Dieppe, March 2008

Why don’t we do our weekend shopping in Dieppe? What a nice idea.
We would drive to Newhaven, take the car ferry to Dieppe, eat a lovely dinner, sleep in our accustomed room at the Aguado Hotel, do our shopping, lunch well, and be home by the evening. Perfect.
But, of course, we had not reckoned with the vagaries of this most pleasant crossing of the Channel.
Seldom in the past has the ship left or arrived on time. On occasion we have been re-directed to other ports, The engines have under-performed and we have travelled slowly at sea. The sea has occasionally been too rough for a crossing. And once we were telephoned before departure to be told that they had read the tides incorrectly and there would be a delay.
But off we set. And this time we half expected that there would be some form of trouble as two violent storms had just passed through and there was a strike at Dover – causing many trucks to converge on alternative Channel ports.
So it was no great surprise to be told on arrival at Newhaven that we would be going to Le Havre instead. Apparently, the car loading ramp at Dieppe had failed.
So we arrived in Le Havre on a dark and rainy evening without map or direction. But Dieppe was to be our unalterable destination (we had ordered wine to be collected there) and there was a motorway for much of the way.
Now, either we are very dense, French sign posting is dreadful (especially around road works) or the locals already know the way and, for foreigners, hard luck.
So instead of finding the motorway we found ourselves amid road works and on a country route – a pleasant one, no doubt, on a fine summer’s day with time to enjoy the countryside and coastal scenery.
Any sign posting in the countryside was difficult to see in the dark and rain. And without a good road map (I had torn out a cursory one from a ferry brochure on gardens of note in Normandy) made accurate direction a bit of a lottery.
But late in the evening, after a harrowing 100 kilometres, we arrived in Dieppe – somewhat shattered.
Even the restaurant of our choice was, for some reason, closed.
So we selected a new restaurant to us, one that had plenty of diners still eating there at the late hour. It was Le New Haven.
The meal and wine were exemplary, the pan-fried scallops the largest and tenderest encountered.
At last our projected sojourn of pleasure was taking shape. But it took much of the meal for us to unwind.
And we slept like logs.
Shopping the following day proceeded as planned – French, Spanish, Chilean wine from two supermarkets (the “foreign” wine having somewhat dusty bottles as the French do not think that anyone else can make it properly, so don’t buy it), garlic sausage, top class beef (probably chewy but tasty, being French) smoked chickens, bouillon cubes, Normandy cider, olive oil (mostly from Spain), Neufchâtel and goats’ cheese, Pont l’Evèque and Roquefort, paper handkerchiefs, sliced raw ham, leeks, apples and avocados, trinket presents and I’m sure other things, many unique to France or much cheaper than in England.
After an excellent lunch at the Bistrot du Pollet (I ate calf’s head) we drove (this time the 100 kilometres on the motorway) to Le Havre (one hour in the dry as opposed to three on country roads in the wet).
We had expected to have to wait a long time for our ship’s departure, but a large ferry was shortly due to leave for Portsmouth. So, thanks to a kind lady at LD Lines who arranged for us to transfer, we were on our way, and were at home when our arranged ship was still at sea.
Because of the inconvenience suffered, we were given a free return trip at some time in the future.
I think that we might do our weekend shopping in France again, and expect both pleasure and strife, as we always do on our crossings to Dieppe by ferry from Newhaven.

Chicken- Chicken on Swede

Here is a cheap, simple and peasant-like dish, elevated to dinner party status by a spirited addition. This dish is almost invariably a huge success.

CHICKEN- CHICKEN ON SWEDE

You will need:
Swede (rutabaga)
Stock (optional)
Butter
Pepper and salt
Ouzo, Pernod or another aniseed spirit. Or star aniseed. Or other liqueur or spirit.
Boned chicken thighs (or legs)
Olive oil
Milled pepper

Pare away the outer skin of a swede or two, or more. Cut the flesh into smallish cubes Cover them with water or stock and boil for 20 to 30 minutes - or until soft. If you are using star aniseed instead of an aniseed spirit as the flavouring for the swede, add three stars to the water in which you are boiling the swede. Discard them when the swede has been boiled.
Pour off the cooking water for the start of a later-to-be-enjoyed soup.
Mash the swede with butter, pepper and salt.
Now stir in a measure (say, a dessertspoon) of Ouzo, Pernod, Ricard, or other aniseed spirit. Or you may have imparted enough aniseed taste from the star aniseeds used when boiling the swede.
Cover the bottom of an ovenproof dish with the mashed swede.
Take chicken thighs (better than legs) from which you have extracted the single, central bone (if you have done this earlier, tie together and put the bones in with the swede when you are boiling it to obtain extra flavour). Keep the skin on the thigh pieces and roll them into bundles before arranging them (one large or two small per person) on top of the mashed swede. If boning chicken legs, also discard the sharp bone lying close to the leg bone and use kitchen scissors to trim away the little white ends of tendon. Wrap in their skin, as with thighs.
When the thighs are in position, and just pressed down a little into the mashed swede, dribble or brush a little olive oil over each. Add salt, and give them a good milling of black pepper from the pepper mill.
If it is more convenient, the preparation can be done well before the dish is ready for the oven. Give it about an hour and a half at a medium setting (longer seems to make little difference, so it is an excellent dish might you be late or very late to eat). Anyhow, after the chicken skin has become crisp and golden, the dish will be ready for the table.
That's it. And it's a stunner. Serve on its own, or with baked or mashed potato, or beans, or a salad, or...
Perhaps you do not like the taste of aniseed. Then don’t add any. It will be almost as good. It is also possible to use any spirit or liqueur for this excellent dish. Use your favourite, or any at hand. Grand Marnier, for instance, is excellent.
I have also made this dish with slightly liquid mashed potato instead of swede, and it was excellent. I flavoured the mash with pressed garlic and de-seeded red chillies, finely chopped.
But start with swede, star aniseed and chicken thighs.

*****

Beef - beef and orange

This delicious beef dish is best made when blood oranges are in season. But it is not necessary. It is a very special beef stew – ideal for a cold winter’s evening when served either with mashed potato or baked potatoes.

