In the tenth century at the Abbey St. Michel in Gaillac some monks planted the first vineyards of what is now the Gaillac Wine Appellation. Last night I went wih my English neighbours Anita and Ray to an apero at this ancient Abbey.
Come for an apero! The French shorten the word aperatif to apero when they ask you round for a drink in the evening. This habit of shortening many words or worse turning lots of phrases into acronyms means a foreigner like me has to almost learn a third language in order to get along linguistically. Every second Friday night during July and August there is an apero in the garden behind the Abbey. For the princely sum of five euros you can buy a plate with olives, cheese, salami and chips along with a ticket for two glasses of wine. Then you find a table and chair and bask in the wonderful evening light on the banks of the Tarn River and listen to the band play and watch the French dance. They dance at every opportunity. No matter what the music, it is the same dance and I swear every one of them can dance at birth. A different band plays each week. Last night it was Salsa. It could be New Orleans Jazz or Country and Western. About two hundred people can fit into the grounds and it is always crowded with young and old. There seems to be no age bar at social gatherings here, unlike Australia and also I'm told the UK where neither oldies nor children are truly welcome.
While the young and not so young danced or gossiped, the children played happily in the tiny vineyard "garden" planted in the grounds. Anita commented that in England they could well be classed as "out of control" . French children are extremely well behaved and as they are taken everywhere with their parents from birth they are very well adjusted socially.
It was a great evening and watching the dancers and the happy faces of the crowd reminded how much my small enterprise Vin de Tarn has to offer for visitors to this area. My groups become more like family rather than simply clients or tourists during a lively busy week here in lovely Labarthe-Bleys. They get to experience a real Taste of the Tarn on evenings like this.
This week I am in Denmark for the graduation from Gymnasium of my grand daughter, Nicole. This event is a huge celebration for the students and is a more important milestone than university graduation. It is a centuries old tradition and certainly a very public spectacle with the population willingly being party to the celebration.
I flew from Toulouse to Copenhagen to be present on this important occasion which marks the end of the three final years of high school study. My “graduate” arrived to meet me for breakfast in town looking very chic and stylish in her graduation cap (literally a graduant's beanie) which resembles a sailors cap. They wear their cap with pride at all times for a week. Capped students are stopped in the street and congratulated on their achievement. Tourist often try to buy the cap but they are a prized possession which the recipients keep, pretty much forever. School friends write messages in the lining and bite the rim and leave their teeth marks for good luck.
Saturday was the formal school ceremony with speeches and songs followed by each graduating student, the girls in white, receiving their diploma. As you can imagine the following drinks and nibbles provided by the school is a noisy affair with a hundred students and their families taking photos and blowing horns and whistles.
Each class then drives off in an assortment of hired and decorated trucks for a day of feasting and drinking. In the "olden days" this was a horse drawn vehicle. Once the trucks leave the school, their journey takes them to the home of every member of the class for sandwiches and drinks. Our job after the ceremony was to hotfoot it home to prepare for the class visit. As Nicole’s truck arrived the loud chanting of Nicole, Nicole announced their arrival, then a rush of girls and boys into her home to be feted, fed, congratulated and photographed yet again. The students drink copious amounts of alcohol during the day and make lots of noise. The wagon, truck or whatever vehicle they’ve chosen is driven at all times by the hired drivvr of the truck so parent worry about the consequences of this orgy of eating and drinking is minimized. The visit to each home is kept strictly to fifteen minutes and they arrive and leave in a great whirl of happiness and laughter.
Last night we went to celebrate at FIAT, a restaurant in Copenhagen. I had booked a table and requested to be seated in the courtyard. We arrived and were shown to what had to be the worst table, in front of the cloakroom and kitchen doors. We asked if perhaps a better table might be possible and a few minutes later were shown to what was arguably the best table in the restaurant. And it was all because of the power of that cap. Thank you and congratulations Nicole.
Walking is taken quite seriously here in the Tarn. One has many choices, from the major pilgrim routes to a leisurely walk in the many nearby spectacularly beautiful forests, lanes and fields.
I recently joined a Walking Club and now go off somewhere different each Monday morning with a very friendly group of people. The familiar tu rather than the more formal vous is used from the first meeting and kisses on each cheek are exchanged all round as a greeting along with lots of bonjours and comment ca va, or how are you? I have often seen such groups here and there and made some enquiries about joining a group but it took an invitation from one of my neighbours to get around to it.
