Tata Nanou Came to Lunch

Ian loves his tata Nanou. She kisses his hands just so and he wouldn't dare scratch or gouge her face the way he does to maman. He is always on his best behavior with tata Nanou. She and I get together when we can. We took up a good habit of going out to little tea houses and back room places that contain a majorité des femmes some time back. Now that getting out isn't as easy, she comes to our house for lunch. On those days, I tell him that she's coming the moment he wakes up, and morning long he's all smiles, waiting for her to come.



We went down to the market on St. Antoine as is our regular habit, and found many delicious things. Brigitte taught me to walk the market to the end, and buy on the way back. At the very end of the market, in the space usually delegated to newcomers and temporary stands, there was a very nice fromagerie, gleaming and new, who has not been on St. Antoine for very long. His selection struck me immediately because not only did his cheese look to be in excellent condition, but he carried the genre of cheeses that are generally not available anywhere but the best fromagers at Les Halles. Some cheese needs special handling to be at its best.

Usually when I have a dinner party and have to put together a very good plate, the kind of plate that people really remember for being perfect examples of cheese they know and love, I always go to Les Halles to visit certain fromagers. It's not just rare cheeses, in fact many of these cheeses you can get at the grocery store, or buy just about anywhere in Lyon. But the way it's handled and season makes all the difference in the world in the flavor. There are cheeses that just could not keep their unique qualities without special care, which are the ones I was seeing here.

I told him I was happy to see his selection, and after quizzing me rat tat tat about who I thought was worth visiting at Les Halles, I met his approval and we talked about his activity as one of only 12 certified trained fromagers that circulate Lyon's forty outdoor markets. These are the fromagers that keep a local cave, first of all, and keep their cheese in ideal conditions before it comes to market, and not the vendors that circulate a dizzying array of over aged, past its prime or otherwise derailed milk products. His home base is located in Lyon's 6th arrondissement, just near Le Petit Vatel on rue de Seze.

The wild asparagus is out and I snatched up a big handful. I knew that Nanou would appreciate it. I decided to do salad with a blanched snowpea chiffonade and wrap the steamed asparagus around a pile of it, layering it with a simmered brunoise of fresh spring turnips and young carrots that I cooled under water after cooking. I topped that with marinated oyster mushrooms and drizzled the lot with a soy, walnut oil and sesame vinaigrette.

Nanou appreciates the simple things in life, and this particular lunch we were both highly satisfied to end with a sackful of sour cherries called griottes here. They glow brightly in the sun at the market for a very short time, no more than a week or two in June. I brought out vintage teacups with soft white cheese, and we chatted about her upcoming wedding plans while we pulled cherries out of their rinse in a bowl of water between us, pitting them before composing each our own topping with a sprinkling of sugar.

The Garden's Progress

I like to drink a glass of wine in my garden at the end of a fruitful day, the setting sun outlining forms in golden silhouette. I can stare at my plants, contemplate their progress, the miracle of their colors and forms. My garden is a place of magic and hope, a place to dwell, a place of quiet affirmation.

Wind blows across the pasture bringing seeds from unruly weeds. During the week they begin to creep in. When we arrive on Friday night the feeling is usually a little bit like facing the sink full of dirty dishes after a raucous dinner party. Will the weeding ever end? Then we set to work, and in short time, tugging up this and that, prying the spiraling fingers of savage wild growth away, we get it back to where we like it.

Since it is our first year, Loïc and I decided to go with a number of small beds, cloistered areas to tend to a smaller number of plants, like a botanical garden or experimental laboratory plot. This way we can lavish each plant with attention, keep up with the learning curve, and not have to spend too much time and money getting the bed's soil just right. We're in it for the joy it brings, and anything we get to eat is a bonus. We can get bigger later if we want, by moving the borders of the beds. Speaking of borders, our first concern was finding proper ones. We found non-toxic linseed oil autoclaved borders made for potagers and they were our only expense aside from seeds, costing about €80 ($120) for the whole garden. The stones are original from our Savoyard chalet roof, replaced last year.

arugula flower and a delicious mouthful from the task of thinning the carrots

When I first planned the garden, I didn't know how easy it would be to move plants around. I realize now that planning a garden is a tentative task, even planting is never set in stone. We discovered, for instance, that some of our kohlrabi seemed to be flourishing way ahead of the ones we'd planted elsewhere in the garden. Then we realized they had been placed next to tomatoes. This juxtaposition is noted in many of our references as a problem, since kohlrabi saps the life from tomatoes. If they grow too fast, they won't taste good, either. I moved the kohlrabi to another bed and grouped the tomatoes all together. They complained at first, but were bright and happy with the rhubarb chard the next weekend.

