Despite the interventions of Mme. Sarcozy Bruni, Sunday still remains a principally closed day in France.
This was brought forcibly to my mind yesterday as we were coming back from a day at a Brocante Foire in Pezenas.
We have two people staying at the moment, two great friends, but still paying customers.
We had enjoyed the day at this most successful fair and it was only while coming home that it struck me that I had made no provisions whatsover for these people eating a starter.
I had marinaded the Duck Breasts in Ginger, Orange and Honey, made a Chocolate and Hazelnut Mousse and gotten in the Cheese.
I realised that I would have to wing it with what was in the fridge.
We had recently bought a slice of Pissaladiere at a food market to ward of the hunger which builds up while looking at food.
So while heading home by mind was working on variations of this delicious version of the Italian Pizza- It is usually a tomato free short pastry slice covered in melted onions and garnished frequently with Olives and Anchovies-all of which I knew I had in the store cupboard.

But then I remembered that I was out of onions, I had used thenm all a couple of days before.
This inturn led my to another thought.
The day I had used them I was marinading Pork Steaks to grill on the barbecue
and had decided to do a version of ratatouille with it.
What I had done was to cook together until meltingly soft the onions peppers and tomatoes and then serve this with aubergine which I would char grill on the barbecue.
This had worked well but as usual I had overestimated and was left with a dish of pepper and onion fondant.

That was the moment when the penny dropped and I realised that I now, with the peppers had the perfect base for my Pissaladiere.

Another set back when I got home was finding that I was out of eggs as I had an idea for using one to enrich the shortbread.
Serendipity struck again when I spotted a piece of parmesan in the fridge, just the thing to make a rich, crumbly base for my version of the Pissaladiere-which was fast moving away from being in any way traditional.
My last fridge find , a perfect one for me, to whom enough is never as good as a feast, was a piece of soft goat cheese.
Well I made them and they were gratefully recieved.
I plan to put them into the repetoire of the Presbytere.

Little Pepper and Goats Cheese Tarts

For the Parmesan Pastry;
175g Flour
90g Butter
50 g Parmesan (crumbed not grated)
4 tablespoons Water

For the Filling:

I Red pepper
2 Med onions
2 Med Tomatoes
2 Tablespoons Olive oil
120g Goats cheese
12 Anchovies
16 stoned black Olives

Make the pastry either by hand or in a food processor and knead the parmesan crumbs at the end.

Either roll these out into four saucer sized pieces or, go all cheffy like me and use to line four small quiche tins.

Either way bake in a hot oven for about 15 minutes until golden brown.

Making the filling is a bit of a pother I know but I think worth it.

Peel the pepper either by halving it and grilling until black or holding it directly on the gas flame and blackening that way.
Either way run under cold water to get rid of the blackened skin.
Peel the tomatoes by plunging into boiling water and then into cold.
Peel then discard the seeds by halving and scooping out with a finger (or a spoon if you must)
Peel and slice the onion and then fry gently in olive oil until soft, add the sliced peeled peppers and the sliced peeled and deseeded tomatoes and cook gently for about thirty minutes until soft and melting.

Put a spoonful of this mixture on each disc of parmesan pastry.
Put a piece of goats cheese on this and then lay over the anchovies and the olives, like so:

Bake in a hot oven for about 20 minutes and then serve with a little salad on the side.

My sister-in-law, quite rightly, has chastised me for praising France constantly and giving only a one sided (the pink spectacle side) view of living out here.

Fair is fair so here are a couple of the down sides;

It is nearly impossible to get a decent Café Créme here due to the French propensity for UHT milk which tastes rather like chalky magnesia but for some reason they don’t mind.

On the same lines my wife, a tea drinker, says that they don’t know how to boil water to make tea.

The French are not as clean as we thought they were, and, although less likely to discard cigarette wrappers and butts about than the Irish, they have a shockingly high proportion of dogs who pollute the streets with abandon.

Size is difficult here. The French idea of Extra Large is somewhat like the Irish medium and I couldn’t fasten the waistband of same over my thigh.
I have however discovered a mens shop called Quinze (Fifteen) who specialise in dressing rugby players into whose clothes I fit.

On the same lines again they must have come shocking short in stature out here when our house was put together and my scalp is lacerated with scars obtained from low door jambs.

The potatoes are strangely causing me some distress.
Having cribbed for years about the Irish preference for floury spuds and the difficulty of making dishes like sauté potatoes and Dauphinoise with them, I now crib about the French preference for waxy pommes de terre and the difficulty of making a fluffy mash or crisp and tender roast spuds with them.

Oh and, the downside of going feral; my heels, having been deprived of shoes and socks, need constant anointing with Shea Butter or they crack.

We have just packed off one group of visitors and have a twenty four hour hiatus before we have the next batch, this again gives me a chance to wonder about our present lot.

Every so often in the last six months I have wondered at the foolhardiness of these two wrinklies heading off to a new life in a new country at their stage when they should have been opting for the comfort of home, pipe and slippers.

