First day of summer time / Le premier jour de l'heure d'été

Last night the clocks went forward and today is the first day of late sunsets and long evenings in the garden. To help the plants along we had a day of rain yesterday, the first for nearly two months, so they are getting the perfect combination of water and warmth.

Dans la nuit l'heure a changé et aujourd'hui est le premier jour du coucher tardif du soleil. Pour aider les plants on a eu une journée de pluie hier - donc ils ont la combination parfaite de l'eau et chaleur.

In the garden / dans le jardin:

the bay and the broad beans are flowering / le laurier sauce et les fèves fleurissent ....

and so are the peas, although they shouldn't be - the plants are too small. et les petits pois aussi, bien qu'ils sont trop petits.

The fig leaves are unfurling / les feuilles du figuier s'ouvrent ...

the climbing rose is about to cover the shelter with flower / la rose grimpante est sur le point de couvrir l'abri de fleurs.

In the cold frame the courgette plants are growing well / Dans la petite serre les plantes de courgette poussent bien.

And on the balcony we have salad leaves and mizuna to go with the wild rocket from the garden / Et sur le balcon il y a des feuilles de salade et de mizuna pour accompagner la roquette sauvage du jardin.

Summer time? Perhaps not yet, but it's beginning to look as though it may happen! / L'heure d'été? Peut-être c'est un peu tôt pour dire ça, mais ça va venir!

Another gift of wild food / Encore un cadeau sauvage

Today a friend brought us these wild leeks.  She says you can take the little 'seed' bulbs off them and plant them for next year's crop. / Aujourd'hui une amie nous a apporté ces poireaux sauvages (porettes).  Elle dit qu'on peut enlever les petits pepins pour les planter dans le jardin.

We cooked them, let them cool and then dressed them with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper to make a salad.

Nous les avons cuits, et puis nous avons ajouté de l'huile d'olive, du jus de citron, sel et poivre pour faire une salade.

 

At this time of the year I begin to long for summer vegetables, weeks before we will have them in the garden.  Today in the market I couldn't resist buying artichokes, aubergines, courgettes and a red pepper. / Je commence à avoir très envie des légumes d'été, et j'ai acheté sur le marché aujourd'hui des artichauts, des aubergines et courgettes et un poivron rouge.

I cooked the artichokes in olive oil and white wine and with the courgettes, aubergines and pepper I made chichoumeille, as ratatouille is called in the Languedoc.  Recipes will be on the Mediterranean cuisine blog.

J'ai cuit les artichauts à l'huile d'olive et au vin blanc, et j'ai fait le chichoumeille, comme on appelle le ratatouille dans le Languedoc.  Les recettes seront sur le blog Mediterranean cuisine

.

Another Cuban link / Un lien cubain encore

I've mentioned before the amazing efforts that Cuba has made to develop self-sufficient organic agriculture due to the economic isolation it has experienced since the collapse of the Soviet system in 1990.  Cuba has had to make the sort of adjustments to industry and agriculture which we will all have to make as oil production declines over the coming decades.  Putting political arguments aside, there is much to admire here.  The country has progressed from reliance on imports and industrialised, chemically fertilised agriculture and horticulture to locally based organic fruit and vegetable production.  In the capital city, Havana, 50 per cent of the food needed for the population is produced within the city in community gardens and roof terraces.  In smaller towns 80 to 100 per cent of food is grown within 5 km.

Depuis l'effondrement du système Sovietique en 1990, Cuba doit développer un système d'agriculture biologique et autosuffisant.  À Havana, la capitale du pays, ils produisent 50 pour cent de la nourriture dans la ville, dans les jardins communitaire et les terraces.  Les villes plus petites produisent entre 80 et 100 pour cent de leurs besoins alimentaires.

On the Guardian gardening blog today I found the link to this film about what is happening in Cuba: The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.  It's quite a long film - about 50 minutes - but it's worth watching because it shows what can be done by people faced with the energy crisis which all developed and developing countries will certainly face very soon.  Most importantly, I think, the film shows the importance of communities, of people working together for each other as well as themselves.  As Patricia Allison, a permaculturalist, says in the film:

It's not the technology, it's the human relationships ...

