Packing heavy for a trip to Tuscany

15 pounds of carrots
4 dozen eggs
20 packets of cream cheese
5 pounds of sugar
5 pounds of flour
2 1/2 lbs of walnuts
2 1/2 lbs of butter
1 heavy-duty mixer
1 food processor with grater attachment
4 vegetable peelers
A packet of drinking straws
A palette knife

This is just a sample of what I'm taking to Tuscany for the wedding of my friends Kathryn and Tristan on Friday.
Guess who's baking the cake?
And guess what kind of cake it is?
That's right, Rose Bakery's world-famous carrot cake!
I'll be back on Sunday to tell you all about it, with pictures.
Wish me luck...

Georges, the goat cheese genius

At our house the word "Georges" is pronounced with the same reverence that others might reserve for "God."
Georges gives me reason to get up in the morning. On Saturdays, he gives me reason to get up especially early, by 7am without fail.
I first heard of Georges about a year ago, around the same time that I first met Franck Cerutti, chef at the Louis XV in Monaco. After introducing me to his favorite producers, Franck invited me to peek into the back of his small refrigerated van, where a couple of dozen plastic trays were stacked on top of each other.
"I have some extraordinary goat cheese," he said. "Would you like some?"
One taste and I was hooked. I had never tasted a goat cheese so fresh and pure, with not the slightest hint of goatiness. It didn't stick to the palate but caressed the tongue. It made me think of spring flowers and cool mountain air. I knew that somehow, whatever it took, I had to secure a regular supply.
"I don't think I can eat any other cheese," I said to Franck. "How can I get my hands on this?"
He laughed. "I'll have to introduce you to Georges."
A couple of Saturdays later a meeting was arranged at 7.30am in a café near the market. At first, Georges was a little skeptical. Who was this Canadian who thought she was entitled to his cheese? I fell on my knees (well, almost). I confessed that all other cheeses had lost their appeal. And Georges told me his story.
He came to the south of France at age 16 from Portugal to work on a goat cheese farm for the summer. While he was there, the farmer had a mishap with one of his beehives. He was stung so many times that he nearly died, and stayed in the hospital for three weeks. Young Georges had to take over. Upon his return, the farmer thanked him by giving him two goats. Georges knew he had found his vocation.
At that time, in the 1970s, France was reluctant to accept more Portuguese immigrants. But the bureaucrats at the préfecture found they couldn't bring themselves to say no to this young foreigner who loved goats, and eventually Georges married a Frenchwoman.
He has supplied many of the top restaurants on the Côte d'Azur but now sells only to Franck and to a passionate fromager at the Forville market in Cannes. And to me. After that meeting in the café, we agreed that each week he would put aside five little round cheeses for me. Some weeks they are fresh and almost fluffy in texture, some weeks they are developing blue spots on the rind and starting to turn creamy inside. His cheeses become creamy just under the rind, collapsing into a runny mass when they are really ripe.
Georges prefers them fresh, but Franck likes them shrunken with a blue crust, which he believes concentrates the essence of the cheese. It amazes Georges that anyone wants to eat them that way, let alone sell them in a three-Michelin-star restaurant. Fresh, runny or blue, what I love most about this cheese is that it feels like one of the healthiest things I could put into my body. That's not something I think very often about cheese.
When I told Georges I like to eat the fresher cheeses for breakfast with chestnut honey and figs, he looked so horrified that I thought my supply might be cut off. Georges is a cheese purist, which might explain why his cheese tastes so unadulterated. Between late November and March he stops producing cheese entirely to allow the goats to follow their natural cycle. He has never been able to explain to me what makes his cheeses so special, but I plan to find out by visiting his farm one of these days.
I serve Georges' cheese as often as I can in my cooking classes, always with the hope that students will share my cheese epiphany. I haven't been disappointed yet.

