Depending how you look at this it is either a totally out of focus and bad snapshot of a bunch of flowers or an artistic impression of same.
My personal jury is out.

This weeks New Yorker is a food issue
-even down to the cartoons!

“You can stop the pain, Marcel.
Just show us how you put the crust on the sea bass.”

OK Leave him alone !I’ll let you use mine!

Roast Bass with Herb and Garlic Crust.

4 x 225g (8 oz.) Fillets of Bass
225g (8 oz.) fresh breadcrumbs
Bunch fresh Parsley
Bunch Basil (or teaspoon Dried)
2 fat cloves Garlic
110g (4 oz.) Butter
Some Quarters of Lemon to serve.

Run your finger over the fish to make sure all the bones are removed.
(If any are left take them out with a tweezers or small pliars)
Chop the parsley and basil finely, chop the garlic, melt the butter and mix together.
(You can throw the breadcrumbs, the roughly chopped garlic and the unchopped herbs into a food processor and whizz for a minute and it will do the job for you, mix in the melted butter when you have taken it out)
Use this mixture to coat the top of the fillets.
Pre heat the oven to Gas 6, 200 C, 400 F.
Oil a baking tray and put the fish on this, into the oven until just cooked through.(6 to 12 mts depending on the thickness of the fish and the heat of your oven)
Serve with the quarter of lemon and/or a dollop of mayonnaise.

When we went to the winegrowers dinner in the Cave Co-operative in the village we were lucky enough to be taken under the wing of a very pleasant couple, Patrick and Anne-Marie.
They were fans of Ireland and had spent lots of holidays here.
We established that he was a retired chemical engineer and she was a daughter of the village whose father and grand father had been local Vignerons and whose family has lived in the village for generations.
A couple of weeks later we met them in the market in the morning and they asked us to come to their house at midday on that day to have an aperitif.
We accepted with alacrity.
It seems that Anne –Marie had inherited the family home, which was a substantial one, in the heart of the village. It must at one time have had an immense garden as she pointed out the bits which had been colonised by members of the family who had built houses of their own. They had retained considerable space, enough for a large fruit garden, a swimming pool and all the original wine cellars which, in this case were above ground.
She brought us on a tour of these cellars, in which production had been stopped sometime in the sixties. For this reason they were a little like a museum of wines and winemaking with all the old tools still in position.
There was even a place with some old bottles were stacked on shelves heavily encrusted with the dirt of decades.
When I asked her how old these were she said she had no idea but why not lets take it up and see.
Patrick was elected to open this bottle but first himself and myself tried to decipher the label.
The date we established was 1895 and the only other word we could read was Noix.
They decided that therefore it must be a Vin de Noix, a fortified, wine based, Walnut flavoured aperitif.
They were both most un hopeful of it being drinkable as most of the early wines they had opened were far too musty to drink. Sometimes even when drinkable on opening they were often unpalatable within an hour of contact with the air.
The cork dissolved into crumbs on contact with the cork screw so we weren’t expecting the best, however our luck held, it was drinkable and furthermore very pleasant.
Anne- Marie poured half of it into a plastic water bottle and presented this and the original bottle to us as a present. (I had already confessed to my passion for old French glass)-an act of great kindness.

We stored the bottle lovingly in the presbytery, awaiting the day when it can be a part of the display for the Table d’Hote and the vin de noix we have brought back to Ireland with us. We may even get the courage to sip it soon.

They were able to do us another service when they came back to the presbytery on Monday to take aperitifs with us.

In the cellar, while rummaging around, I had found a strange sort of glazed and decorated brick which had two holes which I decided would make a perfect candlestick (it does)

Sile had suggested it might have been some sort of bed warmer which I doubted as I couldn’t imagine the reasons for the holes.
We showed it to our French friends who immediatly declared Sile correct.
Apparently the holes were for lifting it off the stove when hot with some sort of tongs.
I still think it makes a great candle stick though.

In August in Thezan we were joined by one of my oldest friends Michael, I use the phrase judiciously, for not only has Michael been a friend since we were at school together(some fifty years ago) he also served as my best-man in 1973 and he celebrated a certain significant birthday last week with us in Languedoc.

In the course of the day we fell upon this quite dotty pair of Hurdy-Gurdiests who were in the town of Capestang on the Canal de Midi.

