Morsels

I may be the last person as obsessed with food and cooking as I am to have made my way to the theater to see Julia and Julie (or vice versa). It’s a sad commentary on my life that I had no girlfriends to go with me — though Dennis and I did get invited by a friend to go to a fabulous screening followed by a four course meal prepared by a local chef. But we were going to be out of town (Maine, lobsters, clams, fine recompense). And then all the women I knew had already gone with their friends. In any case, I have to say that I have the finest, bravest fifteen year old son because he agreed to go with me tonight (Dennis out of town) and sat there and laughed at all the right parts — I think he was a little amazed at all the sex that big galumphing Julia had. But I am hoping he learned something from that… at some point after one of their back and forths (so wonderfully portrayed by Streep and Tucci) I told him I hoped that he found someone in his life to love as much as they did one another. I think he understood what I was saying. Think it might have been overkill if I had suggested we head to the store, grab a duck and debone it together — just for the hell of it? It’s late and I am tired. Not really up to ducks, or sauces, or even poaching an egg.

Also a little jealous of that Julie Powell. Not the best writer but a hell of a concept. I empathized with her and her book dreams (and Julia’s as well). No cooking tonight — just a loaded burger from Five Guys. Yum, yum, yum. And hooray for American cuisine, n’est-ce pas?

In one of my more relaxed recent vacation moments I had the thought that I ought to bake my family bread every weekend instead of buying it at the supermarket. And, as I just posted a few days ago the result was dreadful. I literally threw the two warm loaves into the garbage. In retrospect I think the whole wheat flour was rancid? Anyway, I called my nice, talented friend David Farmer who is very SERIOUS about most cooking projects to see if he might have some sour dough starter for me???

Of course he did. Made from the skin of organic grapes. And he delivered it on Sunday afternoon with a half loaf of warm bread and a handwritten recipe that he has spent some time perfecting.  It looks quite that was simple I will grant it that but all the ingredients are in grams. So I think I need a digital scale? NO jokes please.

He said I could convert everything into regular cups and etc but he looked a little pained when he said this. I am afraid that I have wandered into a whole new very obsessed world of bread baking. It’s not the first foray I’ve had with bread.

I remember back when I was 15, deciding to save up with my best friend, Jeanne McKenzie to go to France. We very reasonably thought that baking and then selling french bread from Mastering the Art of French Cooking was an appropriate (and attainable?) way to make the money. We did make great bread and we did sell it — I think to many grateful people in the Miami U French Dept where my father taught… but, being 15, we lost our focus and moved on to something else. She and I never did get to France together. I’ve since lost touch with her. And I clearly have lost my way with bread as well.

Here’s hoping that I find it this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed.

Update: I wrote this mid-week and never pubbed due to various forms of disorganization and distraction (the one breeding the other). Anyway, on my second “refresh” of the dough and it’s looking/smelling sour. That’s a good thing. More later.

Home from painting class last night and, as usual, my mind was in a swirl. It is hard to explain unless you have been in color’s thrall but there is an afterglow (I can’t think of any word more appropriate) that comes on after spending hours absorbed in the mixing and looking and laying on of the paint, stepping back. Mostly wishing for your brain (ok, my brain) to grow new synapses. But then, getting into my car and driving out of the parking lot, I was hyper-aware of the layers of shadows in the trees, the light on the lake. But not just the light on the lake, the purple, the gray, the maybe black-green.

I’ve been working on a picture of a pirogue in the river Sorgue that I took when we were in France. If I could find the picture in my photos I would post it.

Isle Sur La Sorgue

Well, obviously I managed that though not without some irritating bumps along the way. Why, is technology so mysterious?  Anyway, this is what I am painting. I remember walking along the river, boys ahead, Kinloch and Mary somewhere or other. We were all just taking in the pretty town, the market and working up an appetite. And the river was slowly coursing through, ducks barreling along, etc. I saw this boat and its neighbor door and was struck by the colors, the stillness of it all (though of course that water is never finished with its progress). Probably the owner of the boat had one color paint and that was that for the door and the boat. But to me, it still looks like a study in variations. Deliberately done.

