Duck, duck, goose.

Wherever you go, you see, hear, smell and taste things that can bring you back home.  Looking at ducks and geese in Vietnam did that for me.

Eating and preparing duck (and to a lesser extent geese) is something I only really learned living in France. The southwest of France is most famous for its fowl (especially in the form of foie gras), but you can find good sources across the country.

Confit de canard is duck that has been very slowly braised in its own fat, after having been cured in salt, thyme, bay leaf...It is impossible to overstate how succulent it is.  Confit de canard is traditionally served here in the Languedoc as part of a country-style white bean cassoulet, or stew. I'm not overly crazy about it, to be honest. Maybe I've come across it too much, maybe it's too heavy for me, I don't make it.

But the confit de canard itself, well, that lends itself to nearly anything, especially in the winter. I've even had it to delicious effect in a crisp fried Vietnamese-style spring roll. And the easiest (if slightly time-consuming) modification of a straight-up confit? Rillettes de canard.  A farmhouse kind of meat spread, to be eaten like a crostini, ever so yummy with an Alsace Riesling...

It is the dish you make when the sky is unbearably low, while the kids are doing homework, when the sun has set far too quickly, when there are a few confit legs left over from the big dinner with the neighbors (I compulsively make more food than necessary).  It is a recipe to be made by taste.  To the four duck legs' worth of flaked meat, I added about two tablespoons of duck fat and the same amount of the jellied, flavorsome duck broth.

Also a tablespoon or two of Cognac, a few grinds of pepper, and then everything got worked in by hand.

As the ingredients are kneaded, the texture changes.  Enjoy the process: keep tasting and seasoning until it seems about right.  There should be just enough fat to bind and just enough extra flavor to amplify the duck's inherent savoriness. The finished meat goes in small dishes covered with a preserving layer of duck fat (which isn't eaten).  Keeps for weeks, but think about handing some out to friends and neighbors.  They'll be more than happy to spread some on hearty slices of toast.

I actually made these last week, intending to keep them for a good while.  But we woke up to snow this morning.

I lit a fire in the kitchen stove, and by the time noon arrived, it seemed like the perfect day for rillettes and a steaming bowl of barley vegetable soup. 

After a couple of slices of locally made cheese, we dug into a generous gift of macarons and finished with green tea. 

 Happy sunday, happy day-dreaming, wherever you are.

Goodbye autumn.

The bleached light has distinctly sharpened in the face of winter.  The last of the clinging leaves are giving up their paper selves as the cold goes from being an incoming 'front' to something that settles in around the fields, the villages, the houses, our bodies.  You find yourself straining to find the last bits of color, natural or not.  You tell the children, you tell yourself: there is so much to love about winter--the snap of wind that pinks the cheek; the damp give of the browning leaves underfoot; the clear rush and babble of the full-again brook just beyond the green sway in the field; the Christmas lights twinkling in neighbor's windows; the glittering, shimmering frost in the early morning; the lacy trees stretched bowl-like in the empty sky; the embracing glow of the banked fire in the kitchen corner.  What's not to love?



Sometimes, it's a hard sell.  That's when you say to yourself: next year, I'm doing it differently.  At any rate, this is what I told myself last winter, when I was a.) snowed in with 40 cm of snow outside (with our steep driveway in the middle of unplowed nowhere, it might as well have been 40 meters), and b.) simultaneously bronchitis'ed in with a steadily 40C temperature.  Doing it differently. 

So now, just as a sleek new winter unsheathes her claws, I'm leaving, for more than a month.  Kids pulled out of school, dog at the neighbor's place, the whole kit and caboodle.  Between making lists of lists and de-virusing my computer (...) I've also been spending way too much mental energy trying to figure out how I could continue to blog while traveling.  I finally realized I can perhaps better spend that time with, y'know, my family, rather than scrambling to find a nearby internet cafe then sitting hunched and closed as a parenthesis, tapping out my missive while trying not to be distracted by the clackety fan.  (Oh, the notion of the fan's because we'll be in Vietnam...)

I really think of those extra few hours of non-blogging as a Christmas presents to yours truly. 

