Abra

Holy crap, Coyote Cafe is expensive! Makes France look like a cheap date for dinner. And I'm really looking forward to yor dinner tomorrow night.

This is the Cèpe and Walnut Cream Tart. I made one big tart instead of the 8 small ones, and because cèpes have just gone out of season here in South West France, I used a ring of pleurottes, which are like giant oyster mushrooms, a ring of regular mushrooms, and a pile of rehydrated dried cèpes. It smells fabulous, and I'm looking forward to taking it to a party in a little while. Also, when Chufi and I blogged together a couple of weeks ago, we made several dishes from this book, including the Poule au Pot and the Tripe and Pigs Feet Stew. Both are extraordinary.

Wow, your picturs are sensational. Tell us more about your camera and its settings. It's really hard to do what you're doing, those extreme close ups. I'm way impressed. And the Tara's menu is thrilling.

Me too, I wanna hear about your personal chef gig! It's amazing that Armandino's charcuterie has made it to NM. Too bad they can't spell charcuterie right on the menu, but you can't have everything.

I realize that I'm well known on eGullet for being a no-taste touristical type who will drink any old swill, so I just say "cool, y'all, the less pinon coffee you drink, the more there is for the rest of us!"

Well, ok, I guess with the description of fat-fudgy rice you've successfully talked me out of Emirati food, but that balaleet sounds good, and like something we'd be able to make at home. But what about the New Mexico Pinon Coffee Company? That pinon coffee was a real favorite of mine when we lived where there a Trader Joe's.

So nice to see you blogging, and so nice of you to do it this week, a busy one for all. Not to rub it in, but here in Barcelona where we're spending Christmas it's warm enough to stroll in just a sweater in the daytime, so seeing that snow is pretty amazing. May we have some Lebanese and Emirati recipes as a Christmas present? Then you can work in some photos of home as well as share a taste.

One of the best things I've ever had from a PJ was made form just pure orange juice. It was utterly unreal. Lucky you to have one to play with!

As it turns out, we're planning to be in Barcelona for Christmas too. Silly, I'll be sure to drop by and say hi. I haven't made reservations yet, so any additional restaurant suggestions will be very welcome.

Thank you all for being with us this week, and for all the nice compliments. It's been really special for us to have this time together, and it just wouldn't have been the same without all of you. And please, keep visiting with me on French Letters, where I do my level best to make everyone feel at home in France.

I decided to give Chufi's shutter finger a rest and took my own camera out with us this afternoon. Feeling a bit guilty about having promised you market pictures and failing to deliver, here are some for your delectation. Oh, you wanted to see real people? These are santons, a Provencal holiday tradition of miniatures, beautifully staged here for your imagination to go a-marketing. And it also occurred to us that one thing has been very notably absent from this blog and that's chocolate. Isn't it amazing how little chocolate we've been eating. Here's a bite we'll share with you And then, on our way home for supper, we saw this sign With a fill up and a Euro you get a free panettone! And so we did. So now we're home, preparing our last blog supper, which will be simple and homey, but will feature those beautiful cèpes and some even more beautiful pastry. No gas station panettone, I promise. Just give us a couple of hours to thaw out by the fire and get into the kitchen, and we'll be back for a final post.

Pille's cake made a delicious breakfast, even better than it was last night. I love cakes like that. The oxtail was braised in wine and aromatics for about three hours, then simmered with an herbed Toulouse sausage, some of our Basque ham, and a heap of chestnuts. It's a very nice recipe, one I'd recommend to anyone. Daddy-A, you might want to rethink the Carcassonne part of your trip. It's more touristical than almost any other place I've been in Europe. Quite sad, we found it. So now it's a sunny, cold, and windy morning and Chufi and I are off to get vegetables. We're going to chez Alice where good things are always to be found. We'll be back with the vitamins, minerals, and fiber portion of this blog after a short pause.

Cookie, anyone? These spekulaas are so good that we had to include them in the cake (sorry, Pille) so Chufi bravely reduced them to crumbs before scattering them over the batter. Sorry again, Pille, but we didn't have the right pan. The cake had a lovely, breakfasty crumb, which means that much as we enjoyed it tonight, we'll enjoy it all over again tomorrow morning when we don't have to go to the bakery. As if we hadn't already had enough to drink we had a glass of Lucy's homemade vin de noix with the cake, a delightful pairing that finished off the evening perfectly. And so, if I can pry Chufi's head up off the desktop, we're off to bed. She's not actually snoring, but perhaps the influence of all these gelatinous foods is affecting her. At any rate, we're pooped, and we're outta here for the night. A demain and tot morgen.