BEEF – BEEF AND ORANGE

You will need:
Stewing beef, like shin
Onions
Garlic
Oil
Flour
Oranges
Red wine
Stock cube
Pepper and salt
Gravy browning (optional)

In an iron casserole put oil, chopped onions and chopped garlic. Just brown them.
Now add cubes of shin of beef and brown them. Sprinkle some flour over it all and stir.
As this has been going on, take six medium-size oranges (possibly blood oranges) and, using a sharp knife with a thin blade, pare the zest off three of them. Chop this rind into very small pieces. Squeeze all the oranges and place the juice and the chopped skin in a bowl. To this bowl add red wine measuring half the volume of its orange juice contents.
Add this liquid to the casserole. Add pepper and salt, a crumbled stock cube, and a little gravy browning should you want the final result to look more appetising.
Cook the stew on a very low heat for about an hour and a half – or even more. Test the meat to see if it has become tender, and add a little water as it is cooking if you think the sauce is too thick or beginning to catch.
Serve with mashed or baked potato.

Feral Pigeons and Walnuts

I am a bird lover (and I love my wife, too).
On the top floor of our house is a small room that incorporates our spare bed (on which I paint from a kneeling position), my wife’s modern computer, and my own computer, which is really a sophisticated word-processor and unconnected to the net.
We are very cramped in this room, but it is our joint den, and very cosy.
Outside old inward-opening windows (a real curse, needing drainage channels and a tube to a bucket to deal with wind-blown rainwater) is a wide sill.
Above this sill I suspend a contraption for feeding birds with sunflower seeds.
Beside the normal run of blue tits and great tits came feral pigeons that ate both the dropped seeds and even their husks. They made a noise and a mess, were plain greedy, and deterred the other birds from enjoying a share.
So I constructed a frame of 1 ½” x 1 ½” woodwork on which I attached rows of spikes – used to keep pigeons away from the perching places on public buildings and monuments.
After adjustments and filling gaps with yet more spikes, the feral pigeons tried for seed and failed.
But the husks fell, started to fill the frame, and began to congeal and rot.
So I scraped and vacuumed to keep the sill hygienically clean. This was a painfully spiky and nuisance job.
It then occurred to me that if I lifted the gutter side of the frame, rainwater would run beneath it and wash the detritus into the gutter and then away.
I was eating a walnut when thinking of a simple method to raise the woodwork with something rot-proof and sightly that would be impervious to the elements. So I used broken walnut shell to do the job.
Walnut shells seem to be indestructible, and easy on the eye. So the broken shells were replaced with intact half shells.
Now the rainwater washes away the husks from the front of the raised frame, and it looks nice, too.
With this success I have hung a Niger seed dispenser above the sunflower seed one.
So now goldfinches have joined the tit crowd, the sill is clean, and there is neither the sight nor sound of a feral pigeon.

The Latest Painting

Having started to paint (in pastel to be exact) again after a 27 year break for writing (14 books and some 700 articles), I have now amassed, since June 2006, 28 A1s (19 ¾” x 15 ¾”) (50 cm x 40 cm) and countless “working” A4s (11 ½” x 8 ¼”) (29.5 cm x 21 cm).
So although “Jim’s Paintings” – reached through LINKS beside my blog (www.webpageroberts.blogspot.com) – displays examples of my work over a 75 year period, I thought it might be of interest for viewers to see the latest A1 completed.
As I use my own computer solely for writing, it is my wife Margreet, exercising her skills on a more modern machine, who now enables those interested to see the most recent work.
All my paintings are for sale. It is, however, my 1950s and 1960s paintings that are at present popular with both private collectors and sale room buyers of 20th century art
So, the way I look at it is that in around another 50 years time these new works (which I call my second childhood paintings) will be just as popular as the earlier ones are now. Or, it could happen much earlier.

A Cat Fight

It had been an excellent Saturday before Christmas.
The painting on which I had been working made good progress.
With friends coming for mid-day drinks I made tasty “bites” by frying small squares of my home-made bread in olive oil, turning them over, adding slices of goats’ cheese, milled pepper, salt, a pinch of paprika, and then frying the other side after adding a little more oil. The result is a crisp base with slightly melting cheese on the top. The paprika is for looks. They are very popular.
The guests came and went. Then a wine merchant friend appeared for a while.
As he was leaving through the front door, Fusker, a local cat, owned by a TV motoring personality and debunker of wine snobbery, dashed in to the house and ran up the stairs.
He had done this before. And it was fun to find him, catch him and put him out.
At last I had him in a place where I could bend down to pick him up. But on this occasion he suddenly attacked me viciously with teeth and claws. If an animal chooses to pick a fight with me, and on my territory, I fight back, and fight to win.
And this fight was a considerable one, accompanied by those very loud shrieking noises made by cats when fighting at night.
It took a while to subdue the wild creature, before chastising him with words and actions before ejecting him from the door through which he had entered.
We took stock of my wounds.
The gore was mopped up, and disinfectant put on nine cuts, some superficial, some deep - with two deep ones perilously close to veins.
As we waited for the blood to dry, we both thought that perhaps it might be wise for me to seek an anti-tetanus injection. So we took a mini cab to the Accident and Emergency Department of our local Charing Cross Hospital.
After a short wait, a doctor cleaned each of the nine wounds, and sprayed them with iodine from a spray can (how nice to still be using a substance that was put on to our cuts and grazes as children over 80 years ago). He then dressed them with iodine- impregnated gauze plasters. The anti-tetanus injection followed, and a course of antibiotics started. How wonderful is our National Health Service.
We were wise to seek help, learning that cat bites and scratches were more dangerous to the human body than those of dogs. And we were told that at the slightest sign of infection I was to go back to a hospital immediately.
I intend to die in my own time, but to have “MAULED BY A CAT” as my epitaph would be ignominious in the extreme.

Postscript

James May is a friend and neighbour.
Seeing him one day we said that he should Google “Fusker the cat” or read our blog concerning the above confrontation.
What would you do if a cat savaged a friend and neighbour, probably returning to your house with that neighbour’s blood on tooth and claw?
Would you ignore it? Would you dispatch the cat? Would you apologise? Or would you send him a case of wine in recognition of the pain caused, blood let, taxi fares to and from hospital taken into account, and creative and family time wasted?
He chose the first option - to ignore it. Would you do the same?
James is probably right. For, as my Dutch wife, Margreet, says: The English consider animals to be more important than people.

Sardines and Onions

It was in Venice that a mixed seafood hors d'oeuvre contained the following combination. And excellent it is as a dish on its own as an hors d’oeuvre or light main course. And it is one of the nicest ways of serving canned sardines. Later experiments (see below) were also a great success.
With onion and a can of sardines often at hand, this start to a meal is an ideal choice when you are not sure what to have. And it is cheap, simple, and quick to prepare as well.

