I confess that when we bought our Godin two years ago we were influenced by his extreme good looks.
Our justification of this superficial judgment was that if this monster was going to spend the majority of his time in the corner of our living room doing nothing he could at least pose there in a handsome manner.

At this level M. Godin has certainly done his job well.

He is, even in the height of summer when the thoughts of any artificial heat are abhorrent, universally admired.

We have now however lived with (you never own a Godin, you just keep him for the next generation) Monsieur for two winters and let me tell you when called upon this man is not just a pretty face.

As you can see from his shape M. accepts his logs (50 cms. long, well seasoned oak or beech ) vertically rather than horizontally.
This simple fact is I think one of his major design successes.
His controls are laughably simple, there is a simple small door at his base and this has a damper which you can turn from closed to open.

Last thing at night I will put in a log and then close the damper fully.
In the morning M. is still purring gently and guarding us from all chills. Last nights log will by this stage be a chunk of charcoal just ready to burst into flame (bringing some new wood with it ) at the merest half centimetre turn of the damper.
Open the little door and you will have the towering inferno.

Another of M.’s successes is his position.
We spent Christmas in a house in Dublin where a stove was placed in the old inglenook fireplace.
Not one calor of heat leaked out from there into the room.
Our M. stands proud and delivers heat from every side.

There was a certain demurring from some members of the family when he first arrived because he didn’t have much of a display window.
(M.’s window is so small you can barely make out the glow or flame within)

To those I say if you want the comfort of an open fire (as we had in Ireland ) than have the flickering comfort of an open fire but buy a central heating system (as we did in Ireland ) to keep yourself warm.

We have just spent our first January in the Languedoc.
It has been colder than expected temperatures have occasionally touched zero and even down to minus two.
Thanks to the efforts of Saint Godin (who better than any martyr burns himself each night for our pleasure ) we have survived and in comfort.

We got our third delivery of wood this morning, three steres this time , and this is the victory photograph of our hedge against the cold neatly stacked on the terrace (a mere hour and a half after arrival- we are getting better)

This is last November’s delivery of four steres , all now vapourised.

And our first delivery of three steres last February.
I certainly think this years is bigger- but who’s counting.

I have no idea what biological , physiological or even psychological factors convince some of us that it is necessary to read in the loo but I am quite convinced that if at least some portion of the population, were deprived of this pleasure the results on the regular routines of their lives could be extremely unsettling.

I am a Loo Reader.

That a lot of my friends are is clearly evidenced by the amounts of literature stacked and available in their loos.

The only evidence I have in literature for this phenomenon were Leopold Bllom’s reading of the torn strips of newspaper in his toilet on the morning of June 16th and a rather nice exchange between Bill Bryson and his wife from one of his books ;
She (outside the door) “Are you reading in there ?”
He (inside) “Of course not Dear ”
She “You must be you have been there for at least ten minutes ”
She ” And you have blocked up the keyhole- you must be reading ”

The trouble I find is to provide the correct type of literature for reading in the little room.
My daughters (acknowedging my problem ) have at various times given me presents of volumes of commonplace books called “Reading in the Loo” and the like.
These are fine for the first few weeks, even months but as time goes on and one has read them all at least twice the lose some freshness.
Like wise my ancient copies of compendium books like “The Book of Lists ” , you know they have been there too long when you can quote without reference Jane Fonda’s favourite ten dinner guests.

I have tried leaving my old copies of the New Yorker there but this brings its own problems.
Almost inevitably while in situ I start to read some article which I had previously reckoned uninteresting.
After about fifteen minutes of a deep exposé of something like “The Dangers to
the Body of playing American Football ” (and to avoid a confrontation with my wife like Bill Bryson’s ) I remove the magazine to read at my leisure.
And so all the magazines end up elsewhere.

You do need to have the literature ready for arrival in the right room.

There is nothing particular attractive about having to admit to what you are looking for just before you lock yourself in.

For the moment I think I may have cracked it.
In our personal loo I have now stashed “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare ”

I have started with some plays that I thought I was familiar with but am amazed at how much of Hamlet and Macbeth I have forgotten since my school days.

I think that by the time I will have gotten through Timon of Athens and A Winters Tale I may well be ready to tackle Hamlet again.
And then, there is always The Sonnets.

Left Annecy this morning it was -8C , back in the Languedoc 5 hours later +10C

A land of contrasts- and none the worse for that.

On Monday while trawling through our local supermarket I saw a tray of pieces of shin of beef sawn across , on the bone and “Ping “ the little bulb in the head came on.

Osso Bucco.

This is a wonderful Italian dish of shin of Veal , slow cooked until it falls off the shin bone, in tomatoes and wine.

I got out my much thumbed Elizabeth David Italian Food and set to on tuesday morning.
The idea was that I’d cook in on Tuesday to eat on Wednesday night.
(these slow cooked dishes are always better the second day)
I did a double check on the internet and the consensus of opinion was that the dish was even better if you used beef instead of veal.
I diced about three carrots and two medium onions and peeled and left whole six fat cloves of garlic and sweated these in a knob of butter in a stew pot until soft.
I floured the shin slices and seared these in oil until well browned.
I threw two tins of chopped tomatoes and a glass of white wine onto the onions, added a bunch of thyme from the garden, seasoned well with salt and a grating of black pepper and then pushed the slices of beef on the bone into this.
I brought it to a simmer as I was preheating the oven to 160 C (320F, Gas 3)
and then put the lid on the pan and put it into the oven for an hour and a half.

The traditional accompaniment to a dish of osso Bucco is a Risotto Milanese.
Nothing daunted I set out to do this – again the recipe taken from my old reliable Ms. David.

This consisted of a medium onion chopped finely and softened in a knob of butter.
Once this is soft add a cup full of arborio rice , cook these for a minute or so in the butter and then add a glass full of white wine.
Heat two cups of good chicken stock in a pot and then add this to the risotto ladleful by ladleful (as each one is absorbed you can add the next ) until the rice is cooked and there is just enough liquid left to make a creamy sauce around the rice. (If you run out of stock add some water.)
Just before the finish tradition says that you should add a good pinch of ground saffron.
Do if you can- I was lucky I had a tiny bit in the store cupboard.

And so last night we sat down to eat this dish.
The sauce was fantastic, the rice unctious, some of the meat was palatable but most was tough as an ancient boot.
I had forgotten to include an extra hour in the cooking time to compensate for the meat being beef and not veal.
However we survived, as well as the sauce and the rice being good the beef marrow (which the Italians say is the whole point of the dish ) was a delicious rich savoury jelly.

Nothing daunted I put the tough bits of meat back in the pot along with the marrowless bones and resolved to make a stock from them the next day.

And so to this morning.
There is so much geletine in the leg of beef that the sauce had set to a hard jelly this morning.
I put the whole lot back in the pot with a couple of pints of water and put in on our lowest gas while we headed out for a brief ten minute trip to the dechetterie.

Well one thing led to another and it was about two hours later when we finally got home.

There was my stock pot simmering busily and smelling absolutely delicious.
I suddenly knew what we were having for lunch.
I took out the shin bones from the pot and threw them out, along with the thyme stalks.
I fished out most of the meat and tossed it on a board and chopped it into shreds – it was by this time falling to pieces.
I threw this back in along with the couple of tablespoons left of the risotto , a plass of Port (Marsala would have been better ) heated the mixture up together, checked the seasoning, grated a large chunk of parmesan, cut some bread and we both sat down to one of the best soups I have ever eaten.

Now I feel that I have gotten into Charles Lambs area with this.
In his Dissertation on Roast Pig he describes how the early Chinese burned down their houses just to taste the pigs delicious crackling.

I am advocating a sort of two day marathon just to achieve a bowl of soup.
I don’t expect all of my readers to do this, instead my suggestion would be that the next time you want to make an Osso Bucco add a little extra water and make some soup with the left overs the next day.
You won’t regret it.

Oops,- Forgot to mention the Gremolata (mixture of chopped parsley, garlic and lemon zest) got tossed into the soup at the last moment too.

Across the evening sky,
All the birds are leaving
But how can they know
It’s time for them to go?
Before the winter fire,
I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

As I read about the killings in Tucson last week one thing keeps being spoken of,
the speech given by President Obama after the event.

This man , is an orator watch his oration here on Youtube .

You will perhaps begin to understand how one man can have such an amazing skill as an orator to heal a nation and inspire a whole people into a moment of reconciliation.
It is an amazing display.

Like just about everyone else I used to devour programmes about moving abroad until, of course, we did, from then they have certainly lost their charm.
Now if they come up , and I have the ill luck to be around, I find myself dismayed by their lack of research in the areas to which they are sending people.

Two days ago I watched Jasmine Something or other in Place in the Sun mention, not once but several times, that Pyrennes Oriental was in the South East of France.
PO is very firmly in the South West of France but poor Jasmine was confused by the fact that oriental means east , how was she to know that they were referring to the Eastern Pyrenees ?
This did not of course stop her from pretending to be an expert on the area.
A small glance at an atlas would have sorted her problem.

Yesterday evening Síle and I decided to go for a walk along Serignan beach, the weather is really lovely at the moment.

Just before we left, after sunset , I took this shot from the beach.
That promontary , which looks to be just across the bay , is in fact my old friend Mount Canigou fully 150 klms away.

I am really glad that I have this piece of photographic evidence which fully backs up something I have been observing for some time.
Slowly and inexorably – in a fashion that no-one but me has noticed- the mountain is moving closer and closer .

Eat your heart out Mohammad.

Adam Gopnik has an excellent article in last weeks New Yorker which he calls Sweet Revolution in which he examines the way Dessets (the course which we used to call Pudding ) are going today- particularly as made by Catalan pastry chefs like Jordi Butron and Albert Adria, pastry chef to his more famous brother , Ferran, from El Bulli .

These chefs are doing some really exciting (and difficult ) things with the dessert menu, some of it which quite breaks down the line between savoury and sweet.

When Gopnik put exactly this question to Adria he got the following reply;

“He (Ferran Adria) looked at me with delighted triumph ‘-“It can’t be an American that is asking me that !” he said. “A hamburger with ketchup and Coca-Cola ? That’s the most intense symbiosis of sweet and savoury imaginable. It’s your cultural theme”

But before we get all sniffy about the American love of sweetness with all savoury products let us have a look at our own eating heritage.

Given that we adopted the cranberry with the turkey from the Americas that probably doesn’t count, but , we did always eat apple sauce with our more traditional goose , and intense sweet and sharp mint sauce with our lamb. The French have always loved the sweetness of redcurrant jelly with their lamb, have sneaked sugar into their petits pois and associate the gooseberry with mackerel to such an extent that they have named the fruit after the fish.
I had some American friends in Waterford who used to feed us bacon with pancakes dribbled with maple syrup for breakfast which is a marriage, my taste buds think, made in heaven and let us not forget apple sauce with pork, honey glazed ham, our enjoyment of sweet mango chutney with a curry and the modern, and delicious, fashion of adding flakes of sea salt to caramel.
We have been mixing sweet with savoury for years.
Therefore these modern chefs with their snail custard and parmesan ice cream are merely taking this combination a little further.

Let us remember our own tradition was to end the meal with a Savoury , something with the salt tang of bacon or anchovies. These we ate after dessert and indeed in our tradition, after cheese.
As always when we look at any changes in fashion – in food as in clothes-we are only watching the world turn.
Plus ca change…..