Camont's Henri IV

Merci Henri IV*.

You started a culinary tradition that outlasts event he most political promises when you declared in the late 1500’s-

Si Dieu me prête vie, je ferai qu’il n’y aura point de laboureur en mon royaume qui n’ait les moyens d’avoir le dimanche une poule dans son pot!

If God spares me, I will ensure that there is no working man in my kingdom who does not have the means to have a chicken in the pot every Sunday!

France's Henri IV

In Gascony, a Poule-au-Pot- or a Chicken-in-a-Pot has the mythic attributes that many cultures attribute to chicken soup- heart warming, restorative & familial.  Plus it sports the royal seal of approval from the most mythic king of France- Good King Henry or le Vert Galant. Rather than sporting an ill pallor or being the envious sort, the Vert here refers to the vigorous, sharp or spicy adjective characteristics of being green– as in a sauce verte.**

Here at Camont, we have our own pecking order of royalty. Our Black Gascon rooster, Henri IV, shares more than a name with his royal predecessor. he shares the heroic and amorous reputation of being a true lady’s man. Henri of Navarre has the enviable  reputation of being the Royal Lady’s Man with a hundred ladies-in-waiting at his beck and call, referred to as Catherine de Medici’s Escadron Volant or her famous flying squadron. Henri of Camont has his own ladies in waiting, laying at his beck and coco-ri-co or dashing about the le Parc de Basse-Cour or our Barnyard Park.

So when it came time ‘cull the flock’ and ‘harvest some meat’ , in other words remove a non-productive hen who had stopped laying (taking room & board away from the rest of the working girls), I turned to Henri IV of Navarre’s words and prepared a simple version of a traditional French Sunday dinner- la Poule-au-Pot.

First we killed the hen…

Now before I segue into a rant about a lot of ‘amateur’ urban farm killing taking place in back lots, or self-taught so-called-expert butchery (in the bad sense of the word) on small farms for enthusiastic but unwitting restaurants, let me make a positive appeal for working with the real experts. Experts are those men and women who have worked all their lives raising our food. They are trained in agricultural schools, on family farms, and as apprentices to others previous generations of experts.

Marie-Rose Blancuzzi, my go-to-neighbor and friend came by for a hands-on demonstration. Marie-Rose is a French housewife. She is also an expert chicken killer. Every year since she married the dashing Italian Franck Blancuzzi, nearly 50 years ago, she has raised, slaughtered and cooked hundreds of substantial farm chickens. I have killed a handful of chickens and ducks, fish, pigs over these Gascon years. But I like learning hand-to-hand, and I wanted Marie-Rose to show me some trucs or tricks. Mostly what she showed me was how simple and easy to make it while being sweet and gentle with the good hen who had laid 2 years worth of eggs- somewhere around 600 eggs or so.

So we took the hen from the cage where I had rested her overnight with a sister hen away from the others, (in the end we didn’t kill the second the hen; she got a timely reprieve because she laid an egg in the cage). Marie-Rose cradled her under her arm like a furry black basketball, while Erika grabbed a knife, a pot of hot water and her camera.

I held the hen by her feet and wings while M-R held her head and beak closed. She then extended her neck, sliced the thin sharp knife just under the earlobe and through the main arteries. Holding the head over a pan in which to collect the blood, Marie-Rose encouraged the hen, “Va, va…” I held the body as her life left and the muscles relaxed, her comb and earlobes pale.

Now to pluck.  A quick dunk of the feet first allowed us to peel off the tough outer skin of the feet. I would use the feet in the soup.

Then a few up and down dunks into the hot not boiling water ( approx. 140′F) before the two of us starting at the wings, began to pluck the soft feathers.

Within a few minutes, we were done and the feathers and warm water went into the compost pile. a Perfect way to jump start the pile. The hefty warm carcass sported plump breasts, meaty legs and well-developed bone structure. Back in the kitchen, M-R showed me a neat trick to eviscerate the carcass much like cleaning a foie gras duck.

She removed the mostly empty tripe (not feeding her the night before or early morning made for a cleaner removal of the intestines), the windpipe, crop, gizzard, heart and a surprisingly golden fatted liver. The excess amounts of fat in her cavity attest to how well-fed Camont’s free-range birds are and the liver, like a mini-foie gras was a tasty treat for cooks and helpers alike. We split the chicken in two, each of us taking a half of the hefty nearly 3 kilo bird. I’m not sure how Marie-Rose cooked her half yet, But I chose to make a very local, very Gascon, very easy version of Henri IV’s famous poule-au-pot.

