Where would we be without mayo, the saving sauce of this quick-fix and fresh season?  Not from a jar, but we’re whipping up a bowlful most mornings to be ready for lunch.  For cold chicken, strips of poached fish, and devilishly good with hard boiled eggs, a dollop of mayonnaise is the vagabond’s answer to enhancing almost anything savory.  Mash a clove or two of garlic for the aïoli version to acccompany Salade Niçoise while green beans  steam and are soon ready to plate.  Stir in a little horseradish for cold pork, a little moutarde de Dijon for sliced tomatoes, minced fresh basil to go with whatever is plucked straight from the garden:  mayonnaise’ versatile simplicity easily dresses up leftovers or a bowl of just-steamed new amandine potatoes.

Hold tight to the bowl and whisk, whisk.....

To keep up with the summer’s bounty, mayonnaise can deviate from the classic formula of 1 egg yolk, 1/2 cup oil + 1/2 cup best olive oil + 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard + a pinch of salt.  But to begin with, it is a simple emulsion of whisked egg, oil and additional seasonings, so put an egg yolk ( or 2 ) with the Dijon mustard (Not the sweetened or cheaper stuff – your taste buds will say  merci!) and whisk (by hand – this isn’t enough to use the blender) as it thickens, then add sea salt, and drip by drip whisk in the oil, finishing with the best of your olive oils.  Frankly, using All olive oil has its adherents – but you must use the freshest of Quality oils.  If the vagabond lived on the Ligurian coast of Italy where the lightest, grassy and loveliest oils (note a bias here) are produced, I would. The best balance on a regular basis comes from a blend of grape seed oil or other mild oils and good olive oil.  Our trials have come up very green and bitter with ordinary olive oils (resembling something like crank-case oil?).  A finishing touch of lemon juice – tasting for salt & lemon juice is critical here.  If you have fresh tarragon, mince it and blend in to accompany fresh fish or chicken, or add a scoop of horseradish to perk up cold pork or thinly sliced duck magret or roast beef.  Chop black olives into your mayo to bring the provençal touch to seared or grilled fish.  Sauce Andalouse adds chopped tomatoes and, well, you get the idea – stir it up as you please!

A pinch of lime juice plays up melon's flavor

A slice of this morning’s melon, wrapped in paper-thin slices of country ham -  or as we often do in the southwest, sliced duck ham, with a squeeze from a juicy lime – what could be simpler as a starter or as lunch on a sweltering, hot day?  In fact, you can hold the ham and give me just the lime juice to enhance this sweet curcurbit. Some will wrap their sliced Charentais in prosciutto, others give it a twist of black pepper, sea salt or nutmeg to accent the melon’s flavor.  Right now, when market vendors heap the round, netted spheres of Charente melon or smoother, ridged local cantaloupe in pyramids, it is easy to get used to a slice or three for lunch every day.

Chilled, this fruit of the vine is a cool antidote to the heat waves that can sap our energy.  Desert people knew that….the Egyptians have been eating melon since 2400 B.C.  Moors hybridized wild melons that couldn’t be eaten raw to produce a sweet melon.  During their centuries of rule in  Sicily and Spain, melons became a part of the extensive Arabian agricultural legacy.  Popes in both Rome and Avignon dined on melons, and encouraged local production.  The curious gardener, Thomas Jefferson, planted and savored melon from his garden in Monticello.  So, this curcurbit, in the same family as cucumbers and squash, has taken hold in warm climates around the world.  Across the south of France, from the Atlantic coast’s Charente Maritîme through the Lot and Quercy, to Carpentras and the melon fields of Provence, the melon season is ON.  Which is best? You might want to do a tasting tour to judge for yourself, for local melon appears on menus as a starter as well as dessert.  To finish a summer dinner on a light note, just drizzle a little Pineau de Charente or sweet Monbazillac wine into a small, fruit-filled melon half for a little bit of heaven.

