Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

The good weather continues and as I have a few spare oranges, I make a sauce maltaise to go with asparagus for lunch. Should be blood oranges, but I use what I’ve got. A little sweet for my liking; I’d go with pure hollandaise for preference as a sauce but slivers of butter and shaved parmesan probably tops that and for less effort.

And why do I have spare oranges? I’ve been trying to practice things I learnt at gastronomicom, one of which was a gastrique as a base for a sauce and another was crêpes suzette (which I made for Pancake Day recently). I put these together a couple of weeks ago for a duck à l’orange but the sauce was too sweet. So today I use an equal amount of vinegar to sugar rather than the 4:3 sugar:vinegar ratio of gastronomicom. Much better. Plus reduced orange juice, orange zest and Grand Marnier. With potatoes and lettuce cooked in bone marrow—those bones from the butcher were much bigger than any they serve in restaurants!