Three or so years ago our friend Petra, who enjoys giving presents for no particular reason- a thoroughly delightful habit- gave us a present of a burned CD,it had Pink Martini written on it.
My impression was that it was a compilation of various tracks that Petra had enjoyed, I recognised “ Et puis Je fume” a song which was used for some sort of ad on the tele.
The songs were of so many styles and in so many different languages that it was difficult to find a unifying thread.

It was some time after we got it first that I saw a reference to Pink martini somewhere and realised with a bit of a shock that I was listening to a CD of a single group.
And furthermore these multi lingual songs were being sung by just one singer.

It was a slow burner in our house, played at first because it seemed to provide pleasant unchallenging music, a sort of big band jazz meets a classical orchestra with world music.

It didn’t take too long before we stopped to listen to them as tafel musik and start to take them a little more seriously.
Firstly there was the singer to take into consideration.
All the solo singing was done by one China Forbes, a lady with a huge vocal and emotional range.
Then there was the man who was the musical powerhouse behind this group.
Thomas M Lauderdale,was the pianist and founder of the group.
I don’t think anyone could have invented a more romantic background for this extraordinarily talented man.
Adopted into a mixed race family in Indiana, Thomas was of unknown Asian blood. His adopted father came out of the closet when Thomas was twelve, he and his wife had a thoroughly amicable divorce and the family moved to Portland where his father was ordained a Church Pastor.
This obviously didn’t set Thomas back as he later succeeded in getting into Harvard to study Literature and history.
There he met China Forbes herself studying English Literature and Theatre. She was also (but of course) from a mixed race adopted family, her mother being Black American, her father half Scottish, half French.
These two met when he started to accompany her opera recitals on the piano, from that they decided to set up Pink Martini.
The observant among you will now begin to see where the modern, classical, sophisticated and multilingual group sprang from.

From Petra’s original present we became fans, now have another of their CDs and are soon, after last night, to get some more.
Before we headed off to Languedoc for the summer Sile did a bit of scouring of the internet and she discovered that the same band were giving a concert in Beziers, about six kilometres from Thezan, on the very week we arrived.
We booked it, and last night, in the cloisters of St Nazaire, Bezier’s cathedral we saw them perform.
It was electrifying.
A description of the various numbers would not do them justice.
Here are just a couple of moments.

They started their set with a very free version of Ravel’s Bolero which made me realise why the Catholic church banned public playing of this piece for many years.

At the end of one of the numbers when the whole group broke into a joyous rendering of “I love to go a Wandering” they were granted a mid-number standing ovation, the first I have ever seen happen in many years of concert going.

The audience (of mainly over forties, like ourselves) clapped for a good five minutes after they left they stage until we got our encore.
This was the old standard Brazil to which China Forbes invited us to dance.
There was a lot of old fat flesh doing a whole heap of sambaing and rumbaing for the following five minutes.

Beg, borrow and steal to get to one of their concerts.

Greenhouse Salad

When I was growing up we lived in a very special house in the suburbs of Cork.
This house was on a hill over the city and there was a wonderful view from the garden of the river Lee flowing eastwards out or the city to the harbour.
My mother’s pride and joy (and a contribution towards the household economy) was a huge greenhouse at the very top of the garden.
In this she principally grew two of the most beautifully scented fruits I know; tomatoes and white peaches .

In one of Elizabeth David’s cookery books she talks of an autumn spent in Spain where every day they ate for lunch a simple salad of tomatoes, warm from the vine and dressed in olive oil, a meal she claims it would be hard to better.

My other kitchen goddess, Myrtle Allen, in her book about the food of Ballymaloe says that she has tried for many years to make the perfect tomato soup, she feels it should taste of the juices left in the bowl after a fresh tomato salad.

When my daughter Eileen was ill, a long time ago, they told us in the hospital that she should be encouraged to eat as much as she wanted in the times during her treatment when hungry to compensate for those times when she would lose her appetite.
Eileen’s favourite food at that time (and very possibly still) is bread dipped into the vinaigrette left in the salad bowl from a tomato salad. I have a distinct memory of making tomato salads and (being unable to face another) discarding the fruit to leave the juices to our four year old daughter.

In another of Elizabeth David’s books, I think Summer Cooking, she gives a recipe from Italy, for a salad of tomatoes and peaches.
I remember trying this out and being so impressed with the taste and the wonderful way both fruits brought out each others flavours that I put it on the menu on the restaurant.
While it was never a best seller, those that tried it grew strangely addicted.

