A great fountain in Aix that had a special golden light as the sun set.

Peach Melba (Poached peaches with raspberry sauce.)

Sometimes the best tasting recipes are the simplest. I find this especially true with French recipes-just a few ingredients but, oh, so special. At a recent dinner with a French couple I decided to have Peach Melba for dessert. The French aren’t huge at giving compliments but this dessert sure got them. They said that the best dessert on a hot summer night is one with fruit. I wish I had remembered to take a photo as it is a truly lovely dessert.

Peach Melba

4 cups water
1/4 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
3 large peaches
For the raspberry sauce:
1 pound fresh or frozen raspberries
1 Tab. lemon juice
3 Tab. sugar
3 Tab raspberry liquer (optional)
vamilla ice cream, to serve
mint leaves, to decorate

In a saucepan large enough to hold the peach halves in a single layer, combine the water, sugar and vanilla bean. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.
Cut the peach in half and twist the halves to separate them and remove the peach pits. Add the peach halves to the poaching syrup, cut side down, adding more water if needed to cover the fruit. Press a piece of was paper against the surface of the syrup, reduce the heat to medium-low, then cover and simmer for 15 minutes until tender. Remove the pan from the heat and let the peaches cool in the syruph. (I didn’t have wax paper. In fact I can’t remember the last time I did, so I just used foil.)
Remove the peaches from the syrup and peel off the skins. Place on several thicknesses of paper towels to drain. Then chill.
Put the raspberries, lemon juice and sugar in a food processor and process for 1 minute with metal blade. Press the liquid through a fine strainer into a small bowl. Add liquer and chill.
To serve, place a peach half, cut side up on a dessert plates, fill with a scoop of vanill ice cream and spoon the raspberry sauce over the ice cream. Decorate with mint leaves.

It is a great looking dessert with the bright red sauce flowing over the ice cream and the orange tinged peach. So nice when it is hot and a really lovely mix of flavors.

Cherry Clafoutis

It is cherry season here in Provence and I love it, cherries being one of my favorite fruits. We have a neighbor with two huge cherry trees and every summer he begs us to come over and pick cherries as he can’t use them all. We, of course, accept his offer. This is the first time I can actually eat all of the cherries I want. I eat so many that I make myself sick. We come home with bags so full of the fruit that the ones on the bottom get smashed.
So, what to do with all of those cherries? A friend was here last year and made duck breast with cherry sauce which was great and easy so I did that again this summer. I must say that it is an extremely messy meal to make. Duck has a huge amount of fat and makes a big mess of the stove and cherries, oh my. I learned to wear rubber gloves so I don’t have purple fingers and nails, to wear an apron so I don’t stain whatever I am wearing and to put the bowl and pits in the sink and do the whole operation there as the juice gets everywhere.
I used this to pit the cherries, a handy little devise, but it only get the pits out about 50% of the time and I have to manually get the pit out.

I filled a bowl with the cherries. I did a much larger bowl a few days earlier to make cherry jam but I decided to make a simple dessert called:

Cherry Clafoutis

Which turns out to be a kind of pudding.
The ingredients:
1 pound ripe cherries
2 Tbsp Kirch or lemon juice-I used orange liquor
1 Tbsp sugar
3 Tbsp flour
3 Tbsp sugar
3/4 cup milk
2 eggs
grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Pit the cherries-by the way, the French often don’t pit the cherries as they are supposed to add more flavor to the dessert but I find it a lot of work to eat it that way. Mix the cherries with the Kirsch and sugar and set aside for an hour. I only let it set about 30 minutes. Also the recipe called for a Tblsp of confectioner’s sugar which I didn’t have so I just used regular.
Prehaeat oven to 375 degrees. Butter a shallow ovenproof dish. The photo in my cookbook shows a cute oval dish but I only have a glass pie dish.
Sift the flour into a bowl (I never do this), add the sugar and slowly whisk in the milk until smoothly blended. Add the eggs, lemon zest, nutmeg and vanilla extract and whisk until well combined and smooth.
Scatter the cherries evenly in the baking dish.

