When we walked back to the house from the Mairie on Thursday we went up one of the tiny narrow lanes, called Ruelles, that connect us to the main shopping streets.
The one we went up was called Rue Captain Gos, I think.
Half way up we came upon this extraordinary house, in the course of renovation.

The carvings are so incredibly beautiful and intricate that they must at least date from the renaissance .
The village, they say, goes back to Roman times but if this was a Roman Villa surely it would be some sort of national monument.

Looked at closely the carvings over the windows are quite extraordinary.

We have a little booklet obout the village but it doesn’t seem to mention this house.
Surely this is not because such carving and facades are two a penny here?
I obviously will have to wait before we start to spend more time there before I can satisfy my curiosity on this one.

Having seen, liked and paid the deposit on the Presbytery in Thézan les Béziers we then had to come up with the money to buy it.
The system in France is quite simple.
You make an offer on a property, if it is accepted both parties have a week to change their minds without penalty, then you pay a deposit of 10% and a Notaire, a state solicitor, is appointed.
This man works for both parties and it is he who organises the various surveys on the building.
Given that these are satisfactory then a date of completion is set about three months away when the deal must be completed.
This is the day the money must be produced and the keys are handed over.
We paid our deposit at the end of September.
Then we had to come up with the money.
Our incredibly cooperative bank here in Waterford jumped through hoops trying to persuade their head office people to produce a mortgage.
We are not exactly your typical mortagees, one semi retired, one close to retirement, heading off to France on a crazy whim…….
They refused, then dithered, in the meantime the Notaire offered us a sign date of the 22nd of November.
Knowing that there was no way we would be ready then, we stretched this to the 7th of December.
Our auctioneer in France said that we were lucky to be granted this extension, that it was a charitable gesture from the vendor, the Archdiocese of Montpellier(we were buying a presbytery)

Even though we could have given power of attorney to the notaire Sile and I decided to travel out for the signing and got our Ryanair flights to Carcassonne to be at the Notaire’s office on December 7th –all this before we were granted a mortgage.

In the meantime I had summoned up my best French-and my courage-and phoned up the local branch of the Credit Agricole which was in Murviel Les Béziers, just down the road from Thezan.
The lady there was très gentille and between the two of us we managed to establish an account, this involved me scanning in marriage certs and passports and a lot of emailing.

The mortgage was finally granted on Thursday last, November 30th and then had to be electronically remitted to our account in France.
At 5.00 on Friday the whole amount, plus the Notaires fee (but minus the deposit) went winging into the ether.
By close of business on Tuesday we established that it had arrived in Murviel, this was just as well as we were heading off at 4.00am on Wednesday morning to fly to Carcassonne and then pick up a rented car and drive to Murviel where we had an appointment with the bank at 3.00 to collect our cheque for the Notaire which we were to hand over on Thursday afternoon.
The lovely lady in the bank was desolé when we got to her but our cheque book hadn’t arrived. She could give us a bank cheque but this required two signatures and as M., the second signee, wasn’t in that day could we call for it on the way to the Notaire on Thursday?

We headed into Béziers, it was after all going to be our local city and so far the nearest we had got to it was driving around the périphérique en route between Carcassonne and Thézan.

It turned out to be a lovely little city, full of smart shops, a great Christmas market in the main square, a solid plain cathedral and a Musée des Beaux Arts with a stunning collection of old glass.

Sile had picked out our Chambre d’Hôte for the two nights, it was called La Chamberte and was in the nearby town of Villeneuve les Béziers.

It was a terrific find.
It is an old wine store converted into a restaurant with rooms.
It is run by Bruno and Irwin, a French Irish alliance, and is full of charm, bright Mediterranean colours and serves brilliant food.

They were delighted that we were buying in the area and are going to become an invaluable source of contacts for us in the future.

We reached the bank at 2.30 the following day to collect our cheque
Only to find Madame ,again, desolé because M. had forgotten to sign the cheque and he had to be summoned back from lunch to do so.

We arrived at the extremely anxious Notaires office about 10 minutes late and proceeded with the signing.
About an hour later having signed our names at least one hundred times and been read long tracts of officialese, some of it translated by Freddy Rueda our auctioneer who was also there, we were handed the keys.

We then headed to our local supermarket where we bought large quantities of wine and tinned food which we stashed in the house for the new year.(We will be arriving back in the middle of the bank holidays)

It was the most glorious feeling to sit out on the terrace-I wish I could say in sunshine, in fact it was in light rain- and look south on the Pyrenées, which had a light capping of snow, and feel that Le Presbytère was ours at last.