SARDINES AND ONION

You will need:
Onions
Olive oil
Pepper and salt
Vinegar
Canned sardines

Fry finely chopped onions in plenty of olive oil. Add pepper, salt and just a little vinegar. Put a lid on the pan. When the onions are transparent, cooked, and not yet turning brown, take off the lid and allow any vapour to escape. They are ready. Allow them to become cold.
Serve canned sardines on top of the onions, arranging the decoration of the dish as artistically as you are able. A sprinkling of paprika over all looks nice, as does chopped parsley. A few olives enhance the look of these “fish on an onion sea”.
An alternative way of presenting the canned sardines is to mash them up with chilli sauce. Put a pile of this mixture on top of the onion.
As a test experiment I once added a teaspoon of curry powder to the oil and onion before cooking it. So successful was the result that we now often eat the dish in this form, with whole, canned sardines lying on the pile of curried onion. Now I add the curry powder just before the onions have cooked through.
Once, when I wanted to make this dish and found that I was out of sardines, I used crumbled tuna instead. This turned out to be inspired chance.
Another such fortuitous move was to add the juice of half a lime to the cold onion. The result was sensational.
To make a more substantial dish, you can add potato to the onion, but put a lid on the pan and cook the mixture slowly until the potato is soft.
A pinch of chilli powder or a shake or two of Tabasco added to the onion before cooking it adds a little kick to the overall taste.
I have noticed that when a can of sardines has just been opened, the smell may be on the strong and unpleasant side. So open the can and allow the sardines to “breathe” some time before they are wanted. Then all will be well.
This dish is an absolute winner.

Rashes

I write this for any sufferer in the hope that my experience of rashes, derived from a specific source, might apply to them and be cured.
There are clearly many and varied causes for rash. Thought, and advice from a lay source, cured my particular kind.
For no apparent reason I started to itch and scratch – outside of thighs, at the bend and outside of arms, upper chest, neck and back of scalp.
I applied several over-the-counter creams, which sometimes soothed the skin but did nothing to cure the condition.
I grow a rather fine Aloe Vera plant on my kitchen windowsill. The juice from cutting off a small piece from its fleshy frond/leaves is supposed to cure many an ailment. It certainly had a soothing effect on my rashes but failed to cure the condition. So I took professional medical advice.
A creamy solution and sticky ointment helped – but failed. Another variety of cream did no better.
Was the trouble a dietary one – an allergy, perhaps?
I gave up eating certain foods and drinking certain liquids. There was no change. The itching, rash and rawness continued.
I spoke of the ailment with my sister, June, who had also suffered in much the same way. She recommended a change of soap (a solution for the rashes suffered by a friend’s children), an oily addition to the bath water, and a change of clothes-washing powder or liquid.
About this time I had come to the conclusion that the rashes were occurring where either my clothes rubbed on flesh or where bedclothes and bed linen rubbed on or were pressed against skin.
I asked my wife, Margreet, if by any chance she had changed clothes-washing liquid around the time my rashes had started.
She had. About that time she had added lumps of some substance that advertisers had recommended for making clothes cleaner or whiter (an admission on their part of failure to produce a satisfactory product in the first place).
So I asked her to stop it and, for good measure, change the liquid used from biological to one considered to be more natural. This she did.
The change was almost immediate. The itching became progressively less. The rashes diminished. The raw bits disappeared.
It took a week or two for the afflicted parts to return to normal.
Now I occasionally have a nice scratch, to no ill effect. Don’t we all?

CODGERS

We meet at a hotel in the outskirts of London for a Christmas lunch each year.
We are old. And as we die off, our numbers naturally decline.
But we get resurrected as well. When, soon after the war, some of my fellow Codgers went to lodgings I had in London, they were told by the landlady that I had “gone”. As they knew I had contracted TB at the end of the war, it was presumed that I was dead – there being no cure for TB in those days.
It was not until much later that one of them saw my second BBC 2 Gardeners’ World programme. Word got around that I was alive. So I became a Codger.
The meeting is a reunion of RAF pilots – or rather, those of us who obtained our wings in Oklahoma at the end of the war.
I think that we had all done a little operational flying as part of our training to be pilots. Mine was 20 hours in Coastal Command, flying from Davidstow Moor, in Cornwall, out over the Bay of Biscay looking for baled-out aircrew. We flew Vickers-Armstrong Warwick aircraft, with a specially moulded, wooden lifeboat strapped beneath. These lifesaving boats would be released to descend to the briny, suspended beneath vast parachutes.
One of the great benefits to all who took part in the 1939-1945 war was that men and women from all walks of life were thrown together. Both Lords and paupers found out that our desires and aspirations were all much the same. So it is with Codgers.
None of us, I believe, took up permanent employment in the RAF. One became an airline pilot, one a country vicar, another a Bishop and so on. Many of us had left our schooling to fly. As we were released slowly into a peacetime world we had to decide on a career. It was easier for those with pre-war jobs to return to. For myself, I became a medical student at St Thomas’s Hospital in London.
Skip sixty or more years and there we were, or what’s left of us, eating turkey and Christmas pudding, and drinking wine in each others’ delightful company – Codgers all, with the exception of our seemingly younger and more sprightly wives.
I hear much the same stories each year, mainly about how I crashed an aircraft into small pieces right in front of many of our company, and how, in hospital after it, a drunken orderly amused himself by playing Russian Roulette, spinning the chamber of a revolver, while pointing the weapon at my head. It was an incident that I cannot recall (possibly because of concussion) and, anyhow, would rather not.
But there was something new this time. One of our number told me that I had probably saved his life.
It came about like this. When flying from an auxiliary grass field in wet and freezing conditions in Oklahoma, the controls of my aeroplane (PT 19, Cornell) started to stiffen up. I landed, found my instructor, with his feet up in a warm shed, and reported the matter. “Carry on if you feel like it,” he said.
In the constant quest to accumulate flying hours, I took off from a slushy field into the freezing air again, only, this time, to have the controls go completely solid – iced up. I was too low to jump out with my parachute, so did my best to crash back into the ground as advantageously as possible.
My fellow Codger told me that at the time of my crash he was experiencing exactly the same freezing-up trouble with his aeroplane.
After I had splattered bits of my aircraft about the place, flying was abandoned for the day.
So, unknown to me, I probably, and inadvertently, did save his life.
It was nice to hear, after so many years, that at least some good came from what we might then have called “a wizard prang”.

