200 diamonds, 40 gift tags, and how to devein a foie gras.

    The magazines I buy in France often come with a little freebie attached, a small cadeau stuck to their cover with some magical sticky substance that you can peel off and roll into a ball.

   In the spirit of the approaching season, this month's issue of Modes et Travaux has two giveaways: a small booklet of 40 quite good-looking gift tags, and a petit sachet of 200 "diamonds" to sprinkle on your festive table. This photo doesn't do them justice. These are very sparkly indeed to the point that I think I'd want to save them rather than throwing them out at the end of the meal, (except that the thought of sorting them out from the baguette crumbs doesn't thrill me).
   I suppose I'd define Modes et Travaux as a women's general interest magazine, assuming her interests are fashion, home décor, crafts, gardening, travel and food. At this point I can see I've wandered far off-piste and am going to have to cut straight to the topic I planned to write about in the first place, which is...
   How different the recipes are in French magazines.
   I'll pass briefly over the one for poularde au champagne, which calls for an entire bottle and is snuck in with an article on decorating, and move to the main event: seven fabuleux menus to make for Christmas.
    One begins with a soup of wild mushrooms and foie gras, and moves on to filet mignon en croûte. Dessert is a quick assembly of hazelnut, and chocolate, ice creams, marrons glacés and cream. A "black and white" menu kicks off with a carpaccio of black radish and scallops. "Noël So British" is nothing like any Christmas meal I've ever had in the motherland. Not when you start with a truffled pea soup and the main course--leg of lamb--calls for a great deal of whisky and Asian spices. Dessert is a traditional Christmas pudding topped with sparklers rather than the usual blue flames. Thank you, and God save the Queen.
    The points I'm trying to make here is that a) Christmas in France is more about the food than anything else, b) that what elsewhere in the world are thought of as luxury ingredients may not be cheap here but they're definitely within the realm of possibility--and finally, c) that you'd better have your methods down pat.
    In case you don't, Modes et Travaux's monthly "Masterclass" this time around describes, in words and pictures, four basic techniques that, at this time of year, everyone should have at their fingertips:
     How to fillet a salmon.
     How to open oysters.
     How to carve a capon.
     And...wait for it...
     How to devein a fresh foie gras
(P.S.  I'm dying to make the recipe on the next page. A "shepherd's pie" of duck with wild morilles.)
  

Thanks, Jamie...

    Apart from one recent cloudy day, our spell of summer heat and sunniness just keeps going and going. From about 10 a.m. on, it's too hot to garden, too hot to do anything much outside beyond find a patch of shade, settle into one of our growing collection of vintage deckchairs and read or snooze or watch the butterflies and honeybees hovering around the lavender. I love thinking that the end result of a bee on an oregano flower will eventually find its way into a jar of honey. Worker bees indeed. 

    What we're eating are mostly salads. Salade Niçoise shows up about once every ten days.Also salade Lyonnaise--that's the one made with frisée, lardons, croutons and a poached egg. Adding cubes of potato or, even yummier, tiny new potatoes (or, as I'm doing today, haricots verts) makes it more of a meal. 

   Backtracking: a couple of years ago, I watched Jamie Oliver put together a summer dish of new potatoes, smoked salmon and horseradish cream that looked so incredible I knew I'd be making it someday. That day came last week. 

    I've got most of Oliver's books but my favourite, by far, is Jamie at Home which combines gardening, harvesting and cooking. This particular salad calls for new potatoes, smoked salmon, capers, dill or fennel fronds, crème fraîche and horseradish. I could probably find jars of horseradish in the "English aisle" at various local supermarkets but I didn't have any on hand so I simply left it out--and it was still brilliant. 

    Here's my adaptation with notes for future riffs. This is enough for two as a main course on a hot summer night. Maybe fresh drippy peaches afterwards. 

 Smoked Salmon and Potato Salad

1/2 pound new potatoes, all the same size or cut into same-sized chunks

2 tsp fresh lemon zest

2 Tbsps fresh lemon juice

2 tsp red wine vinegar

olive oil

1 Tbsp capers, drained

3 Tbsp crème fraîche (store-bought or home-made)

6 oz smoked salmom

1/4 cup snipped dill or fennel tops

Steam the potatoes and, while still warm, toss with a dressing you've made from the lemon zest, 1 Tbsp lemon juice, 3-4 Tbsp olive oil and the capers. Season to taste.

Mix the rest of the lemon juice with the crème fraîche. 

Arrange the slices of smoked salmon on a plate. Top with potatoes. Spoon the crème fraîche over the salmon and sprinkle the whole plate with chopped dill or fennel.

Salad riffs:

Add one or more of the following:

- Fine, thin haricots verts

- Just-cooked fresh peas

- Rings of thinly sliced red onion

As Julia would say: "Bon appétit!"

A Few Friends Over for Drinks

    We hadn't had a proper house-warming since we moved in, which was a gradual process over several weeks. But what with that and Christmas coming, it did seem a good idea to throw a party. French, English, Dutch, Irish, Indian, ages ranging from single digits to low eighties, it was a good mix. 

     Many friends brought food as is the custom around here. The whole salmon I cooked almost disappeared. Peter chopped off its head so it would fit in the oven. I stuffed it with lemon, parsley and bay leaves, sloshed a lot of white wine over it before closing its foil overcoat, and baked it for an hour. An hour at 190°C. When that came out, in went the porchetta.

    I've been wanting to make this ever since I first tasted it years ago in Florence, sliced off a huge roast and crammed into a bun. As well as selling whole pork legs to make into hams and sausages, the local supermarket has recently had pork loins on special. I bought one weighing a bit over three kilos and this is what I did:

    Two days before you want to eat it,  you remove all the string that the butcher has carefully tied it together with and slice the pork lengthwise so it opens like a book. Next, you make a paste of fennel seeds, rosemary and garlic, pounded together with a good glug of olive oil. Salt, pepper... That gets slathered inside the pork. Next, and this is the tricky part, you tie the pork back together into its original "log" shape. Cover it with foil, put it in the fridge and forget about it. 

     On the day you want to eat it (and remember this is best at room temperature) bring it out of the fridge a couple of hours before you mean to put it in the oven. Then bake it uncovered on a rack for an hour at 190° C. It seemed to me that it needed an unflinchingly bold sauce so I made a batch of salsa verde with parsley, cilantro, garlic and olive oil.

     As Jamie Oliver would say: easy-peasy. 

     Now, sadly, I forgot to take photos so I can't show you how pretty the salmon looked once I'd skinned it and arrange a line of lemon slices along it, or how tempting the pork was, browned and with a handful of rosemary sprigs chucked in its general direction. Fortunately, Kate did take photos of the party in progress.