Ratatouille

Organic heritage tomatoes at the Jardins Vergers de la Petite Rabaudière, where I buy my veggies.

It's ratatouille season in France, so here is a recipe to use up your tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and zucchini.

 

Organic homegrown zucchini (photo from our archive).

 

Ingredients

A big aubergine, cut into 2cm chunks

Olive oil

2 medium zucchini, cut into 2cm chunks

1 large yellow onion, roughly chopped

1 red and 1 yellow sweet pepper, cut into 2cm chunks

3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

4 medium tomatoes, cut into 2cm chunks

Pinch red pepper flakes

Pinch of sugar

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

½ tsp dried thyme leaves

Ground pepper

 ¼ cup torn basil leaves

Method

1. Salt the aubergine and allow to drain for 20 minutes. Dry with paper towel.
2. Heat olive oil in a pan and cook the zucchini for a few minutes.
3. Add more olive oil and the aubergine to the pan, cook for a few minutes.
4. Add more olive oil, the onion and the peppers to the pan, cook for a few minutes.
5. Add more olive oil, the tomatoes, red pepper flakes and sugar to the pan and cook for 10 minutes.
6. Add the vinegar, thyme and pepper to the pan and cook for 15 minutes.
7. Stir the basil into the pan contents and serve.

 

Garlic drying in a shed on one of our walks.

 

Tomatoes.

 

Organic heritage tomatoes.

 

Organic tomatoes at the market in Preuilly.

 

Onions drying in a shed on a farm near le Petit Pressigny.

 

Chillies drying at a specialist herbalist.

 

Ingredients for ratatouille.

 

A serving of ratatouille.

Organic green and yellow peppers at the gardens of the Chateau de Villandry. Visitors can take these for free (you are encouraged to leave a tip for the gardeners if you do so).

Everything You Need to Know About French Pink Radishes...

Anyone who has ever been to France will have noticed that French people love small pink radishes. Except in the depths of winter they are piled high at the markets. French consumers describe them as cool, crunchy, thirst quenching and a bit spicy. They are very much a feature of spring salads here and liven up the palate after winter. 

 

Organic radishes at les Jardins Vergers de la Petite Rabaudière last week.

They've been cultivated for at least 4000 years. Charlemagne was a big fan and recommended that one cultivate them in abundance. They are indeed very easy to grow, and very prolific. You can grow them almost year round, and they take about a month from sowing the seed to harvesting. The best are grown between March and June, and this year they are now in full swing at our local organic market garden, les Jardins Vergers de la Petite Rabaudière. The worker I spoke to said they are particularly good this year too.

 

Organic radishes being washed at Les Jardins Vergers de La Petite Rabaudière last week.

These little pink radishes come in a number of guises. They can be more or less spicy, spherical or long, pink all over or bicoloured pink and white. The larger ones grown in the summer and autumn are hotter, and they are prone to splitting or being hollow and fibrous. If they go soft it means they are not fresh. When you are buying, choose small, hard, vividly coloured radishes, with green leaves that are not showing any sign of wilting or rotting. And don't discard those leaves -- use them in soup!

The central and western Loire Valley, from Orléans to the Atlantic coast is where most French radishes are grown commercially. So living where I do I have access to the freshest and best. Shame I'm not really all that fond of round radishes. I prefer daikon, and only if it's pickled...

 

Organic radishes at Les Jardins Vergers de La Petite Rabaudière.

France produces nearly 50 thousand tonnes of pink radishes a year, second only to Germany in Europe. French people consume on average 1.5 kilograms each per year of pink radishes.

Pink radishes are mostly water, so they aren't very calorific. They are a good source of fibre, Vitamin C, folic acid (Vitamin B9), potassium and polyphenols (antioxydants).

 

Fabrice Lecomte with his radishes from Villandry at Loches market (photo from our archive).

Ideally, eat them the day you buy them or the next day, while they are as firm and crunchy as possible. They will keep in the fridge in a perforated plastic bag for a week maximum. If they turn out to be spicier than you would like, then pickle them.

To prepare them cut the leaves off so that a tuft of stems remains. Pinch off the hair root at the other end. Use a knife to scrape off any bits that look unappetising. Wash in cold water, scrub with a brush if necessary, drain and dry. Eat with gusto.

Mostly they are eaten with a pinch of salt, a dab of butter and some good bread, but they can be enjoyed in other simple dishes.

• chop finely and add to a creamy dressing for salad greens.
• chop roughly and add to potato salad.
• use instead of cucumber to make a different version of tzatziki.
• fry in butter with thyme and serve with chicken.
  

