Art that sweeps away the dust from the soul

Inside the one of the Orangerie's Monet rooms

Commeth the hour, commeth the artist. Saturday dawned in Paris with the expectation of solid rain, but it proved to be reluctant to pitch it down as forecast.

The Other Half went off to hunt for a jacket in one of Paris’s great department stores, while I went to see a woman about a watch on the Ile St Louis.

Grande Nature morte, Picasso

Meeting up again later, we decided to take the opportunity afforded by the continuing dry weather to head down toward the Tuileries, taking a stroll down the Rue du Rivoli.

When we were most of the way there, the rain decided to fall. Fortunately, we were near to the road and to a rather smart-looking eatery with an unsmart name – The Welcome Café.

Since lunch was required, we sat down under the colonnade to wait out the shower with food.

Paul Guillaume by Modigliani

And very pleasant it was too, with both of us opting for an omelette with girolles, which came garnished with chervil, flat leaf parsley and chives, and was washed down with a glass of Chardonnay from the south west of the country.

For all that the establishment was clearly catering largely for a tourist clientele, the kitchen did not make the error of turning the lightly-beaten egg into something solid and dry, but had clearly cooked it for only a minute at the most.

Mrs David would have approved. I most certainly did.

And so to the Musée de l’Orangerie.

Originally built in 1852 to shelter the garden’s orange trees, it later metamorphosed into a temporary display space, before being assigned to house Monet’s eight monumental Nymphéas canvases in 1922, following the suggestion of the artist’s friend, Georges Clémenceau. It opened to the public in 1927.

Paul Guillaume by Derain

In the basement, the gallery houses the Paul Guillaume colllection of late 19th century and early 20th century paintings.

It’s an extraordinary collection by the dealer, including a large number of Renoirs – this was the point at which The Other Half decided we’d seen more of his works than you “could throw a chocolate box at” – plus plenty of works by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse and others.

Of the ‘others”, this was when at which I concluded that Andre Derain really is overrated – a dilettante, hopping from style to style to style.

Two canvases of harlequins seem to illustrate the point – he simply couldn't make up his mind what he was seeking.

The Matisse works are not his best – being from the ‘awkward’ Nice period, which left his disciples angry and bewildered, as he tried to find his way to the next stage in his artistic journey – but they’re still worth seeing (obviously).

Three Sisters (1917), Matisse

And much the same can be said of the Picasso works there, although a Blue Period couple hugging was well worth seeing, as was a still life, Grande Nature morte (1916-17) that was genuinely Cubist.

There was a sprinkling of Modiglianis – my favourite being a 1915 portrait of Guillaume himself, which knocked one of the same subject by Derain, from 1920, into a cocked hat.

The Other Half was particularly fascinated to discover works by Chaïm Soutine, whose work helped to build the bridge between traditional approaches and expressionist ones.

Le Village (1923) gives an idea of how Soutine viewed the chaos of the modern world, but his portraits are equally interesting, including Le Garçon d’étage (1925).

There are also a number of works by Maurice Utrillo – one of the few famous painters of Montmartre who was actually born there (and died there too).

Le Village, Soutine

We particularly liked La Maison Bernot (1924).

So much for the basement – and well worth the price of admission on its own.

But the two vast, oval rooms that house those Monet canvases, painted in an attempt to find something that would soothe people’s spirits after WWI, are in a different league again.

As I’ve noted previously, I was never particularly ‘in to’ Monet, but these extraordinary canvases made me think again.

Perhaps my lack of interest in them previously was because I’d only seen some of the smaller waterlily paintings in the National Gallery, where the rooms tend to be crowded and you don’t easily get the chance to spend time with the works.

Le Garçon d'étage, Soutine

The Orangerie concentrates the mind.

As you enter the first room, a notice asks you politely to “enjoy quietly”.

And that is precisely what is needed, and the staff enforce it – particularly welcome when a family behind us at one stage decided to start a row about whether they were going back to their hotel or not.

Benches allow you to sit and contemplate the works, and the light and the colour make it easy to get lost in them as they take on a life of their own.

