Photo tour of a hike in the Pyrénées

(our packs on the GR10 trail with an orchidée in the foreground)

(finding our way: Lescun on the map)

Back in May, I wrote briefly about a long weekend spent hiking in the vallée de Lescun in the western portion of the Pyrénées. Bastien took lots of beautiful photos of that weekend that merit being published here. Here's a guided tour of our mountain amblings by theme.

La forêt:

(morning mist and light through the hêtres (beech trees))

(view of une crête (mountain crest))

(uphill climb)

(wow! how did those trees manage to grow out of that rock?)

La montagne:

(it was foggy all morning until we emerged from the forest...to this!)

(it was late May, but the mountains were still heavily snow-capped)

(view of the Cirque de Lescun)

(encore une crête...ou peut-être la même?)

(view down the valley from just above the first cabane, bottom right)

(cool rock formations)

(snowy trails)

(more snowy trails)

(harrowing trail up the mountain)

La flore:

(an orchidée with our destination in the background)

(more orchidées, Bastien's favorite flower to photograph; see blog entry "Le Tarn à pied")

(wildflower)

(une gentiane)

(une fausse ortie (a false stinging nettle))

La faune:

(un papillon)

(un papillon sur une jolie fleur violette)

(moutons! (sheep); we bought the best (so so good!) brebis de montagne (hard sheep's milk cheese) in the village...mmm!)

(le pays des limaces (the land of the slugs); they were literally everywhere on the forest floor!)

Les randonneurs:

Happy Birthday Cake

I knew that sooner or later this would turn into a food blog of sorts. I can't help it. "Miam miam" and "glou glou" (code for food and drink if you didn't catch that) are a national obsession here in France, and that's right up my alley.

I don't know too many Americans (though they're out there!) who call Julia Child an idol, can spend an entire day wandering the streets of a big city to construct a meal and will peruse every stand at a marketplace to find the best tomatoes available (aside from Danny Fox with whom I shared this experience last July in Paris and also with whom I knocked on Ms. Child's door a few years back in Cambridge just before she moved west to San Francisco).

So, if you'll let me have my cake and eat it too (sorry, if you've met my father, you'll forgive me for the bad puns), I'll continue with the culinary theme and provide you with a delicious cake recipe. My mom made it for me a few years ago, and it was so memorable that I baked one for Bastien's birthday a month ago (it presents beautifully; the photos here have too much flash and don't do it justice):



Jacques Pépin's Almond Cake

Cake
• 4 ounces almond paste (1/3 cup tightly packed)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• Dash of salt
• 1 cup cake flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Syrup
• 3 tablespoons water
• 3 tablespoons whiskey, rum, or cognac
• 1/4 cup sugar

Garnish
• 1 1/2 pounds berries (raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, cherries) or other available fruits (currants, diced dried peaches, or diced dried apricots)
• 1/2 cup good apricot jam, diluted with 2/3 cup water
• 8-10 mint leaves
• 1 cup sour cream or crème fraîche for serving

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the almond paste, sugar, butter, and vanilla in a food processor and process for about 10 seconds. Add the eggs, milk, and salt and process for 5 seconds. Add the flour and the baking powder and process for another 5 to 10 seconds, or until smooth.

Butter an 8-inch round cake pan (2 inches deep).

Pour the cake batter into the pan and bake for 45 minutes. Cool on a rack.

At serving time, place the cake on a serving platter.

For the syrup:
Combine the ingredients in a small bowl.

Using a spoon or pastry brush, moisten the cake with the syrup.

Scatter the berries on top of and around the cake.

Spoon on the diluted apricot jam and garnish with the mint leaves.

Serve with the crème fraîche or sour cream.

Make Ahead
You can make the cake early in the day. Or make several cakes and wrap them well for the freezer. Defrost, still in their wrappings, in the refrigerator.

A la soupe!

What with the hot weather, I have been trying to avoid the stove and the oven and have been making a lot of simple cold soups. It helps that we are often the recipients of luscious fresh veggies from Bastien's parents' potager (vegetable garden). This first soup was inspired by Chantal (Bastien's maman), who loaded us up a few weekends ago with a mountain of zucchini:

Soupe de courgettes à la menthe (Zucchini mint soup):

1-2 onions, chopped
1/2 cup dry white wine
4-6 large zucchini, cut in rondelles
crème fraîche (optional; could also use cream, milk, or yogurt)
2 tbsp fresh mint, chopped finely

1. Sauté the onions in olive oil for about 10 minutes.
2. Add the zucchini and continue to sauté for another 5+ minutes.
3. Add the wine, cover, and let simmer until the veggies are soft.
4. Add a heaping tablespoon of crème fraîche and the mint.
5. Season to taste.
6. Purée the soupe and let cool.

