Living in the Languedoc we are begining to discover, is like living nowhere else in France especially with reference to the climate and the weather. The easiest way to explain it is to look a physical map of France, we are very much controlled by our position between various mountain chains and the Mediterranean sea and the winds that these create.
Cast your eye down the map to the central southern coastal section and you will see where we are.
To our north we have the Massif Central, that huge plateau which dominates the centre of France. It also works to protect us from a lot of the cold weather from the north. If you move just a little east from us you will see that there is a gap between the Massif Central and the Alps which dominate the Eastern borders of France. Now that gap, down which flows the River Rhone, funnels down cold winds from the north right down to the sea, this is the dreaded Mistral from which the position of the mountains mercifully protects us. (We have had a French couple from Avignon who stayed with us last winter who confessed that the just wanted a Mistral free weekend). But we are not of course totally exempt from the cold winds of the north. If you look to the west of the Languedoc you will see that there is also a funnel to the west of us, between the Pyrenees and the Massif, down which occasionally flows a cold wind from the North West known as the Tramontane, strangely, if one looks to the effect of western winds in Ireland, this is not always a wet rain bearing wind as it has lost most of that on the way across France. When we came to live here first some farming friends who lived west of Carcassonne thought we were mad; “It is so dry there” they told us “you can’t raise cattle “. This is quite true. There are no cattle farms within an hour of our house.
In fact we have to rely on the Mistral to give us our winter rain. When the cold Mistral hit the Med at the Camargue it creates a wet misty rain known as The Maran, this does head off North Eastwards giving us our dull rainy days, mainly during the winter.
We very frequently find that when we watch the “Meteo” on French television that our Languedoc Mini Climate is different from the rest of France. Fortunately usually milder and easier on old joints and bones.

Here is a suggestion for a menu for dinner for Valentines Day
(lifted straight from my blog in 2007)
for all of you who would rather spend it at home.
(I would drink either champagne or a good quality sparkler all the way through)

Oysters with Fennel and Garlic Butter
(for two)

(Nota Bene the oven opens these for you so you don’t have to do anything bloody with a knife)

12 Oysters

60g (2 oz) Butter
Juice of Half Lemon
Small Bunch Fennel
2 Cloves Garlic.

Finely chop the fennel and the garlic and tip, with the butter and the lemon juice, into a small pot.
Heat until the butter is bubbling then keep warm.

Rinse the oysters in cold water to remove outside sand.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C, Gas 6, 400F

Lay the oysters out on a baking tray with the deep side down and put into the pre heated oven.

Let them open at this heat for about 10 mts., they should be just yawning.

Slip a knife along the top flat shell to release and then discard the top shell and drain off the juice from each one.
Place them on two plates, in the bottom shell and spoon over the melted butter.
Serve with bread to mop up the juices.

Valentines Soup
(will serve 6)

2 Med Onions
1 Med Potato
2 carrots
1 Med Fresh Beetroot
60g (2 oz.) Butter
850ml (1 ½ pts) Stock

Some Greek Yoghurt

If you want to just serve two portions of this the rest will freeze beautifully.

Peel and dice the onion, potato, carrots and beetroot.
Put these in a heavy pot with the butter and put it on a low heat with the lid on.
Let them sweat for 30 mts or so until soft.

Add the stock to the pan and simmer for another 20 mts.

Liquidize and (for extra smoothness) pass through a sieve.

Serve with a swirl of yoghurt and a scattering of chopped chives.

Steak with Sauce Françoise
For 2

2x 8oz. Steaks (Fillet, Sirloin ,Rump, striploin)
Salt and Pepper
110 (4 oz.) Mushrooms
30g (1oz.). Butter
Squeeze of Lemon Juice
110g (4 oz.) Vine Tomatoes
110ml (4 oz.) Cream

First get Sauce ready:
Bring a pot of water to the boil and then slip in the tomatoes, put the put into a sink as soon as it comes back to boil and pour in cold water. When they are cool enough to handle slip off the skins and then chop the tomatoes with a large knife.
Rub the mushrooms in a clean tea towel to remove any compost (there is no need to wash cultivated mushrooms)
Slice these, Melt the butter in a large pan and cook the mushrooms in this until all their liquid has evaporated and they are starting to go brown. Sprinkle over the lemon juice, now put in the chopped tomatoes and bring to the boil stirring all the time.
Next add the cream and again boil, season and continue simmering for a few minutes.