Asparagus, new potatoes and girolles

Some days I have to think, and even agonize, about what to cook. And some days the ingredients just seem to leap into the pots and cook themselves, leaving me feeling almost like a spectator. With the change in season this is happening more and more often.
Don't get me wrong, I love the produce that winter has to offer in Nice: citrus fruits straight off the tree, their shiny green leaves still clinging to the stems; big bunches of Swiss chard for cooking in a kind of frittata known as trouchia or adding to a lentil-and-sausage stew; bunches of violet-topped turnips barely the size of a baby's fist. I can even get excited about celery root at a push and one stallholder, Valérie, calls out to me across the market whenever she has raw beets (they are usually sold pre-cooked in France, but I prefer to roast them myself). Even so, winter cooking requires a certain amount of time and thought: the dishes rarely come together as quickly or spontaneously as in summer.
Yesterday, as so often happens, I set out to buy a couple of ingredients and came back with an overflowing basket. From Dominique, a small producer who spends every winter in Nepal, I bought a bunch of slim, purple spring onions known as cébettes, a few zucchini and some big, rustic-looking fava beans. Dominique isn't officially an organic producer, but she explained to me that because she doesn't use any products, chemical or otherwise, on her vegetables they have less bitterness. I tasted the fava beans at lunch, just peeling the raw beans and throwing them into a salad, and sure enough it's true.
From another producer's stall I chose green-and-purple mesclun salad leaves, a bunch of vivid pink-and-white radishes, small, deep-red cherries from near the town of St-Jeannet and a giant bunch of flat-leaf parsley. I picked up strawberries from Carpentras and the first apricots from Provence in the market's central aisle (none of the local producers had strawberries). Just as I was ready to leave, I spotted tiny orange girolles, known as chanterelles in English, at the stand of the mushroom lady, also known as Mathilde.
They were expensive, but girolles are such an unusual sight at the moment that I couldn't resist, especially when I saw that Mathilde also had bunches of deep purple asparagus from Italy. I'd been wanting to try this asparagus for a while and it seemed a natural match for the mushrooms. Back at home, I decided to match the asparagus and mushrooms with new potatoes from producer Gérard, good enough to rival those on the Ile de Ré - or should I say that the vegetables decided what to do and I watched.
The new potatoes demanded that I pot-roast them in my copper saucepan with olive oil and I obeyed. The asparagus jumped into some simmering salted water in a sauté pan. The mushrooms took a brief bath to rinse off their leaves and twigs, then dived into a frying pan with the purple spring onions and olive oil, asking for just a little butter and parsley at the end. I could have served any of these vegetables separately, but together they made a beautiful dish that speaks of the ease of spring cooking.
The plate that you see in this picture, by the way, is from Terre e Provence (7 rue Massena, 04 93 16 93 45), the shop of one of the oldest pottery manufacturers in Provence. Sadly, the shop is closing: it seems that few people want tasteful pottery these days. Everything is 40 per cent off and I bought ten dessert plates and a beautiful water pitcher for €80. If you live in Nice and appreciate good pottery, it's now or never.

Asparagus, girolles and pot-roasted new potatoes
Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as a starter

12 small new potatoes
Good quality olive oil
2 lbs green or purple asparagus (about 1 kg)
1/2 lb girolle (chanterelle) mushrooms (225 g)
2 spring onions
A handful flat parsley leaves
A knob of butter
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Heat a heavy saucepan over medium heat with enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan, at least 1/4 cup. When the oil is hot, place the scrubbed potatoes in the pan in one layer. Cover the pan and leave on medium-low heat for 20 mins without touching. You should hear the potatoes sizzling - if not, turn up the heat a little. After 20 mins the potatoes should be nearly soft and browned on one side. Turn them over with tongs, put the lid back on and cook for about 10 mins, until browned on the other side and soft all the way through.

Break off the hard part of the asparagus stems and discard. Pour about 1/2 inch (1 cm) water into a sauté pan and bring to a boil. Add 1 tsp of salt and the asparagus. Cover and lower the heat so that the water is gently bubbling. After about 5 mins, test the asparagus with the tip of a knife in the thickest part of the stem. Leave for another few minutes if necessary - the asparagus should not be crisp. When it's tender, drain and refresh briefly with cold water.