The proprietor at one of her windows.

Having had a good poke around the new property, and on Sile’s suggestion we went down to the Mairie and asked could we meet the M le Maire.
This request was not at all surprising to the ladies in the office there and a few minutes later we were chatting with M Duro in his office.

This old post-card of the Mairie, taken in 1900
shows a building still unchanged 107 years later.

He welcomed us to Thezan, was totally happy about us turning the presbytery into a Chambre d’Hôte, and advised us where we could go to find more information about our new purchase.
This is a most important meeting because the Maire in French towns has lots of powers and control of planning applications is one of his duties.

We drank champagne with Irwin in La Chamberte that night and then flew home from Carcassonne on Friday morning.
The nice bit is now done.
Next we have to turn the place into the Chambre d’Hôte of our dreams.

Yesterday was one of my last official functions as Commissioner General of Euro-Toques which I hand over to Lorcan Cribbins of Bang Café in Dublin in February.
This was at The Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin and was the lunch to announce the Baileys Young Chef of the Year.
This is probably our most glittering occasion and as the food is superb-each course being produced by one of the prize winners- there aren’t usually too many refusals.
At the table with Sile and I were TD Ruairi Quinn and his wife and Her Excellency
the South African Ambassador Priscilla Jana, as well as the brand new CEO of Baileys, Sharon Keith also from South Africa. I can assure you that the conversation as well as the food was of the highest quality.
The food was indeed fantastic.
The fish course, and I quote from the menu here; was a Fillet of Wild Sea Bass, Savoy Cabbage, Smoked Gubbeen Bacon, Roast Beetroot and Orange Butter Sauce.
This was agreed by all of our table to be superb.
It turned out to have been cooked by the winner.
To my delight the same winner came from Waterford,( I was not one of the judges I should add!)
Peter Everett is working under the excellent Michael Quinn in Waterford Castle and I was enchanted to see this prize coming to Waterford for the first time.
All five finalists cooked delicious food and all as they were interviewed by the MC Colm Murray, managed to communicate their passion for food.
I was left with a tremendous feeling of optimism for the future of Ireland’s food.

And this is the picture that appeared in the local paper the following week.
Will you look at the big red head on me!
AND I had not a single drop taken as I had to drive back to Watetrford afterwords.

One of the reasons why I think I will never achieve greatness in the kitchen is that I bore too easily.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think I am fairly brilliant at the cooking but there are geniuses out there and I am certainly not one of them.
Read any manual on how to run a successful kitchen and they will tell you that the most important virtue to have in the kitchen is consistency, your customers want this, your staff want this, the food guides demand this.
My niece and her husband have just set up a ready prepared meals business in Cork and I constantly lecture them in my best avuncular fashion about the essential heart of their business being consistency.
Can I practice what I preach?
I’m afraid not.
I am forever tweaking at recipes, it would be nice to confess that this was a symptom of my constant striving after perfection, its not, its just that I get bored with food tasting the same all the time, I constantly want to add a little chilli, a few walnuts, a dried apricot, some fresh tomatoes just to see what the result will be.
Running out of an essential ingredient when the shops are shut is a joyful challenge to me, cooking becomes more fun when you have to scour the cupboards to find a substitute for almonds, or cumin, or even rice.
This is all by way of being a long introduction to my present bread recipe.
By this I mean the one I have been baking for the last couple of weeks and the one I will continue to bake until it begins to bore me.
Since I started to be semi-retired I have made bread every week
I don’t believe we have bought more than two loaves in the last two years.
I have made bread with white flour and brown flour.
I have added in treacle, malt extract, marmite, sun dried tomatoes, walnuts, pine nuts, olives, dried apricots, fresh herbs, crisp pieces of bacon, and countless other bits and pieces.
Most have tasted delicious, for a while.
The one I am making now is the result of finding myself with a half bag of brown and a half bag of white in the cupboard so I said I would make a batch using half and half.
It was a great success, less bland than all white and airier than all brown. I stopped using nuts when I discovered that the seeds were so much cheaper and gave equal amounts of crunch.

Seedy Bread

Because it is freely available I am using Odlums Strong White and Strong Wholemeal at the moment. They give a good result with these proportions. Bread is perhaps the only thing I make when I am meticulous about weights.

For 4xI kg. Loaves

1 kg. Strong White Flour
1 kg. Strong Wholemeal Flour
40g Sesame Seeds
200g Sunflower Seeds
200g Pumpkin Seeds
100g Pinhead Oatmeal
1 Tablespoon Salt
2x7g Sachets of Dried Yeast
6 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1.4 ltrs. Warm Water.