Dieppe Artists 2007

I often seem to be writing about Dieppe. It is simply because we go there three or four times a year for a break, a change, but mainly to re-stock out shelves with wine, which is so much cheaper than it is in England, where such items of civilised life are so highly taxed.
France, although near, is, to me, still a very foreign place. So all the differences between England and “abroad” are of great interest, be it food, manners, plumbing, the rituals of life, art connections, and all the rest. And to witness change (progress?) is also of great interest, for I have seen many changes since I first went there soon after the war – some 50 years ago.
Take the Pollet, for instance.
The Pollet is a small fishermen’s quarter that takes the form of almost an island between the main import dock (now virtually unused, but once a busy dock for imported tropical fruit) and the very active dock for trawlers.
In years gone by the Pollet was rough. It was appropriate that a cider factory there produced very rough cider. It has gone. But what made this small area such an interesting place were the many smoking chimneys, beneath which, fish, mainly herrings, were cured and smoked over smouldering wooden fish boxes. So the Pollet had its own smell, imparting character to the place.
Perhaps fishwive’s children are still fathered by artists there, as has happened in the past. The fishwives are still to be seen nearby, but selling from their stalls on the quayside near to the centrally placed Information Centre. The fish offered by them is so fresh that plaice may still be alive and flapping on the slab.
Artists of the past found much to portray on the Pollet “island”. From the days of sail and then to steam, the work by sailors and dock workers was hard and poorly paid. But for the artist it was real life – life in the raw. Portrayals by present-day artists seem to be more of picturesque cliffs and yachts, colourful and bland – seaside art.
There were several bars on the Pollet island where fishermen and dock hands could quench their thirst, though the bars with girls offered their services by the then railway station across the harbour. But the girls, I think, were more for the use of visiting sailors than artists and locals.
Some ten years ago there was a sudden change in the fortunes of the Pollet. A smart restaurant opened there, called Bistrot du Pollet. Right away it became crowded with discerning clientele, unknown to eat in the district theretofore.
The restaurant has changed hands, but Florence, the charming waitress has been serving satisfied clients for the last eight of those ten years.
Discerning artists, sculptors and musicians still frequent Dieppe, and the Bistrot in particular. If Sickert took a more physical approach to matters on the Pollet, then, nowadays, Anthony Stevens, singer and songwriter, with Caroline, and Graham Gould of The What, eat at the Bistrot (where you might hear in the background a recording of Anthony Stevens singing with Count Basie, for instance).
One eats well at the Bistrot, where the set lunch may introduce you to three courses of food you might not normally choose. So, without choice, there is an element of pleasant surprise at hand. And, being in the heart of the fishermen’s quarter in a fishing port, whatever aquatic delicacy features on the menu is as fresh as it comes, and sure to please.
The success of Bistrot du Pollet has encouraged the existing cafés around it to upgrade. And now another restaurant/café (o’DkLé) (sic) has opened on the quayside nearby, supplying good food that is at about the halfway mark between standard restaurant/café and Michelin mentioned cuisine.
All this is symptomatic of the rise in Dieppe’s status from a smoky fishing port to the present clean and smart marina town.
Dieppe has two hub centres, joined by the Grande Rue, a pedestrian-only street of smart shoe and fashion shops, interspersed with those selling charcuterie, cheese, bakery, and fruit and vegetables – the last (Royal Fruits) offering wonderful value and freshness. For the Saturday market, the street and those leading from it, are coated with stalls, run by both professionals and farmer amateurs (though no live rabbits, chickens or ducks may be sold any more).
At the “town” end of this street stands the Café des Tribunaux, a large and well-run establishment, catering for customers who like to drink, read and talk outside in warm weather, and indoors when the seaside air is cold and windy. It has always been the place for a drink, and the haunt of artists, locals, and tourists alike. Wilde and Beardsley are reputed to have been clients. In such an old established café it is right that, in France, waiters are employed – and stay. For instance, a waiter there, asked how my sons were doing. He had encountered them as children thirty years beforehand.
The other end of the Grande Rue (the port end) is the jumping-off place for restaurants and cafés. And one of these, the Café Suisse, right on the corner, opposite where once stood the circular fish market (now an almost flat fountain), has always been the favoured venue of painters. Albert Lebourg may have frequented it, and others certainly did, like Camille Pissarro, Walter Sickert, Jacques-Emile Blanche, Eugéne Boudin, Frank Martin and Edward Burra.
I am indebted to the writers of an exhibition catalogue for paintings of Dieppe, held in Brighton’s Museum and Art Gallery in 1992, for the following information on artists of note who have drawn inspiration from Dieppe. Aubrey Beardsley, with his two black beauty spots, thought that Dieppe was “Really quite sweet”. Arthur Symons said of Dieppe that he had enjoyed a most amusing and irresponsible holiday there. Picasso remarked that “Dieppe seems to be most of France”. Bonnington loved the cliffs. Braque, who lived much of his life in Dieppe and Varengeville nearby, carved sculptures out of their chalk. Condor loved the place, saying: “The whole front of the sea is simply magnificent.” Daubigny painted the harbour. Delacroix could hardly bear to tear himself away from the “watery landscape”. John Duncan Fergusson painted a Dieppe firework display with S. J. Peploe in the foreground. Gaugin, who painted four pictures of Dieppe, may have met Whistler there. Harold Gilman painted a picture of Dieppe’s troglodytes, and miserable they looked, too. Charles Ginner depicted the quayside in bright sunlight. Spencer Gore was a friend of Sickert and painted much in Dieppe. Sylvia Gosse was Sickert’s pupil, and loved Dieppe as much as her master. Gerald Kelly painted several views of the port, as did Thérèse Lessore. Miro stayed at Verangeville next door, passing through Dieppe on his way. Ben Nicholson, William’s son, painted a picture of the now lost and lamented Sole Dieppoise Restaurant. William Nicholson spent summer holidays in Dieppe, painting streets and the harbour. Camille Pissarro, described as “sweet and patriarchal” toward the end of his life, liked painting the fish market, harbour and Pollet “in rain, sun and smoke”. His painting of a Dieppe Fair in the Place Nationale, depicts a scene almost identical to a market day now. Renoir favoured the region. Matthew Smith painted several works in Dieppe, favouring the harbour and ships. Turner sketched in the town, painting the magnificent Château d’Arques nearby in 1834. Félix Vollotton painted in Dieppe, and when Bonnard came to visit him in nearby Varengeville, he said he’d bring some paints “in case the contagion infects me”. Whistler stayed with Sickert in Dieppe and painted many pictures there, and lectured as well. Christopher Wood said that: “Dieppe was a complete happiness. I have not known it before”. The fact that these artists found such an affinity to Dieppe, shows how splendid and inspirational the place is, and will continue to be.