Brush the mushrooms and wash by sloshing them around in a big bowl of water if necessary (I could get away with doing this as the mushrooms didn't contain much moisture). If you've washed the mushrooms, drain well and dry in paper towels. Slice the spring onions thinly. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat and add the spring onions. When they have softened, add the mushrooms and sauté until just cooked. Stir in a knob of fresh butter, the parsley and some salt and pepper to taste.

Assemble the potatoes, asparagus and mushrooms on a plate and drizzle with your best olive oil. Top with a little fleur de sel.

A good chocolate cake

Some days I just want chocolate cake. Not a fondant cake, or a mousse cake, or a runny-centered cake, or even a Carrément chocolat cake from Pierre Hermé in Paris, but a good old-fashioned sponge cake. Yesterday was one of those days. I was entertaining six five-year-olds for Sam's birthday with a picnic in the Parc du Château, and it was in my interest to keep the chocolate/sugar rush to a minimum. Last year I had started tinkering with a recipe in one of my many hundreds of cookbooks to make it just right for such an occasion, so I decided to fine-tune it to create a reliable cake that I could turn to at short notice.
The original recipe, from a book called The Uncommon Gourmet by Ellen Helman (Ten Speed Press) that followed me across the world from Canada, called for sour cream, an ingredient I can't find in France. Crème fraîche works well (when doesn't it?) but this time I decided to use yaourt à la grècque, a creamy, sour yogurt sold in any French supermarket. The closest I can come to unsweetened chocolate is Lindt 99%, which is sneakily sold in packets that contain a huge amount of plastic packaging and a tiny amount of chocolate, so I opted for the brown-paper-wrapped Nestlé dessert, which contains 52 per cent cocoa solids and zero snob appeal. To compensate for the sweetened chocolate, I reduced the sugar and added a little cocoa powder to the recipe. Light brown sugar brings a slight caramel flavor to the cake. The longer I live in France the less I feel inclined to make fluffy frostings, so I glazed and filled the cake with ganache. Ganache, in case you're wondering, is French for "ridiculously easy yet oh-so-chic."
I was pleased with the result: the cake was chocolatey without being too intense for undeveloped chocolate palates, with a layer of cherry jam in the center providing a little fruity contrast. But the real test would be Sam, who traumatized me on his third birthday by declaring the cake that I had so lovingly made to be "a little dry." That was not a risk with this cake thanks to the yogurt and this time he had only one thing to say: "Encore."

A good chocolate cake
Serves about 16

1 cup sour cream or Greek-style yogurt
1 tsp baking soda
3 oz good quality dark chocolate (80 g)
1 cup butter (100 g)
1 1/2 light brown sugar (300 g)
5 free-range eggs
1 tsp vanilla (5 ml)
2 1/2 cups flour (325 g)
2 tbsp cocoa powder (30 ml)
1/2 cup cherry jam (125 ml)
Sprinkles, for the decoration

Milk chocolate ganache:

4 oz good quality milk chocolate (100 g)
1/4 cup whipping cream (50 ml)

Dark chocolate ganache:

8 oz good quality dark chocolate (200 g)
1/2 cup whipping cream (125 ml)

Preheat the oven to 350 F (160 C). As always when baking, I used the convection setting at a slightly lower temperature. Grease and line a 9-inch cake tin with a removeable base, or two 9-inch layer tins.

Stir together the sour cream or Greek yogurt and baking soda and set aside at room temperature.

Melt the chocolate in a heavy pan over very low heat or in a double boiler (if I had a microwave, I might use it here). As soon as it's melted, set it aside to cool.

In a mixer (I used my beloved KitchenAid), beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy. You'll need to scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice with a rubber spatula. Add the eggs one by one, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the cooled chocolate and vanilla.

