Rick Stein’s Prune and Almond Tart

Rick Stein is probably the first chef personality I became familiar with and remains the only one who I have any real affection for. I remember watching one of his TV shows as a child, French Odyssey – it was compulsory family viewing. I loved the sound of his voice, his dog Chalky and how he communicated directly and personally with the cooks, gardeners, growers and local food experts he met as they travelled by barge on a canal through south-west France. Rick Stein speaks as if everything is a marvel, a wonder. It’s easy to become absorbed in his language, moving with the intonations of his voice. To be a television chef engaging your audience is part of the job description but there is an authenticity to Stein and he seems so genuinely enthralled about the food and people around him, as if he too, like his audience, is learning and tasting things for the first time. Perhaps it was this show that first inspired a love of France – the countryside, the people, the language, but most importantly, the food.

When the show ended we bought the cookbook and after that our collection of French cookbooks seemed to expand – each one offering new ingredients, new stories and new recipes. But every year or so we come back to Rick Stein’s French Odyssey sometimes for a recipe, but often to look at the pictures and to read the words or the funny inscriptions Georgie and I wrote to Mum Christmas 2005.

Mother, my dearest,
This is your Christmas present
for you to use in 2006.
Make lots of dishes so delicious
our lips will be forever licked
Entrées and mains,
with this book you’ll be skipping
through French country lanes.
Savoury, sweet or sour,
everyone knows their mouths will devour!

Before Georgie came home for the summer she emailed us a “List of Delicious-ness,” all the things she would like for us to eat over the summer. Georgie wished for Caribbean pie, lamb and potato curry, Thai beef salad, chocolate self-saucing pudding, roast lamb, pork chops with caramelised apples and onions. Most of the items on the list are firm family favourites that we have been cooking and eating for years and like favourite films and books, none ever tire. I don’t dare to hazard a guess at how many times my mother has made lamb and potato curry. Every time all four of us sit down to a meal, the table set and wine poured, it feels so very long since the last time and even longer since this was habit and normal and the only thing we really knew.

I have been thinking about what I wrote a few months ago about working and what my working life will look like as it begins to take shape. I thought perhaps I would never have a regular 9 to 5 job, that perhaps I would always have irregular hospitality hours and irregular writing hours on the side. But it’s becoming clear that what I value and look forward to is cooking and eating, most especially dinners. Dinners are great. Irregular hours here and there are not conducive to great dinners, or even dinners at all.

So for Georgie’s last night in Wellington we had a great dinner, entrée and dessert taken from Rick Stein’s French Odyssey and the main event taken from Paris, another one of our French focused books. For the entrée Dad and I made seared scallops served on a muddle of lentils with a herb tomato sauce. The lentils were savoury and knubbly, the tomato sauce was bright and garden fresh and the scallops were sweet and tender. For the main course Mum made spiced duck with creamy, wilted, beautiful savoy cabbage. Then Georgie and I made prune and almond tart to honour the list of delicious-ness.

The pastry is short, almost shatteringly so, with a rich and buttery flavour. The prunes are meltingly tender, moist jubes of brandy sweetness. Then the almond, in its traditional almond role, pulls everything together, balances it out, gives the tart substance and body. The almonds, the brandy, the succulent semi-dried fruit remind me of Christmas flavours. And Christmas in our house really only means one thing – family dinners (and breakfasts and morning teas and lunches and afternoon teas and evening nibbles…)

This tart recipe reminds me of the economy of many French dishes. While at first glance the ingredients list may appear daunting and the instructions a bit winded, the case is often a little of a lot. This recipe uses only 4 tablespoons of brandy (we add more, as can be seen in our adapted version below), 35 grams of ground almonds and 55 grams of sugar. There is moderation to be found in French cuisine, which Rick Stein I think understands so very well.

Prune Almond Tart
Adapted from Rick Stein’s recipe. Many thanks to Georgie for the gorgeous photos.

