A little yellow
F’s mum (G) says that she is not a good cook. She says this, as she draws from the oven a large clear dish, shallow and oval and filled to the brim with potatoes, courgettes, tomatoes and artichoke hearts, each item whole and stuffed with a mixture of forcemeat, herbs de Provence, egg, fresh basil and breadcrumbs. She cooks old fashioned things, she says, things her mother cooked, traditional things, quick things to make, not complicated. She cannot, she says as she sets the dish on the tiled kitchen table, think of what to make. She has, she says, as she tips fresh bread into a wicker basket, unwraps the cheeses on their blue glass plate, sets down two bottles of misty chilled water, unfurls napkins and moves the salt, lost the envy to cook.
We’ve been here nineteen days now. Take off seven days for the time we spent at N’s, discount breakfast and snacks. Count two meals a day, three courses each meal without cheese or dessert. That’s twelve times two times three, some seventy-two meals if my arithmetic is right, and not once have we eaten the same thing twice.
Soft haricot verts clad in mustard sauce. Palm hearts pale and sweet. Eggs mimosa, their hollowed whites filled with crumbed yolk and home made mayonnaise. Steak hache; icy pink inside, with soft poached eggs. Courgette gratin (the smallest are the best says G), buried under crispy cheese which pulls in strands when the knife goes in. Pan fried salmon; coral pink, unmussed by seasoning or oil. Aioli with each measured drop, painstaking ground with garlic and with salt. Spaghetti sauce, with olives (green) and chunks of veal, rosemary flecked, or a bolognaise of ground up beef, all lush with herbs and sweet tomato sauce. Goat’s cheese, warmed, over summer leaves. Rough chopped tomatoes mixed with equal parts of mozzarella, sun and basil leaves, drenched in oil and left to soak Broccoli pureed with more crème fraiche. Asparagus spears, white and fine as grass, with vinaigrette. Tabboleh mixed with melon, anchovies and ham. Egg custards baked with caramelised apples and fresh figs, marron glaces, chocolate coffee creams … the list goes on.
F’s favourite; which I have absolutely no idea at all how to spell, is a particularly finicky thing to put together. Thin steaks of veal are laid out flat, a thick slice of ham is placed on the top of each one and then a mozzarella placed on top of that. It’s then rolled up, sewn together so that it doesn’t fall apart and baked in a thick tomato sauce with gruyere cheese liberally grated over the top. For me; my stay would not be the same without this piled up dish of Farcie, the making of which G has kept a deadly secret, the kitchen door shut tight for the hour it takes to prepare.
Toulon has changed and yet remains the same. One thing I love about this town is its resolute refusal to become candy cote d’azured into a pale copy of Cannes or Nice. Despite the hanging baskets perilously strung between the lurching streets, the jasmine perfume poured into the narrow tunnels of Napoleons wall, or cloud white yachts tethered by thick ropes of cash, it remains a place where people live, not a town where people stay. Destroyers berth like exploded airfix kits in the walled off port, or hover on the horizon ice grey against the hot blue sky, their scale reduced to something we can understand.
The air raid sirens sing in the first Wednesday of every month, falling on the Arab quarters shuttered shops. From the balcony where I stand, burning my tongue on star anise, I can see the seven skyscrapers which hide the sea, the twinkling lights of speeding cars disappear into tunnels whisking traffic through the town. I’ve been through once. They are too long to play the game of hold your breath until you reappear, you dive and dive and bend and then, just at that point when you know you will never reascend, you see the light. Sun sleepy in the orange glare, I did not need my dreams disturbed by this mirrored concrete metaphor.
The port of the Mourillon still holds its faded boats of blue and grey, bobbing against the gentle waves just as they did in Dantes day. Though faded fifties flats crowd the narrow space between sea and land, a standing testament to the paper bags of bribes which caused their build, this place would not be strange to him today. Inside the port; weathered men throw silver boules across the yard, swap shouted spells to cause the fish to catch, leave the scattered runes of engines trailed across the ground, tell stories each one taller than the last, or sit in faded cafes with Tarot cards clutched tight beside their glass of little yellow.
* A little yellow= un petit jaune = 1 Pernod.
October 1st, 2007 at 8:52 am
I bet the poor woman will collapse in a heap after your gone, stressed and exhausted from feeding you gannets something new every day.
October 1st, 2007 at 11:05 am
> favourite
ah! veal cordon bleu. my favourite too. and his mother makes it as a variation similar to my own mother’s; altho mum simply rolled them up dumpling-style rather than cylindrical, so they didn’t need stitching. deeeeeLISH, and even juicier and tastier than the flat style since there’s half as much veal per explosion of melted cheese and ham.
