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Best of Demotix Widget | Demotix.com

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where this weblog has gone

It’s gone here : www.dolmen.wordpress.com

Its owner has got all fired up about the protohistoric vestiges littered around this corner of Languedoc. And has taken upon himself the pleasurable task of unearthing what still remains.

It’s a week-by-week stumble  through the garrigues of the Corbieres and the Minervois, in search of a few humble prehistoric stones.

Mapping the heart : kissing and counting

Lac D’Indifference

Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s allegorical Carte du Tendre, is a map of human emotions, upon which she plotted the Lac d’Indifference, Mer d’Inimitié, and many villages including Grand Cœur, Probité, Générosité, Respect, Exactitude and Bonté, in her 17th.c. novel Clélie.

This is Jacky Bowring’s allegorical addition to that map. Her own site is to be found to the west of here, under Passages, in my links. Her posts are moving and affecting.

Tonight – New Year’s Eve – there are those who feel indifferent to the whole show; while others will feel differently, and may need to know how to kiss correctly when meeting. Here is a map for those who care about Kissing and Counting :

How many kisses? Per cheek, per person, per day . . .

There should be a small white patch down there in the bottom left corner : that would represent the utter indifference that our French vigneron friends, Charles and Isabelle, feel about the whole ‘kissy french thing’. They, in common with Parisiens, quite like the way we Anglo-Irish just stand around gormlessly saying ‘ uh, hi . . .’

Shrub – it might grow on you.

We get seasons here. We may be 40 minutes from the Mediterranean but the pool has already had its first thin sheet of ice. The fruit and vegetables follow the seasons too : right now it’s the orange that rules. This New Year’s Eve we’re going to open up the Big House for the occasion : but even with log fires in all the rooms the guests will need further warming, so I shall try this old winter recipe – though I’ll probably save the Eau de Vie de Marc de Languedoc and stick with the brandy. I found this bottle in the cave beneath the house and judging by the label, it was made by the local distillary for the previous owner Monsieur de Longueval, from the skins and pips of his own grapes.

THE IDEAL BARTENDER
by Tom Bullock 1917

Dedicated to those who enjoy snug club rooms, that they may learn the art of preparing for themselves what is good.

Is it any wonder that Mankind stands open-mouthed before the Bartender, considering the Mysteries & Marvels of an Art that borders on Magic?

Recipes found in this Book have been composed & collected, tried & tested, in a quarter-century of experience, by Tom Bullock of the St. Louis Country Club.

BRANDY SHRUB (2-gallon mixture for 40 people)

Into a Punch bowl put the Peeled Rinds of 5 Lemons and the Juice of 12 Lemons and add 5 quarts of Brandy. Make the bowl airtight and set it aside. At the expiration of 6 days add 3 quarts of Sherry wine and 6 pounds of Loaf Sugar, which has been dissolved in 1 quart of plain Soda. Strain through a bag and bottle.

The English Housekeeper, 1851 Anne Cobbett who wrote ‘for the person of moderate income’ is well worth reading for contemporary values and ideals, and her belief that the daughters of ‘the poor’ should be taught domestic skills rather than to read and write. From the 1850s onwards, cookery books proliferated as part of the huge expansion in book publishing that followed the removal of the tax on paper, and improvements in production technology. Eighteenth-century cookery and household books were issued in short print-runs of 1000 – 2500 copies. Such books in the later nineteenth century sold in tens of thousands.

Shrub Serves 6

This was a popular drink among the ladies as it is ‘dangerously pleasant to drink’. The original recipe suggests preparing the drink at least five days in advance. But you will find that it is quite a tasty punch almost immediately after it is mixed. It is likely that oranges were less sweet in those days, and you may wish to reduce the amount of sugar in this recipe.