Sift together the flour and cocoa, or at least sift the cocoa, which is all I did. Fold the flour mixture and sour cream alternately into the egg mixture, beginning and ending with the flour. When the batter seems smooth, pour it into the tin(s).

Bake layers for about 25 mins, and a bigger cake for about 45 mins, until the top of the cake feels slightly springy to the touch.

Remove the cake(s) from the tin(s) and set aside on racks to cool.

For the milk chocolate ganache, break the chocolate into pieces in a small bowl. Bring the cream to a boil and pour over the chocolate. Allow to rest for about 30 secs before stirring with a small whisk until the mixture is smooth. Follow the same procedure to make the dark chocolate ganache and set both ganaches aside at room temperature.

When the cake is cool, cut in half if necessary. Spread the cherry jam over one layer and pour the milk chocolate ganache, which should be thick but still a little runny, overtop. Top with the second layer, then spread the dark chocolate ganache all over the cake using a palette knife. It's a good idea to place the cake on a rack over a large plate while you're doing this, to catch the dripping ganache. If you're making this cake for a child's birthday, top with sprinkles or other decorations. Place in the refrigerator until the ganache sets.

There is of course nothing to stop you from making only one kind of ganache, dark or milk chocolate.

Burlat cherry clafoutis

Sam and I might be different in some ways - the Power Rangers aisle at the toy store is not my idea of paradise - but we basically think alike. He loves cakes of all kinds and so do I. Both of us see birthdays first and foremost as an opportunity to eat cake, and preferably more than once. My parents' visit in honor of his fifth birthday later this week provided the perfect excuse for a little extra indulgence.
Since it wasn't the official birthday gateau, I reasoned that any type of cake would do as long as I could stick candles in it. Big, juicy burlat cherries are especially beautiful at the market just now and I know that the Niçois like to make clafoutis, even if this dessert of crêpe batter poured over fruit originally comes from the Limousin region in central France. My fruit producer friend Louis Berthon makes it with tart griotte cherries, but it's also delicious with burlats so ripe they are nearly black.
I've made many a clafoutis in my lifetime, often substituting other fruits such as pears, plums or even pineapple for the traditional cherries (I'm proud to say that my caramelized pineapple clafoutis was once selected for a book on the 200 best American recipes of the year). I only rarely make cherry clafoutis, not because I don't love it but because the cherry season is so short, lasting about six weeks in southern France. This time I used a recipe from the wonderful book Les desserts d'enfance des cuisiniers (Saveurs et Harmonie), in which 60 top French chefs give away the simple recipes that made their childhoods so sweet. Behind every French chef, it seems, there is a doting mère or grand-mère who has a way with the whisk.
This recipe was from the chef Jean Bardet, who runs Château Belmont in the Loire Valley and grew up in the Limousin. Clafoutis was not surprisingly one of his favorite childhood desserts and his mother's touch was to add a little gnôle, a potent eau-de-vie made with black elderberries that would be pretty nasty if taken on its own. My throat-ripping marc de Provence would do very nicely. Bardet says not to pit the cherries, and I know that many French cooks believe they add a pleasing almond flavor to clafoutis, but I decided that my 85-year-old father would probably like to keep his remaining teeth. I got out my trusty olive pitter, which also works perfectly for cherries, and worked my way through nearly 2 lbs of fruit in 15 minutes. The cherries, from producer Françoise in St-Jeannet just outside Nice, were so fresh and ripe that black juice spurted across the kitchen counter as I pitted them.
That little chore accomplished, making the clafoutis was child's play. The only other change I made to the original recipe was to top the clafoutis with little pieces of butter before I put it in the oven and sprinkle it with brown cane sugar when it came out, a tip I picked up from a friend's French mother-in-law. The cake puffed up in the oven and fell a few minutes after it was removed, which is normal behavior for a clafoutis. The five of us devoured it in five minutes flat, barely leaving Philippe time to take a picture. Only later did I see that the recipe claims to serve eight to ten people.

Clafoutis Limousin
Serves 8-10 (hah!)

1 3/4 lbs cherries (800 g)
2 knobs butter
2 tbsp light brown cane sugar or white sugar

For the batter:
3 heaping tbsp flour (2 1/2 oz, 70 g)
2 heaping tbsp white sugar (2 oz, 50 g)
Pinch of salt
2 whole eggs
3/4 cup milk (200 ml)
1 tbsp kirsch or other eau-de-vie
A little sugar for sprinkling

Butter a deep pie dish with a knob of butter. Place the cherries, pitted or unpitted, in the dish and sprinkle with 2 tbsp sugar. Set aside for an hour.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt and eggs to make a thick paste. Add the milk bit by bit, whisking to make a smooth and slightly thick crêpe batter. Stir in the eau-de-vie. Set this batter aside for 40 mins at room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 400 F (180 C). I used the convection setting at a slightly lower temperature, about 375 F (160 C). Pour the batter over the cherries, top with little pieces of butter and place in the oven. Bake for 35-40 mins, until the clafoutis is puffed and golden. Remove the clafoutis from the oven and sprinkle with a little light brown cane sugar or white sugar. Serve warm.

A different kind of farmer

Every Saturday I look forward to visiting Pierre's stand at the Cours Saleya market. Pierre is one of several small producers who come to the market only on weekends. His products are all organic and he describes them with boundless enthusiasm. Pierre is never more passionate about his vegetables than in the summer, when he grows up to 100 different tomato varieties, from the stripy green zebra to a sweet, deep orange tomato with the texture of a mango. He lays them out in a multicolored array and happily expounds on the qualities of each one.
I've learned to start asking Pierre for tomatoes towards the end of June, when they haven't yet appeared on his stall. Since the early harvest is small he keeps it under the table for his most dedicated customers, those of us who show up by 8am on a Saturday. In winter Pierre turns his attention to citrus fruit, producing such rarities as the knobbly, lemon-like cedrat and a mutant-looking citrus fruit known as Buddha's Fingers because of its segmented shape. Nadim, my friend at Oliviera, buys up as much of Pierre's citrus fruit as he can and turns it into an exquisite mixed fruit marmalade.
Pierre has been inviting me to see his farm for a while now and I finally took him up on it this week, making the most of one of the many statutory holidays in May. His farm is in the hills of Bellet, a tiny wine region within the city of Nice that's thought to be one of the oldest in France. Only about a 15-minute drive from the center of Nice, it's a different world altogether, with a jagged mountain rising up on one side. Only the most dedicated farmers and winemakers continue to work in this area, whose steep, terraced slopes make the labor particularly exhausting. Pierre gets help from his wife Anne, one full-time worker and students from all over the world who exchange labor on organic farms for room and board through an association called Wwoof (they are housed in beautiful little chalets that Pierre constructed from discarded building materials). His parents, who live on the property, also pitch in - his elderly mother weeds tirelessly by hand using a tiny hoe.

Greeting us cheerfully in a T-shirt and torn army fatigues, Pierre took us on a tour of his property. Sam, having bonded instantly with the big black dog, Bali, ran off with Pierre's two sons to gorge on strawberries straight off the plants. Pierre is currently battling a pest attack on his strawberries by launching a counter-attack with insects that he orders from England. He resorts to using organic insecticides only when all other means have failed. (As for offensives on his strawberry plants by children, he said there is nothing that can be done.) He grows only Mara des Bois strawberries, a small, deep red domestic variety that tastes amazingly like a wild strawberry. Though I've tasted Mara des Bois at the market many times, there is nothing like picking them straight from the plants, while they are still warm from the sun.

