truffled homemade pasta coming up!

I imagine fireflies pulsing in rhythm in a tree in some remote forest.

Then a school of little silver fish darting left in unison, then blinking silver right.

A flock of seabirds part the clouds in graceful aerial hijinks.

Although I ranted  about the predictable trending trend a couple of weeks ago, I must give homage to the way we pulsing cooking blogging folks group up together and light the barren forest with our synchronous cooking and curing. After all, wasn’t that what Mrs. WheelBarrow and the Yummy Mummy did during Charcutepalooza?

While I was having a close encounter of the Truffle kind thanks to the Agen market, I turned to a family habit of pasta making as sweet Parisian Mouse David Lebovitz dished up some good home made pasta tips here. Then…back at the Gascon Ranch…

I was smoking up some duck breasts in the big old 18th century cheminee while my good friend Elaine Tin Nyo was doing much of nothing with duck breasts in her Harlem studio humidor and a slightly Mad Dog was barking up the same tree.

Pre-1970

Cooking.

Cooking in France.

Cooking in Gascony, France.

What inspires you to cook? A recipe? A photograph in a cookbook? A blog post?

Here at Camont, I look around my Gascon world for the everyday inspiration that has fueled generations of good Gascon cooks. This month’s inspiration? Muddy farmyards clucking with fat hens and fatter ducks, fields of growing wheat shoots just 6 inches high, plum orchards in bloom anticipation, and all the good folks that grow the food and sell it.

Yesterday with Matt from SAF’s Butchery program and Hilary on our 6-week Butchery & Charcuterie study, we did a bit of reconnaissance along Agen’s high street- le Boulevard de la Republic.   From the Marché Couvert to the Quincaillerie Fabre we sourced some good local products and some good tools to play in Camont’s old Kitchen. This is what we bought:

• magret de canard- 3 fatted duck breasts from Sylvia
• Fresh chicken & rabbit livers, duck hearts from Sylvia too
• nearly a kilo of fresh Cod from Poissonerie Gibaux
• Prune & Pork fresh sausages Charcuterie Yves Labat
• a big Black Truffle- 50 grams big from Lionel at the Jardin Tropical

PS What happened to the Prune & Pork Sausages? We grilled them on fireplace right away and devoured them with a bit of pain au levain. And the livers and hearts? that too will be revealed…

a MAGYC PIE...

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…

This MAGYC week of Gascon food is a 4-day winter exploration from Farm to Market to Kitchen. We swooped into Lavardac market on Wednesday and filled our baskets with: a guinea hen or pintade, a stewing hen, 2 demoiselles or duck carcasses some pork sausage, fresh foie gras, thinly sliced jambon de campagne and enough vegetables to make a rich stock- carrots, onion, celery, leeks, garlic, bay, thyme.

Less a recipe than a blueprint- we built the pie like this:

• boned the pintade then reserved the breasts and thighs.
• make a rich and short bouillon with the carcasses of the duck, pintade and the stewing hen.
• seasoned the 500 gr of pork sausage meat and pintade & chicken liver with onion, salt and pepper.
• deveined the foie gras

In the UK, Sally and Mat will be tweeting from Forest Pig in the Wyre forest; Struan with Ruth and James at Trealy Farm; Nick is with Northfield Farm; Jane in Norfolk Diet Country with Blakeney Deli, De-lish and Brays Cottage Pork Pies.

How will we stay in touch? By Twitter, of course-t he official meaty communication darling of the whole darn Charcutepalooza Charcuterie world! For a list of the SAF meaty tweeters see my new list at @KatedeCamont/saf-uk.

It's just bacon.

A couple of years ago someone, some too-clever-for-their-own-good someone, declared bacon was out… and that in the coming year pork belly was in. That set me off. It’s been cupcakes in and in and in and then- pies at last. In.

Pickling came in and smoking went  out. Butchery, charcuterie, and brewing are in, in, in.

Potlucks, Pop-ups & Popsicles… all get their share of spin IN.

Every January there is media glut of what was trendy then and what’s trendy now. This minute. In now; Out so ten minutes ago!

How do you ever keep up? And why?

I shook my head as I walk the weekly markets of Rural France. What’s ‘in’ now in Agen, Southwest France?

Basically the same things that have been ‘in’ since I first hit the Sunday market in  April 1987- good real clean honest direct locally grown amazingly delicious food.

So, you want to know how to cook? Really Cook? Then do what I did 24 years ago when I stumbled in that market in Agen. Shop. Carry it home. Start cooking. Then eat with gusto. Now, repeat. Every day.

Shop. Cook. Eat.

Do it everyday until it becomes part of your real world, your life, like breathing and sleeping. And share. Please. Don’t be selfish. Spread it around. Invite friends, give to family. Don’t make it so HOLY you can’t have fun.

it's just beans...

Just cook.

It’s pretty simple. We complicate it all with lists and trends and what’s the newest new thing.

Here, in Gascony, it’s more about how some things never go ‘out’ of fashion.

Like duck confit. And bavette steaks, potato gratins and garlic soup

Cassoulet is a winter dish you share with friends; a rare cote de boeuf you share with a lover.

