Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

I’ve said many times that I’m not convinced it’s worth making bread at home if you live in France as you can get good bread from the local boulangerie. But we’re supposed to make a sourdough loaf while we’re here and the Bread Shed, which was packed with students in the early weeks, is now much quieter in the mornings. So, I should have a go. I intended to start last Thursday but there weren’t any spare jars available so I was asked to come back this week. The first few days are pretty easy: you just put in 60g of flour and 60g of cold water each day. Here’s the start of my sourdough starter.

I also started sauerkraut this morning but completely forgot to take any pictures of that! I just had to mix shredded cabbage with some salt for a while, squeezing with my hands until the cabbage was oozing liquid. Then pack this in a jar, make sure the cabbage is all under the liquid and leave for 10 days or so.

My assigned recipes in the kitchen were an Italian beef stew with gremolata and polenta. As the stew needed 2-2.5 hrs in the oven there was a big hole in my order of work which I filled by making a pretty simple yeast bread. Well, it would have been pretty simple had the first batch of yeast done its thing—you add it to warm water with a spoonful of honey. There was plenty of time to start a second batch, though. After that, you just mix the water and yeast in with the flour, pour this into the baking tin and, after it’s been left to rise for 30 mins or so, bake it in the oven.

Then, following the afternoon demo session, we had a planning meeting for a pop-up dinner to be prepared on the 20th. This optional activity was mentioned at the end of last week: there will be a paid-for dinner for 70 guests (we students have a few days to book tickets for friends and family…) to raise money for a couple of local charities. The idea is that we come up with a three course menu plus canapés and petits-fours and cook and serve this on the Saturday evening. Things are still a little vague, but we’ve chosen a head chef and a maitre d’ and on the kitchen side (where I’ve volunteered), we have leads for the different areas. So I’ll see how things develop in the next few days.