So I have taken the image and it has now taken me on. Last night, I worked (with my teacher’s help) on the water which had stymied me. Puzzled me enough so that actually, I worked around it all night. Until at last it was time.  Now, I know water doesn’t mean blue or green but sometimes language gets entirely in the way of seeing a thing. It wasn’t until Jeff framed the water with paper, that I could pick out its grey, violet grey undertones. We mixed and I put it on the canvas and it was right. And that’s another thing…. I can ramble on here, get up in front of a group and opine, etc.. but start explaining a color mix to me, a little raw umber, a little cerulean blue, white a tiny, tiny bit of red and I am struck dumb. I literally had to repeat that aloud several times as if memorizing a phone number that I absoulutely needed (spoken like someone who grew up without cell phones where everything is so nicely stored and clicked).

So it’s not done but it’s on its way and I am looking forward so forward to tomorrow and working on it.

This past weekend while at the farmer’s market, I saw one of my favorite vegetable vendors (he doesn’t have a ton of stuff but he’s nice and it’s all good quality). Anyway, he had just a few boxes of small cherries and when I inquired, he said that they were wild and that his son had picked them. I tried one. It was sweet and simple and full of flavor. I told him I wanted to plant a couple trees at our house in NY and he said I should take the pits and broadcast them — says he has to mow this variety down they are so prodigious. So… maybe I will though I really need to get them going somewhere in a little tree nursery environment so they can get a nice start (he’d probably laugh at that — it does sound prissy.) But the point is. Cherries be good and they make me so very happy.

And, of course, they were out in full force in Provence. Just orchard after orchard of small trees bursting full with cherries. Of course, we all just sort of wanted to stop the car or our walks and surreptitiously grab a bunch but weren’t sure exactly how that would be received and were pretty sure the answer would be — not well. Though, in retrospect, I’m sure we would have been hit by a barrage of well-considered and completely incomprehensible (to the majority of us) french insults.

However, some clever or random-cherry-orchard-farmer-fellow did a very nice thing and planted a lone cherry tree along the road away from the rest of his orchard. Sort of a decoy tree we decided. Susanna and Kinloch and I were driving back from town and our successful foray to the market and our first encounter with TRUFFLE MAN (see below). And Susanna and I were happily commenting on how nice the cherries looked and wouldn’t it be nice if we could just have them and etc… well, Kinloch is about as bad a rule-breaker as his big sister (that would be my mom) and he pulled over to the left-hand side across traffic except there was none, this being hyper-rural france and all and plucked us a handful of perfect cherries. They were big and warm from the sun and they were also forbidden which made them even better.

Of course, we had also purchased some legal ones and Kinloch made a clafouti from them that night. We were having measurement conversion issues since all we had were French cookbooks and I think we may have been tipsy (?) — just guessing. Anyway, sorry Kinloch but the clafouti was not perfect. However, he has made up for it by sending me a recipe from Jean-Georges (he who needs no last name. Like Wolfgang. Or Jacques) which is here.

I have not made a cherry clafouti as of late but promise to to do and will post the results. Meanwhile, there is Kinloch’s recommendation (which is pear-centric and he is a sporadic email pen pal so I haven’t gotten an answer as to whether or not he subbed cherries). And actually, now that I am seriously eye-balling the recipe he sent over, I see it has no corn meal which he mentioned as a nice, lightening ingredient to a very good clafouti he had made. (What do you think they do down there in Virginia? Just concoct and test different clafoutis?).

And…. for those of you who don’t know the species clafouti: here’s a nice bit of info.

It contains an interesting bit of wisdom. A clafouti (traditionally made with cherries) should be made with unpitted cherries (yay! hope for light labor is the family motto, according to Kinloch. No wonder he is a fan).

