Síle and I had to drop her sister and Brother-in-law off in Carcassonne last week and, as we didn’t have any PG’s that night, we decided to head west in the car towards Mirepoix and a bit of exploring.
Somewhere half way between the two towns my eyes lit up, there was a large Brocante shop by the side of the road, we set off in and discovered a treasure trove.
It was run by a young(ish) couple who, unusually for France, were not only interested in us but were prepared to ask questions- well he was-.
The first room had several really handsome Armoires huge beautifully made heavy wardrobes in oak and walnut. I explained to Monsieur that I had already furnished my Chambre d’Hote with Armoires but was curious about the price, it turned that they were all priced between €600 and €300- and that was asking price- basically cheaper than the equivalent from Ikea. M. explained that they were too large for modern villas.
By this stage we had become bosom buddies and I started to explain to him my passion for glass so he brought me triumphantly into the next room which was floor to ceiling with shelves of polished gleaming glass. Then he proudly showed me his most recent finds, a large glass cup and saucer with characteristic bubbles in the glass. “Ah! Biot “says I. Monsieur’s eyes widened a little and he made that marvellous movement with his mouth rather like a fish on dry land which produces a slight pop pop sound and indicates that a Frenchman is impressed. (I can’t reproduce this, even in front of a mirror in the privacy of my bathroom, yet)
This of course made us even closer buddies. (At this stage, I gathered later that Síle and his wife were exchanging glances behind our backs and raising their eyes to heaven- they both knew their men.)
So then I started to gather stuff together, two elegant café glasses from the fin de siècle, a little measured Absinthe carafe, an empty and battered frame, a rather nice cartoon of Jeanne d’Arc being victorious in a battle and (with just €30 left of my mad money) presented these to Monsieur, wondering which I would have to discard.
Monsieur was magnanimous to his new found friend; he charged me €15 for the lot (the carafe alone was well worth that)
Behind our back his wife again raised her eyes to heaven.
Then I gave him our card (in fact I gave him several) and he was again impressed by where we came from. “Ah! Herault-Pop Pop Pop- and then proceeded to give us a little homily on the wines grown there. Unfortunately this is exactly the little homily I give to guests foolish enough to ask about local wines at our table so I began to feel certain impatience.
Eventually we were able to tear ourselves away, me from my new brother, Síle from her new sister-in-exasperation.
It is an endlessly exciting business this brocanting.

It happens to me from time to time that an author gets lodged in my mind and then fate conspires to insure that he remains freshly there by regular reappearances- such a one is the above Anglo-Irish travel writer ; Patrick Leigh Fermor.

But before I write about him I want to write about something completely different.

In the seventies I worked for and became great friends with Michael Waterfield : Michael had at that time very recently been involved in bringing up to date his great aunt, Janet Ross’s, classic Italian Cook book “Leaves from a Tuscan Cookbook” . The Waterfield family had strong roots in Tuscany and at that time owned a castle there.
Michael’s aunt, Kinta Beevor, has written a wonderful evocative story of growing up in that castle called “A Tuscan Childhood”. From reading this book I became interested in the writings of her son ; Anthony Beevor who has written some marvellous accounts of modern European history, and then in turn in the writings of his wife, Artemis Cooper (daughter of another favourite travel writer John Julius Norwich). Ms Cooper afterwards went on to write the definitive biography of my personal doyenne of food writers ; Elizabeth David.

The first time I ever heard Leigh- Fermor mentioned was by the same cookery writer.

In French Provincial Cooking Mrs. David gives a recipe for a melon ice cream which she christens;
Glaçe au Melon de L’Île St. Jacques.
The melon ice has a strange, almost magical flavour and that is why I have called it after that French Caribbean island so unforgettably conjured out of the ocean, only to be once more submerged, by Patrick Leigh Fermor in The Violins of St. Jacques
Heady stuff from ED!
When asked last March to give a talk about food writing at Waterford Writers Weekend I used this quotation to demonstrate why I found good prose writing about food much more inspiring than photographs.

About five years ago friend Petra thrust a book into my hand and said “Take this Martin, I didn’t like it very much but I thought you might”
She was quite right.
The book was “Words of Mercury” by Patrick Leigh Fermor, and was really a compendium of his travel writing.
This I found a most compelling read and at the time on my blog quoted in full his description of Costas dance in a piece called a ”A Cave in the Black Sea”
Shortly after that I came across a piece he wrote for the Architectural Digest in 1986 about building his house in Greece.
He starts the piece with the following words:

“Where a man’s Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is, there shall his heart be also”

Having been lucky enough to inherit exactly that edition of those volumes from my parents, and having brought them down to Languedoc and deposited them in our house there some years ago I feel I understand exactly what he is saying.

