Les Colonnes

Saint Romain en Viennois

Beverly's Food Diary

September 2005

Our house is in an area of outstanding regional foods and wines. When we visit, we like to try new dishes. My particular challenge is to produce delicious meals on two gas burners. When we first bought the house, this was the only means of cooking. We soon supplemented it with a charcoal barbecue. Both these sources limit us to heating foods from below. Despite the constraint, there are many, many delicious foods to prepare.

Our village is close to Vaison-la-Romaine which has had an open-air market every Tuesday since it was first established by Papal Decree in 1592. Every week the streets fill with vendors of every kind of food, lush plants, new and used clothing, tools, soaps, dishes, tablecloths, linens and every imaginable item in between. The food stalls vary with the season, although vendors keep the same pitches, so that once you know the streets and locations you can always find and get to know your favourite specialists in fish, sausages, truffles, mushrooms, cheese and vegetables. One of the great pleasures for a new arrival is getting to know this market and the other smaller but similar ones in the other villages.

Autumn is wild mushroom season in Provence. With the arrival of our first autumn in Le Colombier, I was keen to investigate them. So, when my sister and I came for a visit in September 2005, armed with the latest copy of 'Olive' magazine, the BBC Food magazine, plus a French magazine focusing on wild mushrooms, we were ready for the hunt. But when I say 'hunt', I mean hunting through the markets, not fields and forests. We wandered the Vaison market searching for the best displays. Finally, on the last street, we found a display that took our breath away. There must have been a dozen or more varieties, including a magnificent cèpe about ten inches long and six inches wide, selling at forty four euros per kilo. Later in the season the cèpe prices dropped to nearer twelve to fourteen euros per kilo. But this is nothing compared to the price of truffles, the region's true specialty. In December we found truffles in our local supermarket at a breathtaking 990 euros per kilo, putting the cèpe price into perspective.

During our September visit, I went for about two hundred grams of each mushroom type, basing my quantities on my British recipes. We came home from the market with laiture sanglière, cèpes, black trompettes de morte and yellow girolles. With the weather cooling down, stews were in order. Martha browned chunks of beef in olive oil and sweated carrots, leeks, red peppers and garlic. When the flavours had blended she added the mushrooms and 250 grams of a superb tomato sauce made by our local Italian fresh pasta shop, thinned a little with a generous lashing of my best red Côtes du Rhone Village wine, a Séguret Prieuré St Just. About 25 minutes later we served the stew on fresh tagliatelle and washed it down with the rest of the Séguret.

The next evening we tackled a delicious small chicken from the butcher shop: a coquelet. We browned it in olive oil with onion and garlic, then added the laiture, a nice flat-topped orange-coloured mushroom. We flavoured the dish with fresh rosemary and sage from the courtyard garden and a generous dollop of a crisp chardonnay. Served with boiled potatoes, this was another heart-warming meal.

I was also keen to find a way to exploit this mushroom bonanza along with fish, one of my favourite foods. I couldn't think of any recipes or menus that combined fish and mushrooms, so I asked the fishmonger at our local supermarket for advice. She suggested a fresh white tuna steak and girolles. I seared the tuna in olive oil and then sweated the girolles with some garlic. I put the tuna on a warm plate and piled the girolles and fresh parsley on top. You can see the result at the top of this page, served with boiled flat green beans and topped with sweet fresh cherry tomatoes from our garden.

Finally we dealt with the cèpes by using them in our breakfast menus. In the course of the week we made two omelettes from big bright yellow organic eggs. In the first we chopped the cèpes, fried them gently, mixed them with fromage frais and placed them inside the folded omelette. This made for a rich and juicy dish. The second time we had run out of fromage frais so we sautéed the cèpes and cooked them directly in the eggs. This was also delicious. During the summer we serve this breakfast on the terrace with fresh-squeezed orange juice, croissants and baguettes from the bread van, confiture of local fruits, all washed down with generous amounts of fresh coffee. You can't do better than that!