I hope that, if one good thing comes out of the current economic crisis, it will be an end to the culture in developed countries where people get into their cars and drive to a supermarket to buy their food, and that more people grow their own food or buy locally produced sustainable food, helping and supporting each other, as they do in Cuba.

Sur le blog du jardinage du Guardian aujourd'hui, j'ai trouvé le lien pour ce film autour de l'agriculture en Cuba: The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.  C'est un film long, mais ça vaut la peine parce qu'il montre ce qui est possible dans une crise de l'énergie et surtout l'importance des communautés dans lesquelles les gens travaillent ensemble pour les autres ainsi que eux-mêmes.  Patricia Allison, une permacultrice, dit dans le film:

Ce n'est pas la technologie, c'est les relations humaines ....

J'éspère que la crise economique va apporter la fin de la culture d'aller aux grandes surfaces en voiture pour acheter la nourriture.  J'éspère que encore de gens cultiveront leurs jardins et acheteront la nourriture locale et durable, comme ils font en Cuba.

Asparagus and sweet onions / Les asperges et les oignons de Lézignan

Onions from Lézignan-la-Cèbe are a local speciality.  They are sweet onions from a small village near Pézenas which in 1615 added 'la Cèbe' to its name, from the Occitan word for onion - ceba. In Occitan there is even a special verb meaning 'to plant onions' - cebejar.  In spring the onion growers in the village sell young plants at the roadside for replanting.  Our neighbour went there and brought 100 plants for us.

L'oignon doux de Lézignan-la-Cèbe est une spécialité de ce village près de Pézenas.  Le village a ajouté 'la Cèbe' à son nom en 1615 en honneur.  Ce mot vient du mot occitan ceba (oignon).  En printemps les cultivateurs d'oignons vendent les jeunes plantes au bord de la route.  Notre voisin y est allé et il nous en a apporté 100 plants.

It was difficult to find space for 100 onions we hadn't planned for, but we've put them in a double row alongside the potatoes.

We've been lucky this week - we were given some more wild asparagus too.  We cooked the spears for a couple of minutes in boiling water, let them cool and dressed them with olive oil and a little lemon juice to eat as a salad.  They were delicious - a concentrated flavour of asparagus but with the added 'herbyness' of the garrigue. / On a préparé une salade d'asperges sauvages: cuire les asperges dans l'eau bouillante pour 2 minutes et puis ajouter un peu d'huile d'olive et de jus de citron.  Elles étaient delicieuses avec un gout concentré d'asperge et des herbes de la garrigue.

And a rustic wall / et un mur rustique

Lo Jardinièr has started to make a stone wall to protect our rose bushes from the north wind, using pieces of stone he's collected.  / Lo Jardinièr a commencé la construction d'un mur en pierres pour protéger nos rosiers du vent du nord, en utilisant des pierres qu'il a ramassé.

the first row of stones in a trench ....

choosing the right stones ...

work in progress.

Potting and pottering / Repiquer et bricoler

There seems to be so much to do in the garden at the moment ... watering, because the weather is suddenly hot and we've had very little rain for weeks, planting out lettuce seedlings, sowing other salad plants, preparing the ground for the pepper and tomato plants, having lunch ... and so on.

Il y a beaucoup de travail au jardin en ce moment ... l'arrosage, parce qu'il a commencé de faire chaud et il n'a pas plu pour quelques semaines, repiquer les salads, semer les autres salades, préparer la terre pour les poivrons et les tomates, manger le déjeuner ... etc.

I've repotted over 60 tomato plants (more than we'll need, but they're growing very slowly, so maybe they won't all survive) and some of the courgettes which already have quite large root systems.

J'ai repiqué plus de 60 plantes de tomates et quelques uns de courgettes qui ont déjà des longues racines.

Over the past couple of weeks the garden has become a very noisy place as the bees buzz around the rosemary and the broad bean flowers. / Pendant les semaines dernières le jardin est devenu très bruyant avec les abeilles qui bourdonnent autour des fleurs du romarin et des fèves.

And on this broad bean flower there's one of the big flying black beetles which are very common in our garden.

