When one is lucky enough to buy an old stone house with a walled (if tiny) garden it is amazing to look sometimes at the individual bits of the walls, the different stones used hundreds of years ago when it was built, the shards of pottery used in the mortar, the quite amazing colours of the stones and the plants which are now growing on them.

We are trying to cut back on bread and potatoes since Christmas, a big problem in France where bread is the staple starch and ubiquitous for breakfast.
This led us back to cereals, muesli basically but here we discovered that the French, who have only taken to Muesli recently, prefer a much sweeter mix than we do.
So, what else, but make it ourselves. I went through various peoples recipes and stopped at Rachel Allen’s version of Granola, this I tweaked a little and really liked the result.

I went for Granola because I wanted something that would go with our house breakfast which, as well as the bread and jams, offers fruit and fromage frais. This particular Granola sprinkled over the fromage frais and fruit adds a delicious fruity crunch.
I think we have just found an additional dish for the breakfast table.
The jar, an old sweet jar, I found in Emmaus,the French charity shop, and it cost one Euro last week.

Granola:
Makes about a Kilo

Heat the oven to 170 C

250g Porridge Oats (we use Flahavans which the family smuggle out to us)
100g Sliced Almonds
75g Sunflower Seeds
25g Sesame seeds
25g Linseeds
(or 225g combo of nuts and seeds of choice)
65g Unsalted Butter
75g Honey
1/2 Teaspoon Pure Vanilla
100g Dried Apricots, chopped
50g Prunes (no-stones, chopped)
50g Dates (no stones, chopped)
50g Sultanas
(or 250g of your choice)

Mix well together the oats seeds and nuts.
Heat the honey, butter and vanilla in a pot together until the butter is melted.
Mix this well into the oats and spread out on two large oven trays.
Put this into the preheated oven for 10 mins then take out and toss it about.
Put it back and then check it and toss it every five minutes until it is evenly golden brown.(about a half hour)
Take it out of the oven and leave it cool before adding the fruit.
Store it in an air tight jar.

You can of course do infinite variations on this, use rape seed oil in place of the butter and add hazelnuts or walnuts or pecans as well as dried cranberries or raisins. I just loved the Honey/Butter/Almond flavours of this version.

As we are right next to the church we are thoroughly familiar with its Southern Face, a couple of days ago I discovered that , with the new camera, I could catch a glimpse of is Northern face from the Cimtiere.

Up at the cemetery is this crucifixion. It most likely dates from the 1920’s as the cross is in fact made of cement, there is a similar log of faux wood at the front of our house from that date. The wood of the crucifix has however gathered moss and consequently looks more woody by far than ours . The same weathering has brought a rather unfortunate change to the figure of Christ who now has a head of sky blue hair.

The grass is riz
I wonder where
The Cuckoo is ?

For the first time this year the temperature on the terrace (21 C)
Is actually warmer than the temperature inside (20 C)

I have been making a Confit of Duck legs for years ;in Dwyers in Waterford first and latterly here in le Presbytere. It is an ideal dish for the Table d’Hote as most of the cooking is done in advance.

A confit was the French farm wife’s equivalent of the freezer with one important difference, meat stored in fat, as in a confit, actually improves and deepens in savour and becomes more moist and tender.

The classic confits here in the South West of France are of Goose and Duck and their raison d’etre is really quite simple. The geese and duck in this part of the world were principally reared for Foie Gras, the utterly delicious melting liver now banned in most parts of the USA.(Where you can pick up a gun in a corner store!)

The farmers wife usually had to harvest her geese or ducks at much the same time and thereby needed some method of preserving the surplus, and so was born the confit.

Making it is a simple process. One rubs the meats in salt and aromatic herbs, after 24 hours rub them down, fry them crisp in their own fat and then simmer them slowly in their fat until so tender that they can be pierced with a straw. These can then be stored, completely sealed in fat for up to a year .

This was more or less the method I had been using since I first made them many years ago in Waterford.

However after we had eaten the last batch My staunchest critic (and wife) told me that she thought they were a bit stringy and might be overcooked.

Now it is a fact that the Duck in France is both larger and more tender than his cousin in Ireland- no doubt due to both the breeds used and to the farming methods- so I saw her point and thought it was time to go back to the drawing board.