Just two weeks ago I was flicking through my old friend Michael Waterfield’s new edition of his great great aunt Janet Ross’s book “Leaves from our Tuscan Kitchen” because I was reviewing it for a local paper.
There at the bottom of a long list of various ways of dressing tomatoes for salad I found a throwaway recipe for a salad of Tomatoes and Italian Peaches.

Today, at last, all of these various threads came together.

We are staying in Faugeres in the south of France, living in a little village house with a south facing terrace.
The temperatures are in the mid thirties.
Just yesterday we had bought a large green umbrella and stand as otherwise we were finding the terrace too hot in the middle of the day to eat outside.
At lunchtime today I went to the fridge to find something to eat.
There were large sweet ripe tomatoes and ripe and blushing white peaches.
All of the above came together as I made the following salad (which I have named after my mother’s greenhouse in Tivoli.)

La Salade de La Serre

3 Large Ripe tomatoes
2 Large Ripe White Peaches (yellow peaches or nectarines will do at a pinch)
1 teaspoon caster Sugar (in Ireland only, not needed in the south where the fruit sweetens naturally in the sun)
1 Energetic grinding of black pepper
1 large pinch of Maldon Sea Salt (crushed lightly in your fingers as you scatter)
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons of fruity olive oil
6 to 8 leaves of fresh Basil

1 crisp fresh French loaf or ciabatta

Peel the peaches (by plunging in boiling water if needed)
Slice into eight of ten segments off the stone and then halve these.
Cut the tomatoes into similar sized pieces, discarding the core near the stem.
Sprinkle over the sugar (if using) the pepper, salt, oil and vinega,r tear the basil leaves over, and toss together with a spoon.
Leave for about ten minutes to blend, then eat, on its own or with some cold meats.

When the tomatoes are finished (and this is the best bit) finish off the tomatoey peachy vinaigrette by dipping pieces of the bread into these juices.

The gods probably lived on food like this.

Progress at Le Presbytere

We got to Thezan on Saturday afternoon and went to the house with some trepidation.
We knew that our builder had done the roof but we were rather hoping that the plumber and the electrician would have done their bit.
The roof was finished, the velux windows made a superb difference to the place lighting up the whole magnificent attic

and the opening he had cut for a window in what was to be our bedroom was amazing, gave a previously dead space a narrow view of the vineyards and the hill .

We knew we wouldn’t see any workmen until Monday so we headed off to Faugeres.

We have been granted an immense stroke of good fortune and kindness in that some friends of ours who have a house in the village of Faugeres told us they wouldn’t be using it until August and gave us the keys and their blessing.
We had assumed that we would be using this for the first few days but now it looks like at least a fortnight before our Presbytere is even ready to be squatted in.
Thank you again to Katherina and John.

On Sunday we were invited to lunch with our friends Barry and Mary, who bought in Thezan much the same time as us (and whom we met there for the first time, despite us both being at my brother Ted’s wedding thirty odd years ago).
They are old hands at living in France and not only were their builders come and gone but they now have a swimming pool.
We ate beside it on Sunday, and tried to convince ourselves that it was the most normal thing in the world to be eating and drinking there.
They also convinced us that if we wanted any chance of getting into our house by the summer we would have to stop being nice guys and start rattling some sabres.

We got ready for action therefore on Monday only to find the house a mad hive of activity with plumbers and builders (even at 8. in the morning) all plastering, hammering and sawing.
Our builder complained about the plumber not doing his job on time, the plumber blamed the builder, both blamed the electrician who we got on the phone and who promised to with us the following day.
It was I guess a typical build but with a lot more shrugging.
The system out here is that you employ the builder, plumber and electrician (and indeed the joiner should you need one) separately.
Even though our builder had recommended the others there was a lot of buck passing between one and the other and Sile was constantly having to phone one to pass on the same buck.
We are not quite sure whether all of this is quite as real as it seems, there could be bits of pantomime inserted for our benefit, but the work so far seems good and the builder has even managed to recycle some of the doors (at our request) despite his evident conviction that this is lunacy.

We have explained to them all the all of our families (La Toute Irlande) are arriving out on the 17th and we must have a habitable space in the house by then.
This isn’t as far from the truth as you might think. We are going to have a steady stream of visitors from the 20th to the end of August.
The builder has taken this on board (we are both convinced that he is a decent man) and has promised us the ground floor and the first, with bedrooms and bathrooms) by then.
The attic, two further bedrooms and a bathroom, will be done after we move in and (it may well happen) after the builders holidays in August.

