I woke up dreaming how I might translate to Oregon some of the simple, lovely tastes we experienced in France. Six students met me in Bordeaux to explored the city for a day while we adjusted to being in France. The first night we ate in a large bistro-style restaurant enjoying straight-forward food preparations, driven by good ingredients and cooked properly. The wines, of course, were local, and when you’re in Bordeaux, local means really good. It was a nice way for the group to settle in for spending a week together in the kitchen in Gascony.
The next morning I went to the market hall, les Capucines, to see what I’d find there that I wouldn’t find once we left for the countryside. The plan was to stay for lunch in Bordeaux, then drive the hour or so south and arrive at the Chateau Saint Loup where we’d spend the week cooking and exploring the region around Nerac. I planned to arrive late afternoon, go to a local supermarket and buy whatever was needed for that evening, and for the household generally.
The Chateau, built in 14th century, is nestled on a hillside facing east in a landscape that evokes Tuscany. The rolling countryside is blanketed with a patchwork of farms, fields and woods. The next village, about 2 kilometers away, dominates a hill to the south. I learned about the chateau from Kate Hill who has lived nearby for 20 years. The couple who own the Chateau, the de Mentques, are lovingly restoring it. The website at Chateau Saint Loup en Albret.
The students settled in pretty quickly. The day was beautiful, and all joined me for a ride over meandering country roads leading to town, about twenty minutes away. I told them about King Henry, whose domain this had been, about his love of place, and the feeling he had that well being is measured by a chicken in every pot. “He’s a good king,” I told them. It felt like we emptied the Super marche just getting what we’d need for our day to day necessities, the butter, eggs, milk, sugar, flour, sponges, paper towels, cleaning products.
It’s always fun being in a French supermarket that sells all sorts of duck products, confit, rillettes, pates. There is real ham, real crème fraiche, and six kinds of butter from dairy regions, Normandy, Brittany, the Charentes. You will find and different types of chickens representing different regions and different diets. The range of good quality jams, made without corn syrup, is reassuring and tantalizing. The wine selection, while being mostly local, seemed like it was being given away. I had to try a bottle that was priced under 4 Euros; it turned out to be delicious.
Back in the kitchen, as we unpacked, I started talking about how we would put dinner together from our market purchases. It was a good group, serious about food and cooking. They sat, listened, asked questions, and then went into action. The dynamic was different this time because in addition to me, two of the other teachers from the Studio, Courtney Sproule and Blake Van Roekel, were onboard. I joked about having six participants and three teachers.
The kitchen was a good size, but the students commandeered the dining room table as well as needed. They were organized, cleaned up as they went along, were helpful to each other. As they finished one thing they made themselves available for something else. The table got set, the dishes cleaned and put away. Everyone got wine and some taste of something to stave off hunger until the food was ready. By the time we sat down, everything it took to make was put away. It was a treat to watch happen.
I found in the supermarket small flat disks of local goat cheese that we put on bread from the baker in town. It was crusty outside, chewy inside, and came to life when toasted. The toasts were topped with the disk of goat cheese, stuck in the oven just long enough to have the inside soften. When you cut into the cheese, it was runny, creamy and delicious, and its flavor did not disappoint. We accompanied the cheese toasts with diced beet salad.
It’s always a discovery to come across beets in France because most of the time the beets come ready-cooked. It’s just the tradition, but it always causes comment when someone discovers the large, dark red, somewhat collapsed thing, sitting among the other, fresh vegetables. Nothing is easier than to cut them up, prepare a vinaigrette with lots of mustard, toss and present them on a bed of lettuces. The idea of a 30 minute meal seems ridiculous from this vantage point, where the market collaborates with the consumers to produce really good food easily.
The supermarket had a fresh fish section so I bought what are called the ‘dos de cabillaud,’ the back of the cod, an evenly thick piece of fish. It’s fresh and flavorful, and unspeakably easy to prepare. Since I grew up in Boston, it comes to me second nature. They portioned the fillets and simply put them on a baking sheet. We didn’t put anything on the sheet, or on the fish. I told them to turn the oven to hot and put the fish in to bake until it was tender enough so that when you touched it, it flaked.
“How hot,” was of course the immediate response. French stoves are different than the ones made by General Electric; they are made for French people. There’s a dial that indicates the source of heat, top or bottom, what might boost the heat, convection or not, broil, etc. Once you chose the way you wanted to heat the oven,
you are free to dial it from 140 to 250o …. Centigrade. HEEEEEEELPPPP!
“I just want it hot,” I said; “figure it out. Double the temperature and you’ll be close.” The meltdown was avoided. The oven got hot; minutes later when the fish seemed to be weeping egg white-looking stuff, (“It’s albumin; you only find it in fresh fish. If the egg white is cooked, the chances are the fish is as well.”). We opened the door, poked the fillet with a finger (You always know where those things are; you don’t have to go looking for them.), discovered the fish yielded, flaked, so it was declared done. Easy, easy.
While the fish cooked I asked if anyone knew how to make mayonnaise. One person said they didn’t but wanted to know how. I directed them to prepare it in a blender with a whole egg, salt, lemon juice, and a bit of mustard. Since a whole egg will absorb about a cup of oil, I had them pour one quarter of the total in with the other elements and ran the machine until it formed an emulsion. Once it did that, they slowly poured in the remaining oil until they produced an exquisite, velvety textured mayonnaise. We finished it by adding chopped capers, chopped cornichons, and parsley. When the fish was cooked, we poured off the liquid the fish yielded, added it to the mayonnaise, and had a sauce that was married to the fish it was served with. Nickel, the French might say.
To accompany the fish, I had them slice tomatoes horizontally. They scooped out the seeds, and set the tomato halves on a sheet pan. These were put them into the oven and bake them slowly until they collapsed and concentrated their sweetness. Since it was early in the season we could expect the tomatoes to be lacking in the sort of sweetness the sun of the month of August might give them. When they were collapsed, we topped them with a drizzle of good, French olive oil, a sprinkling of the all purpose flavor booster, called persillade that is made by chopping fresh parsley and mixing it with minced garlic. Before going to the plate to accompany the fish with its sauce, the tomatoes (and the fish) were given a sprinkle of coarse sea salt from the Atlantic at Noirmoutier, a few hours north of where we found ourselves. Before being whisked to the table, they were finished with a grinding of fresh pepper.
They were being introduced to the pure tastes of ingredients they had come to discover. This is French food, not the food found in restaurants in countries outside the frontiers of the country in which we found ourselves. French food; good ingredients, properly cooked.
We were in Gascony,famous among other things, for its strawberries. We were to discover half a dozen varieties of them that we’d never seen or heard of and their perfume was seductive. I took the first one, dipped a strawberry in sugar, then in creamy fromage blanc and enjoyed the berry directly. “Nothing is better than strawberries and cream,” I told them. “No ice cream will ever taste better than what you are about to have.” Day One. Success.
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