Tomato Kumato

July 28, 2010

Slow-Cooked Scrambled Eggs and the Moulin à Papier

Filed under: Breakfast — Tags: Eggs, scrambled eggs — emiglia @ 12:17 pm

When I was growing up, I wasn’t allowed to watch television.

Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true. I was allowed to watch two shows: Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street, both of which were featured on public television. As a result, nearly twenty years later (… excuse me… writing that nearly killed me), I can still recite the voice-over credits thanking the Helena Rubenstein Foundation “and viewers like you” by heart. I also know how crayons are made.

Part of Mr. Rogers’ schtick, aside from the whole world of Make-Believe, was the fact that he had a painting hung in his living room that allowed the viewer to journey to cool places–mostly factories. My absolute favorite was an inside look at how crayons were made: the wax was colored and poured into molds, and my five-year-old eyes were astounded to see hundreds of thousands of orange crayons in a line, wrapped in paper and stuck into a box alongside all the other colors I knew from similar boxes of crayons I had at home. It was life-changing.

So imagine how much stranger it was to see something much more important to me than crayons made from start to finish; in the life of a writer, I can think of nothing more essential than that which makes our trade possible (although the irony of writing this on a blog does not escape me): paper.

That’s right: one of those new excursions I mentioned yesterday was to the Moulin à Papier de Brousses, an artisanal paper mill in a small town about an hour’s drive from where we live in Paziols.

We were lucky to be able to spend a full day at the mill: we started with a tour that reminded me of the crayon video, a tour that led us, not only through the production cycle, but through the history of paper, from the very first papyrus all the way up to modern mechanics and machinery. We learned about the history of the paper mill in Brousses, how the grandson of one of the original millers decided to reopen the mill after it had been closed as a tourist attraction and artisanal mill, where all the paper would be made by hand. Some was sold in the small shop, and we browsed for a few minutes as we awaited our next activity: paper-making.

I watched (and snapped pictures) as the girls launched themselves into the task, first painting hand-made paper with dye to create personalized sheets, and then experimenting with making two of their own sheets of paper by hand.

It’s nothing like the carbon copies we buy in reams for our printers: these sheets have faults and tears, like people. Seeing each individual sheet come off the mold made me think of how many sheets of paper I waste every day on to-do lists and half-finished recipes copied quickly off the internet for use in the kitchen.

So what does all of this have to do with scrambled eggs? Maybe not much… but like the good food blogger I am, I’m still going to try. The eggs, you see, are like the crayons and the paper: something simple and ubiquitous, at first glance… perhaps the simplest of egg preparations. It’s hard to completely ruin scrambled eggs (as long as you don’t overcook them), and unlike an omelette or a fried egg, there is little technique involved aside from stirring.

But like this paper, when done properly, scrambled eggs can become so much more than scrambled eggs. Eggs, cream, butter, salt parsley… everything comes together, and suddenly, I’m reminded of when Julie Powell compared her first egg to cheese sauce. It’s not a mere egg: it’s creamy and decadent, and even if you leave out the cream and replace it with milk for an everyday breakfast, it feels completely decadent.

I, of course, left in the cream: I’m growing ever famous here in Paziols for my heavy hand with all things butter and crème fraîche, but I haven’t heard any complaints yet. The day I served these eggs, though, I didn’t hear much of anything… I was too busy hovering over the stove, making pancakes, muffins, eggs benedict and mimosas for thirty. Why?

…

Why not?

Slow-Cooked Scrambled Eggs

1 Tbsp. butter
20 eggs
2 tsp. salt
25 cl. crème fraiche
1 handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Melt the butter over low heat in a skillet. Whisk the eggs together loosely with a fork, then pour into the pan.

Allow the eggs to sit for 1-2 minutes before beginning to stir. Add the salt, then, with a wooden spoon, stir frequently (nearly constantly), until the eggs form curds, about 5-10 minutes depending on your stovetop. Add the crème fraîche and parsley, and stir until the eggs are just solid. Remove from the heat and pour into a warmed bowl for serving. The eggs will continue to cook slightly after being removed from the heat, so bear this in mind when deciding to remove them.

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July 27, 2010

I Come Bearing Pie

Filed under: Pie — Tags: paziols, peaches, Pie — emiglia @ 11:56 am

*Creeps out from around the corner.*

“Are you mad?”

Seriously… I’m sorry for disappearing like that. I wish I could warn you before the storm comes, but I never seem to know until suddenly, I look at my poor little blog and realize it’s been two weeks and you haven’t had a word from me. So I’m sorry… can you forgive me?

…

I brought pie…

And not only pie: it’s one of the very best pies I’ve ever tried. And that’s saying a lot coming from someone who, like me, loves pie. It was, perhaps, made even better thanks to the peaches from the marchande de pêches here in Paziols–peaches so life-changing that I’ve had to hide them under the counter to keep eager kids (and counselors) from devouring them instead of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Still, I feel confident in saying that this pie–with or without marchande de pêche peaches–is possibly in the top three pies I’ve ever had in my life. Do you forgive me now?

