Monthly Archives: August 2008

Week 20: Pulling a sickie

29 Friday Aug 2008

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Week 20: Pulling a sickie

Today, I should have been cooking a Genoise cake, making my own noodles and filleting trout to cook in red wine.
Instead, I spent it being poorly. Properly ‘You should really go to hospital’ poorly.
Back in 1997 when we were first looking for a house to buy in the South of France, I fell very ill one night in the B&B where we regularly stayed.
It started out as a flu-like symptoms with my right leg swelling up, then developed into a frightening bout of the shakes as I heated up and cooled down in turn with a temperature a couple of degrees above normal. That night I woke up and tried to go to the bathroom for a glass of water and found I couldn’t stand up. I got out of bed and immediately fell to the floor, and simply couldn’t get up again – I was unable to work out which way was ‘down’ to push against the floor to pick myself up. Very frightening.
We called a doctor and he couldn’t find anything wrong, but did rule out having been bitten by something. The day before we’d been house-hunting in the Camargue and I feared I’d been bitten by a mosquito and had contracted malaria. Malarial mosquitos, said the doctor, are a few thousand miles away in Africa – has this man never heard of A Mighty Wind blowing them across the Mediterranean? And what about those little red spiders that are supposed to live in the vines around here? They’re poisonous, everyone who knows nothing says so.
After a day or two the fever went away and I was fine until the symptoms came up again a couple of years later, again without a doctor being able to diagnose the problem despite me undergoing various tests. And then I got another bout of the mystery illness about once a year, so when the problem came up this weekend I rushed round to the doctor immediately. I’ve come to recognise the symptoms early now, particularly the swelling of my right leg, so she was able to order a blood test while the problem was in full flow.
I have, it turns out, an ‘erisipel’, a blood infection. I have – have always had, since my early childhood – athlete’s foot which comes and goes and I control with topical creams to kill the ‘champignons’, the ‘mushrooms’ as the French so delightfully call the fungi. Every now and then they get into my bloodstream via a cut or break in the skin on my foot and infect my whole body – my leg swells up as it’s nearest the site of infection.
My doctor says the best thing is to go to hospital immediately since this is a very serious problem and I could die if I don’t get it sorted out. Ha! Has she never heard of the Cook’s Code of Conduct? Rule 1: Always Go To Work, No Matter What. Rule 2: See rule 1.
The restaurant is officially closed at the moment, but I’m working with the Chef on a few passing groups and our resident group of Gendarmes (groups of CRS Gendarmes, the French riot police, are regularly stationed away from home all over the country and we have a permanent group staying in the hotel). So as it’s just me and him there’s no question of me leaving him to work alone so I tell her to find another solution.
Hmm. Well, you could take this, and this, and this and use this cream and this special soap and lie in bed at home and a nurse will come round and give you twice-daily injections in the stomach to try to stem the infection, she says. Eight prescriptions? I must be poorly. In France, others judge your real level of illness by how many items you’re prescribed – one or two and you’re clearly faking it. Three or four and yes, well, OK, you might be a bit sick but it’s not serious. Five or six items and you’re definitely poorly, take the day off. Eight items, plus a nurse coming round morning and evening to give you an injection? Now you’re definitely sick, lie down straight away.
So I go with this option, except the only nurse I can find in the yellow pages who will take me on doesn’t do home visits so far away from home (she’s a five minute walk from my flat) so I have to schlepp round there twice a day. Me, who’s supposedly so ill I should be on a drip in hospital.
Anyway. So I do that and continue going in to work too, collapsing in bed as soon as I get home. Delphine is working at the moment but, sterling trooper that she is, manages to drive me to and from work most days and I get the bus the rest of the time rather than taking my bike – I’m really not up to cycling the five kilometres to the restaurant.
And the Cook’s Code of Conduct, she rules sternly, doesn’t apply to school and I get to spend the whole day in bed. I do go in to work in the evening, but it’s only for a couple of hours so it’s almost a complete day of rest.