The Café Suisse has modernised considerably since the heyday of the previously mentioned painters. And at one time, with new owners, it had red plastic seats, so uncomfortable, that we declined to frequent the place. Now that the seating is better, it is a good venue for lunch (closed for food in the evening).
Dieppe is the great port for scallop (Coquille St Jacques) boats. So, when in season, it is the dish over which to linger and relish. And because this shellfish is so plentiful there, the amount served is on a very generous scale. In fact, after a few dishes of those tasty morsels (often served with potato in a Normandy cream sauce), we had had enough and found ourselves choosing other items from the menu.
The old ferries from Newhaven would sometimes opt out of crossing the Channel when the weather was rough. The two new ferries have efficient stabilisers fitted, and are more manoeuvrable. This means that the crossing (often, in the past, somewhat of a lottery) is now far more reliable – though our latest winter crossing back did rather shake and stir the insides.I often seem to be writing about Dieppe. It is simply because we go there three or four times a year for a break, a change, but mainly to re-stock out shelves with wine, which is so much cheaper than it is in England, where such items of civilised life are so highly taxed.
France, although near, is, to me, still a very foreign place. So all the differences between England and “abroad” are of great interest, be it food, manners, plumbing, the rituals of life, art connections, and all the rest. And to witness change (progress?) is also of great interest, for I have seen many changes since I first went there soon after the war – some 50 years ago.
Take the Pollet, for instance.
The Pollet is a small fishermen’s quarter that takes the form of almost an island between the main import dock (now virtually unused, but once a busy dock for imported tropical fruit) and the very active dock for trawlers.
In years gone by the Pollet was rough. It was appropriate that a cider factory there produced very rough cider. It has gone. But what made this small area such an interesting place were the many smoking chimneys, beneath which, fish, mainly herrings, were cured and smoked over smouldering wooden fish boxes. So the Pollet had its own smell, imparting character to the place.
Perhaps fishwives children are still fathered by artists there, as has happened in the past. The fishwives are still to be seen nearby, but selling from their stalls on the quayside near to the centrally placed Information Centre. The fish offered by them is so fresh that plaice may still be alive and flapping on the slab.
Artists of the past found much to portray on the Pollet “island”. From the days of sail and then to steam, the work by sailors and dock workers was hard and poorly paid. But for the artist it was real life – life in the raw. Portrayals by present-day artists seem to be more of picturesque cliffs and yachts, colourful and bland – seaside art.
There were several bars on the Pollet island where fishermen and dock hands could quench their thirst, though the bars with girls offered their services by the then railway station across the harbour. But the girls, I think, were more for the use of visiting sailors than artists and locals.
Some ten years ago there was a sudden change in the fortunes of the Pollet. A smart restaurant opened there, called Bistrot du Pollet. Right away it became crowded with discerning clientele, unknown to eat in the district theretofore.
The restaurant has changed hands, but Florence, the charming waitress has been serving satisfied clients for the last eight of those ten years.
Discerning artists, sculptors and musicians still frequent Dieppe, and the Bistrot in particular. If Sickert took a more physical approach to matters on the Pollet, then, nowadays, Anthony Stevens, singer and songwriter, with Caroline, and Graham Gould of The What, eat at the Bistrot (where you might hear in the background a recording of Anthony Stevens singing with Count Basie, for instance).
One eats well at the Bistrot, where the set lunch may introduce you to three courses of food you might not normally choose. So, without choice, there is an element of pleasant surprise at hand. And, being in the heart of the fishermen’s quarter in a fishing port, whatever aquatic delicacy features on the menu is as fresh as it comes, and sure to please.
The success of Bistrot du Pollet has encouraged the existing cafés around it to upgrade. And now another restaurant/café (o’DkLé) (sic) has opened on the quayside nearby, supplying good food that is at about the halfway mark between standard restaurant/café and Michelin mentioned cuisine.
All this is symptomatic of the rise in Dieppe’s status from a smoky fishing port to the present clean and smart marina town.
Dieppe has two hub centres, joined by the Grande Rue, a pedestrian-only street of smart shoe and fashion shops, interspersed with those selling charcuterie, cheese, bakery, and fruit and vegetables – the last (Royal Fruits) offering wonderful value and freshness. For the Saturday market, the street and those leading from it, are coated with stalls, run by both professionals and farmer amateurs (though no live rabbits, chickens or ducks may be sold any more).
At the “town” end of this street stands the Café des Tribunaux, a large and well-run establishment, catering for customers who like to drink, read and talk outside in warm weather, and indoors when the seaside air is cold and windy. It has always been the place for a drink, and the haunt of artists, locals, and tourists alike. Wilde and Beardsley are reputed to have been clients. In such an old established café it is right that, in France, waiters are employed – and stay. For instance, a waiter there, asked how my sons were doing. He had encountered them as children thirty years beforehand.
The other end of the Grande Rue (the port end) is the jumping-off place for restaurants and cafés. And one of these, the Café Suisse, right on the corner, opposite where once stood the circular fish market (now an almost flat fountain), has always been the favoured venue of painters. Albert Lebourg may have frequented it, and others certainly did, like Camille Pissarro, Walter Sickert, Jacques-Emile Blanche, Eva Gonzalès (the lady Impressionist), Eugéne Boudin, Frank Martin and Edward Burra. Other artists have certainly enjoyed the pleasures and sights of Dieppe. Names such as Cotman, Turner, Delacroix, Renoir, Degas, Whistler and Matthew Smith are recorded as having stayed there.
The Café Suisse has modernised considerably since the heyday of the previously mentioned artists. And at one time, with new owners, it had red plastic seats, so uncomfortable that we declined to frequent the place. Now that the seating is more comfortable, it is a good venue for lunch (closed for food in the evening).
Dieppe is the great port for scallop (Coquille St Jacques) boats. So, when in season, it is the dish over which to linger and relish. And because this shellfish is so plentiful there, the amount served is on a very generous scale. In fact, after a few dishes of those tasty morsels (often served with potato in a Normandy cream sauce), we had had enough and found ourselves choosing other items from the menu.
The old ferries from Newhaven would sometimes opt out of crossing the Channel when the weather was rough. The two new ferries have efficient stabilisers fitted, and are more manoeuvrable. This means that the crossing (often, in the past, somewhat of a lottery) is now far more reliable – though our latest winter crossing back did rather shake and stir the insides.