Because, man alive, these kids, I really have to enjoy them this very moment: they absolutely insist upon growing, and at a speed that leaves me slightly dazed.  The little one's plaid flannel pyjama sleeves?  Midway up his forearms.  My sweet eldest (her face lengthening into something frighteningly close to maturity)? She does things on a horse that make me blanch--circus tricks kind of stuff.  Sigh.  I'd just like for this time, during which their open faces are still small enough to cup in my hands, to last a wee bit extra.  Is asking for time to stretch asking for too much?

So yes, I'm off for a big long month with the family. Cross your fingers that we, all of us, are too thrilled to notice the slight time difference between Alpha and Golf. 

Please look for me again in the beginning of January, a few short days after the hangovers wane and the New Year's resolutions to lose weight are declared, after the friends and family have straggled home and you're just beginning to evaluate the possibility of maybe perhaps taking down the decorations.

In the meantime, I didn't want to leave you sitting there empty-handed, so I made you something.  Like all things handmade, if it's pretty, it's only the roughest kind of pretty, an assemblage of little moments that caught my eye while I was in New York.  The exact hue of a certain sort of daydream, it is the product of wanting something and being lucky enough for it to happen. 

I think of you in kind of this way, out there in the ether, my own New York--only in human form.

Maybe you are someone who smiles and laughs at some of the same things I do, and maybe, just maybe, you are also someone who wants to spend a little time with the ones they love, somewhere warm.   I wish you loads of smiles, laughs, warmth and more.  Happy Thanksgiving, if there's a turkey in your near future.  And Merry Christmas, too.  (Bet I'm the first this year to say that!)  I promise I'll bring along a little bit of Vietnam to show and tell in the new year.

The blood rushed to my head.

I think this may be the last time I rhapsodize about citrus...this season. I went a bit mad at the organic co-op when I saw all the blood oranges: I greedily palmed all the carmine citrus I could. The languidly sweet Taroccos and the full-blooded Sanguinellos tumbled willy-nilly into my basket. Then at the farmer's market I went and did it again. Because here's the thing: this means we're that much closer...to patio season, here on the bright blue cusp of the Mediterannean.

Bring on the asparagus.

In the meantime, I made my butcher tut-tut over my exotic tastes when I described a blood orange marinade (with rum! and garlic! and rosemary!) I planned to use on pork loin. But my, oh, my. It resulted in a beautifully succulent, aromatic dish that provoked spontaneous sighs of delight, mon cher Jean-Louis. The ruby fruit also made a scintillating appearance in a Sicilian salad, paired with fennel, which, while highly refreshing, seemed a smidgen premature given the lingering snow outside. Kind of like that halter-top red sun-dress that can still only be worn indoors. With a woolen scarf.

Then it was on to blood orange curd. Yes, I did go there. So decadent and rich in just the pucker-worthy, complex dessert-y place your mouth needs to be every so often. I put the curd in a pie. Which I then covered with a heap of glowing sections of fruit. This was a resounding success, and I'm not too shy to cop to it. Took time to pull together (with a necessary addition of cornstarch). I'm not complaining, mind you: sometimes really good things take time.And sometimes they don't. Case in point, the recipe below, shown above. A ravishing way to be an adult and have your Jell-o too. A turn of the wrist, a few hours' wait, and you're there. (Original recipe courtesy Deborah Madison, via Gourmet magazine).

Gelée d'Orange Sanguine (Blood Orange Jelly with Whipped Cream au Grand Marnier)

Serves 4-6.

1 (1/4 ounce) envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup water
2 cups strained fresh blood orange juice (from perhaps 10-12 oranges)
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon orange flower water, optional

1 cup cream
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
1-2 tablespoons Grand Marnier orange liqueur (taste to decide)

Sprinkle the powdered gelatin over the water in a mixing bowl. Allow to time for water to be absorbed and gelatin to soften. Meanwhile, bring a half-cup cup of juice to a bubbly simmer, add sugar and a pinch of salt, then add to gelatin mixture. Stir until all sugar and gelatin are completely dissolved, then add remaining juice and orange flower water if desired. Pour into small custard cups and refrigerate for at least five hours.

Just before starting the meal, whip the cream in a cold bowl, adding sugar and Grand Marnier. Serve a generous spoonful alongside the unmolded jelly.

Goes well with a cup of hot chocolate.

If you decided to give the white chocolate "Hot Snow" of the previous post a go, then these images, a sumptuous elegy to life in a colder place, are just the kind of visuals that go well with winter dreaming.