Season the steaks well and cook on a hot pan until to your liking.

Pour the sauce over the steaks before serving.

Passion Fruit Crème Brulee

300ml (½ pt Cream)
4 Egg Yolks
2 tbs. Sugar
Half Vanilla Pod
6 passion Fruit
Sugar for top.

Halve the Passion fruit and spoon out the flesh into a sieve set over a bowl.
Push the flesh through with a wooden spoon and add to the cream.

Scrape the seeds from the centre of the vanilla pod into the cream.
Pour into a pot and bring up to the boil.
Beat the yolks up with the sugar.
Pour the hot cream on to these and beat together.
Pour back into the pan and, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon,
Reheat until the cream coats the back of the spoon and a finger drawn along the back of the spoon leaves a trail.
Pour this into 4 or 5 ramekins or 1 pudding dish.
Chill well until it is lightly set.
Sprinkle a light covering of caster sugar on the top.
Pre heat your grill and when very hot set the crème under it and grill until the sugar first melts and then turns a pale brown.
If you have a cooks blow torch it makes this job much easier.

This is a very lightly set cream, not at all jelly like.

It is a strange old world.
Last Friday was one of my 5;2 fasting days so, instead of taking and using one of the recipes which was in The Fast Diet book, and pre calorie counted,I decided I would weigh, measure and calorie count the ingredients for a Prawn Stir Fry myself, I mean I am a chef, how difficult could this be ?

The answer is very difficult indeed.it was 45 minutes later before I had assembled ( blanched, topped and tailed, shelled and shredded as necessary) my ingredients and had my perfect calorie counted mise-en-place on a chopping board ready for the off.

This made me think that this process, one way or the other, was going to have to be performed by Irish chefs before they served any meal to comply with the new legislation.
So then I did an act of pure heroism, even though ravening with the hunger (this 340 calorie repast was my main meal of the day and it was just approaching 6.00 which was my designated dinner time) I photographed my dinner and wrote a piece for face book informing all my chef friends to tell the world how incredibly time consuming this legislation was going to be.
I confess that I was hungry so my words may have contained a little extra sharpness against the powers-that-be ( I also confess that being out of the country and away from the possibility of dawn raids by regengful Environmental.Health Inspectors gave me extra courage)

The result has been, to me, astonishing. 26 comments is not exceptional but 100 likes is and 87 shares is positively amounting to viral from my personal experience.
I seem to have struck a chord and hopefully contributed to the inevitable downfall of this assinine piece of legislation.
Bon Appetit a tous !

Sometimes one thinks one knows a song well, one that has been heard hundreds of times and then, suddenly the words stop you in your tracks and you realise you really never had a clue what it was about.

This happened to me this morning with Charles Trenet’s La Mer.

I had always , vaguely, assumed that this was Trenet’s anthem to “The Sea”, the sort of whole liquid universal mass of it.
This notion was certainly strengthened by Bobby Darin’s anodyne version of the song in the 50’s; “Somewhere over the Sea” I mean take lyrics like “If I could fly like birds on high then straight to your arms I’d be sailing” I mean, honestly, is he a bird or a boat ?

It was the sudden realisation that Trenet’s verses were totally site specific which suddenly brought me up short this morning.

I had better give you a bit of a geography/history lesson here.

Trenet was born in Narbonne (about 30 klms from us) went to school in Beziers (9 klms) and then Perpignan(100klms) and spent his declining years in a house in the hills over Ceret (120 klms).
He was in other words a local lad and his sea is my sea, that stretch of the Mediterranean between Beziers and the Spanish border the sea which is called The Gulf of Lions, which Trenet makes reference to in the song: “des golfes clairs”
Then this shore line is unique for some more things.
It is hollowed out several times by sea lakes called Etangs, from the tiny Pissevaches (which means Cowpiss) through the very much larger Etang de Bages, Etang des Salses and the Etang de Canet at Perpignan.
“Voyez Près des étangs” he sings.
These shallow inland seas are the natural hosts of reeds;
“Ces grands roseaux mouillés” another reference of Trenets.

Last clue is the reference to”Ces Maisons Rouilles” the rusty roofed houses, so typical of this part of the Languedoc.

Legend has it that Trenet wrote the song on the train on the way from Languedoc to Paris.
The train from Perpignan to Paris goes east all along the coast before it turns away from the sea after Agde and heads north to Paris.
On that costal route he would have passed the reeded Etangs, the gulf and the houses he wrote about.