There is something extraordinarily ‘spiritual’ about these works: time spent with them seems to produce something akin to a religious experience.

And it is entirely true to say that their beauty has a soothing quality.

La Maison Bernot, Utrillo

Generally, people are quiet, although an element of disruption can still occur around you. I found it useful to try to ‘play’ Debussy’s Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune to myself in my mental concert hall, and it certainly helped to clear the mind.

Monet died before the Orangerie opened for the first time to display these works.

But these career-ending and defining works, inspired by his garden at Giverny and executed as he struggled with cataracts, go well beyond being simple decoration.

Nymphéas detail, Monet

In the summer of 1931, Amédée Ozenfant, the French Cubist painter, writer and co-founder, with Le Corbusier, of the Purist movement, noted in his journal:

“Monet devoted his last years to the poetic series of the Nymphéas ... I found myself taking off my hat.

“When an experience provokes such a decisive reflex, there is no doubt about it; the work is a strong and elevated one.

“In spite of this apparent superficiality, Monet, like Matisse, attained results as elevated as certain severe works.

“The chapel-like presentation, the submarine light, contribute to this strong impression: but, all the same, Monet had something to do with it.”

Or to put it another way, they also put me in mind of Picasso’s comment, that “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life”.

My view of Monet is changed beyond recognition.

A taste of the sea itself

Oysters – or seaside food porn, as it might be known

As the struggle to deal with a kitchen that includes a fancy juicer gadget but no knife sharpener continues, it’s not really felt as though there have been a huge number of culinary successes to report.

There have been one or two simple meals – not least a boudin Catalan, sliced in half lengthways and grilled briefly – and the inevitable magret de canard.

This was, after all, where we really learned last year that, to be a proper magret de canard, the meat must be from a duck reared in the south west of France for foie.

There’s a reason they have a fabulously thick layer of fat on them – all of which can be saved for potatoes.

A little fish has been cooked – not easy to prepare, though, when you don’t have a thin, flexible, sharp knife to fillet, and the only knife that’s worthy of the name is a cook’s knife, which is fine for many things. But not filleting or skinning fish.

Little soles thankfully required no prep, but an attempt to roast some white fish (I haven’t a clue what it was) in a fresh tomato sauce rather turned into something akin to a stew as the fish, finally skinned, fell apart rather a lot.

The Other Half was complimentary, but I felt far from thrilled.

I tried a very small chicken too – just like last year – but that was disappointingly flawed. Stuffed with garlic and lemon and basil, and with paprika and pepper generously applied to the skin, it had been placed on a trivet of lovely red onion chunks, in the roasting dish. A little liquid was added, the pot was lidded and went into a fan oven at around 160˚C. Less than an hour later, the onion was pretty much cremated.

As The Other Half observed when washing up, the pot itself may not have helped, being almost impossibly lightweight for a casserole. Did that make a difference? I don’t know.

Meatballs

However, the most noteworthy success thus far was meatballs.

The local boucherie sold me approximately 340g of a mix of pork and beef mince – perfect – and this had paprika, pepper and some bread that had been soaked in milk worked into it, before being shaped into balls the size of a large plum. Inevitably, there was an odd number. C’est la vie.

I skinned some of the local tomatoes – the ‘ugly’ ones that taste of the sun – and browned the meatballs in olive oil before setting them on one side.

Some sliced onion and garlic was then softened in the frying pan, before the tomatoes (drained and chopped roughly) were added, together with a little more paprika and black pepper.

After simmering gently for a minute or two, the meatballs were returned to the pan and a ‘lid’ was created with foil, since there was no proper one.

It was cooked for approximately 30 minutes, and garnished with tiny basil leaves on the plate. And the result was good – really good.

We have, in the last week, had one evening meal out, returning to nearby L’Amphitryon for the third time.

It had, we’d heard, a new manager. So there were questions about whether anything had changed and, if so, what?

A lovely view for dining

We booked (sensible, since it was a Friday evening) and found ourselves in a delightful corner on the terrace with a lovely view of the chateau as the sun descended.