What if I told you that I haven’t even left the kitchen in what feels like days? The new running joke here in Paziols is how strange it is to see me without an apron tied around my waist. When I spend too much time in another room of the house or–God forbid–out of doors, people start to ask me if I’m feeling all right. It’s not exaggeration: when you’ve got as many kids (19) who eat as much as these ones do, it’s a wonder I leave the kitchen to go to bed.

Paziols in years past was marked by trips to different sites around the area: I’ve visited the Cathar chateaux of Aguilar and Queribus at least ten times apiece, the musée de la Préhistoire in Tautavel even more. When I first realized I would be missing these outings in favor of more time in front of the stove, I have to admit that I wasn’t all that fussed: you can only climb a crumbling castle a certain number of times before the allure wears off and your patience with small children wandering too close to the edge wears thin. Nevertheless, as I browse old photographs, I find myself missing some of the trips I used to take.

Luckily, there have been new trips, some of which even I have been a part of, like a recent outing to Rennes-le-Chateau, a small town about an hour away from Paziols named for the small chateau that gave the town its story and claim to fame.

Legend has it that a priest who came to work at the parish in this village, Bérenger Saunière, found a buried treasure somewhere inside the small church, permitting him to completely rebuild it. Whether the treasure was a gift from the devil or simply a myth remains to be determined, but as it is now, the legend leaves many questions unanswered, and especially after the publication of books like The DaVinci Code a few years back, the popularity of the small town has grown.

As is often my M.O., I raced through the museum to pop out on the other side, where I could wander the garden peacefully. Saunière constructed not only the small church, but also a series of buildings, including a house and a tower that offers an astounding view of the valley below.

I took advantage of everything–the flowers, the view. Everything was an excuse for a picture, and as I snapped away, I laughed to myself about the observation that the Country Boy had made a few days earlier: as he scrolled through the pictures on my digital camera, he commented that 90% of them were of food.

While the pie pictures leave something to be desired (for this I apologize: but I was otherwise occupied with salad collection after a particularly violent gust of Tramontagne wind, and by the time I got the chance to take a picture, the sun had set), the accusations are true: the majority of my pictures now are of different dishes I make, sometimes ten or twenty pictures of each dish so that I can select the best ones. If it weren’t for this blog, there’s a good chance that I would never have bought a new camera when the old one broke, but as it is, I have one, and when greeted with the opportunity, whether the subject in question be a particularly lovely peach pie or a particularly lovely garden, I’m happy to have the time and the opportunity to capture it on film so that, when I’m back to hovering over my stove or sweeping shards off the floor after yet another glass has slipped from over-eager hands (current count: six), I can remember days like this, when my biggest concern was the angle for a picture of a flower.

Peach and Crème Fraîche Pie (Recipe from Smitten Kitchen)

1/2 recipe All-Butter, Really Flaky Pie Dough, chilled for at least an hour in the fridge

Streusel
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
3 to 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cold (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Filling
1 1/2 pounds ripe (4 to 5 medium) yellow peaches, pitted and quartered
2 to 4 tablespoons granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
5 tablespoons crème fraîche

Prepare pie dough: Roll out pie dough to about 1/8-inch thick and fit into a regular (not deep dish) pie plate, 9 1/2 to 10 inches in diameter. Trim edge to 1/2 inch; fold under and crimp as desired. Pierce bottom of dough all over with a fork. Transfer to freezer for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 400°F right before you take it out.

Make streusel: Stir confectioners’ sugar, baking powder, salt and three tablespoons flour together in a small bowl. Add bits of cold butter, and either using a fork, pastry blender or your fingertips, work them into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs. Add additional flour as needed; I needed to almost double it to get the mixture crumbly, but my kitchen is excessively warm and the butter wanted to melt. Set aside.

Par-bake crust: Tightly press a piece of aluminum foil against frozen pie crust. From here, you ought to fill the shell with pie weights or dried beans, or you can wing it like certainly lazy people we know, hoping the foil will be enough to keep the crust shape in place. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove carefully remove foil and any weights you have used, press any bubbled-up spots in with the back of a spoon, and return the crust to the oven for another 5 to 8 minutes, or until it is lightly golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool slightly. Reduce oven temperature to 375°F.

[P.S. If you're not overly-concerned about "soggy bottoms" (in the words of Julia Child) you can save time by skipping the par-baking step. Given the light nature of the filling, odds are good that it would not become excessively damp even without the parbake.]

Make the filling: Sprinkle quartered peaches with sugar and salt. Let sit for 10 minutes. Spread two tablespoons crème fraîche in bottom of par-baked pie shell, sprinkle with one-third of the streusel and fan the peach quarters decoratively on top. Dot the remaining three tablespoons of crème fraîche on the peaches and sprinkle with remaining streusel.