Henri IV's Famous Poule-au-Pot

Cooking the laying hen for much longer than a commercially raised fryer, I used carrots, onions, thyme, bay, garlic, salt & pepper for the base as it stewed away for over two hours. The broth it made was/is heavenly and we ate the chicken, soup and all with some cardoon slices and made an eggy golden potato puree to serve as a sort of rough dumpling.

Happy I am to have a chicken every week in my pot. It doesn’t have to be Sunday. It doesn’t have to be a economic promise. But it does have to taste good! Merci Henri.

All fotos here by the Gascon Kitchen’s 2010 Photographer in Residence

Erika Hildegarde Johnson

*for more about Henri IV start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_France

**for your “French-word-a-day”

Crepinettes & Couenne

If these photographs makes you hungry to learn how to make French charcuterie, then click here .

My favorite Gascon butcher, Dominique Chapolard and I are winging our way to the IACP conference Portland Oregon a few days early so that we can offer a couple hands-on and demonstration workshops to interested cooks, professionals and food lovers. Although details on venues are still being finalized, we will be in the San Francisco Bay area April 15-17 and then in PDX April 19-24. Contact me directly for further details and stay tuned at our program page on facebook.

Photo of Dominique & Christiane Chapolard at the Nerac Market by Tim Clinch

It’s easy to tell when something strikes a nerve out there in blogville; the comments start flying fast and furious. No one does that better, striking that common chord than Mr. Michael Ruhlman.

I’ve met MR once. Actually, a couple years ago, we spent a few days at the Greenbriar Symposium for Professional Food Writers together, with about 80 other people. I follow his blog and read his books. But considering that we’ll be sitting at the same table between two cleaver-wielding butchers at the IACP conference in PDX talking about Charcuterie in a few short weeks, I thought I better start talking to him sooner than later.

Michael, when you asked the world to answer “Why do I cook”, did you think there would be so many wonderful sincere and sweet answers? I love the little confessions of fear and ineptitude, the songs of passion, necessity, and pride. Most of all, I love the communal longing for something good to eat. Just that simple.  Something better than at a restaurant. Something at home. Made fresh. And …satisfying, really satisfying, body and soul.

So why do I cook? So I can practice what I teach.

I cook good simple satisfying food, everyday, usually twice a day because I live in a country that values food and its preparation as much as it does it’s less everyday arts- music, film, fashion, art. France honors its food by honoring its food producers, designating Culinary Conservation zones, Label Rouge protection for high quality products, and elevating the art of eating to a national sport. We cook in France because we want to eat well. I cook so that I can teach the lessons in culture, history and language that I have learned at the French table. I cook because it is a language of humanity. I have sat in kitchens along a dusty Africa road and learned the real meaning of hospitality. And I have eaten in 3-star Michelin restaurant kitchens tasting the creative passions of the chef.  I wouldn’t trade one for the other. I cook because I love to tell these edible stories that nourish our small circle around a kitchen table.

Looking forward to meeting you again in PDX. I’ll be the one with The French PIG and the man who raised it.

Thanks Tim Clinch for the lovely portrait of piglet & me!

When I bought my first chickens at the Agen Market 18 months ago, it was an experiment in reclaiming the rural roots of Camont, a historic 18th-century Gascon farmhouse on two-and-a-half acres of fertile Garonne River Valley land.  I have called Camont home base for over 20 years. I’d come and go as the work and pleasure directed me, sometimes floating away on the big Barge for chartering for months then returning again for months of summer landlocked living. As my European Culinary Adventures tours took me and my guests far afield to taste other gastronomic destinations- Sicily, Tuscany, Burgundy, Provence, Champagne, and Spain, I would eagerly return to my Gascon Kitchen to reclaim my own cuisine and the local abundance of the surrounding Gascon countryside.

Eventually, the Captain in me swapped places with the Cook and Gardener in me and I moored the Julia Hoyt to the garden gate as a stationary souvenir of the adventures that had led me all over Europe at 5 miles an hour.  ‘What next?’ I mused. What could be as much fun, interesting, and unpredictable as the last 20 years afloat?  I looked around this fragrant memory of a farm and realized that it was simply making food that kept my interest. Not just cooking, teaching and writing about it ‘cuisine’, but growing, planting and now, tending the food we eat at Camont’s Gascon Kitchen.