300 grams dried or half-dried (mi-cuit) prunes
6 tablespoons brandy
1 large egg, lightly beaten
35 grams ground almonds
55 grams caster sugar
250 grams crème fraîche
icing sugar, for dusting
Extra crème fraîche to serve

Pastry:
225 grams plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
130 grams chilled butter, cut into pieces
1.5 – 2 tablespoons chilled water

For the pastry:
Sift the flour and salt into a food processor or a mixing bowl. Add the pieces of chilled butter and work together until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. With the processor running on low or with the blade of the knife if making pastry manually, stir in the water until it comes into a ball. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead briefly until smooth.

For the filling:
Place the prunes in a medium bowl and pour over the brandy. Leave to soak for at least one hour, turning them over every now and then to help them soak up the alcohol.
Roll out the pastry on floured surface and then line a greased tart tin, roughly 25 cm across the base. Prick the base with a fork and chill for 20 minutes.
Pre-heat oven to 200°C. Line the pastry base with baking paper and a layer of rice or baking weights and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the paper and beans and bake for another 4-5 minutes. Remove the pastry base and brush with a little of the beaten egg before returning to the oven for a further 2 minutes. Remove the tart, set aside and lower the temperature to 190°C.
Pick the prunes out of their brandy bath and scatter them on the pastry base. To the brandy add the ground almonds, egg, sugar and crème fraîche and beat until smooth. Pour the almond mixture over the prunes and bake for 45 minutes until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre of the tart comes away clean.

Dust with icing sugar and serve warm or at room temperature with crème fraîche, yoghurt or whipped sweetened cream.

Roasted Carrot Salad + Quinoa Salad

There is a beauty in a salad that you will never find in a roasted leg of lamb, or a chicken curry, or a pasta dish no matter how good and how well made they are. There is a freedom of spirit in a salad. You can free wheel in the kitchen. Salads can be immensely satisfying – a meal in their own right.

A roasted carrot salad has been brewing in my mind for a while now. I first fell in love with roasted carrots while living in France. Often at the local market a 2 kilogram bag of carrots would be a euro or two. I would eat raw carrots like a rabbit, only turning to other carrot recipes when, alarmingly, my finger tips began to look like I had rubbed them in tumeric. I made carrot soup sweetened with braised leeks or fresh orange juice or, alternatively bulked up with potatoes. And then, when I reached the the end of my tether for carrot and orange soup – who knew there was such a tether? roasting became the way to go.

Cut into long strips the carrots char slightly at the thinner edges while the thicker end near the top of the carrots maintain their soft bite. Roasted carrots, while not the prettiest roast vegetable to look at all withered and wrinkly, they are perhaps the best to eat. They are sweet and if well seasoned with good oil and salt and pepper take on a buttery, salty-sweet flavour. In France I would eat them simply straight from the roasting dish, pulling each long wedge from the soft tangle of burnt orange. Or I would pulse them into hummus with a pinch of cayenne and paprika, then slather it on fresh, crusty bread with sliced tomato.

It wasn’t until this winter with bags of carrots seeming to outnumber potatoes, pumpkin and other roastable vegetables that I rediscovered the roasted carrot. I like the shape of a roasted carrot, long and slender. A carrot roasted to tenderness and vibrant orange seems quite different and elegant lying next to round, pale golden potatoes. The inspiration for this carrot salad came from a Ruth Pretty recipe I have always been fond of. The carrots are tender, boiled perhaps as they are less caramel tasting and more mellow, but are zinged up with plenty of chilli, olives, and coriander. I love the heat of the chilli, the acidity of the olives and the freshness of the coriander.

For my salad I roasted everything together – beginning with a whole pan laden with chopped carrots and whole garlic cloves, then twice opening the oven to toss in chopped red chilli and Kalamata olives. Next time I might toss in almonds to roast for the last few minutes to add a bit of crunch.

The quinoa salad is more of an everything salad; endlessly versatile. Start with a base of cooked quinoa – I used a red, black and white mix – and add whatever you have on hand. Sautéed asparagus with lemon, feta, sundried tomatoes, red and yellow capsicum finely diced, sunflower seeds, fresh mint, chopped tomatoes and zuchini rounds cooked until soft and floppy together with fresh basil leaves. The extra bits and pieces nestle well in the tiny fronds of the quinoa and their soft nutty flavour is the ideal vehicle for stronger tastes and textures. Go wild.

