Un weekend en Provence

We've had a busier week than expected since last we blogged so brace yourself it's a long one, for a quick hit take a look at this. After we published the last post, an old colleague of Katie's who lives in Provence got in touch and kindly invited us to stay, so we leaped into the car and drove down there for a wonderful long weekend in lavender country.

Before we drove down to Provence we made the most of an increasingly rare warm Alpine day, returning to our favourite mountain hang out in the Nevache valley. We fancied a snack as we arrived in the village and attempted to buy a pain-au-chocolat from the boulangerie, only to find they had sold everything save a solitary, sad croissant. The paucity of stock in local bakeries has become something of a bête noire for Katie, who has become maniacal about beating the smug early birds who nip in there and buy up the whole place. For example, the very nearest bakery in La Salle sells out of all pastries by around 8.30am (but they can be gone by 8am at the weekend). And if you're a fan of a pain-au-raisin (as Katie is), you can forget it - they are rarer than an albino peacock. The boulanger artisinal in Monetier-les-Bains makes just TWO OR THREE every day (and not on Mondays or Tuesdays). Katie has circumvented the problem by ordering the cursed things in advance, so who's laughing now, eh? Someone clearly has too much time on their hands. 

Delicious pastry snail

Back to Nevache... we walked out of the village towards a waterfall and did some scrambling up a land-slid mountain path to sit at the top and eat our picnic. 

We perched on that little rock on the upper left

We gave Charlie a lacklustre lesson in foraging (we're such London folk) which mostly involved identifying some wild raspberries and eating those, and telling him everything else was poisonous. Charlie did his usual trick of rushing down a path and falling flat on his face, which we think is simply a ruse to be carried on someone's shoulders. At dinner that night we cracked open the raclette machine and the vast quantities of cheese gave us very strange dreams.

Meat, cheese, roasted veg and blanched broccoli

We left the Alps in more burning sunshine to make the scenic drive down to Provence, through peach orchards and avenues of plane trees, winding up in the incredibly smart town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Terribly well turned out people were wandering round terribly nice shops and lunching in terribly expensive restaurants (once a habit of ours, but sadly no more). We felt a little out of place eating our picnic of tuna pasta, peaches and coffee in a thermos, perched on the side of one of the town's drinking water fountains, especially when Charlie started trying to wash his hair in it. 

Duck face

The theme continued as we visited the monastery of St. Paul de Mausole, still a working a psychiatric hospital but more famously where Vincent Van Gogh spent the prolific penultimate year of his life and where he painted many of his most famous works. We mistakenly told Charlie about the ear incident before we arrived so he spent the entire visit loudly asking 'but WHY did he cut his ear off Mummy?' over and over again. After being tutted at by a disapproving French woman, our inquisitive pre-schooler was banished to the gardens to drive his toy cars around in the dirt.

'Little Jeff Corvette' cares not for post-impressionism

It was lovely to stay with Lucie, Slawek and their children Alex and Clara. Charlie was ecstatic to be in the company of children and to have access to the best collection of toy trucks he had ever seen. We visited bustling Aix-en-Provence, which was much more our style than Saint-Rémy. 

Post-chocolate-eclair

There was a super food market and we had a rare lunch out at a lovely restaurant in a beautiful square. We ate enormous salads, which the French do so well, into which they chuck everything but the kitchen sink. We would have taken a photo but sadly we fell on them like a pack of hungry wolves given how long it took us to get served (but we'll save a rant about French service for another time). 

All in all it was a pretty good lunch

Next day we went to a beach near Marseille and swam in the totally calm, warm sea, dodging the occasional jelly fish. Afterwards, we were heading back the Alps via the Gorges du Verdon, touted as the French Grand Canyon

Can we get we bit more lens flare?

However realising we had arrived woefully late in the day and conveniently having packed the tent, we decided to camp. We found an unattended campsite, persuaded a camper to let us sneak through the electric gates and pitched our tent. We ate a simple 3 course meal at a nearby restaurant overlooking a lake,

Hungrily waiting

then survived a fairly freezing night under canvas. It was well worth it though as the next day we were able to properly see the gorges, which did not disappoint. First we visited the ridiculously good looking town of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, followed by a pedalo ride into the gorge from the Lac St. Croix. A highlight was watching a rather brave/foolish man scale the vertical rock face to jump from a great height into the completely opaque turquoise waters. Equally amusing was afterwards observing every other man in the vicinity almost visibly bristling with the feeling that perhaps they too should put on such a manly show.