A November Bumblebee

It was on an early November day that I looked out of the window to see a large bumblebee (female for sure) stumbling around on the pavement in a distressed condition. She was lethargic, resting for spells to regain strength, and unsure of direction.
So I went out to collect her in a small tumbler, and took her through the house to the garden behind.
Was she dying of old age? Had she been hit and stunned by a passing car? Or was she just winding down from her summer endeavours and looking for a warm spot where she could hibernate for the winter out of the cold and wet?
Bumblebees have always been my friends. I still love them, even having been stung by one as a youth. An uncle, high up in the church, told me that it was perfectly all right to pick up an angry bumblebee that was trying to escape through the window glass at his fine 18th century vicarage. The sting I got in the finger for my coming to its aid was a slight prick that drew just a little blood. Then, slowly, my hand and then arm suffered from a form of paralysis. Fortunately the condition stopped at my shoulder. I still loved bumblebees but it put me off religion for good.
Bumblebees of the size I had recovered are females. As I understand it, they emerge from hibernation in March each year to find a home (usually in a woodpile or mouse hole) to raise a family.
They do far more good at pollinating flowers than the same number of honeybees, as they will fly around in the rain when honeybees wont.
Inside Dutch greenhouses are little nest boxes for bumblebees. These insects are reliable pollinators and much treasured.
Because of my fondness for this delightful creature, I have built 4 potential winter homes for them, one being based on the Dutch design. I have had no luck to date and do not really expect to be successful as bumblebees have minds of their own and seldom do what we want them to do.
So I introduced my new found friend (I love the way they crawl on the hand) to each one of my boxes, putting her head into the holes provided, and giving her a gentle push from behind as encouragement. She did not like any of them.
So I introduced her to the rather inviting holes in the occhielloni (hypocaust design bricks). No luck.
I put her in a corner of the garden where there are dark crannies and dried leaves near to flowerpots. She walked out into the open.
I was pleased when she crawled (very slowly) beneath the shed/summer house. But by the following morning she was out once more. With her aimless sense of direction she might walk in circles and fall into cracks between the flagstones, often ending upside down. But she was able to right herself and climb out.
By now I had noticed deterioration in her condition – increasing slowness, more resting, and possibly diminished size.
So I told her that she could winter in our shed. I put her in a snug corner. She came out immediately and started to climb – anything. So, thinking that she might want to hibernate at altitude, I found a warm, wooden shelf for her, high up. She fell down right away, and made off in the general direction of the door.
I now took a large flowerpot and filled it with dried leaves and sticks – making it look and feel as near to a woodpile as I could. This I laid on its side, wedged between a bucket of soil and a brick wall.
I’m afraid that I rather pushed her into a cavity of my “woodpile” and added some dried leaves after her to block out the light.
She did not come out, nor did I see her anywhere the following day.
Is she well? Is she happy? Is she asleep for the winter? Or is she dead? I really don’t know. But I care – very much.

Chicken and Swede

Here is a cheap, simple and peasant-like dish, elevated to dinner party status by a spirited addition. This dish is almost invariably a huge success.

CHICKEN- CHICKEN ON SWEDE

You will need:
Swede (rutabaga)
Stock (optional)
Butter
Pepper and salt
Ouzo, Pernod or another aniseed spirit. Or star aniseed. Or other liqueur or spirit.
Boned chicken thighs (or legs)
Olive oil
Milled pepper

Pare away the outer skin of a swede or two, or more. Cut the flesh into smallish cubes Cover them with water or stock and boil for 20 to 30 minutes - or until soft. If you are using star aniseed instead of an aniseed spirit, add three stars to the water in which you are boiling the swede. Discard them when the swede has been boiled.
Pour off the cooking water for later-to-be-enjoyed soup.
Mash the swede with butter, pepper and salt.
Now stir in a measure (say, a dessertspoon) of Ouzo, Pernod, Ricard, or other aniseed spirit.
Cover the bottom of an ovenproof dish with the mashed swede.
Take chicken thighs (better than legs) from which you have extracted the single, central bone (if you have done this earlier, put the bones in with the swede when you are boiling it to obtain extra flavour). Keep the skin on the thigh pieces and roll them into bundles before arranging them (one large or two small per person) on top of the mashed swede. If boning chicken legs, also discard the sharp bone lying close to the leg bone and use kitchen scissors to trim away the little white ends of tendon. Wrap in their skin, as with thighs.
When they are in position, dribble or brush a little olive oil over each. Add salt, and give them a good milling of black pepper from the pepper mill.
If it is more convenient, the preparation can be done well before the dish is ready for the oven. Give it about an hour and a half at a medium setting (longer seems to make little difference, so it is an excellent dish might you be late or very late to eat). Anyhow, after the chicken skin has become crisp and golden, the dish will be ready for the table.
That's it. And it's a stunner. Serve on its own, or with baked or mashed potato, or beans, or a salad, or...
Perhaps you do not like the taste of aniseed. It is possible to use any spirit or liqueur for this excellent dish. Use your favourite, or any at hand. Grand Marnier, for instance, is excellent.
I have also made this dish with mashed potato instead of swede, and it was excellent. I flavoured the mash with pressed garlic and de-seeded red chillies finely chopped.