The second (February) sowing of broad beans are coming up well.  I'm specially pleased with these as they were seeds we saved a few years ago and had forgotten about!

Spring salad / salade du printemps

Rocket, wild rocket, oregano and sorrel leaves / les feuilles de la roquette, la roquette sauvage, oreganum et oseille.

Wild asparagus / les asperges sauvages

A friend had given us some spears of wild asparagus she had picked and we added some spears from plants growing wild in our garden.  Wild asparagus is thinner than the cultivated variety, with a herby, more concentrated flavour.  It grows in the garrigue, especially where there has recently been a fire so that it has less competition from other bigger plants.  Here the tradition, especially on Easter Monday, is to go for a walk in the garrigue and pick asparagus and then make omelette with it.  We did this in the garden today.

Les asperges sauvages poussent dans la garrigue.  Elles sont plus fines que la varieté cultivée et elles ont un gout concentré.  Il y a une tradition ici d'aller dans les garrigue le lundi de Paque pour ramasser les asperges et puis de faire une omelette aux asperges.  On l'a fait au jardin aujourd'hui.

Pepper germination / germination de poivrons

We've had very high germination rates for most of the varieties we've sown.  All these seeds came from Kokopelli except the Long d'Espagne which our neighbour gave us.

Corno di Toro: 100 %    Italian Red Marconi: 100%  

Lipstick: 100%             Kolaska: 100 %

Kandil Dolma: 60 %      Nardello:  100 %

Long d'Espagne: 10 % (but these seeds were a few years'old)

Yellow cornos (from Kate) and chilli peppers (our own saved seed) were sown later and have not yet germinated.

The problem with the peppers now is to keep them at a consistently high enough temperature and give them enough light.  Today we put some of them out on the balcony under polythene, but some of them got a bit too hot and dry.  I think they'll be OK.

The apricot blossom is over now, and the cherry blossom is here ... / Les fleurs d'abricotier sont finis maintenant, et les fleurs de cerisier arrivent ...

Cherry blossom opening on a tree near our garden - the tree is on public ground, so we'll keep an eye out for the fruit in May.

Warm enough for a lizard / Assez chaud pour un lézard

Suddenly it's spring and the lizards are out in the sun ...

 

Tout à coup, c'est le printemps et les lézards sortent au soleil ...

 

 

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Last month I was away on the 15th so I missed it, and we didn't have many blooms in the garden anyway.  This month is much more colourful:

Le mois dernier je n'étais pas chez moi le 15, et il n'y avait pas des fleurs au jardin.  Aujourd'hui il y a beaucoup plus de couleur:

anemones ...	apricot blossom / fleurs d'abricotier ...
aubretia ...	daffodils / les narcisses ....
and grape hyacinths / et les muscaris.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Moules gratinées

On Friday at an otherwise excellent restaurant in Agde, I ordered moules gratinées and was shocked to find when they arrived that they were huge, green-shelled creatures which I knew don't grow near here.  I asked the waiter and he said that they came from New Zealand!  Although he added that they used local mussels for moules marinières.  Agde is only about 10 km from the nearest mussel beds in the Bassin de Thau.  These New Zealand mussels had suffered from their long journey and months in the freezer - they were tough and tasteless.  How sad, because apart from this the food was good at this family-run restaurant on the quayside, where the woman chef came to our table and explained her ratatouille recipe in great detail - and it was the best ratatouille we'd ever had in a restaurant, as good as we make at home!

Vendredi j'ai commandé des moules gratinées dans un restaurant à Agde et j'ai été étonnée de trouver qu'elles sont des grandes moules au coquilles vertes qui ne viennent pas d'ici.  Elles sont venues de la Nouvelle-Zélande.  Agde n'est que 10 kilometres du Bassin de Thau.  Cettes moules ont souffert de leur voyage long et les mois qu'elles ont passé au congelateur.