ICELAND from Gunnar Konradsson on Vimeo. Music by Steindor Andersen. If you'd like to see more of Gunnar's spectacular photo work, visit his site.

Going forward, looking back.

This being the south of France, after our local version of "Snowmageddon 2010," the next day unfolded clear as crystal. I ventured out to take stock.

The snow threw sunstar-like sparkles, the extraordinary beauty of which my little point and shoot camera cannot duplicate. Please trust me, it was/is the stuff of fairy tales and warm-fisted childhood dreams.Nature is of two minds around here, torn between the pulling of the sun and the withdrawal of cold. Lately, often simultaneously.This is fine, we need the precipitation to make it through the parched months to come, but we mere mortals need...sustenance. We feed on our memories, literally and figuratively. I've come to the end of my supply of heavenly fine rooibos tea sourced during my trip to the desert, but just now I am remembering that Wyoming cup of "hot snow."

Easier than pie, actually. A moment's activity for a deep and sustaining pleasure. If you are feeling chilled, try this on for size, and don't be shy about adding a measure of rum if your moment calls for it.
Neige au Chaud (White Hot Chocolate)

Serves 2.

2 cups whole milk

80 g good white chocolate, chopped

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

generous pinch of cinammon

optional: 1/4 teaspoon sweet almond extract

Heat milk without boiling. Add chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon and optional almond extract, stir until well-combined. Serve, settle down and relax.

'S no dream.

So I just wanted to share a few more "barnyard" images, because the snow has already slipped, dripped and drizzled away, taking that special felted silence with it. But for just a little while, I could make believe I lived somewhere high in the Alps or thereabouts. Without snow tires.
Shadow the rabbit was more at home in the winter white, coming out for daily doses of sun, and making himself the rather impertinent visitor in the henhouse, where I had put the animals' water as it kept freezing over. Yes, it can get that cold in the south, too, just not so often.

Gitane (or Gypsy), our friend's trekking horse, already had a very thick coat and is long accustomed to year-round outdoor life, so she was fine but very alert for any potential snacks offered by humans, crunchy carrots proffered by mittened children being a choice treat. Her water source, the (now whitewater) creek, never froze.

As you might suspect, this video by Sean Stiegemeier was not taken in my backyard, but it did make me dream of snow. Perhaps it will do the same for you. Have an excellent winter weekend.

Miss Daisy drives in.

Here's what it was like this blizzardy weekend in the south of France, thanks to Mediterranean storm 'Daisy'.

Or rather, here's what it was like around my house as I was snowed in for two days. No way I was getting my Kangoo up the driveway. Renault Kangoo. It's my car (kindly get your mind out of the gutter!). Knowing I wasn't feeling well, my neighbor walked through the woods to bring me fresh, home-baked bread and Mason jars full of soups and stews. The (young) chickens were really petrified of the fluffy white stuff and refused to venture out of their house for food until I had cleared a nice big spot for them. The Weimaraner capered and raced around, having spent too much time curled up indoors. I'm fairly certain the potted lavender were less thrilled than the dog.

I don't think we got the 20 or 30 centimeters that Avignon and Arles did but we weren't that far off. These photos were taken after a good amount of melting had already taken place. At least I wasn't stuck on a highway somewhere for hours, as so many have been in Germany, or trapped in a closed airport, as some were in Dublin and Geneva, or without electricity as some 15, 000 unfortunates were outside of Arles.

All things considered, things could have been a lot worse.

Is it too late to share this with you?

45,000 christmas lights, computer-controlled and powered by wind. American ingenuity goes festive.

A house in the mist.

At fourteen or fifteen, unable to sleep at two in the morning, I crept into the family den (lined with genuine laminated wood) and switched on the television, promptly losing myself in the 1954 film adaptation of the Broadway musical Brigadoon.

For a couple of days now, I have been Cyd Charisse, in spirit if nothing else. Okay, I'm speaking fairly loosely here. Gene Kelly was AWOL, there was only this house instead of a musically gifted village, and not a kilt to be found, but it hardly seemed possible for the day to go by any slower, nor fog to be any denser. The fog was palpable, it was the cat that padded up and wrapped itself around the farmhouse (remember that poem?). Only this cat never left.

