Soupe de Poisson

On our last night in Capestang, we stayed in and had one of our favourite, only-in-France meals:  fish soup. 

You can buy this soup ready-made from the supermarket in big glass bottles.  It's not expensive, and you really don't want to guess what goes into it, but it tastes amazing.  Very savoury and salty and satisfying, without being too "fishy", if that makes any sense at all.

You serve the soup with spoonfuls of garlicky rouille stirred through it. 

And bread, wine and salad.

The wine we were drinking came directly from the local vineyards - we just take a plastic, 5-litre bidon down to the cave cooperative and they fill it with wine from a hose.  From a hose!  France is totally the best country ever.

This little bucket of happiness cost us a grand total of 6 euros.  Yep.  I know. 

That's it for the holiday posts!  I'll be putting up some spartan and thrifty entries after this, to compensate for all the cheese and wine.  Thanks for reading, and see you on the flip side!

Dinner at L'Auberge de la Croisade

I have to confess that B and I are fairly lazy/unadventurous when it comes to eating out in France.  We have our old favourites, which are about thirty seconds' walk from our front door, and we tend to stick to them.   Then last summer, our friends Tom and Charlotte stayed in the same town and raved over a restaurant they'd discovered about ten minutes' drive from Capestang, on the road towards a little town called Cruzy.  We were sort of ashamed that we'd never even heard about it, let alone visited it. 

So we resolved to try it this time.  When we arrived, I was so glad we did.  This is what it looks like:

Because it was a warm night, we were able to sit out on the pretty terrace of the restaurant, which was lit by lanterns and surrounded by greenery.  This was the view, over the wide and peaceful Canal Du Midi:

Nearly every table outside was taken, which - since we were there off-season - shows just how popular this place is. 

There were several set menu options on offer, so true to form I went for the cheapest (19.95 euros) and B went for the most intriguing-sounding (the menu surpris, with which you choose either the meat or fish option, and then eat whatever the chef sends out).

The meal kicked off with a pre-starter dish:

I didn't catch the name of this, but it was basically an egg soup drizzled with fresh basil pesto.  I know that sounds kind of gross, but you'll have to take my word for it - it was silky-smooth and very rich. 

This was my main course, a beautifully thick piece of white fish with a crumbed topping and served with a creamy, tarragon-y sauce.

Just looking at that picture is making me hungry.

B had magret de canard, which was pretty much a whole duck, served pinky-red in the middle and surrounded by a dark, savoury gravy.

There was a cheese course, too.  Cheese makes me very happy.   (Remember the cheese trolley at Zaranda?  Ahhh.) 

From left to right, we had a spready blue cheese, a slice of cantal, and a perfectly-ripe-to-the-point-of-runniness Camembert.   I'd thought I was too full to want cheese.  Turns out I was wrong!

The final flourish was the dessert.

Your eyes do not deceive you - that really is a selection plate of mini desserts, including a scoop of blackcurrant ice-cream, a teeny slice of rich-as-sin chocolate tart, a coffee-flavoured mousse, and a raspberry mille feuille.  Oh, and masses of cream. 

Since we were much too full to move, we lingered at our table and drank the locally-produced wine as the sun set.

Fresh Lemon Ice-Cream

Do you know what is amazing?  Ice-cream.

Do you know what is even more amazing?  HOMEMADE ICE-CREAM.

I know, I was sort of on the fence about it, too.  I mean, any kind of ice-cream is delicious!  Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia?  Oh my word!  How could anything, homemade or no, beat that?  But last year, my parents-in-law bought an ice-cream maker.  And B, unable to resist trying out a fancy new gadget, made us strawberry ice-cream using nothing but fresh berries, sugar, and cream.

I died.  It was literally food heaven.  I've been dreaming about it ever since. 

So this year we put homemade ice-cream right at the top of our holiday To Eat list.  It was too late for strawberries, so we decided to use lemons instead.

The recipe is from this very cute and beautifully illustrated book.   We had to use caster sugar in place of icing sugar because I misread the labels in the supermarket (it seemed to work just fine).  Other than the sugar we used 330ml cream, and 3 lemons - zest and juice.   The ice-cream maker does all the hard work for you - you literally throw in the ingredients and switch it on.

The ice-cream turned out to be the prettiest shade of pale yellow.  And it had an amazing, subtle taste of lemon - the sourness of the fruit was counteracted by all the sugar, so you just got its summery flavour coming through on its own.  Dee-lish-oos.

Steak Frites

You can't go to France and not have steak frites at some point during your stay.  It would be like going to Italy and not eating pizza.  It just can't be done.  Whenever we go, we always head to the town square and nab an outside table at the Grille.   You can sit under the shade of the big tree growing in their courtyard and watch the world go by.

The house wine comes in 1/2 litre pichets and is always served cold.  I like it beaucoup.

Our regular order....

The steaks are cooked on a wood-burning grill, which not only smells amazing, but also gives the meat a beautiful smoky flavour.  And they are served alongside your body weight in chips.

Picnicking a la Francais

Yay hoo!  It's time for some lovely holiday posts.  We're back from a week's break in the sunny South of France.  Naturally we spent our time doing leisurely 10km runs up and down the mountainside, brushing up on our French by taking in the odd socio-political lecture at the local university, and examining the fragile and diverse eco-systems of local lakes.  Er, and also we slept late, ate lots of cheese, and drank the town dry of wine. 

