Ravioli with avocado sauce vierge

When I first came across this dish at the Château de la Chèvre d'Or, I thought it was sheer madness. Then I tasted it and decided otherwise.
A few weeks later, I can no longer buy sheets of Niçois ravioli stuffed with beef and Swiss chard or spinach without also picking up a ripe avocado and a punnet of cherry tomatoes. It helps that the first time I served this combination at home, Sam - who had never previously gone wild for avocadoes - declared it the best thing he had ever eaten as he lapped up the last drops of sauce.
Of course, I appreciate how lucky I am to have the fresh pasta shop Barale at the end of my street. Founded in 1892 and still run by the Barale family, it's the place I turn to whenever I feel like eating something delicious without going to any effort (which turns out to be quite often). I buy the pâtes vertes (thick-cut spinach tagliatelle) for pâtes au pistou, panisses (a kind of chickpea polenta) to cut into strips and fry as an apéritif or side dish, and ravioli à la ricotta to serve with a simple tomato sauce.
Until recently, it had never occurred to me to serve ravioli niçois, otherwise known as ravioli à la daube, with anything other than daube sauce, or perhaps tomato sauce (with or without meat). These ravioli were originally designed to use up leftover beef stew, known as daube in these parts, and the extra sauce from the stew would be spooned over the ravioli. Pasta shops in Nice almost inevitably sell this rich, winey stew, more for serving with pasta than eating on its own.
Avocado, lemon and tomato make a brighter, more summery accompaniment, one that works surprisingly well with these earthy-tasting ravioli. A generous quantity of freshly grated parmesan brings it all together, balancing the acidity of the lemon. If you don't have access to Niçois ravioli - I'll post the recipe one of these days - it would be worth experimenting with other types of meat or ricotta ravioli or even plain pasta.

* I'm thrilled to report that Les Petits Farcis was featured alongside other small and informal cooking schools in this month's issue of Gourmet magazine. If you happen to have a copy, turn to page 88 for the article and page 199 for my recipe for Lemon curd tart with olive oil.

Niçois ravioli with avocado sauce vierge
Serves 3

8 dozen Niçois ravioli, or about 450 g (1 lb) other ravioli
1 small avocado or 1/2 large avocado
150 g cherry tomatoes (6 oz)
Juice and zest of one organic lemon
Good-quality olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
Plenty of fresh parmesan cheese
A few fresh basil leaves

Heat a large pot of water for the ravioli. Cut the avocado and tomato into small dice and toss together with the lemon zest. Squeeze the lemon, measure the juice and add it along with the same amount of olive oil to the avocado and tomato. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook the ravioli just until tender and drain carefully (they are fragile). Top with the avocado-tomato mixture and its juice, a generous amount of freshly grated parmesan and the torn basil leaves.

Strawberry tiramisù

This might surprise some of you, but shopping and cooking are not the only things that eat up all my time. I also read - and not just cookbooks. When lovely, poetic Lucy invited readers to turn to page 123 of our current reading, count five sentences and post the following three, I came up with this:
"Look at the sky," she said quickly. The sky had grown darker. "I think it will thunder again."
It seems fitting that the haunting novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters explores the theme of greed, as today's recipe is for greedy people only (which means anyone who might be reading this blog, I hope). I first spotted this summery variation on classic tiramisù at the bakery Bread & Roses in Paris, and had been wanting to recreate their recipe for months.
A little research led me to a recipe by Alsatian Christophe Felder, former pastry chef at the Hôtel Crillon in Paris and a prolific author of pastry books. Felder uses ladyfingers, but I followed the advice of the pastry chef at Bread & Roses and replaced these with pavesini biscuits. He showed me the little packets of thin, airy biscuits and said, "This is the true tiramisù biscuit." Authentic or not - there seems to be some debate on the subject - the pavesini turned out to be just the right size for my tapas glasses, also known as verrines.
Another change I made was to add a splash of Baume de Framboise, a raspberry liqueur from Burgundy which I keep on hand for making kirs with white wine. I might have used more, but I knew that Sam would be testing this dessert. Finally, I replaced Felder's red-tinted sugar with crumbled amaretto biscuits, which added a touch of almond that complements the fruit.
By the way, if you think it sounds a bit technical to pipe the mascarpone cream with a pastry bag, consider that Sam was bouncing around at my side throughout the making of this dessert, and yet it still turned out fairly presentable. A spoon would do fine, too.
I don't think I need to tell you that you'll want soft, sweet strawberries for this - nothing that would bounce if you dropped it on the floor. Lately I've been flirting with bankruptcy by indulging in daily baskets of ciflorettes and gariguettes, early strawberry varieties for the impatient (and greedy).

Strawberry tiramisù
Serves 6-7

1 lb 2 oz strawberries (500 g)
1 tbsp confectioner’s sugar (icing sugar)
2 tbsp cold water
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp strawberry or raspberry liqueur or syrup (optional)
3 eggs
4 oz sugar (100 g)
14 oz mascarpone (375 g)
7 ladyfinger biscuits or 14 pavesini biscuits (small Italian biscuits)
A few amaretto biscuits, for the garnish

Take 200 g (7 1/2 oz) of the strawberries, choosing the least pretty ones. Place these in a blender or food processor with the confectioner’s sugar, cold water, lemon juice and raspberry liqueur or syrup, if using. Blend until smooth and strain into a shallow bowl. Set aside in the refrigerator.

Separate the egg yolks from the whites. In a mixer, beat the egg yolks and half the sugar (50 g/2 oz) until the mixture is pale and fluffy. Add the mascarpone and whisk to combine.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, starting off on low speed and gradually increasing the speed. As they increase in volume, slowly pour in the remaining sugar (50 g/2 oz). Beat until stiff. Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture, starting off with 1/3 of the whites to lighten the mixture.

Soak the biscuits in the strawberry juice as you assemble the ingredients for the tiramisu. Cut the tops off the strawberries, then cut them in half lengthwise and place them upside-down around the bottom of the glasses. Using a pastry bag or a small spoon, place a dollop of mascarpone cream in the bottom of the glass. Top with a soaked biscuit (or 1/2 a ladyfinger). Cover with more cream, then place a biscuit on top of this and cover with a spoonful of the strawberry purée. Cover with cream to the top of the glass, then smooth off the surface with a palette knife.

Repeat this procedure for each of the individual desserts and chill for at least 2 hours. Just before serving, sprinkle the top with crumbled amaretto biscuits.