Pour over the batter and bake for 40 to 45 minutes until set and puffed around the edges.

Before baking

After baking.

It is a very easy dessert to make and I love the combination of cherries, lemon zest and vanilla. I got compliments from some French people on this dessert so I guess I did it right.

Tartines

Recently, on a food board, I was reading about someone discovering tartines on one of the shows about cooking in the States. The lady, the Barefoot Countess, visited Paris and showed them Poiline bread and then how to make a tartine, a type of open-faced sandwich. I wasn’t very familiar with them, except for an occasional one on top of a salad in a cafe, but once a friend showed me how to make them, I’ve made them quite often as they are simple, delicious, good for starting a meal, or as the main course.

Tartine

Four slices of a large loaf of bread. Flavored ones are fine, such as loaves with olives.
Garlic clove
tomato
dried tomato
ham-I like the Italian ham
round goat cheese
olive oil
basil leaves

Toast the bread, rub with garlic clove. You can then halve a tomato and rub it into the bread-they do this in Spain. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Some people, at this point, spread some sort of tasty spread on the bread, a tampenade, for instance. Top with the ham, which you can dice for easier eating, then several slices of dried tomato, basil leaves, cheese and sprinkle with the herbs de Provence. Put under a broiler until the cheese is brown and soft. Serve with a simple salad.

Just some photos having to do with food as I don’t have a photo of tartines.

This is a Croque Monsieur. A very good sandwich served in France-a sort of grilled cheese sandwich with a bechamel sauce on top so it must be eaten with a fork and knife.

I love this table and wish I had one like it in my yard. Maybe someday I will. I saw it in a yard that I passed on our walk the other day and thought how nice it would be to have a meal there under the trees.
Today is Good Friday and we have Maurice’s grandchildren here. They leave tomorrow to return home for Easter with their parents so I made a traditional French Easter meal today. It was really great to smell the lamb cooking in the oven, studded with garlic and covered with oil and rosemary. It tasted as good as it smelled. The French serve it with white beans. I seldom have lamb but think I will now after this meal.

Roast Leg of Lamb with Beans (Gigot d’Agneau)

6-7 pound leg of lamb
3 or 4 garlic cloves
olive oil
fresh or dried resmary leaves
1 pound dried navy or fava beans, soaked overnight in cold water
1 bay leaf
2 Tbsp red wine
2/3 beef broth
2 Tbsp butter
salt and black pepper

Preheat the oven to 425. Wipe the leg of lamb with damp paper towels. Cut 2 or 3 of the garlic cloves into 10-12 slivers, then with the tip of a knife, cut 10-12 slits into the lamb and insert the garlic into the slits. Rub with oil, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with rosemary.
Set the lamb on a rack in a shallow roasting pan and put in oven. After 15 minutes, reduce the heat to 350 and roast for 1 1/2 hourrs to 1 3/4 hours-about 18 minutes per pound.
Meanwhile, rinse the beans and put in a saucepan with enough fresh water to cover generously. Add the remaining garlic clove-I diced mine-and the bay leaf, then bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 45 minutes-1 hour or until tender.
Transfer the roast to a board and stand, loosely covered, for 10 minutes. Skim off the fat from the cooking juices, then add the wine and broth to the roasting pan. Boil over medium heat, stirring and scraping the base of the pan, until slightly reduced. Strain into a warmed gravy boat.
Drain the beans, discard the bay leaf, then toss the beans with the butter and season with salt and pepper.

Before I give you a recipe I have discovered in France, here are a few photos I recently took around Paris, most of the Christmas variety.

Christmas lights in one of the most beautiful passages in Paris, Galerie Vivienne.

I liked the reflection of these silver birds into a silver dish that I saw in the window of a florist in the Marais.

This Christmas window was in a hotel near the Odeon metro stop. I love the red cardinals.

