A Billet Doux to Jamie Oliver (and some other TV chefs)

    After many years of being a real fan of hers, Nigella has lost me. These days, her programs seem to be warmed-over versions of her original ones--and all those faux sexy gestures have definitely lost their charm. Personally, I'm waiting for the moment when Nigella suggestively sticks her finger into boiling oil...
    Instead, my favourite TV chefs at the moment are, in no particular order, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Nigel Slater, Ina "Barefoot Contessa" Garten and Jamie Oliver. Googling "TV" plus the name you're curious about should take you where you want to go.
    Reasons? Maybe because they don't call themselves "chefs"for one thing.
    Known as Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-It-All--because he appears to be willing to put almost anything in his mouth (maybe he and Nigella should collude) Hugh F-W lives at River Cottage, a bucolic haven where he grows, harvests, cooks and feeds huge armies of people. He always makes it look very doable, so sometimes I do. I'm thinking of a blazingly pretty salad of carrots, oranges and cashews and a silky plate of leeks cooked in coconut milk. Simply by creating flavours that anyone in their right mind wants to eat, Hugh F-W has done wonders for popularizing vegetable dishes.
     I've long been a fan of Nigel Slater who looks more like an academic than a cook. Besides being a regular columnist in The Guardian, he's also written a book that slingshots me right back to my English childhood. Kia Ora, The Jaffa Cake, The Cadbury's Flake...if any of these names causes a twinge of nostalgia, you need a copy of Eating for England: The Delights & Eccentricities of the British at Table.
     The only non-Brit to make the cut, American Ina Gartner would fit right in with Hugh, Nigel and Jamie. "Largesse" is the first word I think of when I think of Ina although I'm not sure that the health police would approve of her generosity with butter and cream. Their loss. She doesn't faff around with twee decorative touches. She also has the same measuring spoons that I do.

     Finally, I'm a huge fan of Jamie Oliver because he uses his fame in the right way, mostly, by genuinely trying to help people eat healthier food.  

     The other night, I came on a program called "Jamie Does Venice." God, that's a beautiful city. It really doesn't have a single bad angle. Overlooked quite often is that it also has a woman's prison which, Jamie, bless him, visited (which is the kind of thing he does). 

    Not sure if it was there that he cooked a risotto, but he cooked it somewhere and, instead of the usual seafood or veg, topped it with uncooked tomatoes, basil and parmesan. Then he made a little salad on the side using courgette flowers.

    Hmmm, I thought. Got all those, and got some arborio rice. So, the following evening, out I went with my tiny axe, gave the vegetable patch 40 whacks and came back with this: 

       The salad wasn't totally garden-grown as I added some thinly sliced fennel for crunch.
But all in all, a pleasant and easy little summer supper. A tip of the hat to Monsieur Oliver.

Heirloom Tomatoes, Peaches and Nectarines

If ever there was proof that buying the best ingredients makes cooking easy, here's the first course I made for supper tonight. Don't the colours of these heirloom tomatoes knock your socks off? Bought on Friday at the market and probably picked that morning, at most, the night before, so even days after I bought them, they're still in prime shape.  

Friends over for the evening. She's vegetarian but eats fish so I pan-fried cod fillets in olive oil, piled them on a plate and sprinkled fresh rosemary over the top. 

That afternoon, I'd made polenta and poured it into a round dish. Neat quarter-circles for browning and crisping in more olive oil. Leftover peperonata from the other day provided vivid colour and good flavours.

Right, the peaches and nectarines. Now in drippy, juicy, messy abundance at the markets. Following a recipe in Georgeanne Brennan's The Food and Flavors of Haute Provence, I made a gratin. Peeled, stoned and quartered fruit, a batter poured over, a "crumble" of chopped almonds, sugar and dried lavender on top. Fifteen minutes in the oven. The batter doesn't seem to add much so, next time, I'll skip it.

Cascades, Pork Chops and Peperonata

The heatwave was still going strong on Wednesday so we took ourselves off to Roquefort-les-Cascades. Not a drippy blue-veined cheese, which is what it sounds like, but a small pretty village not far from Laroque d'Olmes. Just so you know, that's an ancient little town on a hill 5 km from the village of Léran where we live.  

We drove through the village, silent and dozy in the sun and rife with fiery red geraniums and followed a rough narrow road towards the waterfalls that give Roquefort-les-Cascades its name. But they weren't much in evidence today although the woman in charge of the tourism hut said they were spectacular between January and early spring. We followed a nartrail up through the forest past rock and fallen logs covered with thick velvety moss of an almost fluorescent green. Like all official trails in France, the paths are identified by yellow horizontal strokes or Xs to reassure you that you're going--or not going-- in the right direction.

Driving back through Lavelanet, we stopped for lunch. "Non merci" to a three-course menu on a day this hot but a salad with "tick off the boxes" ingredients hit the spot. 

It was definitely a night for the barbecue. I thawed a couple of pork chops, marinated them with chopped garlic, olive oil and a splash of passionfruit vinegar, abandoned them for an hour or so and Peter tossed them on the grill. Chops here are exceptionally juicy. I wonder if French pigs are allowed to produce fatter meat? A bowl of the peperonata I made yesterday from the recipe in Mark Strausman's The Campagna Table and baguette filled the other two thirds of our plates. 

A Sicilian dish, peperonata is basically a ratatouille-style stew of red and green peppers, canned crushed tomatoes, garlic, onion and anchovies, seasoned with oregano. Also a dash of hot chili flakes but, as I didn't have any, I used cayenne pepper instead. Like ratatouille, peperonata is one of those dishes that is endlessly useful. Sort of a "little black dress" of summer cooking. Straight off the stove, at room temperature, or chilled, it gets along happily with whatever protein you put it with. I could imagine spreading it on toasted baguette as an apero snack too, or dolloped on pasta or spooned over pan-fried wedges of polenta.