Fava bean gnocchi

There hasn't been much time for experiments in my kitchen lately. That doesn't mean that I haven't been cooking, just that for the past couple of weeks most meals have consisted of leftovers from my cooking classes or the handful of dishes that I can make again and again without anyone in the house tiring of them.
This week, leftover monkfish from bourride - fish stew with aïoli - and its accompanying new potatoes came back as Thai yellow curry thanks to a tub of spice paste at the back of the refrigerator and a can of coconut milk. For lunch every day I ate a big plate of mesclun with buttery local avocados and the juiciest lemons from the organic shop across the street. With Georges' goat's cheese grilled on pain tonique - sourdough bread with sultanas, pistachios and hazelnuts - from the Moulin du Païou bakery, the meal was complete. Last night I fell back on spicy herbed meatballs served with instant couscous, cinnamon and raisins, my favorite use for the steak haché that is ground in front of me at my local butcher's. It's even better if you replace the couscous with cooked bulgur and whip up some hummus to serve with it.
Today being a holiday in France, I was in the mood to try something new and went looking for inspiration on the astounding blog B comme Bon (never mind if you can't read French, just admire the pictures). Her idea of making gnocchi with leftover fava bean purée appealed to me, even if I can't imagine ever shelling enough fava beans to have leftover purée. The instructions were charmingly vague, which made me a bit nervous as I've had some disasters in the past with non-potato gnocchi. Still, the knowledge that gnocchi and fèves are Sam's two favorite foods in the world - after chocolate, of course - gave me the incentive to try my luck.
For this recipe I looked for fully grown fèves rather than the smaller févettes, which are delicious raw but too tiny to consider using for purée. I came back with what looked like a big bag of the long, knobbly pods, but experience has taught me that no matter how many fava beans you shell, there are never enough. I ended up with about 2 cups of beans, which thanks to Sam's expert help became 1 cup of peeled beans and (sigh) about 1/2 cup of emerald green purée.



To this I added a beaten egg and a pinch of salt, as instructed by B comme Bon, then just enough flour to form the dough into long sausages. I kept in on the very soft side, for fear of producing tough little dumplings. At this stage, Sam got involved again in rolling and shaping the gnocchi. I resisted the urge to demand that they all be the same size and shape, concentrating instead on sautéeing thin strips of smoked duck breast to use as a garnish. I also mixed some chopped chives with crème fraîche, which I dolloped on top of the cooked gnocchi.
The verdict? "Génial," said Sam, who didn't mind that they were firm compared to the fluffy potato gnocchi we usually buy. I enjoyed them too, but wasn't sure that they made of the most of market-fresh broad beans. So please don't feel in the least bit guilty if you are tempted to use the frozen kind - I won't tell.


Fava bean gnocchi
Serves 2 as a main course, 3 as a starter

2 cups shelled fava beans (broad beans), unpeeled (I started with 1.2 kg of beans in their shells)
1 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp water
1 egg
A pinch of salt
About 1 1/4 cups flour (I used Italian 00 flour but all-purpose will do)
Good-quality olive oil

Garnishes:
Crème fraîche or fromage blanc mixed with chives
Smoked duck breast or bacon, cut into matchsticks and fried until golden

Blanch the shelled broad beans in boiling water for 1 min, then drain and rinse with cold water. Pop each broad bean out of its skin, making a small slit in the opposite side from the pointy tip. You should have about 1 cup of peeled beans.

In a small pan, cook the beans with the olive oil and water until very soft, then purée in a food processor or put through a food mill. (I cooked them in the Thermomix for 5 mins at 100 C and puréed them on Turbo for 30 secs).

Transfer the beans to a bowl and add the egg, salt and 1 cup of flour. Mix well to form a dough using a rounded pastry scraper or wooden spoon, then add a little more flour bit by bit until the dough is sticky but workable.

Divide it into three and roll it as best you can on a heavily floured board into long sausages. Cut into short lengths and place on a floured plate. (My gnocchi could have been smaller, as they swelled up in the water.)

Meanwhile, heat a large pot of boiling water. Add 1 tbsp of coarse salt, gently add the gnocchi and cook for about 2 mins, until the gnocchi have been floating at the surface for about 30 secs.

Drain, toss with a little olive oil and top with the garnishes.

A moment in the sun

With deadlines looming like thunderclouds I've barely had time to breathe this week, let alone turn my mind to blogging. But I did find a few moments to appear on the local news.
It happened after I ran into a camera crew from France 3 television while giving a tour of the Cours Saleya market. We chatted for a few moments and I explained what I do. "A Canadian teaching Niçois cooking to Americans? There's a story in that," said the journalist Olivier, looking amused and slightly skeptical (I'm used to that look).
A couple of days later, Olivier and cameraman Niels showed up to follow my class around the market and into my kitchen, where I had planned a vegetarian menu of socca, artichokes stewed in white wine, soupe au pistou and tarte Tatin. "I don't cook," said Olivier, "but I do know how to make artichokes à la barigoule, so I'll be watching."
I breathed a sigh of relief when he gave a nod of approval, adding only that he likes to throw in some chopped tomatoes in summer (something I'll be trying as soon as tomatoes are in season). A big thank you to Judith from Vancouver, Rosana from Texas and Io from Oregon - their names are mixed up in the video - who seemed completely unfazed by having a big camera pointed at their faces as they perfected their artichoke-trimming skills.
I struggled for ages trying to upload the video, but for the moment all I can offer you is this link. Scroll down to 27.03 - Cuisine niçoise on the right-hand side and you can watch the short segment.
The picture above, by the way, is from my recent lunch at the Château de la Chèvre d'Or in Eze, which I'll be telling you all about very soon.

Tackling the artichoke

With leaves like Cruella's spiky fingernails and a spirit just as malicious, this is not a vegetable to be taken lightly. The spiky Italian artichoke seems hell-bent on causing injury - but oh, what a reward once you conquer it.
When my wine merchant saw the vicious thorns poking out of my basket this morning, his eyes lit up. "Ce sont les meilleurs," he exclaimed. "Comme du beurre." They even got the attention of the normally reserved Jouni, who became positively enthused at the sight of my acquisition.
Spiky or not, the artichoke is not as scary a vegetable as it looks. A member of the thistle family, this flower bud varies in color from pale green-gray to deep purple and can be bigger than a grapefruit or as small as a lime. As the name suggests, it contains a hairy "choke" (known as the foin in French) that can be removed before or after cooking to reveal its well-concealed heart: the real prize for all that effort.
Big globe artichokes from Brittany are the best for steaming or boiling whole and eating leaf by leaf with vinaigrette or mayonnaise. But a more familiar sight in the south of France is the small violet-tinged artichoke known as the artichaut violet or poivrade. With barely developed chokes, these can be eaten raw, stewed with white wine, onion and carrot in a barigoule or poached just until tender in water, the juice of a lemon and a tablespoon of olive oil before being added to salads or pasta sauces.
We often cook artichauts à la barigoule in my classes as a way of introducing people to the small violet artichoke. Preparing them gets easier - and definitely faster - with practice, but requires no special skill other than a bit of patience.
Today I decided to try a recipe that I had been eyeing for a long time in Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. She described it as a primitive barigoule, involving only a startling amount of olive oil, water and artichokes. The water-and-oil emulsion spits and sputters as the water evaporates leaving only oil, but it's all part of the fun (as is cleaning up afterwards).
The result reminded me of the Jewish fried artichokes I had eaten in Rome, complete with crisp outer leaves, making this recipe well worth the mess. In hindsight, I could have discarded fewer leaves than usual for this recipe as the crunchy fried leaves - like little artichoke chips - were probably the best part.

