We're having an - um - 'interesting' festive period. So far:
1. It snowed, in an unforecast-type manner. It started on Christmas Eve just an hour or so before we were due to leave to go to some friends in the next-but-one village for an apéro - our sole bit of R'n'R in an otherwise working Yule. We got halfway down the track, and had to turn back as we - or at least the car - were slipping and sliding all over the place. It's been freezing cold ever since - minus 8 when I got up this morning - and we're iced in.
2. The door fell off the oven. Probably terminally.
3. The dishwasher decided, repeatedly, that it was much more fun to empty itself all over the floor than anywhere else. Probably terminally.
4. The fridge clearly felt left out and followed suit. Probably terminally. (Okay, so we inherited them when we moved in and they're all a good 15 years old. But they didn't have to all die at once, did they?).
5. The only tardis I got anywhere near was the one in the 2009 Doctor Who Christmas special, which finally hit the screen here last night (we've not had the merest whiff of the Eleventh Doctor on France 4 yet). Yes, sorry, I'm a Doctor Who fan. You have my permission to yawn ...
6. Nobody changed my sheets.
7. Oh, and John stacked a tonne of books on top of my glasses. Definitely terminally ....
Bonnes fêtes to you too. Bah humbug.
* pun unintended, but satisfying.
Sunday, 26 December 2010
Monday, 20 December 2010
Dear Père Noël ....
Dear Père Noël
How are things? I hope you're well and not too stressed out, and that Rudolph's nose is better (has he tried calendula ointment, I wonder?). I realise it's quite a number of years since you've heard from me, but I'm sure you must remember me. I was the one who always used to drink your sherry and replace it with cough medicine.
Anyway. Those days are over: I don't use cough medicine any more. I know you'll be very busy so I won't take up too much of your time, but I was I wondering - ahem - if you might be persuaded to pay me another visit. Please don't listen to anything they might tell you: I have tried really hard to be good this year - I mean look, we've even had the builders here for weeks and I've not murdered anyone. And you can't get much more gooder than that. So if you could just see your way to dropping down my chimney - that'll be the one nearest the Pyrénées, otherwise you'll get stuck in the cooker hood - here are five things that I'd really like:
1. An extra day each week; a secret one, that doesn't appear on the calendar, and if you could just slip it into a different dimension so nobody can find me when I'm sitting reading that would be even better.
2. To miraculously find clean, ironed, white Egyptian cotton sheets on my bed every night.
3. A non-white Christmas so that I can actually carry the materials that I'm working with to and from the barn without crampons and an ice axe.
4. A tardis. I would really love to be able to travel forward in time just to reassure myself that we will finish the work on this house, one day, in my lifetime. And I'd like to be able to travel backwards too, because there are a few decisions I might have taken differently if I knew what I know now. Which reminds me, while we're on that subject ...
5. Do you think it might be possible to have the gift of hindsight, only to have it in advance?
There. I think that's quite restrained, don't you? If you don't think it's enough to be worth the detour, I'd also rather like to borrow a few of your Little Helpers for a while, but I don't want to appear greedy.
Now, do you know the way to Grillou? I expect you use a SatNav these days, so just a word of warning - when you get to Rimont it'll try to send you up a muddy track and through a lake. Not useful, and the reindeer will get chillblains. I'm afraid I won't be able to leave you a glass of sherry as you just can't get the stuff here; would some rather nice Muscat de Saint Jean de Minervois do instead, I wonder?
Anyway, I do hope you all have a lovely Christmas. Please try to stay zen, and remember to breathe.
Love
Kalba xx
How are things? I hope you're well and not too stressed out, and that Rudolph's nose is better (has he tried calendula ointment, I wonder?). I realise it's quite a number of years since you've heard from me, but I'm sure you must remember me. I was the one who always used to drink your sherry and replace it with cough medicine.
Anyway. Those days are over: I don't use cough medicine any more. I know you'll be very busy so I won't take up too much of your time, but I was I wondering - ahem - if you might be persuaded to pay me another visit. Please don't listen to anything they might tell you: I have tried really hard to be good this year - I mean look, we've even had the builders here for weeks and I've not murdered anyone. And you can't get much more gooder than that. So if you could just see your way to dropping down my chimney - that'll be the one nearest the Pyrénées, otherwise you'll get stuck in the cooker hood - here are five things that I'd really like:
1. An extra day each week; a secret one, that doesn't appear on the calendar, and if you could just slip it into a different dimension so nobody can find me when I'm sitting reading that would be even better.