We finished off this rather perfect day with a vertiginous 100km drive around the whole gorge, stopping every five minutes to jump out of the car and stare down into the abyss. 

say...

...no...

...more

Almost as stunning as the gorge were the Provencal lavender fields - row upon row of perfectly straight plants - and the most beautiful sunset we have ever seen as we drove back to the Alps in the evening. Sunsets are mostly lost on those not there to witness them but trust us, this was a good 'un. An enormous red orb slipped behind the distant mountains, its fiery hue outlining the surrounding clouds...OK whatever, it was pretty spectacular anyway.

We are very lucky to have visited both Tuscany and Provence in the last two weeks, which are the stuff of holiday dreams. We're now back in the Alps, closing the house down ready for winter. Today a mobile delicatessen turned up in the village square selling a vast array of dry-aged côte de boeuf, charcuterie and local cheeses. So different from the dodgy man selling frozen chicken out of the back of his van that turned up once outside Katie's house when she was a child. Ed made French onion soup for dinner, which happily Charlie wolfed down 

Charlie's breath still smells from this onion based delight

and to our elation he has also started eating tomatoes - although only if doused in balsamic glaze.

On Friday we leave for Italy. France has been wonderful, much wine has been drunk, pastries eaten and hills climbed. Charlie has cultivated an impressively bass, nasal French accent, in which he loves to cry 'saucisson' at the top of his voice. Ed is halfway through writing his first book '100 Ways With A Tin Of Haricot Beans'. And Katie has realised she needs to be less uptight about pastry. We'll be spending most of October near Penne, a little town near Pescara about halfway up the boot on the east coast. We drive down there on our fifth wedding anniversary, when for form's sake, one imagines we'll call a ceasefire on our epic driving-related rows.

Pasta and pirates

We're back from Italia and a hideaway in the hills where internet coverage was at best incredibly dodgy (unless you managed to drain all of Tom's wifi hub data allowance, ha ha).

The hills were actually alive... with grasshoppers

The day before we went we walked as near as we could get to the Meije Glacier at Col de Lauteret and then had a picnic. Charlie heroically ran up and then down a mountain, but fell over just before we reached the car park and slightly brained himself on a rock. Luckily his skull is very thick indeed. 

Then the next day we drove to Italy along the autostrada from the Alps to Tuscany via Turin and Piacenza, before deciding to go on the local roads past Parma, Modena and Bologna in the vague hope that a hunk of Parmesan or a bottle of balsamic vinegar might spontaneously drop through our open car window. Instead, we just had a monumental argument in Parma. It began as a disagreement over parking and then matured into all-out character assassinations. More significantly we failed to get any ham or cheese for which the city is famous. After the remainder of the drive sat in grim silence, we arrived in the beautiful Tuscan hills just in time for dinner and a glass of the excellent local wine which we drank by the gallon.

The ultimate argument diffuser

We stayed at Agriturismo Corboli in the hills outside San Querico about halfway between Bologna and Florence. There were plenty of people staying there, including our friends Tom and Mary with their son James and a two lovely German families with children of similar ages. Charlie had a great week, released from the boredom of hanging out the 'rents. He and James remained in character as pirates for the entire week as well as regularly performing a strange ritual 'ca-chika' dance for the little German girls (à la Gob in Arrested Development).

 

The boys in a rare non-pirate moment

One day we visited Bologna, hired bicycles and visited two stunning churches which were enlivened by Tom's brief but detailed module in the history of architecture so that we're now fully appraised on Gothic arches and flying buttresses. We were unfortunately slightly foxed by the food scene for which Bologna is renowned, as we turned up to an amazing indoor market which was understandably bustling and afforded four adults and two toddlers no space to sit and eat. We eventually compromised by sitting on what admittedly was a sort of hybrid bench-ashtray where we hurriedly stuffed down various pastas in ragu sauce (not the kind peddled by mildly offensive Italian stereotype muppets, thank goodness).

We then made up for this sub-optimal experience by locating the most amazing gelato palace that to our minds has ever existed (Cremeria Funivia). I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it's the best ice cream we've ever tried, in fact sitting writing this in the Alps it's almost tempting to drive the 10hour+ round trip to go back for seconds. IT WAS AMAZING. The inside of the parlour looked part science lab part wonka-esque fantasy. We got a pretty decent selection, Charlie had plain chocolate, but there really was nothing plain about it. Katie went for lemon and strawberry sorbet, refreshingly clean and bursting with flavor. Ed went for the triple threat of dark chocolate, cherry and to finish white chocolate and hazelnut. Did we mention how good it was? It was very good.