Before you start, prepare a bowl of water with the juice of a lemon. Add each trimmed artichoke to this water as quickly as possible to stop it from oxidizing (which turns it from a lovely pale yellow-green to gray).

Cut off the long stems, leaving about 5 cm (2 inches) of stem attached to the artichoke. The remaining stem can be peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces and cooked asparagus-style or made into soup.

Now cut about 3 cm (1 1/2 inches) off the top of the artichoke and discard the trimmings. You might like to keep a half-lemon nearby to rub the cut top of the artichoke before you continue.

Remove the hard outer leaves, starting at the stem and working your way up. Normally I discard at least three layers, until the leaves are pale yellow-green tinged with pink, but in this recipe you really only need to discard about two layers.
Now trim the stem using a small knife or vegetable peeler. The artichokes are ready to go into the lemon water.

When you've finished trimming all the artichokes, place them (without the lemon water) in a frying pan or saucepan that will hold them in one layer. Pour in olive oil to about halfway up the artichokes, then add water just to cover them.

Bring the water and oil to a boil over high heat. They should bubble vigorously and emulsify, creating a creamy liquid. Lower the heat only enough to minimize the spitting, but since the aim is to let all the water evaporate it has to boil hard.

When the water has evaporated and only oil is left, the spitting will calm and the oil will continue to bubble. Now keep a close eye on the artichokes. You might need to move them around a little, and I placed them stem side up towards the end to brown the leaves. It took longer than the recipe predicted, about 35-40 minutes rather than 15-20. This could be because I used a saucepan rather than a sauté pan.

Once the artichokes are golden, remove them with a slotted spoon, drain them on a paper towel and serve hot, sprinkled with fleur de sel.

Celeriac and kohlrabi rösti

With spring around the corner, the last thing I should be thinking about is knobbly, hairy vegetables that grow under the ground.
There are true wild asparagus at the market, which I've tossed with cappellini pasta, lemon zest and juice, cream and parmesan, and stirred into just-laid eggs with cubed potatoes for a frittata to be eaten on the beach (it has been that warm).

Finger-thin carrots taste sweet and delicate, even if they are just a tiny bit knobbly and hairy; I bite into them just as they are or glaze them in butter and honey with whole cumin seeds.
How do you like these violet artichokes? Trimming them is a fastidious task but the result is always worth the effort, whether I slice them raw, cook them quickly in lemony water or stew them for an hour in white wine and olive oil.

On Sunday, at the Libération market north of the train station in Nice, I spotted the season's first fava beans (also known as broad beans). They cost €8 a kilo, but I didn't hesitate for a second. "Une caprice," said the farmer, smiling knowingly. There is no better snack in spring than emerald fava beans straight from the pod, each one peeled of its bitter skin if you have the patience.
But, just as it's not quite time to put away my winter coat, I can still get excited about the earthy taste of celery root (or celeriac) and the turnipy crunch of purple-skinned kohlrabi. I picked up one of each from an organic producer at the market last weekend, not quite knowing what I would do with them. As I was idly flipping through a folder of clipped recipes, I came across a brilliant idea from Clare Ferguson in an old (2005) issue of Homes and Gardens magazine.
Her recipe called only for celeriac, but as my root was small kohlrabi seemed the obvious addition. The use of chickpea flour made these rösti slightly reminiscent of socca, that Niçois classic (note: these rösti are gluten-free). I was also delighted that the recipe called for parsley stems, something I throw away unless I'm planning to make vegetable stock.
The tomato sauce with sweet chili that Ferguson suggests would have been perfect, but as a light lunch with salad and nothing else they were very good too: sweet, slightly nutty and fresh-tasting all at once.
I seem not to be the only one who has celeriac on the brain: I was surprised to see, as I blog-hopped after that lunch, that aforkfulofspaghetti also has a post on celeriac fritters this week. They involve whole slices of celeriac, but look equally delicious.

Celeriac and kohlrabi rösti
Serves 4-6 as a side dish, 2-3 as a light lunch with salad

1 small celeriac (about 325-350 g)
1/2 kohlrabi (about 100 g)
50 g chickpea flour
A handful of parsley, stems and leaves
1 egg
2 tbsp cold water
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cracked black peppercorns
Good quality olive oil, for frying

Scrub and peel the celeriac and peel the kohlrabi. Shred coarsely by hand or using the grating attachment of your food processor.
If using the food processor (I did), replace the shredding blade with the chopping blade.
Add the chickpea flour, thinly sliced parsley leaves and stems, beaten egg, water, and seasonings. Process, in brief bursts, until the contents are fairly evenly mixed. By hand, simply mix well.
Heat a good tablespoon of oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Drop tablespoons of this mixture into the hot oil and cook for 2-3 mins on each side, until browned and cooked through. Set aside in a warm oven until all the rösti are cooked (you may need to cook them in two batches).
Serve alongside meat or with a tomato-chili sauce as a snack or light lunch.

Mandarin marmalade

My downstairs neighbor Tony is normally quite friendly. When I run into him in the street, he says hello and sometimes stops for a chat.
On Saturday, though, he backed away from me slowly as if I were a madwoman, muttering "no thanks, no thanks" without meeting my eye. It was my fault for asking the seemingly innocent question that no-one who lives in Nice wants to hear during the month of March.
"Would you like some citrus fruit?"
Local lemons, oranges, grapefruits and kumquats, untouched by chemicals and with glossy green leaves, sell for €3.50 a kilo at the market. Yet just about anyone who has been in Nice for any length of time knows someone with at least one productive citrus tree that produces a glut of fruit at this time of year. Just when I start to long for sweet French strawberries (which have, rather bizarrely, already made their first appearance at the market), I find myself cooking up enough bitter-orange marmalade to supply the whole reluctant neighborhood.
A well-meaning friend with a lovingly-tended garden filled my shopping cart to the brim with mandarins and bitter oranges this weekend. Mandarins have a mysterious, almost exotic scent that I would love to bottle and wear as a perfume. But there is a good reason why they have fallen out of favor over the years: they are absolutely stuffed with pips. Try to juice a mandarin with an electric citrus juicer and these will fly all over the kitchen, I've discovered the hard way (I now squash them with my hands directly over a sieve).
With heaps of mandarins in my kitchen, there was no excuse not to make the most labor-intensive jam in my repertory (I've decided to ignore the bitter oranges for the time being). Thanks to Philippe's help with the slicing and de-pipping it wasn't as painful as I had expected, even if it was a little disheartening to see 2.5 kilos of mandarins become a mere 7 jars of marmalade.
Still, when I've had enough of strawberries I know I will be glad to have given those mandarins a home.