2. To miraculously find clean, ironed, white Egyptian cotton sheets on my bed every night.
3. A non-white Christmas so that I can actually carry the materials that I'm working with to and from the barn without crampons and an ice axe.
4. A tardis. I would really love to be able to travel forward in time just to reassure myself that we will finish the work on this house, one day, in my lifetime. And I'd like to be able to travel backwards too, because there are a few decisions I might have taken differently if I knew what I know now. Which reminds me, while we're on that subject ...
5. Do you think it might be possible to have the gift of hindsight, only to have it in advance?
There. I think that's quite restrained, don't you? If you don't think it's enough to be worth the detour, I'd also rather like to borrow a few of your Little Helpers for a while, but I don't want to appear greedy.
Now, do you know the way to Grillou? I expect you use a SatNav these days, so just a word of warning - when you get to Rimont it'll try to send you up a muddy track and through a lake. Not useful, and the reindeer will get chillblains. I'm afraid I won't be able to leave you a glass of sherry as you just can't get the stuff here; would some rather nice Muscat de Saint Jean de Minervois do instead, I wonder?
Anyway, I do hope you all have a lovely Christmas. Please try to stay zen, and remember to breathe.
Love
Kalba xx
Saturday, 18 December 2010
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Dogs ...
... are such strange creatures. You buy them warm beds, and fill them with blankets and pillows, and where do they want to be on one of the coldest days of the year?
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Bean eaters anonymous
Once upon a time, we had a habit of spending a weekend somewhere in Tuscany at about this point in the year: to wander, to drink coffee, maybe to do a gallery or two ... and to eat. Well, okay, mostly to eat. But hey, come on, it was work: a lot of the inspiration for what I cooked at the resto came from Tuscany, and by that point in the year I was in need of a top up. Tiresome, huh?
The Tuscans are not called mangiafagioli (beaneaters) for nothing: beans play a huge part in the local cuisine. And they're sooooo good too: in the days when you could actually carry more than a spare pair of knickers on Ryanair we used to bring back kilos of them (beans, not knickers), along with several litres of newly pressed oil (if you once saw someone emptying a large suitcase at Stansted airport security and trying to explain convincingly why it was full of bubblewrap and not a lot else ... that was me). Lucca was our very favourite haunt; apart from being just a genuinely lovely little city, its oil and beans are second to none (Awww. I want to go, NOW!). It was in Lucca that I first ate zuppa di frantoiana - literally 'oil mill soup' - at a trattoria called Gigi. November is oil pressing time, and there are dishes featuring the new oil are on every menu. Gigi's zuppa was so good that we ate it twice, in quick succession, then I came home and did my best to recreate it.
Today being a biting Tuscan-cold type of day seemed like a perfect opportunity to spend a few hours on zuppa duty, especially given that the alternative was yet another hands-and-knees afternoon waxing the newly restored terracotta tiles in the dining room. I couldn't manage the new oil - we buy our 'good' olive oil from the Coop in Clermont l'Herault which produces several varieties, but pressing doesn't take place until December at the earliest - but for the first time (beware - crow alert) I did manage to use a lot of our own vegetables - everything but potatoes, celery and garlic in fact, none of which we grow.
Amazingly, even the tomatoes are ours: we picked them green at the beginning of the month and they're ripening nicely on the windowsill. So, in case you too have a task that you'd like to avoid, here is the (sort of) recipe.
Zuppa de frantoiana
some onions and/or leeks, diced
some green celery, including the leaves, finely chopped
some carrots, chopped into smallish pieces
a few potatoes, ditto
some garlic, minced
some fresh herbs - rosemary, thyme, parsley, basil, that sort of thing - chopped
a couple of peperoncini or small dried red chili peppers, crushed
some cavalo nero (black Tuscan kale) or Savoy cabbage, shredded
some butternut squash or pumpkin or potimarron, peeled and chopped into small-to-medium pieces
a few fresh tomatoes, skinned and chopped
some vegetable stock
some pinto or cannellini beans, cooked
a rind of Parmesan if you have one
some wheat or spelt grains
some good olive oil
So, this is what I do. In a big pan, warm some olive oil and gently fry the onions for 5 minutes. Add the celery, fry for 5 minutes. Add the carrots, fry for 5 minutes. Add the potatoes, fry for 5 minutes. Add the herbs and peperoncini, fry for 5 minutes. Add the cavalo nero, pumpkin and tomatoes, fry for 5 minutes. I know this seems a bit OTT, but I've found it to be the best way of bringing out the flavour of each ingredient - if you add them all to the pan at once it's all a little bit more indistinct and subdued.