Although I have tended a couple of vegetable and herb gardens for many years now, it was the addition of food animals (we don’t count Bacon the big dog, or Boudin the barn cat in this group) that flipped me from being a voyeuristic wannabee food producer, to re-establishing Camont’s roots as the sort of scrappy self-sufficient family enterprise that it was for nearly 300 years.   Starting with just 3 hens and a rooster, we soon become a happy family of a dozen hens, a very busy and proud rooster, 4 Rouen Clair ducks and a drake and the soon to arrive pair of lambs in the newly fenced pasture. Like many of you urban farmer neophytes, I, too, have been lured by the golden treasury of fresh eggs and wholesome meat as well as our own wonderful organic vegetables and fruit.  Quite frankly, and  in the words of an favorite ex-husband,  I could buy all of this good food from my near neighbors and for little money. What he didn’t get, and I was slow to explain, was the wily and invasive learning that takes place and the profound understanding that comes with watching something grow from seed or root or egg. Nourishing at many levels, the growing of food, even the most modest windowsill garden, teaches us of life from the first germ to sprout to the tossing of greens with a good vinaigrette for a summer salad. Nothing gets taken for granted again. As Dana McMahan found out on a recent writer’s residency, not one brussel sprout goes to waste. So when the super productive feathered working girls are churning out 8-10 eggs a day, here is what we do.

Omelette Catalane

So why did I get those chickens? To help teach my students, those brave and spunky cooks who make their way through the internet jungle to find this site, then brave the electronic media to write an email, then screw up the courage to buy a ticket, make a commitment and fly to a country that insists that you pay attention to what you eat every day, three times a day! It is grueling for many, a few wimp out along the way, but most revel in the French way of tasting, really tasting what this country, that could be described as a 260,000 square mile garden and the most visited country in the world (82 million people every year!), produces. Food. Very Good Food. It all starts with an egg.

Fortunately, I am surrounded by experts: farm families, housewives who still buy a dozen chickens to kill, pluck and cook, and of course, weekly markets full of artisan producers who grow and sell their food directly to you. Now we pass this hands-on learning to working interns, apprentice students and creative residents all through the year here at these varied and individualized programs.

The chicken experiment has been a success. Now the foundation of the Gascon Kitchen basse–cour or barnyard, students at the Gascon Kitchen at Camont learn that the investment in caring for the critters is reaped on their plates. The proof is in our golden yolked pudding… or in this case our Catalan Tortilla or Omelette Catalan.

BASIX Catalan Omelette made with fresh Spinach

1. After washing fresh spinach until grit-free, place wet leaves in saute pan, cover and wilt over high heat. About 3 to 5 minutes.
2. Break a dozen fresh eggs into a large bowl. whisk.
3. Sauté garlic and hot pepper in a half of cup of olive oil. remove when pieces when golden.
4. Soften one small sliced onion in the oil. do not brown. Remove from oil, leaving the now intensely perfumed oil in the pan.
5. Add wilted spinach and onions to the beaten eggs. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg. stir well.
6. Pour egg and spinach mixture into the hot pan and cook gently about 10 minutes. turn heat down until the mixture sets. then using a platter of pan lid, flip the omelet over and continue cooking on other side. Remove and serve warm or at room temperature as tapas.

More great photos by erika hildegarde johnson

SPRING

My Gascon neighbors call Spring- le saison d’amour the season of love. This morning, this too cold February morning and Valentine’s Day, I found my sweetheart present on the ground outside the chicken coop. Not one, but TWO fat white translucent-shelled duck eggs and the Spring promise of Easter ducklings and next Fall’s Duckfest here at Camont.

When I was a girl, my mother had a funny way of nagging us to clean our rooms. She called mine- The Lazy ‘K’  Ranch and warned me that I would need a maid when I grew up. (Thanks Mom for the tip!). But being lazy in the kitchen can be a good thing. One day… 20 years after I started out on this European Culinary Adventure, I understood that the real art in being Lazy with a capital ‘K’ was knowing when a recipe worked effortlessly, elegantly and easily. I call these the Gascon Kitchen Basix- the recipes I cook and teach everyday, year-round at Camont. So know when you see the ‘Basix’  key, you can take a page from my ‘Running the Lazy ‘K” Ranch’ workbook and whip up a French Supper for friends …or even votre amant.

Ducks are lazy, too. At the beginning of laying their clutch, they drop their eggs wherever they are sleeping. They lay mostly at night. I can imagine they hate to move when nature calls to the nice secure sheltered nest pen we built last year. However, their feathered neighbors, eleven productive hens and a busy rooster- Henri, conveniently lay our daily gift in one tidy pile in the shelter of the blue coop. So day in and day, even when it’s not Valentine’s Day, we harvest a basket of extraordinarily fresh, deep yellow-yolked, naturally organic hen’s eggs. Eggs. French eggs. My Gascon deep yellow yolked French eggs from Camont’s happy chickens. This is where the most basic of Basix recipes start.

