The roof of the Chateau de Mus, seen from the quarry near us, remind me of Alain-Fournier’s lost demesne

This is the headline on the Midi-Libre this morning.
It translates as “A Putrid Summer”.

And it is interesting that this is what the French think of the weather we have been having here so far.

Truth is the summer in France is WAY below par but as one who has been raised on what is called the summer in Ireland we are not really feeling any pain as yet- especially since the Meteo promises temperatures of about 24C for the next week and very little cloud.

Of course being from Ireland has its advantages, in today’s “Le Monde” they tell us that there has been a fall of 15% in holiday bed nights during May throughout France. As our main cachement area has had even worse weather than here in the Languedoc we aren’t suffering as badly as some of the others.

As the front door faces due north we only get a tiny window of opportunity to take pictures of it in the sun; viz. early mornings in mid-summer.
Today we were blessed with such a day when the sun was shining, we had friends prepared to act as photographers (Thanks to Petra and Donal) and as an added bonus there are roadworks outside the house so all the cars were banned for the day from parking there.

In the summer of 2006 Síle planted a vine, a Chassalas ; a Table Grape in our garden here. The -rather ambitious- intention- was that it would rise up to the terrace- a whole floor away- and then be trained to provide shelter from the hot summer sun of the Midi. This was its size in 2007 , it nearly died during the winter of 06/07 but Sile brought it back to life and it was healthy, if tiny, in May.

Oner the next four years it crept sinuously up the wall towards the terrace and by the summer of 2011 it was reaching towards the canopy.

Today it now is providing shade for about a third of the terrace, we reckon we will have to put a much reduced canvas cover up this year for our guests.

You can hire these little boats by the hour on the canal, as Petra, Donal and I did yesterday.

In the autumn of 1973 Sile and I decided we were going to burn our boats and head for France. (In fact this turned out to be merely a tipping of toes in French water, anticipating the actual move by some thirty something years but that is another story.)
To this end I wrote to all of the cookery writers I knew and asked for advice, it is to their eternal credit that they all replied. The best advice however came from Theodora Fitzgibbon. She put us in touch with Madame Graves who was then proprietor of a very smart hotel in Glengarrif, Ballylickey House. Mme Graves’ establishment was a member of an organisation called Relais de Campagne a very chic consortium of French Country House Hotels.
Madame Graves (a niece-in-law of the poet Robert Graves) also graciously replied and put us in touch with the main office of that organisation in Paris who advised us to write to two Chateaux Hotels who were, they thought looking for staff.
At this time in our lives Sile was working as a Primary school teacher, I as a chef in Snaffles on permanent split duties so the one time we could talk was during the afternoon, and that usually in a pub in Dublin.
On this particular day we agreed to meet in Mooney’s bar on Abbey Street and there, with notepaper, a dictionary and the names of the hotels we tried to compose a letter to these people of such high quality as they might offer us a job.
We were struggling when a very polite girl, who had been sitting at a nearby table, came up and talked to us.
“I am from France” she said “and my friend and I are listening to you struggle with this letter, would you like to help”
Then this charming girl gave us a crash course in the necessary formulae necessary to write a letter for a job application in France. The one particular part I remember was the sign off. We had written something like “Cordialment” before signing our names.
Under Mademoiselle’s tutelage we wrote (and I joke not):
“Je vous prie de voir , cher Madame, a l’assurances de mes salutations distinguees “ Which is just about as obsequious as it appears.
However, impressed no doubt by our correct attitudes both establishments offered us work and , about six weeks after we headed off, on the boat to the Chateau de Teildras in Anjou in France.
That we didn’t last long there is neither here nor there what I am sure is true is that we would never have got there in the first place without the Jeune Fille in the Abbey Mooney.
Belated thanks Mademoiselle.

Two words in French which I find charming have kept some their old fashioned meanings here.

A few days ago, with a heaped trolly (Chariot here!) I let a woman with a loaf of bread go ahead of me to the check out.
She flashed me her very best smile and said “C’est gentille Monsieur”

In English “gentle” has got to mean soft and delicate, where as here in France it has retained some of the meaning inherent in the word Gentleman, meaning courteous and mannerly.

