15, Rue Boyer 1911.
Eugene Atget

This man made thousands of photographs of street scenes in the French capital around the turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.

Click here for a beautiful film of his works, made by Berenice Abbot in 1927 which she perfectly matched with two of Satés Gymnopédies.

5 minutes and 10 seconds of total detente

Yesterday, while going down to the village for bread, I passed a small gathering of people from the village and workmen all talking and waving their arms about in front of one of the village houses.
One of the ladies, one of the many that I now “Bon Jour + small chat about the weather” to, greeted me like a saviour.
Aha ! she said (in French) “Here is Monsieur, He speaks English and French, he can help us!”
I was then directed to the house of “Un Anglais” with directions to ask him could he leave his house open for a few hours as they had to connect a “branchement ” inside (I’m not sure if this was water or electricity).
The Anglais, took one look at me and said “You’re Martin aren’t you ?
I read your blog “.
Anyway within seconds it turned out that he had understood what they wanted but they had not understood that he was happy to give them the key if they popped it back through the letter box when finished.

I became the hero of the hour.

Found in translation really, I suppose.

I have, for over ten years now, been a devoted reader of the New Yorker Magazine .
It is the most beautiful thing to read, all the pieces so well put together that I have read with pleasure stories about American Football and even Eastern European economics without even realising that these subjects would normally bore me stiff.

Slowly but surely over the years I have begun to search the contents pages for certain writers who I have developed a certain rapport with, writers who seem to have the same fascination with nerdish subjects as I do, foremost among them is a writer called Burkhard Bilger.

One of the first articles of his that sticks in my mind was called The Height Gap which he wrote in April ’05.
This exposed the amazing fact that young American men had actually got shorter in the previous ten years, they were now overtaken and passed by their peers in Holland and Sweden. This loss of height had only been discovered in history as a result of famine, young America’s diet of Burgers and Fries was effectively stunting their growth.

This led almost directly to a piece he wrote in September ’06 called the The Lunchroom Rebellion which was about a courageous Chef in California who had taken on the schools authority in an effort to try and provide healthier school lunches.

(Shortly after that article was written I was in a hotel outside Turin attending Slow Food’s Terra Madre. I asked the lady I was sitting next to, if she, like me was a chef.
“Not really” she explained ” I do school dinners”
This started me in a speech of praise of the lady, Ann Cooper, whom Bilger had written about.
“That was me” she said.)

As I flick through the archives of the New Yorker it becomes evident he never wrote a piece I didn’t enjoy.

Just take these titles “A Better Brew ” about boutique breweries , “The Cheese Nun” about a catholic nun who travelled Europe helping artisan cheese makers better their understanding of how cheese is made.
Even when not writing about food “Spider Woman” fascinated me with its story of a woman who searched out venomous spiders in New York.

Just lately, while trawling the internet I came up with a nice little catch.
A book called “Noodling for Flatheads ” written by Bilger in the year 2000.

This is a gem, get it if you can.
It is mostly about vanishing, often food related, customs of the southern states of America.
His last essay in the book is called “The Rolley Holers” about a group of marble players in Kentucky.
I am going to leave you with a quote from the begining of this story which gives a description of the country and people of the area.

“The land here is as stingy with resources as it is profligate with beauty, making a living from it has never been easy. After more than two centuries the towns still look makeshift- the houses lean along the roadsides as if dropped there by a passing tornado- and folks can be so understated they can hardly talk at all.”

My friend Peter’s cynical and cruel remark about poor Bobby Gentry’s song on my entry on the third of June put me in mind of another series of activities with appropiate names based on the arts and literature.
Taking the ball directly from Peter, what about;

The Tallahatchie Ridge Bungie Jumping Experience.

Here are some more from my twisted brain:

The Anna Karenina Train Spotting Society.

The Ophelia School of (Flower Arranging and) Brook Swimming

The Isadora Duncan Silk Scarf Manufacturing Company
(Stay Stuck when Others Give Up)

or even

Wing Making for Dummies by Icarus

In the Eighties I worked for George and Susie Gossip in Ballinakill House in Waterford.
Susie’s father, Luke, had been the managing director of a large advertising agency in Dublin and found it a great ice-breaker at, frequently attended , dinner parties to ask a neighbour “How do you heat your water ?”

There followed inevitably a discussion on the respective merits of oil, coal, gas, wood, anthracite and electricity.

Another ice breaker is to ask “How do you make your coffee ?”

There follows a discussion of the fans of filters, plungers, espresso machines, “You cannot beat an ordinary coffee pot” purists and even those (my own food heroine Elizabeth David among them ) who claim that they cannot tell “Real ” from instant.

Over the years I seem to have settled on two methods.

First thing in the morning, the house to myself and in Robe de Chambre I like a little pot of espresso to jolt me into the day.
For clients then I find you cannot beat the new stainless steel hollow walled jobs.
These men keep the coffee hot for about thirty minutes and operate like a plunger so there is no messing with little strainers.