Roasted Carrot Salad

A large amount of carrots, say a kilo or so.
4 cloves garlic
2 small red chilli
a handful of black olives
salt and pepper
olive oil
a small bunch of fresh coriander

Pre-heat oven to 180°C. Chop carrots in half lengthwise then into quarters lengthwise until you have long strips. Place the carrots and the peeled garlic cloves in a roasting pan with a generous slug of olive oil and salt and pepper. Roast for 30 minutes then add the finely diced chilli. After another 10 minutes add the olives and continue to cook for another 10 to 15 minutes. Garnish with chopped coriander.

An award nomination

This coming Sunday the 3rd of June will mark a year since I returned from France. It has gone by so fast. I think about France often; the weekends away, the skiing, the people I met, the food I ate, the wonderful places I visited. This blog constantly reminds me of France and seems to hold me to these memories. I started blogging in France and came to find such enjoyment in the blogging community and the discipline of writing regularly.

It is so lovely then to be nominated for The Food Stories Award for Excellence in Storytelling. Sarah from More Than Greens kindly nominated me for this award. I like Sarah’s blog because, while duck confit and a perfectly medium rare steak are some of my favourite meals, I do agree with her that vegetarian food has so much to offer in terms of diversity, taste, colour, texture and health. More than just rabbit food, as she says.

The nomination for this award requires me to also nominate five other blogs for Excellence in Storytelling. Some of these blogs I have read for a while, and others I have only recently discovered. But either way, they each offer wonderful snapshots into other culinary lives.

• Down Under - a fellow Wellington blogger, though originally from France, this blog is an interesting perspective of my favourite city
• As Strong As Soup - I think the title is great, as are the many French cake recipes
• Eat, etc - a recent discovery and I look forward to reading more
• Vegetarian Ventures - I love the style of photography here
• The Patterned Plate – the header first drew me in, now I love the writing too

Be sure to click on these links – they are great blogs.

New Books and Sponge Cake

One day I hope to live in a house with a library, or the very least, a decent shelving unit. I have been buying a lot of books this year. Investment shopping, I call it. I do not have a lot of time for reading at the moment. But one day, when I have those floor to ceiling wooden shelves, I will read every day. In the meantime, an artful stack to look at will do.

The wonderful thing about investment book shopping is the anything-goes rule. One day, I will read this! Short story collections, yes; crazy whacky poetry, yes; books of essays, yes; cookbooks requiring ingredients I can’t yet afford and kitchen ware I don’t yet own, yes; food writing, yes; novels, yes. Do you see how this game works?

This week has been a stand out week for buying books. There was a Vic Books sale, a clearance sale, books for as little as $2 I has been told. It was miserable weather and Francesca and I were feeling slightly sorry for ourselves. We trudged up the hill to Victoria where there was the promise of coffee and quiet book shopping. We bought poetry books, novels, a book of plays, a book of essays. And then, almost as an after thought, I picked up a pretty pink french cookbook called Taste Le Tour.

It has a padded cover with pink stripes and looks quite uncharacteristic of french cuisine. Where are the beautiful pictures of french markets and countryside, teeming with rounds of cheese, hanging sausages and plucked poultry? Instead there is a sketch on the front cover and the motif of a lurking black cat. It could be mistaken for a children’s picture book. My collection of querky french cookbooks is growing. I’m realising I buy french cook books because the stories between the pages, rather than the list of ingredients on them, is worth more to me.

But each cook book needs testing. I made the Gateau de Savoie from Taste le Tour, mainly because I had all the ingredients, but also, I feel a certain loyalty to the Savoie-Alpes region after living there for a while. I don’t think I ever tried this sponge cake while there, but I wish I had. I imagine it would be feather light in France. The recipe calls for six eggs, separated. A little daunting really, especially as personal experience tells me the risk increases exponentially as the quantity of eggs increases. I was worried. But, lo and behold, my cake rose like a soufflé with a crisp shell, almost biscuit like. Beneath this was soft sponge, almost plain but for the slightest whisper of lemon. The author of the book says his grandmother used to serve this cake with fresh fruit and runny custard. I would have liked some berries to macerate in a little sugar, maybe a dash of rum, and wait for the ruby juices to soak through the pale sponge. Instead, we ate ours in the fading afternoon sun with whipped vanilla cream and glasses of Pimm’s, admiring our books.

