Meanwhile, back in the potager....

   I hadn't actually planned to grow courgettes but when someone gave us a seedling a few months ago, I stuck it in the large flower-pot-that-was-formerly-home-to various-ornamental-grasses-that-died-in-the-winter.
    The courgette plant is now producing at warm speed.

 Here's the second one I harvested (along with the one I won at boules for size comparison).

 Here's another one that I donated anonymously this afternoon to a neighbour.

     And here are more coming down the production line. Time to cook up a batch of soup, bake a cake, and freeze some for later in the year.

A Tale of Two Courgettes...

   Last Thursday we played boules with some friends. Sixteen of us were split up into teams of two. I'm still a bit hazy on the rules but basically you play another team and the first one to reach a score of 11, wins.

  A great deal of measuring goes on, and standing around in the shade...

   The winners walked away with bottles of bubbly. Our team was awarded consolation prizes of truly enormous courgettes. Mine--as you can see--is bigger than Peter's forearm. It's colossal, and so heavy that my little electronic scale gives out whimpers of despair when I try to guess the weight.

Opportunistic Salads

Here's how today's lunch came together (tinned mackerel, cheese and a drippy melon played roles too). 

   The yellow courgette plant produced another fat one, seemingly overnight. The roquette plants are still pushing up leaves. A couple of days ago, one of the UK papers that I read on-line inspired me with a whole hundred yummy-sounding, simple and seasonal recipes, the kind that assume that what you'd rather be doing is lying in a hammock. Read them all at http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/19/easy-quick-recipes and you'll come upon one for a courgette salad which adds up to greatly more than the sum of its parts. I tinkered with it a bit. No Parmesan around so I ignored that and I also used lemon juice instead of vinegar in the dressing but, honestly, what a bright, little dish--especially served on a bottle-green plate.

   Next up is ye olde cooked peppers and garlic cloves in olive oil. No recipe for this. Just cut neatish strips of as many red and yellow peppers as you have. Add more garlic cloves than you think decent and simmer the lot until tender in plenty of olive oil. Eat at room temperature. Keep leftovers to top pasta or toasted baguette. Speaking of which... 

    Odd lengths of loaf have been accumulating in the corner of the counter where I keep bread. Using the olive oil left from the peppers, I made croutons. About half an hour before lunch, I chopped four tomatoes, threw in slightly less than that amount of croutons, chopped a couple of anchovies quite finely, threw in some basil and dressed the lot with oil and balsamic. 

   I love, love sparky, colourful food like this on a summer day when--pause to check the thermometer--it's 29 degrees outside.

Courgette Season is Underway

We've already eaten one good-sized yellow courgette off our main plant. More are fattening up every day. This round one was bought on Friday at Lavelanet market. 

   I stuffed it with the usual sausage meat/tomato/courgette flesh mixture seasoned with herbes de Provence. While that was simmering away to reduce the liquid, I steamed four potatoes cut into quarters. Tossed with olive oil, lemon juice and lots of fresh rosemary, these went into the oven at the same time as the courgettes. 

  At Friday's market, I'd also picked up a big bunch of "Bright Lights" chard. About ten minutes before the courgette halves and potatoes were due to exit the oven, I brought a pan of water to boiling point. The chopped chard stems went in first; the shredded leaves a few minutes later. 

   Oh yes, it was good eaten in the garden as the temperature cooled, the sky grew dark and the level dropped in the rosé bottle.

How to Stuff a Courgette

I've fallen hard for the perfectly round courgettes (zucchini) that are the size of small melons--and in season right now. 

As well as courgettes, market stalls these days are also  banked high with stout, glossy purple or white aubergines (eggplants), shiny red peppers and branches of fat tomatoes. 

One hugely popular way to turn any, or all of these, into a main course is to combine their innards with seasoned meat. 

Tidily lined up in store windows, markets and supermarkets: you see légumes farcis everywhere across the south of France at this time of year. 

I began with the small packet of fresh sausage meat that I bought the other day from the travelling butcher (relax, health police, I'd kept it in the freezer).

Normally, when I cook ground meat of any kind, I have to siphon off a bucketload of fat. Not this time. In fact, there was so little grease I didn't even bother to get rid of it. To the meat mixture, I added chopped onion and garlic, then seasoned it all with herbes de Provence, salt and pepper. 

I sliced off the little "hats" of the courgettes, and scooped out their insides leaving a shell thin enough to cook but substantial enough to hold the contents. Coarsely chopped, the filling went into the pan. It released quite a lot of water so I simmered the mixture for a few minutes to thicken it. The final addition was some leftover croutons which I bashed into medium-sized crumbs. 

I spooned the mixture into the courgettes, drizzled a little olive oil over the top and popped each one into a small earthware soufflé dish just big enough to hold it. Technical details: a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes--the timing will vary with the size of the courgette. Cook the "shell" till you can pierce it with a fork but not so much that it collapses.

P.S. That "sauce" on the side is simply a chopped up Green Zebra tomato mixed with a little vinaigrette.

Precisely Planned Chutney & Impromptu Duck Confit

Food shows up everywhere in France. Last week I picked up a crafts magazine, its pages filled with dauntingly ambitious projects, its front cover sporting a small book of recipes for jams and chutneys.

Chutney de courgettes (zucchini) sounded intriguing so, Monday, I assembled all the ingredients at Mirepoix market and at SuperU (the local supermarket which had courgettes on special: two kilos for 1.95 euros). I couldn't find a bird's eye chili so I bought a Spanish one instead, as scarlet and glossy as a tart's patent leather shoes.

The only mistake I made, I think, was the vinaigre blanc. Bottom shelf stuff, it came in the same kind of plastic bottle that you find turpentine and bleach in and, when I unscrewed the cap, it gave off such an eye-watering whiff that I used white wine vinegar instead. The recipe filled five Bonne Maman jam jars (which tells you something about our confiture consumption) with a bit left over.

At about 10 a.m. yesterday morning, I heard the toot-toot of the butcher's truck announcing that it had arrived at the end of Impasse de l'église. Some of the village's older residents were already there when I arrived, buying little packages of this and that from the young woman behind the counter.

I asked her if she had any of the meat mixture used for stuffing vegetables at this time of year. Peppers, aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes... Yes, she said, pointing to a fat coil of homemade sausages. I bought a length, and she carefully sliced it open and packaged the contents to make my life easier. Speaking of making life easier: right now, she also sells sausage-stuffed quail wrapped in bacon, all ready to go in the oven.

Later, the same day. Plans easily go awry here. Having a big glass of red with friends in their garden meant it was 7:30 p.m. before we walked in the door. Possibly later Anyway, too late to start faffing around with stuffing courgettes. 

A staple in our pantry is a big tin of duck confit. Peter opened it (the peculiarities of French can openers are a whole other separate post, as is their curious take on plastic wrap) and two legs went into the frypan to warm through and crisp. 

Meanwhile, I boiled some potatoes. Most of the duck fat that melted off the confit went into a small jar, to be stored in the fridge. That way, the duck skin could get golden and crunchy. Around the duck, I arranged cooked potato wedges so they could do the same. The new chutney de courgettes was very good with it all in a sweet/duck à l'orange sort of way, and a green salad added a bit of desirable edge to all that richness.