Some wedding photos

28 Thursday Aug 2008

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My very old friend Simon Grosset – we’ve known each other since 1980 when we met at the offices of the London Student newspaper, he as a photographer and I as a reporter – has taken some stunningly brilliant photos of our wedding last weekend. http://www.q-photography.co.uk/CDprints/
It does help that he’s a professional wedding photographer now, of course.
The ‘official’ pictures are being processed at the moment by Walter, of Studio Italiano – another great photographer with a great website, http://studioitaliano.fr/

Week 19: A microbiological initiation – what I did at school on February 13 2006

26 Tuesday Aug 2008

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A microbe, our teacher tells us in our ‘Hygiene’ class today, is an infinitely small living being visible only through a microscope. I want to tell her that anything that is ‘infinitely’ small is, by definition, not visible through anything, let alone a microscope, but desist. No one likes to be corrected by someone older and wiser than they are when they’re pretending to teach 16-year-olds.
Which is one of the recurring – indeed, perhaps the only – problems I have with this course. That is, it’s really designed to be done by young adults stepping out into the world for the first time, not smart-arsed 46-year-olds who are already more highly qualified, not to say intelligent (and modest to boot) than their teachers. But classes on hygiene, as it’s called, and law and so on are part of the course and will come up in the exam and so yes, they have to be done.
What is also annoyingly starting to become clear is that I may also have to do all the other exams the 17-year-olds do when they take their cookery exams, i.e. In French, maths, geography, history and so on. When I signed up for this course last year I was told that, since I already have a higher exam qualification in the UK (my degree, in fact, poor though it was) I would be excused all but the cookery exams. Now, it turns out, the French educational system farts in the general direction of the English educational system and refuses to recognise it as in any way worthwhile whatsoever. “Ah doo nat recognaize yorr deggree,” it says in its heavily-accented English, much in the style of the French soldiers in that Monty Python film. I can appeal, of course, a process which will (a) take for ever, (b) cast a bad light on me and (c) will be won by the French so I might as well do the other exams and get it over with. As Delphine says, even if they agree now to recognise my English Degree they could decide not to in a few years’ time and take my CAP away, so just knuckle down and do the other exams.
The problem is that the other adult education students in my year come in on Tuesday mornings to study these other subjects (the teenagers are at school full-time and take two years to complete the course) and I now have to glean, second-hand from them details on exactly what these examinations may be about.
This one will run and run.
Like some of the cheeses we start talking about amongst ourselves in our hygiene class. It’s usually Eric who starts these discussions – he’s a bit, but not much, younger than me and runs his family restaurant just outside Avignon. He often manages to get our Hygiene teacher going on another subject than the one she’s teaching us (how much more fat there is in a tablespoon of mayonnaise than a tablespoon of vinaigrette is one of her favourites) and the ensuing discussions often serve to wake us all up. Which is not necessarily a good thing, but anyway.
The important thing we take away from today’s class (says our teacher) is that MOs (Micro Organismes) have five conditions essential for their life: something to eat, particularly proteins; at least 40% water in their environment; an agreeable temperature of 37 degrees centigrade; neutral pH of 7; and either an oxygenated atmosphere for aerobic bacteria or a lack of it for anaerobic ones. I, being a clever dick, think about those bugs that live inside volcanic vents in the ocean, inside frozen food and elsewhere these conditions don’t apply, but that’s just me being a clever dick. For the purpose of this exam, bugs like the conditions that apply inside our bodies, full stop.
Today’s cooking is a Gibelotte de Braconniers, essentially a hunter’s stew made on this occasion with rabbit. I’ve worked with rabbit a fair bit in the past; at my first restaurant we made rabbit terrine by stewing rabbit thighs with a few onions and then picking off the meat to stuff into aluminium ramekins, topping them up with the cooking juice and thyme laced with gelatine and allowing them to set. At my current restaurant chef sometimes puts rabbit on the weekly menu and I’ve had a go at cutting them up a few times.
Today we learn how to divide the body into six portions (some of them fairly mean ones it has to be said, there’s not an enormous amount of meat on a rabbit after all) and David impresses us by producing a series of côtes de lapin, rabbit chops which they serve as amuse bouches in the restaurant where he works (which is even posher than the one where I work). Hey David, no one likes a smart arse…
This afternoon is a ‘Charlotte aux fruits confits’. The ‘Fruits confits’ turn out to be tinned strawberries, which is fine. Charlottes are cream puddings set either by the addition of fruit or gelatine and, to be on the safe side, we use both, and they work fairly well since most don’t turn out too runny and several are definitely edible. And it’s good practise for me since it’s Delphine’s birthday this weekend and we’re celebrating at home in Avignon by inviting the family round. Delphine wants a charlotte – she’s celebrating in conjunction with her brother who’s birthday comes soon – and traditionally they have a charlotte, so I’ve promised to make a gigantic one.
We finish off the day making something much more interesting – salmon profiteroles with beurre blanc. Beurre blanc – translating it as ‘white butter’ doesn’t really have the same cachet does it? – is a favourite of mine, easy to make, great tasting and it seems to impress people a lot. Every time I go to see Nick and Amanda in London I have to make it for them, with Amanda practising hard to perfect it herself. Here’s a tip: you can’t keep it in the fridge and use it again the next day, Amanda…
Of course, this being France and the recipe only having four basic ingredients – chopped shallots, wine and/or vinegar, salt and butter – the inverse square law of arguing about how to make it applies. That is, the less ingredients something has, the more different ways there are of making it. The arguments in class centre around how the proportions of wine and vinegar change depending on what you serve it with. Me, I just go for a 50-50 split but this is, clearly, the Easy, Foreign way out. What if you’re serving it with sole? Salmon? Surely you need more vinegar with the salmon…
The salmon profiteroles are simple by comparison: poach the salmon in a little cream, season, stuff into the choux buns you made earlier. Choux buns I do enjoy making, especially now I’ve got over the temptation to cook them too little – they always need more time in the oven than you think to dry them out properly. For which you also need an oven with vents that open to let the steam out – this may be why your choux buns don’t work at home, the oven is sealed shut and keeps all the moisture inside, preventing your choux from stiffening suitably.
Now there’s a tip…