Savoie Sponge Cake
From Taste Le Tour

Note the size of the cake tin; this is a large mixture. My cake rose above the sides of the tin, threatening to spill over, hence it developed a little muffin top.

90 grams plain flour
90 grams cornflour
6 eggs, separated
grated zest of 1 lemon
300 grams caster sugar
a pinch of cream of tartar
icing sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter a 25cm round cake tin.

Sift the two flours together and set aside.

Beat the egg yolks, lemon zest and 150 grams of the sugar in a bowl until very pale and mousse like. Wash the beaters well.

Beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until stiff peaks form. Slowly add the remaining 150 grams of sugar and beat slowly, or whisk, until well incorporated. Gently fold the egg whites into the egg yolks, followed by the flours. Be careful not to over mix.

Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the surface. Dust the cake with icing sugar and bake for 35-40 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes before turning onto a wire rack. Cool completely before serving.

Tarte aux pommes classique

I have been in a bit of a French funk since the weekend. These happen every so often, where I seem unable to distance myself from my french memories. I remember going to the markets and the market sellers pulling off a plastic bag, maybe wiping their hands on their apron and then saying in a deep, rolling voice, “Dites-moi, mademoiselle!” I remember learning to ski and mountainside chalets and vin chaud. I remember all the horrific mistakes I made while speaking French: the bumbling, awkward conversations where the other person folded their arms and quizzically repeated my butchered French. But then, I most dearly remember the conversations I had with people, who rather than rolling their eyes and sighing, “Les anglaises…” they said, “Ahhh, vous avez un accent…?” like they weren’t quite sure, like I could be from anywhere. I liked those moments the best. I remember wandering the streets of Bordeaux in the early spring heat with no money and no food and no one to share it with but as happy as I ever thought I could be.

I worked at a wedding on the weekend and the groom was french. It was a beautiful wedding and many of the guests were so excited and relieved that I could communicate with them. They were a lively lot, who smoked and drank and danced all night. They ate with enthusiasm, New Zealand lamb or groper, sampled our wines and cheese. And there was never any question over which was the red or the white wine glass, or whose side plate was whose, because eating is what they do so well. It made me miss France and all the wonderful people I met there.

So Tuesday afternoon, I pulled my tome of french cuisine from its shelf and thought une tarte aux pommes would ease my french blues. I put on my faux-french apron and made pâte brisée. The pastry was soft and smooth, enough to make you swoon, really. I peeled and finely sliced apples, arranging them in haphazard rows. Then covered the apples in a liberal dousing of sugar.

Upon cooking, the apples on the bottom stew and release their juices, while the apples on top became golden and slightly firm to the tooth. The texture changes as you bite through the apples and there are beautiful sing-song lifts of tart and sweet. But let’s not forget what holds this dessert together – the pastry. This pastry softly shatters beneath your teeth, but in a good way, like a buttery crumble. It adds another flavour dimension to this dessert; a little bit savoury, a little bit mealy.

Ideally I would be eating a slice of this with un café at the local salon du thé. But, then again, being able to share this tarte aux pommes with the people I care about here, in New Zealand, is just as wonderful, if not more so.

Tarte aux pommes classique

For the pastry:
200grams standard flour
100grams of butter (let the butter come to room temperature for an hour or so before using it)
2 1/2 tablespoons of water

Place the flour in a bowl. Cut the butter into cubes and using your fingertips rub the butter into the flour until it resembles fine bread crumbs. Add the water and quickly work the dough together into a ball. It doesn’t have to be totally smooth, just as long as it is not very wet and mushy. If it is add a sprinkle more flour. Let the dough to rest at room temperature for at least a half hour. Roll the pastry on a floured work surface until it is about 4-5mm thick. Grease the tart pan, preferably round, unlike mine, and lay the pastry in the bottom.

For the apples:
5-6 apples suitable for cooking
100 grams sugar
2 tablespoons apricot jam

Pre-heat the oven to 180°. Peel the apples, remove the core and cut into quarters. Slice each quarter finely to create crescent-ish shapes. Lay the slices in rows, one on top of the other. Sprinkle with sugar. Place the tart in the oven and cook until golden brown and the juices bubble ever so slightly at the edges.

