries
Found a fantastic recipe for Spicy Blackberry Chutney (recipe below) so spent an hour on Sunday afternoon out picking blackberries again, another 3lbs. With my little set of steps, my bramble tackling ‘paint roller’ tool, gloves and basket, I was congratulating myself that neither the dog nor the chickens have the equipment or ingenuity to gather the berries from the top of the hedge. But then I realised they didn’t need to - they had formed a different plan to get those biggest, juiciest berries from the highest branches - they were waiting for me to do the picking for them. Standing in a line under the steps they stood poised to make a grab for all those berries I was knocking off, dropping or throwing away. They're certainly not ‘dumb’ our animals!!

Meanwhile our other dog affectionately known as the ‘west highland witch’ (or often more simply ‘the witch’) was bombing up and down the hedge trying to terrorise the men and dogs walking up the lane beside the garden. The ‘west highland witch’ is, like most other west highland terriers, completely unaware of her diminutive stature and will happily take on all comers; even those with guns! Her pint sized frame is accompanied by a gallon sized bark and she’ll chase after any and all dogs no matter how big or small. She sees it as her role to defend our territory. ‘Nutty dog’ all 50 muscular kilos of him looks on in boredom, he’s not too fond of guns and unless the people come through the gate there’s no chance of bouncing on them so he’s really not interested. And besides there were blackberries to steal.

The men and dogs in the lane were our neighbours and members of the local shoot out looking for game in the woods. Here, as in much of France, they are very proud of the local game and their ability to put meat on the table every month of the year from hunting, shooting or fishing. Pheasant, partridge, rabbit, deer and boar are all plentiful, wild and ‘fair game’, in the literal sense of the expression. As a fierce opponent to fox hunting but very keen on fishing, I have always had mixed feelings about ‘country pursuits’ in the UK. Here it’s not only a popular pastime but a primary source of food for many, and a major part of community life.

Bartering

Our neighbours comprise of a vast extended family of cousins and in-laws who occupy a house and a couple of caravans next door. They work as builders and farm hands, they fix cars, they trade scrap metal, they keep a pig, and they hunt, fish and do whatever it takes to get by. They are all unfailingly polite, speak no English at all, and they are always on the scrounge for stuff. Most often the boys are after a litre of petrol or two-stroke oil to get one of their many motor bikes or ‘cars’ going. They caught on pretty soon after we moved in that my ‘machine nut’ of a husband usually has that sort of stuff hanging about. So round they come, often on a Sunday afternoon, and with a mixture of hand signals and our rubbish French we work out what they want – and so started the most amazing impromptu barter system. We provide them with emergency supply of petrol/oil etc, they do us favours and share with us the spoils of their activities. At first they cleared away a stack of scrap metal from our renovations; then they shared with us tips on where to catch the best fish; after that they started delivering a few fresh trout to us on their way back from successful fishing trips.

So when they appeared at the gate on Sunday evening out we went expecting to fetch the oil can; instead over the gate they handed us a brace of pheasants and waved away any offer of payment! All I can say is that the generosity and neighbourliness that has been extended to us since we arrived in the village in March, despite our truly terrible attempts to learn their language, is sometimes overwhelming. It hardly compares, but I will be making them a big blackberry cake this week.

Now does anyone have any recipes for pheasant…?

Spicy Blackberry Chutney

1lb of Blackberries
1 large Onion – finely sliced
5 oz Caster Sugar
2 tbsp Dijon mustard (I used whole grain which worked very well)

150ml Red Wine Vinegar - The original recipe used White Wine Vinegar but it is easier (cheaper) to get Red Wine Vinegar here and it worked just fine.

Put all the ingredients, except the vinegar, in a large saucepan and stir well. Heat over a medium heat stirring frequently until the blackberries have burst and the onions softened, this takes about 15 minutes. Add the vinegar and let the whole thing simmer, be careful that it doesn’t burn on the bottom. After approximately 15 minutes it should be slightly thickened so that when you draw a spoon across the pan you can see the bottom of the pan for a second.

Pour into a sterilised jar and seal immediately. Can be used immediately but as with all chutney it benefits from waiting a week or two to let the fruit and vegetable flavours come out and mellow the vinegar.

10 tomatoes… 3 beans!

