Blog Posts

Celery

7/10/2019

My father used to call the once winter-season vegetable coming into its best right now ‘cerely’, much as my eldest daughter, when little, used to call trucks ‘rollies’, which made lorries seem so much more effervescent and roadworthy.

Celery is that dieter’s darling - an edible that burns more calories in the digesting of it than it delivers in the eating of it. But it’s a vegetable that doesn’t inspire much respect, although a ‘mirepoix’ or ‘soffrito’ would be lost without it. Combined with finely diced onion and carrot, celery provides that foundation flavouring to so many braised dishes, from soups to stews.

And yet, even while being patronised, celery has proudly survived many decades of food fashion as its own self. From the 1830s to early 1900s, it was such an expensive vegetable, because of the care and attention it demanded in its cultivation, that wealthy families displayed it on the dining table in water like flowers in ‘celery vases’, intricate glass pieces now part of museum collections.

In a not too distant decade past, soft blue cheese was smeared down each stalk’s gutter for passing around with wicked cocktails. In the US, it has always been served - incongruously but oh-so-rightly - with spicy-hot chicken wings. Jamie Oliver gave it pizzazz when he took a whole head and sliced it finely right across in thin half moons, dressing it with vinaigrette as a new kind of refreshing salad to which, in Jamie lingo, you could add ‘other pukka stuff’.

You can’t make elegant Waldorf salad without a head of celery. A chicken salad of yesterday’s roast mixed up in a generous blanketing of mustardy mayonnaise with handfuls of toasted walnuts and capers is cranked up more than a notch by a folding in of copious amounts of sliced celery.

Celery, Apium graveolens var. graveolens, is not to be confused with celeriac, Apium graveolens var. Rapaceum, of which more another time. It’s been around f-o-r-e-v-e-r. (What decent vegetable hasn’t?) It was originally a marshland plant, which may explain why you might be finding it hard to cultivate in the hot and dry south west France. It was found around the Mediterranean in salty, marshy soil near the coast. It isn’t too happy in soil that lacks a salt content or isn’t constantly damp.

Like leeks, it needs earthing up as it grows, in order to develop that white stalk. Celery that has been left unearthed to its own wayward devices in the potager develops a bitter and emphatic flavour hard to welcome in the mouth.

But let that tangle go on to flower, and you’ll have seeds to use as a spice and, if you are homeopathically inclined, to apply in various cures. Back in time, celery seeds were employed by Ayurvedic practitioners in India to treat colds, flu, arthritis, some diseases of the liver and spleen, and against water retention. This versatile seed is still used as a diuretic. It promises a number of other medical benefits, all of which tend to be prefaced by the ambivalent ‘hedge-your-bets’ verb: ‘May’.

Why should the poor maligned head of celery be held responsible for so much? It’s deliciously crunchy, it’s a healthy snack, it makes your slow-braised recipes taste good - what more do you want? It’s not celery’s fault it cooks out limp and grey.

Here’s a more colourful use for it, which goes well with roast meats and with game, and makes a delicious vegetarian dish or supper dish served with no more than a crusty baguette and perhaps a salad on the side.

Braised celery with dried cèpes
Serves 4

200ml chicken stock
10g dried cèpes
70g butter
4 whole bunches of celery, outer stalks peeled with a potato peeler
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 small clove garlic, bruised
2 tablespoons capers
50ml vin de noix or Madeira
Salt and freshly milled white pepper
2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 180C.

Pour hot chicken stock over dried cèpes and leave to soak 15 minutes.

Melt butter in an ovenproof dish. Peel off the fibers from the outer stalks of the celery hearts with a potato peeler. Halve each celery heart down the middle or tie stalks together and cut heart across its middle, reserving remaining loose stalks for other use. Gently stew in butter till colouring lightly then add vinegar. Reduce liquid at a bubbling simmer to nearly nothing then add stock and cèpes. Bring to the boil and add garlic, capers, vin de noix or Madeira and season.

Cover dish with foil and bake 40-60 minutes. Check once or twice. If liquid is drying out, add a little more stock and lower heat. If there is too much, remove dish to stovetop and boil down over high heat. The celery and sauce should be syrupy and golden. Remove the garlic, sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Hint: To remove the tough fibres from the outer stalks of a bunch of celery, hold the bunch of celery hearts in one hand and run the potato peeler with the other hand down each of the outer stalks.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the October 2019 edition of The Bugle.

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Grapes

3/9/2019

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Summer’s winding down. We’re coming to the end of the more or less lazy time of year, poised once more at the start of the demanding working season that begins with the vendange.