 The black winter radish and the white daikon are also popular in France.

Garance Apples

Garance is an interesting new apple variety, released in 2014, and developed by the French Institute of Agronomy Research INRAE and various commercial partners. The smallish fruit matures in October for picking, and is grass green almost entirely covered by a crimson blush. It's a very distinctive looking apple, and has been specifically targetted towards organic growers, particularly in the south of France. It is disease resistant, medium sized and doesn't need much care or inputs. The ancestors of this variety are a hybrid of Idared and Primo, then crossed with Pitchounette.

I discovered it because Sandy, from our local organic orchard Fruit O Kalm, had a box of the fruit at the market one day. She explained she only had one tree, but was very impressed by its performance. Naturally I bought a couple to try. The fruit is very crunchy, juicy, sweet and perfumed.

 

Sandy on her organic apple stall in Preuilly sur Claise.

I assume it is named after the dyestuff. Garance is French for madder Rubria tinctoria, the plant from which the red dye alizarin is extracted.

Reinette d'Anjou Apple

Reinette d'Anjou is an old variety of apple, vigorous and productive, particularly suited to home gardens or organic orchards. The fruit are yellowy green with a red blush. The flesh is slightly soft, but still crunchy, with a very good balance of acid to sweetness. They are good eating apples from harvest in October into the winter, and will keep for cooking up until April.

 

Reinette d'Anjou at the market in Preuilly, on the stall of our local organic orchard Fruit O Kalm.
 

It's not widely grown, and deserves to be better known. The fruit is a good size, and juicy, so it's a good one to juice. The origins of this variety are not really known, but it is typical of the varieties that have emerged from the Anjou area.

An Antique Butter Kneader

I spotted this unusual hand mill at the annual summer brocante (flea market/garage sale) in Preuilly. I wondered what it was for and asked the vendor. As soon as he said 'c'est pour malaxer le beurre' I knew exactly what it was because I'd seen the process performed in modern stainless steel on video. It is for kneading butter after it has been churned and before it is shaped into pats. An apparatus like this is for the best butter, so the object is rare because not all farmhouse butter producers did a thorough kneading.

 

It is for working the butter so that the last few drops of buttermilk can be squeezed out, and salt crystals can be added and evenly worked in. The salt will also draw out even more liquid, so that the butter is said to 'weep'. If you want to see a malaxeur à beurre just like this one in action, visit La Maison de Beurre in Saint Malo (Brittany) and check out the very similar machine used by Bordier [link]. A lot of people consider this to be the best butter in the world.

Traditionally these 19th century machines are made of teak, so I assume that is what the wood of this one is.

I can remember my mother making butter, up until I was about 10 years old (ie 1970). After the house cow was milked, by hand, the cream was separated from the milk in a centrifuge with an electric motor housed in a small shed at the bottom of the garden. Then the cream was beaten in the stand mixer. Once Mum had something that looked more or less like butter it was flushed a couple of times with water, then tipped out onto the bench and beaten and squeezed with hand held wooden paddles rather than run through a butter kneader. Then with those same paddles it was shaped into blocks (pats), making sure to give a nice pattern from the ridges on one side of the paddles, before being wrapped in waxed paper for storage in the fridge.

Shellfish in the Stream

Most years I go to the summer fete at Séligny (population 250). This is because I have several friends who live there, the natural history association Botamyco37 that I'm a member of puts on a display, and one of the best melon producers in the area sells their delicious Charentais melons at their peak. 

 

This bloke had excellent saucisson, from Maine et  Loire to our west. I bought wild boar, wild mushroom and bull.

 

This year I had lunch with friends Jean, Michel and Michelle. The menu was melon, moules frites and tarte fine aux pommes. Simple and classic. 

 

The Charentais melons on this stall come from a farm just outside the village. I bought three.

 

My friend André lives in a house on the edge of the village that was his grandparents before him. Everyone in Séligny not only knows one another, but they are related. Jean told me his grandmother married three times, so almost everyone is greeted with 'ah, mon/ma petit.e cousin.e !'. This term is used in French to indicate a familiale link that is not as close and direct as first cousin, but might be several times removed.

 

The village restaurant.

 

André informed me that the mussels for the fete menu had been stored overnight in the brook that runs through his garden. He also told me that back in the day, his grandfather used to keep the community oysters fresh in the same brook. But in those days many people's untreated sewage discharged straight into the stream, and André's house is downstream of the entire village...

 

The remains of our meal.

The menu for the day.