Weekend Breakfast-at-Camont. Asparagus & HAM

It begins here, with two good ingredients.

Ham- Eric Ospital’s Ibaiona brand from the Basque Country.

Asparagus- local, just picked and carried to the market so fresh it snaps.

This week, my Kitchen Godmother, Vétou Pompele,  came by for weekend breakfast (a decidedly not French event) and asked me what I would make for her.

I grabbed a copy of my first cookbook that chronicled my early days sailing on the Julia Hoyt and said,

“Your Asparagus and Ham dish, of course”.

She had forgotten about what was long one of my favorite dishes.  It’s easy. When you cook everyday, EVERY DAY, that’s a lot of recipes under the bridge. We have both forgotten half of the wonderful dishes we cooked together over years of sailing the canals and rivers of France on the Julia Hoyt. This was always one of my Spring favorites, because unlike my life BF (Before France), asparagus is a once a year event, a few scant weeks of spear-ful delight.  Read More

My Keeping Kitchen! A is for Asparagus

I’ve always loved the term “a keeping kitchen.”

Keeping Kitchen…

• a place for making food to keep for the winter.
• an edible way of keeping traditions alive.
• a gathering then sharing of abundant harvest.

Over the years, I’ve referred to my French pantry, the way of keeping it stocked, and the very kitchen at Camont as the “Keeping Kitchen”. Within these stone walls at Camont, I have been keeping the traditions of Gascon cooking alive as well as adding to it with my own fresh take on authentic recipes- folding in a new good idea here, leaving out an old bad habit there but always keeping true to the spirit if not the actual letter of the laws of the kitchen.

Good friend and co-conspirator in Italy, Judy Witts- the DivinaCucina diva and I hatched the idea of another combined blog effort like the Going Whole Hog blog project we did a couple years ago. We wanted more than a way to keep tabs on each other’s gardens, kitchens, and lives in Tuscany and Gascony. We want to share our euro-view of what surrounds us as not-quite natives/not-quite-expats. Trends come strong and fast up the internet pipeline but from here they can actually be old world news.  We decided to share our everyday cooking habits for stocking the Euro-Larder otherwise known here as the Keeping Kitchen.

les petits gateaux de Marie de Chèvre- little goat’s cheese cakes

There is something about these little cheese cakes, tangy with fresh goats cheese- les faiselles- softer than cream cheese, rich but not too. I make them with eggs from the little black hens here at Camont so they are stained deep saffron yellow and taste beyond delicious. I spooned the thick batter into brown paper baking cups I bought so long ago I can’t remember where. They puffed and huffed and rose above the edges so beautifully…then sank into themselves in a rather self-indulgent way. ‘Eat me now!” they seemed to taunt. So we did. Next time I buy the fresh clean goats cheese from Marie de Chèvre,  I’ll decide if I want a more stable batter or just given in to my whisk driven idea of a Gascon Goat Cheesecake. Soft, dense, not too sweet…more like a tender canelé inside or a miniature torteau

The recipe for les petits gateaux de Marie de Chèvre:

This made about a dozen muffin tin size cakes.

• 400 gr fresh goats cheese called faiselle here in France
• 200 gr white sugar (150gr for yolks- 50gr for whites)
• 50 ml milk (about 4 tablespoon)
• 4 eggs, separated
• 50 gr flour
• Splash of vanilla/rum/Armagnac

1. Pass goat cheese through a food mill or ricer.
2. Beat in egg yolks, 150 gr sugar, milk and flour. (I use a hand whisk.)
3. Whisk egg whites with 50 gr sugar until stiff peaks. (I use a copper bowl and hand whisk)
4. Fold in a large spoonful of whites into the cheese/yolk mixture. Stir well.
5. Fold remaining whites into cheese/yolk batter.
6. Splash in the flavoring (we use  the Secret formula!).
7. Spoon into individual serving size muffin tins, ramekins or paper molds brushed with butter.
8. Place into hot oven (220’C/425’F) for 10 minutes. Turn down to 200’ C/ 390’F.  The tops will soufflé puff up round and start to brown immediately. Don’t panic! Let it cook.
9. Then let the little soufflés cook for another 10 minutes. remove from oven and serve while warm with some spring ripe strawberries from the market.

 

Market Report- Spring in Southwest France

Fresh green tops, dirt clinging to the roots, heavy crunch of pure RADISH.

I love this time of year at the markets. Our first local produce, much grown under poly tunnels, is filling the tables of my neighbor farmers in a rainbow of good food.

Artichauts. Peppers. Peas. Fava beans. Spring onions…

So what’s cooking at Camont?

Try this simple Radish Leaf soup from my first cookbook. It’s a wonderful way to celebrate spring and the first greens to poke through the rich garden soil. Start cooking as you unpack your baskets, then grab a piece of saucisson and a baguette. Eh Voila! a perfect Spring lunch.

Here’s the recipe…

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MAGYC Pies at Camont

There are pies and there are PIES.

There is magic and there is MAGYC.

And yes, this is a bonafide, real, authentic MAGYC PIE.

Over the years, I have dabbled in savoury pies as the visual and gustatory homage to Monsieur Monet’s painted pies here, here and here, of course!

But this week as Fran and Ian from Melbourne, and Hilary from Sonoma, and Matt from Welbeck descend on the Chapolard home for lunch, we’ll be bringing this fat MAGYC PIE with us.  MAGYC stands for Mastering the Art of Gascon Cooking (with a nod to Julie Child’s masterful book). What’s in this golden-crusted succulent pie? Read on…

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