Nearly simultaneously, there have been hundreds of passengers stuck on a Eurostar train under the English Channel and thousands of stranded would-be passengers in London and Paris, almost all of whom deeply desired to go home for the holidays. I was also stuck--but already at home. Granted, there are worse things (such as the aforementioned train mess) but this house has been completely cut off from anything resembling civilization, or even the landscape familiar to me, with no visibility past one or two meters.

The only weapon I chose to wield against the resulting (mild) case of cabin fever was to read about food. Then to cook. A lot. There are now four types of Christmas cookies (including a new one: lemon-glazed persimmon bars); my go-to rosemary and garlic marinade for a leg of lamb; candied clementines, incandescent and nearly translucent; the best-ever crèmes renversées (what the world outside of France calls a crème caramel); an ivory-hued cream of parsnip soup; a winter salad sprinkled generously with crumbled chestnuts and my neighbor's very fresh goat cheese. My waistline will bear the brunt of this isolation, but boy the house smells divine. No doubt Cyd would shake her perfectly coiffed, chiseled head at the sight of my kitchen...

I do hope we'll get lucky with a bit of milder weather tomorrow, as I really must rejoin civilization in last-minute gift-hunting at the local marchés de noel . It is, after all, nearly Christmas. Dear reader, I wish you and yours warm fingers and toes, a kitchen full of good smells (and someone to help clean up), a big glass with tiny bubbles, and an enduring sense of peace. Oh, and not too much fog.

Staying warm.

It has shifted from this......and this... ..to these. This all happened in a matter of moments, or so it seems. Spoiled with an endlessly balmy November, we rolled blithely into blackest December. Boy, do I ever resent the guy who came up with Daylight Savings Time for robbing me of those last rays of light. All the radiators have been flicked up a notch to accomodate the drop in temperature. Will we have a white Christmas? It would be atypical for the Languedoc these past few winters. But stock up anyway on the few aromatic ingredients for vin chaud, or mulled wine. For when you're snowed in, or when you just want to pretend that you are.

Vin Chaud (French Mulled Wine)

Serves one to four people, depending on the degree of thirst.

one bottle of Beaujolais red wine

zest of 2 oranges

zest of one lemon

4 cinnamon sticks

6 whole pods of cardamom, split open

6 whole cloves

1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

1/3 cup of currant liqueur (Cassis de Dijon), or Cognac and 3 tablespoons of sugar

Combine the wine and all the spices in a saucepan, heat until simmering, and allow to bubble very slightly for about half an hour. Take at least three deep breaths of the gorgeous perfumes wafting through your house. Add the Cassis de Dijon, or sweetened Cognac, simmer for another five minutes, strain and serve.

Sip and dream of picture-postcard Christmas markets in the Alsace, where the snow lingers a bit longer.

Underwater.

Remember when you were little and first tried to reach the bottom of the pool, fighting the buoyancy of your own body and above all that mad desire to suck in air? In the countryside, without a television or a newspaper subscription, suddenly losing your internet connection can feel similar. Amazing how I can even imagine associating computer time to something as vital as breathing, but there you go. You get used to access, and hurry-it-up, both of which I have lacked for the past few days. This, while such interesting little moments were happening, between the (tidal) waves of holiday rush (visits, preparations for visits, more visits, trimming the tree, making wreaths, making merry). I guess the lead up to Christmas doesn't differ that much whether I live in Amsterdam, Washington, D.C., or the boonies of France. (It isn't really the boonies here, but it can feel like it when one is sans internet connection.)

I thought of you, dear reader, when I was driving past broad swathes of grapevines and noticing they'd finally shifted from pure autumn gold to the reddish brown, leafless haze of winter. But at that very same instant--I swear on a stack of Bibles taller than me--the title song of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! musical came on the radio:

...Flowers in the prairie where the june bugs zoom,
Plen'y of heart and plen'y of hope.
Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain
And the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain...

Enough to send a girl into some rather odd daydreams.

The creche naif.

You follow the D1 to reach Parignargues, a tiny village in the sun just outside Nimes. Another microclimat entirely, nearly everything is still green. Once you see a clock tower (at left) nearly leaning against a church tower, you'll know you have arrived. The village is mute, all animation is in the minute church. Just follow the sign.

