I had no idea how much I relied on the internet out here until it went.
Sile and I are like two lost souls waiting for it to come back.
Neuf, our internet supplier out here seem to admit that it is their fault and have promised to send a technician before the end of the week to fix us.
We will wait and see.

In the meantime forgive the lack of blog, I’ll make up for it when i get back on air.

Since we bought the house here in Thezan we have from time to time been trying to book a table in this restaurant in Magalas, about 15 minutes away.

It has only been going for about three years itself but has managed to hook a Bib Gourmand from Michelin and an impressive 14 from Gault Millau.
This week we knew that my brother Teddy and his wife and daughter were coming over so about a fortnight ago we rang and begged for a table any night at all this week.
We got one for tonight.

The history of the building is that it was the butchers shop in the village, was made a restaurant before M. Bontemps (sic) arrived called Le Boucherie and since he has taken over is fairly acknowledged as the most interesting -and reasonable -eating in the area.

Four out of the five of us decided to eat the Menu Surprise.
This was priced according to how many courses you took.
We went for the €30 choice : Starter, Main and Cheese or Dessert.
(we were very grateful we didn’t go for any more!)

Even before we were fully seated we were amused with a little dish of hummus accompanied with a dish of toasted sesame seeds and some grisilini to dip in both.
Then arrived a dish for each of us of tiny sweet mussels and clams in a superb bacon and cream sauce; another amuse.
Our palates were to be amused yet again before we actually got our starter with a tiny shot glass of intense and delicious hot puree of cauliflower.
So much for the freebies.
The starter (and they had the generosity to produce one for our A La Carte chooser who hadn’t ordered one) was delicious but exceptional mainly in its garnishes.
It was a generous slab of Foie Gras with some toasted brioche. With it was a glass with some quince paste in the bottom and some delicious quince jelly in the middle and a tiny bowl of confiture de Figues on top.
There was also something creamy in a glass which was I suspect related to the liver and a salad of perfectly dressed red leaves all impaled on a in skewer .
And all very good.

We were actually the first in the restaurant to achieve main course so this moment of drama was centered on us.

In arrives the chef and his assistant carrying a ten foot plank holding a joint of pink meat which they held along our table for us to review.
It was then taken away to carve.
It was, we were told, a joint of pork which had been cooked for 22 hours at extremely low temperature.

It was extremely good, very pink and tender, very fatty (I ate every bit) and served with some pasta dressed with some intense pistou.

Next up was another freebie a little cleanser of pineapple, mango, lychee and passion .
Suitably clensed we all went on for the dessert (despite the tempting array of cheeses on an old butchers block in the corner)
This was a mousse of three chocolates, served in a glass (they do love stuff in glasses in France!) and was extremely good, especially the dark layer which was full of a crisp chiffonade of flaked toasted almonds.

Unbelievably after this marathon we were offered more petit fours with the coffee.

It was very very good, not I feel incredibly original but none the worse for that and for €30 a skull, for a meal of that quality, incredible value.

I talked a little to Mme Bontemps (La Maitre d’), praised inordinately her husbands skill, and said we would send customers to her when ever there was a vacancy- “But you have no need ” I said ” You are full anyway”
I wanted to book in for next week before we went but wasn’t let.

The wines -my friends told me- were excellent.
It being November for yet another three days I drank sparkling water and drove home.

Fleeing from Irish floods and rain I was fortunately able to shelter some of the family in Thezan.

Sister-in-law Mary, Sile, Niece Nora-the-Pharmacist (since yesterday afternoon) and brother Teddy (who is 2 and a half years older than me but owes his youthful looks to chemicals) pose before the village.

The word Apotheosis means elevation to divine status.

This is a version of the potato cake which I have been cooking with variations for years, so simple is it that I have never even thought of giving out a recipe for it, but , as we ate a pan full on the terrace yesterday, and enjoyed every bit, I was inspired to picture them in their golden simplicity and share them with you.

There are a couple of ground rules for making these.

You need a fairly decent spud, dry, suitable for mash or puree- ones suitable for chips are also good.

You need a stout sieve or mouli legumes, any lumps found in a potato cake are unforgivable. (In fact any lumps found in ANY mashed potato are unforgivable- having been served lumpy mash twice in a hotel in Wexford County {name on application only} no amount of wild horses would drag me back there again.)

You need a good non-stick pan, the one in the shot is a Favorit from Ikea, about €40 four years ago, still perfect -I have just bought a second one.

You need to have a reasonably generous hand with the butter and cheese, these lads are not Cuisine Minceur

The strange thing about these beauties is that, rather like stalking game , they are never approached directly but down wind and with every appearance of doing something completely different.
In other words it is the business of the chef to make too much delicious creamy mashed potato for the dinner (not always as easy as it seems) and in this way to have enough left over mash for the potato cakes- this is a learned skill but with trial and effort it is master-able, and the rewards are great.
I have never in my forty odd years of making potato cakes steamed spuds directly for them.
And this leads to requirement number five.
The best potato cakes are always started in the steamer rather than the pan.
Softness is everything to achieve the velvet smoothness of our apotheosis and I have found that only by steaming can this be guaranteed.

Once these are soft through, to the point of implosion, then they can be lifted off the simmering water.
In a large pot, usually the same one, then melt a chunk of butter- it’s up to you- a dollop of milk (cream at Christmas time) and a very generous scattering of sea salt and an even more generous coarse grating of black pepper.
Put this pot back on the heat until the milk and butter are bubbling (and likely seperated – ignore this).
Take this off the heat and put your mouli or sieve over the pot and push through the potoato into the pot.