It has been a help that we have been so busy readying the house for visitors that there has been no time to have last minute doubts, and no option to do so anyway.
One of the real changes that you slip into in a hot country is one of dress.
Here I wear sandals, when not barefoot, shorts and t-shirts, I seem to alternate between about three sets of each.
I haven’t worn socks, shoes, long trousers, long sleeved shirts, jumpers, or jackets (except for funerals) since early last June when I came out.
It really does feel like I have gone feral, back to a more primitive state.
There is something about living in warm air that makes one feel a little like the Swiss Family Robinson.
Certain chores become much easier.
Yeast bread rises in thirty minutes beautifully, clothes dry on the line in minutes instead of hours-or days -spent taking them in from the rain.

You become aware that most of our civilizations were born around the Mediterranean; Egyptian, Greek, Roman.
The very earliest art has been found in caves in the Pyrenees which we can see from the terrace.
This is not of course wholly accidental.
If we in Ireland were to have discovered the yeast rising of bread we would first have to have discovered central heating to make it possible.
How much of our time in Ireland is spent trying to keep warm, a large portion of our income goes on heating fuel, translate that back to primitive man and it gives him more time to appreciate the pleasures of leisure and the joys of art and music.

On a different tack I have long been convinced that the start of language, and therefore civilization, was when man decided to hunt in groups, and therefore to eat in groups with sufficient food at the table to give them leisure to talk to each other.
I have just ordered a book written by a Harvard anthropologist, Richard Wrangham, which makes an even more interesting case.
He argues that humanity started to evolve above its peers not because of the use of tools, as most other anthropologists seem to agree, but because they started to cook.
You would have to read his book (Catching Fire, how cooking made us human) to get all of his theses, but he does make a few cogent points which seem to back his argument up.
To those who claim that we should eat only raw food he quotes a study which tells us that the raw food diet cannot guarantee an adequate energy supply and that about half of female raw foodists get so thin that they stop menstruating.

Grist, of course, to the mill to one who likes to think that as a practising chef he is following one of the noblest professions in the world.
Now I also feel that I am doing this in the very cradle of civilization.

Frances Daly, later Dwyer was born.

Mother of seven, grandmother of thirty something and greatgrandmother of another thirtysomething.

Much missed by us all.

My grand niece Laura is visiting us this weekend.
She regards me as an amiable but possible lunatic and smiles at me to humour me.

This Indian summer stretches on into October with afternoon temperatures well up in the high twenties.
The Mediterranean is a balmy 21 or 22 degrees each day so swimming is really pleasant.
I must say I wasn’t expecting this, Vivre La France !

Went down to the butchers this morning to get some lamb for dinner.
M. Buttonier and his wife had been shut for the last week.
Over the crowd of housewives in the shop I caught M.’s eye.
Were you on holidays ?
Yes, he said, making a face.
Where did you go?
Sicily.
Was the weather good?
It rained all week.(another face)
Oh said I (sniggering) It was beautiful here.
Madame then joined in, and across the heads she glared at me in mock anger.
There’s nothing funny about that, she said.
(at this stage the whole shop was enjoying the fun)
Its Okay, I said, I can laugh ! I come from Ireland.
Oh! said she, Does it rain in Ireland in September?
Madame, I said, It rains in Ireland all year around.

It wasn’t until I left the shop, still smiling (I am easily amused) that I realised that, of course,the entire conversation was in French.

Mine must be improving!

We are enjoying an Indian summer out here at the moment, in fact it is nearly perfect weather, the days cloudless and very warm, high twenties in the afternoons and still comfortable enough to eat dinner on the terrace every night but cool enough for comfortable sleep.
The vendange is over, all the grapes seem now to have been gathered and Cessanon had a fete to celebrate this on Sunday.
The Chambre d’Hôte ticks away nicely, enough people to keep us going without ever being really hard pressed.
It really is so different from a restaurant, the system here is that one cooks and then dines with the residents. This completely does away with the “service industry” feeling and people feel that they are with us for a dinner party-and we both feel just like the hosts at the same.
We often have to fight the guests from helping with the wash up , not something that often happened in the restaurant.
The system of a no-choice menu is also a chef’s heaven, I do make it clear when people are booking that I need to know about dislikes, allergies, or any other food problems, forewarned it is no problem to adjust the menu accordingly or at least offer an alternative.

Bar a couple of weeks in the spring and two funerals I have now been out here for over six months and am beginning to ask my self how do I like it.
The answer is , so far at any rate, very much indeed.
We were always aware that our previous experience of France had been to a large extent through the rose tinted spectacles of Summer Holidays and were aware that the day to day stuff was going to be different.
The consoling thing is that it hasn’t been nearly as different as we feared.
The French at heart behave in much the same way as the Irish.
They are certainly more polite but I would not say necessarily any kinder that the Irish. They are more formal but can take the piss just like at home.
As for our fears of missing friends from home? Well we have had a steady stream of friends and relatives all summer and autumn and unlike the brief visits we would have had in Waterford we usually get to spend time with same and get a good “go” off them.
Hard to say what I miss, some things are hard to get here- but then I don’t drink much tea and am happy to skip the odd rasher and sausage.

So far it seems we have hit the good life dead square on, no regrets, but who knows what the future holds.

Flicking back through my blog I discovered this entry named Red Room Before which I had put out way back on July 12th and never did I manage to give you the after.

La Voila !