Mix this all together then tip out on to a table top and knead it vigorously.
I knead this for 5 minutes, taking a little break every minute as it is tough work. It would probably be easier to knead it a half at time and it won’t change the loaf.

Divide in four-use the scales to make this accurate-I usually end up with four loaves just under a kilo each.
Make four neat rolls and put into four one kilo loaf tins which you will never wash but oil occasionally.
Let these rise at room temperature for about two hours until they make a nice dome over the top of the tin then cook for 30 mts at 220C, 425F, Gas 7 or 200C in a fan assisted oven.

These freeze excellently (and thaw in a microwave in one minute when set to full) and because of the olive oil they can sit around for a few days out of the freezer without any much harm.
I warn you, once you start making your own bread it is hard to go back to the shop stuff.

One of my nicer duties as Commissioner General of Euro-Toques
was to shepherd Rachel Allen around on the day of the Food Awards.
She had kindly agreed to present the trophies for us.

On this occasion the French do have a word for it, les restes being the leftovers, those little bits and pieces in the fridge which are too good to discard and yet too small to be of much use.
For me with my present life style they are a godsend.
Every lunch time has me having a poke about in the fridge and inevitably finding something to heat up, mix with eggs, put in a sandwich or just gnaw.
(This is partly because I still find it difficult to cook small enough quantities for two.)
That yesterdays Restes became today’s breakfast is partly Sile’s fault.
With our dinner last night we had eaten some baby spinach leaves. These were so small and tender that I hadn’t the heart to put them near water.
I had just chopped a couple of cloves of garlic, softened these in a covered pan in a knob of butter and then cooked the spinach in this until it was soft.
It was delicious.
But we didn’t get to finish it.
This was because we had some other restes to finish first.
There was a little cabbage cooked with bacon from Tuesday and
another bit of spinach from Monday.
The potatoes we were eating were the remains of the boiled potatoes from both of those days now diced and crisped in hot olive oil, these were a great favourite in our house as a child and officially known as fried poppies, that they frequently grace the dinner menu chez Dwyer is no accident.
But I have digressed.
As a result of the existing restes to finish we never got to eat all of the delicious buttery garlicky baby spinach leaves.
As I was carefully stashing this in the fridge Sile said ;
“ I suppose you will make these into an Eggs Florentine for your breakfast”
“Nonsense” said I, “ I couldn’t eat Garlic for breakfast”
But I did.
And it was delicious!

Here’s how I did it.

Leftover Egg Florentine.

Ingredients.

1 large tablespoonful of Cooked Buttery Garlicky Baby Spinach.
1 Hazelnut of Butter.
I cubic inch of strange Parmesan type cheese which has been lurking in your fridge for several months.
Salt and Pepper.

Method

Melt the butter in a small heat proof bowl or ramekin.
Swilly it about to coat the inside of the bowl.
Put the table spoon of Spinach in the bowl, press it down with a spoon and make a hollow in the centre.
Into this break a fresh free range egg and season with a little salt and lots of fresh black pepper.
Grate the cheese finely and sprinkle over.
Put this bowl into a pot with an inch of water and simmer until the whites are just setting.
Now put this under the grill and grill until the cheese is melting browned and bubbling.
Eat with a teaspoon and some soldiers to dip.
(I bet you will be sorry there wasn’t enough spinach for two, I was!)

Aha! For once the French haven’t got a word for it.
This piece was sent to me this morning by Eugene Mc Veigh
my nephew-in-law to be.
It being a remarkable series of tongue twisters I decided to title
the blog (which I have stolen verbatim from Eugene) with whatever
the French phrase for tongue twister could be.
I got the above.

For once it is the English who have a word for it.

Please repeat all of the following out loud.

Cours d’anglais

Comme Quoi le français n’est pas plus compliqué !!

On dit que la langue française est compliquée, que dire de l’anglais.?

“Trois sorcières regardent trois montres Swatch. Quelle sorcière regarde quelle montre Swatch ?”

Et maintenant en anglais :

“Three witches watch three Swatch watches. Which witch watches which Swatch watch?”

Maintenant pour les spécialistes :

” Trois sorcières suédoises et transsexuelles regardent les boutons de trois montres Swatch suisses. Quelle sorcière suédoise transsexuelle regarde quel bouton de quelle montre Swatch suisse ?”

Et en anglais (accrochez-vous) :

“Three Swedish switched witches watch three Swiss Swatch watch switches.Which Swedish switched witch watches which Swiss Swatch watch Switch ?”

