For several summers running, I had rather a dreamy job which involved cooking whatever I wanted for a sweet family with a broad palate in the Southwest of France. Now, if you work in a restaurant, the bottom line is always in the front of your mind (or at least, your chef’s) and therefore your style can find itself rather cramped but other than occasional requests for potatoes (they were English after all) I could and did, mess about composing menus to my heart’s content.
The house was built out of what used to be the barn and the main house of a tiny hamlet and the wood and stone construction retained a rustic feel though the kitchen boasted 2 ovens (heaven!), a fridge which dispensed ice and a dishwasher as well as windows looking out over the sunset and sunrise sides of the house. When it was particularly hot, I could take off my sandals and cool my feet against the terracotta floor.
In the cool of the mornings, I jumped on the trampoline (I love tramps!) or rambled about with the dogs past other similarly picturesque houses, one of which sold rabbits and chickens that they raised and slaughtered.
On my days off, I occasionally visited charming towns like Rocamadour, of cheese fame, which is balanced extremely precariously on a cliff or I would stay and swim and join the family for lunch. C. not only taught me how to make Pytt-i-panna but also introduced me to Pissaladiere, the French version of pizza, said to have been brought to France by the Romans in the 1300s.
Though my French didn’t improve much, I did learn that pain au chocolat in the south are called chocolatines and if you order the former, you’ll be considered a no-good Northerner (or, more likely, a tourist). If you’re ever around those parts, try it – you might get a smile.
Do you know any dialect food words?
See Pissaladiere recipe here
Tagged as:
anchovies,
french,
olives,
onion jam,
pescatarian
While I can pretty much eat anything, I know I’m lucky to be able to do so. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that we are both the most chemical-drenched generation in history and suffering from an unprecedented rise in auto-immune diseases.
Like many cooks, for me, part of the joy of cooking for my friends is the feeling of nourishing them and taking care of them in a practical way. It’s sad that people seem to feel as though they should apologise for their food choices whether for health or personal reasons but I often hear “oh, sorry to be a pain but I can’t/don’t eat…” In fact, since I have so many things on my to-cook list, it helps me to have some parameters when I think about a menu.
Remember when I talked about lemon ginger tea and the imminent prospect of singing at a wedding? It was for my friends Nici and Max and in return they kindly shouted us to tickets to the Gurten Festival in Switzerland where we saw, among other bands, Faith No More and The Gossip together.
Nici has celiac disease and usually if I’m cooking for a friend who is gluten-free, I make rice or other grains but since we didn’t know if we’d be able to sit down if the ground was muddy, onigiri was likely to get squished and there was nowhere to heat food, bread seemed like the easiest option.
I did a little poking around and seeing Shauna’s recipe was easy, similar to the superlative no-knead bread in procedure and well-received in gluten-free quarters, I tried it. It was received unanimously well.
Do you know any other good gluten-free bread or cake recipes?
See here for Gluten Free Olive Bread recipe
Tagged as:
gluten free girl,
gluten-free,
olives
Confession: I used to have no idea how to cook. When I first moved out when I was 17, I used to subsist mainly on toast and I thought that putting every vegetable I had in the fridge in pasta sauce was a good idea. I could just about manage to make misoshiru.
I lived in town in a huge and dirty warehouse that I’m surprised wasn’t condemned and if you leaned out the window of the living room, you could always amuse yourself with the latest drama; one memorable time a woman was so drunk that when she tried to drive out of her (parallel) park, she merely went back and forth, bashing loudly into the car in front, then behind, over and over again.
The enormous pile of dishes in the barely functioning kitchen was no incentive to improve my skills either, but sometimes, a girl’s gotta have cake. At 3 am. While I didn’t know the basics of cooking, I could read and follow instructions so I tried this lemon and yoghurt cake recipe I got from Leon of chocolate picnic fame’s) mum.
Since then I think I‘ve probably made it more than 100 times. I still make it today. It’s my go-to cake.
When did you learn to cook?
See here for Lemon Yoghurt Cake recipe
Tagged as:
cake,
easy,
everyday cake,
fast,
lemon,
syrup,
yoghurt
One of the things I loved about living in Tokyo were the thriving businesses run by small shop-keepers: a tiny stationer’s shop wedged between the jeweller’s and a ramen stand, the yaki-imo man driving around in his pick-up truck with a brazier on the back calling out to all and sundry to get his sweet potatoes while they were steaming hot (yaki-imooooo, ya.ki.IMO!), shops selling nothing but seaweed and the local tofu shop which was no more than a hole in the wall.
I think these businesses survive despite the inevitable onslaught of convenience stores and supermarkets for several reasons, one being that the Japanese mania for terroir goes beyond even that of the French and so specialty shops have a loyal clientele and the second, more negative perhaps, is that most women with children tend to be housewives or part-time workers whether they like it or not and therefore have the time to shop at a variety of stores rather than a one-stop shop.
Tofu, despite its sometimes tasteless and suspiciously firm Western vegetarian incarnations, is lovely. When it is very fresh it has a creaminess that calls for nothing more than a grating of ginger, a sprinkling of spring onions and a splash of shoyu, a dish which is called hiyayakko. Since there (rather surprisingly) don’t seem to be any small tofu purveyors where I live in Austria, let alone a choice of more than two kinds (firm or cotton pressed and silken) I was reduced one day to using the stuff one can buy in a plastic shrink wrapped packet for hiyayakko.
It was sort of like eating a Snickers when you want a Belgian truffle but it hit the spot, sort of.
Do you live in a small shops or superstore kind of place?
See Hiyayakko instructions here
Tagged as:
gluten-free,
japanese,
tofu,
tokyo,
vegan,
vegetarian