‘Basix’ are the simple recipes I learned from French housewives and farm neighbors.

Basix: good everyday dishes that we live on.

Basix: simple meals for family and friends.

Basix: fast food from fresh ingredients.

B A S I X . E G G S

In fact, every one of these Basix dishes stars just one basic ingredient and today it is all about the E G G. Enjoy this sweet breath of a Sunday omelet with your sweetheart or just for yourself! Inspired by Bonnie Walsh’s dad, who made Souffle-ed Omelets whenever we had a sleepover, I teach these golden clouds at Camont when students wake on Sunday Morning. The first grumbles of beating the whites by hand with whisk and copper bowl, turn to amazed admiration for the marshmallow-soft stiff peaks. Mr. Walsh used to bake them in shallow pie pans; I use a deeper terracotta dish and cook them a bit longer. Eh Voila! my own Valentine’s kiss to you.

BASIX Omelette Sucrée Souflée- serves 4

Heat oven to 400′F or 200′C.  Place a tablespoon of butter in a pie pan or oven proof clay dish. Place in hot oven until the butter melts. In the meantime make your omelet.

1. Take 6 very fresh eggs. Separate whites from yolks into 2 clean bowls.Yes, those yolks are really that color! happy chickens.
2. Whisk 3 Tablespoons sugar into yolks. Whisk until sugar is dissolved and yolks are ribbony.
3. Whisk egg whites in copper bowl. (Suck your stomache in when whisking for a bonus workout.)
4. Whisk eggs until the form a strong peak but not too dry.
5. Mix a large spoon full of whipped whites into the egg yolks then pour yolks onto whites.
6. Fold the whites into the yolks. Gently. A few ribbons of white in the gold is fine.

Pour eggs into the hot pan and place into the hot oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes until set. My finger-deep omelette took closer to 30 minutes. A thinner one might take just 15 min. Keep an eye on the oven! We served this melt in your mouth Sunday breakfast with some hot compote des pommes (applesauce) and marmalade covered toast. Perfect.

All these BASIX Eggy pix by http://www.erikajohnsonphoto.com/ Merci!

1. time to cook cook cook
2. a really roaring fire in the ancient 2-meter wide cheminée kicking out lots of BTUs
3. long simmering braised cuts of good farm raised meat like shoulder, neck and shank
4. bay, thyme and parsley perfuming a simmering wine sauce for civet
5. local red wine like Elian DaRoz’s Chant Coucou
6. guilt free bowls of steaming spicy hot chocolate
7. tiny marble-sized brussel sprouts, as sweet as sugar drops steamed and rolled in salted butter
8. a desire to share hot food with friends
9. happy hens laying 10 eggs a day
10. leftover cassoulet with an egg broken poached on top for lunch

Cooking is different in winter. Shorter sauces long simmered. Meat closer to the bone. Days that lengthen and grow encouraging a later supper. Cooking in winter after the holiday extravaganzas is leaner but still redolent of what draws us close in to the table- silky mouth feel, satisfying, and filling hot food.

Draw close, my friends as we gather new energy for a series of late winter food. Based on farm fresh products, seasonally available now, we begin with a few recipes that are Gascon kitchen standards. Consider the egg as the beginning…

Days run together between frosty mornings and fattening buds.

Winter becomes a memory; Spring a promise.

2010 began with a convivial DUCKFEST at Neal Foley’s Shaw Island farm where 15 curious and committed gastronomes admired, slaughtered, plucked, gutted, cooked, confited and ate their way through as many ducks over several meals- 15 ducks. The results? take a look here- on flickr.

Next came a more intimate but no less intensive initiation to the art of the fatted duck- confit, civet, pate, terrines and, of course, foie gras. Camp Confit, like it’s predecessor Camp Cassoulet, is a no-holds-barred boot camp in which willing and eager students Research and Devour the traditional Gascon Fat Duck- le canard gras and all its trimmings. For our writer-in-resident’s view on all the fun, check out former vegetarian Dana McMahan’s first Duck blog posts here http://en.wordpress.com/tag/kitchen-at-camont/

What’s next? The Gascon Kitchen at Camont is a creative vortex for all things food, organic, local and real. While we invite the virtual in to peek over our shoulders, the emphasize is clearing on the hands on and real deal experiences on a historic 18thC Gascon farm site. Camont with its ducks, chickens and potager is not quite a farm; my Gascon Kitchen is much more than a cooking school.