All hail Chufi, the Yoda of food photography! Just for you, of course, we tried out the new Champagne. The first thing you see is this the cool little thingie on top of the cork. Actually, I think it's a picture of a bottle filling machine, and just seeing it makes me happy. Then next, there's this Four of our six precious, hand-delivered bottles. And for a shockingly good price, too. Because this stuff is absolutely delicious. Tiny, fine bubbles,a perfectly balanced acidity, not quite bone dry with just the lightest hint of fruit. Really wonderful. Even better with peanut doodles. If you ever saw my post on French junk food you know that it's world class. Now that Chufi has discovered these peanut doodles she's scheming how to fit a pile of them into her luggage. You'd think she'd be begging me for some Champagne to take home, but no. It's peanut doodles or bust. We'll be going back to the supermarket so she can stock up, it's a sure point on our itinerary. I want to answer a couple of questions before we go and roast the marrow bones. About the truffles, yes, I too had always heard that they couldn't be cultivated. But here people do plant trees that are thought to be favorable to truffles, and they do water them to encourage truffle growth. Maybe there's some more alchemy involved. I'm going to do further research on this point, since of course I need an excuse to eat more truffles, but that's all I know thus far. It's not all wild pigs rooting about while crusty old guys hide beneath their favorite trees. Then there's the question of regional foods. I don't know many neighbors yet, but my strong impression is that, much like at home, cooking with regional ingredients is pretty close to regional cooking. The use of walnuts, duck, goat cheeses, goose fat, guinea hen, rabbit, and olive oil, are pretty universal. There's not a fish market in our town, but there's always a line at the weekly fish vendor's stand, for Mediterranean fish that I seldom recognize and haven't yet learned to cook. Snails are popular, and a month ago there were cèpes and girolle mushrooms everywhere. They've been replaced by foie gras and chestnuts. So that's a long way of saying that the typical South Western array of ingredients are available, even if I'm not yet sure how the average local cook uses them all. And now, Chufi's gotten the cake out of the pan, always a sticky moment. The oxtails need another dose of wine and I need to get a chunk of ham ready to go in with them. The salad for the marrow bones needs making. In other words, we've got to cook in order to blog! See you in a while.

Well yeah, why don't you just come and live in France? That's what we wondered, and so we did. It's very interesting and rewarding, baffling, beautiful. And yes, the Champagne delivery lady did come right to the door. We'll pop a cork tonight and tell you whether it was worth it to open the door to her. Not really, of course I'd have opened the door, because she belongs to the secret vegetable club that I've been invited into. The bread that you saw at lunch is a pain Aveyronnais that comes from the bakery right next door to the house. Later we'll crack the loaf of milled-this-morning bread to use as toasts for the marrow with parsley salad. Right now the oxtail is simmering away in its bath of Picpoul de Pinet, with onions, carrots and a bouquet garni. Later Toulouse sausage, chestnuts, and a bit of ham will be added. It smells delicious already. We really hoped that Pille would be able to come join us for this blog, but she wasn't able to make it. Thus we find Chufi in the kitchen making a Pille apple cake, which we plan to dust with spekulaas crumbs that Chufi brought from Amsterdam. Of course she brought whole cookies, not crumbs, but you know what I mean. Me, I'm planning to take a nice glass of rosé into the shower, wash off the dust of our walk, and prepare myself for the marrow bones. They always freak me out a tiny bit, and fortification is required. I know, a person who eats tripe for breakfast doesn't seem like someone who'd have a hissy over marrow, but that's just the way I am. And speaking of the secret vegetable club, because we've been besieged with requests to keep the blog alive, and because tomorrow is in fact Vegetable Morning, we'll be ending the blog sometime tomorrow, and not tonight. So you can sleep sweetly, secure in the knowledge that we'll still be here in the morning.

Now that I have my identity back, let me correct my alter-ego on one fine point. We do have our own garbage bin and put it out once a week, whereas the recycling bins are communal and are all over town. Sometimes we've even been known to drop recycling off in other towns, but possibly that would be considered rude. And no, I don't think truffles are cheaper here. That was about $100 a person for lunch, obviously a rare treat, but one that was really worth having. The truffles were wild mountain truffles, as opposed to the ones more commonly found here, which although they're not exactly cultivated, are watered to increase their size thereby diluting their flavor. So, this morning I awoke to the excellent news that I've sold a little article to a major food publication. If that wouldn't make me eat a nice bowl of tripe for breakfast, I don't know what would. Chufi's breakfast was much more normal. So now we're off into the cold for a good cross-country walk. All we've been doing is eat, and I think we're both twitching for some exercise and fresh air. We'll be back, all rosy-cheeked and out of breath, after a bit. Meanwhile, what about those dessert ideas?