So cool, local, and in season

Pear blossoms, an April pleasure

The gnarly old pear tree – said to be one hundred years old – is a reassuring sign that April is on track.  This year it is laden with blossoms, which will drift onto the flower bed below before summer’s warmer days bring a cover of greenery.  The variety is a hard winter pear to be picked and ripened in the shade during autumn months. But my attention now turns to the ground, to the potager calling to be spaded and prepared for tomato and pepper plants.  These and lettuce sets are already available at the weekly market, so I am running behind.  In April’s chilly mornings and warm afternoons everything shoots and sprouts at once.

New rhubarb and oranges sanguine...

For weeks, I watched the pink rhubarb stems like a hawk, noting more bundles of leaves ready to unfurl and shoot out from the rich soil near our potager compost heap. It had been a cold winter – just the trigger rhubarb needs for energetic production.  One more day of growth in the clump was all it needed before enough could be pulled to cook, enough for a dish or two of rhubarb sauce, whip, or fool.  So, a dish of  rhubarb sauce lightened with a dash of orange zest is in the picture for our first spring supper outdoors.  Having trimmed and cleaned the slim stalks, I chopped them up to measure almost 2 cups.  A cup of water sweetened with a tablespoon of honey and slivers of orange peel – all heated in a saucepan, ready to simmer the rhubarb, covered, for 10 to 12 minutes – was all it took.  Since oranges sanguine (blood oranges) are still available, I squeezed the juice from a quarter of an orange to give color to the sauce.  This is just enough for 2, but if drained and folded into whipped cream (and a sprinkling of shaved, toasted almonds) it could stretch to serve 4.  With almond cookies, of course.  Longer spring evenings invite a walk ’round the garden after supper – to discover more signs of spring.

Earliest wild orchids - in poor, rocky places

Hot off the griddle, blinis for apéros or...supper

Often blini -  little two-bite disks of goodness – appear as cocktail party fare at Christmas and Easter, making an appearance on some platters for a Mardi Gras fest.  But a blin or two can be great comfort food any time. The vagabond has fond memories of these pancakes as an occasional late supper after a long day’s work in wintry Helsinki. Hopping off the tram in front of Sashlik, one of the city’s Russian restaurants, once I stepped through the brocade entry curtains, the February snow and slush seemed far behind.  No menu was necessary, as I knew what to order:  a side of buttery blini and a restorative bowl of beet borscht. With the blini, just a dab of smetana and chopped dill – and an icy thimble-sized glass of vodka.

These lingering images stir me on, and I return to blini-making.  Most of my recipes call for  several pounds of flour, six eggs, a half-pound of butter – too big a batch without a crowd to feed.  At last, a scaled-for-two recipe of such stunning simplicity fell out of a favorite cookbook and landed in my lap.  This will make about fifteen to eighteen small blini:  allow about three hours including cooking them – two hours for the batter to rise gives you time to clear the way, chop up the garnish and heat the griddle.

Easy blini:      3/4 cup /175 ml  milk, warmed

2 tsp. granulated yeast

1/2 cup/ 50 g. buckwheat flour

1 large egg, separated

1/4 cup / 25 g. plain flour + 1/2 tsp. fine sea salt

1/4 cup /75 ml butter, melted

2 Tablespoons thick cream

2 Tablespoons minced dill (or dried if none is available)

1/2 cup/150 ml butter, warmed/clarified for cooking

Garnishes:  chopped green spring onions, chopped hard-boiled eggs, fish roe such as trout or – best of all – vendace, white fish roe/muikkun matti

Sprinkle the yeast over the warmed milk, let it proof for 10 minutes. Put the flours in a mixing bowl, make a well and plop the egg yolk in, then whisk in the milk/yeast. Set the bowl in a warm place to rise for 2 hours, wrapped in  a thick towel. Bubbles will form and let you know it is ready:  whip the egg white and fold it into this batter with melted butter, fold in the thick cream and dill (or use fresh dill as a garnish if you prefer). Heat a crêpe pan or iron skillet, dribble on some clarified butter (use the golden top layer, it tolerates high griddle temps) and drop 1 full tablespoon of batter for each blin; flip as bubbles begin to form around the edges. Keep warm (on a covered plate or in foil) or serve at room temperature with the garnishes.  And what to drink with your blini fest?  Sparkling wine, or iced vodka is the vagabond’s suggestion.