At home tonight, I made moules gratinées (garlic, parsley, white wine, bread crumbs, grated cheese and a little paprika) with mussels from Bouzigues and they were delicious:

Chez nous ce soir j'ai fait les moules gratinées - les moules de Bouzigues à l'ail, persil, vin blanc, chapelure, fromage rapé et un peu de piment doux - et elles sont delicieuses:

Followed by Lo Jardinièr's chard and goats' cheese tart:

In the garden / Au jardin

We planted out 10 celery plants from seed given to us by Kate.  I sowed the seed in October and they have grown very slowly on the windowsill through the cold weather.  They're doing well now, though.  Thanks, Kate!  The artichoke plant on the right is supposed to be the same variety as its bigger neighbour - Violet de Provence.  I can't remember whether the others had similar smooth-edged leaves when they were small.

To the sea at last! / Enfin à la mer!

For the first time this year, a day warm enough to go to the sea and paddle in the (cold) water / Pour la première fois cette année il a fait assez beau pour aller à la mer et faire trempette.

Snow-covered Mont Canigou and the eastern Pyrenees, from the beach at Le Grau d'Agde / Le Mont Canigou couvert de neige et les Pyrénées orientales, de la plage au Grau d'Agde.

Spraying Bordeaux mixture / La bouillie bordelaise

Bordeaux mixture (copper sulphate) is a treatment against fungus and other diseases which is permitted in organic agriculture and horticulture. It is used on the vines here in the Languedoc and in other vine-growing areas and perhaps because it's so commonly used in the vineyards gardeners in Gabian use it on a wide range of plants: fruit trees, olive trees, roses, potatoes.

La bouillie bordelaise est un traitement contre les maladies qui est permis dans l'agriculture biologique. Les viticulteurs du Languedoc et les autres régions vigneronnes la mettent sur les vignes et ici à Gabian les jardiniers la utilisent pour les arbres fruitiers, les oliviers, les pommes de terre, les rosiers etc.

It must be used at least 14 days before harvesting and for fruit trees the best time is in spring before the fruits form. I've been waiting for a calm day to spray our trees and although today wasn't completely still there was less wind than there has been for the last couple of weeks.

Il faut traiter les plantes et les arbres au moins 14 jours avant la récolte et pour les arbres fruitiers le meilleur temps est le printemps. J'attendais une journée calme pour vaporiser la bouillie bordelaise sur nos arbres. Aujoud'hui il y avait moins de vent qu'on a eu les dernières deux semaines.

The powder and the liquid once it's mixed with water are a lovely deep blue colour which makes the leaves and flowers look pretty ....

olive leaves / les feuilles d'olivier

and polka-dot apricot blossom / et les fleurs d'abricotier à pois.

Chorizo and chickpeas / Chorizo et pois chiches

After a hard morning's work in the garden we were ready for lunch and I made a quick stew of tinned chickpeas and some little chorizo sausages which we'd bought in the market earlier, with garlic, thyme, tomato passata, a glass of red wine and a green sweet onion.

Après le travail du matin au jardin on était prêt pour le déjeuner. J'ai préparé un ragout express des pois chiches et des petits chorizos qu'on a acheté sur le marché ce matin, avec de l'ail, du thym, de la purée de tomates, un verre de vin rouge et un oignon doux.

Tomato and pepper sowings update / mise à jour des semences de tomates et de poivrons

The tomato seedlings enjoying the sun on the balcony - when they have two true leaves we'll transplant them into individual pots. / Les petits plants de tomate au soleil au balcon - quand ils auront deux vraies feuilles nous les repiquerons en petits pots individuels.

The pepper seeds germinated very quickly on our heated seed-starter box. The Corno di toro, Nardello, Kolaska, Lipstick and Italian Red Marconi germinated in about 7-8 days. The Kandil dolma and the Spanish long pepper (seeds given to us by our neighbour) have been slower but are showing signs of germinating now. / Les semences de poivron ont germé très vite sur le boîte chauffée: 7-8 jours pour: Corno di toro, Nardello, Kolaska, Lipstick et Italian Red Marconi. Les semence de Kandil dolma et long d'Espagne (ce dernier de notre voisin) commencent a germer maintenant.

Bees at work / Les abeilles travaillent

The apricot is blossoming ... / L'abricotier fleurit ...

Wednesday ...

Friday ....

Sunday ....

Monday ....

And the bees are at work .... / Et les abeilles travaillent ...