Peuvent aller se rhabiller nos saucisses sèches de l’archiduchesse!!!

I have just finished devouring Julie Powell’s book; Julie and Julia. I managed to read it in 24 hours, virtually in one sitting.
How could I not be totally taken over by a book which combines a passion for cooking with one for blogging.
Briefly, and do read it to discover much more, the book describes how a young New York woman decides to cook her way through Julia Child’s 1961 cook book; Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
She does this over a year and blogs about it as she goes.
Her final dish, her Piece de Resistance, is Pate de Canard en Croute, or boned and stuffed duck cooked in pastry.

This is the dish that brings me to the Miss Mc Coys.

In the seventies when Sile and I came back from England we settled in Kilkenny with a vague idea of opening a restaurant there.
While we looked about for a suitable premises, and to keep the wolf from the door I decided to do a little outside catering.
This consisted mainly of making Pate and Lasagne for people but occasionally I got asked to something a little more up-market.
It was while doing some food for a party at the Smithwicks house, the same family who brewed the beer, that I first heard of the Mc Coys.
They were a pair of fairly impoverished Protestant sisters who had at some stage in the distant past run a café in Waterford but for the last fifty odd years had been running an outside catering business, often doing weddings in marquees for the gentry in the South East. Their skill in cooking was legendary as was the length of time they had been practising their skills in the area.
They had , so the story went, in recent years catered for weddings where the bride was a grand-daughter of a wedding they had catered for previously.
They lived in Annstown in Waterford on a small farm by the sea, which they farmed industriously.
One woman told me that on one occasion when the sisters were standing behind a beautiful starched linen clothed table, groaning with a wedding buffet, she had glanced behind the cloth to see that one of the sisters was still wearing her manure spattered wellies.
On another occasion they were spotted carting a huge monkfish ( the most terrifying thing to see when it still has its cats head on its slender tail) into the local fishmongers to sell.
Apparently they had caught it while fishing off Annstown that morning.
They were a pair of feisty old ladies.
We left Kilkenny in 1979 and I went to work with George Gossip in his old family home in Waterford which he had turned into a restaurant called Ballinakill House.
One of the dishes which I had on the menu there was the Pate de Canard en Croute which I had stolen directly from Julia Child’s book.
This I served as a cold starter with a little orange salad.
One night George came into the kitchen to tell me that one of the Miss Mc Coys was in the restaurant and would like to talk to me, she wanted to know how I boned the duck for the pate.
Rather flushed with pride I went to boast of my skills to the famous Miss Mc Coy.
Now as anyone who reads Julie Powell’s book will find out it is no mean feat to bone a duck.
It involves making an incision all along the backbone and peeling the intact flesh and skin back from the bones until one is left with something not unlike a discarded and empty baby-gro.
I went out to Miss Mc Coys table and proceeded to tell her how this was done.
She politely waited until I was finished, then told me that that wasn’t the way she used to bone a duck.
She used, it turned out not to make any incision but to leave the skin intact.
She used to put her hand,(“There are advantages in having small hands “ she told me.)into the duck’s inside through the hole made to clean out its innards.
There, armed with a small sharp knife, she would scrape all the bones free of flesh, break them (there are advantages in having strong hands too!) and remove them through the same orifice.
This was not just skill, this was ingenuity of the highest order.
I retired, humbled, to the kitchen.

Since my technical daughter Caitriona wired me in to Stat-Counter last February I take a certain voyeuristic satisfaction every so often in peering at these statistics and seeing where the people who read my bits and pieces come from.
As well as recording my “words” pieces the counter tells me who has been reading my recipes (there are 550 of these on my site) and even more satisfyingly which of these recipes these people have been downloading.
I hasten to add that they do not tell me who (at least not in ways I can interpret) but just where they have come from.

Last night’s check reveals that some one in Japan has downloaded my Mussel and Fennel Soup, that there is some one in Texas who has been reading all of my potato recipes –does he want a new way of doing potatoes for a dinner party?- and someone in Sheffield obviously has just bought some Celeriac and is wondering what the hell he is going to do with it.
A family in Canada are possibly even now enjoying my Irish Stew and it is possible that someone in Israel is searching the shops for Cardamom with the intention of making my Cardamom cake.
There is someone in London who is agonising as to whether they will cook my Brown Stew or my Beef Stew with Shallots and there is even some one in the Sonoma Desert who has cooked my “Irish” variation of Huevos Rancheros, Ranchhouse Eggs; I know this because they wrote to tell me!

Fascinating isn’t it!