I will have to leave you with the lyrics of the song so you can judge for yourselves but I am convinced that Trenet’s song is really as specific to this portion of the Med as “The Banks of my own Lovely Lee” was to my old home town: Cork.

It deserves a decent translation into English.
I just may have to give it a bash…..

La Mer

La mer
Qu´on voit danser le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d´argent
La mer
Des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie

La mer
Au ciel d´été confond
Ses blancs moutons
Avec les anges si purs
La mer bergère d´azur
Infinie

Voyez
Près des étangs
Ces grands roseaux mouillés
Voyez
Ces oiseaux blancs
Et ces maisons rouillées

La mer
Les a bercés
Le long des golfes clairs
Et d´une chanson d´amour
La mer
A bercé mon cœur pour la vie

Listen to the man himself sing the definitive version here
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXQh9jTwwoA

I know it is probably not normal to show pictures (however discreet) of our downstairs loo but…..

These curtains which Madame made a few years ago do, I think, deserve a wider audience.

Because her family discard NOTHING she inherited some old linen sheets from the old home in Edenderry when her Aunt died and these have travelled along with us (of course.)

We created this loo, in the back of the office, when we converted Le Presbytere, but it had a large picture window directly across a narrow Ruelle from our neighbours.
Madame had the excellent notion of dying the linen pale green and using it as a curtain. Because they are so old and worn they are reduced to soft delicate transparency so serve perfectly to protect the (famous) Dwyer modesty while permitting maximum light.

It is so satisfying that probably about 100 years after they were first woven they are having a second career.

(Number three is my personal favourite)
1 “He had delusions of adequacy.”
– Walter Kerr

2 “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
– Clarence Darrow

3 “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
– William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

4 “In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.”
– Charles, Count Talleyrand

5 “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
– Mae West

6 “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
– Oscar Wilde

7 “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.”
– Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

8 “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I’m afraid this wasn’t it.”
– Groucho Marx

So pleased that the Deise Greenway is becoming a reality at last. In March 2005 (ten years ago) we walked it having been previously introduced by friends from Kilmac. Below follows an account of that day:

Walking the Railway Line March 14th 2005

Yesterday was my birthday, (56 if you must know) and most of my family kindly gathered around me to celebrate. Saturday night was the birthday dinner. I had bought a 3 ½ kg fresh rod caught Bass from Liam Burke in Ballybricken on Saturday morning.
It came in the door of the shop as I was there and left with me.
This was my night off the cooker so Sile and Caitriona cooked it (exactly as instructed in “Bass with Pak Choy” under recipes) and it was quite the most delicious piece of Bass any of us had ever eaten.
Thanks Liam and top marks to the chefs.

After dinner we were telling the lads about a marvellous walk we had taken along the old Dungarvan railway line.
This Christmas some friends, who are from Kilmacthomas, had walked us along about 4 miles of the old Dungarvan line between Old Durrow station and Clonea Beach. This is a fabulous walk which brings you through a long tunnel and over a very high viaduct before you get to Clonea.
Fired with enthusiasm Aonghus (the son-in law elect) managed to persuade Caitriona and Eileen that we should try it again on Sunday.It was agreed.

On Sunday morning, fortified with an excellent smoked salmon and scrambled egg birthday breakfast, well wrapped and booted (quite a lot of water underfoot) and furnished with two good torches (for the tunnel) we set off.

To get there you have to drive to Kilmac (thomas for strangers), but pass the turn to the village, take the next left, sign posted Stradbally, and drive straight along this road for about three miles, passing through two junctions as you do. You will then come to a five cross roads, called Carrigahilla Cross on the map, where you take the second right turn along the R675 for about a mile. You turn to the right then and go up over hill and dale for a mile or so, you will go under the spectacular and beautifully arched Durrow Railway Bridge just before you get to a junction where you park the car. From this on you are on your feet. Just cross the road and you will find yourself on the railway line.

A word of caution at this stage, this line has not been used for a great number of years and is not suitable for small children as there are many places where the fences are gone and they could fall considerable distances if unsupervised.

The first bit of interest you come upon is the old station of Durrow. Even though most of the buildings are now ruined it is still very recognisable as a station with its signal box, platform etc. It is a little sad to see it now so gone to seed but still fascinating to imagine it as it was , a once busy halt on a busy line.