Bake the pie: Until the crème fraîche is bubble and the streusel is golden brown, about 50 minutes. Cover edge of crust with a strip of foil if it browns too quickly. Let cool on a wire rack at least 15 minutes before serving.

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July 13, 2010

Peach Clafoutis

Filed under: Cakes — Tags: clafoutis, dessert, paziols, peach — emiglia @ 12:18 pm

I speak slowly and carefully, even when I’m doing a million things at once. “Met les pâtes dans la casserole,” I say to one of the girls. She looks at the giant pile of noodles–four bags that amount to two kilos.

“Tout ?” she asks, unsure.

“Tout.” I reply, turning back to chopping tomatoes. From behind me, I hear the tell-tale sound of dehydrated pasta hitting the tiled floor I’ve just swept for the third time this week.

“C’est pas grave,” I say, without even turning around. I reach for a broom as I catch the eye of the girl who’s dropped the pasta, her face still playing host to a worried expression. The Sous-Chef laughs.

“It’s only grave if she does it,” she says, referring to my habit of letting things slide–egg dropping, adding of too much salt, incorrect tomato slicing, overwhipping of egg whites… as long as it’s not me who does it, “C’est pas grave.” If I’m the one setting torchons on fire or overcooking rice or dropping bread on the floor, however, watch out… it’s a calamity.

Somehow, though, on a recent occasion, I gave myself a free ride. I bought a ridiculous amount of peaches last Monday when the marchande de pêches came to our little square: something about hearing that familiar “Allô, allô,” over the loudspeaker again made me overzealous, and somehow, it suddently made sense to buy an entire cajet of peaches, even though somewhere in my Excel spreadsheet head I was certain there was no way we would get through all of them in a week, even if I did make jam. And sure enough, even though I gobbled them like candy and made two batches of confiture, I ended up nearing the end of the week with a basket full of peaches who looked as though they were on their last legs.

“C’est pas grave,” I said, to the astonishment of the Sous-Chef who, I’m sure, was expecting a major meltdown. (She knows me too well).

Instead, I whipped out this recipe for clafoutis I’ve been meaning to try, replacing the apricots with peaches. It was an amazing success; the texture was perfect, the taste of the creamy custard the perfect foil for the peaches I’ve come to look forward too all year long. I would have eaten it breakfast, lunch and dinner, but it’s all gone now. C’est pas grave… I’m sure there will be other opportunities for clafoutis.

Peach Clafoutis (adapted from Chez LouLou’s recipe for apricot clafoutis)

12 ounces fresh peaches, pitted and cut in four
1 cup minus 2 tablespoons sifted flour
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cups whole milk
3 large eggs
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons butter, cut into 6 pieces

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees F.

Butter and lightly flour a 9½ inch round tart pan or baking dish with deep sides.

Place the peaches in the tart pan.

Combine the flour and the salt in a large bowl and whisk together.

Add 1 cup of the milk and whisk until completely smooth, then add the eggs, one by one, whisking briefly after each addition.

Whisk in the vanilla sugar, the vanilla extract and the remaining 1 cup of milk.

Pour the batter over the apricots and dot with the butter pieces.

Place in the center of the oven and bake for about 25 minutes, until puffed and golden brown.

Let cool completely before serving,

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July 12, 2010

Tarte Tatin

Filed under: Pie — Tags: apple, tarte tatin, tatin — emiglia @ 5:07 pm

I am–and always have been–of the school of thought that says that people don’t change.

Maybe a little bit, OK, I admit, but really, most people–and most things–don’t change all that much. When they do, it comes as a shock, at least to me.

Paziols, on the other hand, is a strange sort of organic place where everything changes and yet nothing changes all at the same time. Each time I come back to this house, I recognize everything, the past four summers blending together into a wild blur of all-nighters in the grenier and early mornings in the kitchen, long lunches on the terrace and excursions started from the garage.

I feel as though this house is mine: the blue paint I spattered all over the tiles two summers ago is still there, proof that I exist, though most of the kids have taken to telling me that this place wouldn’t exist without me, something I can’t even imagine (the program not existing or the program existing without me.)

Summers blend together through memories and photographs, though I can separate them easily if I try hard enough; trying is hardly worth it though. It doesn’t seem to matter anyway: I’ve always been here. Anne-Marie and I are the only ones who have been here all four years, and even though there are some kids and some counselors who are back again after two or three years, it’s me that people in the town recognize. “You’ve come here before… haven’t you?”

I don’t recognize most of them–after all, it’s much easier to remember someone when they invade your small town every summer with a band of rowdy Americans than it is to recognize the locals who watch you swarm down on them from afar. By chance, I finally met one of them this weekend, and he posed all the questions I was sure others had been thinking of. “What are you doing here?” “Why France?” “Wait… where are you from?”

I don’t mind answering. It may be my fourth year, but I’m always learning things about this place, and nothing ever gets old for me, even the Cathar chateaux and the prehistoric museum in Tautavel we visit every year. But maybe most of all, it’s the people who actually do come back that make this place into what it is.