Cook’s Notes: Buckwheat flour is essential – but if you wish, use 1/3 rye flour, 1/3 buckwheat and 1/3 white flour proportions for heartier blini. The real deal is to have them “swimming in butter”, as a Finnish friend counsels, but that will be up to you.  Clarified butter has a higher smoke point, so it is worth the extra minutes to melt and separate it for cooking them without burning.  With the addition of smoked fish (delicate trout or peppered mackerel), lemon slices, sour cream and a modest beet and apple salad, blinis become a light supper.  Watch for more of the amazing buckwheat story in March.

Lemons ready.... for soup

There is a point in winter when my soup répertoire sags a little. What root can be added, what spice and snap can I stir in?  A perk-up for chicken or vegetable soup is in order. When one eats soup every day (in provincial France, still very common), before or as the evening meal, there must be something beyond tourain (a garlic-infused broth with slices of yesterday’s baguette) or soupe au pistou (many vegetables in a savory broth, somewhat like minestrone).  These are basics – along with velouté de potimarron (winter squash purée) and châtaigne (chestnut cream) -  filling soups for workers’ lunches in auberges and restaurants routiers (truck stops) across the southwest. There’s nothing wrong with those if you are chopping wood or building a barn.  Let’s simply say I’m looking to lighten up a first course soup. To do just that I look south to Greece…. and find lemons.

Whether this Mediterranean combination of eggs and lemons is a silky soup or a sauce, Avgolemono wakes up any bored diner’s tastebuds. Whisk eggs and lemon juice, stir into a chicken broth, heat through and serve – what could be easier?  I first tasted avgolemono (stress middle syllable…avgo Le mono) in a Greek Taverna in Chicago – on Halsted Street as I recall,  it seems eons ago – where my papilles (taste buds) were duly impressed.  And it was an introduction to pastina, tiny oval pastas that look like rice.  Most recipes begin with: cook a three pound chicken, etc. , but you could easily base this on last month’s basic soup stock (post of January 22), and add a cupful of chopped chicken or serve salted chicken on the side.  As with any use of fresh eggs, temperatures need to be watched carefully so curdling doesn’t spoil the soup.  Use white rice or pastina - i prefer “langue des oiseaux“, birds tongues pastina available in specialty shops selling Mediterranean products.

To serve 4, once you have  heated 4 cups of broth in a small soup pot, toss in 1/3 cup of pastina or long grain white rice to cook, covered for 20 minutes while you whisk the avgolemono in a bowl:

2 large, fresh eggs, whisked for 3 minutes

juice of 1 or 2 lemons (2 if you like it tart) & thin lemon slices for garnish; 1 lemon yields about 1/4 cup juice

Add the lemon juice to the eggs, beating constantly – then gradually blend in 1 cup of hot stock from the soup pot, continue beating without interruption, and pour this mixture into the soup, stirring (for 5 to 10 minutes) as it thickens slightly. It should be satiny smooth and the pastina or rice translucent at this point. This last-minute trick depends on the cook’s concentration, stirring as the soup warms. Garnish each bowl with a lemon slice or parsley sprig.

Avgolemono as a sauce can be made in a similar way, using a double boiler or dish over (never touching the water) a pan of boiling water.  Myrsini Lambraki* suggests sauce proportions of 1 egg to the juice of 1 lemon, a pinch of salt and 1/2 cup or more of the vegetable stock whisked in to the desired thickness.  Separate the whites and yolks for a frothier sauce, and serve on fish, asparagus, courgettes, broccoli or cauliflower (this is superb).  A Greek friend warns – never serve avgolemono with tomatoes or garlic, but suggests topping each serving with cracked black pepper or minced Greek oregano.  That, or a sprinkling of chopped fresh mint on top will transport you to a taverna table overlooking the Agean.