We did a lot of picnicking.  I dearly love a picnic.  There's something about eating in the open air which makes all food taste just that little bit better - even sandwiches take on a kind of exotic quality when they're enjoyed al fresco.  Because of that, I don't hold with fancy picnics - simple, easily-transportable foods are all you need.  And luckily, we had a local bakery and fresh produce market on our doorstep, which were the perfect places to satisfy all our picnic requirements.

Spot the difference:

Picnic day one -

Picnic day five -

Bread, cheese, fresh tomatoes - and nothing else.  Bliss.

Beetroot Salad With Yogurt

I know.  Another beetroot recipe.  That's two in the space of a week!  I can hear you shouting at your computer now:  but I never buy beetroot!  And certainly not in large enough quantities to merit two meals in one week!  Enough with the beetroot already!  Sheesh!

But what's a girl to do?  The Inevitable Beetroot has made its return and we'll all just have to get used to it.  On the plus side, it does allow you to make meals that look like this:

So pretty!

(This is inspired by Vefa, again.)

Beetroot Salad With Yogurt

You need (serves 2):

3 beetroot, cooked, peeled and allowed to cool (=fiddly.  Wear an apron.  The juice stains like nobody's business.  Or buy ready-prepared beetroot from the supermarket)
150ml natural yogurt
Olive oil
Wine vinegar - either red or wine is fine
Salt & pepper

Slice your beetroot thinly and lay over a plate.  Drizzle the slices with olive oil and vinegar.  Glop the yogurt on top, and finish with a grating of salt and pepper.  Serve at room temperature so that the flavours have a chance to combine.

Breakfast of Champions

It's a happy day in the Plum household when three things happily coincide:

1.) We have fresh bread in the house;

2.) We have eggs;

3.) I have time for a proper breakfast.

Hardboiled egg + soft bread roll + orange juice = perfect breakfast.  Don't give me any of your soft-boiled, egg-and-soldiers nonsense.  Runny yolks are wrong. Hardboiled is where it's at.

PS - in case you were wondering, yes, that is indeed a tea towel rather than a placemat.  And?

Beetroot Risotto

Oh hello, old friend.  You're back, are you?  Oh yes - the inevitable beetroot has made its return in the veg box.  That must mean that winter is on the way, boo.  But it also means we can make one of our favourite beetroot recipes, risotto.  Yay!

Make your risotto in the normal way, and after all the stock has been absorbed, add in two grated (uncooked) beetroot.  Lots of cheese and a squeeze of lemon juice finish it off.

Look at the beautiful colour of that.  Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?  Here's a close-up.

And it tastes as good as it looks.

Old Favourites

Hello!!

Sorry for the blog silence over the past week.  I've been sunning myself in the South of France and (of course) eating my body weight in baguettes.  I'll be posting on that soon (hint: it's something like this - cheese cheese cheese), but here are a couple of pre-holiday posts first.

Pasta con pesto.

And a home-grown tomato salad.

And wine.

Roasted Peppers Stuffed With Squid And Rice

We own quite a lot of cookbooks.  I'm semi-obsessed with them.  (I like to read them even if I'm not looking for recipes - I just love the photos and the descriptions of food.  Is that weird?  It's probably weird.)   I definitely have my favourites - Nigella for fancy impress-people dishes, Nigel for simple weekday dinners. 

Vefa is my favourite go-to for delicious summer meals.

We had some beautiful red peppers in our veg box this week, and Vefa's Kitchen has a recipe for peppers stuffed with squid and rice.  Sounded like a marriage made in heaven!

While the de-cored peppers roasted lightly in the oven, we made up the risotto stuffing.  Lots of garlic, onions, and squid that was sauteed first in some white wine. 

There turned out to be a lot more risotto than there was space in the peppers, but hey ho.  We just spooned it over the top of the peppers and the whole dish went into the oven for about 20 minutes to bake through. 

It was delicious - the peppers were sweet, and the rice and squid filling fragrant and soft inside.  Perfect for a late summer supper.

The Week of Fun Things - Ten

We made pasta.  From scratch.

A little Dutch courage....

Action stations!

The rolling out stage.  I agree, it doesn't look too appetising yet.

Separating spaghetti = fiddly job.  Also, more difficult after wine consumption.

And what kind of amazing sauce did you make to accompany this incredible home-made pasta, I hear you cry?
Well...

What do you think?

Yeps.

That officially concludes the week of fun, so normal service will resume tomorrow.  Thanks for reading!

The Week of Fun Things - Nine

Two words:  Eton Mess.

Oooooh yeah.

The Week of Fun Things - Eight

We sampled lemonades.

This stuff is pretty amazing.  Very light and summery without being too sweet.

Whereas the Leon version is freshly-made and sour enough to tingle on your tongue.  I LOVE sour flavours.  Yes please. 

The Week of Fun Things - Seven

We ate the bread.  And the cheese.

And then we died happy.

The Week of Fun Things - Six

We bought fresh yeast....

...and used it to make bread.  (Recipe here). 

The smell of bread baking in the oven is my favourite smell ever. 

The Week of Fun Things - Five

Breakfast.

I ordered pancakes.



I mean, have you ever seen a more amazing-looking breakfast in your life?  Fluffy pancakes dusted with icing sugar.  Natural yogurt.  Rhubarb jam in a teeny tiny saucepan.  I almost cried with happiness. 

The Week of Fun Things - Four

We went to the market. 

We bought cheese.

The Week of Fun Things - Three

Cornish pasties.  Well, when in Rome....

The Week of Fun Things - Two

We foraged for food in the hedgerows of Cornwall. 

We made a monster crumble out of the blackberries we found.  We forgot all about the fresh mint we picked.   Woops.

The Week of Fun Things - One

We had a train picnic.  All sourced by M&S.