Mix the apricot jam with a dash of warm water and brush lightly over the apples once removed from the oven.

Serve warm with crème fraiche or thick yoghurt or vanilla ice cream.

Ce n’est pas la glace au chocolat…

Chocolate flavoured whipped cream doesn’t sound too bad, does it? But what if I say that this chocolate whipped cream is frozen and somehow meant to be ice cream.

The process of making this imposter ice cream is quite lovely. It feels like you are doing something good, something exciting. With the heart-stopping quantities of cream required it surely is going to be the most lush of desserts, you think to yourself. Firstly, you whip the cream until quite thick – “slovenly folds” as Nigel Slater wrote. Then mix through some icing sugar and a drop or two of vanilla essence. You place the cream in a shallow container in the freezer for 30 minutes or until a sort of thin, icy crust begins to form at the edges.

Meanwhile, melt chunks of chocolate with a slosh more cream in a bain-marie. Once glistening and luxuriously smooth, let cool. Remove the cream from the freezer and place in a bowl, add the chocolate. Begin to fold through; rich dark streaks swirling through the white. Until they swirl no more. The cold cream has in fact hardened the chocolate into grainy, pebbley bits. You must smash through the mix with a fork. Return the chocolate cream to the freezer for a few hours. At this point I had a few doubts.

It almost resembles chocolate covered dirt...

Eating the frozen chocolate cream is what I imagine eating cold sand could be like. Your spoon seems to ricochet off the many minuscule ice shards. It does not delicately curl the contours of your spoon, nor does it tenderly roll through the contours of your mouth. The fine grains of hard chocolate and the tangy taste of cream and the bitterness of dark chocolate jar and clash. It is not the sort of cream to hold on your tongue and allow the flavours to introduce themselves, like the freshness of raspberry or lemon ice cream, or the pleasing familarity of vanilla or strawberry. Instead, you are left with the kind of discomfort that comes from too much chocolate and cream, a head or a stomach discomfort I can never be sure, but either way, you need a lie down.

I had grand ideas for this post. I was going to write about the day I bought this little book for €5 from a stationary shop in Annecy, France. I was going to begin with a description of the weather – a clear and crisp day in late January, how we were wrapped up in hats, scarves, gloves and coats. I would have told you that my friend Ivan and I spent the day walking around the lake ripping off pieces of baguette and eating ham and Swiss gruyère from their paper wrappings. And that we had crêpes for afternoon tea with caramelised bananas, chocolate ice cream and chocolate sauce.

Afterwards we walked into the stationary shop and I probably picked up and put back down this petit livre several times. It is called Desserts with the sub title, trop bons. It all looks trop bons too; almond and pear tart, apple and red fruit torte, pears stuffed with figs and then wrapped in pastry, a red rice and sauteed grape risotto, apricot soufflé, tiramisu made with white chocolate and raspberries, peaches poached in Marsala, honey and banana ice cream and yoghurt and pistachio semifreddo. I could make it all.

And yet, of all the desserts, page 172 was selected: glace au chocolat. This post is my entry into the One Year Anniversary of Belleau Kitchen’s Random Recipe Challenge, even though the recipe, or my execution of it, needs some serious work.

Glace au chocolat
Original recipe in French, translated par moi

I am wondering if mixing through the chocolate before freezing would have produced better results.

300ml cream
2 tablespoons milk
50g icing sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
125g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
2 tablespoons cream

Beat the cream and the milk until thick- not so much that peaks form but just softly whipped. Incorporate the icing sugar and the vanilla extract. Pour the mixture into a shallow container and place for 30 minutes in the freezer, until the ice begins to take the outer edges.

Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie with the second measure of cream. Heat until the mixture is combined then let cool.

Remove the ice cream from the freezer and pour the cream into a bowl. Incorporate the chocolate and work énergiquement with a fork. Pour the chocolate cream back into the plastic container, cover and place back in the freezer. Remove the ice cream from the freezer 30 minutes before serving.

Serve with chocolate sauce.