The first week was a little strange as we walked back here to my village of Labarthe-Bleys and took a very familiar walk. Each walk is led by a member of the group and something unusual or interesting is included. During a morning in the Forest de Gresigne we saw a hidden ruined glass blowing factory from the eighteenth century. The characteristically green glass made in this forest was famous in that era. We stopped at a tiny hamlet with lovely church where the mayor came to greet us. Catholics were buried in the cemetery close to the church and the Protestants on the other side of the road. The protestant part now belongs to our guide and forms part of his garden. When he was a child his great grandmother told him that after a big storm they would find bones in their well. It seems that almost all glassblowers were Protestants. Last week we drove about twenty minutes up into the Aveyron and walked through the most beautiful country side imaginable. As summer has not arrived yet, each walk has been in unusually cool weather. Because of the recent rain, we found lots of mushrooms this week. June is the month to find the delicious delicately flavoured girolle mushroom. There are no walks in July and August, normally the very hot months.
A number of friends have taken one and two week pilgrim walks to Santiago de Compestella in Spain but walking the twenty to thirty kilometers a day required is a bit daunting for me. These very important routes cross much of the South of France on their way to Santiago de Compestella to the shrine of the apostle St James. In medieval times the pilgrims wore a cockle shell, usually around their neck to mark them as pilgrims under the protection of the order of St James. It was also used as a drinking vessel. On the road up to the old city of Cordes sur Ciel there is a house with a cockle shell carved above the front door and I have often promised to find out more but so far ....
Coquilles St Jacques although well known was just a delicious seafood dish for me before I came here and learned about the coquille and the pilgrims. My friend Sabine, who lives in Brittany where delicious seafood is part of the daily diet, decided to make Coquilles St Jacques for a special and big O birthday party for her husband last year. We spent a couple of days trying to find sixty real cockle shells and not the plastic serving ones sold everywhere. Usually they are easy to buy but not that year. Here is Sabine's recipe, for six not sixty people. Mushrooms are often included in the recipe for this dish
Coquilles St Jacques.
Half a kilo of Scallops
3/4 cup of white wine
1/2 cup water
Juice of a lemon
1 small onion finely chopped.
6 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup cream
Salt and pepper
Breadcrumbs
Grated gruyere cheese
Scallops
Simmer the scallops gently in the water, lemon juice and wine, mixture for a few minutes. Do no overcook them as they will become tough Sauce
Melt butter and onions and add the flour. Stir for a few moments and then add some of the wine and water mixture. Stir until the sauce is a little thicker than the consistency you want and then add the cream. This is basically a simple béchamel sauce with a nice fishy flavour.
Top with breadcrumbs and grated cheese.
Pop under a griller for a few moments to melt the cheese.
Another very quick and simple variation of mine is to chop an onion finely and cook it for a few minutes in butter. Then add the scallops and gently cook for four or five minutes. Flame the mixture with cognac and pour over a bed of steamed rice to serve.
I came to live in Labarthe-Bleys par hazard (by chance) as a result of meeting two English women who ran one week summer workshops here. I was living in Cordes sur Ciel and helping a friend restore an amazing historic building which had been the centre of the embroidery industry in the town at the end of the 19th Century. I was invited for dinner here as a result of showing interest in a workshop on Shakespeare run by one of these women, Julia Wilson-Dickson. But there was no mention of a Food and Wine workshop even though Pippa was a fabulous cook! Not to share and celebrate the gourmet delights of this region seemed to me a terrible waste. We are surrounded by the vineyards of the Gaillac appellation, one, if not the oldest in France, along with a bounty of wonderful fresh seasonal food so this seemed a serious omission. When I broached this Pippa said airily “ everyone asks us that, why don’t you do it?” And so it was that Wine and Food Studio, which morphed into Vin de Tarn was born.
My love of the region has grown and my passion for wine and food keep me on an eternal diet of delicious delicacies. If strawberries and asparagus are the sure sign of spring, it is cherries that sing “summer is here”. This week-end the arrival of the first cherries is celebrated in Céret south of Toulouse. It is a custom to send the first box of cherries each season from there to the French President. Nearer to home Castelsarrasin has been celebrating the arrival of the Berlat cherries this week-end and not to be left out so have I, by eating lots of them and making clafoutis a la Mme Ciron who was my trusty housekeeper at Chateau Rahoul near Bordeaux when I lived there mny years ago, in another lifetime. I visited a number of years ago and she had saved the very last of the cherries on her tree to make clafoutis for me. I still have her recipe for this pancake like desert written all those years ago in my Favourites Folder, and I know she would be happy to share it with you. Whilst cherries are the traditional fruit other summer fruits can be substituted.
Clafoutis a la Mme Ciron.
400 grams of ripe deseeded cherries ( traditionally they were cooked with seeds but..)
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of all purpose flour
200 ml milk
Vanilla
A little slosh of Eau de Vie (I use a home made one which is very strong)
You will need a shallow round buttered baking dish about 15x20 cms.
