A Fun Time

I had a fun time the other day. We held a barbecue and invited several of our neighbours.

We barbecued some local pork which I had marinated in Brittany Cider, local onions, garlic and mushrooms. I used “sel de guerrande” which is a sea salt also from Brittany, that seems to go especially well in marinades with cider. The salt is harvested in huge ponds of sea water which are sealed and then left to evaporate in the sun. The resulting salt is exquisite.

Various neighbours brought dishes to share made with produce from their gardens. We had a very nice mixed leaf salad with so many different salad leaves it is impossible to list them all – in fact I’m not even sure what some of them were, but it sure tasted good.

Then another of our neighbours brought the famous Clafoutis. I posted an article about clafoutis recently. Clafoutis is a tart made from cherries and with a sort of custardy base. I don’t know how to make it, and living in this part of the world, I would never dream of trying! However, I do know how to eat it – slowly and savouring every mouthful. She had made it that day with cherries from her garden.

Sadly, I was busy trying to coax a very recalcitrant barbecue to get hot enough to cook pork so I didn’t get any photographs.

The day before the barbecue I had, once again visited my friend Bernard at his vineyard. We had some guests staying with us who wanted to buy some wine to take home and that was quite enough reason for me! We visited with Bernard and enjoyed the tour of his vines and chai before moving into his cave for the tasting. I was not on form on Wednesday so my translation was lees than perfect and on more than one occasion I couldn't find the English words for things like the Vats!

Our guests tried several wines, all from his vines from the light, fruity 2007 rosé through Bergerac Sec, the dry white to the rich ruby red 2004 Bergerac rouge. 2004 and 2005 produced very different reds in Bergerac and it is always interesting to see the look on peoples faces as they taste the two and I explain that both wines have been made by the same man from grapes from the same vines and using the same methods. The only difference is the weather the grapes grew up in!

Towards the end of the tasting I was telling Bernard about the barbecue but, sadly, he was unable to come as he would be leaving very early the following morning for a market several hours drive away. He produced a bottle of his rosé and tipped somewhat less than half a small tasting glass out probably no more than 50ml. He replaced this in the original bottle with a sweet syrup of Peach. Then pushed the cork back in and shook the bottle.

The result was a wonderfully tasty aperitif with the peach adding a very special and pleasant flavour to the rosé. I took the bottle with me and served it, well chilled, as the aperitif at the barbecue the following evening. Everyone really enjoyed it with several of our French neighbours demanding to know what secret recipe I had discovered. I was pretty pleased to be introducing people from this wine growing region to an aperitif with which they were not familiar and which they enjoyed so much.

In the garden here nothing much is happening. The weather remains awful with lots of rain and not much sunshine. Temperatures at this time of year should be up into the 30’s C (upper 80’s into 90’s F) but last week the highest temperature I recorded was 24 C (75 F) with a low of just 10C (50F). However, the weeds are growing prolifically and in most cases are far outstripping the crops. I read on other blogs that this is pretty much the same across France.

Cakes, pastries and all things good

I recently posted a picture to accompany something I was writing about cherries. It was a picture of a clafoutis a delicious cherry tart made in this part of France. After I posted it I was surprised at the amount of comments the pie got! After all, this is a gardening blog!!

Then, today, I went to my friend Kate’s blog Hills and Plains Seedsavers

And lo and behold she had also posted a picture of a cake. In this case it was a cake she had been given on a visit to see the gnomes who write the blog The Mad Gnomes Strike Again

The article was lovely, but what really attracted my attention were the two comments. There were 8 photos in Kate’s piece. That is because she is much better at digital photography than I am. One day I will find something I am better at than her!

So, I visited her page, there were two comments on a piece with 8 photos…. And both comments mentioned the one picture of a cake

I just thought that maybe our respective blogs are becoming not just veggie oriented, not even food oriented but distinctly cake oriented. Don’t get me wrong, I have no complaints about this at all. Austrian apple cake, French clafoutis cherry tart – who cares where the next cake comes from, just roll it right in here please.

Tomorrow is Saturday and in the morning I shall be making my weekly visit to the lovely market at Villereal. I'm going to take my camera, as I do every week. I'm going to take some photos, as I try to every week. I'm hoping this time I will have something to show you, as I also do every week. Wish me luck.

Those bees, they are wise you know?

We have a big old cherry tree in our garden. It stands proud, probably getting on for 12metres (40feet) high and guarding the entrance to our orchard. There are three walnut trees in the orchard as well, but even they, who are probably over a hundred years old, even they don’t seem as majestic as that cherry.

It’s an eating cherry, a beautiful big red, almost black, cherry. Every year since we moved here four years ago, we have been helped by the young daughter of one of our neighbours to pick the cherries, usually collecting about 10 to 15 kilos (20 to 30 lbs) of sweet ripe red cherries. Actually, we probably pick a lot more than that but that is the amount which make it back to the kitchen – the rest getting eaten on the way!

Once in the kitchen this gorgeous fruit has been turned into wonderful dishes. Of course, at harvest time a great number are just piled into the fruit bowl and eaten throughout the day. My neighbour’s kid also usually gets to take a big bowlful home which they eat over the next few days.

Then some are put into bags and frozen. They will be pulled out from the freezer throughout the coming year to use in all sorts of dishes or even just allowed to thaw and then eaten in their own juice.

Clafoutis, is a traditional dish made with cherries in a sort of custard batter which is very popular in this part of France. The dish is normally made with whole cherries because the pits add a special taste to the dish during baking. I actually make it with whole cherries because the one time I depitted the cherries, the cherry juice stained the batter and made the whole thing look almost inedible – but of course, in France, it’s the taste!

The rest of the cherries are made into cherry jam. I try and do this on the same day the cherries are picked but don’t always succeed. I also make a second batch of cherry jam about now, just as the new fruit is coming to harvest, using up all the left over frozen cherries from last year. I’m not sure whether I can taste the difference.

As I do every Saturday morning, I went to market last Saturday and there, on our greengrocers stall was cerises pays – cherries harvested locally, and it reminded me that it was time to be thinking about harvesting my own.

During last week I checked my cherry tree.. I took this picture of it back in March when it was just coming into blossom and subsequently it filled with crisp white cherry blossom.

Rather than finding 10 to 15 kilos of cherries waiting to be picked, I found about 10 to 15 cherries!

Suggestions from the local French sages who garden are that the weather during spring was so awful the bees couldn’t pollinate the tree properly. It was very, very wet, it was very, very windy and they would be buffeted and knocked off course as they tried to collect the pollen.

Another idea is that the huge drop in the bee population is being seen in failed crops.

But one of my neighbours solved the riddle when he said to me. (In a thick French accent) “Those bees, they are wise you know? They wake up in their hives and look out of the window. It is blowing a gale, it is pouring down with rain, so they simply roll back into bed and snuggle down under their blankets”

Well wouldn’t you?