Last year, when we dined there on our last night, we had been presented with very fancy amuse bouche. One was a tiny quiche each, with parmesan in, which – and regular readers may need to make sure they’re sitting down – The Other Half ate, knowingly, and didn’t object to.

Anyway, this year, the amuse bouche had been simplified to small croutons with Serrano and cheese on one, and a swirl of aïoli and a curled anchovy on the other.

And damned fine they were too, relying not on fancy culinary skills, but on the quality of the ingredients.

My starter, I admit, was as simple as it comes: six oysters.

Now it was late last year that I tried my first oysters, with no problems. These were rather different – being Mediterranean oysters and rather larger.

Not only are they larger, the taste is different: these really zinged with a sense of tasting the sea itself – just as Elizabeth David described the experience of eating utterly fresh sea urchins in Italy. What an absolute joy. There was some shallot vinegar with them, but I didn’t bother and stuck simply with the lemon. I’m too much of an oyster baby to want anything extra.

It was also a new experience in that they had not been cut free from the shell, so I had to do a new kind of work for my kick.

Cod, chorizo sauce and very nice vegetables

That may have been the cause of the problem I had some hours later, when a single dash to the bathroom was required. Not enough – thankfully – to make me believe that I’m allergic to oysters per se.

For my main course, I opted for cabillaud – cod – with a chorizo sauce. And very nice it was too, with a selection of vegetables that were also superbly cooked.

I know it’s boring, but I finished with ice cream, because I was just far too full for anything else – and the portions sizes were generous, to say the least.

We enjoyed a nice bottle of local rosé to wash it all down.

One of the few other differences we could see was the presence of chips – hand cut – where we don’t recall seeing them before.

But I’m delighted to report that the food at L’Amphitryon remains of excellent quality, and helps it stands out far from the ‘tourist trap’ restaurants to do exist in the village. And the service too is charming and unrushed.

All in all, it was an excellent evening.

Forget the dolmades – try this with your vine leaves

Mushrooms on top of vine leaves

There’s always something new to learn – and neither the world of gardening nor that of cooking are any exception.



After mentioning, a few days ago, that my vine is developing nicely, m’friend George pointed out that the is a recipe that uses vine leaves in the Divine Mrs D’s Summer Cooking.



Mushrooms cooked in vine leaves, apparently.

 I went straight to the cookery books.



My copy is part of the Grub Street hardback Elizabeth David Classics, which also includes Mediterranean Food and French Country Cooking: a delightful collection.



In this context, that means that I had two recipes for this same dish.

In Mediterranean Food – her 1950 debut – Mrs D included a recipe for ‘Cèpes à l’Italienne’, which involved “1lb cèpes or morels or other mushrooms, vine leaves, oil, garlic, salt and pepper”.



The mushrooms are cleaned, de-stalked, sprinkled with salt and left for a few minutes, before being put “in a warm oven a minute or two to dry”.



The “washed and dried” leaves are placed at the bottom of a “fireproof” dish and covered with a film of olive oil, before being placed “over the flame” until the oil is hot: “not boiling”, though.



The cèpes go in (“stalk side up”) and the pot goes in a moderate oven for half an hour.



After that, the stalks are cut into thin pieces and, with a clove of garlic, added to the dish. It’s seasoned and cooked for a further 10 minutes.



By 1955, when Summer Cooking was first published, the recipe had been changed subtly.



Now called simply: “mushrooms cooked in vine leaves”, David introduces it by saying that she has “already published recipes similar to this one,” but she makes “no apology for including it again here, as I think many people who have a vine growing in their gardens would be glad to now it”.



The mushrooms by this time are simply “cleaned whole flat” ones, and the leaves are blanched before lining the dish.



There is more garlic here too – “3 or 4 whole cloves” – and the mushrooms are finally covered with more vine leaves before the dish is lidded.



In this case, it requires a slow oven for 35 minutes.



But apart from the simplification – had David and/or her publishers decided that readers might prefer a simpler version? – the most interesting difference in how this is written up is in the explanation of what the dish achieves.