Grapes are coming into their own. Hanging in buxom bunches of purple and green, they weigh down vines on arbours and over garden fences as much as they do along the well tended lines of the region’s vineyards.

Some of these suffered atrociously in early summer from entirely unexpected attacks by extreme weather, grapes crushed under a sudden burst of hail in some vineyards, in others by localised and ferocious windstorms that had no effect on vines under a kilometre away, and which blew themselves out almost as soon as they had begun. Up to 90 percent of grapes were lost in June on several estates in the wider south west region if France.

But winemakers tend to be a philosophical set of people. With or without climate change, putting your faith in nature and hoping it will be on your side when setting out to make wine is one of life's great perils.

Wine-making has been done for centuries. The oldest known winery goes all the way back to 4000 BC, in Armenia, while as many as 8000 years ago, there was an established viticulture culture in neighbouring Georgia.

Grapes are full of all kinds of health-giving multi-syllabic properties in unpronounceable combinations. Most recently popular was resveratrol which some touted as being a life extender, though there isn’t any strong scientific evidence yet to back that claim. Any excuse for a glass.

The so-called ‘French paradox’ - that phenomenon of red-meat eating, red-wine drinking that seems to protect the French from the heart-related diseases bringing down other cultures - probably has less to do with the protective qualities of wine than the sensible manner in which the French eat, that is to say, slowly, at table among friends and family, not on the run or in the car, with better balanced plates of considered components, served in much smaller portions than, say, in America.

Grapes are enormously versatile. They aren’t just for crushing for barrel fermentation or draping by the bunch into the fruit bowl. From them is produced not only jam and jellies and juice, but also vinegar and grapeseed oil. And don’t forget raisins.

Though sweet, grapes have a valuable place in savoury recipes. Their acidity can point up and counterbalance rich dishes cooked in butter or cream. Throw a handful into a gratin of brussels sprouts in a Gruyere cheese sauce then brown it under the grill. Or tone down a sauteed shrimp and rice dish that has been highly and deliciously spiced with a mix of toasted-and-ground cumin seed, fennel seed and Piment d’Espelette. You can roast red grapes and set them on slices of toasted baguette slathered in Bleu d’Auvergne to eat with your evening aperitif in the autumn sunshine. And don’t forget how well they go in a chilled, mayonnaise-dressed, salad of chunks of turkey or chicken breast on endive and watercress leaves under a scattering of toasted almonds.

Here is a dish, easy to put together, that makes an impressive and delicious course at both a formal dinner and a relaxed family supper, depending on the elegant platter or rustic bowl you present it in.

Wine-braised chicken with roasted grapes

Serves 4

4 medium onions, peeled
600g potatoes, peeled
2 large heads of fennel
1.5kg free-range chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ bunch fresh rosemary, leaves roughly chopped
300ml white wine
200ml chicken stock
1 head of garlic, cut through the middle into 2
1 lemon, scrubbed and thinly sliced
2 handfuls red grapes, preferably seedless
Leaves from a few sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley

Preheat oven 190C.

Cut onions into wedges, roughly chop potatoes. Shave fennel bulbs with a potato peeler then cut into six pieces, keeping layers attached to base.

Season chicken. Heat oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Working in batches, add chicken and fry until gold all over then remove to a plate. Add more oil if needed.

Reduce heat to medium-low, add onions and fennel and saute gently until soft but not coloured, about 15 minutes. Return chicken to pan, add rosemary, raise heat to medium-high and leave chicken to colour a few minutes.

Pour in wine and bring to boil, then lower heat and reduce by half. Add stock and potatoes. Insert garlic halves between chicken pieces and bring pan gently back to boil.

Transfer all to a roasting tray, slip lemon slices between chicken pieces and vegetables. Roast 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender and chicken cooked through.

After 10 minutes, put the grapes in a small roasting dish, drizzle with a little oil and roast in oven for the last 20 minutes or until caramelised. Fold grapes into chicken. Pick off and roughly chop parsley leaves, scatter over and serve.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the September 2019 edition of The Bugle.

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Garlic

2/8/2019

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You know you’re in France as soon you set foot in the Paris Metro. It’s not just the idiosyncratic door opener, more suited in design as the lock to a public loo, but the miasma of garlic that hangs in the air. It’s the one vegetable that distinguishes the British nation from the French.

Its flavour brought fear (and frequent loathing) to the hearts of post-war eaters introduced to this member of the allium family with the cookbooks of Elizabeth David in the 1950s. Eating garlic separated the men from the boys (women, in those days, generally being the person assigned to cooking duties and in whose gift, therefore, it was to use the root or not).