In the 1940s, the village priest, l'abbe Jeanjean, built a nativity scene, using old clockworks and sewing machine engines to animate his busy vision. There is of course the baby Jesus, stage right, but the space is dominated by craftsmen--the pot thrower, the blacksmith, the chimney sweep et al. And munching sheep. The Three Kings and their camels trundle officiously and repeatedly by on a track, to better view the baby, who seems a bit outsized, but then again he isn't just any baby.

The activities reach a soaring crescendo with St. Michael, who uses his lance to imperiously smack a demon right back into hell. All this kitschy, earnest bustle is watched over by complacent Mary, resplendent with her tin and rhinestone crown. It's a lot of drama for a Saturday afternoon, and the highly satisfied children take turns dropping coins into the collection box placed there for the maintenance of the creche. Their coins set in motion another little baby Jesus, whose little display box lights up as he wiggles, waves, and all but coos at them. The religious fervor overwhelms us, and we rashly decide to get a jump on l'Epiphanie by committing cultural sacrilege and having a Galette aux Rois for tonight's dessert. (Place your bets on who finds the feve and wins the crown). I will make amends to French traditionalists everywhere by making my own Galette aux Rois on the first sunday in January...while daydreaming about Melchior, Gaspard and Balthazar--les Rois Mages--the Sorceror Kings.

The Pere Noel drops by.

According to Agathe, Sophie's friend from pony club, the Père Noël has magic powder which he sprinkles on his reindeer to make them fly. I'm afraid to ask why he can be spotted all over France in the company of a white horse. The seed of doubt in Sophie's eight-year-old head is already being fertilized enough by recess rumor.

I'd like to know why they think the Père Noël showed up at Sophie's school last Friday--with her classmate's horse. I might have asked the Père myself, but he showed up after I left. Figures. Everyone's families had been invited for a Christmas lunch on the last day of school, to be held in the school cantine. After grinning continuously over our wine and appetizers at the children singing their way through a medley of Christmas songs, over two hundred people settled down for veal fricassee and buche de noel, or yule log (6 euros per person for enormous, kid-ladled portions). Our waiters were selected from the oldest kids, who'd dressed for the occasion. As the service was a bit slow, I had time to gaze around and do a bit of musing. I was startled by how many grandparents showed up, although I suppose they are more available. These are often the ones who mind other parents' little ones on a regular basis, which seems like something out of a fairy tale to me. I forget that the expatriate life, spent at a formidable distance from one's family, is not the life most people choose. You lose, you gain.

Examining the rather puny, half-hearted efforts to dress up the otherwise bare, large walls, I had time to ruminate on the odd inability of the otherwise (generally anyway) oh-so-stylish French to decorate for the holidays. They hang these horrible, deflated little plastic santas outside of their windows, for example. I realize this is a personal, small gripe, but I don't know why French Christmas trees must always look so anemic, so sorrowful, so oddly-shaped, compared to the lush, fluffy behemoths to be found on the other side of the Atlantic. Jose Bove would probably retort that the French trees haven't been genetically modified. At present, the French simply do not have suitably plushy, filled out trees to decorate (the only somewhat decent variety to be found is the Nordmann), and, once decorated, the ornaments are usually too sparsely and quite poorly hung anyway. Even in Paris you find weirdly shoddy Christmas decor--everywhere. They manage deciduous tree lighting decently, but the rest I just don't get. The annual December editions of Cote Sud, Marie Claire Maison, and Elle Decor are the exceptions to the un-Christmassy rant of above...

So anyway, there we were, filling up endlessly long tables, munching on slices of flute (the inflated, airy cousin to the baguette) from the only bakery in the handkerchief-sized village. Everybody was periodically craning for a look at the littlest children, seated communely at scaled-down round tables in the center of the canteen. The veal and its carrots were juicy and tender; we all went for seconds. I didn't try the pitchers of red wine, but others certainly did. I could see Max, at his round table, seriously chowing down. Sophie said it was the kind of food they get every day...except for the yule log. I cannot imagine eating like this every day, but it is one of the things Sophie loves the most about the French educational system: a warm, multi-course lunch.

I left early, utterly satisfied and replete with good feelings; it was time to get started on my own holiday cooking.

Merry Christmas to all, (and to all a good night!)--Clement C. Moore. (Remember?)