The French don’t really have bacon. Our second or third day in St Didier, Wes and I went to the charcuterie for a fine gigot d’agneau which we managed to get the butcher to butterfly by making slicing signs and then spreading our hands out as if asking for alms… a plat, I think the butcher said.

And were there and it was uncrowded so we had time to glance around and see a lovely pate de campagne so we got a bit of that and then I saw the bacon or what seemed to be bacon and now I can’t even remember what it was called … but it was fume and we wanted some so get a bit but then it didn’t seem to be enough so we asked for more. I ought to have noticed the butcher’s surprise.

But it all fell into place once Wes started cutting into the “bacon” the next morning. There were no sharp knives in the house as it was anyway but still — there was never meant to be a thin slice coming off of that tranche. No way.

The bits of meat sizzled were nice though not so crisp and salty. In fact — the meat was clearly something that they use small bits of to season lentils or to sprinkle over frisee with a poached egg, etc.

Luckily, we had scrambled eggs with shaved bits of truffles from our truffle man whom we found again in the little Beaucet market. This time he was not under an old stone arch but rather out in the nice sun. And I could see that he actually carried his truffles in an old medicine bag, not a fishing tackle box as previously reported. Who knows, in those parts, maybe truffles are considered medicinal.

In any case, that morning, as the wind blew cool and strong (like Maine after a thunderstorm has passed and the sky is bluer than it has a right to be) our eggs and truffles and hard-won meat bits were a fine cure for last day blues.

The night before we made the night before: Baby Calamari Fritters.

Instructions. First — go to the market at Isle Sur La Sorgue and find the fishmonger with white hair and piercing blue eyes… he is just past the tablecloth and herb stand and before the olive stand. To the left.

Then ask him how to clean the inch-long whole baby squid and let him smile and choose a little shiny beauty. The have him pop it’s poor head off with his thumb - voila! (sort of reminds me in retrospect of that stupid little rhyme we used to say as little kids and that always upset me “mama had a little baby and it’s head popped off”). ‘Course he didn’t show us the itsy cuttle bone that ahd to be cut away. But that was ok because we had my uncle Kinloch to sweetly clean them later (as a nice surprise) while Dennis and I went into town for une pression (beer).

Here’s the recipe — couldn’t be easier except for the finding of those little fellas. We also ate a lovely Frutti Di Mare which Susanna mostly made. I will post her recipe soon.

A post from France only now I am in Bay Village and jet-lagged and don’t think it’s fair that the French get to live in France:

The days have blurred together now and since I wrote nothing down for this day in my journal but the food I made, I will have to create a sort of pastiche I suppose. Ahhh, no, I remember it now. This was Wednesday, when we set off to the new market, which was several kilometers away from St Didier, in Beaucet. There was the pizza van a fellow we had seen since our arrival in St Didier and a source of interest most especially to the kids, naturally. Our truffle guy again and an excellent vegetable stand. I bought shiny, tight eggplants, zucchini, red peppers, tomatoes, onions… hopefully you all know where this is going by now. I love ratatouille but cannot get my family to eat it. Still, I thought… if I make a grande ratatouille, I know Susanna and Wes and Kinloch and Mary will eat it. And if I make it expressly for Arthur in Provence no less, I am sure he will eat it. I bought carrots and mushrooms as well because Susanna and I had seen, in Saveur, a recipe for lapin a la moutarde violette. I will say more about this mustard, which turned into a bit of an obsession for me later. But suffice it to say that I knew Christopher and maybe Mary would not eat lapin and I wasn’t going to be able to find this crazy mustard. So I improvised and it was good, good, good.

