French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [34]
‘There I lived all the daytime out of doors, and in the evening my favourite place was the kitchen. The ways of cooking were very primitive (and in many parts of the south-west of France they still are); that is to say they were perfect, and gave results which I did not appreciate enough then, and which we try now, often in vain, to imitate. The roasting was done on a spit, and the rest of the cooking on charcoal. If a dish had to be braised, it was cooked in a casserole with a hollow lid; in this warm ashes and burning charcoals were put, and the dish cooked slowly, resting on square holes. There were three or four holes in the tiled covered stand, which was a fixture. This was called a potager.
‘If something required baking as opposed to roasting, it was sent to the baker’s to be cooked after the bread had been removed. There was a baker’s oven in the house at the end of the yard, but I do not remember seeing it in use.
‘The grandest place was the chimney, so high and deep I could walk into it, and the dogs (which were called landiers) were almost as tall as I was. It was lovely to see a fat chicken or a row of partridges revolving slowly on the spit and becoming more and more golden. They were carefully basted and a subtle perfume filled the kitchen. Meanwhile, a crisp salad was being prepared with a chapon rubbed with garlic.
‘Next to the fireplace was a large cherrywood saloir, where in pounds of sea-salt pieces of pork were pickled, and I can still see the unerring gesture of the cook: pushing the sliding lid out, she would put in her arm to the elbow and draw out a handful of salt, which she would throw, positively throw, in the soup, a yard away. . . .
‘Some of the dishes and kitchen forks and spoons were of pewter. To my great joy I discovered one day that they melted easily. . . .
‘In the store room next to the kitchen were a long table and shelves always covered with all sorts of provisions; large earthenware jars full of confits of pork and goose, a small barrel where vinegar slowly matured, a bowl where honey oozed out of the comb, jams, preserves of sorrel and of tomatoes, and odd bottles with grapes and cherries marinating in brandy; next to the table a weighing machine on which I used to stand at regular intervals; sacks of haricot beans, of potatoes; eggs, each one carefully dated in pencil.
‘And there were the baskets of fruit, perfect small melons, late plums, under-ripe medlars waiting to soften, peaches, pears hollowed out by a bird or a wasp, figs that had fallen of their own accord, all the fruits of September naturally ripe and sometimes still warm from the sun. Everything in profusion. It is no doubt the remembrance of these early days which makes me despise and dislike all primeurs, the fruit artificially grown, gathered too early and expensively sent, wrapped in cotton wool, to “smart” restaurants.
‘The garden could hardly be called a garden; it was large, wild and not too well kept. There were fruit trees amongst the flowers, here a pear tree, there a currant bush, so that one could either smell a rose, crush a verbena or eat a fruit; there were borders of box, but also of sorrel and chibol; and the stiff battalion of leeks, shallots and garlic, the delicate pale-green foliage of the carrot, the aggressive steel-grey leaves of the artichokes, the rows of lettuce which always ran to seed too quickly.
‘It was not a proud ornamental garden, but it symbolised more than anything else the French provincial life.’
South-Western France: The Languedoc
You have decided upon your meal, and Madame, in her black dress, has moved majestically towards the kitchen to attend to your wishes. A bottle of cooled white wine is already in front of you, and from the big table in the centre of the restaurant a waiter brings hors-d’œuvre, to keep you amused and occupied while more