The French Country Hotel Test

In my distant youth family holidays were largely spent camping in France and Switzerland. Finances were rarely flush, so we lived off dishes cooked beside the tent, or later in the caravan, bulked out on occasion with frites from the camp shop. When economies allowed we had a special treat of eating a meal out, generally in a small hotel restaurant. The quality, simplicity and generosity of that food is part of my culinary DNA now.

Best of all such places was the Midi Papillon in St Jean de Bruel, south of pre-bridge Millau. My parents had found a campsite nearby at Nant that was so good they did a deal to leave their tourer there permanently, Ruth and I free to use it when they did not.

By chance they and we discovered the Midi Papillon, and pockets by then being deeper would eat there maybe three times in a fortnight. Buying The Sunday Times on our way over we were delighted and annoyed to find it listed in their top 10 restaurants in France. Yet a seven course tasting menu cost little more than a Berni Inn steak and chips follwed by Walls Ice Cream.

The Midi Papillon (run by the Papillon family - how nice to be called Mr Butterfly) merited the honour. Highlights included stuffed sheep's feet: gelatious, meaty, herby, delicious; freshwater crayfish in a muscat and cream sauce (with a bib unpretentiously provided, the sauce flew everywhere); the best Vieux Cantal and Roquefort cheeses in the world (Roquefort is made half an hour away by the hazardous Cevenne roads); and soups.

The aroma of beautiful freshly cooked soup at home still conjures up memories of such pleasures in those hotels. For the hotelier of course it is a cheap dish, made no doubt with vegetables past their very best, stock that uses bones and trimmings from other dishes, and enormous care. Such soups appear daily as one of the two options on the Table d'Hote menu. But nobody objects, especially as they will be eaten with baguette of perfect crispness. Tired and troubled on a business trip I once arrived late on at a small auberge in Bourgoin Jallieu. That soupy smell greeted me, and I chose soupe au pistou for my first course. It was so good I finished the tureen. The chef-proprietor, clearly pleased by my appreciation of his food, chatted with me - he'd worked at the Dorchester it turned out.

Earlier this week we had such a super soup moment ourselves. A cauliflower bought for a salad I never got around to making needed using up, or so I thought - once the leaves were peeled back it was revealed as blemish-free. Cooked with butter and cream (a rare treat these days), an onion, a few chopped celery stalks and leaves and some chopped chard stems for bulk and depth, and using cheaty bouillon vegetable stock, its scent pervaded the house and greeted the Dear Leader when she returned from her travels and travails. It would have passed the test of acceptability in a small country hotel in France. There were no leftovers.

And the Winner Is...

Not the Oscars, but my thoughts on the best food of the Christmas break, from which I am returning today.

Of the bought-in stuff there is no debate, the bargain Serrano ham from Aldi at £39.99 including stand, knife and sharpening steel was clearly the best. When we first cut into it my heart sank, as those two or three initial slices were not tasty. It improved after a day or so, and is now (kept in a cold conservatory) deeply salty-meaty.

As it won't last forever ham has of late been included in numerous recipes, like last night's chicken in wine (dry January so party leftover finding a home too) and cream, and our pizza-fest. Such luxury.

Is it strange or not that the best thing I cooked was one of the simplest, done in haste? Returning from picking up my father to spend Christmas with us I was allowed three minutes to sit down, then asked what was I going to cook. As a restorative and with an eye on the upcoming relative lack of veg I did a take on Jane Grigson's classic curried parsnip soup, or maybe an unnatural union between that and potage bonne femme.

My version was a curried vegetable soup, with just one (very big) parsnip though that did dominate the flavour. As ever chopped onions were sweated in a little butter, to which four large carrots, that parsnip, three potatoes, two leeks, and several cloves of garlic were added, all chopped or chunked. Hot water and a cheaty spoonful of Swiss vegetable bouillon powder went in, plus - and this was not planned, I found a dearth of ready-made curry powder - my own version ground from pepper, cumin, fenugreek, a tiny bit of star anise, a tsp of turmeric and more of coriander seeds. Simmered for 20 minutes until the veg were beyond soft it was finished with a little cream then zapped with the stick of ultimate power. It was warming, tasty and even a little virtuous.

If you cost it out the veg maybe ran to £1.50, the cream 25p, and the curry ingredients 10p. So four fed for well under £2, and it kept us going (in two senses) until the evening when the chocolates, snacks and other indulgences kicked in. They cost a bit more.

Just Imagine - Meat Free Christmas?