It’s curious it took us so long to discover the flavouring. Garlic has been known since the time of the ancient Egyptians. In a rather high-handed tone, ancient Romans described it as “much used for food among the poor.”

Way back in those days, it was also recognised for its medicinal properties. Studies today have confirmed it contains high levels of vitamins and a large number of nutrients from calcium to iron and phosphorus necessary to the functioning of our immune system.

Garlic can reduce colds and the duration of a cold. It’s said to have an impact on reducing blood pressure and in consequence cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and heart attack. There are studies that suggest it can also assist in controlling the development of Alzheimer’s and dementia, though these studies have their sceptics.

Native to central Asia with at least 120 cultivars, garlic grows wild all over the place. Walk through a wood in Scotland in late spring and the scent of garlic fills the air, while the firework sparkles of its white flowers indicate that its best picking time is now past. Its leaves make a good pesto, eliminating the need for the clove of garlic and the basil, the essential base to which are added the pine nuts or walnuts, oil and Pecorino Romano of the original Genoese recipe.

In France, three types of garlic have been awarded protected AOC status. Not just the familiar Ail Rose de Lautrec, the rose pink garlic of the Lautrec region most readily found in markets in spring, but the Ail Blanc de Lomagne from Gascony, and Ail de la Drôme. These are the garlics to be most simply experienced by rubbing a cut clove (leave its peel on for grip) over a thick slice of sourbread toast before drizzling over a glug of good olive oil and a grinding of black pepper. Add diced sunripe tomato and you have bruschetta (pronounced ‘broosketta’, please, never ‘brooshetta’).

Regular garlic is all you need for cooking. And if you come across those large containers of ready-peeled cloves, one way to use them is to confit them. Set them in a small saucepan and cover them with vegetable oil to rise 1 centimetre above them and simmer them over the lowest possible heat until they begin to turn a soft gold. Let them cool and store them in the fridge for adding to roast chicken or other baked dishes, using the flavoured oil to baste, or serve them to hearty (brave?) gourmets in a bowl ,stabbing some of them with toothpicks, to eat with aperitifs. This method produces deliciously squishy, caramelised cloves. Or spread them over a slice of toast.

Garlic is a good ‘elevator’ of food. Its flavour convinces the diner you’ve spend time and effort over your cooking as in this recipe that impresses but which comes together with very little time and effort. It will do its stuff in the oven while you are outside with your aperitif and confited garlic, enjoying the wonderful June weather.

Serves 4

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
A wineglassful of bought mayonnaise
65g grated Comte, Parmesan, or other hard cheese, grated
2-3 tablespoons fine breadcrumbs
1 or 2 finely chopped cloves of peeled garlic to taste
2 tablespoons finely chopped tarragon
A little milk in a dinner plate
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 200C.
Line a baking sheet with buttered greaseproof paper.
In a small bowl, mix together the mayonnaise, garlic, herbs and cheese. Season with salt and black pepper.
Dip each chicken breast in the milk and lay it on the baking sheet.
Spread each chicken breast with the mayonnaise mix and bake for 15-20 minutes.
Remove from oven and sprinkle over the breadcrumbs then return to the oven and bake for a further 15-20 minutes till the juices run clear. If the breadcrumbs haven’t turned gold, set them under a hot grill for a minute or two.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the June 2019 edition of The Bugle.

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Peas, two recipes

4/7/2019

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I offer you an ode to one of my favourite fruits - the pea. Yes indeed, botanically speaking, the pea does not qualify as a vegetable because it develops from a flower into a pod which contains its seeds.

It was a summer holiday ritual of my childhood that my sister and I were not released to go off on all-day adventures on bicycles until we had picked and podded that day’s dish of peas. Back then, no-one had any idea of or interest in where we had disappeared to or how long we would be gone. We were only instructed to be back in time for supper which, for the peas alone, we would not have missed.

Planted during the wintery part of the year all the way through to early summer - those jewels that emerge in July represent the epitome of summer. Sweet enough to eat raw (try offering a bowl of them with aperitifs. They will disappear faster than crisps), pick or buy them young enough that their tender pods can be eaten too. If you don’t have access to fresh peas, they are about the one unique vegetable that is just as good - some might say even better - cooked from frozen.

Back in the Middle Ages - and the present day north of England, location of the famous mushy peas made from the marrowfat pea variety - peas were grown for drying to eat as a porridge, potage or soup. Records find peas as early as the Neolithic period in the spread of land that is now know as Greece, Turkey, Jordan and Syria. Archaeologists discovered evidence of peas in the Nile delta as far back as 4800 BC, then later in Georgia and even later in Afghanistan. Peas first appeared as a staple in India and modern-day Pakistan as far back as 2250 BC. But it took several centuries for eaters to wake up to the joy of the immature pea eaten fresh.