*Myrsini Lambraki’s useful Cretan Cuisine for Everyone, published by Myrsini Edition in 2005, emphasizes vegetables and explains the principles of the Mediterranean diet pyramid.

I fell for grissini in Turin one winter weekend, and although it was a few years ago, it was a memorable gastronomic crush.  Bakers’ windows,  steamed up from the warmth inside, all displayed individual styles – some straight, some knobby – of these long, crisp fingers of bread.  To call them “bread sticks” doesn’t seem quite fair, for they ran from delicate wands to thicker, shorter sticks studded with herbs or seeds. All variations are very crisp, wonderful for nibbling with a bowl of thick, hearty soup. Every winter I indulge in a nostalgic trip back to Turin via a batch of homemade grissini.

Savory wands, Grissini banish the winter "blahs"

If you can’t find frozen pizza dough, or if your favorite bakery doesn’t take orders for unbaked baguette dough, simply make your own. This can be made the day before, kept to cool-rise overnight and rolled out, shaped to bake for the next day’s lunch. If you do this, let it rest at room temperature before working the dough. It also can be rolled into a long log, sliced into rounds and patted flat to make pitas.  Simple, economical grissini can be on the table in under two hours. Begin by proofing (sprinkle yeast over the water, cover and let it rest for 10 minutes in a warm place) until the surface begins to show some tiny bubble activity :

1 teaspoon dried yeast sprinkled over 1 + 2/3 cup/14 oz/400ml warm water

4 1/2 cups to 5 cups/1 lb.4 oz. unbleached white flour – this will vary with the flour you use; allow more for dusting the work surface)  + 1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons each mixed herbs and seeds for rolling each wand: oregano, thyme, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, Hungarian sweet paprika, celery salt, crushed black pepper – choose 2 or 3, as you like – mixed on a plate.

olive oil for your hands and to brush over grissini before baking

Put the flour in a warm bowl, gradually pour the water + yeast in along the inside of the bowl, stirring to incorporate it without becoming lumpy – pinch any lumps with your fingertips and keep working it into a ball. Cover and let this rest for about 30 minutes. Prepare 2 large baking sheets by lining each with a piece of baking paper, preheat the oven to hot:  450° f./230°c. When the dough has almost doubled, oil your hands and knead, slapping the dough and turning it over until it feels elastic. Slice it into 6 parts, roll one by one into a long rectangle 1 1/2 inches/3 to 4 mm thick, and cut evenly into 6 parts. Pick each one up, roll and begin to twist – the dough will stretch – so cut each strand in half, roll in the mixed herbs and place on the baking sheet. Brush each with a little olive oil. Let rest while shaping all the grissini, then bake for 10 minutes - just as you put them in, spray the oven interior with a water mist (to crisp edges) – until lightly golden. Then turn off the oven, open the door slightly and watch closely that they are not too brown, but leave to crisp for about 10 minutes before taking them out to cool on a rack.  Depending on how thin you shape them, this should make 2 to 3 dozen grissini. In metal tins lined with aluminum foil, they will keep at least a week in a cool place.  Serve short ones with apéros to dip into a tapenade, brousse or soft cheese dip – save the long grissini to enjoy with  salads and soups… to chase away any winter blues or blahs.

Every recipe has its source, an inspiration to try a new angle. I must thank Alba Pezone for clarifying steps in making grissini, as found in Elle à Table, December 2009.