Winter 2005-2006

Through the winter, cooking was a huge challenge. The electrician kept reducing the amount of electricity available as he cut off circuits and rooms. The winter was one of the coldest in years. The house was wide open upstairs. The amount of mud and dust from the construction work was unbelievable. The tale of Christmas dinner will follow soon. By late January I was finally forced to eat out as no cooking could be done at all.

Summer 2006 - The Ratatouille Challenge!

Michael, a good friend from Glasgow, came to stay with us for 2 weeks in June. He brought a set of ratatouille recipes with the intention of trying each to find the best and rapidly settled on a recipe by Jane Grigson. This calls for equal amounts of courgette, aubergine, green or red pepper and onions (500 grams of each). The courgette and aubergine are dusted in flour and sauteed. The pepper and onions are sauteed without flour. The sauce is carefully distilled and reduced from fresh tomatoes.

With tender loving care, Michael made the first batch. It took 5 hours and was the best I ever tasted. But he tried again in order to shorten the time. In about 4 hours he had a fabulous ratatouille. In the second week he tried a third time and reached ratatouille nirvana. It was heavenly. So now we set out a challenge for aspiring cooks who come to visit: can you produce an equally divine ratatouille?

Quintin came to visit in July and worked on a new recipe for ratatouille. He based it very loosely on a recipe by Sarah Leah Chase in her book 'Pedalling Through Provence'. Sarah suggests roasting the vegetables first in order to deepen flavour. She also has the temerity to suggest adding other vegs like potatoe and asparagus. It's quite a shock but Quintin went for it. He roasted potatoes, aubergines, peppers, courgettes and onions. Delia Smith also recommends roasting the vegs so there was a good precedent. But, while neither Sarah nor Delia's recipes called for a true tomato sauce, Quintin decided to add that to the recipe. He cooked down a sauce of fresh tomatoes, the roasted onions and roasted garlic. A small splash of Cotes du Rhone 'La Nyonsaise' was added along with fresh basil. The whole was mixed together and put in the oven for a final blending of the flavours. Thank heaven our heatwave broke in this afternoon and everywhere became much cooler - down to 26 degrees Celsius. The oven heated the kitchen a bit but it was tolerable with the cooler temperatures all around.

In the end, he produced an interesting and varied ratatouille. We agreed that the potatoes, while delicious when roasted and before being mixed in with the other vegs, were not a truly beneficial addition to the pot. The texture was too great a contrast. But apart from the spuds, it was a delicious dish.

Additional ratatouilles were produced by David and later by Muffy. Both were hard-pressed to give it long, loving attention. When caught up in the holiday tasks of locating eagles, running up, down and around mountains, socialising with the neighbours, visiting Roman monuments, it's hard to devote time to cooking. But both produced delicious ratatouilles, one with the seasonal addition of cepes.

For my own part, I found some decaying courgettes in the fridge and needed to do a rescue job. I was trying to work slowly and carefully but, in time honoured fashion, I managed to scorch the courgettes and onions. My tomato sauce was good but meagre, with only one large Russian tomato to use, so I threw in some ready-made tomato sauce. This saved the day, making the ratatouille edible but certainly not a prize-winner.

By end of season, between us all we have used a good number of the local courgettes, aubergines, peppers, onions, tomatoes, garlic and basil. We've enjoyed a variety of recipes and were able to compare a lot of ideas. I've decided that recipes using weights of produce are easier to get right than those saying things like 'take one aubergine.' How big should it be? How can I tell how much is enough? We've had long discussions on the texture of ratatouille, the best ratio of vegetables to use, what secret or magic ingredients to add. We've raised an important question of 'when is a ratatouille not a ratatouille'? This would go for any regional special dish. For example, can we put sausage in bouillabaisse? Fish in cassoulet? How far can one go with a traditional recipe, adapting it for modern ingredients or needs but still able to call it by its original name? When Harry poured champagne freely into the paella, did it change the dish or just make a superb Paella Royale?

Throughout the summer we ate wonderful heirloom tomatoes for breakfasts and in salads. By the end of our stay, autumn was coming and the search for the wild mushrooms began again. The first ones arrived in the Vaison market and we indulged in wild mushroom risotto. Fabulous!