Lo Jardinièr has laid some paving in front of our bench, using recycled tiles. / Lo Jardinièr a mis des carreaux recyclés devant notre banc.

The anemones are starting to flower. / Les anemones commencent à fleurir.

International Women's Day / Journée de la Femme

Today it's International Women's Day and I want to celebrate women who garden.  There are well-known women gardeners such as Vita Sackville-West, who created a beautiful garden at Sissinghurst in the south of England, and Gertrude Jekyll, who collaborated with the architect Edwin Lutyens and designed gardens for members of the Arts and Craft movement in nineteenth-century England.  But these women, talented as they were, were privileged and well-off.

C'est la Journée de la Femme et je voudrai fêter les femmes qui jardinent.  Les jardinières fameuses, comme Vita Sackville-West et Gertrude Jekyll étaient privilégiées et riche, même si elles étaient douées.

Ever since human beings stopped being hunter-gatherers, settled down and began to develop horticulture, women have gardened.  They have grown fruit and vegetables so that their families would have food.  They are unrecognised but important, supporting their families and communities and passing on knowledge of plants to the next generation.

Depuis que les humains ne sont plus des chasseurs-cueilleurs, les femmes jardinent.  Elles cultivent les fruits et les légumes pour que leurs familles puissent manger.  Elles sont inconnues mais importantes.

One of my early garden role models was my grandmother.  After a hard working life, finally in her sixties she owned her own house and garden in rural west Wales.  The land was high above sea-level and the climate was cold and damp, but she loved vegetables, so she grew them.  She was a vegetarian before it was fashionable and very eccentric, but decades later many of her neighbours still remember her gardening and her knowledge of healing plants.

Ma grandmère, végétarienne avant le mot et très excentrique, était mon premier modèle à émuler.  Elle cultivait son jardin au climat froid et humide de l'ouest du pays de Galles et ses voisins se souviennent toujours sa connaissance des plantes curatifs.

My childhood memories of my grandmother's garden are of picking peas and gooseberries and eating them straight from the plant, the delicious tiny carrots she would cook for us and her rhubarb plant which was well-known in the area for its vigour.

One of the poems in my sequence based on her life, published as In Sight of the Sea, celebrates

her last years spent coaxing

from the stony ground rows of beans

and peas, the rhubarb plant famed

for its strength, seeing the future

beyond her, planting the Mediterranean

pines of her memory.

                      'A House of her Own'

All over the world women grow food, unnoticed and unrewarded except by their families, in difficult climates, in poverty and in challenging or dangerous political and social conditions.  In South Africa, in a 'revolution fuelled by organic vegetables', women are cultivating community food gardens, like the one at Gugulethu described by Helen Kilbey in this article on allAfrica.com, and they find the experience empowering.  In Rawfi in Niger women grow cabbages, onions and carrots in the plot shown in this video:

And water the plot ...

After seeing this clip, we'll all appreciate our running water, taps and hose pipes more.

Happy Women's Day!

Lemons, courgettes and morcilla / Citrons, courgettes et morcilla

Our own lemon tree has produced only three fruits, but lemons are cheap at the moment - 4 for 1 € in the market on Wednesday - so I bought eight to preserve, using two recipes from Catalan gardener's blog. So it's not my recipe, but I couldn't resist putting the pictures on this blog - such a lovely colour!

Notre citronier n'a produit que trois fruits, mais les citrons sont moins chers en ce moment - 4 pour 1 € sur le marché mercredi - donc, j'en ai acheté huit pour faire les citrons confits selon les deux recettes de Catalan gardener.

I sliced five of the lemons, salted them and left them to drain overnight in a colander (left, below) / j'ai coupé en tranches cinq citrons, j'ai ajouté du sel et les ai laissé pour la nuit dans une passoire (à gauche).

I quartered the other three lemons and rubbed salt into the cut surfaces, put them in jars and used Tomás Graves's trick with the olives, a couple of bay leaves and a bay twig to keep them under the boiling water which I added to the jars. / J'ai coupé en tranches les trois autres citrons, j'ai mis du sel sur les surfaces coupées et des feuilles et brins de laurier sauce pour les garder au dessous de l'eau bouillante que j'ai ajouté aux bocaux.

