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!