Before

After

It should come as no surprise to those of you that know us and know Tuscany that we generally ate very well the whole week. Every night after the kids had been put to bed we sat outside, watching the hills turn green-to-pink-to-grey, trying in vain to keep the mosquitoes from feasting on us and putting away about 729 bottles of red wine and pigging out on take away pizza, chicken in white wine, Tuscan sausage and bean stew, or various pastas and fresh tomato mozzarella and basil (the hills were alive with wild herbs which infused everything we cooked with a heady depth of flavor). 

We alternated days hanging out by the pool and occasionally throwing the kids in with more adventurous outings including Siena, which Ed remembered well from a family trip to see the Palio in the mid nineties. Unsurprisingly the close proximity to horses galloping at full speed round the central cobbled square without any adequate barrier to protect the spectators left a pretty vivid memory and he managed to point out the exact point on the circuit where he stood as a teenager. 

This is why Ed usually wears black...

We scaled the Torre del Mangia for more vertiginous views of the city.

"Pirates always climb towers"

Then managed to get the kids to pose for possibly the grumpiest photo they could muster at the top. 

The princes in the tower

View from the top

On the way down

Prior to that we felt we needed a hearty meal to fuel our touristic endeavors so we found a great little buffet serving a lovely selection of pastas, cured and cooked meats and artichoke hearts. James guarded the restaurant and threatened to keelhaul any landlubbers who dared step aboard

About 10 people stopped to photograph him, he's probably trending somewhere right now

We decided to prolong our stay an extra night and this proved not entirely successful as all day Friday we were treated to an antediluvian* rainstorm. We cowered in our tiny lodgings cooking buttery eggs and hotdogs and steadily getting more and more cabin feverish until eventually around 4pm the clouds briefly parted and allowed us to get a very brief sodden stomp down the hillside before dinner. Still we were grateful to have not had to drive through the maelstrom and it was lovely to spend one more day with Mary, Tom and James.

We decided to set off at a leisurely pace for our return to the Alps, and decided to make Charlie's year by visiting the Ferrari factory in Maranello, after first buying him a model F1 car and allowing him to watch the Grand Prix qualifying while eating pizza for lunch. It might have been the best day of his life. 

Ed's favourite Ferrari. Might look in Autotrader when we get back in case we can just pick one up.

As we pushed on North the weather deteriorated and we ended up driving into the Alps in similarly torrential rain as we had experienced the day before. This wasn't much fun on the descent into Briancon in the pitch dark but thankfully the trusty VW delivered us safely back to our home from home and we've settled back into our Alpine retreat. When we woke up the next morning, it was apparent that Autumn had arrived in our absence. So we went and bought firewood from a man missing most of his fingers and ate smores for dinner tonight...

Charlie had such a sugar high he did laps of the room squealing, good reaction...

*Ed's private education is showing here because Katie sure as hell didn't learn the word 'antediluvian' at Theale Green comprehensive. Christ.

Natural highs and black eyes

In explanation for for the lack of recent activity on the blog, we seem to have been filling our evenings with drunken reverie and then the subsequent evenings hungover and only able to sit mindlessly in front of Netflix (a more thorough precis of that follows at the end of this epic installment) as opposed to formulating coherent paragraphs which read good...

It's been another lovely week. We have discovered, among other things:

The Col de Lauteret and the alpine gardens, where Captain Scott (of the Antarctic fame) trained in preparation for his ultimately ill fated expeditions and is memorialised by way of a pile of rocks with a plaque attached.

Arrrgh it's coming straight towards me (at speed of 10.5 miles per year*...)

 * the fastest recorded movement of a glacier. Don't think this one's moving that fast though.

A lovely park at the foot of the hill in Briancon, which has a lake populated with what look like Leopard Fish. However, given these creatures are reportedly native to the Congo river basin, we can assume they are probably just trout. Nevertheless, it's a very tranquil spot and there's also a playground there and one of those terrifying treetop assault courses that some people seem to enjoy doing. 