This morning I put the slices of lemon in jars and topped them up with olive oil - the two recipes produced four colourful jars for the preserves shelf. In a month's time we'll be able to start adding them to tagines. / Ce matin j'ai mis les tranches de citron dans les bocaux et j'ai ajouté de l'huile d'olive - et voilà, quatre bocaux aux couleurs vives. Dans un mois on pourra les ajouter aux tajines.

Sowing courgettes / Semer les courgettes

Lo Jardinièr came up with another great recycling idea for the courgette seeds. The seeds are in compost in card centres from toilet rolls, held upright by plastic pots and then the pots are put inside 5 litre water bottles which have been cut in half to make a mini cloche for each pot, which can be put outside on the balcony when the seeds germinate.

Un autre truc de recyclage de Lo Jardinièr pour les semences de courgette. Les semence sont dans le terreau dans des centres des rouleaux de papièr hygiénique, et puis dans des pots que nous avons mis dans des bouteilles d'eau 5 litre, coupé en moitiés pour faire une petite serre individuelle.

And morcilla for lunch ... / Et la morcilla pour déjeuner

It was a nice surprise to find Spanish morcilla with pine nuts in the village shop this morning, so I made a warm salad of potatoes, sweet onions, spring onions, pickled garlic and sun dried tomatoes, with slices of fried morcilla, for a very good lunch with a glass of rosé from Domaine des Pascales in Gabian.

Une bonne surprise à l'épicier du village ce matin - la morcilla espagnole aux pignons. Donc j'ai fait une salade tiède de pommes de terre, oignons doux, oignons verts, ail confit aux tomates séchées, avec des tranches de morcilla poelées - un très bon déjeuner, avec un verre de rosé du Domaine des Pascales à Gabian.

Garden panorama / panorama du jardin

Apricot / Abricotier

Local food again / La nourriture locale encore

Lo Jardinièr and I spend a lot of time talking about and eating local food. We try to eat food which is produced as locally as possible, and much of it comes from our own garden. We do try not to get obsessional about it, though, and Lo Jardinièr often points out that some trade between communities and between countries is essential. It's unrealistic to expect people in the twenty-first century to have the way of life which was common in rural areas during the nineteenth century. We've both read an interesting book by Gillian Tindall, Céléstine, about life in the Berry region of central France 150 years ago. Tindall discovered from letters written at the time that people in the village of Chassignolles very rarely went to the nearest town, La Châtre which was only 7 km away. The only things they needed to buy there were needles for sewing. Everything else was produced in the village. This kind of self-sufficiency is almost impossible to imagine now.

Nous essayons de manger la nourriture locale et beaucoup de légumes qu'on mange vient de notre jardin. Mais, le commerce est necessaire. En outre, vivre comme les gens du dix-neuvième siècle c'est peu réaliste. Nous venons de lire un histoire d'un village dans le Berry il y a 150 ans, Céléstine, de Gillian Tindall, qui raconte la vie du village de Chassignolles donc les habitants ont visité la ville de La Châtre très peu, seulement pour acheter les aiguilles. Tous leurs autres besoins étaient produit dans le village.

Kate at Hills and Plains Seedsavers has recently been writing about local food, too. With the eyes of someone new to French markets she has remarked on things which we sometimes take for granted, like the fact that almost everything you buy here is marked with its département of origin. In the markets here in the Languedoc very locally grown fruit and vegetables are marked 'pays', meaning the countryside around, or even the name of the village or small town near which they were grown, like the grapes from Clermont l'Hérault.

Kate a écrit sur le blog Hills and Plains Seedsavers au sujet de la nourriture locale. Une australienne en France, elle a remarqué des choses que nous ne remarquons plus, comme les départements d'origine de tous les produits qui sont indiqués sur les marchés.