Week 18: Household cabbage – what I did at school on February 6 2006

17 Sunday Aug 2008

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French bureaucracy is complicated for a number of reasons, not least the fact that it’s charged with keeping French bureaucracy going. In the UK, 11% of the workforce works for the government in one capacity or another – policemen, nurses, bureaucrats, whatever. In France, the percentage is 24%. Twenty-four percent! A quarter of the workforce which does nothing productive at all, just spends its days providing fodder for the nation’s stand-up comedians and moaners. Blimey.
So today at school we spend an hour learning about the French judicial system which, according to the bureaucrats who organise the French educational system, I need to know about before I’m safe to unleash on the omelette-and-chips buying French public.
Like much of the civilised world, French government is divided into Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches (are you asleep yet? Try reading this in a hot, stuffy, sunlit classroom after getting up at 6 am, working in a hot kitchen all morning and then stuffing yourself with stodge at lunchtime) and the separations thereof  “As detailed in the 5th French Constitution of 1958, the fundamental text of the Republic, of the state of law and democracy,” I noted before nodding off. And then I woke up and drew this huge diagram of the French judicial system, the eight tribunals and all the rest of it. Blimey. No really, blimey.
Anyway. Luckily this morning was much more interesting. The cookery we learn at school is very traditional; the recipes largely date back to Escoffier and the early 20th century, some beyond that. It’s the basis of French cuisine from which everything since has sprung – this is how Escoffier made a fond de veau, veal stock, no one has found a better method so this is how we do it now is what we are told at school. The French are, quite rightly in my view, very proud that their cuisine is the foundation of most cookery in the Western world and, naturally, insist that theirs is the best version of it available.
In a way it’s reassuring; these methods have been tried and tested by generations of chefs over more than a hundred years so they work and work well; equally it’s discomfiting to realise that, if your recipe doesn’t work it really is your own fault and it’s really you who’s done something wrong.
I am most discomfited by things which are supposed to rise and foam, everything from whipped cream to bread. So today I have the cold sweats as we approach the pâte à brioche which we are going to use to make a favourite snack dish of many French people, the saucisson brioché, sausage in a (brioche) bun, i.e. posh hot dogs.
Frankly I’d much rather make the saucisson, a process that interests me much more than baking simply because I know I can do it. I’ve already written about how Pascal, the nice chap with whom I share a workstation at school, whips my cream for me while I cut his potatoes into pretty shapes. My inability to make things rise extends to bread too I’m sure, since every time I’ve tried making it myself at home – either manually or in a bread machine – I’ve managed to produce only doorstop-quality lumps of flour and water so unleavened the ancient Israelites would be proud of me. Although if one of my loaves fell on them out of the sky they’d end up with concussion rather than a decent feed. I have no idea why I can’t make bread or decently-risen cakes; I have warm hands, I have acid sweat, I am stupid – all are possibilities and, indeed, true in at least two of the three cases. The fact remains that, in the rising stakes, I’m a non-starter.
So brioche, Chef Garnier assures us, is easy. Anyone can make it. It’s almost as easy as profiteroles, he says. My profiteroles always end up as flat as my Yorkshire puddings, I tell him, and have no reason to think that my brioche will be any different.
We’ll see, he says.
The lesson starts with a discussion of flour types; today we’re using what is known in France as Type 45 or Farine de Patissier, since it is very rich in gluten, the protein which gives it the strength to stay up once it’s risen. “This is very white flour,” he tells us. “Even whiter than English skin.” Har har, whatever would he do without the English guy to tease? Anyway, the higher the number the less gluten the flour has, Chef tells us. Right.