Beat the batter ingredients together and leave for about 10 minutes. Butter the dish and spread the cherries in the dish. Sprinkle with sugar and place in a preheated oven of 200 degrees for about ten minutes. Bring the cherries from the oven and pour the batter over them. Return to the oven for about 30 minutes or until it sets.
Note. Making good clafoutis this is not quite as simple as it sounds. More flour and it becomes stodgy, less and it can fail to set. The first one I made was a runny disaster. If this happens, keep experimenting until you get the quantities right for you. Delicious served warm with a heavy dusting of icing sugar and cream or yogurt.
Afternoon tea and Pannetone with some friends was a lucky day for me because it led to a wonderful afternoon of brilliant theatre in Albi yesterday. A neighbour, Pat is a singer in a local choir and during tea and cake she mentioned they were performing Carmina Burana in May and asked if any of us wanted tickets. It was a wow. In any major city it would have been a success. The principal singers were professionals but the 500 strong choirs were amateurs. The choreography was brilliant and very topical. Le Casino opened the performance with tables piled with gold ingots surrounded by gamblers who had become robots, slaves to one goal, money; all else forgotten. This of course led to misery downfall and ruin. Tyranny, liberation, fornication, and murder follow. Finally after terrible suffering peace returns but the people become bored with that and finally they return to mammon and the casino. La Fortuna presided throughout the performance. The orchestra was excellent. The audience responded as only a French audience can, with the rhythmic clapping which shows their approval. They will also be performing to sell out performances in Agen and Toulouse.
Saturday and Sunday are my favourite market days. Sunday it is Saint Antonin about twenty minutes away so yesterday Maddie my neighbour and I went for our weekly fix. Once the hurdle of parking is out of the way, it is paradise for greedy gourmands. Outstanding for produce all year round now that it is spring this market is exceptional. It is the May Day long week-end and traditional fragrant, delicatemuguet, or lily of the valley bouquets were on sale at most stalls. Baskets at the ready for the goodies it was taste, and try everything. The colours were so vibrant and green seemed to be the colour of the week. First it was a purchase of pots of aromatics or herbs to plant in the garden. Without a second thought we bought fat green olives, a lovely bunch of fresh asparagus, tiny tasty leaves of spinach and fresh PetitPoiswhich we shelled and ate as we strolled along the narrow market street. Speckled quail eggs which looked almost too pretty to eat and Aillete, the young fresh garlic now in season also went into the baskets. This is instant gratification at its best and so much more satisfying than adding items to an internet basket. The famous local Garriguete strawberries, which bear only one crop are in season so it is buy and eat, eat, eat them while you can.
I also bought an expensive can of Cassouletfrom Christian, a local producer who lives in CastelnaudeMontmiral. It is useful to have in the pantry in case of unexpected guests and I find his the best of many I’ve tried. Even though I am on one of my seemingly perpetual regimes or diets, I could not resist the temptation of a littlefoiegras on a morsel of bread which he always offers. He only sells from the markets but told me he is opening “a little something” where he lives soon. He is the best friend of my builder Paul and promised to send me an invitation to the launch. I explained that as Paul has just taken four truckloads of fill from my place to his site I might also rank in the friendship stakes now. My brother and his wife who visit each year love his mustard fruits and it is on their list of must haves when they arrive.
Exhausted from our efforts, shopping baskets bulging, we followed the aroma of roasted coffee and drank our ritual GrandeCrème in the square near the covered market. This is another custom my brother enjoys as one is always joined by friends and the circle at the table just keeps growing. I am inspired to cook after Sunday at S.A so with very little effort I sat down to a late lunch of pasta with blanched green spinach with fresh goat’s cheese topped with scattered toasted pine nuts followed by garriguet strawberries (no wine until I lose three more kilos).
Sunday 25th April, ANZAC Day, the day when Australians remember the fallen at Gallipoli in the Great War. Two years ago I thought that as I lived in Europe I would take the opportunity to go to Gallipoli. Instead I went to Villers Bretonneau with an Australian friend and her husband. It was the 90th anniversary of a big and decisive battle there on exactly the same date in April but four years later. Like many Australians I knew little of the battles of the Somme except for the trenches and the carnage caused by a new kind of warfare when phrases such as cannon fodder and over the top were born. There was some discussion about cars and driving and it was agreed that I would take my car and drive if the could find accommodation in nearby Amiens which already seemed to be almost impossible but which we managed. We spent the first night in Paris in the apartment of Jean’s sister who was fortunately away in Canada. The trip out of Paris redefined the concept interesting, with Jean telling me to go one way and Lorraine another. As we had agreed at the outset that I was the driver I politely requested them to decide who was to be the navigator as my car could only go in one direction at a time. The countryside was that wonderful pale new green which heralds spring in Europe. Whilst in Paris, where we walked in the Bois de Boulogne the Chestnuts were all in full flower, further north they were still only at budburst stage. Arriving in Amiens, we checked into our hotel and went to a bistro recommended by the hotel manager.