Mandarin marmalade
(Sorry, it's hard to predict the number of jars! Allow about a dozen, just in case.)

An important trick when making marmalade is to save the pips as you slice the fruit. Place them in a small bowl, covered with water, overnight. The next day, drain the pips and add the water to the jam as it cooks: it's full of pectin. Unfortunately, my pips got thrown out by accident this time, which meant that the jam had to be reduced more than usual before it set.

2.5 kg mandarins (about 5 1/2 lbs)
1 lemon
2 kg sugar (about 4 1/2 lbs)

In one or two large bowls, soak the whole mandarins in cold water overnight.

The next day, drain and discard this water. Cut the mandarins and lemon into thin slices, removing the pips. Set these aside in a small bowl, covering them with water. Place the mandarin slices in one or two large bowls, with the sugar and just enough water to cover the fruit. Set aside overnight once again in a cool place.

The next day, dump the fruit in its syrup and the pip water into a very large saucepan or copper jam basin. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a steady bubble and cook until the juices set when a small amount is dripped onto a plate. This can take anywhere between 1-2 hours.

Pour into sterilized jam jars. I sterilize my jars by washing them well, then placing the wet jars on a tray in the oven at 180 C (375 F) for at least 20 mins.

New olive oil and salade exotique

You could easily miss Claude's trestle table among the producers at the Cours Saleya market. Little pots of hand-labelled tapenade stand next to bottles of herb-infused red wine vinegar and deep golden oil, with a few jars of honey to one side and sometimes a long loaf of pain d'épice.
It might seem like a modest collection of goods, but if Claude sold nothing more than vinegar I would still be heartbroken if she stopped coming to the market on Saturday mornings*. Perfumed with basil or slightly peppery nasturtium, this pure ingredient goes into nearly every one of my twice-daily salads. Her deep amber honey is a revelation, tasting of the rosemary, thyme and other plants that grow wild on her unruly hillside, and her oil has the delicate almond taste, typical of this area, that I've come to love.
Modest and unassuming, Claude brightens visibly when anyone shows enthusiasm for her products. Her pain d'épice, made without eggs and spiced only with anise in the Provençal way, already has an avid following; for Christmas, she produced a sugar-free version to serve with foie gras. She is the only small farmer at the market who speaks English, and many a visitor has been won over by her tasting of olive paste and tapenade.
You can imagine my excitement when Claude invited me to see her transform freshly harvested olives into oil earlier this month. There are a few stone olive mills in the hills behind Nice, but they are rarely used these days and Claude is the only producer I know of who has her own old-fashioned mill. It's a legacy from her father who, amazingly, built the whole mechanism himself using a giant stone from a perfume factory and bits and pieces from other mills. In his day, the mill could produce oil on one level and flour up above; Claude uses it only for oil, making it two or three times a year.
February might seem late in the season to make olive oil: in many parts of the olive-producing world, the harvest begins in October or November. But the little black Niçois olive, officially called the Caillette, is traditionally left on the tree until most of the olives are purply-black. This results in a deep golden oil that might at first seem too subtle if you are used to a more peppery taste. I love its almost buttery character, particularly with fragile mesclun leaves and on white-fleshed fish.
Though Claude's farm is just 40 minutes from Nice, the countryside feels surprisingly remote. We followed Pierre's wife Anne in her bright orange car towards Contes, then to Coaraze where Claude lives next door to her 87-year-old mother Marguerite. It happened to be Marguerite's birthday, and her playful eyes as she offered us a glass (or three) of her own very quaffable wine told me immediately that she is a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, Marguerite kept an eagle eye on the olive oil making process all day, often pitching in to show how it's done.

First about 300 kilos of freshly picked olives went into the big stone mill, which efficiently ground the flesh and pits to a black paste. This so resembled tapenade that a couple of people, Philippe included, couldn't help dipping their fingers in. "Beurk!" Olives straight off the tree are horribly bitter.

Eventually the oil started to separate from the paste. This clear oil could be scooped out with a ladle, and tasted remarkably sweet and almondy.

Then Claude turned on a tap and nearly filled the big stone basin with lukewarm water, causing the oil to float to the top. While this was going on, a volunteer farm worker from Vermont (you too can work on an organic farm in exchange for room and board by visiting Wwoof) took us on a tour of the property. Taking care of nearly 300 olive trees and a few beehives too is a daunting task for Claude and her mother, and Claude has come to rely on her "wwoofers," volunteers from around the world who stay for a week or longer.

We said hello to the beautiful goats, who sadly no longer supply cheese for the market. Claude's goat cheese was legendary at the Cours Saleya, but European Union regulations forced her to stop her artisanal production and she didn't feel able to invest in the separate, surgically clean building that is now required. These regulations explain why there is now so little farmer's cheese to be found in this area. Luckily, the EU bent its rules for the olive mill thanks to its steel mechanism, which was considered nearly as hygienic as stainless steel.

Since Claude gave up making cheese she has taken up beekeeping, a project she originally intended to share with her sister. Unfortunately, her sister had a severe allergic reaction to her first bee sting and Claude is now on her own.

Sam had a go at beating the olives off the trees, which takes some strength.

Back at the mill, golden oil was floating on the water. We took turns scooping up the oil with a a holey frying pan intended for roasting chestnuts and transferring it to a bucket before filtering it. I wasn't entirely sure why we were using a pan with holes in it (and forgot to ask), but I think it allowed any water to run out before we poured the oil into the bucket. On either side of the mill, helpers used small brooms to sweep the oil towards the scooper. The most efficient helper was Marguerite, who can remember olive harvests year by year back to the 1940s.

Finally, Claude's sister toasted slices of baguette in the fire for the brissauda. We rubbed these with garlic, dipped them in the fresh oil and sprinkled them with oregano: heaven. I thought about how many people must have indulged in this ritual over thousands of years, and how lucky I was to be taking part.