One recipe that I discovered here in France is Farci. I don’t think its orgin is French but rather middle-eastern. There are many dishes around the world including in France, that arrived along with immigrants-farci is one. I tried to do a google search to find the source of this meal but the closest I came was that the word farci means stuffed. My mother used to make stuffed peppers that I wasn’t that fond of which consisted of hamburger meat mixed with rice, put into a green bell pepper and topped with a tomato sauce. Here in France I see farci offered often on menus and sold in street markets-either just the meat or already all done ready for cooking. Vegetables used for cooking are bell pepper, zuchinni-they these cute little round varieties that are good for this-tomatoes and sometimes mushrooms or onions. This recipe is from the book, On Rue Tatin by Susan Loomis. Two friends who do alot of French cooking looked at the recipe and said, “Hmm, milk and bread?” Maybe this is an Americanization of the usual Farci recipe, I’m not sure, but I know many Americans add that to their meatloaf recipes. I tried to make this recipe from memory once and, my memory being what it is, forgot the milk and bread and it still tasted great.

Stuffed Tomatoes (Tomatoes Farcies)

2 slices fresh bread
1/2 cup milk
2 pounds juicy tomatoes
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
8 oz button mushrooms, diced
1 3/4 lb. lean minced pork (sometimes I use half pork with hamburger meat or veal)
1/4 c. fresh tarragon leaves (I used 2 Tb. dried)
1 cup lightly packed flat-leaf parsley
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 425 F (220 c )
Tear the bread into small pieces, put in bowl, cover with milk, let sit about 30 minutes.
Slice the top off each tomato and remove the seeds and most of the inner pith. Lightly season with salt and pepper and place in oven proof dish.
Heat oil with the onions and garlic over medium heat. Cook, stirring, until the onions are translucent, about 8 minutes, transfer to bowl. Add the mushrooms to the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are tender, 5 to 6 minutes. Transfer to bowl with onions and garlic.
Add the bread and milk to the bowl along with the pork. Chop the tarragon and parsley and add along with the eggs. Blend the mixuture thoroughtly-you will probably have to use your hands..
Evenly divide the stuffing among the tomatoes (or zucchini). Place the tops of the tomatoes on top. Bake until deep golden color, about 1 hour. Drizzle the tomatoes with the cooking juices in the pan.

I don’t usually like to try new recipes when I am having company but I thought I would have a sort of Autumn dinner and, to me, it just isn’t autumnal unless you have a dessert with apples.It turned out to be a huge hit. I found this recipe in the book called On Rue Tatin by a lady named Susan Loomis who lives in France and gives cooking classes there. All of the recipes look good to me and I plan to work my way through them. Her web site is: www.onruetatin.com
This is a dessert for when you want to blow your diet, raise your cholesterol and add inches to your hips but, my, is it good. It calls for adding sugar to the pan after cooking the apples in butter. My apples, for some reason, gave off a lot of liquid and the sugar never carmelized as it said it would in the recipe. I poured off the sugary liquid before I added the egg mixture and baked it and it tasted great but I’m thinking it would be even better with that carmalized taste and next time I will pour off any liquid before sprinkling on the sugar. I used the real vanilla bean which is so good. I didn’t have Calvados but I bet that would make it even better.

Melting Apple Custard (Fondant aux Pommes Vanillees)

3 lbs tart cooking apples, peeled and cored
7 Tbs unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
6 Tbs Calvados (optional)
1 whole vanilla bean, split down middle
3 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1 1/4 cups double cream

Preheat oven to 425 F, 220 C.
Cut apples in quarters. Heat the butter in a skillet over medium high heat. When butter is hot and foamy add the apples and saute them until they are golden all over, about 10 minutes. (This is where I should have emptied all of the juice out of the pan). Add half the sugar and cook until the sugar has carmelized, shaking the pan so the apples and sugar are moving across it and the sugar doesn’t burn. If using Calvados, pour it into the pan and swirl it around, then flame the alcohol in the pan, shaking until the flames die down.
Transfer the apples to a non-reactive dish.
Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean. Whisk together the eggs and egg yolks in a bowl and then whisk in the vanilla seeds. Whisk the remaining sugar and cream until the mixutre is combined. Pour the mixture over the apples, and bake in the center of the oven until the top is golden and puffed, about 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and let it cool for about 20 minutes before serving-if you can wait that long.