Lille. October 2007

My only contact with Lille had been en route to Paris via Eurostar. The train stops momentarily in a concrete structure that bodes ill.
But sitting next to a civil servant at Lord’s cricket ground, and discussing holidays, he recommended L’Hermitage Gantois hotel in that city as his favourite holiday destination. So, wanting a short break in France, we aimed for it, getting a good deal through “the net” at a very expensive place.
The hotel had been a religious institution and centre of hospitality since the 15th century. It had been turned into a luxury establishment by joining up buildings of religious accommodation around four courtyard gardens. The main, central courtyard, had been glazed over to form a light and airy atrium. In this stood a central bar, surrounded by comfortable pale blue leather armchairs and sofas. To the side of this courtyard was a fully furnished church. So it could be an ideal hotel for those of a religious inclination.
Our spacious room was decorated in new oak panelling in the Louis XV style, with an equally grand Carrara green marble tiled bathroom. But there were strange omissions in design. There were no drawers, and minimal hanging space for clothes. The electrics worked magically by placing the room “key” in a slot just inside the door. But there was only one bedside light, and to turn off the two bright overhead lights, it was necessary to get out of bed and switch them off in the corners of the room. There was no bidet (are they really so out of fashion? How sad.). I often think that in a “no-expense-spared” hotel room that there should be a small pissoir for men near to the lavatory. Men, by their nature and structure are inclined to dribble and splash. So for hygiene’s sake one would be an advantage. And it would save men from having to always raise and lower the lavatory seat. There was no lavatory brush. To turn on the bath water was a job for a contortionist – and a contortionist who would get soaked by the shower in the process. So I eventually had to fill the bath through the spout and shower. The grey marble basin was a pleasure to use and charm to the eye. It took the form of a small cascade rather than the normal bowl. The towels were great, many and thick, with creams and shampooy things exemplary.
Hanging on the oak panelling of the room were some pleasant reproductions of 18th century prints. The one above my side of the comfortable bed was of a mother spanking her naughty child with a bunch of flowers. It was titled: “Punishment of Love”.
We had arrived in time for lunch after an uneventful journey by rail. So, in our usual way, we sought advice on where we might eat. Recommended places were either too grand for lunch, or closed. But in the rue de Pas stood Les 400 Coups. It was full, the waiters busy and efficient, and the menu offering mostly grilled meat. We were fitted in, and noticed that this was a place for trenchermen, and with the food served on trenchers. With a view to possibly returning, I picked a sample dish of all the grilled meats on offer (ribs, lamb, beef, chicken and gammon). Margreet chose two meats. With whole roast potatoes and salad, the helpings were huge and excellent, washed down with Bel Pils beer and equally excellent carafe red wine. We had made a great choice for our first meal in Lille.
As is our wont, we are inclined to overdo our eating on the first day in France. And this was no exception.
After shopping unsuccessfully in Galeries Lafayette and Printemps we took our aperitifs in a café on the large central square (Place G. de Gaulle) – a square rather too large, not particularly interesting architecturally, and with too small a central feature to hold it all together.
As we had noticed already in the shops, the dress for both sexes was drab – blacks browns and greys. To see someone, even wearing a coloured sweater, was cause for joy. And there were a surprising number of the halt and maim.
We decided to eat in our hotel’s red painted and golden vaulted dining room. One dish (the hors d’oeuvre) was exceptional. It was a fricassée of snails, garlic, butter, parsley, cep mushrooms and duck liver – one item having a distinctly smoky flavour. With bread and wine it could have made a splendid meal on its own.
A visit to the Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille was instructive. Its vast halls had so much wall space it was as if they had to purchase the largest works of classical art as possible to hang on them. But there were jewels to be found there. The best was a Brueghel of a snow scene that held interest in the details of what was going on at the time and, if standing back, the entire composition. There was a Bosch and two large Goyas to make the visit memorable.
On leaving those halls of art it was time for a quiet lunch at the Bistrot de Pierrot nearby. Next to us at first was a furniture manufacturer who gave us good advice on what to eat there, choosing from the blackboard menu.
Then in came six large men of our country’s Rugby fraternity, en route to Paris for the World Cup semi-final between England and France. They were in festive mood, of considerable importance in life, and discerning of food, wine, and accommodation. In no time we were on intimate terms, soon to be joined by a French couple whose nephew is the one who smuggles in a live cockerel to England/France matches at Twickenham.
So with much banter and in fine spirits, we conversed, laughed, drank and ate. So our “quiet” meal turned out to be a rather noisy one.
The “crunch” match was to be played in Paris that evening. So we shopped in Lille for an evening’s television picnic of bagette, bressaola and Morbier cheese. For the wine, we chose one that we knew well - Lidl’s excellent South African Pinotage (at under £2).
After drinks in the hotel’s covered atrium, we settled in for a night of picnic and sport.
The television build-up coverage was considerable. Interviews, replays, expectant hosts, the favourites… on it went. And the more it continued in that vein, the more we were conscious of the huge expectation that the French nation had placed on the shoulders of their team. Could the Latin temperament take it?
Then it was “off”. The match was nail-bitingly close. The final whistle was blown, with the underdogs, the English, victorious.
The shouts from our room of “on a gagné” were so loud that we must have rattled the bones of those hermits and nuns who had once resided in the surrounding hospice cells in silence.
The television programme then turned to interviewing the sad, defeated players – ones who had so hugely let their country down. There was only one brief shot of the victorious English. The French were suffering – and made to suffer more in their defeat. They were still the hosts for the Rugby World Cup, but now only as onlooking hosts, no longer participants. One really felt quite sorry for them.
So Sunday came, and our plan was to investigate “Old Lille”. The buildings were ornate with deep carvings and glowing colours – more Dutch/Belgian then French. In fact, the entire old town and its way of life felt more Belgian than French. Margreet pronounced the women’s fashion shops there to be excellent.
In the rue de Monnaie, at the Place du Concert, was a quite splendid and very crushed market, where locals were doing their Sunday and week’s shopping. Cheese, fruit, vegetables, flowers, roasting meats and much more, were there for those willing to force their way around the many stalls.
We drank beer at a roadside pavement café table to watch the drably coloured but well dressed people go about their business.
With many restaurants closed on the Sabbath, where were we to lunch? I asked a flower shop assistant about to display his wares on the pavement. Where did he like to eat in the district? The restaurant recommended was Chez la Vieille, in the rue de Gand. It was closed, but a sign in the window told that their sister restaurant, Au Vieux de la Vieille, in the Place aux Onions nearby, was open on Sundays. So, in this simple and unsophisticated café/restaurant we ate excellently and cheaply. Typical of Flemish food were dishes cooked with Maroilles. What were Maroilles? I thought that they sounded like mushrooms. It turned out to be a cheese, with a very pungent smell of a farmyard and taste to match. I had it in a white sauce surrounding chicken – yes, distinctive.
So, wanting only a token meal that evening, we returned to Au Vieux de la Vieille, where they like to serve food on wooden planks. So we started with two small, hard sausages, served on its plank, to be cut with a sharp knife. Then we shared a dish of a mixed plank, consisting of two cheeses, two thick slices from terrines, salad and chips. It was quite enough, and accompanied by a jug of wine – from the simple list choice of red, white or rosé.
Back at the hotel we watched a television programme of the other Rugby semi-final, with South Africa beating Argentina.
For our last lunch we ate up-market, and very well, on scallops and roe deer chops. But the uniqueness of the restaurant, La Part des Anges, in rue de la Monnaie, was that the wine, chosen from an extensive blackboard list, was only available “by the glass”. We thought this to be an excellent idea.
So our short break in Lille was almost over. Our feelings were that we liked Lille very much in almost every respect. We never had a meal that was less than excellent – and all much to our taste. The shops, especially the fashion boutiques, were top class. But with no “heart” in the form of movement from the activities of river, canals or port, we might go somewhere else next time. But I doubt if we’ll eat as well.