By the time our potluck lunch was served we were a little less hungry, but all of us ate with gusto anyway: Claude with her mother, sister and nephew, Pierre, Anne and their two sons, Nadim, us, a few wwoofers and a couple of friends of Pierre. I contributed a bulgur and red pepper salad that Claude dubbed salade exotique, while Pierre brought fennel from his farm which, in Nadim's words, tasted as if they had been dipped in pastis. We simply cut the bulbs in half and bit straight into their white flesh, dipping them first in olive oil of course. Claude prepared a huge dish of pasta while her sister, who lived in Greece for 10 years, made a delicious Greek pea stew. Then there were several cakes, including a birthday one for Marguerite.

After lunch Claude got straight back to work, pressing the pulp to extract more oil (which she would use for her flavored oils) and then draining the water into a rectangular basin outside. My job was to gently rake the oil from the top of this basin while Philippe scooped it into a bucket.
Making oil this way is labor-intensive and Claude could easily save herself the trouble by taking her olives to a modern mill, which would turn them into oil with zero effort on her part in a couple of hours. But I got the feeling that keeping this mill running is an ongoing gesture of respect for her father's ingenuity and hard work.
We were the last to leave and, when we did, Claude presented us with a bottle of cloudy oil to take home. I'm tempted to treasure it, but I also know that oil this fresh is best savoured quickly.

* Claude is taking her annual break, but will be back at the market at the end of March.

My bulgur and red pepper salad came from the Casa Moro book, though I found the recipe in my Books For Cooks 7 collection. Red peppers aren't exactly in season, but at this time of year I think it's OK to overlook that kind of thing occasionally. I found that I needed to soak the coarse bulgur for a lot longer than the recipe said, and I added the juice of a lemon to the dressing. Of course, I also doused the salad liberally with olive oil fresh from the mill.


Salade exotique
Serves 4-6
(adapted from Casa Moro)

3 red peppers
175 g (6 oz/1 cup) medium or coarse bulgur
6 spring onions, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 tsp hot paprika (I used Espelette pepper)
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 tbsp olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp each roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley and mint
1 tbsp roughly chopped fresh dill
Salt, black pepper

Grill the peppers either under a preheated overhead grill or over the naked flame of a gas hob, or on a barbecue and cook, turning, until evenly charred and blistered all over. Put the peppers in a bowl, cover with a plate, and leave for 10 mins while the trapped steam loosens the peppers skins so that they may be easily slipped off. Then peel, core and seed the peppers before very finely chopping to a semi-purée.

Soak the bulgur in warm water for 15-45 mins or until no longer hard in the center, then squeeze dry and put in a large mixing bowl with the chopped peppers, spring onions, garlic, paprika, tomato paste, olive oil, lemon juice and fresh herbs. Mix everything well together and add salt and pepper to taste.

Five minute soufflé

Soufflé is the quintessential show-off dish, so it's no wonder the French have kept quiet all these years about how easy it really is to make.
This version from chef Christian Plumail in Nice is one of the simplest and best I have ever eaten. It calls for only four ingredients - lemon, eggs, sugar and a pinch of salt - and comes together ridiculously quickly with the help of an electric mixer.
You can bake the soufflés in ramekins, but I've found that my tapas glasses withstand the heat of the oven and create an even more dramatic result.
The only secret to this recipe is to fill the ramekins or glasses right to the top and smooth them off with a knife before baking. If you get the timing right (the recipe below works perfectly for me), they will hold their shape for a good two or three minutes after coming out of the oven.
Of course, as the French say, "A soufflé waits for no-one." Be sure your guests wait obediently for their soufflés, and not the other way around: soufflés are not known for being docile.
I'm lucky enough to have heaps of local lemons in my kitchen as the lemon season is at its peak here. If this isn't the case where you live, look for organic or untreated lemons so that you can use the zest without having to scrub the fruit.
I often serve this soufflé with an apple and star anise compote, but have also paired it with raspberry sorbet: lemon and raspberries are made for each other, I think.

In Paris, the soufflé is the little black dress of the dessert world. Here are a few of the most spectacular that I've encountered (so far):

- Grapefruit soufflé with grapefruit sorbet at Le Jules Verne.
- Grand Marnier soufflé at the St-Germain bistro Chez Dumonet - Joséphine.
- Vanilla soufflé at the Le Troquet in the 15th arrondissement (the pastry chef made a collar of butter around the top of the ramekin so that the soufflé would rise evenly).
- Chartreuse soufflé at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon.
- Valrhona chocolate soufflé at Paule Caillat's cooking class.

Lemon soufflé
Serves 4

2 untreated lemons
3 eggs
50 g + 1 tbsp white sugar (1/4 cup + 1 tbsp)
A pinch of salt
Butter and extra white sugar for the soufflé dishes
Icing sugar (Confectioner's sugar)

Carefully butter four individual soufflé dishes and sprinkle with sugar to coat each dish evenly.

Zest the lemons and chop the zest finely. Squeeze one of the lemons and set aside the juice.

Separate the eggs. In a mixer, whisk the egg yolks and 1/4 cup sugar until the mixture thickens and lightens in color. Add the lemon zest.

Clean the whisk and beat the egg whites in a separate bowl with the pinch of salt until stiff but not dry. Add the 1 tbsp sugar, then the lemon juice bit by bit.

Add 1/3 of the egg whites to the egg yolk mixture and beat with a whisk to lighten the mixture. Add the rest of the egg whites, folding them in gently with a spatula.

Fill the soufflé dishes right to the top, smoothing the surface with a knife. Sprinkle with icing sugar. Place the dishes on a baking sheet and bake in a 375 F (180 C) oven, preferably on the convection setting, for 8 minutes, until well risen and lightly browned.