If you are growing them yourself, or have access to a grower, don’t waste the pods. No good Perigord housewife or cook would. They make a fine soup.

Pea pod soup

Serves 4

1 kg pea pods
1 tablespoon butter
1 shallot, peeled and finely chopped
¾ litre chicken stock or water
Salt to taste
Single cream
Small bunch of chives, finely chopped
Pea shoots (optional)

Top and tail the pods. Melt butter in a pan and sweat shallot. Add pods and boiling stock or water. Boil gently till soft. Puree in a blender using a little of the cooking liquid to loosen, then pass through a sieve and season.

Reheat with remaining chicken stock or water. Ladle into warm bowls, swirl in a little cream, scatter over some chopped chives and a pea shoot.

If you’d like to make a main course of them, this is a delectable recipe pinched from The Guardian that pairs peas with ricotta. The two star ingredients marry well; but whereas you can happily make the previous recipe with any frozen pea, this one needs to have fresh peas for best affect and a good ricotta which unless carefully sourced can be extremely bland in flavour.

Pea, mint and ricotta

Serves 4

A handful of flat-leaf parsley
50g toasted breadcrumbs
250g runner beans (topped and tailed)
Juice of 1 lemon
Extra virgin olive oil
100g fresh peas
A handful of picked mint leaves
A handful of pea shoots
200g ricotta
Salt and black pepper

Firstly make your parsley crumbs. Chop the parsley finely and bash together with the toasted breadcrumbs in a pestle and mortar.
Blanch the runner beans in boiling salted water. Remove while they still have bite, drain well, but reserve the water, then place on a hot griddle or frying pan. Char until marked and blistered.

Place on a plate and squeeze over the lemon juice, a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper. In the same pan of boiling water, cook your peas and drain.

In a large bowl, combine the mint and pea shoots. Roughly chop the runner beans (save the dressing) then add to the salad with the cooked peas. Blob the ricotta over a large serving plate and assemble your salad over the top, dress with the reserved lemon juice and olive oil. Finish off the salad with an attractive scattering of the parsley crumbs.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the July 2019 edition of The Bugle.

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Chateau de Rooey

21/6/2019

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These are the months to be jumping in and out of the pool or the river and to enjoy eating in the open air and to welcome the long, slow ending of the day with a p’tit apéro. And here in the Perigord you can enjoy an evening drink that it wholly unique to this part of the world.

It is light, charming and delicious. It is still quite rare. And we can enjoy it thanks in large part to one extraordinary family, Gilles and Laetitia Gérault. It begins over twenty years ago when Gilles, who had graduated from wine school and had been working at the Coite de la Borde vineyard suddenly he had the opportunity to rent some vines at one of the oldest sites for wine in the Bergerac.

The vines were perched on the ridge directly to the north of the town of Bergerac with spectacular views of the river Dordogne and the conurbation below. This was where the monks in the tenth century began growing vines and making wine, required for the eucharist, after the old Roman-era vineyards had been devastated by two centuries of invasions from Arabs in the 8th century and Vikings in the 9th. It was only two hundred years later that the monks moved across the river and began making the wine that has become famous as Monbazillac.

It was called the Chateau de Rooy, after some Dutch or Flemish connected from those 16th and 17th century times when the Huguenots of Bergerac close ties with their fellow Protestants in Britain and the Low Countries. Many later fled there as refugees when King louis XIV revoked the tolerations granted by King Henri IV and began persecuting Protestants.

Gilles was convinced it was good land for wine and at first as he began clearing the scrubland and coaxing the old vines into giving their best, he only made Bergerac Sec, the dry white wine. He had no clients, and depended entirely on sellinging unbottled wine in bulk to négociants, the middlemen and wholesalers who long dominated the wine trade in the Bergerac and the Bordeaux. (Until the 1920s, there was no difference between the two regions; Bergerac wine was routinely sold as Bordeaux.)

Gilles had two strokes of luck. The first was that for his first few years the price of wine in bulk was good and there were no great frosts or hailstorms nor other climate disasters that could have wiped him out. The second was that Laetitia believed in him and in his dream and until 2011 she went out to work in town and they lived on her salary. Every penny Gilles made from wine was ploughed back into the land, buying new vats and bottling equipment, building a new chai to make the wine and slowly planting new vines. Along the way, Laetitia produced three daughters.