Bon courage!

Rice cakes

I am going to tell a story about rice pilaf, or risotto. I can’t promise it to be very interesting, in fact, I suspect it to be rather dull. A story to sigh and roll your eyes at and think, “Oh dear, Harriet.”

This story started several months ago, in France, during a determined search for the ideal risotto recipe. I wrote down several variations with the intention of trying them all when I returned to New Zealand and had more people to cook for and hopefully in a kitchen where the bench was not the top of my washing machine.

Friday night I pulled from my recipe folder one I had titled, ‘Soubise-French risotto.’ I can’t recall writing this title down and a quick Google search informed me that soubise is, in actual fact, a bechamel based sauce with a puree of cooked onions. I ignored the incorrect title and made it anyway. I chopped many onions, for which I donned a pair of swimming goggles, a couple of garlic cloves and cooked them in glorious amounts of butter. Adding two diced fennel bulbs, then stirring through washed basmati rice. Soon pouring in a considerable slug of white wine and a half litre of stock. The aroma of onions and garlic cooking in butter filled our little kitchen and, I thought, this might work out.

I envisaged a rice dish that was tender to the fork, each grain of rice delicate and well formed. However, the result was neither a pilaf nor a risotto, but more like a mashed potato made of rice. On a cold winter night, perhaps for a lonesome meal for one, a rice mash could be quite lovely, if ever so self-indulgent. But not a dish to serve to guests, and not a dish to show the subtle fresh flavour of fennel.

I spent today thinking how it could have been improved. I believe I have the answers now. (I sometimes worry at the state of my life that a failed rice pilaf is the first thing on my mind.) I won’t bore you with the analysis of such a matter, but rather suggest a delicious way to use up leftover rice mash-risotto-pilaf. I stirred through a beaten egg, molded the mixture into patties and fried them in a little butter until golden brown. I do enjoy a risotto cake, though normally I would add some tinned tuna or salmon, or chopped fresh coriander and sweet chilli sauce to create something akin to Thai fish cakes. All I added for extra seasoning was a little bit, merely a glistening, of lemon vinaigrette after the rice cakes were cooked. The acidity of the citrus cut the richness of the rice cakes and the butter, adding a pleasant tang. A lemon chutney would also have added a hint of a sharper flavour.

I do intend to improve the mistitled recipe, so stay tuned for the next thrilling installment…

Salade composée

Last week on a quiet Sunday afternoon spent lounging in the sun, I read Stephanie Alexander’s book Cooking and Traveling in South-West France. It is a beautiful book with stories of the people she met and the meals they shared. The south-west is quite possibly my favourite region of France with its rich culinary history and wine culture. I enjoy Stephanie’s book in a somewhat bittersweet way: during my few days in Bordeaux I was as poor as a church mouse and surviving on a few yoghurts, a few apples and a pottle of couscous salad, eating a few teaspoons every few hours to tide me over.

It is these experiences of the poor starving backpacker that made me so appreciative of the meals I shared with my french friends. One particular meal with my friend Sophie and her family we had an entrée of a salad with mesclun, foie gras, magret de canard, corn and small preserved onions that were so tiny and so sweet I thought they might have been a berry. It is a surprisingly light salad, and a reminder that salad is so much more than torn lettuce with a chopped tomato or cucumber.

It was not until I read the page titled La Salade Composée in Stephanie Alexander’s book that I remembered this meal and this salad, the delicate flavours of the duck enhanced by the simple preparation. Stephanie writes that a ‘composed salad’ can be made with any number of ingredient combinations, though it pays not to overcrowd the flavours too much. La salade composée reminded me of another salad, our Saturday lunch sort of salad, in winter or summer: chicken, pear, walnut and blue cheese.

Slices of fragrant, slightly firm pear, crumbles of blue cheese, lightly toasted walnuts and pan-grilled chicken is a classic combination, and, like the duck and foie gras salad, the marriage of flavours is perfectly balanced by the freshness of mesclun, or baby rocket, or cos lettuce. Serve with grilled bread, drizzled in olive oil.