This year, five of the six older girls who are campers here are returning students, one of which is my Sous-Chef from last year. She stumbled back into the kitchen as though she had never left, and though I took my time remembering where we kept the knives and which one was my favorite–after two weeks back, it seems impossible that I could have ever forgotten–she had remembered everything down to where we kept the presse-ail, and she was more than happy to watch me recreate one of the favorite desserts from last year: tarte tatin.

She’s taken a different role this year–something I didn’t expect. Instead of hanging on my coattails, she’s the one directing the younger kids, leaving me free to run around chasing boiling-over pots and burning quiches. She stands behind me calmly and explains how to wash the salad three times, where the bowls for the tomatoes are kept, how to set the table for lunch. One afternoon, when I got stuck in Perpignan for longer than expected, Anne-Marie turned to her and asked, “What’s for lunch?” I wasn’t there to witness it, but apparently, she didn’t miss a beat.

So maybe some things have changed. After all, this year, the Country Boy flung the last few slices of tarte into the circle of six grandes, who launched themselves onto them like lions and licked the plates clean.

This year it was me, and not Marc, who turned the tarte tatins out of their pans and onto the glass serving plate. This year, no one suffered sugar burns, but no one laughed at Marc screaming like a little girl either. And this year, the Sous-Chef stood calmly behind one of the other girls, explaing what to do with the seemingly endless apple slices I kept dumping into her bowl, as she created spirals in a pan of melted butter and sugar and settled back into her element.

Tarte Tatin (republished from this time last year)

2 refrigerated puff pastries
14 granny smith apples
lemon juice
1 cup butter
3 cups sugar
2 sachets vanilla sugar or 2 tsp. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Core and peel the apples and slice them. Use a little bit of lemon juice to keep them from browning as you slice.

Heat the butter and sugar in two tarte tatin pans or in two skillets if you don’t have them over medium heat. Add the vanilla sugar.

When the butter and sugar are melted together, add the apple slices in swirls from the inside out. You will not use all the apples. Turn the heat down to low and cook.

As the apples begin to cook, squeeze more and more apples into the spaces that will appear between apple slices. Continue cooking until the sugar is a deep brown and all the apples have been used.

Flip the pans so that the apples are upside down into tarte pans (if you are using tarte tatin pans, skip this step).

Unroll the pastries onto the apples, pressing the sides down so that they stick. Place in the oven and cook for half an hour, or until the pastry is golden on top. Serve with crème fraîche.

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July 9, 2010

Chocolate Mousse

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: chocolate, mousse, paziols — emiglia @ 6:49 pm

When I was growing up, I was fairly well-known amongst friends, teachers and family members for my catagorical lack of organizational skills. I forgot my books at school at least once a week and my homework at home even more often. I never knew where my socks, papers or headbands were, and my closet was an atrocious mess, but as long as the floor of my room was tidy, no one ever bothered me about it, so I just let it get worse. In the fifth grade, I took a study skills class, which I found to be completely useless, mainly because I didn’t ever sit down and study, especially considering the fact that my desk was nearly always completely covered in papers.

It didn’t get any better in high school. I routinely nearly failed room inspections and would end up shoving things into my closet to clear space so that I wouldn’t get a fire hazard note yet again. I still get made fun of by my college friends for the day one of them walked in on me napping, curled up in a ball at the foot of my bed because it was so covered in stuff.

It took Paziols–and a houseful of teenagers and children–for me to become obsessive… and obsessive is what I have become. I can’t stand to leave the kitchen dirty for even a moment. I am constantly gathering papers and stacking them, making piles and calling kids to come collect their things. I remind myself of my mother… it makes me shudder to remember how much I hated her telling me to “pick up that fuzz… what do you mean you don’t see it?” but when one of the girls creates a lake on the kitchen floor after flipping over one of the dishwashing basins, I realize why she acted the way she did.

One of my co-workers, the Marseillaise, told Anne-Marie that our heads work differently. “You’re spiderwebs and brainstorms,” she said. “Emily is Excel spreadsheets.”

It’s strange to look back and wonder what twelve-year-old me would think of my organization now: my color-coded lesson plans and divided binders and endless categorized lists: a pantry inventory, a menu plan, a weekly tabulated shopping list keyed carefully into Google Spreadsheets, printed, and marked up with multicolored highlighters. Even I find it strange, and I’m the one staying up until three in the morning making all the lists.

I think what shocks Anne-Marie the most, though, is the way that all the organization gets left at the kitchen door: once my plans are made and my lists double-checked, I leave them on the table and make my way into the kitchen, where there are no recipes and no rules. Chocolate mousse is made à l’arache: when the egg whites fell, we just whipped up some more by hand. When the chocolate separated, we beat it into submission. And when there were no clean spoons to be found, the bowl was licked in a very creative, outside-the-box sort of way.