We also tasted wines from a local cooperative as the sun beat down on us and the wine guy obligingly gave us tastes. We bought several bottles of good, local wine (for the equivalent of $5 a bottle). The kids shuffled their feet in the dirt and looked too warm. But it was midday and nothing would be open for them. The town had no restaurant. We climbed its steep cobblestoned streets and found a fountain with trees to shade it. Someone had taken one of the ancient hillside stone homes and cut out tremendous glass windows. The interior was white. There was a spiral staircase and a view to Mt Ventoux. I wondered who they were and if it was ok to feel a little inadequate that that was not my home, not my life. We looked over a stone wall and down into the valley at a flower producer’s back yard, where all the flowers were corralled into their own section, so that there was an ordered array of disorderly colors – magenta, orange, fuschia – it was glaring and the light was high and flat at the same time. The bell tolled in the church and we made our way down to the car. Lunch and then a good clean swim in the pool awaited.

I ought to have properly announced that I was heading (with famille) off to Provence and then Paris for a week and a half and so would not be posting. But then… ta-da! the house has internet and all is right with the world (not to mention the fact that it is incredibly beautiful here, with olive groves and cherry orchards and vineyards abounding). My Aunt Mary who is along keeps stopping and saying — “you know where we are? We’re in France!” and she’s right to stop and say it because sometimes we are so busy eating and walking and driving that we don’t exactly forget but we just don’t stay with it.

We’ve been eating wonderfully but last night when we pulled something together out of what we’d gotten at the market and what was in the fridge, we really outdid ourselves. But I will start at the beginning when sister Susanna, Uncle Kinloch and I all headed into the nearby village to forage for baguettes and croissants and pain aux chocolats — you know, your everyday French breakfast. Anyway, we got those and then noticed that there was a sweet little market in the municipal parking lot. Unlike the market the day before, this was small and uncrowded. But there was a great cheese stand with a very helpful fellow who gave us the brie made of raw milk — not the other brie that he usually sold to americans (I take no credit for this, my sister’s french is terrific plus she’s cute) and we bought a St Felicien and a Banon and another goat cheese infused with garlic. He was very bossy about all the cheeses but most especially the last one which he insisted could only be served with a salad and cut into thin wedges.

We moved on and passed under a stone archway. Just there was an old man sitting at a rickey white table with a scale and a metal fishing tackle box full of truffles. Kinloch immediately said that they ought to be purchased but Susanna and I said no they would be too expensive and it was too much and other kill-joy (ish) things. One ought to know about Kinloch that he just bought a jar of honey at a le local trap de touristes as he put it and then opened the jar so we could dip fingers in the jar. Just right there out in the open! So he has no culinary shame. He is happy, happy and always ready to buy truffles. But we did pass the little man by and moved on to another stand where a woman was selling small heads of red leafed lettuce called Rouget and some cherries.

We were done. But we did have to pass that little man. And this time, Kinloch prevailed. We bought two (though the truffle man thought we ought to have three). And they were something ridiculous like 18 euros.

Oh, and we got two kinds of olives — black marinated in garlic and then some wonderful green ones (Caisses aux escabeches — which means crushed and these were marinated with shallots).

Back home and the plan was to pull together all the cheeses, the olives, slice some wild boar sausage that Wes had purchased and make some salads. Susanna sliced up some grape tomatoes with basil and olive oil. I made a green salad with a shallot vinaigrette. The main course? Pappardelle tossed with butter and shaved truffles. I forgot to tell about the butter. We bought that from the cheese dude as well and that was unsalted and made of raw mile as well.

It was about as good a meal as a person can have. Oh, and there was a cherry clafouti that we got along with the bread and croissants and that we ate with a lovely dessert wine that Susanna had brought down from Paris (is it lazy of me to not peek around the corner at the empties to find the name? Oh alright. … Pacherenc du Vic-Bihl — Domaine Pichard 2004) Twas yummy and probably not findable in the U.S.

So there you have it. I suppose I will post the recipe for the pasta with truffles but it seems a little silly. I was actually going to write that I wouldn’t ever make it because of the truffle thing but how final. No, I will make it and I will be thankful for truffles and time and memories no one can take from me.