A lentil salad for any season

When I lived in France I didn’t really live the culinary dream many expected. I didn’t dine on foie gras or steak frites or cassoulet each day, drink a bottle of Bordeaux or Burgundy each night, and buy new cheeses and interesting cuts of meat from the market each week. I did most of my own cooking and would sometimes spend 3 days living on porridge, or bread and butter, or pumpkin soup for lunch and dinner.  I rarely ate meat, mostly tofu, in fact I practically became a vegetarian.

But there were wonderful meals during trips away to my friend’s auberge, or the confit du canard we treated ourselves to during a cold December weekend in Paris. There was Christmas in Wales with the most enormous turkey and a celebratory New Year’s dinner in Barcelona with Rioja and tomato bread and octopus. There were thick winter stews and a citrus, slightly tangy, cheese-cake strudel dessert at a tavern in Innsbruck, Austria.

Then, towards the end of my travels around France I spent nearly a month living and working with two different French couples in the south-west region of France. For the first two weeks I lived on the outskirts of a small town south of Bordeaux called Pissos with Marie Hélène and Christoph. They live on pancake flat land surrounded by pine forest stretching to the horizons. They have a small river near their property where they catch trout, and make beignets from the blossom of elderflower trees hanging over the river banks. They have chickens and pigeons which cluck and coo all day, fly at the windows and have even been known to come inside the house.

The kitchen is the centre of their home. It is an eclectic kitchen with benches of different surfaces and different heights, apothecary style jars sitting on shelves holding home-made herbal teas and their “pantry” is spread throughout the house in a beautiful collection of old chests and cupboards and sideboards. But the most impressive part of the kitchen, indeed the whole house, is the 180 year old  fireplace. It is framed by a stone wall and has a white piece of lace fabric hanging around the top edges. It has a grill nestled in the bottom and a bar above the flames for hanging pots.

I ate very well during my two weeks with Marie Hélène and Christoph; Marie is an amazing cook. I was helping Marie in her organic vegetable garden so everyday we had a an apéro hour of fresh radishes, or peas still in their pods, or baby carrots. We came home from the garden around 1 o’clock for lunch which was nearly always accompanied by a bottle of wine and fresh bread. One day lunch was a whole roast chicken (complete with innards and gizzards….) with home-made fries, another day it was fish baked in the outdoor fire, or roast pork and crispy sauteed new potatoes, or chunky andouillette sausages. Every meal was followed by coffee and, maybe yoghurt. The yoghurt was made in Germany and sold by Marie’s friend at the market; it was the smoothest, creamiest, most flavoursome yoghurt I think I have ever tasted.

Every meal was memorable but one which I can most easily recreate here in my humble kitchen is the lentil salad. One day Marie Hélène rose early to cook a large pot of lentils. Before lunch she mixed through whatever she had on hand and fresh produce from her garden: tomatoes, feta, onions, chopped radish, garlic, fresh herbs and pieces of beautiful, sweet and slightly smoky cured Spanish style ham. We ate it outdoors in the sun at a table with a blue floral pattern cloth.

My lentil salad had a spring twist with asparagus and zucchini sauteed with lemon zest and juice and a pinch of chilli flakes. I used canned lentils and tossed through capers, diced tomato, cubes of Parmesan, though feta would have been nicer, small strips of bacon and slightly caramelised red onion. Shake a dressing together with olive oil, lemon juice, a crushed garlic clove, a teaspoon of mustard, salt and pepper. Then let the flavours mellow and soften together for a while.

My lentil salad was more a topping to go with a leafy green salad but if I added one or two more cans of lentils this could have been a meal on its own. A torn piece of baguette or ciabatta drizzled in olive oil and lightly toasted would have been perfect with it. In the winter add cooked lentils to a warm roast vegetable salad with some spicy chorizo sausage; wonderful for eating seasonally.

Summer is taking its own sweet time reaching us here in Wellington. I may not be able to recreate spring time in France sitting at an outdoor table surrounded by pine trees, blue skies and plentiful wine, but I do plan to coax summer forward with strawberries and Pimm’s and good, good salad.

French Pork Terrine

Last year when I was teaching English in France I was sometimes invited to the end of term apéro hour. Or three. It was here in a classroom colourful with childrens’ artwork on a snowy night in late December that I had my first taste of home-made charcuterie.

