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Rhona

Fun in Paris

A lovely weekend in Paris. We travelled up by TGV, which was a swift and smooth ride, and as soon as humanly possible after disembarking we found ourselves a pleasant lunch. For me, some lamb chops

followed by some delightfully crunchy creme brulee.

Supper on Saturday night was prefixed by a trying stroll to the restaurant. Apparently there was a techno-parade heading our way and the streets of the Marais were thronged with Parisian youth seemingly attempting to out-drink and generally out-yob their British counterparts, and we had to pick our way carefully through what had become an open pissoir and vomitorium.

Putting all that thankfully behind us we settled in for a happy return to le Bistrot de L’Oulette where we embarked on a series of unusual delights. My starter was one of the best I’ve tasted: escargots with artichokes; tender and perfect:

followed by oxtail with foie gras wrapped in a cabbage leaf

and finishing with icecream – prunes with armagnac.

Sunday we visited the newly opened Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, which was excellent, stylish and unusual, from the courtyard

to the ceiling;

and even the toilettes were suitably attired:

We hastened then to fortify ourselves with a splendid salad

and then joined many, many Parisians in the Luxembourg gardens

where we found ourselves in a queue to see the greenhouses, which are normally closed to the public (it was a holiday though, so they were open for two days only) and which have a stunning collection of orchids

They have one or two dahlias too…

and lots of fruit:

Even more interestingly, they have bees

in many hives. They were selling the honey the day we were there, but had sold out within an hour; I gather it’s an extremely popular annual event.

We stopped to refresh ourselves with an Italian-style gelato from Amorino:

Foot-weary we managed to limp to a supper engagement at Chez Janou which is seemingly always heaving with custom, and rightly so.

My starter was a many-splendoured salad incorporating avocado, crayfish and pink grapefruit…

After some concentrated walking and shopping on Monday morning, our last lunch was upon us before we knew it. We settled into a cafe near Place des Vosges.

Tarte tatin, a fitting finale:

And finally boarded the Eurostar for the trip back to London. We were lucky to have no trouble getting ourselves back, since one of the tunnels is still closed and there are delays and cancellations which will go on for a while yet.

Climate of the Poem workshop with Sean O’Brien, in France

Last week at Chateau Ventenac sped by. Having made note of the interesting (to travellers) fact that it takes about 2 hours door-to-door to reach Stansted from Turnham Green, I have little else of comfort or interest to report about that journey.

There was that traveller’s moment when I learned, at Victoria Station, that there was no underground service on the Victoria line the day I travelled, and so I had to make one of those Londoner rolling-gear changes, where you must always expect the unexpected whenever making a journey, and I got there in the end.

Can I just say what an appalling place Stansted is for anyone who cares about food, comfort, manners or convenience? And to mention that you can pay stupid amounts for just about anything there… speaking as one who forgot to pick up that essential item (for the borderline flu-sufferer, namely Twinings Ginger & Lemon tea) at my local groceteria and was forced to hand over the extortionate price of forgetfulness.

Seeking literary consolation, I visited the book concession and – in a vain quest to find any section called “Poetry” – stumbled upon a promising new tome by Felicity Lawrence (Eat Your Heart Out) to keep me company on my journey. I have already learned more than I wanted to know about the evils of cereal and some scary things about milk, meat and vegetables. Happy landings…

Here was our view from the chateau:

and another, of the many surrounding windmills at sunset:

Here’s a view of our first evening’s supper, first and last course: some grilled goat’s cheese on bread on salad:

and a bit of apricot tart with ice cream:

Each day’s lunch included a decorative platter of sliced beets garnished with creme fraiche, as well as a good selection of salads, sausages and and cheese.

Happy tutor packs his pencils at the end of the week:

Happy chickens, modern sharecroppers and wild strawberries

Just came across this sweet story about a heritage breed of chicken that has been revived in India, to help counter the trade in industrial egg and poultry production.

And while we’re in a positive mood, another happy story, about the rise of garden-sharing by urban gardeners.

On my eternal quest for food poems, I found this one by Helen Dunmore, called Wild Strawberries.

Shropshire nosh

Back already from a week in Shropshire, enjoying good food and better company as we whiled away the week talking about food and food writing with tutors Lindsey Bareham and Paul Bailey and enjoyed the opportunity of a lifetime to break bread with Claudia Roden, who was a delightful, articulate and well-travelled guest speaker.