deleted because we have our identities mixed up

After due consideration, a certain amount of persuasion, and a dose of reality, we hereby decree that this blog shall continue for our mutual amusement through tomorrow night. So we'll spend one more day together, just you, us and a pile of bones we happen to have in the fridge. We don't have the whole day planned yet, but dinner is looking like marrow bones with parsley salad on toast, then oxtail and chestnut stew with a Brussels sprout and potato stamppot, for that Franco-Dutch flair. And then for dessert we need something not too rich, but good enough to end a blog with. We have a mountain of apples and a big bowl of walnuts. Any suggestions? Oh, and the Champagne delivery lady came by today, so tomorrow night is bound to feature us trying out the new stash of bubbly. And now, we're falling all over each other to see who can fall asleep first. Bonne nuit and Welterusten.

We're finally home after a long day on the road. Chufi has the pictures so I'll let her tell the story of Our Third T. Truffles, that is. Lots of truffles.

It's morning in France. The sun is shining, there's a light breeze, and it's cool and fresh. There's less that one load of dirty dishes left on the counter from last night, the fridge is stuffed with lefftovers, and yes, the local producers market is this morning and we'll be going. Right after coffee. Lots of coffee.

"Are we logged off?" asks Chufi, on her way upstairs to bed. That's how much this blog affected our dinner tonight. Every mouthful was accompanied by the click of a camera and the thought of the story behind the bite. It was pretty extraordinary. We've been living, as Chufi says, in a world where the only thing that matters is whether or not you like tripe. But then, the only reason we did this dinner was for the blog...or was the only reason we did the blog because of the dinner? I forget, or maybe I never knew. Maybe it was just an excuse to drink too much, as if we needed an excuse. Even Beppo got into the spirit, as it were. And no, he normally doesn't have blue eyes. I told you it was an extraordinary night.

This is by far the best tripe dish I've ever eaten. The rich smoothness of the tripe, the little bits of gelatinous sensuality that are the nuggets of pigs feet, the cubes of intensely sweet and slightly salty ham, the highly aromatic and flavorful broth, all combine into a rich and heady delight. Not everyone at the table loved it as much as I did (not mentioning any names, Chufi!) but that's ok, it means there's some left for me to have for breakfast. Mmmm, tripe for breakfast.

And now we sit down to dinner at last. The table, set with its pain de meule that's traveled from Lyon to start our meal, awaits us.

Today I had the distinct pleasure of picking the first lemon from our lemon tree. Now the juice and rind are in our quince and prune croustade and we're ready for a little glass of something. This is our cooking wine, a Charles de Cazanove. Wine to drink while cooking, that is. At least that was our plan. Shall I show you one bottle at a time, be a real tease? Or just strip all at once? Ok, I'll give you a break. So here we have, from left to right, our cooking champagne, then an all-white lineup, which I find truly weird as a confirmed red wine drinker. After the champagne there's the wine chosen especially for the tripe and trotters by our awesome wine seller a Vin de Pays d'Oc Mas d'Espanet Eolienne , then the Domaine La Croix Belle N. 7 Vin du Pays du Cote du Thongue, for the poule au pot. Then for the cheese course a Domaine Prieure-Brunet Mersault-Charmes Priemier Cru, and a Chateau Mauras Sauternes to go with the dessert. That was the theory, but of course, reality prevailed, and a red Faugères had to be opened for the cooking phase too, since, uh, a bottle of Champagne doesn't go all that far and a night without red wine is just no night at all. So now we're listening to Laurie Lewis, eating French junk food, bacon flavored nut doodads, and letting things simmer. Sigh for us.

Ok, we're here, all three of us, after a cozy restaurant lunch, in case we starved to death before dinner. I wish there were going to be sanglier, and in fact I have ordered some, and considering that they're running loose on the streets of Perpignan they should be easy to get, but no, there's no wild boar for dinner in the forseeable future. The poule is going to become Paula Wolfert's poule au pot, and since we're also using her recipe for tripe and her quince and prune tart recipe, I guess you could call this a Dinner in Honor of Paula's Cooking of SouthWest France, as interpreted by Klary, Lucy, and Abra, with the aid of several bottles of excellent French wine and a veritable ton of cheese that Lucy hauled over here on the TGV, and a few sniff-inspections courtesy of Beppo. And now, let's get cooking!