Our aim is to eat mostly food which is produced within 100 km of Gabian, but to allow ourselves some foodstuffs, most importantly coffee, which come from further away. Sometimes during the winter I can't resist buying an aubergine which has come from the south of Spain and we eat citrus fruits from Valencia and dried fruit from north Africa, which I tell myself is almost local, just the other side of the Mediterranean. We've always eaten a lot of rice, occasionally Basmati rice from India, but since we've been living in Gabian mostly from Spain and Italy and the Camargue (about 100 km away), which I thought was the nearest rice production area. So I'm very excited to have found an even more local rice producer in Marseillette which is only 80 km away.

Duo of red and white rice, cooked

Je suis ravie de trouver un producteur de riz qui est très proche - 80 km de Gabian à Marseillette dans l'Aude.

La Rizière de l'Etang de Marseillette

Laurent Malis grows long grain, red grain, round grain and whole grain rice in what was once a salt water lagoon which was drained at the beginning of the nineteenth century. His website has all the details (in French) of the area, the range of rice he grows and recipes. And, best of all, the rice is delicious!

Laurent Malis cultive le riz à Marseillette, sur un étang qui a été asseché en 1808. Le site Internet a des renseignements sur la gamme de riz, le terroir et des recettes. Et le riz est délicieux!

Lamb and aubergine casserole with rice / Casserole d'agneau et d'aubergine au riz

I made a casserole with some pieces of breast of lamb, onions, garlic, white wine, paprika and tomato passata. When it was nearly ready I added some reconstituted dried aubergine slices which we grew last summer, and served it with the Marseillette rice.

The recipe for this casserole will be on the Mediterranean cuisine blog. La recette sera sur le blog Mediterranean cuisine.

Tapenade

This was a very local dish. We made tapenade with some of the olives given to us in November by friends who live about 4 km away. We cured the olives and they are now ready to eat. You can add anchovies to tapenade, but this is a simpler recipe. We removed the stones from the olives, leaving about 300 gm of olive flesh. I chopped 3 cloves of garlic and some parsley in the food processor, added the olives and processed them, then added the juice of half a lemon, a couple of tablespoonfuls of olive oil and some salt. Et voilà! Serve the tapenade with lemon wedges and crusty bread or toast. These olives give it a lovely reddish colour.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi / St David's Day / La fête nationale du pays de Galles

Today we'll be celebrating by serving the Welsh dish cawl (a soup or stew of lamb, leeks and potatoes) to a party of our Occitan friends.

Aujourd'hui on fête la Saint-David en servant le plat gallois cawl (le ragout d'agneau et des légumes) pour nos amis occitans.

The main ingredients of cawl are meat, leeks, onions and potatoes. In the hills of west Wales, where my family comes from, it is usually made with ham or with lamb. The high land there is so poor that it can only be used for raising sheep, and all smallholders would have kept a pig as well, as a way of recycling waste. Potatoes, leeks, carrots and onions would have been grown in the garden or in a small field. This is the ultimate sustainable food - as most peasant dishes are, the world over. In more fertile areas of south Wales, where the land is good enough for dairy farming and cattle-rearing, cawl is made with beef.

Les ingrédients principals du cawl sont la viande, les poireaux, les oignons et les pommes de terre. Sur les collines de l'ouest du Pays de Galles, d'où vient ma famille, on fait le cawl avec l'agneau ou le jambon. Le terrain haut est si pauvre qu'il ne supporte que les moutons, et tous les paysans élévaient des cochons aussi - un façon de recyclage. Les pommes de terre, les poireaux, les carrottes et les oignons poussaient dans les potagers ou dans les petits champs. C'est la nourriture durable, comme la plupart de plats paysans autour du monde. Dans les régions plus fertile au sud du Pays de Galles ils font le cawl avec le boeuf.

The recipe for cawl is simple: just put lamb (or ham), potatoes and carrots in a large pan, cover with water, add salt, pepper, bay leaves and parsley, bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour. Take out the lamb and remove the meat from the bone. Cut into 2 cm chunks and return to the pan. Add chopped leeks and simmer for a further half an hour. Serve, garnished with chopped parsley, with a good tasty farmhouse cheese and some crusty bread. Quantities depend on how much meat you've got - this is a good dish for making meat go further as you can use less meat and more vegetable. Some of the meat should be on the bone as this makes a better stock, and some of the meat should be quite fatty - to create a 'starry' effect on the surface of the cawl.