Ducks - more than just a delicious menu option

We've spent a couple of days exploring the Vallée de la Clarée, which has a number of pretty villages along the valley floor. We found a riding stables, where we took Charlie on a pony ride. The stables was the epitome of relaxed equestrianism: they gave us a pony, pointed us at a mountain path and said good luck. Katie employed similar disciplinary tactics on the horse to those she uses on Charlie and a successful balade à cheval was had by all. So much so, Katie is going to have a go herself, but probably on something a little larger.

Giddy-up

Today, we returned to the valley to explore and spent a most bucolic (that's bucolic, not bubonic) morning cycling from Rosiers to Nevache climbing gently up about 250m in height over 15km. 

Katie fails to master hitch-hiking

We discovered a farm selling goats' cheese and bought some to add to our picnic. We then experienced a beautiful moment when Charlie selected this morceau artisinale over a Babybel. A warm glow of smug satisfaction permeated the rest of the picnic and there was much rejoicing.

Goat's cheese, bread knob, leftover risotto, fruit salad

We've also started taking our three water pistols with us wherever we go, and after picnicking each day it's not uncommon to find us all engaged in a fierce and bitter gunfight. Ed has even taken to packing extra water for this very purpose. Not necessary today in Nevache, which has public drinking troughs on every corner, so we treated ourselves to a lengthy water fight right in front of the tourist office to the bemusement of several hikers. 

Happiness is a cold pistol

In case anyone is wondering what we've been shoveling into our faces over the last week: a risotto primavera (despite it being the wrong season) with some chicken stock that Katie had managed not to throw away and a banana cake to clear up a glut of manky old bananas. Ed did a goats' cheese and caramelised onion tarte for dinner tonight, but made with shop-bought puff pastry as there isn't enough time in the world to make that stuff by hand more than once a blue moon. Besides it doesn't work when we make it ourselves (we've tried once).

Tarte au chèvre et oignons caramélisés, green salad, omelette for Charles

Yesterday Ed managed to attack himself with the bike rack, a gift very kindly donated to us by his boss Rich. It is an excellent bit of kit which despite attaching to the hatch-back still allows you to access the boot, however there is one terrifying design fault - when you come to shut the boot it descends at a fearsome speed and if you're not paying attention it will give you one hell of a whack sur la tête. This rather embarrassingly happened in the middle of the Aldi car park and an uncharacteristically concerned Frenchman who witnessed it commented "Ça va?" to which Ed immediately replied "Ça va bien merci" in his best GCSE standard French in spite of his semi-concussed confusion. Still it has resulted in quite an impressive black eye, and the bike rack has been removed until it's next needed when hopefully Ed can be trusted to operate it without risk of brain injury.

"It'll have your eye out" maybe time to experiment with an eye patch?

Anyway back to the thrilling summation of our Netflix consumption- it's not all been mindless rubbish, Ed has got to the end of season 3 of Bojack Horseman which despite being by turns surreal, absurdist and hilarious also manages to be deeply moving, depressing and the most biting satire of Hollywoo (sic) since The Player.

We watched The Double which is Richard Ayoade's second feature after the quirky-ly enjoyable Submarine. Based on a Dostoevsky short story it has Jesse Eisenberg playing the downtrodden lead and his doppelgänger who seems to possess all the charm, charisma and confidence that the original lacks. The film plays like an 80's nostalgia trip owing a great debt to Terry Gilliam's Brazil as well as a healthy dose of Lynchian nightmarishness, but it is a little slow to get going and never really delivers the cathartic payoff that the skin-crawlingly oppressive mise-en-scène sets up.

The next hungover evening we watched Bernie by the consistently brilliant Richard Linklater, with Jack Black playing the eponymous funeral director who befriends and later murders a rich widow played by Shirley Maclaine. There were a couple of interesting twists that we had not seen done before - the whole story is based on a real life murder case and the dramatic reconstruction is interspersed with interviews of the real life towns-folk. Despite the fact that an apparently avaricious young man shot a wealthy old lady four times in the back before hiding her corpse in a freezer for nine months, the entire community seem to be on his side. In fact it becomes difficult to know how you feel about the case with nobody coming off as exactly likeable or entirely innocent and at points you wish Bernie had appointed the lawyers from The Jinx who know a thing or two about getting rich folk off the hook for murder in Texas.

On Sunday we're heading to Tuscany for five days to join some friends on holiday and muck around on an agriturismo which specialises in, guess what, pork products. On the way we'll be driving through the culinary triumvirate of Parma (ham and parmesan), Modena (balsamic vinegar) and Bologna (ah ha, not spaghetti bolognese - cue QI-claxon here - which isn't 'recognised by locals' and apparently only exists in stupid British people's heads. Bologna is in fact famous for tagliatelle al ragù, which as far as we can see, is still a dish that should never be eaten on a first date).