Make a tarte, an easy all-butter crust filled with ripe fruit sprinkled with sugar, and carry to a friend’s house for tea. Every week.

Make a terrine and spread some joy when guests come to visit.

Roast a chicken for Sunday lunch.

Drown some berries in a jar and have a taste of summer next winter.

Keep doing that and pretty soon you’ll realize that you have cooked and cooked and cooked yourself through the seasons. Old friends will hang on you; family will be grateful. And best of all, you’ll come to realize that good food never goes out of fashion.

Thanks for letting me rant. Just had to get that off my chest.

Need a little reminder? Or jump start your good habits. It’s what we do here at this Kitchen at Camont. We teach, share, devour and enjoy good food. EVERYDAY. Have fun!

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This New Year’s Rant is dedicated to my good friend and great Photographer Tim Clinch who has spent the last decade photographing the good food of Gascony. Along for the ride, a new generation has been listening at our elbows. Here to Felix and Bella pursuing their own version of what’s in NOW. Good luck you two!

 

Peter Barrett's Rubber Boots

Bravo.

Bravo, Bravo, Bravo to you all!

And especially to Peter Barrett, the persistently innovative, mouthwatering edgy talent from cookblog who swept the votes to become the Grand Prize Winner of the ‘Year of Meat’ called Charcutepalooza.

Peter’s contemporary tastes on traditional charcuterie reflects a new look at the oldways of curing and cooking we are discovering across the globe. I like it. I like the slipping of a bit of dried duck breast into a bowl of noodle & soup and the shaving of an overcured bresaola to make dashi. His Lamb Pastrami was damn cute and on cue and the miso-ed bacon tarte renversée an invitation to jump the traditional Gascon ship.

But here in Gascony, I stay the course and preach the old Frenchways.  I stray not far from the classic French farm methods of salt, smoke and time. In this Kitchen at Camont, there is very little equipment a food geek could love but an 8ft-wide chemineé and an airy pantry. Clay cassoles, glass jars of confit and summer fruit line the open shelves. The focus is always on the pure product, the nearby producers and the authentic luxury of time to get it right. Keeping the door open to the past is my chosen job.

So, I breathed a soft sigh of relief when I spotted those rubber boots on Peter. There will be Gascon muddy March fields to tramp, pig farms to explore, rainy markets with dripping umbrellas to scour and duck farms to quack over. Pack your Paris togs for the Grand Ham Shindig with Cathy, TrufflePig‘s Jack Dancy and the rest of the Charcutepalooza gang.  But when you come here bring the boots, Peter, bring the boots.

Interested in a week’s charcuterie adventure like Peter will experience?  Click here to find dates and more information…

Welcome to my favorite bridge- the one I cross to go to the market weekly in Gascony, the bridge over the Baïse at Nerac. This isn’t the usual view. Usually I am looking at Henri IV’s chateau or the medieval bridge leading to Petit Nerac. But this day, one day at the end of 2011, I crossed the street and looked away from my usual view; away from the tourist sights, away from the lovely jumble of waddle and daub buildings topped with terracotta roof tiles.

On this day, I looked across the road, up the river and tried to see around that bend. I realized looking wasn’t quite enough. I needed to take that bend and see for myself what was hidden from the typical view. I needed to get off the bridge, down the path, on a rowboat…

I have been beaming down a straight path for sometime. Although confident of my cooking steps, sure of my footfalls along these Gascon charcuterie trails, I have been lacking… je ne sais pas quoi. Perhaps lacking a certain sense of unplanned adventure on an otherwise full 2012 calendar, I crave a chaotic inner adventure. When looking for a New Year picture to post, I was drawn to this iphone-snapped, app-tweaked, tree-crusted bend of a little river in Southwest France. It is the reverse view of a familiar scene; a visual reminder to look behind, around or over; an invitation to create a little crook along a familiar path.

So yes, there will be new workshops in France, the UK & the US. Yes, there will be butchery & charcuterie, food photography & other hijinks with Tim Clinch as well as all the other delicious and challenging courses at Camont. Yes, there will be much good food and friendship around the kitchen table at Camont. But just maybe there will also be creative chaos, uproarious upheaval and unexpected bends in the road. May this crooked new path lead us all somewhere interesting in this brand new year. Happy Happy New Year to my dear readers.

Mom is fussing in the kitchen. My dynamo-of-an-87-year-old-larger-than-life Mom. Not cooking really but fussing all the same for her two straying daughters returned home for the holidays.

Plagued by that out of body experience that flying always engenders, I quake as Mom pulls a clip of papers off the refrigerator door and starts talking about her mom’s Christmas cookies- le nell or pizzelle. Ever year a box of these anise-scented waffle snowflakes would arrive by slow mail. A Big Box. Grandma’s Italian cookies. Ah, food memories. ”Look, someone gave me  my grandmother’s cookie filling made with chickpeas, chocolate and grape jelly, (jet lag kicks in blah, blah, blah…) Hershey’s bar, anise, etc..” I woke up.