Now if ever I need precise and accurate instructions for a French recipe the lady I return to is Julia Child and her bible : Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

She had this to say:

“Modern freezers and refrigerators have made changes in the Confit traditions. In the old days you had to simmer the duck for at least 2 ½ hours until every bit of moisture had evaporated and a straw could pierce the meat with ease ; you were then sure it would keep through the winter packed in its jars of fat in your cellar. For our purposes, since we are more interested in taste than tradition, the duck is cooked only until done and it is then stored in its fat in the refrigerator.”

Sound Woman Julia !

So, since I was now following Madame Child’s instructions for cooking confit it seemed imperative that I also follow her directions for the earlier salting. Here again she had precise instructions:

“Salt the Duck for 24 hours using half the ingredients for the dry-salt cure for pork or add duck to the cure along with the pork you are doing”

Now I will have to digress.

I had my first Christmas in France this year and, with all my family coming, was anxious to honour both the Irish and the French Christmas traditions. This led me to the problem of the Baked Ham, now I have eaten this- mainly in motorway cafes- many times but have never seen it for sale. As I was ordering my Turkey and Goose from my friendly butcher in the village I asked him if he could manage to produce a Jambon Cru for me as well. Now the vast majority of Jambon here is eaten uncooked as that of Bayonne or Parma in Italy so I went to some extremes to explain what I wanted.

When I took my big box of Christmas tuck home from the butchers I soon realised that I had been misunderstood and my Jambon Cru was, basically, a leg of pork.

Nothing daunted I sawed the leg in two, cooked half for Christmas (it was excellent cold on Stephens Day) and froze the other half with an eye to doing something with it later.

Now it seemed my moment had come.

Back I went to Julia’s recipe for dry-salt cure for Pork..

Her recipe for the Salts and Aromatics consisted of : Salt, Sugar, Saltpetre, Juniper Berries, Peppercorns, Allspice, Thyme and Bay Leaf.

Now God was certainly on my side all of these ingredients (even the Saltpetre- a relic from making Spiced Beef) could be produced from my larder or garden so, on Saturday I took the half leg of pork from the freezer and gave it two days to thaw in the fridge and I bought 16 Duck legs in La Ferme Biterroise.

Yesterday I boned out my thawed piece of Pork (as instructed by Julia) and threw all of the dry salt cure ingredients into the magimix to crush to a coarse powder, and got my largest enamel pot, and having rubbed both the Duck and the Pork thoroughly in the half of the mix I packed them into the pot and put them into the coldest room in the house.

This evening, 24 hours after insertion, I will remove the duck and cook exactly as Julia instructed.. In 5 days time I will add the remaining salt cure ingredients to the pot and then leave the pork turn slowly into Bacon for ten days more.

Watch this space.

Having discovered a new restaurant in the village and having eaten well of Quail (Caille in French) the chef came out of the kitchen to talk to us as we left.
“La Caille” said Jacinta “etait trés bon” and then from the depths of a twisted mind I managed my second pun in French. “L’accueil etait aussi tre chaleureuse ” for which I actually got a little laugh.

For non- French speakers here is a little note.
Jacinta said; “The Quail was very good ”
I said “The welcome was also very warm”

“La Caille” and ” l’acueil” are pronounced in axactly the same way.

Sile and I decided to have a day out on Wednesday last and to head to Serignan for lunch and then go the modern art museum there.
However it was not to be.
As we passed La Condamine, a vineyard just at the edge of town we saw a sign up; “Noveau Restaurant Les Deux M’s” actually in La Condamine.
Now that could be very good news indeed for us. While we are busy in the summer it is very difficult to get a night off from the cooking as the Pizzeria in the village is excellent but not classy enough for some.
A good quality restaurant within walking distance could only be good news for us.
As we parked our car we had another minute of serendipity. Just getting out of their car on the same errand as ourselves, were two ladies we had wanted to contact for some time. One is the proprietor of a local, very smart B&B, La Hacienda, which is perched over the river Orb at Reals, and boasts its own pool as well as private access to the river. Jacinta Delahaye is also a wine writer and comes from Ireland. With Jacinta was Michelle who lives in Thezan and who also has connections with Ireland as she worked for Sopexa, the French food promotion board. They were as glad to see us as we them so we quickly decided to have lunch together.
And so this totally unplanned lunch became a party!
The welcome and the food in Les Deux M’s turned out to be extremely pleasant, and our roast Quail with Port Sauce and Sweet Potato stood up well to the bottle of Cabernet Jacintha selected.
We never got to Serignan, but found a good and useful restaurant and two new friends.

First warning that the” French” Nationwide which features Le Presbytere
will be broadcast on March 6th.