Socca and sundried tomato hummus

Like most people who make a sort of living from writing, I rarely spring into action until I sense a deadline looming. With just two days left to take part in Susan's Legume Love Affair, I started thinking seriously about my own passions: lentils, especially the small, flinty-green ones from the volcanic land around Puy in central France; white beans, particularly the pearly coco de Paimpol from Brittany and the coveted crop from the town of Albenga in Liguria; and chickpeas, which make up for in versatility what they lack in glamor.
Everyone loves hummus and chana dal (don't they?), but not so many people know what to do with chickpea flour. It has become a staple in my kitchen since I settled in Nice, where a curious chickpea pancake called socca is sold at stalls throughout the Old Town. Consisting of nothing more than chickpea flour, water, olive oil and salt, it probably once served as a sort of plate. These days, rough slices of it are wrapped in paper, sprinkled with pepper and eaten as a snack at any time of day or night. Socca made its way across the border from Liguria, where it's called farinata, and may have African origins.
Wherever it comes from, socca doesn't always inspire love at first sight. Bread guru Dan Lepard describes spitting out his first bite of socca in Nice before growing to appreciate this unleavened bread. I don't want to point fingers, but it may be that the socca he tried had been kept warm for too long or even (gasp!) reheated. Socca must be very, very fresh and very, very hot to be good.
The Niçois believe that only a wood-fired oven produces true socca. Don't listen to them. If your oven will heat to around 240 C (500 F or so), there is no excuse not to make socca. I love my copper socca tin, which doubles as a pizza pan, but again it's not a necessity - before investing in this, I used ordinary cake tins with great success.
I often depart from tradition slightly by adding some chopped rosemary to the socca batter; half a teaspoon of chili paste is just as welcome. With chickpeas on the brain, I was intrigued to see Mark Bittman's recipe in the New York Times this week for hummus with sundried tomato. For Susan's event, I decided to put together a double shot of chickpea by serving this with socca. I pretty much stuck to the recipe, though I felt compelled to add 1/4 cup of tahini and replaced the pimenton with Espelette pepper from the Basque region.

My little experiment had surprising results. On its own, the sun-dried tomato hummus didn't completely win me over - I think it's hard to improve on classic hummus and found the dried tomato taste a little overbearing. But with the socca the tomato hummus suddenly seemed right, its acidity and sweetness balancing the natural heaviness of the chickpeas. Plain socca will seem naked from now on.

Socca
Enough for 2 cake tins or 1 large socca or pizza pan

125 g chickpea flour (about 1 cup)
250 ml cold water (about 1 cup)
45 ml olive oil (3 tbsp)
1/2 tsp salt
1 sprig rosemary
Freshly ground pepper

In a mixing bowl, combine the water and chickpea flour. Add 15 ml (1 tbsp) olive oil, the salt and chopped rosemary leaves. Mix well until smooth. The batter should have the consistency of light cream – add water if necessary. Set aside at room temperature for at least 2 hours or, better yet, let the batter rest overnight, covered, in the refrigerator.

Heat the oven on maximum heat for at least 20 mins, with the cake tins or socca pan inside. Pour 1 tbsp olive oil into each of the 2 tins, or 2 tbsp oil into the large pan, and place in the oven to heat for 5 mins. Pour the socca batter into the tin(s). Place in the upper part of the oven.

After 5 mins, turn on the oven’s broiler (grill). Cook for 3-4 mins, until the socca starts to brown and even burn a little in spots.

To serve, cut into rough pieces and sprinkle with plenty of freshly ground pepper.

La trouchia - Swiss chard omelette

Something I've learned over time at the Cours Saleya market is that things are not always as they appear.
So, with my heart set on trouchia for lunch, I didn't panic when I saw that the producer famed among local chefs for her Swiss chard had laid out nothing more than mixed salad leaves, a dozen lemons and a few cartons of eggs on her trestle table. Sneaking a discreet peek under the table, I asked her sweetly, "You wouldn't happen to have any blettes, would you?"
Her eyes narrowed. "How many bunches do you need?"
Triumph. The chard - or silverbeet, as it's sometimes called - had been set aside for those who could prove they wanted it badly enough. Happily I've shopped at this market long enough to know just who might be hiding what, and for whom (as I walked away with the chard I saw the chef who had no doubt reserved most of the day's harvest).
I've always had a fondness for chard's thick ribs and crinkly, spinach-like leaves, but only in Nice has this vegetable become something I couldn't possibly live without. Centuries before they tasted their first vine-ripened tomatoes, the farmers in the hills behind Nice made hardy Swiss chard their staple vegetable. It stretches small amounts of meat in Niçois ravioli and lentil-sausage stew and stars as the main ingredient in tians and tourtes, including a sweet variation with pine nuts, raisins and rum. Some producers sell a thin-ribbed local variety, which is perfect for recipes that call only for the leaves.
I love it that a chef like Franck, who goes through caviar and truffles by the case at the Louis XV in Monaco, can get so excited when instructing me on how to make la trouchia, a thick Swiss chard omelette with just enough egg to bind it together. They key is not to precook the chard but to get the temperature just right so that the leaves don't give off too much water as they cook. It's safest to cook it in a non-stick pan, though I've got away with using my well-seasoned cast iron pan.
If you find yourself with any leftovers (we never have), try them tucked into a sandwich, just as Franck's mother used to do - preferably standing on a mountainside with wild thyme and rosemary at your feet.

Because trouchia makes great picnic food and is vegetarian to boot, I'm submitting this recipe to Mansi's blogging event Game Night. Eat it hot, warm, cold, in a sandwich or cut into bite-sized pieces and served with toothpicks.


La trouchia
Serves 2-4

The quantities for this recipe aren't precise - just use enough egg so that the mixture doesn't seem too dry and don't skimp on the parmesan. Feel free to add chopped garlic and some mint or basil if it's in season.

1 bunch Swiss chard (silverbeet), leaves only
1/2 bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
3-4 eggs, just enough to bind the mixture
50 g parmesan cheese (about 2 oz)
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
2-3 tbsp good quality olive oil

Wash and dry the chard leaves well (I often let them soak for about 30 mins in salted water to remove some of the bitterness). Slice them very thinly and place in a large bowl with the chopped parsley leaves. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs and add to the chard, adding three eggs at first and a fourth (or even a fifth) if necessary. Grate the parmesan and stir it into the mixture along with the seasonings.

Warm the oil over medium heat in a heavy frying pan (24 cm seems to be an ideal size) with a tight-fitting lid. Add the chard and press down with a wooden spoon to flatten the mixture. Cover, lower the heat a little and cook for about 15 mins, until the base is browned. Keep an eye on it to be sure that it doesn't cook too quickly or slowly. Now place a large plate over the pan, put on some oven mitts and flip the omelette over onto the plate. Slide it back into the frying pan, cover again and cook for another 5-10 mins, until lightly browned on the other side. Serve hot, warm or cold.