From the left here is my Batterie de Café
The first three are the Italian Espresso makers.
Here you load coffee in the middle section, and fill the bottom with water.
This is put on the gas and the steam, forced through the coffee, condenses and delivers a pungent brew to the upper chamber.
The first delivers two little cups, the second four then six.
Great stuff for the morning.

The fourth one is a more genteel version of the first three.
It does exactly the same job but delivers instead into a rather daintier china pot.

The last two are my stainless steel ones.
I gave one of these last year to my sister D who for years had sworn by a particularly obnoxious yellow enamel job with which one had to use a strainer.
This one had a particularly vile habit.
As you poured out the last cup, with stunning accuracy, it would drop it’s lid into the cup, spilling all its contents over you and the table.
The stainless model managed to usurp the pivotal role of the yellow peril but I suspect it still lurks in their house somewhere.

But just when one is assuming that a modern breakthrough in Coffee Pot style had occured our friend Petra bought thie one in a Brocante in Trebes last month.

It is a German model from the twenties and is practically identical in function to the new ones.
The pot fits into a chrome sleeve lined with felt which insulates as well as the steel.
Because it does not posses an inbuilt filtration device we use it, with great success, for those lesser mortals who believe tea to be an appropriate breakfast drink.

But lest we get carried away below is the tea pot which stood us in great stead for our first two years of camping in Le Presbytere.

The great advantages of this little Polish model (a first cousin of my sisters yellow abomination) are that you need no kettle so you can bring it to the boil on the gas and then add tea.
Also it has a cunning catch on the lid which stops it dive bombing into cup.

Happy Billy Joe Mc Allister day to all.

This morning

The first time I ate a Clafoutis was in a Chambre d’Hote in the Vendée when we were en route down south.

Madame rather proudly, presented us with a Clafoutis aux Frambroises ; “They are from my own Garden,” she said.
It was delicious.

But because Síle didn’t get holidays from school until the begining of July, we always missed the Cherry season in May and June and so I missed eating the true Clafoutis, the one made with Cherries.

I have made Clafoutis of Raspberries, Peaches, Apricots, Blackberries, in fact just about any fruit which can be slipped into batter but never, until last week, one with Cherries.

All that changed last week when P and I were staying.
It was P’s birthday and he requested a Clafoutis for his cake (having tasted one of mine before.)
For once the time was right, the cherries were in season, so I was able to make the real thing.

Without doubt Cherries make the best Clafoutis.

I decided to make another today and Síle got some delicious dark red local Cherries in the supermarket.

While I was waiting for it to cook I looked up the origins of the dish on the internet.

I discovered that it should be made from dark red cherries (Voila!) and came from the Limousin.
I had kinda assumed it would be from here or the Midi Pyrenees as here we have the reputation for having the best and earliest cherries.
The origin of the word was however, I discovered from the Occitan:

The dish’s name derives from Occitan clafotís, from the verb clafir, meaning “to fill” (implied: “the batter with cherries”). Clafoutis apparently spread throughout France during the 19th century.

So, whatever Limousin’s claims it came from somewhere not too far away from Languedoc.
Here is the recipe (and a picture) of the one I made today.

Cherry Clafoutis

300g Caster Sugar
210g Flour
1 tsp. Baking Powder
3 Eggs
150g Melted Unsalted Butter
1 tbs. Kirsch or Brandy
250g Cherries

Mix together the sugar, flour and baking powder in a bowl.
Make a well in the centre.
Break the eggs into the well and beat them with a whisk gradually
Incorporating the dry ingredients.
As the mixture thickens add the melted butter and the Kirsch.
Pour this mixture into a 12 ins tart tin or quiche tin ( not one with a removable base)
Stone the cherries and push them one by one into the batter.
Bake this at 150C. 300F.Gas 4 for at least 50mts (mine took an hour and a quarter in a non-fan oven.
This must be served from the tin either hot from the oven or at room temperature with some whipped cream.

You will have noticed of course that I disobeyed my own commands (because we have guests staying whom I wished to impress) and, by lining a detachable base tin with tin foil, which I liberally buttered, I managed to lift the Clafoutis out of the tin.
A business only to be recommended to nerdy cheffy types, like me.

I have stolen this directly from David Crystal’s blog.

(See Left)

He in turn got it from a US correspondent.

It is the list of winners in a recent New York Magazine contest in which you had to take a well-known expression in a foreign language, change a single letter, and provide a definition for the new expression.

Here is my selection of his selection.

HARLEZ-VOUS FRANCAIS
Can you drive a French motorcycle?

VENI, VIPI, VICI
I came, I’m a very important person, I conquered

RESPONDEZ S’IL VOUS PLAID
Honk if you’re Scottish

LE ROI EST MORT. JIVE LE ROI
The king is dead. No kidding.

PRO BOZO PUBLICO
Support your local clown

FELIX NAVIDAD
Our cat has a boat

HASTE CUISINE
Fast French food

E PLURIBUS ANUM
Out of any group, there’s always one asshole

Now I am going to rack my brains trying to think of one.

Any Takers…….?