Morning sunlight catches the Mimosa

About 2009 I found on the internet an excellent , knowledgeable and very informative blog for this region. It was called the Evening Herault and was, it seemed (we were never told for sure) written by a Dublin couple who had a French house here in the Herault somewhere on the Canal de Midi. They were most careful about not revealing their identity and despite me trailing my coat in front of the site many times I never did discover who they were.
Then, quite abruptly, about 4 or 5 years ago they disappeared.

I am still curious as to their identity and miss their informative blogs.

Anyone out there with any idea do pm me at martin@lepresbytere.net

Sometime in around 2005 I read an article by Bill Buford, a staff writer in the New Yorker, about his meeting with and subsequent working for Mario Batali.
Batali cooked in and owned (with one Joe Bastianich- to whom we will return) New York’s most famous Italian restaurant ; Babbo in Manhattan. He also was a hugely popular television chef in the states, eccentric, immensely colourful and certainly larger than life in every way.
It happened that, in 2002 Bill Buford, at this stage a “keen but basically clueless amateur cook” was giving a birthday party for a friend who was also a friend of Batali’s and he had the temerity to ask him along to the party. As Burford tells it his skill, or lack of it, became unimportant as Batali took over the evening.
As well as the various alcohols he brought with him Batali also brought some home cured Lardo (yep , that is pig fat) which , rather like a priest at mass, he proceeded to place on the tongues of the willing guests “ this is the best song sung in the key of pig” and as he fed them Grappa flavoured with quince and Grappa with walnut he regaled them with stories of food and eating. He told them that he and Jo Bastianich would frequently put back a case of wine during an evening meal in Italy, thereby encouraging the party even further. Batali then asks Bill Buford to join him at a football game the following day where he discovers that Batali is also a hero of these hard boiled fans “ I just love this guy” said a security man to Buford “Just lookin’ at him makes me hungry”
The upshot of all this is that Buford decides, incredibly- he must have been in his fifties- to give up his solid New Yorker job and start to work for Mario in his kitchen.
This he does and eventually works his way up to line chef there when he further decides to follow Batali’s career path and work for Marco Pierre White in London and then a Pasta Maker and after a butcher in Tuscany.
Now all these moves I followed with great avidity as Buford wrote his continuing story in the New Yorker ; fantastic tales of incredible hours of hard work in New York, London and Italy.
He brought this progress together in a book called “Heat” which he got published in 2006- and this is still available.
His very last words in the book (which I found hugely influential I confess) were his answer to Batali when he asked when he was going to open his own restaurant. Buford said the time was not right :“If I am really to understand Italian cooking I must follow Catherine de Midicis….I need to cross the Alps and learn what happened next. I have to go to France”
That was written sometime in 2005 and then there was no more in the New Yorker from Bill Buford. But last year he came back into my life in a most surprising way.
There was a family reunion in Le Presbytere during the summer, various brothers and sisters originally from County Carlow now well scattered through the world, getting together for the first time in years. Franco, the Italian husband of one of the ladies escaped the Irish reunion and came quietly into the kitchen shortly after they arrived (people quite frequently do) He told me that his sister was in the business, as it turned out this was a little understatement. She was Lydia Bastianich, USA’s most famous Italian television chef, partner in many restaurants with one Mario Batali and mother of his – previously mentioned-business partner Joe. Franco was surprised with my familiarity with Batali- really unknown outside America- but getting more so as he became famous for huge charity works with the like of Bono et al. But then I had read Buford and he had stuck in my mind.
After Christmas and with some time on my hands I decided to submit a piece on Drisheen, a blood sausage from my native Cork, to the Oxford Symposium of Food as their theme for this year’s Symposium is “Offal” This they published on their face book page. To my pleasure this was “liked” and commented on by various people, among them, to my wonder, one Bill Buford. Of course I stretched out my brass neck, and wrote him a fan letter and asked him if he had ever gone to France and had he written about it yet. The kind man replied:
“Thank you! I’ve been, 5 years in Lyon, and am finally finishing the book, to be published in the fall (with luck, grace, an absence of gravity, etc)”
So I have another treat awaiting by next Christmas, Bill Buford in a Restaurant in Lyon- I can’t wait !

I first posted this blog ten years ago today.
It is about a strange coincidence which Síle and I discovered just when we started to go out together, concerning a photograph which must now be at least eighty years old.

Sile and I had met in Sion Hill teacher training college in 1971 and had started to go out together in Connemara in the Easter of 1972.
Of course Sile had to come to Cork as soon as possible to meet all the family and friends, she was from Skerries and had beem born and reared in Westmeath, so would never have met these people before.
We went to see my friends Siobhan and Sue Curtis who lived on the Magazine Road in Cork at that time (the last entry photograph of the two of us must have been taken then by one of them in their back garden)
As soon as we were in the sitting room of their house Sile spotted this photograph of Sue and Siobhan’s parents wedding on the mantlepiece over the fire.

Something about it obviously intrigued her as she stood up for a closer look. She had recognised her mother in the photograph!

Sile was quite correct , her mother was not just at the wedding but had acted as chief bridesmaid.
Sile’s parents and the Curtis parents had been friends in the forties but had lost touch over the years.
Madge Curtis (better known to the people of Cork as “Maeve” the woman’s editor of the Cork Examiner) had been on holiday in Glengarrif with Sile’s mother when she had met Tony Curtis, the groom in the wedding photo.
The two ladies had taken photographs of each other on their bikes on that holiday and we found these recently when looking through old photos in Sile’s parents house in Skerries.
This is the one of Sile’s Mum

And this of Madge Curtis

Small world isn’t it!