It may make me insane when the kids forget to turn off the lights or leave the bathroom door opened to air it out after a shower. The Country Boy may have to come calm me down as he laughs at me when I come back to the kitchen after having left it immaculate to see a pile of dirty dishes where there were none. But there’s something about watching kids work their way through something–even if it’s not the way I, or any self-respecting cook, would have done it–that makes a little bit of disorganization worth it.

Chocolate Mousse

1/2 tasse crème entière
400 g. 70% dark chocolate, chopped
6 tablespoons butter
4 egg yolks
10 egg whites plus 4 egg whites (you may not need the extra four)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt

Over a double boiler, melt the cream and chocolate together. Remove from heat and mix in the butter. Set aside.

Beat the egg yolks in a bowl. Slowly add the chocolate mixture to temper, then beat to combine.

Beat the egg whites into submission. Carefully fold in the sugars, cocoa and salt. Add 1/3 of the egg whites to the chocolate mixture and mix well. Carefully fold in the remaining whites. If the whites have fallen too much after the addition of the sugars and chocolate (which may happen if you have small helpers), beat the extra four egg whites into submission and fold them in.

Distribute into individual cups or ramekins and chill at least an hour before serving.

Allow your helpers to lick the bowl with reckless abandon.

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July 6, 2010

Tomato Salad and My Junior Counselor

Filed under: Salad — Tags: france, paziols, Salad, tomatoes — emiglia @ 9:48 pm

It’s been awhile. I’m sorry… really I am. I had the best of intentions to come on here and write every evening, but when your days start at six and end at midnight or one in the morning, it’s all I can do to finish my freelance articles before passing out face-down on my keyboard. I tried to write a blog yesterday, but I’m not entirely sure it was in English or French, and when even I have no idea what I’m writing, I know that the only thing I can do is down another coffee and step away from the keyboard.

It’s OK, though. I’m back now, with lots of things to share. Mostly, though, I want to tell a story about the two little Turkish girls who appeared at our doorway a few days ago.

It’s astounding to me that less than a week ago, the house had only a handful of teenagers in it, and now it’s filled with children. These two sweet things were the first of the group to come to the house, with suitcases holding matching nightgowns and matching headbands for sleeping. They change their clothes at least three times a day, and they have all sorts of jewelry and perfume that they put on au hasard, as though dinner in Paziols were some sort of fancy outing instead of a family-style spread on the terrace in front of the vines and the setting sun.

Two days ago, the other kids began to arrive, with them a handful of Turkish girls whose French was limited at best. The older of the pair of sisters immediately took it upon herself to be a “junior counselor,” putting them into straight lines with buddies, making sure the younger ones had sunscreen on and translating for those who didn’t understand.

I watched her as we walked to the Fontaine des Eaux, walking on the street side of the sidewalk, the way the rest of us animateurs tend to do, herding the little ones like sheep and carrying their towels and water bottles when they realized how heavy they were.

Coming back to Paziols is always a mix of emotions for me. It’s my favorite place in the world–there’s no denying it. I love everything about the vines, the old roads that wind through the hills, the little hidden spots we’ve found. There’s something about this place that makes me want to be all alone here to cherish it, to be able to sit at the water’s edge and dip my feet into the river that runs so pure that fresh, wild mint grows at its banks. It’s so fresh you could drink it, if you wanted to.

But that’s not how I experience Paziols–not by a long shot. Instead, I’m here with the kids, making sure that they all have a sandwich and a banana and a water bottle, and though it’s strange not to be able to sit and let my thoughts run and flow as freely as I like, to sit as quietly as I do when I’m alone with just a notebook to write down a stray idea that I think might be worth hanging onto, there’s something about seeing the elation on the kids’ tired faces when they realize we’ve finally arrived where we’ve been headed for the past twenty minutes, watching as they descend on the water like a pack of wild animals dying of thirst, that makes me appreciate it even more, as though seeing it through their eyes lets me relive what it was like the first summer I came here, when the trees leaning in over the water were new to me too, when the bridge we now know is there was something we had to discover.

My Junior Counselor jumped in with the rest of them, splashing around and posing giddily for pictures that I took as I waded and prayed that no one would knock me over as I held my camera above my head to keep it dry. She’s just a kid herself, after all: once the fun of newfound responsibility’s allure had faded, she was happy as anyone to wait to have a cookie passed to her and to have someone waiting at the water’s edge with a dry towel.

Still, there’s something about her that makes her different from the other kids: we made our way back home and I descended on the kitchen, as I’m known to do, and she immediately appeared, dressed to the nines, of course, with a sparkly dress covered in sequins and elbow-length cotton gloves.

“Je peux t’aider?” she asked, and as I always do, I looked around for something she could do, some job she could get her hands on so she would feel useful without making me worry about knives and hot oil. The tomato salad, the same one I’ve been making for the past four years, was the perfect thing. And so my little Junior Counselor carefully picked fresh basil leaves from the plant in the garden, added salt and oil–”Tu me dis stop?”–until I told her it was enough, and mixed carefully with a wooden spoon until everything was ready.