Yes just 3 beans! We won’t be winning any awards for our beans this year but the tomato plants are just loaded. Despite early promise the beans have failed spectacularly whilst the tomatoes have grown like wild things and the big surprise for any British gardener is that they do so well outside; no glass in sight! No patient nurturing and doing battle with the insects…. just plant and watch them grow.

Of course I still have to out wit the 'nutty dog' to make sure I get to the tomatoes before he does...

On the weekend I collected several pounds of ripe tomatoes so its fantastic Tomato Soup time, then traditional french Ratatouille with fresh tomatoes instead of tinned, then later I will make some tomato sauces to freeze. And finally when the weather changes (I pray that won’t be for a few weeks yet) and the last few pounds won’t have enough sun to ripen I’ll pick them green and make scrumptious Green Tomato Chutney to last through the winter.

I use an old Delia recipe for Tomato Soup which is quick and easy and beats the flavour of a tin of soup by miles. I have modified the original recipe through trial and error to make the method even easier (Delia’s Complete Cookery Course is a permanent companion in my kitchen, and a starting point for anything I’m not sure what to do with… )

(Better than the well known tinned variety) Tomato Soup

750g ripe tomatoes (mark a cross on the bottom of each tomato and dip in boiling water for a few seconds, rinse off under cold water and remove the skins, then roughly chop the tomatoes)
1 medium onion (preferably a red onion but any one will do) finely chopped
1 medium potato diced
Olive Oil
275ml of good vegetable stock
2 fat garlic cloves crushed

Basil and Cream or Basil Oil and Parmesan to finish

In a large heavy based saucepan heat a large slug of olive oil, add the onion and diced potato and over a medium heat soften them slowly without browning.

When the onions and potatoes are soft add the garlic and cook with the onion for a minute or so then add the chopped tomatoes stirring them in well and cooking for a further minute. Add the stock and season with salt and pepper. Cover and leave to simmer for about 25 minutes.

Take the pan off the stove and carefully pass the soup through a sieve to remove the pips and any hard tomato cores. Return to the saucepan check the seasoning and re-heat.

Here you can get creative, sometimes I like to add ripped basil leaves and/or a large slug of cream and heat very gently. Sometimes I prefer to leave the soup plain then when it is hot pour into heated dishes and drizzle a little basil oil (or garlic oil or other fragrant flavoured oil) and add parmesan shavings to the top.

Always serve with plenty of bread… french if you can get it of course!

No one ever tells you what to do with a dried sausage?

This is the home of the dried sausage (one of them); they are everywhere and the people love them. Every market has several charcuterie stalls selling them, every butcher has a selection, and every supermarket sells them. Local producers are often on hand to let you sample their produce. Some of them are fantastic, delicious and very morish… some of them are reminiscent of chewing old boots!

The only advice I offer is to by them in the market direct from a producer and above all try before you buy! My rule of thumb is that the fatter the sausage the more moist it is and the least likely to be subject to the old leather effect (it was ever thus!!).

So you buy your delicious sausage and take it home… then what? It’s too chewy for sandwiches, to hard to use like chorizo for pizza topping and too strong usually for adding to many dishes. You can have a few slices with a cheese and bread lunch, snack on it with a glass of wine, or put it with a selection of other dried meats and hams for a fabulous charcuterie plate.

(The word charcuterie comes from the french words for - flesh (chair) and cooked (cuit), and describes prepared meat products such as bacon, ham, sausage, terrines, pates and confit which are original ways to preserve meat before we had fridges. These methods are still practiced today, particularly in France and across mainland Europe for the flavors that come from both of the meat and the specific preservation processes.)

But how to store it? Put it in the fridge it goes damp and sticky; wrap it goes furry. The answer seems to be hang it up in the kitchen by the little loop helpfully attached to the end. But this is my dilemma; I understand that air drying is a traditional and perfectly healthy way to preserve meat… however in my constant battle against the all pervasive flies in this Country, hanging unwrapped meat in my kitchen seems self defeating! I guess I’ll just have to get over my ‘fly thing’ and ignore them, that’s what the French do. However my solution thus far is to hang it, unwrapped in a cupboard, not sure if I will just end up with all the flies in the cupboard or if the lack of circulating air will make it go off… will keep you posted!