On arrival last Monday it had been deemed warm and fine enough weather, after a week of record-breaking rains, to sit on the terrace for a before-dinner drink. Unfortunately this left us open to an enthusiastic welcome by hosts of Shropshire midges, wild with appetite. I had in all my years in England somehow never personally experienced midges and always imagined them as some smaller variety of mosquitoes, but now I think they are more like a tiny, carnivorous mutation of the fruit fly, which has evolved with an insatiable taste for human flesh and an instinct that causes them, en masse, to try to enter the human head by any available orifice. More like what we Canadians might call a no-see-um. Ouch, by any name.

Luckily we had a few distractions of our own: a generous sampling of excellent breads and local cheeses (clockwise from top left: Wrekin White; Stinking Bishop; Gloucestershire Brie; Shropshire Blue; and Cothi Caws Cynros goat cheese)

and some wonderful Old Spot ham

from the nearby Ludlow Food Centre,

which we visited on Wednesday. A custom-built local food shop, in essence the farm shop of the Earl of Plymouth estate, 80% of its provisions come from 4 counties (Shropshire, Worcestershire, Powys and Hertfordshire). It has a central selling area surrounded by kitchens, from which resident cheesemaker Dudley Martin produces butter and cheese;

desserts (she was finishing work on some raspberry brulees during our visit) from food prize-winner Catherine Moran’s Sweet Stuff Slow;

meats, responsibility of the centre’s butcher John Brereton (from the estate, including organic beef, lamb and traditional Old Spot pork);

coffees (roasted and ground in-house), baked goods, and preserves like this Thai Perry Pear Pickle.

It was all, as they say, food for thought and we talked about the centre for the rest of the week, with interest and ambivalence. While there I picked up a little morsel of Tipsy Cherry Fruit Cake, the handiwork of The Simply Delicious Fruit Cake Company, and it was. The jam and pate I bought at the same time will be sampled later.

We were near a pretty village called Clun, where they have a castle with views of the town:

We ate well, by our own fair hands, with a little help and challenge from Lindsey’s and Paul’s collection of recipe books. Wednesday’s team were the winners of favourite all-round meal, with some Chez Panisse chicken, roasted vegetables, baked potatoes, and a garlic, pine-nut and cream sauce to bind it,

and a self-assembly apple crumble made of 3 different apples, with rum-soused raisins, crumbly flapjack and lots of double cream.

There were many other nice things to eat and drink through the week as well….

Now I must prepare myself for a change of country and cuisine as I’m off to France tomorrow.

Food & poetry

It seems I am not the only one on the planet with these twinned obsessions. On Friday I went to Farringdon Road and found my way up the near vertical stairs of the Betsey Trotwood, which by its position I’d guess is frequented by Guardian writers and which boasts music and poetry nights, and locally-sourced foods (though I think not including the tiny bag of crisps I purchased from them at some considerable expense: when did they go up to 80p I wonder?). Friday night’s reading theme got its title, as the lucky winner of the bottle of Italian brandy was able to identify, from The Naked Lunch: Unspeakably Toothsome – an evening of food poems. Co-hosts Annie Freud and Roddy Lumsden read and invited a number of other poets to read also, from their own work as well as favourite food related poems by other poets. Each poet participating was rewarded with a food and drink goodies parcel rather than a fee.

Readers included: John Stammers (reading John Berryman, Frank O’Hara‘s “For Grace after a party”), Simon Barraclough (reading from Titus Andronicus, and Anonymous); ex-chef Angela Kirby (Peter Phillips – “I want to be buried in a restaurant” and Anne Stewart “To a melon”); Isobel Dixon (Les Murray – “In a time of cuisine” and Jonathan Swift “Green Leeks”); Mark Waldron (Russell Edson “Mouse” and Mattea Harvey “Setting the table”); Roddy Lumsden (Paul Muldoon “Holy Thursday”, Neil Rollinson “Scampi” – and a memorable poem of his own about the horrors of eating stroganoff in Shannon Airport); Annie Freud (Wendy Cope “The uncertainty of the poet”, DH Lawrence “Figs” and Bertolt Brecht “Buying oranges”); Cath Drake (Michael Ondaatje “Rat jelly”, Jacques Prevert “Breakfast”); Heather Philipson (Wallace Stevens “Floral decorations for bananas”, Frank O’Hara “Animals”); Susan Grindley (Lewis Carroll “Walrus and the carpenter”) and Tim Wells (Rodney Jones “First coca-cola” and Luke Warmwater “Hungry for pizza”).

One afternoon I caught up on some Radio 4 listening and heard a recent Food Programme about anchovies, which told a by-now familiar tale of looming extinction: the best varieties of anchovy are being harvested for volume rather than sustainability, and so we are likely to lose them altogether before too long.

Brunch yesterday was a delightful piece of french toast

at Sam’s…

I now embark on a week without (gasp) internet access. See ya later!