Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

With our upcoming salad & herb recognition test, the garden walk this morning was led by Eileen, an extremely knowledgeable Ballymaloe gardener who made sure we saw—and could taste—all of the salads and herbs on the list for Friday. I learnt that Salad Burnet tastes like cucumber and that there is a chocolate mint that tastes pretty much like an After Eight mint. Other interesting sights around the garden included the nearly 2m tall asparagus spears/flowers…

… and the sage flowers. I’m sure I’ve never seen our sage in either Gex or Valréas in flower like this.

Our salad hunt took us to the greenhouse where I checked up on my sweetcorn plant. It’s now above waist height and a photograph just of it doesn’t show much so here’s the “cornfield” we planted 5 weeks ago.

Just to the right is a row of peas and we didn’t pass up on the opportunity to taste peas within seconds of being picked.

There was also time before class to decant another batch of water kefir. Cherry and ginger this time; the cherry and mandarin was pretty good—and very fizzy. I also checked up on my kombucha but it’s hard to see how the scoby is doing. I guess I’ll find out next Wednesday with Maria.

The morning demo was dedicated to gluten free cakes, breads, pastries and pizzas. As was our lunch—the demo area and the kitchen where our Wednesday lunches are prepared had both been specially cleaned on Tuesday evening. This is really necessary, emphasised Debbie, our teacher, given that coeliac disease is a serious autoimmune disorder. Food outlets who cater to coeliacs must be really sure there can be no wheat contamination in their offerings—and that’s really difficult in a kitchen where bread and pastry are prepared. Interestingly, at 1%, the prevalence of coeliac disease in Ireland is relatively high, a subject of much study, apparently.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t hungry after the main course lunch and didn’t think to try the cakes on offer to see how they tasted. The general opinion on my table of three, though, was that although the breads and the pastry for the quiche were OK we preferred the normal versions. The ‘nduja and pepper quiche was really good, though, and worth making some time!

The afternoon session was again devoted to wine, with tastings of a German Riesling, a white Bordeaux (mostly Sauvignon Blanc with some Semillon), a Stellenbosch Chardonnay, a really interesting orange wine from Georgia made in buried amphorae (Iago Chinuri), a chilled Italian red and a Morgon. My favourites were the Bordeaux (the audience was split pretty much evenly when asked to choose between that and the Chardonnay) and the Georgian orange wine. Suppliers in France seem to be out of stock, sadly… (And that research illustrates what people are saying: wine in Ireland is expensive. The Iago Chinuri is €20.60 on the French web site and €30.85 on the Irish one.)

To close, some pictures of the farm animals: