A frite on my shoulder

Yesterday I did something that I would never, in a million years, have imagined myself doing. (Yes, I will tell you what it was. But you'll have to read on ....).

Rewind - ahem - several years. Let me just say that whereas my mother may have had many good qualities, cooking was not among them. We subsisted largely on a diet of tough grey meat, soggy potatoes, greens that managed to be grey, tough and soggy at the same time, and convenience foods. It was so bad that I thought school dinners were gourmet extravaganzas; my dad, meanwhile, got his fix of food with taste by lunching every day at various Italian, Bangladeshi and Caribbean greasy spoons in London's East End. What we never had at home was anything deep-fried. Deep-fried food was deemed to be - how can I put it? - a bit common (probably a small mercy given that mum would almost certainly have set fire to the kitchen). Visiting the fish and chip shop was acceptable - once - whilst on holiday; otherwise, never.

I first encountered proper frites while working as a student in a hotel in the Swiss Alps. Every morning M. le Patron would cut - by hand - a veritable Alp of chips; he'd blanch them in boiling water, then dry and chill them before frying them at a low temperature for five minutes or so. After that they'd be drained and refrigerated, to await the lunch service when they'd be cooked again, to order, at a high temperature. They were fantastic - soft and fluffy on the inside, crisp and golden on the outside. No wonder diners came from far and wide to eat them.

A few years later my then partner had a habit of cooking up pans of late-night chips in the house we shared with our somewhat outrageous friends Bob and Mike. The house would miraculously fill up with Acton's weird and wonderful, who would stay until the early hours while John (that one, not this one) would produce bowl after bowl of frites to accompany the endless bottles of bad wine we drank while sewing women's knickers (don't ask). I was much too terrified to go anywhere near the kitchen, the idea of a saucepan full of boiling oil  - we had no mod cons like chip baskets - on a gas hob being just t o o o o far outside my comfort zone. And then with the end of that relationship came the end of my eating frites maison for 20 odd years ...

... until last night. Because what I did yesterday was ... buy a deep fryer.

It's posh. It's from Lidl. That is not a contradiction in terms. So before you - as I would have done until recently - pour scorn on my choice of shop, let me tell you that in the last couple of years I've bought from Lidl (amongst other things): an orbital sander and a detail sander, both of which clearly come out of the Bosch factory; an espresso machine that is indistinguishable from the Moulinex model; an SDS drill of indeterminate provenance but as functional and robust as anything you could find; plus various kettles, toasters, kitchen scales, bagless vacuum cleaners, hand blenders, parasols, garden chairs and other stuff, all at around a third of the price of proper 'branded' goods and all with a three year warranty. Still laughing?

I bought it with fantasies of making panisse and briks and courgette flower fritters and tempura and churros and felafel and pakora and bhajis and accras de morue and puris and whitebait et al. And I shall. But last night there was only one thing to cook.

Frites, M. le Patron style. And oh my god, they were good.

Comfort me with shopping

All good things must come to an end. (Or so I'm told. Personally I don't see why they should. Sounds a bit like a Puritan conspiracy to me. However.)

For a start, summer seems to have left us, suddenly and definitively. One day I'm outside wearing - well, not much, and sweltering; the next I'm reluctantly pulling on long sleeves. And today even I, the anti-clothes queen of Ariège, found myself putting on jeans - and, heaven forfend, a denim jacket - for the first time since the spring. I know of course that it's (probably) not all over bar the shouting - we can, and often do, get a wonderful Indian summer. And then there's l'été de la Saint Martin, around 11 November, which is often (more often than you might expect by chance ) an unusually mild and sunny period, after the first frosts but before the first snows - and almost exactly six months apart from the Saints de Glace. But all this aside, today I felt chilly, and I'm not good at that.

And then there's the diminishing of the light. Whereas just a couple of weeks ago we were happily eating outside at 9pm, now it's dark by 8.30, and by the time you've put all the outside lights and something warm on, to be honest the whole thing kind of loses the plot and so on the whole we've retreated indoors. I think we must be becoming French, or something. Mind you, to a sunlight freak like me there's something terribly depressing about the daily loss of daylight we have to endure for six months of the year, especially as it starts in June when summer hasn't even got going: the summer solstice may well be the beginning of summer, but it's also the beginning of the darkness. (Now the winter solstice ... that really is cause for celebration ....)

As if that weren't all enough, we're going through our own, slightly belated, rentrée: after our fantastic Ariège holiday week we're back at work with a vengeance ... and The Perfectionist is back for a final (well final-ish) fling. Much as I love my builder, however, I don't love the lime and plaster dust and mackerel tins that he has a habit of trawling along with him ... The good news though is that the new dining room is now lime plastered, has a door, and almost looks like a room and not the goat shed that it was (you do still have to leap a metre down to get to it as there are no steps yet, but I'm told that will change by  ... December. Sigh.); the good-and-bad news is that the next couple of weeks will see us borrowing some scaffolding from a friend and lime washing the entire room, the walls of which are - gulp - 5 metres high.