We left home on what has now become our annual summer transhumance to the south of France last Thursday 3rd July.
We travelled, as usual, with Irish Ferries who rose to the occasion by providing us with a new boat, the Oscar Wilde, a boat which endearingly has decided to call most of its utilities after Oscar related subjects. Next to its children’s playground it has little quotations on the wall showing what a great family man Oscar was and the bar is called the Gaiety Bar, it is difficult to find out whither irony is intended or not..
The boar is a model of modern comfort. We were delighted with our cabin which had two windows, two large beds (not bunks) and a television. The beds also made comfortable sofas so one could live there in complete comfort for the journey.

Because the French (like ourselves) are continually upgrading their roads we discovered that now the route to Thezan that Michelin recommended was not down the coast via Nantes and Bordeaux as before nor the one through Paris (which we would be terrified of) but down the centre through Tours and Clermont Ferrand.
As we knew we would not have our own house to go to we decided to stop on the way and found Les Tilleuls, a place in the dead centre of France in a village called Bruère-Allichamps which had the perfect Michelin recommendations for us; a bib gourmand indicating the food was good but moderately priced and the accommodation given two coins telling us that it was basic but cheap.
B&B for two was €70, the kind of price you would find it hard to find in a hostel in Ireland, so we made a decision to pig out on the dinner and go for the “Menu Degustation” which promised us eight courses (in fact it turned out to be closer to ten) of the chefs choice, all with accompanying wines of the region. This came in at €70 a head, but hell we decided to push the boat out on the first night of what promised to be a working summer and ordered it.

We went up the road to the Abbey at Noirac before dinner and while there had an aperitif in a little Auberge at the gates of the abbey, it was a lovely evening the whole place just so intensely French that it was difficult to believe the previous morning we had been in rainy Waterford.

The dinner turned out to be a bit of a triumph.
Some bizarre moments, a mousse of Foie-Gras turned into a foam with yoghurt and served in a test tube with a sundae spoon was much better than it sounds, and there were two superb fish courses one of Sandre, the local fish of the Cher which we could see from the hotel, and the other of Turbot cooked with the skin so crisp that it tasted like a rasher and the flesh just barely cooked served on a bed of Samphire with a delicious boule of Meaux mustard ice cream.
A brilliant meal, I wish I could remember more of it,( at one stage we had an olive oil sorbet which was delicious) but as they served us a different glass of wine with each course my memory of the last three or four are a little bit hazy.
(I do remember insisting that I meet the chef and shake his hand)

My neighbour Hannah has a scarlet rose which likes to display herself over the wall at the begining of July.

I love Bill Bryson for his passion, like my own, for atrocious puns.
This bit is from Down Under, his travels through Australia.
On his way to overnight in Hay he stops for petrol:

As I paid the man asked me where I was heading.
‘Hay’ I replied, and was struck by a sudden droll thought. ‘And I’d better hurry. Do you know why?
He gave me a blank look.
‘Because I want to make Hay while the sun shines.’
The man’s expression did not change.
‘I want to make Hay while the sun shines.’ I repeated with with a slight alteration of emphasis and a more encouraging expression.
The blank look, I realised after a moment, was probably permanent.
‘Aw, you won’t have any trouble with that,’ the man said after a minute’s considered thought. ‘It’ll be light for hours yet.’

We were in Corsica for Easter about ten years ago and on Good Friday we found in the local shop that there was a biscuit which, like the Hot Crossed Bun, was special to the day. We discovered from the shopkeeper that this was a type of shortbread made with a combination of ordinary flour and semolina and flavoured with fennel seeds.

We bought some and tried them, and found them interesting, but a bit dry.

At the same time we had bought some early strawberries, and someone got the inspired idea of combining the strawberries with the shortbreads.
This worked beautifully, a match made in heaven.

There was something about the slightly dry granularity of the biscuit and the bite of fennel which had an delicious affinity with the ripe fruit.

When we got home to Waterford I tried various combinations until I came up with the following recipe. It then became a fixture on the restaurant menu while the strawberries were in season.

(It actually became such a fixture that it now has become a national dish in Corsica and features in several Corsican web sites,which reference my recipe!)