Best served cold. Could be made 1 day ahead and left to chill in the fridge overnight.


The second soup is one of my favorites. I LOVE tomatoes and came to this recipe by trial and error:

RPM's Gazpacho

2 pounds ripe tomatoes
2 cucumbers
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 avocado
1 onion
1/2 red onion
3-6 garlic cloves (depending on size and your tolerance for bad breath)
2 slices toasted or stale whole grain bread
2 tbsp fresh chopped basil
2 tbsp fresh chopped Italian parseley
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/2 cup good olive oil

salt, pepper

1. Finely chop all solid ingredients (the bread should be in crumbs) and add to a large bowl.
2. Add the vinegars and oil and season to taste.
3. Blend to a chunky consistency.
4. Place in refridgerator to cool (best if made one day ahead to allow flavors to blend).

écre-what?

Two weeks ago, the temperature in Macau climbed way way up to 40,9°C. That's 105.6°F!!! (Bastien's nifty new weather station allows for such precision):


Let me tell you that manual labor in the out of doors in 100°+ weather is NOT fun, and if you've ever set foot in a vineyard you might realize that there's not a hell of a lot of shade to relieve you. We started the day at 6am, an hour earlier than usual, in attempt to beat the impending heat, but it was roasting and I was sweating buckets by about 9am. Four hours and about as many gallons of water later, we were done for the day, delirious and desperate for a cold shower. The house, with stone walls a meter thick, is normally cool (albeit humid) inside, but that particular day it was like walking into an oven--no palpable difference between indoors and out.

If only we had had a wrap-around porch, a rocking chair, a straw hat, overalls, and an old corncob pipe, we might have envisioned ourselves in the deep south on a tobacco plantation (not sure why we would have done that other than for our delirium and that we've been watching a lot of old American movies, but stay with me here). Instead we had écrevisses (crawfish, hence my allusion to the south):


I did think Bastien had gone a little nutty in the heat when he started fabricating a snare out of a clothes line and said he was going fishing for écrevisses. But the fossés (ditches that collect rainwater) in the vineyard were teeming with the little buggers and apparently, with a little doctoring, they would make for a tasty dinner. So the chasseur pêcheur (hunter fisherman) headed out into the sweltering evening with a stock pot and a laundry line:


On his first outing, he caught about une dizaine (10) little red critters, only enough for a taste, really, since there's not much meat inside. But on day two of that oppressive canicule (heat wave), he ventured back to the ditch, determined to catch our dinner. And sure enough, he came back with a whopping 40 crawfish! After 2 mortalities (crawfish are nasty to one another!), we were left with 38 units for dinner:


The chasseur pêcheur was quite proud of his catch:


But we were a bit befuddled as to how to proceed with the preparations. A little internet research and a toothbrush (gotta get the mud off) proved useful, and we were soon cooking (and thereby sweating) up a storm:


Delicious!


If you ever stumble across a crawfish in a ditch, here's the recipe (though I suppose this could translate over to lobster or other such crustaceans):

Ecrevisses de Macau

40 crawfish (or crayfish)
3 small shallots, minced
3 or 4 tomatoes, cubed
cognac (bourbon or whiskeywork, too)
dry white wine
Italian parsley, chopped
crème fraîche (if you can't find, you could substitute with heavy cream)

1. Sauté the crawfish in olive oil over medium heat.
2. Once the crawfish turn red, add the shallots and tomatoes and cook for another few minutes until the shallots are cooked through.
3. Sprinkle with cognac and flambé (be careful!), letting the alcohol burn off.
4. Add a cup of white wine and cover the pan for 5 minutes.
5. Add several tablespoons (more or less to your liking) of crème fraîche, the parseley, salt and pepper and serve hot

Vivent les américains!

There is so much to add to the blog at this point that I'm not sure where to begin! In mid-May I started work in the vines, which pulled me out of the house in the afternoons and then quickly became a full-time affair. I have since become the chef d'équipe (team leader) of a small group of ne'er-do-well high school and college students who have come to work on their tans...I mean in the vines...for the summer. We spend 7 1/2 hours a day together suckering (épamprage), training (relevage), and leafing (effeuillage) the new vines that grow at a staggering rate. Here's an image of the vines about a month or more ago--they have since tripled in size (notice the cygogne (stork) on her afternoon promenade; we see storks daily flying overhead and wandering the vineyard):



Here's a closeup of where the vines are now--after many long hours of suckering, training, and leafing. Look at all those grappes (grape bunches)!


When I wrote in May about removing the Americans in the vines, I was referring to part of the suckering process. No, we don't have American suckers (tourists) roaming the vineyard (just Brits and Germans who park their camping cars at the château for the night). Suckering refers to the removal of suckers, or extraneous shoots and plant growth. An American in vine speak is a sucker that grows from the earth at the base of the souche (the grape vine stock or stump; in the pic above it's the wood that all the leaves are sprouting from). The Americans are particularly invasive (still talking about the vine here) and grow to great lengths while winding themselves into the midst of the rest of the branches and generally creating a gros bordel (a big mess of twists and knots). They take root and won't let go, so you have to get in there with a spade to cut them loose.