And so maybe all this goes some way towards explaining why a quick trip to Saint Girons market to buy broccoli plants this morning got waylaid into coffee with friends, and then into a bit of food shopping, and then into the buying of a half price barbecue, and then into a fully fledged shop-till-you-drop session for new clothes. Both of us have dropped two full sizes since we moved here and now that the trouser-wearing season has returned we've both tended to look, as my mother used to say, like sacks of potatoes, which is not good for the ego (and hoisting your Andy Pandy trousers up 127 times an hour gets pretty boring too). Although I'm not generally a fan of shopping, do you know what? It was fun. And two hours, five shops and several carrier bags later, we're fit to be seen in public again.

Cows en fête

The Builders are coming back this week after their summer break (huh!), so we're rushing round like the proverbial mouches bleues trying to prepare (which I guess is a bit like cleaning your house ready for the cleaner to come in, but as I've never had a cleaner, so to speak, I wouldn't know ...). This afternoon, however, we prised ourselves away from our respective tasks - John from wirebrushing beams, me from weighing up and sourcing various heating options - to go and look at some cows.

Yes, I know we've got cows down the track, and very nice ones they are too - Gascon and Limousin, if you want to know. But the annual Foire Agricole at Le Mas d'Azil, 15 minutes away through the cave (yes, really), is a must-do. As its publicity puts it, it's a day where ruralité is put in the forefront - not as folklore, but as real, day to day agricultural life, with its economic and social difficulties as well as its successes. I like that. And it was a good day. Here's some of it, in pictures ...




We got cows in profusion:






Most of them came complete with panels showing which butcher we'd be able to buy them from when they pass into their next life. One of the things that I like about butchers here is that a lot of them have pictures in their window of the animals they're selling bits of inside. Yes, okay, it's a bit uncomfortable, at least for me; but it's straight, and honest, and it honours the animal that was killed for food. And (beware, soapbox mode coming up) one of the things I bang on about is that those of us who eat meat - even if, like me, it's not every day - need to recognise and accept that real live animals, with pretty faces and melty eyes, are killed for that sole purpose or in the service of it. But it's not for those who want to go on thinking that meat grows on polystyrene trays, perhaps ...



We also got some rather splendid pigs and piglets, for whom the day seemed just that bit too much like hard work ...






There were sheep and goats and rabbits and turkeys and ducks and geese and chickens and donkeys and horses too, naturally. Not to mention some rather fetching underwear:



I suspect their owners may have been eating too much of this:



It's millas, a local dessert traditionally served to celebrate the killing of the family pig. It's made from fine corn meal, wheat flour, raw milk, sugar, butter and orange flower water; it's made in a similar way to polenta: cooked, and stirred with a long wooden paddle, for at least an hour, then poured into trays to cool, after which it's cut up into squares and fried in butter until golden. It is, I warn you, more addictive than it looks ...

There was what in England would these days be called a farmers' market (here, it's just a market, because what else would a market be ...). This bread was being baked from scratch in a wood fired oven set up in a van:



This guy, from the delightfully named village of Camarade - between Grillou and Le Mas d'Azil - makes some of the best Tomme de Vache des Pyrénées: it's really yellow, and like eating new mown grass:



I'm very fond of Le Mas d'Azil. We're there quite a lot: at the Wednesday market, or for a coffee as we're driving through, or occasionally to eat at the pizzeria or the local hotel-restaurant, Le Gardel. It has some lovely squares, shaded by plane trees, and some equally lovely medieval columbage houses, many with gardens running right down to the Arize river, which runs through the middle:



And yet there are still corners of the town (village? I'm never sure) that we're discovering. Today, for instance, we stumbled upon an old house which was actually rather forlorn, but redeemed by this lovely old shutter, with its patina of bleu pastel (woad) and linseed oil:



And then, of course, there are the caves, and the dolmens. Another blog, another time ...

Sequels 1

In the early hours of this morning, the bill to relax restrictions on Sunday trading was passed in the Senate, by just six votes - the lowest majority in the current term. There were no amendments; all the Senators' proposals were rejected, due largely to the ginormous pressure put onto the upper house by the government, which did not, it must be said, go down brilliantly with everyone: "The Senate's being transformed into a house of followers-on who just have one freedom: to say yes", commented one Senator.