Pierre's land is the antithesis of the perfectly controlled modern farm. There are harmless weeds between the lettuces and artichokes grow around the borders. He plants sunflowers at the end of rows to keep an eye on the insects that might be present - the pests will attack the flowers before they move on to the vegetables. Squash plants climb up trellises, partly to hide the sight of the shopping mall down below.
As we walk through his land, which has been recently extended, it becomes clear that Pierre is no ordinary farmer. He plans to build a greenhouse that will be used partly for farming and partly for events such as exhibitions, tastings and concerts. On the forested part of his land, he wants to construct a treehouse where visitors can sip a glass of wine or stretch out for a nap. In early July he is planning an open house to celebrate the first tomatoes with a poetry reading among the trees.
Farming the old-fashioned way might seem romantic, but it's also full of perils. Because Pierre avoids chemical products he sometimes loses entire crops to pests or disease. Besides selling at the market in Nice he takes part in an organic basket scheme, but his clients need to be convinced to take what's available instead of choosing only the most familiar vegetables and fruit. Fortunately, he works with chefs who are thrilled to cook with heirloom vegetables such as kohlrabi, butter beans and chicory.

After touring Pierre's farm we sat on his terrace sipping chilled white wine from neighboring vineyard Clot dou Baile, whose female winemaker is equally passionate about what she does. As the children frolicked among the fruit trees Pierre's life seemed idyllic, but he has not chosen the easy path. From now on, when I make a salad of his Japanese greens or bite into a slim banana tomato from his farm, I'll think about how much imagination and effort were involved in getting these to my table.
If the idea of meeting people like Pierre while discovering the little-known arrière-pays behind Nice appeals to you, then my "Meet the producers" tours could be for you. With Philippe as the driver, we spend the day visiting vegetable, fruit, olive oil and wine producers, with lunch in a beautiful hilltop village. Visit my Petits Farcis website for more information.

Huîtres plates

I'll never forget my first taste of oysters in France. I had eaten oysters a few times in Canada, but they had always travelled too far to have any life left in them. Then I moved to France and spent a few days in Brittany, where I visited the fishing town of Cancale in the Mont St-Michel bay, home of genius chef Olivier Roellinger. I didn't have the means to eat in his restaurant (and have still never made it there, though it's high up on my list), so found a simple café by the sea with wooden benches and a super-speedy oyster shucker. In seconds a dozen oysters were placed before us with a few lemon halves for squeezing on top.
As the lemon juice hit the oyster it positively jumped, contracting in reaction to the acidity. Now, this might make some people squeamish, but to me this is what an oyster should be: barely out of the sea and fully alive. The texture was silky and the taste like a concentrated and clean essence of seawater. No oyster experience has lived up to that one since - I think Paris is too urban for oysters and in Nice the bracing wind is missing - but last week's oysters on the Ile de Ré came a close second. There were several oyster stands at the market in St-Martin de Ré and the one that appealed to me the most was that of Frédéric Voisin, who is based near the town of Loix. What caught my eye were his huîtres plates, flat oysters that are native to France but have been largely replaced by the creuses, which originated in Japan.
As we bought a dozen of these oysters, Frédéric gave us a few tips. Flat oysters should be opened at their tip, he said, by digging a small knife below the lightly curved shell to cut the hinge. On the Ile de Ré they use a special knife which does not have the traditional metal handguard between the blade and the handle. "When you're opening an oyster it's your other hand that's at risk," explained Frédéric. "With the handguard there is more chance that you will press too hard and cut into your opposite hand." He also told us to empty out the première eau, the first water, from the oyster as we opened it and wait a few seconds for it to release new, cleaner water. "The impurities are in the first water," he said. If bits of shell got into the oyster, he advised rinsing it with mineral water.
Armed with Frédéric's knife and instructions, Philippe skilfully opened the oysters back at the house. If these oysters were not quite as lively as those in Cancale, they did have the clean, pure taste I had sought all these years. Flat oysters are stronger in taste than creuses, but these were by no means overwhelming, just beautifully intense. With pain au levain, salted butter and a bottle of chilled Muscadet, it would be hard to ask for more.
Frédéric Voisin
Le Grouin, 17111 Loix-en-Ré, 05 46 43 51 38.
voisinfrederic@wanadoo.fr
Frédéric ships his oysters anywhere in France and to several European countries.