Then just last April we had a visit from a distinguished intellectual Scotsman who was on a cycling tour of the area.
He, having had a pleasant dinner on our terrace and having very much enjoyed the conversation, wrote to thank me afterwards with a quotation from Horace via PLF.
“Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte”

This of course sent me scurrying into all sorts of research, there I discovered it refers to a moment in PLF’s life when, while working for the Greek resistance on the Isle of Crete, he found it impossible to harm his captured German Captain who quoted this bit of Horace because as he said “We have all drunk from the same fountain”.

But I am not finished with Mr. Leigh Fermor quite yet.

I have just heard that my friends Petra and Finola are going to attend a special day on his writings at Lismore Travel Writers Festival.
Attending will be the lady who is presently involved in writing his biography, one Artemis Cooper.

Foyer Anciens

St Thibery

Faultless Basil

Au Jardin de Presbytere

The Grapes Progress

Aussi au Jardin

Heroic Oleander

Au Place d’Eglise

Beau-frere Martin is staying with us at the moment and he has been having lessons in sculpture with Elke Montreal, a German Sculptor who lives in the village.
This is his polar bear, a brilliant, lumbering animal.

A question I am often asked.
Rather surprisingly I have an answer, maybe this one wasn’t the best…. but it was a bit of a revelation and bloody good.

It was I think 2006 and I attended the Slow Food Salone in Turin (an event so huge that it took over the entire city) as a chef I was invited and other similar chefs had been invited were put together in a hotel out in the sticks.
Sandro, the sole Italian in our delegation, having observed the pap we were getting for supper in the hotel told us that the following night he was going to drive us into the mountains for a Real Italian Meal.
So , the following night, in Sandro’s Fiat we headed forth: two American (one and American Indian), one Italian, one Englishman, and one Irishman (moi).

After a few hours drive up the mountains we parked outside the door of (what seemed to me) a fairly routine cafe.
Inside we were greeted cordially by the host (son of the chef as I remember) and sat down to Antipasti- pleasant but unexceptional.
Nota Bene that we were not offered either menus or choices.

Then came the interesting bit.

The waiter arrived out with six hot plates which he placed in front of us.

On each ( rather to my chagrin) were two fried eggs , (barely set) and a mound of very light , creamy puree potatoes.

We were mostly looking fairly askance when Senor arrived out again with a little mandolin and a silver dish on which rested five perfect white truffles.
Then in front of our astonished eyes, Senor grated an exquisite truffle on top of each plate of eggs and potato.

The smell alone of the flakes of truffle as they landed on the warm potatoes and eggs would have made the journey worthwhile- the tastes were ethereal.

I can no longer remember what (if anything)we were offered for desert.
The smell and the flavour of the truffles still remain with me.

I’m reading, and greatly enjoying, James Knowlson’s biography of Beckett : “Damned to Fame”.
Knowlson can really use the most cunning analogies to illustrate his man:

On Beckett’s unadmitted influence by great classic writers he says ” A man who consumes large quantities of garlic does not always realise how his breath, even the pores of his skin , emit its powerful odour”.
And on the influence of classic painting Knowlson says ” If we could take X-rays of some of Beckett’s later plays, we would surely be able to detect some of the ghostly images of the old masters lurking beneath the surface”

Reading about Leonard Cohen’s travails with his ex manager/lover reminds me of an odd meeting from the early seventies. I was contacted by a Canadian girl called Pritchard Morgan (I can no longer remember how) who was looking for a bed for a night in Dublin.

I managed to find a bed for her in the flat of my friend Maire Scally. There was a Leonard Cohen concert in Dublin that night and she told us that she was a great friend- in fact that she was ; “the girl with chestnut hair” in “Dress Rehearsal Rag”.

The following day she told us that she had met him after the concert and he had taken her to “The Soup Bowl” restaurant for dinner. Then she left and I have never heard of or from her since,all I can remember is that she had a great head of red hair that she smelled strongly and not unpleasantly of coconut.

In the car yesterday :

Martin : What do they call those Breton processions with the crucifix again Síle?
A.. A.. ?

Síle : Pardon

Martin : WHAT DO THEY CALL THOSE BRETON PROCESSIONS WITH THE CRUCIFIX
SÍLE !

(Then I got a [well deserved]clatter.)

The concept of a Table d’Hote predated by some time the concept of the restaurant here in France. The traveller stopped at a suitable house and was fed by, and with, the family. It was only when the chefs to the nobility started to offer restorative soups to the populace to earn their crust after the revolution that the restaurant was born.