Bard - Picnic in Provence: a Tale of Love in France, with Recipes

PICNIC IN PROVENCE

This edition published in 2015 by Summersdale Publishers Ltd.

First published in the USA in 2015 by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Group, Inc.

Copyright Elizabeth Bard, 2015

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.

Elizabeth Bard has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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For my mother. Now I get it.

CONTENTS

LIST OF RECIPES

A Simple Birthday Cake
A Thousand and One Nights (Ras-el-Hanout Ice Cream with Grilled Almonds)
Barbecued Sardines with Vinegar and Honey
Beef and Spelt Berry Soup
Blood Sausage with Apples and Autumn Spices
Caramelized Onion and Anchovy Flatbread
Carrot-Saffron Cupcakes
Champagne Cocktail with Shaved Truffle
Chef Salad with Chicken Livers
Cherry Clafoutis
Chickpea Salad with Sweet Peppers and Herbs
Clams with Saffron Fennel Tomato Sauce
Creamy Courgette Soup
Corn Souffl
Courgette Flowers Stuffed with Goat's Cheese, Mint, and Anise Seed
Courgettes Gratin
Dark Chocolate Mousse
Dominique's Seventy-Two-Hour Salt Cod with Wilted Leeks
Fig and Almond Tart
First Asparagus with Tahini Yogurt Dressing
Grated Carrot Salad
Green Beans with Bacon
Grilled Whole Sea Bass with Lemon and Herbs
Homemade Hot Fudge
Hungarian Cherry Cake
Jean's Cherry Marmalade
Jean's Rosemary, Olive, and Parmesan Sabls
Lavender-Honey and Thyme Ice Cream
Lentil and Sausage Stew
Mendiants
Mamie's Apple Cake
Midnight Pear Quickbread
Mini-Almond-Cakes with Apricot and Lavender
Mollie and David's Fig Chutney
Monkfish Fillets with Tomatoes and Fresh Peas
Mulled-Wine Roasted Plums
Poached Pears with Truffle Crme Anglaise
Puff Pastry 'Butterfly' Cookies
Pumpkin Cheesecake
Rabbit with Pastis, Fennel, and Fresh Peas
Raw Beet, Carrot, and Cabbage Salad
Roasted Figs with Roquefort and Honey
Rocket Salad with Chicken, Fresh Figs, and Avocado
Rocket Salad with Roasted Red Onions, Butternut Squash, Walnuts, and Fresh Goat's Cheese
Rosemary Caponata
Saffron Summer Compote
Sausage with Flageolet Beans and Courgettes
Sea Bass with Parma Ham, Green Olives, and Champagne
Seven-Hour Lamb with North African Spices
Simple Salmon in Foil
Soupe au Pistou
Split Pea Soup with Pork Belly and Cognac
Stuffed Tomatoes and Courgettes
Tomato Napoleon with Artichoke Pure
Truffle Toasts with Salted Butter
Tuna Tartare
Twenty-Minute Cod and Creamy Leeks
Warm Goat's Cheese Salad
White Beans with Tomatoes and Herbs
White Peach and Blueberry Salad with Rose Syrup
Whole Grain Salad with Chickpeas and Herbs
Whole-wheat Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes, Shrimp, and Aubergines
Yellow Split Pea Pure with Orange-Ginger Vinaigrette

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect people's privacy.

Once again, poor Gwendal didn't get that lucky.

CHAPTER 1

PICNIC IN PROVENCE

I don't, as a rule, introduce myself to cows. But these were important cows, essential ones. If for some reason they weren't available, our dream of lowcally made Provenal ice cream would be dead before it began.

"Hello ladies," I said gamely, noting the bones jutting out from their hind quarters. To an American, they seemed a bit svelte for good lavender ice cream. But this is France, so it shouldn't surprise me that even the livestock look like they're on a diet. The cows observed me with perfect detachment as my heels sank into the early spring mud. One finally looked up and gave me her full attention. She chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of hay, her large liquid eyes perfectly ringed with black, like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. Suddenly, her head bobbed down toward my boots and immediately back up again, as if to say, "Excusez-moi, Madame, but it's clear from the cleanliness of your shoes that you're new around here. Very, very new. And, as a rule, we don't produce milk for anyone born in Manhattan."

If you had told me on my wedding day that ten years later I'd be standing in a field in Provence making small talk with skinny cows, I would have nodded politely and, with a twist of my pearls, said that you had mistaken me for someone else. I would have been wrong.

***

We didn't come to stay. We had no intentions beyond a few days of sun and a busty bottle of Ctes du Rhne.

Creste, an hour east of Avignon, is not what you'd call the chic part of Provence. A village of 1,300, tucked into a valley along the old Roman road, the locals are accustomed to tourists passing through on their way to more scenic hilltop towns Saignon, Lourmarin nearby. There is a single main street with a butcher, two boulangeries, and a caf with plastic chairs and a thatched awning. It takes about twentyfive seconds to cross the village, from the moment you enter, at the roundabout near the blinking neon cross of the pharmacy, to the moment you drive out of town under a canopy of towering plane trees. If you duck to rummage in the glove compartment for an extra pair of sunglasses, you might miss it. But here we were: one exhausted French executive and his pregnant American wife, staying for ten days over the Easter holidays.

Gwendal and I rolled our bags, wheels noisy as a stagecoach, through the stone-paved courtyard of the B&B. La Belle Cour is a gracious house, full of books, sofas with deeply dented cushions, and the grave tick-tocking of grandfather clocks. As we climbed the spiral stairs to our room (no one offered me a piggyback, though I might have accepted it), I ran my hand along the white plaster walls, chilly to the touch. The plumped-up pillows on the bed were welcoming. I sat down eased down, really with my belly in the lead, on the quilted chenille spread.

I thought of another set of spiral stairs, three flights up to a cramped love nest in the heart of Paris. Ten years ago, I had lunch with a handsome Frenchman and never quite went home. My French lover is now my French husband, and I'm an adopted Parisienne. I know which local bakery makes the best croissants; I can speak fluently to the man at the phone company (a bigger accomplishment than it sounds), and I can order a neatly flayed rabbit from the butcher without the slightest hesitation.