As you walk the line you will notice that most of the sleepers and their stays are now gone. The remaining surface is loose granite chips which form a stable if sharp surface to walk along.

There are two advantages of walking on a railway line , one, they are traffic free so you don’t have to spend your time dodging Sunday drivers, and secondly the original railway engineers liked to keep the trains on the level so there is no trudging down valley and hauling up hill . On the contrary if a line hits a hill it just tunnels through it, if it hits a valley it just spans it.
This is wonderfully relaxing walking for creaky ankles (mine) and knees (’s)

After a while you notice that the track begins to bore its way into the hill. At this stage the ground becomes quite wet so that the people wearing wellingtons have the advantage. You also find yourself walking through banks of bright green watercress. The track at this point seems to have formed a handy, but very shallow, canal for the local streams so the water is flowing along slowly, a perfect environment for producing healthy green watercress.
A little further on you round a corner and find yourself facing the tunnel.

It is quite dramatic at this point, as it stretches foreward in a dead straight line to the tiny patch of light at the end.
This is about a mile long and goes under a hill called ,according to the map, Ballykeroge Big. Being a class of an amateur word man I decided immediately this must be a version of Ballykeroge Beag or Little Ballykeroge, beag being the Irish word for little, a quick scan of the map however revealed the next townland to be called Ballykeroge Little.
So much for my etymological expertise.

The tunnel itself is terrific, though fairly rough underfoot so bring good torches. Every so often, along its length, it has escape alcoves like little sentry boxes. In quite a few of these the streams have, over the years, carried lime down from the soil which has created the most amazing natural sculptures. There are a few embryonic stalactites and stalagmites and in one of these alcoves a fabulous petrified stream of pure white which looks like a melting glacier.

Marvellous stuff and all just within a few miles of home!

Aonghus and I leave the tunnel

After the tunnel you go along about a mile of sunken track. Caitriona and Aonghus, who spent some time in the far east, said it was just like the Passage of the Dead on the way to the bridge on the river Kwai on which thousands of prisoners had died during construction
It does have a jungle feel to it, with hanging ivy tendrils and mossy walls making it feel quite foreign. Its difficult to remember that I’m still in county Waterford.
The next bit of excitement is the crossing of the Ballyvoyle viaduct. This crosses high over the Dalligan River and gives one a lovely view of Dungarvan Harbour and across to Helvick. This soaring bridge is probably not for people with vertigo as it is a long way down to the Dalligan flowing underneath (not that this stopped my lot dropping stones down into the river and waiting for what seemed like ages for the splash)
The iron railings here look a bit shaky so I wouldn’t recommend leaning on them!
The track then goes on for about another mile or so (some of it quite high over the road and with no railings) before it comes to a dead stop in a farm. The first time we walked this, we struggled down through this farm and ended up sipping delicious mulled wine (which one of the party had had the foresight to bring in a flask) on the beach in Ballyvoyle.
This time we met some cows on the line so we turned back at the farm and retraced our footsteps for the car.

We had one more mission.

We stopped and gathered a bag of the succulent green Watercress.
ThisI turned into a beautiful dark green Leek and Watercress Soup when we got home.
Recipe follows (I am still, after all, a chef)

Leek and Watercress Soup.
(enough for about 10 but it freezes beautifully)

60g (2oz.) Butter
2 tablespoons Olive Oil
2 medium Onions
4 Leeks
3 Medium Potatoes
1 ltr.(2 pints) Stock
5 mts. Picking of Watercress

Peel and slice the onions and potatoes and put them to sweat in a large lidded pot.
Fill a sink with water, slice the leeks thinly and swill about in the water to get rid of all grit and dirt. Drain off and add these to the onions and potatoes.
Again fill the sink with cold water and similarly and thoroughly wash the watercress. You should be careful that there aren’t little snails sticking to the stems, however a good shaking about in the water seems to get rid of them.

Once the onions, potatoes and leeks have softened you can add the stock to the pot and bring it up to a good rolling boil. At this stage throw the drained watercress into the pot, bring back to the boil and simmer for 4 to 5 mts. Liquidise , season and serve.

My lot polished off most of it after that walk.

