Robert, Tessa or Rachel?

rosemary
4 days ago
6 min read

or maybe Elizabeth or Richard?

What do they all have in common? Provence. Well every now and then not always. What do they not have in common? The years in between them all. The times. Why am I featuring them? Well this is another account of another potential meal, and how I decided on what to cook.

On Friday we are entertaining friends for lunch together with my sister and her husband. Maybe, at least for some of the time my niece who is driving her mother to and from Sunbury, going for a shop at Doncaster in between. The weather is almost perfect - a balmy 28 degrees and sunny - so a meal outside perhaps. And sitting on my desk as a lucky dip is Elizabeth David's Summer Cooking - it's my next lucky dip - well she's the Grande Dame of French cooking so I thought I would begin there. It's summer after all, and after a much trendier, sort of Middle-Eastern dinner on Sunday with the family I thought I might go simple and nostalgic - French - southern French.

So I started flipping through this lovely slim volume. In my head I had begun with the idea of the very simple French kind of hors d'œuvre described by Elizabeth in her very first recipe in this book - A summer hors d'œuvre:

"A dish of long red radishes, cleaned, but with a little of the green leaves left on, a dish of mixed green and black olives, a plate of raw, round small whole tomatoes, a dish of hard - (not too hard) boiled eggs, cut lengthways and garnished with a bunch of parsley. On the table a pepper mill and a salt mill, lemons and olive oil, butter and fresh bread. Not very original perhaps, but how often does one meet with a really fresh and unmessed hors d'œuvre?"

Well yes she's right, but I wanted to take it up a tiny notch. Besides I won't find those beautiful long radishes in our local supermarkets and David hates hard-boiled eggs - and olives too.

Then I thought of that beautiful French carrot salad - very finely grated carrot in a dressing that I couldn't quite remember, but which I love. Maybe some tapenade. I have a jar - given to me by a friend - of duck pâté - maybe a tuna pâté too. So I leafed through this chapter and couldn't find anything that I fancied on that particular day. Which is when I turned to my Provençal cookbook selection - Richard Olney's Provence the Beautiful Cookbook; Robert Carrier's Feasts of Provence; Rachel Khoo's My Little French Kitchen and Tessa Kiros' Provence to Pondicherry. And as I wrote this I also remembered Luke Nguyen's France and France a Culinary Journey - by various authors - so I just had a quick look there too, but Luke Nguyen was a little bit too Asian and France a Culinary Journey was just a little too same old, same old. Which on some occasions is just what I need, but not this week. Of course I also have several other French cookbooks, but none with a particular focus on Provence.

I should add here, that as well as looking for something nostalgic and Provençal I also wanted something simple. I had spent a lot of time in the kitchen on last Sunday's meal, and wanted to go for something simpler this time.

I began with Robert Carrier's Feasts of Provence - well he is such a cooking hero of mine, and this is a truly beautiful book with just about everything truly Provençal in it. I was tempted by a few things - Pissaladière - but one of my guests will be suffering from fairly major dental surgery the day before, and besides she is mildly intolerant of onions. So not a good idea on this occasion. Tapenade - I was still wondering about tapenade, and sort of still am, and his recipe is good so I mentally bookmarked that. His meat dishes are lovely too but most of them were too heavy for lunch and the Provençal chicken - which I have made before and loved, was, dare I say, boring - well today anyway. Salade Niçoise? Perhaps, but a reserve thought at this stage of the process.

At this stage of the decision process I was still heavily inclined to my old gurus, maybe for nostalgic reasons, but also sort of feeling that I should stay traditional. So the next choice was Richard Olney's Provence the Beautiful Cookbook. I don't think I looked at this properly at first, and so I just revisited it again. So many gorgeous things to choose from - too much really - and so because, by then I had more or less decided on a menu I have set it aside, for now, promising myself to make a few things from it in the near future - for example there are at least half a dozen riffs on a potato gratin that I could try, plus half a dozen chicken dishes.

But not fro Friday.

Having discarded my gurus it was time to turn to the young, which is interesting to me, because here I found my answers, and they are more in the spirit of Provence rather than actual traditional dishes. I would like to think it's because I'm young at heart, but actually I think it's partly mild boredom - that constant search for the new that the human race seems to be afflicted with.

So what did I find? For the starter (and the main) - from Tessa Kiros' Provence to Pondicherry - Tarte à la tomate - which is indeed just that. A pastry shell filled with tomatoes flavoured with thyme, which grows in my garden. Now how ridiculously simple is that? Although, as she says in her introduction:

"This simple tart relies on beautiful ripe tomatoes - there is not much else to hide behind here."

So I instantly thought of Coles' heritage tomatoes - to hell with the expense - which is actually much less than those sold in Woolworths, and only slightly more than their truss tomatoes anyway. Fundamentally you just fill the shell with sliced tomatoes and let it cook for a long time until almost caramelised. She suggests serving it with a salad and some goat's cheese. Well maybe, maybe just on its own. It's not the main course, and although I have indeed bought some Meredith goat's cheese I was going to serve that as nibbles. You can find the recipe online - Tarte à la tomate.

Tessa is also supplying me with my main dish - Poulet au poivron, fenouille et olives (Chicken with capsicum, fennel and olives). The photo shown here is not the actual dish as it is not online. This is Roast chicken with fennel and olives from Cooking for Keeps. It was the closest I could find, but not quite as interesting I think. Tessa's recipe includes red capsicum, garlic of course, and potatoes, but she does say you can add whatever other vegetables you fancy. Fundamentally it's a tray-bake with a whole roast chicken sitting on vegetables. So dead simple. I have the capsicum and I could add some zucchini. However, the fennel was somewhat of a shock. I bought two chickens because I'm not sure that one chicken would do six - maybe seven - people, so I therefore need to amp up the vegetables too. However, fennel is obviously not in season - or something - because in Coles this morning they were very small and horrendously priced at just over $4.00 each. But I swallowed my fear of budgetary disapproval from my husband - in this case he's right really - but leaving the fennel out would just be wrong. Maybe I'll see what Woolworths has to offer tomorrow. and spend yet more money

Dessert - from Rachel Khoo - and her book My Little French Kitchen - Mousse au nougat, although I had also been tempted by her Rouleaux Niçois as the main. The recipe for this is on the Gingey Bites website, but the picture is from the book.

Back to the dessert - also pretty simple - whipped cream and egg whites, with nuts, candied orange peel and honey. And I can make it the day before. You are supposed to make it with lavender honey, which I suspect you cannot find easily here, but I decided to use the fancy honey that was in a Christmas hamper - Tambo Valley honey which is yellow box - and might be too strong. But never mind. I thought the candied orange peel would be easy but couldn't find any at all, until at the last minute I saw dried blood oranges which looked pretty classy. Probably not at all the same thing, but it will have to do.

All of which demonstrates that generally speaking whenever you are making somebody else's recipe you usually have to adjust it somewhere - either with a different ingredient, or with quantities - that I never seem to get quite right.

I just hope I get the feeling of Provence at least - with a glass of rosé, lunch in the open air and sunshine but alas I don't have a Provençal tablecloth - well not the right shape. Although I do have Provençal style crockery ...