She fades back and forth between being nearly an adult to just another little girl. She came with me to pick up peaches from the marchande de pêches, and she immediately grew tired and wanted to be held and cuddled and amused. But as soon as Anne-Marie arrived with the three younger Turkish girls, Junior Counselor was back to giving orders and telling the little ones what they could do to help.

I jokingly call her my mini-me now. She’s taken over some of my daily tasks–she writes the menu on the chalkboard in the kitchen every night and carefully wipes down the whiteboard to write the schedule for the next day before she goes to bed. In the morning, as I cut bread for tartines, she appears and, without even asking, starts setting the table: assiettes, bols, couverts. She shows the younger kids where everything is and helps them to put it in the right place.

And then when she’s done, she comes to where I’m sitting and climbs into my lap and waits for a hug.

“Ta robe est jolie,” she tells me, petting the fabric of my cotton dress. I kiss the top of her head, because with little kids, sometimes all you want to do is kiss and hug them, and all they want is to be kissed and hugged. The Junior Counselor is never far now–she can tell when I’m ready to start making dinner, and she appears, already wearing an apron to cover whatever dress she’s picked out for the occasion.

“Je peux t’aider?” she asks. Even if there’s nothing to do, I find something, just so I can see the look on her face as everything comes together, and I can remember what that was like when I was eleven and things were that new.

Salade de Tomates

This salad is perfect to make with kids, because the recipe is so not exact. Good, fresh tomatoes and good olive oil are key here. After that, there’s no need to worry.

5-6 large, fresh tomatoes, diced
2-3 cloves of garlic, pressed
3 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
2-3 tsp. salt
5-6 fresh basil leaves

Combine the tomatoes, garlic, oil and salt to taste in a large bowl. Rip the basil leaves into the salad and toss to combine. Serve with a smile, and be sure to say “merci” to your junior counselor.

La Fontaine des Eaux–Paziols

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July 3, 2010

Ratatouille

Filed under: Side Dishes, Vegetarian Main Dishes — Tags: aubergine, courgette, eggplant, france, pepper, ratatouille, zucchini — emiglia @ 11:42 am

It’s funny how I forget how much I love France until I’m back–I know how much you are all probably tired of hearing this over and over again, but each time I come back, it’s as though I’ve never felt this way before.

Even though I know how much I missed it, even though I can read my blog entries from when I was in Cannes and in Paris, even though I know how inspired I felt and how much I actually sat down to write while I was living in the 5th last year, I am still completely bowled over every time I come back and have that, “Oh… right,” moment. The one that reminds me that I’ve come home.

Ireland was great–I’m not denying it. I had an amazing time in London with Emese and the English One, and I’ve never laughed so much or so hard as when I was traveling around the British Isles with the CYF, King Kong and the Engineer. But as the Country Boy, the Parisian and I drove over the border from Spain to France, now with Anne-Marie and three of the kids in tow, I remembered.

Anne-Marie laughs at me when she catches me looking out the window. “T’es vraiment bien, là,” she says. You’re really good, there… It’s not a question… she knows when I stare at these vines that I’m better than I’ve ever been.

I found a page of the little notebook I carry with me everywhere–it’s almost full and some of the pages are falling out. I started writing in it when I first moved to France three years ago. In purple pen, my familiar scrawl speaks words that seem so faraway now. “I want that feeling of ‘The place I am is the best place I’ve ever been.’ I can’t remember the last time I felt that way. I want to curl up and hide in my cargo pants. It used to be so easy.”

But this is nothing like high school and ski caps and cargo pants and quilts I wrapped myself up in to drink endless cups of coffee and get lost in Blink-182 lyrics. That was fake–an identity I had created for myself out of something that I wanted to be. This is something that has come about based on who I wanted to be, maybe. I find myself writing my own future into my fiction and being surprised when I find myself living it years later. But it’s real now… that’s for sure. Paziols is home; France is mine.

There are some kinks to work out, for sure. The Country Boy and I have taken to late night walks–I can’t sleep when everything is this good; I’ve been getting three hours of sleep a night and climbing out of bed early in the morning so that I can have the sidewalks to myself for the only cool daylight hour before the sun bakes the streets as I buy our daily bread from the café down the road. I’m full of energy, attacking jobs I used to hate, like mopping the floors, with vigor. Anne-Marie has to forcefully drag me away from sinks of dirty dishes I want to wash and lesson plans I create weeks in advance. I can’t help it–I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy before.

Voilà. If only I could sit Nicolas Sarkozy down for a chat, maybe he’d make an exception for me and let me make Paziols my home all the time, instead of for the six weeks that already feel as though they’re passing too quickly.

Until then, I’ll just keep on keeping on, immersing myself in everything that will sit still for me and some things that won’t, and, of course, embrace being in my kitchen again, where it only seems right to bring together the summer staples of tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant and herbes de Provence for ratatouille.

