Playing summer games- the new Kitchen Game.

New site, same old blog? I hope not.  For me as well as for you, this fresh clean site for the Kitchen-at-Camont is as much a sign of the time as the Julie & Julia film. Old world cook meets new world cook-sort of.  My old world tilts a little. The French Kitchen is now my new world- the Kitchen at Camont.

What’s changed? Why the change? There is a new game afoot. A fast paced, catch-as-catch-can game of virtual tag & twitter, of who’s in front, who’s on first and who the heck is following me?

I began my early blog as an exercise in writing, a way to share these French days and a seduction for those looking for a French kitchen adventure.  Whereas none of the above has actually changed, I am imposing a new set of rules for the game dictated by a new hunger, a craving if you will, to focus on the close at hand, the impossibly ‘close to the earth gastronomy’ , that surrounds me as I write.

The hunger for a sharper view, a singular depth of field is sometimes inspired by the photographs I love that blur the edges of real life and leave the mouth-watering detail seducing our palates.  Where the  early French Kitchen was as broad and inclusive as its namesake, rambling across a map of recipes, musings of all things French, the new KITCHEN-AT-CAMONT focuses on this very French dirt surrounding the 18th century farmhouse called Camont, one hectare (2.4 acres) of  heavy river bottom silt, clay and stone, and the concentric circles that radiate out from here, the beating heart of the kitchen, to include the Lot-et-Garonne department, the Gers, Gascony, the Southwest. It’s a game of who plays what where.

Games We Play at the KITCHEN-AT-CAMONT

Tic-Tac-Toe. Even as I describe my ‘hood, I picture a game board of circles and diagonals, a rural tic-tac-toe (or naughts & crosses) that begins in my Potager Carre’ where the vegetable  are planted in 8 square beds surrounding a center square. In the center of this square, now late summer overgrown with weeds and grass, is a circle table where tools and seeds spill onto the gravel and topped by a X-crossed pergola struggling to be overgrown with shade giving grapevines. This is where the planting game begins every winter as I plan the season to come in my own version of the potager game- where to plant the too many tomatoes, the curling beans, the slender leeks for winter soups? There are other games here, too.

Jacks. I remember the toss of palm-pinching  metal spikes and bounce of a golf ball as I pick raspberries into my palm. The thorns prick my palms as I cradle the ripe berries and try to keep any from falling off to the jungle underfoot. I win when I gather a cup before breakfast or enough for confiture without cutting up my summer brown arms. I was always good at jacks.

“Up periscope!” “DIVE, DIVE!” 11 year old David Holland and I shouted as we held our breath and blew invisible bubbles. Growing up at Pearl Harbor we played submarine while hiding in an orange tree. Here, at Camont, I am more likely to hide in the ‘canned ham’ of an office, my 70′s trailer turned gypsy wagon, listening to Bacon snore while I tap at creating a new kitchen game.

Hide & Seek, played on hot summer nights in Phoenix when the temperature often rose after midnight and the neighbor kids rushed to find a place to squat and disappear into the scary dark, now becomes Hunt & Peck as I tap out the stories and recipes that fall in my lap from a neighbor, a fete, an inspired idea.  I still wonder how long I must wait until someone finds me crouched behind the keyboard. Ally, ally, oxen free!

Summer at Camp Camont begins this week as the sleeping tents unfurl and the Gascon croquet hoops are staggered amongst the orchard trees.  The bbq pit is ready, the pizza oven is hot and the herbalicious popsicles are freezing. All serious food will cease and desist until further notice with only playful, summer fun food allowed.  Haricot verts are free for the picking, tomatoes eaten at every meal and ice cream mandated even after eating fish. (Sorry, Grandpa Hill!)  Bacon insists on pork every day and who should know better.

Bacon

Summer Fun begins at Camp Camont August 14th. There is room to camp under the trees, bring a tent, share some food, tell some stories. Woofers and couch surfers alike are welcome. Bikes, hammocks, kayaks and rowboats all need a good scrub and some heavy duty play.  I’ll be hiding in the ‘gypsy wagon’ playing a game of  Chutes & Ladders as I string the Chinese lanterns for the summer evening boules tournaments.

PS. I haven’t tossed out all the old blog posts. They are now archived at the katehill.blogspot location.  But don’t forget to change your feed to this new URL and subscribe to the Kitchen-at-Camont blog by using the widget on the sidebar.

Blackberry Summer- a French Fool

I am a fool. A fool for summer, for preserving… for anything growing within reach of the Kitchen-at-Camont. When walking Bacon down the towpath first thing on these French summer mornings or passing the Garden Shed on the way to feed the Flock, I have been counting the days to ripeness, sampling the wares for sweetness and getting ready to pounce on both wild and cultivated blackberries, as soon as there was enough to harvest.

A plate full was not enough to bother for confiture even with the extra raspberries. So in my usual Gasconne fashion, I turned to drink. Armagnac, specifically.

The ingredients on the bottle of artisan creme de mure sauvage calls for sugar and eau-de-vie. Nothing more. This is the simple life at its best! So I tipped the berries into a canning jar, added a generous scoop of white sugar, and covered the dark brooding berries with a bottle of eau-de-vie (simple clear brandy) and the remains of a favored bottle of Delord armagnac.  Cover and seal. Give a few quick shakes to break up the berries and melt the sugar. Eh voila! Now wait a month- the necessary patience until I taste test the brew.  Filter the fruit and seed out and decant the sweet dark summer liquor into a fancy bottle. Make a label. Write “Summer Fool ’09″

Preserving. These are the summer ways to remember a cool morning spent picking berries and listening to the quiet clucking of a new mother teaching her chicks to hunt and peck for a few stray ripe berries that drape across the chicken wire. This winter, after cursing the wet winter chores of mucking out the coop, I’ll remember summer ’09 better with a glass of Fool in hand.

‘Summer-under-Glass’ is a part of our

NEW  ‘Camp Camont’ programs at the Kitchen-at-Camont.