The second word “Genial” has almost entirely slipped from usage in English, except perhaps in the TV announcers cliche “Our Genial Host”. But Dickens used it a lot and it always brings to my mind one of his more rotund gentlemen with a twinkling eye.
In France it is still much used, even perhaps over used, for “nice”.
No matter, every time I hear someone say “genial” the portly twinkler comes to mind.

2,000th Blog

Early morning coffee on the terrace, before the sun gets to it, the Swifts and Martins dive bomb our tree.

As this is my 1,999th blog piece I have decided to celebrate it by repeating the my very first one, from February 2005 ; eight years a blogging.

I have always loved mayonnaise. Loved to eat it but I think even more loved to make it. Before I ever started to cook professionally I had read Elizabeth Davids inspiring essay on mayonnaise in French Provincial Cooking. I say essay very deliberately because, far from being just a recipe this two page treatise and hymn to mayonnaise tells you all about its history and the legends that surround its birth, but also of course, tells you how to make the stuff.
However the bit that inspired me is where she says
“I do not care, unless I am in a great hurry, to let it, (an electric beater)deprive me of the pleasure and satisfaction to be obtained by sitting down quietly with bowl and spoon, eggs and oil, to the peaceful kitchen task of concocting the beautiful shining golden ointment which is mayonnaise”

These poetic lines moved me instantly into mayonnaise manufacture.

There is something almost magical about mayonnaise everytime you make it.
Two entirely liquid ingredients, runny almost, when blended in a certain painstaking way can merge into such a thick unctuous, well… ointment.

My very first job was in a very chic basement restaurant called Snaffles in Leeson street in Dublin. This was run by an eccentric but essentially lovable ascendancy couple called Nick and Rosie Tinne. Rosie was at this time compiling her book “Irish Country House Cooking” (still available occasionally on the internet). The time was the very early seventies and I was in my very early twenties and very naive.

Rosie flew in the door of the kitchen one morning carrying a dozen crap splattered eggs, a large tin of Italian Olive Oil, and a huge wooden bowl and spoon.
“Maahtin, Maahtin! You MUST make some mayonnaise for me. I’m having a party tonight and I’ve got the curse, it ALWAYS curdles when I’ve got the curse!”
Needless to say I got over my shock and made her the mayo, and yes I made it in the wooden bowl with the wooden spoon as she had been taught to in her Cordon Blue school in Paris.

There was a lot of mystique about making mayonnaise though. I remember an aunt of mine doing something very complicated in a liquidizer which involved hard boiled eggs, cream and copious quantities of vinegar.

We mistrusted the simple and pure flavour of good eggs and olive oil in Ireland for a long time. (When my sister came back from an au pair job in Frejus in the late fifties, fired with the tastes of Provence, she discovered that Olive Oil was only available in minute bottles in Chemists shops and intended to promote suntans!)

Mayonnaise is perhaps the simplest of all sauces. I have often said in cookery classes that I can make a half pint of mayonnaise in much the same time as it would take you to find it in the Hellmans jar in the fridge – and I can!
I will follow Ms. David’s proportions for making the “golden ointment”

Recipe:
3 large Freerange Eggs at room temperature
300ml Good Olive Oil also at room temperature
(I don’t always search out extra virgin oil for this)
Pinch Salt and grating of black pepper
1 tablespoon White Wine Vinegar

Beat the eggs thoroughly with the salt and pepper (I quite often use an electric hand held beater if none of my cooking mentors are looking)
Dribble in the oil, firstly drop by drop and then as the oil starts to thicken the yolks you can increase the rate to a thin stream and add the vinegar.
Again, I will quote Elizabeth David to tell you when to stop
“It should, if a spoonful is lifted up and dropped back into the bowl, fall from the spoon with a satisfying plop, and retain its shape, like a thick jelly”
this marvellous (and sensual) description is perfect.

Make your own mayonnaise, it tastes so much better and who knows, you too
might enjoy the process of making the “golden ointment”.

This Spring’s group of walkers enjoy a picnic by a ruined church on the road from St. Chinian