Next comes the tough bit.
Using elbow power and a wooden spoon or a hand held whisk, now beat up the potato with the milk and butter until it becomes a light white and pale cloud.
This you then eat immediately with what ever meats you would think would suit it.

This is not of course the apotheosis, but it is a damned nice step on the way.
This is where,, like the clever deer stalker, you must give the impression of having no interest whatsoever in your ultimate prey but set on some innocent other pursuit.
You must now conceal with clever sleight of hand, sufficient mash potatoes for tomorrows celestial lunch, putting the whole lot out on the table can often prove fatal.

Now to day two (or three or four, they are good lasters these lads)

Rouse out the hidden mash from the fridge, let us suppose you managed to put away about 300g – a half pound or more.

Put this into a bowl and drop into it two free range eggs.
Beat these together well.

Now is the time for flavourings (not essential)
You can add some chopped chives or finely chopped scallions, some crisp lardons of bacon,-in fact just about anything you fancy.
Yesterday I just added some finely chopped (about two tablespoons full) of an aged Comté

Now get out your pan and heat well on the top of the stove.
Put on a tablespoon of olive oil and then drop in tablespoons of the potato mixture. (If you have more than a pan full light the oven, set at warm and keep the first batch warm while cooking the second)

Leave them untouched for about three minutes on one side until brown then flip over and repeat the process on the other.

They should look like this:

Now serve with….. well the possibilities are endless.
Excellent on their own, with some crisp rashers and/or a poached egg.
They are delicious with some smoked salmon-should become a national dish- and superb,(and a match for) a little caviar(or Danish lumpfish Roe)- should some be handy.

Their crisp softness is further enhanced by a light grating of white truffles but that might be a step too far for your store cupboard.

The new phone book for Herault arrived in this afternoon.

The first thing I had to do was to check were we in it.

Sure enough there, the very last entry of the D’s and just two places under the Maire himself was mé féin.

It seems that we have arrived in France

A beautiful new blogger is born.

Yep the old reprobate designer/ carpenter/furniture maker / electrician/ ebenist/antique consultant/furniture remover/tiler /floor layer/in fact Rennaisance Craftsman and long time buddy has got bored at having himself spoken of publicly only on martindwyer.com as has gone out on his own.
Brilliant stuff, put him on your favourites instantly.
clivenunn.com

This new book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner starts off with a discription of the crisis of equine droppings which was hitting large cities at the end of the nineteenth century.
At the time one commentator predicted that by 1930 horse manure would reach
the level of Manhattan’s third-story windows.

The whole situation was of course diffused totally by the advent of steam and the internal combustion engine.

Levitt and Dubner then proceed in this extremely silly book to misuse this occurance as a sign that the incidence of Global Warming will be likely and miraculously resolved by some external force.
Neither of these are, it should be noted, in the least qualified to speak about either climate or weather but this doesn’t stop them flying all sorts of crazy notions as to how it could be resolved.

Elizabeth Kolbert reviews this book in this weeks New Yorker and I just love her final sentence of the review so much that I will quote it to you :
“… while some forms of horseshit are no longer a problem, others will always be with us.”

Anyone who has dipped into my blog from time to time will know me as a fan of the Saint from Montpellier who is the patron of sufferers of the Bubonic Plague and always pictured with his skirts in the air showing off his Buboes.

(painting by Carlo Crivelli in 1430)

My friend Robert was in Fontfroid Abbey last summer, which is about an hour to the south of Thezan. While there he met a group of four monks, who, at his request agreed to be photographed.
One of them (as you can see from the following picture) had a special devotion to St. Roch.

(photo Robert Hayes-McCoy)

(The truth of the matter is that these were a rather secular set of extras, involved in filming of a habit ripper in the abbey)

In the meantime his wife Anne found the real man lifting his skirt much more discreetly to a dog (which is normal) and a little mineature monk (rare) in a niche.

(photo Anne Swanton)

Thank you all three for the pictures.

(just before the match-when France was still beautiful)

In this weeks Every Monday Mary Mulvihill mentions en passant that a Waterford man invented the rasher.

Now as a part time adopted Waterfordman with a food obsession such a statement could not rest in parenthesis.
I remember my great joy when I discovered that the Jacob family of bakers from Bridge Street (just around the corner from my restaurant in Mary Street) had invented a form of dry biscuit suitable for victualling ships on long voyages and called it the Cream Cracker.

How much more central to Irish cuisine was the rasher ?

On the net, in a piece about Food Inventions in Ask About Ireland here they tell us :

The bacon rasher was reputedly invented in 1820 by a butcher in Waterford city, Henry Denny. Before then, bacon was cured in chunks, but often the salt solution could not penetrate to the core of the chunk and the meat would rot. Denny’s successful innovation was to cut the meat in thin slices, which could be cooked quickly or ‘rashed’.

This made me haul out out my ever reliable (shorter) OED to find if “Rashed” ever meant to cook quickly.
According to the OED I am afraid not, which puts in doubt the whole statement above.
The OED gives the meaning of rasher as A thin slice of Bacon or Ham (origin unknown)

But then, just above this they give an alternate meaning of the verb to rash as ; To cut or slash

As Bart Simpson would say “Doh !” Do the editors at the OED read their own dictionary?

This suddenly puts the ball back in the Waterford court, okay the origins of the word go back to the cutting rather than the cooking, but I’m happy enough to believe (until offered other evidence) that Henry Denny did it 1820.

If I was a true Waterford person I should at this moment interject;
“Up the Deise !”
But of course I am much to sophisticated for that.