Saffron rice pudding

I'm having a hard time concentrating on my chosen subject this morning, so potent are the chocolatey aromas wafting from the oven at Emilie's Cookies. I have set up shop here while some major renovations take place in our apartment, and it's only because I'm meeting a friend for lunch at La Merenda that I have steeled myself while fist-sized balls of dough studded with chunks of finest-quality bittersweet chocolate emerge from the oven as comic-book-perfect cookies.
Besides, today I'm here to talk about saffron, a scent that doesn't soothe in the way of chocolate but titillates and intrigues, occasionally dominating a dish completely (as in risotto alla milanese) but more often blending mysteriously with other spices. A yellow tint is, of course, no guarantee that a dish contains saffron - turmeric often stands in as a cheap substitute, as do some dubious substances that mimick the real thing.
Being the world's most expensive spice, saffron is subject to an alarming amount of abuse and fraud. Nothing illustrates this better than the golden threads that some Iranian friends of Nadim's brought him back from a trip to the Himalayas. They had visited a spice market and were curious to compare Indian saffron with that of their own country, which is considered the best in the world. Nothing on the front of the package set off alarm bells, so Nadim happily threw some of the saffron into his rice. It came out smelling and tasting like wet nylon carpet. Only then did he notice what was written on the back of the box. Read it carefully and you'll understand just how far cynicism can go in the spice business.

One spice grower who is most definitely not cynical is Thierry Pardé, who cultivates the precious crocus sativus bulb on a one-hectare farm in the fields of the Gâtinais south of Paris. The idea of French saffron seems surprising these days, but in the 17th century the Gâtinais was renowned for its saffron and over the past several years a few dedicated growers have revived the tradition.
I first came across Thierry at the Salon Saveurs in Paris, one of the food events I consider most worthwhile because it brings together producers from all over France who would otherwise be tricky to track down. On my first encounter with him I bought three small tubes of saffron, which disappeared in no time and left me longing for more. These long, deep ochre threads were not only the most perfectly formed I had ever seen, they were also the most potent – two qualities that make them prized among the top chefs in France.
At December’s Salon Saveurs I wasn’t about to make the same mistake, so this time I picked up 1.5 g of saffron, a relatively huge amount considering that Thierry produces only 1 kg in a year from 150,000 flowers. The little jar cost just over €30, but it’s money well spent as it takes just a few of the stamens to transport a dish to Italy, Spain, North Africa or the Middle East.


Thierry warns never to buy powdered saffron, which he says could be mixed with bricks, chalk, rust or even lead. Judging from Nadim’s experience I’m inclined to believe him. Once you’ve got your hands on the real thing, he urges you to treat it with care to preserve all of its qualities. This means infusing it in liquid (warm or cold, never hot) for at least three hours and adding it to any dish just before the end of the cooking time over gentle heat. You can infuse it in water, broth, white wine or milk, though I’ve noticed that milk seems to absorb and temper its dramatic yellow-orange color. Use about 2 threads per person in desserts, 3 per person in savory dishes.
Thierry gave me the idea of adding saffron to rice pudding, bringing a distinctly adult twist to this childhood dessert. Since the recipe in his booklet was charmingly vague, I adapted my own recipe from the cookbook Petites recettes pour grandir. In that recipe I used orange zest and orange flower water; here I replaced them with lemon zest and saffron. One of the things I love about rice pudding is that it doesn’t need much sugar, making it the perfect post-Christmas indulgence. It’s also an economical dish that is only as rich as you want it to be (you can use partly skimmed milk or make it richer, and yellower, by adding an egg yolk or two along with the saffron).
I like my rice pudding on the runny side so that it doesn’t go solid after resting overnight in the refrigerator, so don’t be alarmed if it still seems a little liquid at the end of the cooking time. To me it tasted best cold out of the fridge a day after it was made, but there is a good chance it won’t last that long.


Rice pudding with lemon and saffron
Serves 4

When this pudding didn’t turn deep golden as I had hoped, I infused more saffron in a little water overnight and added it the next day. As you can see, the milk again soaked up the color – but fortunately not the flavor, which enlivens this otherwise soothing dessert.

8-12 saffron threads, depending on their strength
30 ml whipping (double) cream or crème fraîche (2 tbsp)
750 ml whole milk (3 cups)
60 g sugar, raw cane sugar if possible (1/3 cup)
70 g short-grain rice, such as Arborio (a generous 1/3 cup)
Zest of 1 lemon, finely chopped
A pinch of salt

Stir the saffron threads into the cream and set aside at room temperature (or in the refrigerator in summer) for a few hours to infuse.

Bring the milk to a simmer in a medium saucepan and add the sugar, rice, lemon zest and salt. Lower the heat and cook very slowly for about 1 hour, stirring every few minutes and removing the skin that forms on the surface.

When you can see the rice grains at the surface of the milk and the liquid has thickened, turn off the heat and stir in the saffron-cream mixture. Cover the pot and set aside to cool. The rice will continue to absorb the liquid.

Pour into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap (clingfilm) directly on the surface to stop a skin from forming, and serve chilled.

I'm submitting this post to Weekend Herb Blogging, which was created by Kalyn's Kitchen and is being hosted this week by Cooking in Westchester.

Brioche des rois

Just when you think you can't eat another cake or drink another glass of champagne (well, ok, I can always drink champagne), the French find another reason to bring the workday to a halt and indulge.
The epiphany is a serious culinary event here, lasting not just one day - officially January 6th - but the whole month of January. Pâtisseries vie to outdo each other with their epiphany cakes, inside each of which lurks a small porcelain figure known as a fève because in the original version it was a humble dried bean. Finding the fève makes you king or queen for the day and is a highlight of any French childhood - I can still remember wearing the golden paper crown and choosing a king from among my classmates at Sam's age, when my family spent a year in Paris and changed the way I would look at food forever.
For many people, the fève - though inedible - is the best part of the epiphany cake, which most often consists of two layers of puff pastry with a frangipane filling. No matter how flaky the pastry or how rich the almond cream, I think there is something a little monotonous about the cake known as the galette des rois. So I was happy to discover that Provence has its own version of the epiphany cake, made with brioche and decorated with candied fruit and coarse sugar crystals.
A brioche des rois that feeds four to six people sells for around €10 in bakeries, and since I had some candied fruit hanging around after Christmas it made sense to attempt it myself. For reasons I'm still trying to understand, the first recipe I tried, from Andrée Maureau's Desserts et douceurs en Provence, nearly went horribly wrong when the dough stubbornly refused to rise even when left overnight. Determined not to let it go to waste, I dissolved another packet of yeast in a little warm water the next morning, making sure it bubbled, and incorporated it into the dough with a couple of scoops of flour. Left in a warm place, the dough finally cooperated and the resulting brioche would have looked at home in a bakery window.
In the meantime, feeling the first recipe was not to be trusted, I had started on a second brioche from the blog Eggs & Mouillettes. French blogger Fabienne is from Provence and this was her mother's recipe, so I was fairly confident that this one wouldn't flop. Indeed, this was a brioche better than anything I could have bought in a bakery thanks to its almond filling, an embellishment that bakers in Nice invariably leave out.