So we sieve the flour and form it into two adjacent rings, one large and one small. These are fontaines, which literally means fountains but translates better as wells, to receive, in the large one, the majority of the liquid and eggs; the smaller one takes the yeast dissolved in a little of the warmed milk; the large well takes the sugar and, importantly, the salt. Mix the salt and yeast and the former kills the latter and your dough will not rise. Hmm. Perhaps salt from my sweaty hands is killing the yeast? But then why am I equally incapable of making cakes rise when using levure chimique, baking powder?
Anyway. We mix up the two wells separately for a couple of minutes, adding the salt, sugar and eggs to the large well before mixing the two fontaines together. The mixture, we are warned, must be neither too dry nor too humid; it must have body, Chef says, and you give it body by battering it against the steel worktop, throwing it down and lifting it up like some sort of alien blob, thumping it down to Give It Body. It’s done when it no longer sticks to the counter, apparently, but the fault in the process here is that, until it no longer sticks to the counter, it sticks to the counter. And your hands, clothes, hair, face and anything else it touches. So much for Escoffier’s great recipes.
But eventually I wear my dough out enough so that it gives up (most) of its hold on me, my clothes and the worktop and I add little parcels of softened butter (beurre en pomade en petits parcelles) before leaving it to rise for half an hour at 30-35 degrees. At which point we ‘chase out the carbonic gas’, as Chef translates it (badly) for me before allowing it to rise again.
Roll it out, wrap it round your sausage (Missis!), paint it with egg yolk and everything in the oven for 45 minutes or so until it looks just like the ones they sell in the shops. Well, a misshapen version of one they sell in the shops, one which only my mother could love and even she would be caught selling it surreptitiously to the dog under the table when she thought I wasn’t watching.
Still. Chef deems them all Good Enough to let us out to lunch and we trek off to the school canteen to eat, well, saucisson brioché. What a coincidence. I am careful to choose a slice from one not made by me and quite tasty it is too, if you ignore most of the pastry and eat the bought-in saucisson inside.
And avoiding the stodge is a good idea, it turns out, since there’s that aforementioned class on the French legal system immediately after lunch.
We eventually escape with our lives after a nice nap to spend the afternoon making ‘Chou de ménage’, household cabbage. What?
Household cabbage, it turns out, is a cabbage cut into quarters and then used by Chef as an example of ‘Braiser par expansion’, braising by expansion whereby the delicious taste of the cabbage expands out into its cooking medium (can you spot the fatal flaw in this argument, children? Can you?)
Anyway. Trim your cabbage, cut it into four equal quarters, rinse it in vinegared water to kill the beasties, blanch in boiling water for a few minutes, refresh in iced water, drain, cut off the root which you’d left to hold the whole thing together while it cooked (oops), fry off your Garniture Aromatique (onions and carrots cut into a nice macedoine), add the cabbage wrapped with bacon or couenne (the membrane which surrounds a pig’s stomach – very useful for holding together things which would otherwise float off and do their own thing – pop it into your casserole dish and cook it in the oven at 200 degrees Centigrade for an hour and a quarter. Blimey. All this for braised cabbage? Ah, but the lessons are about braising and wrapping and making a macedoine with everything the same size. It’s just a shame that we couldn’t have learned these lessons on something edible.
Still. We finish off the afternoon with some Pommes Fondants, melting potatoes. The object of which, of course, is not to finish up with melted potatoes. Well, not until they arrive in the client’s mouth that is. We start with large potatoes, 7-8 centimetre jobbies which we cut in two and then turn so that they’re all the same size and seven-sided shape and then cook in a buttered dish in the oven, moistening it regularly with ‘fond blanc’, white chicken stock (i.e. stock made from unroasted chicken bones – as opposed to fond brun, which is made with roasted bones) so they sit up to their waists in it. Except that, at the end of the cooking time (an hour or so) the liquid should all be just evaporated and your spuds barely coloured. So get that one right or turn your pommes fondants into pommes on fire.