Gilles had a further dream, to revive an almost lost appellation called Rosette, a slightly sweet white wine that I find perfect for a summer evening. It goes beautifully with goat’s cheese, foie gras and enjoy some sloshed over my strawberries. I sometimes use it to poach white fish and it makes a terrific partner for Chinese and Japanese food, or with a very dark and bitter chocolate.

Rosette became an appellation in 1946 but there was little demand and less promotion and by the late 1990s when Gilles began there were only five vineyards still making small amounts. Even today, google ‘Rosette’ and you will find it described as a hybrid grape grown in Canada and New York state to make a light red wine or a rosé.

The Rosette of Bergerac deserves better than that. It is made from Sauvignon Blanc or Gris and Semillon grapes and Muscadelle. It is a far more serious wine than the usual cheap vin moelleux wine offered in supermarkets. After two years in his new vineyard Gilles decided to try, mainly because he had a good harvest and some wine left over. He made 5,000 bottles of Rosette and managed to sell the lot.

‘I seldom saw the children as the girls grew up,’ he recalls. ‘I was working all the time, spending every weekend selling my wines at wine shows and markets, and after ten years I was selling 20,000 bottles of Rosette a year. I had begun to earn a living and Laetitia could give up her outside job and come back to work much, much harder with me, doing all the administration.’

His Rosette is 6.60 euros a bottle, cheap at the price for something as good as this that is also just about unique - although other local vineyards are now offering Rosettes. Gilles’s other wines are are also strongly recommended. His Bergerac Sec (which won a silver medal at the Paris Concours last year) and his Bergerac Red are a bargain at 5.10 euros a bottle.

His prestige wines, called Folly de Rooy, are stunning at 12.90 euros. I was not surprised that his Folly white won gold at the Paris Concours, which also this year gave him the Prix d’Excellence for his Pecharmants (He won six golds in the last six years). And the Hachette Guide gives it two stars. In short, he is one of the Bergerac’s finest wine makers, despite his vineyard being devastated by the great frost of 2017.

‘Wine is a good mother,’ he told me, shrugging, before taking me off to admire his marvellous view and show me his new replanting plans. ‘If she fails you one year, she do well by you the next.’

To reach Ch de Rooy, take the Mussidan road north out of Bergerac and after about 3 miles is a turning on the right marked Rosette-Est.

This column originally appeared in the June 2019 edition of The Bugle.

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Perigord photo show

29/5/2019

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Back in the Perigord after a month on the road promoting the latest Bruno, and as is always the case after time away I'm appreciating the pleasures of home with a new eye.

I was sent this link to a slideshow of photos of the region, which will cycle through the entire selection at a leisurely pace.

The photos are not my own; I believe they belong to the site linked.

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German book tour May 2019

30/4/2019

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New interview: WorldRadioParis

26/7/2018

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Courtesy of Your American Friend in Paris, an interview about life in the Perigord, the quality of life in rural France, and my inspirations.

If the embedded player does not work, the interview can also be found on this link.

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Vin de Bruno: Tome II

11/4/2018

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Bergerac AOC 2014

Origin: On limestone and clay soils from the plateau dominating the Dordogne Valley. The vineyards are mainly facing south-west, therefore have an optimal sun exposure.

Harvest: Mechanical in order to harvest during the night, when the cold air protects our healthy grapes from starting fermentation.

Grape varieties: Merlot 80%, Cabernet Sauvignon 20%

Winemaking: We respect both the tradition and modern technologies: temperature control, reasonable extraction of tannins and colour, very detailed and specific tastings throughout the whole process.

Ageing: This wine is aged in French oak barrels for ten months. The attention to its evolution and the regular rackings are the base of a balanced and soft wine.

Ageing potential: This wine is good to drink now but can wait 2 to 3 years to reveal its great complexity.

Tasting notes: This wine has an intense ruby colour. On the nose, it offers red fresh fruits with delicate aromas of plum, blackberry and biscuit. On the palate, this wine is medium bodied and offers chewy tannins giving this wine good texture and body. In terms of flavors, we have fresh red berries with a touch of vanilla. The finish is fresh, with a spicy note. The best match with food is to drink this wine with friends with some good charcuteries, meat, cheese or even desserts!

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A Bruno dinner

28/9/2017

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This week I was sent a link to Diane'sCookbooks, a website in which the (I presume) eponymous Diane has put together a Bruno feast using the recipes on this site and taken from the Bruno novels.

She has done an absolutely wonderful job putting the meal together, and I thought I would share it with you in lieu of an English language cookbook (which we are still trying to make happen!).

To see the post in its entirety, please click here.