The brioche is very good in itself, but the gooey almond, sugar, candied fruit and egg mixture in the center takes it to another level. If you're one of the millions of people who finds candied fruit too cloying, it's entirely optional and can be replaced with dried fruit or simply forgotten. Fabienne uses angelica and raisins, but I substituted some not-too-sweet candied orange rind from producer Loulou, which had also gone into my Christmas pudding. I topped one brioche with candied fruit just for the fun of it, but the other looked almost as pretty sprinkled only with the coarse sugar. I had to visit three specialty shops before I found coarse sugar and ended up paying a ridiculous €10.50 for it at Le Pain Quotidien (so much for the money I saved making my own brioche), but the cake did look naked without it.

Sam helped with placing the fèves and there may have been method to his madness because, after instructing me where to cut the finished cake, he promptly became king for the day. His fève collection is growing by the minute.

By the way, I'm off to Rome tomorrow for a few days and will have internet access, so if you have any favorite places to tell me about I'd be extremely grateful!


Brioche des rois
Adapted from Eggs & Mouillettes
Serves 10

Brioche:
150 ml milk
1 packet dried yeast
400 g flour
75 g sugar
125 g butter
2 eggs
1 tbsp orange flower water

Filling:
100 g sugar
1 egg
50 g butter
150 g powdered almonds
50 g candied orange rind, finely diced

Egg wash:
1 egg
A pinch of salt

Glaze:
2 tbsp strained apricot jam
2 tbsp icing (confectioner's) sugar
1 tbsp water
Candied fruits
Coarse sugar crystals

For the sponge, warm the milk and stir in the yeast, 50 g of the flour and sugar. Place in a warm spot, such as near a radiator, until the mixture bubbles and doubles in size, 1-2 hours.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan and beat the eggs in a small bowl. Place the sponge mixture in the bowl of a mixer with a dough hook or continue working by hand. On low speed if using the mixer, add the rest of the flour, butter, eggs and orange flower water. Mix for 5 mins on low speed or knead by hand for 10 mins, until smooth and silky. Cover with a plastic bag and set aside in a warm place for about 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled in size.

Work the dough a little by hand, then stretch it out to make a large rectangle (the dough should be easy to work with at this point). Fold it in three, give it a quarter turn and stretch it out again into a rectangle. Repeat this process 4 or 5 times, then let the dough rest, covered with a dish towel, for a few minutes while you make the filling.

For the filling, melt the butter in a small saucepan and stir in the sugar, egg, ground almonds and candied fruit (if using).

Roll the dough out into a long, narrow strip. Spread the filling along the center of this strip, then fold the dough over the filling to cover it completely, pinching it well. Join the ends of the strip to make a doughnut shape (my strip wasn't quite long enough, so the hole filled up as the brioche cooked). Carefully transfer the brioche to a baking sheet and let it rise, covered, for about 35-45 mins.

Beat the egg for the egg wash with a pinch of salt and brush this all over the brioche. Bake the brioche at 200 C for 20-30 mins, being careful not to burn the base.

For the glaze, bring the ingredients to a boil in a small saucepan until slightly thickened. Brush the cooked brioche with the glaze and top with candied fruit and sugar.

Green tomato jam with ginger and vanilla

I've been doing my best to forget about tomatoes, loading up at the market on knobbly-skinned winter squash, the tender little broccoli known as brocoletti, and skinny carrots the color of beets courtesy of organic market gardener Joëlle. Oh, and lots of local oranges and lemons too, their leaves still clinging to the stems.
But on Saturday, at Pierre's stand, tomatoes couldn't help but catch my eye one last time. Pierre, you might remember, is the producer who cultivated more than 100 heirloom tomato varieties this summer. His plants continue to produce, even sprouting new seedlings which he has replanted under cover because on the Côte d'Azur there is an off chance that tomatoes could flourish in winter.
Saturday's heat-deprived green tomatoes couldn't compare to the summer's flamboyant display, but they brought to mind an extraordinary green tomato jam I had tasted at Oliviera with the fresh ewe's milk cheese known as brousse de brebis. As luck would have it Nadim, the maker of this jam, was standing next to me and all I had to do was turn to him and ask for the recipe. Armed with his generous advice I picked up two kilos, happy to give tomatoes a last hurrah before winter really sets in.
At home, I was curious to see what recipes might be circulating on the internet and soon came across one from the famed Alsatian jam maker Christine Ferber. Her recipe, although similar to Nadim's in its proportions, involved macerating the fruit overnight and giving it a 10-minute boil the next day before leaving it for another 24 hours and boiling it again. I rejected this method not because I'm against jam that takes three days to make, but because my Saturday expedition to the market had left not an inch of space in my French-sized refrigerator for the luxury of letting fruit macerate.
Ferber also advises carefully deseeding each tomato and removing the white membranes, directions that I took rather lightly as Pierre's heirloom varieties don't have many seeds or membranes. When I did come across a tomato with a lot of seeds, I squeezed them out.
I added ginger to recreate the taste I so loved in Nadim's jam, but also couldn't resist throwing in one of my lively-scented Madagascar vanilla beans that had just arrived in the post. You'll be hearing more about these beans and their uses very soon.
The result, after a relaxing hour and a half of bubbling and occasional stirring, was a beautiful translucent green jam flecked with black dots, its sweetness enhanced by the vanilla and offset by the ginger. You can of course spread it on bread, but I agree with Nadim that it's particularly delicious with fresh cheese or thick yoghurt.


Green tomato jam with ginger and vanilla
Makes about 4 11-oz (300 g) jars

4 1/2 lbs green tomatoes (2 kg)
1/2 the weight in sugar of the tomatoes, once the tomatoes have been deseeded and diced
2-inch chunk ginger, peeled (5 cm)
1 vanilla bean
Juice of 1 lemon, organic if possible

Cut the tomatoes in half horizontally and squeeze out the seeds if they seem to have a lot of seeds. Cut the tomatoes into small dice and weigh them to find out what quantity of sugar you will need. Slice the ginger against the grain and then chop it finely. Slit the vanilla bean in half and scrape out the seeds with a knife, holding each half flat against the board as you scrape.

Place the tomatoes, sugar, ginger, vanilla bean with its seeds and lemon juice in a large saucepan or a copper jam basin if you have one. Bring to a boil, stirring, then reduce the heat and let the jam bubble happily and reduce until thickened. It should look like a thick, syrupy green tomato sauce, which can take up to 2 hours. To test for doneness, drip some of the liquid onto a cold plate. If it sets, the jam is done.

Meanwhile sterilize the pots, either by boiling them in a large pot of water for 10 minutes or washing them well and placing them in the oven at 375 F (180 C) to dry for 20 mins. Fill the pots with the jam while both are still very hot. Seal with very clean lids.