If you've managed to get an image of all of this, you may still be wondering why these intrusive vines have been given a national identity from the US of A. Well, in the mid 19th century, a vine scourge swept through Europe, ravaging the vineyards and nearly wiping them out entirely. The culprit for all the damage done was Phylloxéra, an aphid that attacks the roots of the vine. Scientists discovered that an American varietal was resistant to Phylloxéra, so the French began to import American porte-greffes (grafts). The French cépage (grape varietal) is grafted to the American porte-greffe, so it is the American that forms the roots (sometimes upwards of 10m or about 33ft deep) and base of the stock and the French greffe that grows into the stock and eventually produces the fruit. Nearly all French vines continue to be grafted and planted this way to this day.

When it comes to vine care, the Americans are a real pain in the rear, but without them we might be living in a world sans vino (gasp!). So, when the French get critical, just serve up un verre de rouge (a glass of red wine) and remind them that it was the Americans that saved their national pride and joy - le vin! - from extinction. Here's to French American partnerships! :) Santé!

A little taste of the Pyrénées

I have been helping out in the vines full time this week and have not had time to update the much neglected blog! It seems a blog is a full time job in and of itself! I am on my lunch break right now and thought I'd take 5 minutes to post a pic or two before heading back outside to get rid of the Americans. What?! No, I haven't turned against my compatriots, it turns out an American is a technical term relating to the vine. More on this later in another post!

We had a four-day weekend last weekend and headed south to the Pyrénées, just east of the Pays Basque, for 2 full days of glorious hiking in the cirque de Lescun and a night of tapas further south in Pamplona. I'll share more next week, but for now here's a few images to tide you over...

We emerged from the fog to this view of the cirque de Lescun (def: a bowl-shaped, steep-walled mountain basin carved by glaciation, often containing a small, round lake):



Day 2. More magnificent view of the snow-capped mountains:



Sunday lunch. Tapas in Pamplona just 2 1/2 hours southwest of Lescun:


This weekend we're off to Gaillac for Biocybèle, the largest organic fair in southwestern France...

Lots more to come. Bon weekend!

Le Tarn à pied

We spent this past weekend in the Tarn* again, this time chez Mélina and Jordan in their amazing house en brique et colombage (in brick and half-timber). Wish I had taken pictures, but to give you an idea of the style, here's an image from Place Plumereau in Tours, where I spent many an hour in the cafés back in 2002-2003:


Determined to make the most of the good weather on Saturday afternoon, we set out en masse (Mélina, Jordan, David, Angéline, Amandine, Thomas, Bastien, and I) for une randonnée (a hike) near the village of Milhars. Within about half-an-hour, we arrived at an impressive cascade (waterfall):


Which, of course, needed to be explored for any potential caillou-ting (see post on Brittany, Le pays de la pluie éternelle, for a definition).


After climbing under and over and around the waterfall and after determining it's source several meters higher up, we were content to move on. Jordan and crew had to head home, but Bastien, Angéline, and I soldiered on, led by our fearless guide, David (aka Agenda XXI):


There was threat of wolves and bandits along the forrested trail, so David surveyed the lay of the land and plotted our course from strategic lookouts. (Okay, no wolves or bandits, but Bastien did see a viper. Eek! In the photo above, David poses on the platform of a hunter's post that we passed along the way. Fortunately hunting season is over. I would not want to be taken for a chevreuil (deer)!!).

In addition to our fearless guide, we brought along an indefatiguable botanist (a certain Bastien Leduc). Every flower deserves a picture! Amazing we finished the hike before nightfall, but we weren't in a hurry. Every once in a while (2 minutes), you need to stop and smell the orchidées sauvages (wild orchids) and other flora. I must admit, they are beautiful:


This one apparently looks like a nest of little monkeys (space monkeys? what do you think?):


And this one is really astounding. Mimicry in nature! There's no bee in the photo, it's part of the flower!:


Here we are at one of the highest vantage points along the route. As he was taking the picture, Bastien told us to pose comme des stars (like stars), hence my ridiculous stance. Ignore me, check out the view!:


And a little further along, we could see Cordes, the Medieval hilltown, off in the distance:


At the end of the day, we were thirsty for more hiking! If it doesn't rain this weekend, we're heading straight for the Pays Basque!

*The Tarn is the 81st department in France and is part of the larger region of Midi-Pyrénées. Albi is the chef-lieu (capital). Bastien grew up in the area (in Gaillac and in Castelnau de Montmiral, where his parents live now).