There was no clarification forthcoming on the vexed issue of what constitutes an area of interest to tourists. The socialists argue that the new law will apply to the more than 6000 communes considered to be of tourist interest in the Code du Tourisme; the work minister believes that only the 500 communes listed as touristique in the Code du Travail will be affected. Can't you just see the famous French shrug of the shoulders ...

In spite of reassurances that the principle of le repos dominical remains inviolable, the opposition remains unconvinced. As one UMP renegade put it, "it's a change that dare not speak its name".

Is there more to Sunday than shopping?

Nicolas Sarkozy clearly doesn't think there is. When the Obama family visited Paris one Sunday earlier this year, he reported himself to be 'hugely embarrassed' that he had to make special arrangements for Michelle and the girls when they wanted to shop at an upmarket children's clothing shop. And of course loosening the restrictions on Sunday trading was part of his election manifesto. So just what's a bling bling president to do?

A quick run down of Sunday shopping in France as he is spoke: at the moment, food shops may open until midday (mais of course; how else would we all get our meat, our bread and tarts and the ready roast chickens that come complete with their roast potatoes?), but otherwise, basically, Sunday trading is verboten. Oh, unless, that is, you happen to have applied for a dérogation (dispensation), or you are a florist, or you hire out DVDs, or ... Or unless you're in an area designated as touristique, in which case you may sell books, or sporting goods, or 'items of a cultural nature', though not clothes or DIY stuff. Or unless it's one of the five Sundays that any commerce may open, given the authority of its maire. Or unless you're just a small, owner-run business with no staff, in which case you can open when the hell you like. Get the picture? Yes, it's a bit complicated. Some, though not I (more on that in a minute), would call it archaic and so consider that change was long overdue. Enter M. Sarkozy.

His first attempt was - how can I put it - not a success. There was massive opposition from both left and right, with large numbers of the ruling party decrying it as an attack on family values and the various socialist parties as an attack on workers' rights. It wasn't, however, wholly unsupported: one morning on Europe 1 breakfast news I heard a politician loudly proclaiming his inalienable right to take his family to IKEA on Sunday afternoons so that they could spend 'quality time' together. Hmm. Family love among the Billy bookcases and meatballs. Bet you're glad you don't live with him ...

So, another, watered down, version was cobbled together. Some would say compromise; many would say fudge. Shops in three of France's biggest metropolitan areas - Paris, Marseille, Lille (plus, originally, Lyon, until its UMP MPs kicked up a stink ...) - will be allowed to open on Sundays; employees will have to right to refuse to work, and employers will have to pay those who choose to work double time. In addition, local officials in areas deemed to be 'of interest to tourists' (which, let's face it, covers much of France) will be able to authorise Sunday opening - but in this case employers will be able to tell their employees which day they can take off and will be under no obligation to pay overtime. Very fair. Not.

Last week, the National Assembly voted in favour of the new bill. Just. Today, it's gone to Senate, the upper house. Debate is expected to last three days, with voting on Thursday. All the expectations are that it will go through, though this being France I wouldn't for one moment expect something as petty as a new law to be the end of the matter ...

According to opinion polls, the country is split pretty much down the middle. Interestingly, though, a quick trawl of a couple of Anglophone forums suggests that the vast majority of English speakers is hugely in favour of Sunday opening; two of the biggest grouses amongst Anglo Saxon immigrants seem to be not being able to shop till they drop on Sundays (and, in smaller towns, Mondays), and not being able to shop till they drop at lunchtime, when most shops, except the very largest grandes surfaces, close for two hours. What many immigrants may not know is that le repos dominical is regarded here as something of a divine right, acquired as it was in 1906 as part of a whole collective of workers' rights including paid holidays, state health insurance and the right to strike. Sundays are for family, and long lunches, and (for some) church, and for simply chilling. No wonder it provokes such passion: let it go, and you're on the slippery slope.

Personally, I like the fact that most shops aren't open on Sundays. I can't think of much worse than spending the day buying furniture or paint or, heaven forfend, clothes (I'm not exactly renowned for my love of buying clothes or indeed for my sartorial elegance, being happiest in shorts and tee shirt. And I cheerfully admit, much to the horror of friends, that although I've never set foot in a chic boutique, I'm not averse to scouring the rummage stalls in the markets and the rails at Emmaus ...). I don't have family, and I'm not a christian, but I see no good reason whatsoever why we shouldn't have one day a week without being faced with materialism and consumerism; I don't actually care which day of the week it is, so long as we all share the same one. Ah, but (M. Sarkozy would say) we need to stimulate the economy and increase growth. Well actually, I don't share that view either. My sympathies lie rather more with the décroissance movement - which is alive and flourishing here, and even sports its own monthly magazine. But best not get me started on that one.

Suffice it to say that you won't be finding me in the meatball queue on Sunday afternoons.