Roots, herbs...all go into the stock pot

Making Soup,  a few words on step 1:  Stock

Turnips with lilac shoulders, a stalk of crisp celery or two, a duck or guinea fowl carcass, maybe a ham bone, and don’t forget the carrots to give a winter soup color…with  sage, thyme and bay leaves. All of these flavor-giving basics are at hand when I reach for the soup stock kettle. Market day will provide more ingredients: leeks, a handful of parsley that the maraîcher always tucks into my sack, and yellow onions whose inner skins will be added for color.  I’ll use the inner, trimmed green leek tops minced up – save the most of the whites for the final soup, onions  will be quartered and stuck with cloves and carrots scrubbed but not peeled. Following Patricia Wells’ sound advice that vegetables cut in small pieces give the stock more of their flavor, I’ll chop them up, run cold water into the soup pot to cover all ingredients, turn on the heat to medium and begin the day’s simmering. The herbs tucked inside the carcass won’t float to the top with eventual foam, making skimming easier. Actually, any fresh veg you have on hand, from cores of cauliflower to broccoli stems will add flavor and nutrients, so use it all up. Lift the lid after ten minutes, begin to skim off any foam rising, then add 1 tablespoon sea salt and 1 tablespoon white wine or cider vinegar (to draw calcium from the bones into the stock) and turn heat to low.  After about four hours – or longer if you wish – strain the soup into glass jars and let the stock cool. Pull pieces of duck or pork off the bones for a spaghetti sauce or soup later. With a good layer of duck fat on top, the stock will keep about a week – if you don’t use it in a risotto first!  More about soup next week: pastinas, tiny noodles…and almond dumplings.

As golden and plump as a ripe quince, autumn is here at last.  Something about the fullness of this season, always a mixture of pleasure and melancholy, brings more to do than hours in a day allow. Beyond finishing up some desk work, beyond raking a fresh ton of maple and elm leaves, then pulling out dry tomato plants – it is a season that draws me into la petite cuisine. With a bowl of firm quince at the ready, what is stopping the vagabond from taking a new tack with a pork roast?  And stirring up a pot of duck stock for vegetable soup fits into the week end’s goal: a Sunday lunch with friends. The menu is lined up:  a pork roast has been rubbed with minced rosemary, garlic, sage and a little pepper, then wrapped in jambon de pays/cured country ham to mellow overnight. Quince and sweet onions are ready to sauté in duck fat to accompany the pork.  Sweet potatoes and carrots will roast slowly, drizzled with pan juices for an hour. A ripened bleu de Gex and lait cru/raw milk Camembert are cool, waiting their turn on the table. My master chef/MC has cooked the apple sauce and formed his special pastry dough into a ball to rest overnight – ready to roll in the morning for Tarte aux pommes à la Michel - before slicing firm apples for the garniture/topping. A few recipes will follow after the true test: tasting on Sunday.

Monday’s report adds a few details to the pork roast recipe sketched above. A 3 pound/1.5 kg rolled pork roast for 7 or 8 begins with the seasoning and wrapping in four slices of jambon de pays/cured country ham. Let the seasoned roast rest overnight, then bring to room temperature in the morning. Allowing about 2 hours roasting, preheat oven to 350°f/175°c; a meat thermometer should show 185° f/90°c  when done. Heat a heavy skillet and sear the roast on all sides before putting it into the roasting pan, on top of a bed of sage leaves. Insert meat thermometer. After 40 minutes, add 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into rounds (some may be tucked under the roast). Season with white pepper and nutmeg, drizzle with olive oil or melted butter, return roast to oven – but baste every 30 minutes. Remove from the oven 20 minutes before serving in a heated dish, surrounded with the rounds of sweet potatoes. Garnish with parsley & sage leaves. Serve with a side of brown rice or wild rice. Well balanced wines from our Bergerac region, the Pécharmant, compliment the rich flavors and sweet tones of this menu. Look for the Pécharmant reds of Château Tillerai, Château Terre Vieille – or splash out with a Graves from Château d’Ardennes….to toast the golden season.

Quince in focus: The fruit, the tree, the lore of cydonia oblonga are brought into focus on the site – scroll down to October 27 entry:

http://blog.metmuseum.org/cloistersgardens/2008

Next up: report on the almond harvest, making chèvre at home (at last), and a visit with vintners.

