Tourteau Fromage de Chevre- a goat cheese treat!
Goats. Cheese. Cake. Our day started on Goats, moved into Cheese- chèvre, of course, and then finished on Cake. Goat’s Cheese Cake. I welcomed @SabinaCuisina into the Gascon Kitchen a short week ago, fresh from midterms at her culinary institute and ready for a Gascon Spring Break. (thanks to hubby TP!) Sabina was not the first person in the Gascon Kitchen that lives and breathes cheese- goats, sheep or cow! But she is the first person to... Read More
Poule-au-Pot…a chicken in every pot.
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... Read More
Raising Chickens & the age old conundrum of how to use a dozen eggs: Omelette Catalane
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 ed me, sometimes floating away on the big Barge for chartering for months then returning again for months of summer landlocked... Read More
A Sweet Omelet as light as a golden cloud for you!
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.... Read More
Duckys- cornmeal ducklard cookies
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... Read More
Projet Cochon- the Butcher & the Kids
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Camont’s New Beekeeper- Narcisse the Sweet
When shopping the Le Passage d’Agen market on a Wednesday, I whisper to students and guests that “This man sells the best honey in Gascony!”. I get little patronizing nods, the cameras click away; they love his trim mustaches, the flowing gray locks, his black Stetson hat. He flirts and poses and sells a few more kilos of leeks, garlic, potatoes, persimmons, nefliers and pomegranates. But I wait. I wait patiently for the French... Read More
Baker
A world of food-making whirls around me by the time I wake, here at Camont. Yesterday, photographer Tim Clinch and I started a week of shooting for a new book project under a flour-dusted cloud called la Boulangerie de Pierre in a modest strip mall in le Passage d’Agen. This was always a good bakery. When the previous owners retired, I sniffed over losing their very fine malted barley flutes. Soon enough, Pierre and Valerie unpacked their bags... Read More
Could this be your Perfect Pig on an October morning?
The Agen market is full of surprises on a perfect fall morning. Today, shopping for quince, cress, and cilantro I ran into a drove of pigs. Free-range, pasture-raised French pigs. Like a stage setting, simplicity itself- one knife, a cleaver, a wooden block, & a smile. Julien Veyrac of Tournon d’Agenais No one was more surprised than me to meet the new butcher boy on the block and discover some damn good looking charcuterie and fresh... Read More
Bon Jour les Poulets!
Created by Julia Leach, 8-week stagiere at the Kitchen-at-Camont. Fall ’09. Read More