In the last few years Semolina flour has become quite difficult to get and I found the shortbread just wasn’t the same without it.
Yesterday I got a hankering after the original and tried an experiment.
Knowing that couscous was a coarse version of Semolina I decided to try making my own.
I put 250g of couscous into a food processor and tried that- no avail-after several minutes it looked just the same (its harder than it looks!).
I tipped the mixture into a liquidiser and there achieved some success.
After 5 mts of blending about half of the couscous had been turned into flour,so, I tipped it out and sifted out the amount needed for the shortbread.
Now if you want to try the recipe you have three options; make it with all plain flour, acquire some semolina from some source or other, or make like a mad obsessed chef and do it my way.
Whichever way do not leave out the fennel seeds, they are a very special part of the finished product.

175g (6 oz.) Butter
175g (6 oz.) Flour
90g (3 oz.) Semolina
90g (3 oz.) Caster Sugar
1 tsp. Fennel Seeds

225 ml (8 oz.) Cream
350g (12 oz.) Strawberries
2 tbs. Caster Sugar
You will need a 20cm.(8ins) round tart tin.

Make sure the butter is very cold and hard and cut it into small dice.
Mix the flour, sugar and semolina together.
Put in the diced butter and cut it together with a knife until the pieces of butter are very small.
Finish working lightly with your fingers until the mixture is dough like.
Using the knife cut in the fennel seeds then form the mixture into a rough ball.

(Or you can tip all these ingredients into a food processor and whizz until they form a ball.)

Now press it in an even layer into the bottom of a 12″ tart tin and prick with a fork.
(I find this mixture far to crumbly to roll out)

Bake this at Gas 1, 140C, 275 F. until it has coloured pale brown- about 45 mts.

”

Leave this in the tin until it cools and then turn it out carefully onto a plate.
Hull the strawberries and put 120g (4 oz).in a bowl.
Mash these with the sugar (and a little orange liqueur should you have some handy)
Whip the cream until stiff. Spoon this over the shortbread.
Put all the whole strawberries on the cream and then spoon over the mashed sweetened ones.

Yep, I know it looks a bit messy but it tastes marvellous.

(This should make enough for 4 to 6 )

60g (2 oz.) Butter
60g (2 oz.) Flour
300ml (10 oz.) Milk
5 Eggs
6 oz. Mature Irish Cheddar
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh Chives
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh Chervil (or parsley will do)

Salt and Pepper.

You will need a 1 to 1.5 litre capacity oven proof dish.

Make a white sauce by melting the butter in a pot, then stir in the flour.
Add the milk a little at a time,whisking in each addition as you go, then let it come up to a gentle simmer.
Grate the cheese and add to the sauce.
Then simmer for 5 to 6 mts to cook in the flour.
Stir in the chopped herbs.
Prepare the souffle dish by buttering the inside well.
Separate the eggs and beat the whites until stiff enough to just hold a peak.
Beat the yolks well together and beat into to the cheese mixture.
Fold a large spoonful of the whites into the cheese mix to lighten it and then fold in the remainder. (Do this gently –you want to keep the air beaten into the whites)
Pour into the buttered dish and cook in a pre-heated oven at Gas 4, 175 C, 350 F for 35 to 40 mts. It should rise well and be crusty on top while still remaining soft in the middle.
Eat immediately, with a salad.

Two or three years ago, while fairly new to retirement, I picked up a copy of our local free paper, Waterford Today, and while flicking through it my eye landed on a recipe which was sitting there, incongrously, for Canadian Salmon.
It was clear that they were picking up recipes from some American syndication.

Instantly aggrivated I phoned them and complained, and, furthermore, offered my services for recipes with a local relevance.

To my surprise they accepted and so “Food Matters” a weekly recipe slot was born.
For all of you who live outside the Waterford urban area I offer you a sample of todays piece. (the newspaper comes out straight, it is my scanning which is bockety)

I recently got a notion to relieve my recipe slot on local radio (WLRFM) by doing occasional cook-book reviews. Again somewhat to my surprise when I wrote to cook-book publishers they sent back copies of the book for review by return.
(Beats ordering from Amazon anyday).
One of them said that that would appreciate getting a copy of the review, so nothing daunted, I started submitting my reviews to the Waterford Today where, again to my surprise, they are published.

Here is my review of my old friend Michael Waterfield’s book , again from todays edition.

I have now began to notice that the page which is headed by my Food Matters piece has now become a mecca for little pieces and even advertisments about food. Inadvertantly I seem to have started a food page in our local paper.

Again on the same page from todays edition they have an article and photo about our impending Terra Madre

As far as I’m concerned anything that raises awareness about local food matters is delightful (and I can’t help feeling a little chuffed that I seem to have started it all !)

The finished product;
Seville/Bigarade/Naphre/Bitter Orange Liqueur

(I still havn’t decided what to call it)

ready for consumption