With Labor Day comes a “back to school” mood, and with that mood memories of many years spent preparing the art room for a new round of  classes.  Days short on time meant bag lunches of fruit, a sandwich and…Fig Newtons.  Is it any wonder that an association still remains?  This month, daily walks to a splendid white fig tree – the Adriatic variety, if my sources are correct – bring back a few hazy memories of figgy brown-bag treats.  The green, sheeny globes of figs are bulging now, inviting me to gather a few every evening as they slowly ripen.  Since the large tree grows next to a railroad overpass, we have access only to the tree tops.  I use an umbrella handle to loop over branches, pulling them closer to twist off a few ripe fruit. Figs don’t ripen after being picked, and can only be kept for a day or two in a cool pantry. So, with twenty-four perfect figs on hand, it’s time to preserve them for winter feasts.

Select firm, ripe fruit with no marks or splits, rinse gently and let them dry. Prepare a simple medium syrup in one soup pot, dissolving 3 cups of sugar in 6 cups of water and letting it simmer while preparing the 24 figs. If you like, add a stick of cinnamon or a few star anise to the syrup. Wash a lemon and cut into thin slices, to be added to each jar. In another pot half filled with boiling water, blanch the figs for 2 minutes. Scoop them out with a skimmer and immerse in the hot syrup, bring to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 5 to 8 minutes.  Sterilize 3 (or 4*) pint jars & lids in a boiling water bath. With tongs, remove the jars; carefully ladle figs into each jar, slip in a lemon slice and top up with the hot syrup, leaving 1/4 ” air space.  Wipe rims clean and place lids on, twist to seal. Place in a boiling water bath (use the one in which jars were sterilized), cover and process for 45 minutes. Depending on the size of the fruit, you may need another* jar. Any remaining syrup is ready for poaching pears or nectarines.  Let the jars cool away from drafts, let rest for a day, then label and store in a cool, dark place for a month. Then they’ll be ready to serve with a cheese platter, as a sweet garnish for duckling or pork – or as a gift for a fig-loving friend.

Scents-wise: Gathering the fruit or stirring up a jam, the fig’s sensual aromas are so intense – “this should be bottled”, I mused.  A California couple has done just that, with Mediterranean Fig scents and soaps in the Pacifica line.  Visit www.pacificaperfume.com and don’t miss the Mediterranean Fig body butter with almond oil!

Or should I say, rooster soup?  While September winds rustle in the maple trees, a pot of soup simmers away on the back burner.  Rich aromas of leeks, carrots and herbs in chicken soup fill the house.  After Sunday’s delicious dinner of braised coquelets, the obvious follow-up is to fill a kettle with vegetables, the trimmed wings and necks  (no feet this time) and gizzards of the little roosters. One advantage of living in southwestern France is an abundant supply of poultry – all sorts of feathered fowl.  So, when a friend thins out the number of young roosters in her chicken coop, the meaty little birds are on the menu.  They are bought with necks intact, so these and the wing tips are loped off for Monday’s rich broth.  With fond memories of Julia Child’s inimitable “Making Chicken Bouillon”  TV episode, I pull the gizzard, heart and liver out to reserve as well. The hands-on approach becomes second nature when fresh fowl is so much a part of the culinary landscape.  Actually, the coquelet can be prepared as you would squab or quail or small game birds: they need to be wrapped in strips of smoked bacon to retain flavor, stuffed with garlic and herbs, then roasted or braised in red wine. In this Bergerac region, there’s no shortage of red wine.

It does take time, making soup, and in France, “…time bows at the altar of gastronomy” as Roger Cohen observed in Monday’s  International Herald Tribune (August 31, page 7, Views). In an article titled, Advantage France, he cleverly recounts the ceremonial trimming of canettes (female ducklings) in a French market, and ladles out astute philosophy while noting innate cultural differences.  Being more involved with our food sources, and the less appealing tasks of preparation is, well, part of the process.  It is, as Cohen points out, connected to time, place and terroir.  And often this can’t be specifically translated, but ….it can be tasted.

September’s bites :  White figs,  Limousin markets, making fresh chèvre, and notes on the almond harvest.