They handed out song sheets so that other dotty idiots could sing along with them.
I was immediatly suckered, the song sheets were full of terrific French Chansons.and there I spotted my favourite George Brassens number which on request the played for me.
Of course Michael and I joined in the singing.
It seemed very suitable to have the two ancient friends together in France celebrating their dotage by singing Les Copains d’Abord

(This was actaully written last week but never posted)

You can feel the air of nervous excitement all around for the last weeks.
In the cave which we can see from our terrace there has been intense and thorough cleaning, even some replastering of floors and walls. Every weed had been eliminated and the gleaming new fermenting vat has had its spotless stainless steel outside further polished and burnished.
This is going to be the first year for this vat, last years model was removed and discarded and this new, state of the art model, is threaded with wires and refrigeration units and has obviously cost the vigneron plenty.
In the fields the vignerons prowl their vines, hoping for some late but light rain to swell the grapes and for some hot sun to sweeten them.
At the co ops the large yellow signs are already in place.
“Attention Vendange” daring any of us to get in the way of the safe arrival of grapes and their transformation into wine. Outside the caves in the villages large boxes and triangles have been put up to stop people parking near them.
Everywhere there are men working on their tractors, running tests on their large grape harvesters, ((there is very little hand picking of grapes here,) and nervously picking and tasting their grapes in the fields.
There the grapes are declaring themselves ready.
Those small fists of hard green bullets, which you had to hunt for when we arrived first, as they hid behind leaves, are now much larger than their leaves and hang in large black soft sweet bunches.

We went to Chateau Coujan, near Murviel, our next-door neighbour village, yesterday to get some decent wines to tide us through the winter.
We arrived in typical heedless Irish fashion, at just after midi.
Madame was cross, it was her lunch time.
I said that I was “desolé ”, would return in the afternoon, begged her pardon (you can never be quite apologetic enough in France)
so she forgave us and brought us, past her eleventh century chapel, and her ravishing renaissance chateau to the caves proper, where she was going to perform the degustation.
This was a vast room with two lines of enormous wooden barrels making an isle in the middle down which we picked our way.
The light was dim, we couldn’t actually see any walls (“I must get some of the men to replace bulbs” murmured Madame, “it is so high”….) but there was a tasting area in the middle with a light and a dozen bottles of wine ready to go and the regulation spittoon, this one and ancient number of battered copper with a large copper funnel on top to direct the spits.
Despite the hour she determined to give us the full degustation, but was relieved when I explained that we mainly wanted to taste the reds at the €6 to €7 range.
At this price, Madame produced a stunner, called Gabrielle de Spinola, after a highly titled Italian noble woman who lived in the Chateau of Murviel 200 years ago and had bought copious quantities of their wine, Madame showed us the records.
The wine is a lovely soft (feminine, Madame said) warm wine and it ticked all of our boxes.
To Madame’s delight we ordered seven cases.
She insisted on us tasting some of the more expensive wines, pooh poohing our protestations and of course did persuade us to buy a small quantity of some of the more expensive wines and even one bottle of L’Ile de Corail (€22) for my best man Michael, who was with us, as a consolante for his 60th on Sunday.
As we left the cave we were talking to Madame about the oncoming vendange. Now firm friends (we had spent the bones of €500) Madame said that they were nervous about this year.
As we knew ourselves there had been a lot of rain during the spring (good) but a certain lack of sunshine in the early summer(not good) but she said weather forecast for the next few days was excellent (very good)

Sadly we start for home on Tuesday morning.
We will probably miss most of the vendange, Madame told us that with her it goes on for about a month.
We sat on our terrace last night drinking some Gabrielle de Spinola and seeing a bright pink sunset indicating that both the shepherds and Madame were sanguine about tomorrows sun.
Tomorrow we go to a whole ox roast in the cave cooperative in the village. Its timing makes me convinced that it is intended as a sacrifice to the gods for a good harvest.
I hope it works.

Back in Waterford after seven weeks in France. Sile and I swore that we were not going to bore the pants off all of our friends by going on, and on about how marvellous it is there and how much better than Ireland it is etc etc.
The very first thing that we noticed this afternoon as we pulled up to the door of our house was that the Red Geraniums we had planted by the front door (okay to the pedants, I know that they are actually Pelargoniums but thats the name I know them by) were putting on a terrific display.
We had wanted while in France to do something similar on the terrace but were thwarted by this little tiny butterfly who lays eggs in these flowers and then his caterpillar larvae devour them from the inside out.
Our attempts at decorating the presbetery terrace with bright pots of red geraniums were totally stymied by these creatures.
So, in this instance anyway, Waterford won hands down.

The victorious Waterford Geraniums.