Ratatouille (serves 10 with leftovers)

Note: My Dutch ovens are small, so I used two and divided the recipe between them.

3 yellow onions
4 tablespoons sunflower oil
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
salt, to taste
3 zucchini
4 small eggplants
3 red peppers
2 tablespoons herbes de Provence
4 cloves garlic
1 120 g. can of tomato paste
1 800 g. can of whole, peeled tomatoes

Cut the onions into a small dice. Sauté them in a large Dutch oven over medium heat with the sunflower oil, olive oil and a bit of salt to taste.

Cut the zucchini and the eggplant into half-moons. Cut the peppers in half, remove the seeds, and cut the halves into thin half-rings.

When the onions are translucent, add the eggplant. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, then add the zucchini. Continue to cook for 3-5 minutes, and finally add the peppers. Toss to combine and continue to cook.

Press the garlic with a garlic press and add it to the Dutch oven with the herbes de Provence. Mix and add the two cans of tomatoes.

Cook together over low heat, covered, at least an hour and up to two hours. Serve with a French-style omelette, and hide some to have for leftovers the next day: they’re even better.

Photo credits : Alexandra Schwartz

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July 2, 2010

Tomato Paella

Filed under: Pork, Rice — Tags: paella, paziols, Rice, spain, spanish, tomatoes — emiglia @ 7:16 pm

After several years of doing fairly ridiculous things whilst traveling, I’ve gotten to the point where, when I suggest spending the night in an airport/train station/bus stop to make a cheap layover even cheaper, my friends just roll my eyes and don’t even try to convince me that anything else would be a good idea. Case in point: a few weeks ago, while spending all of six hours, none of them daylit, in Marseille with my brother, we decided to nap on the couches of a bar/lounge in the lobby of a Holiday Inn across the street from Marseille-St-Charles. My brother just rolled his eyes and curled up under a towel, while I chugged cups of coffee and tried not to seem too sketchy to the very nervous looking bartender who didn’t ask us until around four in the morning if there was anything he could do for us.

So when the Parisian, the Country Boy and I found ourselves with a few dark hours to spend in Barcelona between my landing at ten and Anne-Marie’s arrival at nine the next morning, I saw no reason to leave the airport at all. The Parisian found this altogether ridiculous, and told me as much. The Country Boy even volunteered to pay for my hotel but, stubborn half-Sicilian that I am, I refused on sheer principle, and we finally found a way to compromise: we would drive to Barcelona, park the Transporter on the street, and sleep in it.

We immediately headed for the Rambla, where the Parisian and I had sat over giant beers and sangria nearly two years before, and we ate paella and drank even more beer. When we had eaten our fill, we found a place to park the car–completely by chance, just in front of the French consulate.

This was very exciting to all of us, especially the Country Boy.

The Parisian immediately claimed the back seat for himself and left me and the Country Boy to duke it out over the middle section, which I refused–again, on principle–deciding instead to curl up in the front seat, which grew old after about two minutes. I climbed carefully out of the car to sit on the curb instead, where the air was cool and fresh, and was surprised to see the Country Boy climb out the window behind me a few moments later–apparently, even though it was three in the morning, he couldn’t sleep either.

We did the only thing that made any sense: we walked down to the beach, climbed the lifeguard chair, meandered in the sand, dipped our feet in the water, snuck into a fancy hotel to use the bathroom, and blasted old 90s rock mp3s from his cell phone. And when we couldn’t take anymore of waiting for the sun to rise (fun fact: the sun takes a very, very, very long time to rise), we walked back up la Rambla and found ourselves coffee amongst the semi-drunk tourists who were climbing out of the nightclubs they had spent their nights in, the sunlight the end of their night and the beginning of our first day in Paziols.

I’m in Paziols now–I have been for a few days now, as some of you may know. The snap back to the reality of what is, without a doubt, my favorite place on Earth has been more than gratifying, as I get used to my kitchen again, as the Sous-Chef picks up new words of vocabulary and teaches them to the little Turkish girls who have just arrived with hardly a word of French but an unexplainably extensive knowledge of grammar and verb conjugations.

Nearly every evening, after the kids have gone to bed and the dishes have been done, the Country Boy and I sit up in the downstairs room–he on his guitar and me typing away at a million words a minute–listening to 90s rock and waiting for the sun to rise. Now, we go to bed before it does, but sometimes I think about what it would be like to watch the sun rise over the vines instead of over the Mediterranean, of what that might look like, of if I would have the patience to let it happen before my eyes.

This tomato paella isn’t anything like the seafood one I had in Barcelona: it’s a dish I made for the group last year that I’m only just getting around to posting, but it will definitely be making an appearance on our table again. The tomatoes turn what is one of the only dishes in which I will tolerate rice into something extraordinary. I adore the summer tomatoes here in Paziols, but when I made this, I used canned. Stay tuned for more stories, a myriad of new recipes, and the results of my experiment in following this recipe to a tee when I get my hands on some more of the garden tomatoes that our neighbor loves to foist on us, “Prends-en encore… encore… encore…”

It’s very hard to turn down tomatoes.