This year as well as offering weekend classes, long-term apprenticeships and working internships, we are bringing the Gascon Kitchen and some our French friends to you. in April 2010, Dominique and Christiane Chapolard, those charming ambassadors of charcuterie, are accompanying me on a West coast demonstration and cooking extravaganza- Camp Charcuterie- the Art of the French Pig.

Charcuterie Smiles at the Nerac Market

Spring courses begin in March, Summer in Mid May. write for more information and see our Programs page here.

This is the Money Shot. When Gabe gathered us in front of the plucking shed, aprons, bonnets, gloves and …ducks, of course, for a group portrait, I knew this was the one I would blow up to frame in my rogues gallery at Camont. Now, returned to base camp at the kitchen-at-Camont, I’ve barely had time to look back as I launch a week of Camp Confit with  newly arrived folks but here are a few of my favorite shots out of the wonderful group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/duckfest2010/.

So here’s to all my ducky new buddies and especially to Neal Foley, aka Podchef, master Twittermeister and good food advocate extraordinaire. Thanks for a wonderful memorable first twitter-induced event Duckfest 2010. watch this space for more tips, trucs and recipes as we cook our French Fat ducks this week at Camont. For more complete reportage about events, meals and the usual suspects check here, here and here.

These twittering farm hands belong to none other than Podchef, himself.

Duck. Duck. Goose.

When people ask me about typical Gascon cuisine, I turn web-footed and start quacking.

In Gascony, Duck is the national bird.

In most Gascon homes, Duck Fat is the cooking fat of choice as well as flavor enhancer.

With duck on the brain, I slip some thinly sliced leftover magret (breasts) onto a steamy hot corn tortilla with a slug of my potager chili sauce.

There is a pot of duck rillettes in the fridge  ready to spread on toasted pain de campagne that has been rubbed with garlic.

A slab of magret séché or Duck Ham, a smoked and dried duck breast, rubbed liberally with black pepper, twirls off a string in the fireplace at Camont. Sliced thinly and served with pears, melons or prunes it makes  a sweet/salty appetizer

Jars of Confit de Canard sits in the pantry, each with 2 fatted duck legs poached in a sea of liquid gold.

A little Spanish pot perches on the kitchen counter filled with pure white duck fat for cooking omelets, potatoes, etc.

Cans with hand-lettered brown labels announce- cou farci, petits coeur aux foie gras, manchons et gesiers. (stuffed necks, hearts filled with foie gras, confited wings & gizzards)

Crispy duck cracklin’s sprinkled with sea salt, black pepper and quatre-épices warmed in  oven are served like Gascon Popcorn.

A steamy marmite of broth simmers on the fireplace flavored with a duck carcass, carrots, leeks, shallots, thyme and bay- Bouillon de Canard.

Oh, not last and not least, a terrine of Foie Gras from Jehanne’s  Ferme de Boué waits to be opened for Christmas eve with my family in the U.S.

It is just 26 days to D-day. January 1 2010 is Duck Day and I’m  counting days to my arrival on Podchef Island to help the @podchef himself, farmer, chef and food guru Neal Foley, kill, cook, cure and eat a few dozen meaty Rouen ducks. Someone declared December as ‘all-duck, all the time’ month. So as December’s kitchen becomes more and more infused with the scent of duck, I took a break from savory to sweet with these melt in your mouth shortbread cookies.

In the spirit of Ashley Rodriquez’ great post on bacon fat shortbread cookies here, ‘nothing goes to waste’ in the Kitchen at Camont. So with a bit of tweaking from Ashleys’ recipe and an inspirational nod to my sweet guru David Lebovitz easy jam tart use of cornmeal (after all ducks take to corn like… ) I baked up a first batch of these crumbling rich, nutty-flavored shortbreads. Duckys.

Here’s the recipe for a few dozen Duckys

What:

70 gr duck fat

70 gr butter

50 gr white sugar

50 gr brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 Tablespoon white armagnac- (or rum)

200 gr white flour

80 gr fine cornmeal

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon baking powder

How:

I melted the duck fat and butter together with the sugar until it formed a broken caramel.

Then measured all dry ingredients into a large bowl, poured in fat/sugar mix, broke in the eggs with the armagnac then stirred like mad.

Next, I divdied the dough in half, formed two rolls, wrapped them in parchment and stuck them in the frigo until I was ready to bake.

Cut the rolls into thick slices. Place on cookie sheet. Bake in a hot oven (400′F) for 15 minutes or until slighty toasted. Quack! Quick, make coffee or tea!