On the Irish Ferries boat over to France they have most of their signs in two languages, English and French.
The cheaper of the two restaurants, where there is not waiter service, is labelled, in the English sign; Buffet Restaurant- two French words , the French sign brings the languages on a full circle as it labels the same café; Le Self Service.
Strange things language

The French are particularly fond of having annual dinners to celebrate, well to celebrate just about anything. In the village of Rasteau, in Vaucluse, the lady who acted as agent for the house we were renting told us we should go along to the school, on the night we arrived, as they were having a dinner to celebrate the end of term.
We did this and made friends with people there, Marie Jose and Jean, who afterwards came to visit us in Ireland.
When we moved into Thezan we were careful not to miss any of these dinners.
Shortly after we arrived this summer the dinner for Bastille day was announced, this we duly attended in the Place de Mairie, and we enjoyed it, set up a nodding acquaintance with some of the locals but, mainly because we brought our two daughters with us, we didn’t do any major ice breaking.
Shortly after that they the ‘Allo ‘Allo lady announced the annual dinner for the hunters but, as these have a reputation for aggressive lawlessness we decided to skip this.

(Perhaps at this moment I should digress and explain who the ‘Allo ‘Allo lady is.
Every so often, not every day, but sometimes several times in one day, the peace of the village is shattered by the announcements made over a loudspeaker system which is mounted on the top of the clock tower quite near our house. These announcements are usually to publicise up and coming social events, but are equally as likely to be about a missing cat or even about a badly parked car that needs shifting. These are usually announced by a lady, but then on occasions-her day off?- they can be delivered by a man.
They are inevitably prefaced by the announcer saying ‘Allo ‘Allo in a loud voice, thereby making one wonder if the dreadful Franglais series, based on the goings-on of the French resistance during WW2, was as badly researched as we imagined.)

After the Hunters Dinner, which ended up in loud singing of hunting songs into the small hours, we missed a cook out in the Petit Jardin (The small village park) because it was full by the time we applied for tickets, but managed to secure tickets for the wine growers dinner which was held last night.
We went down to this determined to start introducing ourselves to the Thezanais and to this end determined to stand around looking awkward until someone took pity on us and started to adopt us.
Our plan worked to perfection.
There was a particularly vivacious lady, who obviously knew everyone, who took pity on us and introduced us first to a charming older couple, he was the retired village school master and delighted to compare notes with Sile on our various education systems, and particularly on the amount of holidays in Ireland.
Madame, it turned out sat on the council of the village-a very powerful body here in rural France- and she in turn introduced to a very interesting couple.
Monsieur, it appeared, was a distinguished medical doctor, originally from Thezan, now living in Bordeaux, who was a candidate for the mayor of Thezan at the next elections of mayor in the Spring. This job of Mayor is not a nominal post as it is in Ireland. Here the job carries not just prestige but also real power. The village mayor, for example, is also the final arbiter on such potentially controversial matters as planning permission.
To meet this man, socially, was a bit of a coup, even more so should he be elected in due course.
He also told us that he, and all Catholics of his age in the village, were extremely familiar with the Presbytere, as they all would have received their Christian Doctrine classes in the room which we now know as the office.This was a surprise to us good irish Catholics, to whom Christian Doctrine was very much part of the daily curriculum in schools. We forget, of course, that here in France Catholicism is not the state religion as it is in Ireland.
I spent the dinner sitting next to his very charming wife, a woman of great patience who went to great lengths to understand my French. She in turn introduced me to her son, whom I took to be a student,(and told him so) but who turned out to be the financial controller of Louis Vitton in Clermont Ferrand.
They also introduced us to a lady, a veritable ball of vivacity, hair died several colours which is very a la mode here, who turned out to be the ‘Allo ‘Allo Lady herself !
(I think it pleased her that I kissed her hand and said I was honoured to meet her!)
We were then taken under the wing of a distinguished couple who have a house, with a pool, here in the village. We have no idea what they do/did but they turned out to be great fans of Ireland and holiday there all the time.
The food we ate, for a measly €15 per head, was superb.
It was advertised as being Porcelette on Brochette.
This, I decided could either be little pieces of Pork cooked on skewers or a barbecued sucking pig.
As soon as we arrived the head of the local wine growers association made an announcement and summoned us all to the back of the building. Sile understood him to tell us it would be for the cutting of the cake. Once we got there all was revealed.
There was the wonderful sight of a whole young pig, browned to a turn and crisp, turning on a mechanical spit over embers.
The flavour, when we got to eat it was magnificent, smokey, tender and with wonderful crisp crackling, quite the best pork I have eaten.
The meal was served, again in typical French style, in the fermenting room of the wine coop where the large doors were opened to the elements and we were dwarfed, very suitably, by immense stainless steel fermenting vats.
This was reassuring .
It seemed unlikely that we would run out of wine.
When the party finally broke up and we headed home there was much hand shaking, even some kissing and we headed home in great form, convinced that we had now broken into Thezan society.