5-6 juice oranges
2 cups (or less) sugar
1 quart rum or brandy
Squeeze the oranges until you have 2 cups of juice. Reserve half of the skins. Strain the juice to remove the pith and pits.
Combine the juice, sugar and liquor in a large bottle. Coarsely chop the orange peels and add them. Cover and shake the mixture.
About 8 hours later, strain out the peels. Cover and shake the mixture about 4 times daily for the next 4 days. Reserve for use.
To serve, pour into a small punch bowl and chill with ice either in the bowl or in individual glasses.
To 1 quart of strained orange juice, put 2 lbs. loaf sugar, and 9 pints of rum or brandy; also the peels of half the oranges. Let it stand one night, then strain, pour into a cask, and shake it four times a day for four days. Let it stand till fine, then bottle it.

Arabic shurb ‘beverage’

Parsnips are evil

The train of thought has just pulled in to a station called Non Sequitur.
Out steps – a parsnip. Alone on the platform, and looking round anxiously for a context.

Well – I am able to provide it with one, but that’s all this lonely stranger is going to find in France. It will not be greeted by eager cooks or consumers. It’s not out of favour. It’s not out of season. It’s an unter-vegetable – fit only for ruminants of the most unthinking kind. And what was once deemed suitable only for cattle, can never grace the plate of a proper Frenchman élévé dans la tradition.

I’ll probably never get to the bottom of this tradition – it all seems tangled up with the transition from feudalism towards the emergence of the Nation State: it’s the need for all these newly-constructed ‘countries’ to assert their difference.
It involves Louis X1V – ‘le Roi Soleil’ – and the influence of his sumptuous & sophisticated court on all the other little tuppeny-ha’penny countries of Europe. And of course the Academie Française – its thoughtpolice – declaring what is, and is not proper & correct.
An example of its influence: spices. It declared that the strong spices that mediaeval Europe used to enliven its meat (and mask its gamey taste) were unfit for France: henceforth only herbs were acceptable in proper cuisine. The fact that France had lost control of the Spice Route, first to the Portuguese then to the navies of Holland, and later England – was dismissed as irrelevant . . . Naturellement the idea that France’s eating habits (and spending budget) could be held ransom to these uncouth foreigners, was insupportable.
It is worth noting that the dominant theme in English cooking is the use of spices for their own sake, especially in pursuit of effects that combine the sour and the sweet. The records of spice consumption, from the time of the amalgamation of the ‘Sopers Lane Pepperers’ and the ‘Cheap Spicers’ in 1345, shows a binge lasting nearly a millenium. [National dish of England? Chicken Tikka Massala. Somehow shameful? Not in the least : utterly traditional. Spices R Us !]

Pardonnez-moi. We must go back and save the puzzled parsnip on the platform – the whole point of this post. When asked for some panais at the supermarket, the manager had to be called: Non – never heard of it. Other people remembered some such thing – like a carrot? but bigger? and sweeter? and white, you say? C’est possible . . .
Our Larousse Chambers Advanced French-English dictionary is silent on the word panais – no entry at all. But says this for parsnip: ‘panais – légume courante dans l’alimentation britannique’ (‘an everyday vegetable of the British food-trade’) So - they have a tradition de cuisine  while we just eat off the back of trucks?
French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David has just one entry: ‘Used in very small quantities as a flavouring in pot au feu.’

We finally tracked some down on a small market stall in Carcassonne last Christmas. An elderly farmer had grown them as a curiosity: he thought they might be mediaeval, but – hélas – he could not tell us how they should be cooked …

Now. At a dinner party given by an eminent medical man living in our village, we enjoyed classic cuisine du terroir (aka cuisine de grande-mère) and learnt that he could not abide curries. Moreover: curries, and anything sucré-salé (sweet&sour) was an abomination, and that no shelf-space should be given to spices in a right-thinking cook’s kitchen: they could only spoil the palette, and ruin a dish. This was a fairly young, fairly cultured modern Frenchman, who will never savour the joys of a parsnip, quartered and tossed in an emulsion of olive oil and shoyu, and roasted ’til meltingly caramelised. And most emphatically not steamed parsnips, mashed with butter and roast cumin seeds, with the Christmas turkey. ‘ Ah, non: Quel horreur!’