Purée half the beans either with some of their cooking water, or with some vegetable stock, and add them to the pan, with the Parmesan rind too if you have it. Add more vegetable stock to just cover the vegetables, then simmer over the lowest possible heat for an hour.
Add the wheat and simmer for another half an hour. At that point, add the rest of the beans and simmer for another 20 minutes or so. Stir in some olive oil and let the whole thing stand for a couple of hours. Reheat gently - it should now be nicely thick - check the seasoning, ladle into bowls and serve with a glug of good olive oil poured over each one.
Make at least twice as much as you can eat, because it'll be even better tomorrow ....
The Tuscans are not called mangiafagioli (beaneaters) for nothing: beans play a huge part in the local cuisine. And they're sooooo good too: in the days when you could actually carry more than a spare pair of knickers on Ryanair we used to bring back kilos of them (beans, not knickers), along with several litres of newly pressed oil (if you once saw someone emptying a large suitcase at Stansted airport security and trying to explain convincingly why it was full of bubblewrap and not a lot else ... that was me). Lucca was our very favourite haunt; apart from being just a genuinely lovely little city, its oil and beans are second to none (Awww. I want to go, NOW!). It was in Lucca that I first ate zuppa di frantoiana - literally 'oil mill soup' - at a trattoria called Gigi. November is oil pressing time, and there are dishes featuring the new oil are on every menu. Gigi's zuppa was so good that we ate it twice, in quick succession, then I came home and did my best to recreate it.
Today being a biting Tuscan-cold type of day seemed like a perfect opportunity to spend a few hours on zuppa duty, especially given that the alternative was yet another hands-and-knees afternoon waxing the newly restored terracotta tiles in the dining room. I couldn't manage the new oil - we buy our 'good' olive oil from the Coop in Clermont l'Herault which produces several varieties, but pressing doesn't take place until December at the earliest - but for the first time (beware - crow alert) I did manage to use a lot of our own vegetables - everything but potatoes, celery and garlic in fact, none of which we grow.
 |
| Cavalo nero (black Tuscan kale) growing on the potager |
Amazingly, even the tomatoes are ours: we picked them green at the beginning of the month and they're ripening nicely on the windowsill. So, in case you too have a task that you'd like to avoid, here is the (sort of) recipe.
Zuppa de frantoiana
some onions and/or leeks, diced
some green celery, including the leaves, finely chopped
some carrots, chopped into smallish pieces
a few potatoes, ditto
some garlic, minced
some fresh herbs - rosemary, thyme, parsley, basil, that sort of thing - chopped
a couple of peperoncini or small dried red chili peppers, crushed
some cavalo nero (black Tuscan kale) or Savoy cabbage, shredded
some butternut squash or pumpkin or potimarron, peeled and chopped into small-to-medium pieces
a few fresh tomatoes, skinned and chopped
some vegetable stock
some pinto or cannellini beans, cooked
a rind of Parmesan if you have one
some wheat or spelt grains
some good olive oil
So, this is what I do. In a big pan, warm some olive oil and gently fry the onions for 5 minutes. Add the celery, fry for 5 minutes. Add the carrots, fry for 5 minutes. Add the potatoes, fry for 5 minutes. Add the herbs and peperoncini, fry for 5 minutes. Add the cavalo nero, pumpkin and tomatoes, fry for 5 minutes. I know this seems a bit OTT, but I've found it to be the best way of bringing out the flavour of each ingredient - if you add them all to the pan at once it's all a little bit more indistinct and subdued.
Purée half the beans either with some of their cooking water, or with some vegetable stock, and add them to the pan, with the Parmesan rind too if you have it. Add more vegetable stock to just cover the vegetables, then simmer over the lowest possible heat for an hour.
Add the wheat and simmer for another half an hour. At that point, add the rest of the beans and simmer for another 20 minutes or so. Stir in some olive oil and let the whole thing stand for a couple of hours. Reheat gently - it should now be nicely thick - check the seasoning, ladle into bowls and serve with a glug of good olive oil poured over each one.
Make at least twice as much as you can eat, because it'll be even better tomorrow ....
Saturday, 27 November 2010
A tale of two Grilloux ...
8.30am: a world white with hard frost: minus 6 degrees.
12.30pm: lunch on the terrace: 20 degrees in the sun. On the shady side of the house: still zero; central heating still on anti-frost setting.
A blackbird singing, in blissful defiance of the season.
12.30pm: lunch on the terrace: 20 degrees in the sun. On the shady side of the house: still zero; central heating still on anti-frost setting.
A blackbird singing, in blissful defiance of the season.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)