This is the name of a sort of festival of the combined villages in our part of the Herault. I wish I could explain the significance of the name; it seems to refer to some aligning reference about our area.
The lane just to the left of our front door, the one we use to go down to the shops is called Rue del Catet, this obviously has some significance in the name of the festival, as we were to discover this morning.
As we started to leave the house at around eleven we noticed two large bags of cushions at the top of the Rue del Catet, (perhaps I should explain at this moment that this Rue is not really in any way a street, a steps for most of its way it joins another Ruelle, or little lane, before it hits the village.) After the first flight of steps there is a little square and here were set two chairs and there were a lot of officials with badges being officious and some quite glamorous people talking loudly in Spanish.
The cushions were for the steps we discovered as people began to take their places and sit there and so the two chairs were going to provide a small, intimate arena, like a mini Orange or Verona, for a performance at the bottom.
It became established that it was going to be a recital of Flamenco singing by one Mariano Zamora and his guitarist Jose Luis Navarro.
I had discovered to my surprise last year while on holiday in Andalucia that I had a huge tolerance of Flamenco that amounted to liking and this was amazing to see that this had actually arrived at my door.
I quickly texted my friend Michael in Andalucia who assured me that Mariano was a true Flamenco artist, and his nickname was
El Amerense (which from previous experience of nicknames in that world probably means something like the fat cow.)
Michael’s recognition was correct though, the man was an artist and I thoroughly enjoyed the next hour of Flamenco, Seanós with guitar- incredibly skilful guitar- would give you a little flavour of the sort of music I was enjoying.
It went down very well indeed, not so surprising when you consider the strongly Spanish nature of Thezan who, if the grave yard is to be believed, are mostly of Spanish origin, and if the local histories are to be believed, have been here since they fled from the Moors in the twelfth century.
The people quickly dissipated after the concert so the street was again quiet about fifteen minutes afterwards when we decided to head off on our aborted trip.
As I stood proprietarily at my doorstep El Amerense passed by and I had the satisfaction of saying bravo to his face (to which he bowed his head and said; “Merci”)

About three years ago, with Euro-Toques we took a trip to what is probably the culinary capital of Europe, San Sebastian. It has such a good reputation as a food capital because it has more Michelin Stars per head of population than anyplace else.

We had three days of intense eating, wonderful fish particularly, in marvellous restaurants (and one huge feed of steak in a working mans club, which are a feature of life there, and one marvellous night of grazing on Pinchos, which are their version of Tapas) when it was decided to bring us to taste the local white wine, Chacolí, which is traditionally drunk extremely fresh and poured from a great height to maximise its slight petulance.
The tasting was in the vinyard and the kindly proprietor had provided big platters of bread and chunks of pink fish as soakage.
The wine was lovely, but the first person to taste the fish gave a little gasp and soon the whisper went around (we were all chefs) “taste the fish, it is delicious”
It was tuna like in appearance but the similarity stopped there, I have never tasted fish like it, there was no hint of that dryness you usually associate with large fish like Tuna, it was moist and chunky, firm but perfectly tender.
In no time the Irish chefs had scoffed the lot.
When we were asked for questions, inevitably, one of us asked us what was the fish.
Miffed at our concentration on the food, we were told it was Tuna, “the Ventresca, the belly”.
Before we left Spain I had discovered that Spaniards like to can the Ventresca and they produced little flat cans of this part of the Tuna which look like tins of Anchovies and are just as dear. I bought about a dozen and brought them home.
On every subsequent trip to Spain I have done the same, I was contemplating a Trip to Barcelona (it is only a few hours drive away) to do the same before I got back.

In Ireland we survive mostly on fish, we have a very good monger in Waterford and we buy fish at a good price from him (I did spent an enormous amount of money with him in the twenty five years I was working as a chef in Waterford)
It was rather shock, since we have moved into Languedoc, to find how expensive the fish is here, my suspicion is that most of their fish now has to be brought in from the Atlantic, the Mediterranean having been fished out.
Our estate agent had told us that there was one excellent fish shop in Beziers and one day last week we found it, noted its position and so found our way back to it yesterday.
It is a terrific fish shop, more of a fish market really.
Tanks of Lobster, Crab and Spider Crab, lashings of every sort of shellfish and then the sign over the big bloody signs of Tuna, Ventriche, on special offer.
Ventriche, Ventresca, it had to be the same. When I asked the lady produced a great dirty slab of what looked like pork belly. I had hit pay dirt.
The Tuna cost €18 a kilo, the Ventriche was €12, about what it cost for one of the tiny tins.
I bought a kilo, brought it home, smathered it in Olive Oil, salt and pepper, squeezed a lemon over it and roasted it in the little Moulinex for about 30 mts at 220C.
It turned out even better than the Tuna we are with the Chacolí, and went down excellently with some icy cold chardonnay from Cornhellion, our next-door village.

I think we have found our signature fish dish for the table d’hôte.