“The great point about this dish is that the vine leaves make cultivated mushrooms taste like field mushrooms,” explains David, in a short, bracketed note.



All of which sounds fascinating – and very tempting. Now my vine isn’t currently big enough to be raiding for leaves for such an experiment, but the one at the back of the potager is.



Although it borders the area where the bins are kept, I picked leaves from furthest away. The blanching ensured they were clean.

I hadn't gone for the most generic of ’shrooms, since this was intended as the first course of a Sunday dinner, but for a selection of girolles, pied bleu and king oysters.

One of the latter was sliced into four lengthways. The rest were trimmed and brushed as necessary.



And I diverted from the recipe slightly in slicing my garlic.



It’s a perfectly easy dish to construct. Since I don’t have a small lidded dish, I covered one tightly with foil, pleated.



My “slow oven” was set to 150˚C (fan).



This really is something that I will do again. The leaves add something to the mushrooms that seems to deepen the flavour. A very, very satisfying result.



After that, it was a simple case of little lamb chops, each topped with a sprig of fresh oregano from the patio and grilled until the fat was crisp, then served with lemon, in true Italian style.



Ready for the oven

Given such an Italian influence to the meal, the only question was what else to serve with that.



Since The Other Half isn't exactly keen on polenta – which is how my first experience of lamb chops and lemon came when it was served in Venice – I opted for a rather French solution. Well, one I picked up in Paris, at any rate.



I cooked and puréed a small amount of potato, but mixed it with good virgin oil instead of cream and butter.

Seasoned with fleur de sel, each serving was in a small bowl, with a dimple in the smoothed top (back of a teaspoon), into which a little further of my best virgin oil, green and peppery, was dripped.



Perfect. Though I say so myself.



What that single potato also meant, though, was a debut for one of the new Le Creuset saucepans.



They’ll take some getting used to – not least because of a smashing piece of design.



Every lid has a small hole in it to vent the steam, meaning that you can boil without either having the lid balanced so as to leave a gap or having to keep the temperature higher.



So it’s easy to see that those pans will actually save on fuel – they’re not just good to look at.



Good design can pay dividends. And a recipe for mushrooms cooked in vine leaves, whether published once or more, will certainly be done more.

Eggs and Mrs David and snow

This morning, I cracked open an egg when making my breakfast omelette to find a double yolker.

To be fair, I had expected it, setting aside the egg in question until I was cooking something for which it would be better suited than being prepared to sit in an egg cup.

It was a vast thing, that egg – XL to start with – with an elongated shape, so that it was hardly the stuff of rocket science to guess that it would have two yolks.

In which case, I had a three-yolk omelette without breaking more than two eggs.

I follow the venerable Mrs David’s instructions on omelettes – well, to be more accurate, the instructions from someone else that she reproduces, crediting them and saying that she can do no better.

Reading and following those instructions was the point at which I finally learned to make an omelette – albeit further aided by investment in a proper heavy-duty, copper-coated omelette pan from across the Channel.

So you start by melting a good knob of butter and letting it just reach the foaming, might-be-about-to-start-turning-golden-at-any-minute stage, before you lob in your lightly beaten eggs: two plus one yolk, if you’re following many traditional recipes. Double yolkers excepted, I usually just use two: it’s quite enough for me.

From then on, it’s going to take about 40-45 seconds, as you raise the pan from on one side and then the other, gently lifting the egg mix to allow the uncooked, liquid egg to reach the base of the pan. But not much longer – you want it to still be silkily soft.

And then turn out carefully onto your plate, season and consume – although not with Mrs David’s glass of wine at that time of the day.

Actually, this morning’s omelette had a new seasoning: I wanted to use up some lumpfish ‘caviar’ and decided to garnish it with that, which added quite enough of a salty taste to the egg.

I remember seeing double yolks way back in the days when the family eggs came from one of the farmers that my father knew.

It’s funny how you forget such things, and only remember when something actually jumps up and slaps you across the metaphorical chops. When we started getting our eggs from Matthew was the point at which I remembered how good eggs can be.