Then in order not to get lost on the important day, we set off to find the memorial. What a fiasco. First mistake, we forgot the map, second mistake, we did not follow instructions given to us by a local we asked for directions, thirdly and most seriously some of the major roads were closed in preparation for the service the next morning so getting there depended on our poor sense of direction. The memorial is impeccably maintained by the Australian War Graves Commission but it broke your heart to see those rows of white stones, row on row of them. Unlike American War Graves I once saw in Italy near Florence, which seemed to cradle the fallen in a peaceful timeless silence, these seemed to speak of waste and wanton destruction. Located at the top of a hill, looking across the green fields it seemed simply and achingly sad.
At 2.AM in the morning of the 25th, having not slept a wink we had breakfast and set of for VB as it is fondly called by the locals. We were well rugged up but it was cold. There were about four thousand people there and it seemed that everyone I spoke to was relative of a soldier who had been in the Somme. The places where battles were fought are carved into the walls of the Memorial and those familiar names seemed to bring those days so real and close. I realized again our indebtedness to all who fought in that war and the wars that followed. It rang so true in that eerie dawn light that “whenever we think of them we honour them” We remembered when Australians wore heavy woolen uniforms and called each other cobber. As five o’clock arrived so did the birds with their Dawn Chorus to remind us that life goes on and songs are sung again.
After the service it was back to VB for coffee and croissants. A group of army helicopter pilots who were there to play rugby in the following days started a game of two up and kept the visitors entertained for hours. At 9 o’clock I realized we had already been up for seven hours. We drove to Fromelles later in the day with a young French Journalist who is married to an Australian and lives in Champagne. He had arranged for the curator of the museum to open it especially for us. Before visiting the museum we went to the cemetery and looked across that infamous no mans land to the memorial where the relics of German bunkers have been left as a reminder of that battle. I could not imagine the horror of having to cross it.
The museum was simply amazing, clearly the most important thing in the world to the elderly caretaker. It is curious the things that attract ones attention. Although everything was fascinating and immaculately presented it was the duckboards in the trenches which captured my imagination. I had thought, if indeed I had ever thought about it, that the sappers just rolled them out like carpet. They actually came in lengths about four feet long and were made of extremely heavy timber. A man would not be able to carry more than a few at a time and yet miles of them were laid. The curator took us to the house where Hitler lived for a number of years. There is one story, among many, that the Australians were thirty yards from Hitler at one stage. What a difference it would have made if he had been killed then. Another favourite story is how the infamous Red Baron, whose plane went down in a field near VB died. Many claim to have fired the shot that killed him. The locals say they waited till he hit the ground and then shot him, in other words he died in the crash.
On hearing of our visit, my friend Pixie asked if I had seen the South African graves. Her father fought in the battle at Delville Wood. She said that it was a poignant moment of remembrance for her when she received my email of our visit to the Somme. In the forty years I have known her and she never mentioned it. Looking at the War Graves Commission papers I was amazed to realise the enormity of effort required to retrieve those bodies, record their names, where they had fallen and were buried; thousands and thousands of them rescued while battles raged around them. What a massive task and responsibility; heroic and soul destroying. And it went on for years after the war ended. There are 410 cemeteries in the Somme and 130,000 graves. One of our unknown was returned and interred at the WarCemetery in Canberra where he now symbolizes his many comrades. A matter of weeks after our return from Fromelles a mass grave of some four hundred soldiers was discovered in those same fields.
A friend told me he had been to an Anzac memorial service once in France but was not at all impressed because he thought it just glorified war. For me it was the opposite. It became real and present and brought home to me the stark realization of the terror of war and how grateful I am that my family and friends to have been spared.
Every second Friday night during July and August there is an apero in the garden behind the Abbey. For the princely sum of five euros you can buy a plate with olives, cheese, salami and chips along with a ticket for two glasses of wine. Then you find a table and chair and bask in the wonderful evening light on the banks of the Tarn River and listen to the band play and watch the French dance. They dance at every opportunity. No matter what the music, it is the same dance and I swear every one of them can dance at birth. A different band plays each week. Last night it was Salsa. It could be New Orleans Jazz or Country and Western. About two hundred people can fit into the grounds and it is always crowded with young and old. There seems to be no age bar at social gatherings here, unlike Australia and also I'm told the UK where neither oldies nor children are truly welcome. 