Taking a walk through the beds, we have: Eggplant, green beans, peppers, brussels sprouts, a watermelon plant, nasturtiums which in French are called capucine, cilantro, chervil, garlic, yellow onions, chives, carrots, lettuce, parsley, red onions, shallots, arugula, a bed of mixed greens, rhubarb chard, leeks, kohlrabi, a permanent bed of Mara des Bois strawberries, tomatoes, basil, sucrine lettuce and round red radishes. Outside the beds along corners in the wide pathways, I have planted oregano, sage, rosemary, lemon verbena, tarragon, dill, and extra dwarf nasturtiums. At the end of each path on the high side near the sunflowers and dahlias, I have put a cardoon plant at the end of each path. They are very popular in Lyon, and I look forward to preparing them the Lyonnais way.

The gourd hill had a rough start, because I changed my mind at the last minute and decided it should go on a slope located by the compost. We put out our tender pattypan, butternut, delicious pumpkin plants that in French are called potimarron, zucchinis, widely spaced with room to grow. They were all promptly eaten by snails, of which there are a profusion in the compost heap. We started again but had little hope. One difference was the use of some organic pellets to make the snails and slugs lose their appetite. We had just about given up on the lot, when all of the seeds we planted sprouted and grew fast. Now we're faced with this business of thinning. Never easy. Another factor is that one of us poked about 20 kohlrabi seeds into the ground all over the slope when we'd lost hope and they've all exploded into healthy plants too. My neighbor thinks it's cabbage. "Handsome cabbage patch you have there!" he says. I correct him but he doesn't hear it. "Yep, that's some nice looking cabbage." Sometimes I wonder if he planted it. Neither Loïc nor I remember planting it. I might have thrown some seeds down in frustration...

dahlias

The dahlias were a windfall, from the "magic flower lady" at the St. Antoine market of Lyon, where I shop during the week. We always go to this woman, who sings "did you know that flowers are magic?" over and over, in rhythm and harmony with the church bells that ring from time to time in the mornings. One morning she was offering a huge clump of dahlia tubers for €2 for the lot. I asked her what color they were, as if I cared. "Surprise!" she beamed. The clump filled a huge grocery store shopping bag. We tossed it in the trunk and dragged it out into the garden that evening. I spent a good hour wedging the vast knot of tubers apart with the old Parmesan knife I'd bought from a man on the street in Sicily, and burying them, one by one. It was good work. With each one that went into the ground, my little troubles melted away. Even if they don't come up for some reason like poor soil chemistry or slugs or something, I know I will have gotten my €2 worth. The hope for flowers is one of my most delectable painful pleasures. For me it sometimes ranks above the flowers themselves.

tomato flowers and our first haricots.

We're cutting herbs and greens already. Last weekend we enjoyed some flavorful young chard and arugula. I also prepared a dish using les fines herbes from my garden, which made it that much more satisfying. I am allowing some coriander to go to seed, but trying to keep the chervil from bolting by razing the lot every week. I get big bunches every weekend. The arugula made several delicious salads and went into a savory bread, and this weekend we found that it had bloomed. It's interesting to see the pretty flowers that these greens and herbs can produce.

French Market Menu Ideas for Blueberries

Different berries come out at different parts of the season. One precocious delightful berry I had the pleasure of tasting the other day is this what my neighbor is calling the "Siberian Blueberry" which from my research seems like a European cousin of the honeyberry. She gave me a big sack of them. Judging from taste, I imagine that if they were to appear on a producer's stand in Lyon they'd go for a pretty price. Her family grows and sells vegetables at a local market in her home town. I asked her if they ever put out baskets of these berries. "No, because they're mine" she responded.

Two small bushes were given to her 20 years ago by a man who appreciated her interest while she was on a horticultural themed school field trip to Poland. She explains that she put them in the garden of her childhood home, a ski station in the Haute Savoie, and they came to grow quite tall and produce amazingly huge crops of very small, intensely flavored berries that grow in clumps - ready to pick in late spring. Not your average blueberry.