And when I cracked the first double yolker from an egg I’d got from the same source – Black Rock hens, organic and free range, if you’re interested – it was as a case of: ‘oh gosh – I’d completely forgotten that such things occurred’.

But memories of eggs and farms also mean memories of snow for me, which is equally apt, given the UK weather forecast right now, and that I am due to be northbound for work tomorrow.

When we lived in Mossley – in the top half of that small mill town of 10,000, which was spread along the east-facing side of a Pennine hill, the valley and up into the opposite hill, we entirely expected to get cut off for a day or so once or twice a winter.

But one year – I cannot recall whether we were cut off at the time – the road up to a farm near Hartshead Pike was impassible for my father in his car. So I was sent, on foot, to collect the eggs.

I yomped up the road to opposite the parish church, before breaking away into a field and up a steep hill that was several inches deep in snow.

On the way back, I slipped, and ended up careering down the same slope some way on my backside.

When I got home, my mother (who, these days, is slightly embarrassed by this story) was only concerned about one thing – whether I’d broken any of the eggs! They were all intact, as it happened – just as I was. But I did feel a certain sense of being piqued at the priorities revealed.

Not that that was the only time that snow left me with a story to tell in those times.

I’d probably only been at Fairfield High School for Girls – some eight miles from Mossley, near the centre of Manchester – for a year or slightly more, when the white stuff had a big impact.

It was a Thursday – you’ll see later why I know this. There had been a trifling hint of snow at school. Only when I left for home at the usual time did it become an issue.

Indeed, it only became an issue well beyond Aston-under–Lyne, which was where I changed buses and, therefore, the halfway point of my daily journeys.

I was three quarters of the way home, then, near the old Ladysmith Barracks, when the bus stopped and the driver announced that he could go no further.

The reason was the snow, which had fallen heavily and drifted across the road that hugged the hill for a mile or so before dipping into top Mossley – near where I’d left the road to head for the farm and those eggs.

I was on my own.

Pulling the hood of my Air Force blue duffle coat up, I headed on up Mossley Road, the hill to my right, the fall away to Ashton Golf Club to my left, Hawkshead Pike ahead, and cars stranded in the deep drifting snow.

I reached a stranded bus and took a break inside, where I met a woman who took me – and a couple of other girls – under her wing.

We plodded on, taking a further break in another bus, before hitting the top of the town.

Almost the first buolding you hit coming from that direction is – or at least was – a pub. She took us all inside and the landlord gave us hot blackcurrant drinks.

From there, it was a short way home, albeit over icy roads.

I remember getting back, covered in the snow that was still falling thickly, and standing at the front door, ringing the bell, waiting to be let in.

When my mother opened it, the first thing she heard from this short, stocky yeti was whether Top of the Pops had started yet.

I had no watch; we had no mobile phones or tablets or computers. I had no clue as to the time. But that was why I know that it was a Thursday.

Thereafter, for my remaining time at Fairfield at least, the first hint of snow on the school fields would see the Mossley girls sent home straight away.

Nearly 40 years later, I remember that adventure with pleasure. I don’t think I was ever scared during it.

And perhaps it also explains why I never think of snow with anything other than relish.

In lieu of pissaladière

A few hours before we set off for France, a colleague, who is at least as passionate about food and cooking as me, asked if I was taking any recipes on holiday.

He seemed surprised when I said that no, nothing was packed.

Three years ago, I did sit on the beach with Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking as reading material, but I didn’t really cook from it.

Indeed, as I explained to the said colleague, I had no recipes with me because we tend to eat out at lunch and then sup on charcuterie, bread, tomatoes and wine in the evening.

He agreed that, given the quality of such simple foods, nobody would want to do much else.

But the best laid plans etc …

That was all well and good when that was still our core eating plan, but partly because St Elme has been less inspiring that on previous holidays, we’ve continued lunching on the beach from Cyril’s café, and then I’ve been cooking more at the house in the evening.

As it happens, I’d bought a small book of Catalan dishes within 24 hours of being in Collioure – and a magazine of seasonal French recipes only a few days later. So I had plenty of material for inspiration.

