Voluptuous Signs of Spring at the Markets

    It really doesn't matter what the thermometer says, March is a dreary month for fruits and vegetables if your aim is to eat whatever's grown locally.  Granted, we can get salad greens almost all the year round but, by now, I've had it with root vegetables, cabbages and apples--especially since the temperatures have been in the mid to high 20s recently--which explains why the first glimpse of these 2011 crops got my juices flowing.  

Mirepox market....Gorgeous amethyst-tipped asparagus.
Just steam and eat hot with butter or cold with vinaigrette. 

Lavelanet market...These opulently scarlet fraises come from near Perpignan, close to the Spanish border. As with asparagus, you don't need to mess about with them. All I do is slice the strawbs, sugar them (just a little) and put a pot of crème fraîche alongside.

  

The Sin of Greediness

    That's what "péché de gourmandise" is French for--and the name of one of my favourite blogs. It's all about food and, as a fellow blogeuse, I have huge admiration for its author who, whenever I look has cooked something new and suitably sinful.
    Thanks to her for introducing me to two words I didn't know. I could see that herb butter, hazelnuts and parmesan played roles in Praires farcies au beurre d'herbes aux noisettes et au parmesan but praires? Hard shell clams, which I sometimes see at the local SuperU. You're warned not too cook them too long in the oven or they become, second new word of the day....caoutchouteuses...rubbery.
       Butter, white wine, I suppose you could call this a mildly sinful recipe unlike the one below for Tarte chocolat-citron au mascarpone which is deep, dark evil. I believe in never doing things by halves, especially sinning.  So, for the perfect accompaniment, follow the blog's suggestion and sip a glass of Muscat de Rivesaltes while you're at it.

       Go on, click on it. You know you want to....

Update on the Chocolate Biscuit Cake

All you need are tiny portions as it's stupefyingly rich. Cut into small bars while it's still chilled.

With it, we sipped small glasses of homemade vin de noix--delicious, like a cream sherry.

Prince William's Royal Wedding Chocolate Biscuit Cake

   As well as cutting ye olde traditional fruit cake, Prince William and Kate Middleton will offer a chocolate biscuit cake to their guests at their wedding reception. I read about this on-line in the UK newspapers. Chocolate biscuit cake? Sounded intriguing so I did some research, read some recipes and decided that this was exactly what I wanted to make for tomorrow night.
    Backing up a bit, a number of us get together for a "stitch and bitch" session every Thursday. Knitters, textile artists, French, English, ranging in age from 80something down to 30something, we meet at someone's house for a couple of hours to work on our projects, swap ideas and chat. The evening usually winds up with a pot of tea and biscuits.
   Naming no names but somehow, a while back, wine got into the act. Last week someone brought along a bottle of Normandy cider. Someone else brought along a bottle of Vin de Noix from her family's stash, and said it went very well with chocolate cake. Hence the chocolate biscuit cake to be unveiled tomorrow night.

Love the simple ingredients...chocolate, butter, golden syrup...

Throw in some squashed biscuits, hazelnuts and raisins....

    I've lost the bookmark for the recipe but I did print it out so I can tell you what goes into it. Let me know if you want precise quantities.
    You start with quitealot of butter, quitealot of chocolate and two tablespoons of golden syrup. I had no problem finding the latter as it's a constant on the "British" shelf at the local SuperU, along with jars of Marmite and sauce to make instant chicken tikka masala.
     Anyway, what you do is mix the butter, chocolate and syrup together over low heat until you have a thick chocolate sauce. Then stir in lots of biscuits that you've put in a plastic bag and bashed with a rolling pin (making sure to leave some chunks). The recipe calls for "Rich Tea" biscuits but I couldn't find those so I used "Petit Beurre" which sounded far more decadent. Also add in chopped hazelnuts and raisins. Stir everything together and spoon into a square cake tin. Let cool and put in the fridge. Immediately rinse the pan with water so that you're not tempted to scrape up and eat what's left.
     I'll report back on what it tastes like....

The New Plan de Travail...

   Plan de travail is one of the many terms I've had to learn living in France. It means "countertop" and, because we couldn't decide on the exact shade of tile we wanted in the kitchen, we installed temporary tiles (left over from the floor) all of 14 months ago!
   Then, on yet another trip to Géant Carrelage in Pamiers, we both saw a colour we liked--and voila! Rather than describe them as "sort of greeny-blue-y-grey" I've realized that they are the exact shade of a couple of herbs in the garden--and a stunning contrast when you sit an ordinary orange on them.
    And there are your "art director moments" for today.

Some santolina trimmings from a rambunctious plant at the front of the house.
Dried, this is said to repel moths. We'll see...

    Cuttings from a curry plant. Will they develop roots?
I hope so.

Would you call this fusion food?

   You haven't lived till you've tasted my lardons fried rice, a cross-cultural dish that's hardly likely to find its way into any foodie magazine. But good, fast and cheap? Exceptionellement.
   First you need lardons, those invaluable little bacon-bit-like things that I pick up as regularly as I buy eggs, milk and bread....I was going to write this out in a classic recipe format but there's so much wiggle room in the recipe that I'll just tell you the ingredients and technique, and let you take it from there.
    Begin by browning your lardons (or chopped rashers of bacon) in a frying pan, about 50 grams per person should be enough although more doesn't hurt. Then add cold leftover rice, about a cupful for two maybe, although, to reiterate, more is fine too.
    Break up the rice with a fork as you heat it up in the bacon fat so that the grains are approaching separateness. Then beat two eggs and add those, stirring and stirring so that the eggs get cooked but don't coagulate into large eggy lumps. Almost there.
   Chop a couple of green onions, add those and heat them through. Add one or two sloshes of soy sauce.
   Stir everything together, and season with ground black pepper. Now, the French component...dish up your fried rice into a couple of bowls and strew with finely chopped chives from your potager.
 

Le Printemps!!!

      Apologies for that long digression about our Asian travels. To be honest, we returned to France in mid-February but what with jet-lag, and getting back into the swim of things, I got disgracefully behind with this blog.  Just a few to do--all French ones--and I'll be all caught up.
     We came back to chilly weather and the welcome sight of little green spears poking through the earth. Here's what my frantic bulb-planting in December has led to...

I can't really say that I planted these primroses. They just come back year after year.

And thanks to Nature for the following....

Wild violets.

Celandines run rampant...

And so does Honesty which grows in the woodland area of the garden. Last year, when I picked the dried seedheads, I deliberately scattered the seeds hither and yon.