While we wait for the higher altitude blueberry fields to ripen, I am happy for this exotic gift. She said that she has more than she knows what to do with. She normally freezes them, but thought I might appreciate a sack full. Do I! I went through my country notes for some examples of what the restauranteurs do with regular and wild blueberries across the country and provide you this list, while I decide what to do with these.

To begin:

A marbled foie gras terrine seasoned with blueberry infused Marc.
pan seared foie gras served simply with blueberries.
minced duck magret with Mont Lozère blueberries
a duck foie gras terrine with bonbons de myrtilles.

As part of a main dish:

Lamb chops served with a blueberry infused reduction sauce
duck breast with honey and blueberries
farm raised pigeon with a pink peppercorn and blueberry sauce
magret de canard with «blueberry blood»
filet de boeuf à la myrtille sauvage
veal loin with a blueberry seasoned jus

Or as part of a dessert:

The classic blueberry tart
blueberry crème brûlée
blueberries with licorice flavors in an entremet with a dollop of fresh young farmer's cheese sorbet
chocolate cake with a soft center of wild blueberry preserves
blueberry crumble
blueberries tucked into an almond sablé crust and crème patissière, served warm with vanilla ice cream
clafoutis aux myrtilles
matafan aux myrtilles
a fried blueberry flavored boule de crème brûlée refreshed with frozen yogurt
simple house made blueberry ice cream
wild blueberries served covered in a flurry of crushed meringue
fromage blanc with blueberries
thin crêpes with a wild blueberry sauce
a blueberry tartelette with its pistachio crème légère
thin waffles served with a lime seasoned blueberry confiture
vanilla seasoned fresh farmer's cheese mousse drizzled with a warm blueberry compote, topped with a thin sablé
a Bugundy sparkling wine sabayon with wild blueberries
thick soft pistachio and blueberry swirled cookies
white peach panna cotta drizzled with blueberry sauce
a Genepi seasoned blackberry and blueberry gratin
charlotte aux myrtilles
a blueberry tartelette served with white farmer's cheese ice cream.

In hopes that this list inspires you to expand your blueberry repertoire.

Mother's Day and His Lovely Pancakes

We celebrate Mother's Day later in France than we do in the States. It was this past weekend. It was my first Mother's Day! We had Alpine lake trout on the grill, stuffed with the proliferation of chervil that has to be cut back every week now to keep it from forming flowers and a good dose of dill weed, leftover from one of my herb ateliers with the Dartmouth College students.

Loic made good tasting pancakes with the levain we keep in the mountain kitchen, which seems to be doing well with some coddling every weekend. It still smells clean so we'll keep it going as long as it wants to keep playing house with us, it's been about a month now. It sits in one of the Russian soup pots I bought near that pickle market in St. Petersburg during our early years of marriage, by the stove. Once we get there and I get the fire going, it gets a good stir and a nice feeding and then warms up nice and toasty by the fire. It stays comfortably warm all weekend. When we leave for the week, the house cools down considerably, so it takes a nap for awhile. The kitchen is half underground, having been built into the mountain slope with 2 foot thick stone walls, so once it cools down it stays cool until we come back and pump up the fire again.



We just feed it on arrival (I toss in a sugar cube as a kind of repentance for nearly starving it to death and a couple of tablespoons of flour) and cover it loosely with foil. It gets fed flour again the next two days. Then we see how it looks the next weekend. So far so good, and the nice flavor reminds us both of the bread Loic used to make in Los Angeles when we were newlyweds, albeit much less scientifically recorded and monitored. I suspect that when the weather gets warm we might lose our levain, since it will most likely take on a sour aspect when the yeast population does begin to starve during the week. I'm just happy for the time we'll have with it. I won't worry about how long it's going to last. We like the bread we can buy up there just as much. But I like the kneading, and rising and all that. I like to plop a round loaf on the sheet, clip the top with scissors, and spray it with water every few minutes after it goes into the hot oven. The satisfying thing is that it comes out tasting like real bread each time, the kind we seek out, and the holes don't get too big.

I woke up on the morning of, and waited. I heard the baby making all kinds of conversation that eventually evolved to complaints. No coffee. I turned on my bedside light and broke out the almanac. Pages later, the morning birds started to change their song, baby continued to get into trouble, the sunshine began to creak and make sounds on the roof. I decided that it must be getting well into brunch time and made my way downstairs and he was still working on those lovely pancakes. They tasted very nice.

Here's a little film of our weekend levain.