So unless it's a very boring trip indeed, we'll be back here on our return! Ciao x

Tarte Tatin

Inspired by the Great British Bake Off I decided to do some baking. I attempted to make tarte tatin, which I have never made before, but which I have enjoyed eating on numerous occasions. I started off by looking up recipes on the internet and came across a very recent one by Claire Ptak, of Violet Bakery in Hackney.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/28/apple-tarte-tatin-recipe-puff-pastry-claire-ptak-baking-the-seasons

The Violet Bakery is beautiful and irritating in equal measure. It's the kind of place that serves its cakes on the same 1970s china your parents got as a wedding present (which your parents will love to loudly comment on if you ever take them there, which you shouldn't). The service is glacial and the staff are dressed in that inimitable Hackney style Ugly-on-Purpose. They mix their cakes with a 1950s Hobart they probably found in a skip. I adore their cakes, but I don't honestly feel cool enough to be in there in the first place.

I love Claire Ptak's recipes, not only do they generally work, but her books are beautiful (she is a food stylist - although if ever there was a #firstworldproblem it is that) and she explains how to be a good baker outside of just following a recipe. In one of her recipe books she relates a moment during her time as a stagiaire at Chez Panisse in California (one day I will totally do a stage there too...) when the great Alice Waters told her off for her poor mise en place. In other words, if you don't get your shit weighed out and organised before starting to bake, and tidy as you go, you're going to get into trouble. I generally cook in a hurricane of confusion, so it's a piece of advice I have tried to take on board.

Sooo, tarte tatin. As explained in the overly pedantic Guardian comments section below the recipe, tarte tatin it does not need prefacing with 'apple'. A tarte tatin is always made with apple and only if made with other fruits do they need specifying in the title of the dish. Especially if you're making a banana one, like Sarah Jane did on the Bake Off. I will want to know it's a Banana Tarte Tatin so I can avoid eating it and then arrange to have you killed. 

First let's deal with the pastry. Claire's (we're on first name terms now right?) recipe kindly only specifies '500g puff pastry'. Which I think implies I can either make it or buy it. So I sent Eddie to the shop. Sadly he came back empty handed, apparently it's still a capital offence in France to buy ready-made pastry. (OK, I'm only joking, you can buy it, but I bet you believed me for a second there. Mind you, you still can't buy fresh chicken stock). 

So I made some rough puff BY HAND. I froze some cubes of butter and instead of using a standing mixer (which I don't have here) I used the washed hands of a small boy. Then I rolled out the whole buttery mess, folded it and turned it, resting in the freezer for 20 minutes in between. Five times. 

No rolling pin. So I turned to the next obvious cylindrical object

Mise en place still rubbish

I made a caramel with butter and sugar, which immediately hardened into rock hard toffee once it had cooled, but I hoped it would liquefy once in the oven. I peeled and cored my apples and popped them on top, but the wrong way up as I forgot the whole thing would would eventually be turned out upside down. 

The finished product can't be said to have been an unmitigated success, as my dutifully made puff pastry did not laminate (i.e. get layers) and instead turned into a sort of buttery crisp. That said, it was pretty tasty so not a total disaster. 

Buttery

Fruit the wrong way up

I learn from various online forums that a failure to laminate is either down to the butter being too warm when it goes in the oven so it just immediately melts (but my pastry had been in the fridge), or it's down to the oven not being hot enough. I don't know the oven in the house in France so I think this is likely. Pastry has never been my strong suit, I'm also totally crap at making shortcrust, so maybe it's something I should practice....

We ate the tarte while watching 'Mr. Right', a hit-man-rom-com in the vein of Grosse Point Blank - one of Eddie's favorite films. It was a pleasant surprise to find a new and watchable film on netflix and it proved to be the perfect antidote to our jaded state of overfed exhaustion. With the amiable screen presences of the consistently excellent Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick on fine form, the humour was amusing, the romance touching and the action well choreographed. The script had a touch of Shane Black but with a female co-lead instead of his more typical bromances. 

And for all of you who have found this post criminally boring, here's a photo of Charlie with a stewed carrot stuffed into each cheek.

'I want to make you an offer you can't refuse'