Still chicken about buying chicken…

Market day today. In truth it’s market day everyday in this part of France in one local town or another. But my favourite market days are Castelnau Magnoac on a Saturday morning with a stop off at the lovely Memory Bar for coffee and a ‘pain au raisin’ picked up from the boulangerie en route; and Boulogne sur Gess on a Wednesday followed by quick coffee and a swim at the fantastic outdoor pool at the ‘parc nautique’.

The weather has returned to seasonal norm with lovely long hot days, so I’m fancying a summer roast chicken for tonight. Traditionally winter fare I think roasts also work well in the summer as you can put them in the oven for an hour and get outside to enjoy the sun, the trick is to lighten the flavours with something like lemon and rosemary and serve with seasonal vegetables.

The trouble is, while I like the idea of buying all my food fresh and local from the market, when it comes to chicken you never know quite what you are going to get, and as yet my French is still too rubbish to have a long conversation about its provenance.

First there is the choice of birds; as with their beef the French are specific about not just the cut but the gender of the animal it came from. With chicken it is the gender and the differences between what they are fed, how old they are and how they have been reared. They have awards for specific criteria, and a variety of names. Do I buy a Poulet, Capon, Poulette, Coq, Volaille…? And then you find that alongside on the slab are similar looking bird’s pintade – guinea fowl, dinde – turkey etc.

I don’t mind getting it home to find it still has a neck, or even that the gizzards are packed in the cavity (the dogs love them and they are great for stock making) but sometimes from the market you open up the paper wrapping to find its still pretty much whole… the neck and head, complete with beak, are tucked neatly underneath. Now I’m not in any way squeamish and I am happy to know where my meat comes from; I am the sort of carnivore that has no problem making the direct connection between the animal/bird and the food on my plate. But there is something about a plucked chicken looking up at me that gives me pause! Perhaps it’s just too much a reminder of our laying hens, ‘the girls’, who are often in the kitchen pecking up crumbs and are pretty much part of the family.

'the girls'

So I ‘chicken’ out! Buy my shallots for pickling, some salad and bread from the market and beat a path to the local Intermarche for a chicken I can trust. The meat counter at the supermarket in Castelnau is great (as is the fish counter and the cheese counter – it’s only a tiny supermarket) the butcher knows his stuff, has great meat much of it sourced locally. The ‘jaune’ chicken from the Sud Ouest, has the fermier (free range) status, was corn fed and given a decently long life. It has a lovely flavour and I know that when I get it home it won’t wink at me.

Jo’s Summer Roast Chicken

1 small to medium chicken - I usually get one about 3lb or 1.350kg in weight (ample for two, plus sandwiches following lunch time and some over for my favourite leftover dish, a chicken and leek risotto)
½ an unwaxed lemon cut into wedges
1 small or ½ a large onion cut into wedges
3 large juicy garlic cloves, squashed and peeled
Sprigs of rosemary

Ensure the bird is clean and dry both inside and out and stuff the cavity with the wedges of onion, and lemon (give the lemon wedges a squeeze as you put them in), the garlic cloves and sprigs of rosemary. These will give the bird flavour and help to keep the flesh moist as it roasts.

Place the bird in a roasting pan and baste with a generous amount of olive oil. Grind some black pepper over the bird and put into a pre heated oven at 180ºC, roast for 20 minutes to the 1lb / 450g. I test it after this time; baste it with the pan juices and depending on how it’s going put it back in for a further 10 or 20 minutes. It’s cooked when a skewer comes out clean and the leg separates easily from the body when tugged.

Leave the chicken to rest for 15 minutes somewhere warm before carving. For a summer roast there is no need for gravy but the juices from the bird mixed with the olive oil, lemon juice, and flavoured with the onion and rosemary during cooking are delicious. Slice some breast meat and pull off a leg to serve drizzled with a little of the pan juices.

I think the best accompaniment is some crushed or whole new potatoes and green beans or a leafy salad.

Tomorrow I’ll strip the carcass and put it in a deep saucepan along with the lemon, onion, rosemary and garlic from inside the chicken, cover with water and simmer for two hours which will make about 2 pints of delicious stock which I keep in the fridge for making sauces and risotto. It will be perfect for Chicken & Leek Risotto for supper tomorrow night.

2lbs of blackberries, 2 eggs, and a tomato

My haul from the garden today. I’m still surprised that blackberries - a fruit so associated with autumn back home – are ready for picking in August, its still the middle of summer here. (Although I have to admit the last few evenings have started to get a little chilly and made me think that ‘cardy’ season is not too far away.)