Last night a friend in Síle’s choir had a birthday party for her husband who turned a significant number.

We were told in advance it was to be an “Apero Dinatoire” which is impossible to translate but it is such a good way to give a dinner party that really I feel I must share the experience with my Irish Friends.

There were twelve of us and we all sat around a table to start with, nibbling little cocktail biscuits and slices of salami while we drank either a vin doux from the Loire or Champagne.
Then the food started to come out, course after course of delicious little morsels. There was slivers of foie gras wrapped in crisp bacon served with a slice of fried apple, a garlicy puree of beetroot and cucumber, a timbale of smoked salmon and avocado, a delicious terrine of monkfish and lobster, and the piece de resistance, some buttery snails with herbs and garlic (the birthday boy is from Burgundy) before we hit the cheeses, the pre-dessert, and then the desserts.

This worked so well on so many different levels. It seemed that the couple had divided the tasks so there was always one relaxing at the table while the other was rustling up the next delicious trayfull in the kitchen. The host was in charge of the wines and we went through many different styles with the various courses, always with some cool champagne on the table.

It was a lovely night, relaxed and, because the host and hostess didn’t have to produce a large hot main course, it was comfortably informal.

Many thanks to our hosts Carole Babonneau et Pascal.

Went on an excursion today up Les Monts d’Espinouse to find what is possibly one of the last of the thatched barns of l’Herault.
We had to climb quite a bit to get there. We knew from the guide that it was near the village of Fraisse sur Agout but didn’t realise that this was at 900 metres up in the mountain. We hit quite a lot of snow on the way but fortunately the roads were very clear.
The Ferme de Prat d’Alaric was really interesting. The thatching in the Herault was done with Genet (Broom) which is far untidier than our reed thatchs in Ireland.There was no information on the site but we gathered that an interperative centre is in the making.
The village of Fraisse was very pretty with some lovely picnic spots by the river Agout so we promised to get back in the spring.

This is a story, entirely true I promise, which I put up on the blog in July 2007. It happened in Waterford but I have changed the names.
It is the last heart warmer for Christmas- honest.
The Fish Filleter’s Tale
Peter, a young married Polish man, had a particular difficulty when he moved to Ireland from his home in rural Poland.
Peter had a hearing difficulty, was bright intelligent and very good with his hands, but his language skills in English were never going to be great. Getting a job in Ireland was never going to be easy for Peter but eventually, after much trying, he managed to find work as a cleaner, in the factory where his wife worked in Waterford.
This was not a great job but it did pay about ten times more than any job he could have found in Poland.
Then news arrived from home, his father was seriously sick and likely to die.
Peter and his wife spent all of their savings and bought return flights to Poland to see him.
Not only did they see him but he recovered, his father, as lots of Poles do, put this down to the power of prayer.
So Peter and his wife returned to Waterford.
There they discovered to their horror that both of their jobs had been filled in their absence by other, and equally needy workers from Eastern Europe.
They started the rounds of jobs again but with the same lack of success.
In despair Peter rang his father and said that they would have to go back to Poland.
Peter’s father told him, “Before you leave, go and pray in the chapel”
Peter, dutiful son that he was, did just that.
He went up to a chapel in Waterford and prayed for work.
Out of the chapel he turned the wrong way and found himself on a little lane in a warren of lanes in the old part of the town.
There was a door open in a little house in one of the lanes and Peter glanced inside.
There to his amazement was a large elderly man filleting fish at a rate of knots.
Now Peter, coming from inland Poland never saw much in the line of fish , except the odd carp at Christmas, so he just stood there, enthralled, as this man tore through these fish.
The fishmonger, saw Peter staring at him.
Now the same fishmonger was at that moment wishing to hell he could find someone to help him with this mountain of fish freshly arrived in his shop, the back of which led out to the lane where Peter was standing.
“If you are going to stand there you might as well do something” he said to Peter who just smiled at him with a total lack of comprehension.
Nothing deterred the fishmonger went to a place behind the door and grabbed a huge white oilskin apron, showed Peter how to put it on, showed him how to fillet a few fish and then just let him at it.
Peter, as lots of people who are not skilled with speech, had extremely intelligent hands, and , within a short while was filleting as if he had been doing it all his life.
The fishmonger was delighted and offered Peter a job.
Peter, still uncomprehending, came back with his wife, and then all was interpreted.
He gratefully accepted the job, with tears coursing down his cheeks.
Peter’s wife then told the fishmonger about the prayer in the chapel, and how they were now convinced that this prayer had got him the job.
Two weeks after this had happened, just a few days ago, I bought some fish in the same fishmongers and was told this story.
In the back I could see Peter flying through fish dressed in boots and oilskins looking the thorough professional.
The fishmongers daughter, who had told me the story smiled back at him;
“He is a fantastic worker”, she said” We were dead lucky to find him.”

In Christmas 1978 Síle and I were living in Kilkenny and broke.
We only had the one child, Caitríona, then about 15 months, and I was on the dole and making a precarious living teaching cookery at night classes and doing catering for parties and delicatessens.

Inspired by the French love of selling good things to eat in pretty containers I approached Nicky Mosse in Bennetsbridge and asked him would he do a special Christmas pot for me which I could then fill with Chicken Liver Pate and sell for Christmas presents.

Nicky produced this, a variation of his spongewear bowls, changing the birds into holly leaves, and produced 100 of these for me for a couple of pounds each.
I filled these with the pate and stuck a little ad in the “Kilkenny People” offering them for sale for a fiver each and held my breath.

Well they sold like hot cakes and at the end of the day we had only one left for ourselves.

And we made enough out of the proceedings to have a slap up Christmas.