WHAT? Chickpeas, cecis, garbanzos? grape jelly? A Hershey’s bar? Let me see that!

I wake from a jet lag stupor long enough to scan the scrap of paper and promise to make the recipe tomorrow before going back to sleep. Now at 3 in the morning (about breakfast time in Gascony), I start to scour the web for this chick pea/chocolate combo and find it here, here and here in all its Abruzzese quirky glory.

Petronella DiCarlo DiPietrantonio of Roccamorice, Abruzzo Italy

When we rescued my Grandmother’s pizzelle iron from obscurity a few years ago, still flour dusted and weighing of a lifetime of cookie making, I thought we had already covered the topic of keeping the Abruzzese traditions alive in the family. Remember readers… once does not a tradition make!

So meet Petronella DiCarlo DiPietrantonio from Roccamorice in the mountainous Abruzzo of Italy. My great-Grandmother. I met her when I was nine. Mamuch was a tiny, scowling Italian-only speaking  that lived with my Grandmother Julia in Portland Maine. She terrified me; at nine, I was already taller than she. Having arrived with the first wave of Italian Immigrants to Portland through Ellis Island she came to cook for her young husband and other workers living in a rooming house. I get the cooking DNA from her. Grazie!

I deciphered the key ingredients in this filling which seems to be traditionally made for a stuffed ravioli sort of deep-fried Christmas or Easter treat. Mamuch used it to fill the pizzelle cookie sandwich that my Mother remembers chunky with walnuts.

Chickpeas competes with chestnuts for texture, protein and richness.  The Abruzzo is famous for both. One of my desert island foods, I love them and now will not hesitate to use them in sweet dishes, too.

Chocolate snobs will quake at the Hershey’s bar, so feel free to go with dark choc or cocoa but I am sure that my great grandmother used the newly developed and very American Hershey’s Bar.

Grape jelly. Even I questioned this until I found the original source here . Next year, I’ll make a few batches of this from my grapes at Camont but for the reasons as above, I am sticking to the nostalgia riddled recipe. I’m positive Italian cooks embraced the new and easier fast food found in their new life in America. The children and grandchildren like my mother, would have had that New World taste imprinted in their memory.

Mom & Mamuch- 1940's Portland Maine

So as a tribute to the colorful taste threads that help weave a family’s story… here is my Christmas present to my own family this year around the Hill Family tree- boxes of snowflake Pizzelle cookies filled with Petronella’s Special New World Chick Pea & Chocolate Italian Cookie Filling.

Happy Holidays everyone from my Home to Yours. And from my mother’s grandmother to you…

Recipe for Christmas Pizzelle Cookie Filling thanks to cousin Eleanor and transcribed here…

•  1 small jar of grape jelly
• 2 cans of chick peas
• 1/2 quart of wine
• 1 lb. of walnuts chopped
• 1 orange grated
• 1 large Hershey bar
• 3 cups of sugar

venison heart

“…and every time I “dress” game — such a pleasant euphemism, that — I marvel at how fast my mind toggles from hunter to butcher to cook.”   Hank Shaw

I love Hank Shaw. When Hank pops up on my radar screen- on twitter, in a book review, on his very fine award-winning website- http://honest-food.net/, I take notice. He lives a life practicing what he preaches. Foraging Artist, Gastronomic Cook, straight-from-the-hip Word Shooter.

Hank is on my mind a lot this week, as I gather and forage new wild resources for the Butchery & Charcuterie courses- people, organizations, purveyors here in the Midlands of the UK. Acting like a beacon to focus my thoughts on what we have been exploring over and over during these last 9 weeks of school,  Hank keeps me honest. Where does this meat come from?

When I read Hank’s recent blog post ‘On Killing’ , I was already listening hard. I didn’t need to add another comment to the hundred plus already posted. Killing, hunting, harvesting, slaughtering & butchering are already a part of my daily lexis here on a famous hunting estate and as a cook living close to the terroir in the French countryside.  I’m not squeamish. I eat meat.

This week at the School of Artisan Food I jumped at the chance to welcome  Steve Bloomfield and Sue Ecroyd of  the British Association of Shooting and Conservation to visit and share their message. Former gamekeeper, Steve walked us through the organization’s goals and resources. Their Taste of Game program website is a gold mind of where to begin- want to learn to shoot and hunt? need a venison recipe? or just a list of restaurants to frequent for a taste of something wild? I think we might have to change the name of the program to Hunting, Butchery & Charcuterie.

Since October, the Butchery & Charcuterie diploma students have been butchering a lot of game: venison-red, fallow & roe, pheasant, rabbits, & duck. This week, a Wild Boar walks into our life courtesy of Tom Clark at Thornbridge Hall and the practical training of butchering well-raised farm pigs will be put to a slightly wilder the test.

Which recipe will I make to first introduce that taste of boar into our opening palates? A perfect simple Milanese courtesy of Mr. Shaw. I return to my opening note: I heart Hank Shaw.

Hank, you listening?

Kate Hill is Head of Butchery & Charcuterie at the School of Artisan Food located on the amazing Welbeck Estate in the England’s Midland region north of London.