It was a lovely way to spend an hour in the garden today, out in the sunshine and unusually not bothered by the wasps which are a current feature of any outside activity at the moment; particularly if it involves fruit of any kind, even the fermented kind that comes in a glass. But today the wasps seemed too busy on the other side of the garden getting drunk on the over ripe remnants of the plum crop, while I wandered along the other hedge gathering a big bowl of sweet black fruit.

The unruly and overgrown hedges I complained about so bitterly when we moved into the house in March are now loaded with blackberries at a variety of stages of ripeness, as well as elderberries and rosehips which will ripen much later in the year. This is my second gathering of blackberries this week, I collected about a pound of small sweet ones midweek when I first noticed they were ripening and just couldn’t wait. The same day I turned the lot into a jar of fantastic tasting, if somewhat runny, blackberry jam. And so delicious was the jam I had to make a batch of scones to go with it!

How glad am I that we have been too busy with the house to attack these hedges and hack them into shape. There is so much unripe fruit still on the hedge I think we will be feasting from them for weeks. There were so many for picking today I didn’t worry that the low hanging fruit was being systematically removed by my ‘nutty dog’ with a penchant for fruit.

About the ‘nutty dog’… he’s a full grown male chocolate Labrador with the brain of a three month old puppy. And he is HUGE. He is the clumsiest, stupidest hound ever; he came to us as a puppy, all huge paws and huge character and he grew… and he grew… the rest of him grew to fill those paws and match the character. He is so full of boundless enthusiasm and friendliness that he ‘bounces’ everyone he meets. Passers by, visitors, casual callers and long time friends are all welcomed with the scary sight of 50kg’s of muscle and teeth bounding up, intent on licking your face. But he’s harmless, apart from accidentally knocking you flying, as he has often done to me! We have tried every conceivable form of humane discipline to break him of this habit but with no luck. His saving graces are that he doesn’t do it to children and after 10 minutes in your company he will be the most adoring, loyal and quiet dog ever… unfortunately, or possibly fortunately, many people don’t wait around for 10 minutes to find out!!

He does however have this amazing talent; he is the most efficient fruit picker I have ever come across. As with all Labrador’s he is driven by his stomach and he loves fruit. Any fruit. All fruit. He puckers up those great slobbery lips and with the most delicate pout he removes the juiciest fruits from any tree or bush. Plums, greengages, raspberries, gooseberries… his favourite trick at our last house was to follow me every evening to the garden to test the ripeness of the gooseberry bush and just when I was happy that they had reached the perfect balance of tart and sweet, would strip the bush before I could gather them the next day. And to add insult not a scratch on him from those sharp spiny branches.

And today as I return to the house my hands and arms scratched and stinging, my fingers a pin cushion of thorns and spikes and red from the juice, there he is completely unscathed but a belly full of blackberries.

I am particularly pleased with myself for my impromptu branch tackler that meant I was able to get to the very tallest branches. I put to good use a small roller handle with a long arm meant for painting behind radiators. I think this is probably the first time it’s been used – my life really is too short to be painting behind radiators!

This batch of blackberries is destined for jelly. I have always been fascinated by the idea of making gorgeous jewel coloured pots of fruit jellies, delicious with cheese and cold cuts and a good accompaniment I have discovered for duck, a local speciality. This region is famous for its duck, magret, confit, smoked, dried, in pate and sausage, foie gras and all the other ‘bits’ served in a variety of unusual and interesting ways.

Magret or breast is my favourite way to eat duck, and whilst not cheap it’s more reasonably priced here than in the UK, it’s locally produced on fairly small scale farms and one large breast serves two easily. Pan fried till the skin is crisp, the fat rendered and the outside browned and finished in the oven for 10 minutes till pink in the middle, then very importantly left to rest. While the duck is resting I reduce a glass of local red wine in the pan juices and add some rosemary; or mushrooms and finish with cream; or finely shredded leeks and a grind of black pepper. This week I tried adding some rosemary leaves and a tablespoon full of the blackberry jam I’d just made. The flavour was lovely but the whole blackberries from the jam were annoying leaving pips in the teeth. Thus I am now making pip-less blackberry jelly, to serve with cheese and cold cuts, or cold chicken pie but also to add to duck sauces, and fancy it would be a pretty good flavour whisked into gravy to accompany most game.