As it happened, two of the three dishes I’m going to describe didn’t need any magazine – although the third was a pretty accurate version of one (I can read a French recipe, in French!).

On Saturday, heading back from the beach, we popped into the alimentation.

There, at the little butcher’s counter, was a single duck breast. But at almost 400g, it was enough for the two of us.

We picked up a vacuum pack of pre-cooked new potatoes too.

The duck turned out to be real magret de canard duck – by which I mean that apparently it should be breast from a duck that’s been reared for foie gras.

It was dried with kitchen paper and then the skin scored and salted.

Into a hot frying pan it went, cooked for six minutes, skin side down, with the liquid fat drained off into a deep saucepan.

Turn and cook for a further seven minutes.

After which, it was popped onto a plate, covered with foil and placed into a warmed oven to rest.

Next, a spot of improv.

I deglazed the pan with two miniatures of Banyuls, the local dessert wine, which happened to be in the fridge, and then added a knob of butter – there was no flour in the house, so this thickened the sauce a little as well as giving it a gloss.

Into this went a punnet of blackberries that was also in the fridge.

Cooked down a little, they were crushed into the sauce.

In the meantime, the potatoes were taken out of their vacuum packing, rinsed and drained and dried on more kitchen paper, before being cut into thick slices.

Here, the duck fat came into its own. The potato slices were popped in – ouch! The spitting! – and cooked until just golden, before being served with a sprinkling of fleur de sel that I had found doing its best to hide away in the back of a draw.

These were then served with the duck, sliced in the traditional fashion and with a good portion of the blackberry and Banyuls sauce.

It proved to be a very tasty meal indeed.

And all from a tiny ‘corner shop'!

Last night, I actually did cook from the magazine.

Chicken breast, bought on Sunday at the boucherie, was marinaded for an hour in minced garlic, the juice of three limes and some paprika.

In the meantime, a dish was prepared with a large halved tomato, and slices of courgette, all spritzed with oil and topped with more minced garlic, combined this time with breadcrumbs (made by hand-chopping Sunday’s left-over bread, since there is no processor here).

Then this went into the oven, with the chicken (and marinade, plus a glug of oil) in its own dish alongside.

It had 20 minutes – and then another 10 because that was required.

The courgette slices were piled into neat heaps alongside a tomato half, and the chicken was napped with the juices it had been cooked in.

The only other things required were the usual rosé and bread, with dipping oil/vinegar.

Amazingly, it worked. And there was certainly no danger of any vampire coming near overnight.

But my pièce de résistance (so far) was fish again – which is particularly pleasing, given my historic struggles with cooking seafood.

It was the market on Sunday morning. Only one of the fish stalls was present, and it didn’t have a large selection of fish.

More to the point, there was no monkfish.

I’d had this in mind, since we’d been given a big bag of tomatoes by a couple who live across the street (friends of the woman who owns the house).

It was a kind gesture, but left me with a surfeit. So I was thinking of something like monkfish, baked with lashings of tomatoes.

Bearing in mind The Other Half’s fish limits, I was drawn to a fillet of white fish labeled ‘lieu’. I had no idea what it was, but it looked a tad like cod. So in incredibly French fashion, I bought a piece.

Later, Google being my friend, I discovered that it was pollack. Which I have never cooked.

So what to do?

I set the oven to 150˚C and liberally oiled a baking dish.

The fillet was cut into two, laid in the dish and gently seasoned.

On top went a further drizzle of oil, three anchovies and three black luque olives.

And then the dish went in the oven. It had about 13 minutes in total (I checked after 10) and then was served with a tomato concasse – three tomatoes, peeled, deseeded and diced, seasoned and dressed with virgin oil, and garnished with shredded basil.

Of course, there was also fresh bread, with oil and Balsamico to dip, and a slice of lemon on the side.

And, if I say so myself, it was pretty damned good.

So I have christened it my pollack pissaladière – or rather: ‘In lieu of pissaladière’, which might not quite roll off the tongue, but I do rather like the multilingual play on words.