As the teachers’ cars were steadily being hidden under snow, we kept the glasses at spirited levels, no one ready to retrieve the snow shovels yet. One teacher brought out from her handbag a knobbly, white-dusted saucisson. She sliced this salami into fine chips and we gently tore off the white skin. She told us her husband made it.

The saucisson was mild and still tender, a slightly smoky, sweet taste. I told her I had never eaten home-made saucisson before. She said I had come to the right place, France. I had to agree.

A few weeks ago, to give me a little taste of France again, we made a pork terrine. On thick grainy bread with baby cornichons and a sweet chutney, it did feel like a rustic, French country lunch. We followed Jamie Oliver’s recipe in Jamie does… Spain, Italy, Sweden, Morocco, Greece, France. We thought it needed a few improvements; more seasoning, and dare I say it, a little more fat.

Last weekend, to overcome the winter blues and take a trip down French memory lane, we had a go at another terrine. We were after something light, yet warming and comforting. A simple, hearty terrine is a more interesting way to channel rustic France than a thick vegetable soup, we thought. As I perused French recipes, I wondered if I could convince Mum of my home-sickness for France enough that she would buy foie gras and a bottle of young Sauterne. Mum is easily persuaded by these things: I’ll keep you posted. Instead, we bought a pork shoulder, a pork fillet, smoky bacon lardons, chicken livers and the most beautifully fragrant thyme.

My dear elderly Nana, who always phones us during weekends and holidays, is a keen ear to Mum’s kitchen stories. Nana leads a quiet life now and our family’s francophile habits seem quite exotic to her. Nana asked what a terrine is. Mum told her it was a bit like a chunky paté: mince various cuts of meat, add herbs, seasonings, breadcrumbs and something to bind it all together then bake it in the oven. Nana said that sounded like an awful lot of hard work and wouldn’t we be better off serving our lunch guests a nice egg.

It should be said that the French have wonderful ways of preparing and serving eggs, but I don’t think they would be able to look past this hearty terrine.

French Pork Terrine
Based loosely on Jamie Oliver’s recipe.

For the very best flavours, make a few days ahead and keep refrigerated.

large knob of butter (think French proportions)
3 roughly chopped shallots
2 large cloves of garlic, minced
slosh of brandy
1.5kg of mixed pork cuts (we used a shoulder and a fillet)
100g chicken livers
200g smoked bacon lardons
1/3cup duck fat
1 handful fresh breadcrumbs
1 small bunch parsley, coarsely chopped
1 small bunch thyme, coarsely chopped
1 egg
1/4cup cream
2tbsp salt
4-5 bay leaves

Pre-heat oven to 180°C. Place butter in a frypan on medium heat. Add chopped shallots and cook until soft and transparent. Add garlic. Once shallots are cooked, add the brandy and turn off the heat.

Chop the pork meat into cubes, removing any tough pieces of fat or skin. If you have a mincer, great, if not, a food processor works fine. Mince the meat in several stages, it doesn’t have to be too fine, in fact, a coarse mince works well. Mince the chicken livers, the lardons and the duck fat.

In a small bowl whisk the egg with the cream.

Place the minced meat in a large mixing bowl. Add the cooked shallots, chopped herbs, breadcrumbs, salt and egg mixture. Mix well (with your hands is best).

(To test the seasonings this second time round we took a spoonful and cooked it in the frypan.)

Once seasonings are to your taste, lay the bay leaves in the bottom of a loaf or pie dish. Spread terrine mixture smoothly on top. Place terrine dish in a roasting pan and fill half way up with water to create a bain-marie. Bake in the oven for 90 minutes or until the juices run clear.

Once cooked, take the terrine from the oven and place a piece of tinfoil on top. Lay a few cans on top of tin foil as a weight to compress the terrine creating a denser and more easily sliced terrine. Leave the terrine with weights on top for about 4 hours, or until cold. Remove tinfoil and weights and refrigerate. Don’t discard the juices, they set to a loose jelly, which while not appealing to look at, keep the terrine moist.
Serve with crusty bread – toasted is good – cornichons, salad greens and a selection of chutneys, spicy mango and beetroot are delicious accompaniments.