This is mainly a blog I put out about 10 years ago on this site.
I just recently put it up on the facebook page of the Oxford Symposium of Food and Cookery:

Because there is a strong tradition of using French as the language of professional food there always has been a tendency to get the French words wrong in menus.
Somehow the translations never quite work.
Dutch Sauce does not sound like it would have anything of the buttery richness redolent in “Sauce Hollandaise”, something called “Skewered Lamb Nuts” doesn’t have the same ring as “Noisettes d’Agneau en Brochettes” and one would not wonder at Profiteroles made from “Cabbage paste” not having the same airy lightness as those made from “Pate A Choux.”
To compound out difficulties the naming of dishes in France has quite often been done by people whose love of the food they were producing was often to lead them close to poetry.
A fresh green herb sauce for fish is known as “Sauce Vert Pre” –green meadow sauce, a simple butter and lemon garnish for Trout or Sole is known as “A la Belle Meuniere”-in the style of the beautiful millers wife.
Because of the supposed soporific effect of Lettuce, soup made from that plant was called “Potage Pere Tranquille” or a soup to quieten Father. This has always brought to mind our own (Irish) folk song ;The Spinning Wheel.
In the song the mother was sent to sleep by the hum of the spinning wheel as spun by her daughter aware of her lover waiting outside the window, the French daughter of course relied on food to quieten Father, and fed him on lettuce soup before making her escape. The effect however is the same in both;
“Noiseless and light to the lattice above her
The maid steps, then leaps to the arms of her lover.”
But for pure poetry I have to go back to my cookery muse, Elizabeth David.
In French Provincial Cooking she names a melon Ice cream “Glace au Melon de l’Isle St. St Jacques” because:
“The melon has a strange almost magic flavour and that is why I have called it after that French Caribbean Island so unforgettebly conjured out of the ocean, only to be once more submerged, by Patrick Leigh Fermor in “The Violins of St Jacques”.
The French nomenclature has left us with a very useful shorthand of typical garnishes for foods. We can all be pretty sure that “A La Provencal” will contain at least tomatoes and possibly garlic and black olives as well. Dishes served “A La Lyonnaise “ will contain onions. “A La Bourguignonne” will certainly contain red wine, “Normandie” cream, with a strong possibility of apples or cider.
They did not however stop at naming dishes after their own provinces.
We have already mentioned the Dutch, the Italians were, for some reason given “A garnish of chopped Mushrooms” The Hungarians, more understandably Paprika. A l’Indienne is the French description of a Curry which is one example of them getting the name right but never quite managing to perfect the spicing. I always think that the English have a much better handle on this dish than the French, probably because of their stronger colonial background in India.
The French however gave the British very little credit for culinary expertise, “A l’Anglais” refers to something boiled in water.
The Germans and Spaniards fared much better, the former having a classic Veloute sauce enriched with egg yolks and cream named in their honour, the latter having Sauce Espagnol, one of the great Sauces Meres of French cooking called after them. One can search in vain in the Larousse Gastronimique for an “A l’Irlandaise. We can however make a tenuous connection with Mayonnaise, supposedly first prepared for a certain General Mahon by his chef. Definitely a man of Irish extraction.
Talking of Irish extraction it is very interesting to note that we can claim to have a half share in the Swedish royal house.
Napoleon’s marshal Bernadotte was tactically granted the Swedish throne by the Swedish people when their monarch died without heir. The same Bernadotte had married Desire Clary, an old squeeze of Bonies, who’s parents were involved in the silk trade in Marseilles and were originally Clearys from the west of Ireland.
To get back to the point, the problems involved in getting the French names correct on our menus often gives us amazing dishes.
I have seen the “belle meuniere” mentioned above offered as “Sole Manure”,and, in the sixties, when they were still a novelty, a friend was offered “Koo-Jets” in a Kilkenny restaurant. She was delighted when they turned out to be courgettes. Another friend when she requested a “Mille Feuille” pronounced in the French manner was gently corrected by a waitress who told her it was a “Milly Filly”, I’m not at all sure that that wasn’t an improvement.
But my own two favourite pieces of menu mistakes come from the time when I was working as a waiter in Barley Cove Hotel in West Cork.
Seeing the giggles of a table of city people one lunch time I discovered that the reception had gotten the “Buttered Peas” on the vegetable offerings wrong, somebody’s finger had slipped down a line and they had become “Buggered Peas”- the mind boggles!
However the same typist bettered even that when , the following week,one of the desserts on offer was the wonderful option;
“Lemon Meringue Piss”.