Tomato Paella with Chorizo
Source: Pinch My Salt

3 1/2 C. chicken or vegetable broth
1 1/2 pounds ripe tomatoes, cored and cut into thick wedges (Note: I used good canned whole tomatoes.)
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/4 C. extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 large cloves of garlic, minced
1 T. tomato paste
large pinch saffron threads
2 t. smoked paprika (I used a combination of hot and sweet)
2 C. arborio rice
3-4 oz. Spanish chorizo, diced
minced parsley for garnish.

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Warm broth in a saucepan. Put tomatoes in a medium bowl, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and drizzle with 1 T. olive oil. Toss to coat.

2. Put remaining 3 T. oil in a 10- or 12-inch ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables soften, 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in tomato paste, saffron, and paprika and cook for a minute more. Add rice and cook, stirring occasionally, until it is shiny, another minute or two. Add the chopped sausage and liquid and stir until just combined.

3. Put tomato wedges on top of rice and drizzle with remaining juices. Put pan in oven and roast, undisturbed, for 15 minutes. Check to see if rice is dry and just tender. If not, return pan to oven for another 5 minutes. If rice looks too dry but still is not quite done, add a small amount of stock or water (or wine). When rice is ready, turn off oven and let pan sit for 5 to 15 minutes.

4. Remove pan from oven and sprinkle with parsley. If you like, put pan over high heat for a few minutes to develop a bit of a bottom crust before serving.

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Barcelona at Night

Filed under: Uncategorized — emiglia @ 10:10 am

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July 1, 2010

London Calling

Filed under: Uncategorized — emiglia @ 7:36 pm

There was a point in my life that I was nearly positive I was going to move to London.

I had made a five-year plan–I’ve made lots of five-year plans, but this one felt pretty real at the time. It was before I had moved to France… before I had even considered moving to France, but there it was on the sheet of paper I had printed out: finish university in Toronto, move to London to go to the London School of Journalism, and then I was going to live in Ealing and work for an editing house. It was the perfect plan.

Needless to say, I didn’t move to London. I moved to Cannes instead, and then to Paris, which turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Still, the fact that I almost moved there, at least in my head, means that going back is always an interesting experience… especially now that two of my best friends–Emese and the English One–live there (to be fair, the English One actually lives in Milton Keynes, but he always comes down to London when I come for a visit.)

The CYF, the English One and I were all at Toronto together, so it only seemed right that we end our British adventure with a stopover in London, where I had my first encounter with meat pies.

Mother Mash is a restaurant that Emese found–Emese always manages to find the best places. This one had a mix-and-match menu of mash, meat pies and gravy that had all of us digging in with zeal. I went with steak pie and colcannon mash, which seemed appropriate considering the comparatively small amount of Irish cuisine I had tried over the past week.

The next night, we decided to make our own dinner; for a change, I didn’t cook a thing, and instead let Emese show off her newly acquired Australian Vegemite stew-making skills. As we sat around her apartment digging into stew and sipping Strongbow, I had a small glimpse of what it might have been like to move to London: it was almost like when we lived in Paris together, our usual wine replaced with cider, bowls of stew instead of the baguette and cheese we used to eat. I liked it… it wasn’t Paris, but I liked it all the same.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the dinner I would eat the next night: it was nothing like what I would have had had I lived in London, especially not now, when I’ve spent all my money on gas and Magners. The Sous-Chef’s father had sent me an e-mail letting me know that he and the Sous-Chef would be in London at the same time I was there, and they wanted to treat me to dinner so that I could meet a winemaking friend of theirs. Considering the fact that a) The Sous-Chef is one of my favorite people, b) The dinners I usually have with the Sous-Chef’s father are fairly epic, and c) I’ll jump on any opportunity to meet someone in the wine business, I found myself ambling down confusing London streets in an unfamiliar neighborhood until I finally stumbled upon the restaurant (with the help of a very nice Englishman).

The restaurant, in case you were wondering, was Gordon Ramsey’s Petrus. Feel free to get jealous now. We didn’t even look at the menu–the Sous-Chef’s father ordered us all the tasting menu, and I squirmed in my seat as courses arrived: brothy tomato soup as an amuse bouche, perfect foie gras, tender scallops, rich lamb and a dessert that had us all in awe: a chocolate sphere with chocolate sauce that forced it to melt over the scoop of vanilla ice cream it surrounded.

As I strolled back through the streets, vaguely recognizing the way that I had come, I wondered again what it would have been like to have lived here… but I didn’t let myself dream about it too long. While I was happy to see Emese and the English One–and happy with the vast spectrum of culinary experiences I had–I had better things to look forward to: it was almost time to go home to Paziols.

Mother Mash
107 Leadenhall Street

Petrus
1 Kinnerton Street

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