> cloud white yachts tethered by thick ropes of cash
brilliant. beautiful.
> Mourillon
imagine! i knew they had fans but never for a moment expected to discover an aging prog-rock band had had a city named after them.
October 1st, 2007 at 11:06 am
hmm. your comments tool ate the link to the veal cordon bleu how-to:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-veal-cordon-bleu
October 2nd, 2007 at 4:09 am
If I went there do you think she would teach me her recipes?
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Ditto to what CB said. Holy moly.
That, and take me? Please?
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:11 am
Frobi - Gannets? I haven’t heard that expression for years! (Not that we are gannets btw).
I did try to get G to chill out on the cooking but to no avail (admittedly I didn’t try that hard), she said this was just normal daily stuff she’d be making anyway and one of the things she was a little upset about was the fact that she couldn’t think of anything really special to make for us…
It never fails to surprise me just how utterly obsessed by food the French are and how much of a nice change this obsession is. No one seems to be bothered about being a size zero, or watching their weight and yet, in the South of France anyway, you see very few overweight people. Having said that, maybe the fact that sit down meals are still a big deal there, has something to do with it.
Sal. hey I like them! (but only with Fish - who apparently shares the local off licence with us). But it’s not quite a city, the Mourillon is the old port of Toulon and the surrounding winding streets - as immortalised in the Count of Monte Cristo.
And the veal cordon bleu your mum makes does sound very similar to the dish G cooked although they don’t call it that. The word sounds like Borgonveau but I know that’s not at all how they spell it. I do a similar recipe, using steak, streaky bacon and sage and onion (home made sage and onion natch) which I cook in red wine with button mushrooms and shallots (my mum makes the sauce with mushrooms, fresh cream and white wine). I don’t sew them up either, I roll them and seal the edges with a little egg. Gorgeous…I’d give the veal one a try myself but it’s really difficult to get veal in Britain, at least without it costing the earth anyway.
CB. I’m sure she would. Or at least you’d learn them the same way I did, by sitting at the kitchen table just watching as she made them. The thing is that G is an intuitive cook, she doesn’t really have recipes as such… it’s all just what she makes, and then adapts. So when I was learning how to make the courgette gratin she also told me how if you left the courgettes whole and put them longways in a tall dish then it made a courgette cake, how you can use spinach instead of the courgettes or how, if you adda little creme fraiche and parsley to the mix you can do the same thing with carrots. One of the things she did make (to go with the salmon) which I’d never thought of doing, was a broccoli puree (again with creme fraiche) it was gorgeous…
Christine. OK, But it might be a bit cramped in the suitcase. Maybe I should persuade G to open a cookery school…either that or I should get my act together and start a cookery blog as well…
October 7th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
cant read this blog makes me too hungry!
October 9th, 2007 at 9:58 am
i love you.
this was very nearly pornography…call it erotica instead.
never stop blogging.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
First Nations ordered me come here.Now I’ll have to send her a bunch of flowers in thanks.Lovely writing about a lovely place(Though it’s yonks since I was there.)(passes plate up for second helpings…)
October 15th, 2007 at 5:14 am
FN. Thank you. Thank you very very much. I don’t want to stop blogging. I haven’t stopped blogging. The only difference is that I don’t often now post what I blog. Partly because most of it is too long, mostly because most of it is too personal. I used to be able to do Hendrix Cat, slightly funny, slightly self-deprecating etc. This piece only made it up here because F told me I had to post it. Comments like the one you left gives me courage to say press publish and be damned!
Dinahmow - Hello and welcome. So glad you liked it. I’m of the opinion we should send flowers to FN on a regular basis anyway and possibly light candles around the screen when we’re on her page, her writing is constantly impeccable.
October 17th, 2007 at 10:47 am
press and be damned!
October 31st, 2007 at 5:42 pm
no, seriously. press.
November 5th, 2007 at 2:48 am
Post. Now.
We don’t mind long entries. In fact, we love them. (What the hell else do you think I do at work?) And nothing’s too personal, since we’ve never met. So it’s all good.
November 6th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
>From the balcony where I stand, burning my tongue on star anise
anise-licker
November 8th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
How lovelily written. I too hope you’ll post again soon.
November 13th, 2007 at 7:07 am
CB. Well I have met some of you. And I’m related to some others (Although that wouldn’t stop me posting personal stuff) and the rest of you I feel like I know…it all gets complicated. T
Sal. And it took you 2 months to come up with that line? You’re slipping!
BiB. Thank you! I’m really glad you enjoyed it. I’ve jumped over to your site (twice now) and have been so overawed by your writing that I didn’t dare leave a comment! I promise I will when I get my nerve!