I am working on an article for Lancashire Life about the vegetarian alternative at Christmas. Imagine the impact in most British homes of the suggestion that this was to be a meat free Christmas. My son would be devastated, my father (if, contrary to his habitual threats, he makes the trip up here again this year) would pack his bag and return to Norfolk. My wife, however, would probably welcome the change and the implicit health benefits of cutting down on animal fats. But then she also welcomes my plan to buy in a whole air-dried ham as part of our festive fare this year.

The imagination requested in the title means more than those reactions though. The two chefs interviewed thus far have offered some clever ideas, and not just theoretical ones but dishes they cooked last year or plan to cook this year. A raw pudding; Christmas (veggie) lasagne; a wild mushroom and Stilton strudel...

My conscience is regularly pricked by the knowledge that we here eat too much meat - in the West in general, and this household in particular. When I cook vegetarian or near vegetarian dishes we are no less satisfied, our systems don't collapse (far from it in terms of what euphemistically we'll call digestive health), and we enjoy them.

Last night the bulk of our main course came from a huge range of veg, home grown and bought in, this being a vegetable soup along minestrone lines (though the stock was chicken from the carcase of Sunday's roast bird). For the first time in weeks I made my own bread, so that accompaniment had flavour. It didn't have imagination though, something that I clearly need to work on if I am crowbar more vegetarian food into our diet.

To fire that imagination I'm going to have to buy some veggie cookbooks - though anything that features brown rice or wholewheat pasta is banned - and visit a veggie restaurant or two, something that apparently today will be less painful than the last time I did so. That was in Germany on business, so quite a while back. The menu was dismal, and the least offensive offering was pasta with pesto. The pasta was in that state of soggy rigor mortis that comes when it has been poorly drained and left at one side for five minutes before serving; the pesto had no zing to it (I suspect it was from a long-open jar not freshly made). I was dining there because a week of large lumps of boiled pig (roughly how I'd define Germany's national cuisine) with boiled spuds had fired me with a need for something else. The pasta and pesto inspired a return to boiled pig.

Austerity Feast

Wonderful weather prompted us to invite a few friends over for a mid-afternoon meal to be eaten in the garden on Sunday. The same weather had kept me from shopping, so I had to improvise with stuff from the garden and stores. Not exactly an austerity feast, but we resisted the temptation to rush out and buy a ton of ingredients to feed the five thousand - well, seven.

Last of the Swiss chard made a good soup with a couple of onions, some potatoes to thicken it, and liquid from a roasting chicken (defrosted from our intervention stock the day before). Same chicken (covered and stuffed with herbs to lift it) with a load of lettuce and other leaves fresh from the garden went farther as a salad than it would have as a chunk of meat each. And in between those courses three pizzas with different toppings, cut into slices and presented on a huge plate, filled stomachs and interested palates (especially the anchovy and chilli one, hot hot hot). 

On a perfect sunny afternoon you can get away with a lot. No pudding - just cheeses - met with approval instead of violence, as we could cut and nibble away while talking. Maybe we are going to have the first proper summer for about six years. The sunshine makes a huge difference. Our guests brought some good wines, we added to the list, made sure everything was well chilled (only whites and roses in evidence) and the warmth turned them into something special. 

One more 'course' preceded the above, a cheap and cheerful Cava chilled to death and made into rhubarb bellinis. Hugh F-W's idea, 500g of rhubarb stewed with sugar and orange juice for 15 minutes then the syrup (once chilled) sieved off and used 1:4 with the fizz. Surprisingly it was absolutely lovely, but then again we did have that sun.

Leftovers and What They Mean

Recipe books are often filled with recipes for leftovers. Ideally a good cook has none, as their food should be so good nothing remains at the end of a meal, and they have judged precisely what is required. But inevitably we all have odds and sods that make their way into the fridge for later use, and it is literally a waste not to use them.

Friday we had some neighbours over for a meal, the main course of which was a daube of beef slow cooked for four hours. Lots of meat, and some health conscious eaters, so a few morsels left at the end. On Sunday these were dried of sauce, cut into much thinner pieces, and mixed with a drained tin of lentils, chopped onion and vinaigrette to make a salad. It was good, and I felt virtuous.

Getting the same feeling now as I smell the stock made with a chicken carcass and a few veg and herbs, the basis of a vegetable soup tonight. But it has to be about more than thrift to be really valid, and good chicken stock is always more than thrifty, the beginning of many flavorsome sauces, stews and soups. Cubes (we all use them at times) get nowhere near.

So leftovers well used are a sign for me of imagination, of economic thinking, and maybe experience. But only if they are not the norm.