The Asymmetrical Bridge

My son, Pete, is the owner of a 1954, 4’ x 2’ painting, by me, of an asymmetrical bridge over the Basingstoke Canal in Hampshire.
When I was painting landscape in those days I stayed in lodgings and scoured the country to find congenial subjects. Canals had always appealed to me. I can not recall what drew me to this particular bridge. But I set up my easel on the bank of the disused Basingstoke Canal on a day so cold that there was snow on the ground and ice on puddles where once had been deep water for barges – canal boats, incidentally, that were considerably wider than those in the rest of the country.
Pete had for a long time wanted to see the actual bridge. So I looked up its position on the old maps I had used at the time, and then new, only to discover that in the meantime the M3 motorway passed by, either very close to it or even over it. So it was with more hope than expectation that Pete, Margreet and I, with a photograph of the ’54 painting in hand, set out to find our bridge in October 2007.
Leave at junction 5, I told them, cross over the motorway, turn left, pass through a village called Nately Scures and take the first left.
That first left was a narrow country lane, leading to Up Nately.
We crossed over the motorway on a modern bridge and, looking down from it, could see no sign of canal workings. And then, there before us, was a narrowing of the lane with a hump back. We passed over it and looked down on to the canal – still unused and mostly dry, damp, or of stagnant water.
Parking the car in a space near to a red telephone box, we made our way back to the bridge and down to the old towpath via a very slippery set of crumbling steps.
And there it was in front of us – the red brick, asymmetrical bridge.
We walked beneath it to find the actual place where I had set up my easel in 1954, crossing the moist canal on foot and getting rather muddy in the process.
Practically nothing had changed. The tree in the left foreground had spread its branches and increased its girth. The canal was as dry, but now with puddles covered in duckweed instead of ice. And a sort of low sluice, installed presumably to hold back water to form a pond, had gone, manifesting itself as scattered, green lichen encrusted bricks.
I wanted to inspect the brickwork of the bridge. And the more I saw, the crazier the design became apparent.
The insides of the single arch were not straight, but deliberately bowed in shape. The brickwork where the bridge’s construction met the ground, splayed outwards. The apex of the arch on one side of the road was about 4’ to the side from the apex of the other. The parapets on either side of the roadway varied in height, so that at one place it was possible to lean on the brickwork and on another to trip over it. The coping bricks on the parapets were sometimes flat, sometimes rounded. The bricks were of differing colour and not always laid evenly. Because of the shape of the canal cutting, one side of the bridge was made with far more brickwork than the other. In fact, practically nothing about this bridge was as expected. It was asymmetrical and original in almost every aspect. The whole construction was a brilliant flight of fancy. And it was made during the construction of the canal between 1789 and 1794.
Who designed it? Who made it? Why had this part of the canal not been re-opened for recreational purposes like many of the others in the country?
There was a small house nearby, perched high above the cutting and shrouded in greenery. I took our photograph of the painting to show the occupants, who seemed unaware of this delightful construction almost beneath their doorstep. They kindly directed us to a pub a few miles down the road.
At the Fox and Goose, in very pretty Greywell village, we lunched off well-prepared country food and drank excellent beer. I asked the landlady if she knew much about the canal. She produced a short account of its history, written by a local.
Of the design or construction of the bridge there was no information. I like to think of a crowd of navvies who specialised in knocking up bridges out of their heads to suit the local conditions as they went along with their comrades digging out the canal.
The reason why the canal thereabouts has remained for so long untouched and part of nature’s blend in and around it, is that some of it passes through a tunnel 1230 yards long, called the Greywell Tunnel. And in this tunnel are bats – lots of them. It is thought that 10,000 might be wintering there. And bats must be looked after and protected.
What might the future hold for this charming and quite unspoilt small corner of late 18th century rural England? The bridge has stood the test of time, aided by iron ties and repaired brickwork (the original bricks came from a brickworks at Nately Scures a short distance away). A rent in the parapet on one side was disturbing. But as long as the bats continue to favour the Greywell Tunnel, then there is hope – for no change. Should the bridge ever be torn down (God forbid), at least, the image will remain for as long as that 1954 picture lasts.

No Trouble Kneaded Bread

Since writing a recipe for No Need to Knead Bread I have been experimenting with making real, kneaded bread, with the least possible work or trouble. I do not believe that the following recipe could be simpler. And out of it you will obtain three loaves for well below the price of a bought one, and without the cost of a bread-making machine and the electricity needed to make it work. The resultant bread will have a slight feel of cake about it.

NO TROUBLE KNEADED BREAD

You will need:
1 ½ kilo packet of strong white bread flour.
Salt
Turmeric (optional for colour)
Honey
Dried yeast
3 non-stick bread tins.

In a large bowl put the flour with a little salt and a pinch or two of turmeric (for a pleasant colour in the finished bread).
Now, in a half pint measuring beaker, put hot water in which to dissolve a scant teaspoon of honey. Then add a heaped teaspoon of dried yeast. Stir it all together.
Top up the beaker with hot water and place it on top of the flour in the bowl. Scoop up some of the flour to cover the liquid in the beaker.
Place the bowl and beaker in a warm place. An under-floor-heated surface is ideal.
When the flour surface in the beaker is bubbling, and with the yeasty liquid overflowing, stir the entire contents of the beaker into the flour.
You will now have to add two beakers full of hot water, being very careful as you get to the end of the final one, as having stirred in the liquid so far and obtained a slightly dry-to-sticky mass of a ball, it is easy to overdo the liquid and form a gooey mass (which is quite unsuitable).
Now take the ball of dough out of the bowl with your hands, and scrape the bowl with a spatula to add any bits clinging to the sides. Now knead the ball on a flat, dry, clean, unfloured surface. Too firm a dough will result in poor rising and rather solid bread. Too plastic a mixture may overflow the tins when rising. Aim for pleasing elasticity.
The kneading process is done with the balls of your hands pushing into the dough and away from you. As you do it, the dough will become sausage shaped. Fold in the ends to form a rough ball again, and repeat the process. Continue kneading until the ball (which will become drier as you work on it) looks well blended. I do it for about three to four minutes. It takes a little muscle power, but is a most satisfactory process to be involved in.
Form the kneaded dough into a round ball and, with the point of a sharp knife, mark it into three equal sections. Now cut the sections apart and place each in a non-stick bread tin.
Stretch out the rather elastic dough to cover the base of the tin. And then, with the said sharp knife, score across the surface of the dough a few times. Return the tins to the selected warm place.
When the dough has risen to the state when it looks as if it might overflow the three tins, put them into an oven that you have previously heated to its maximum.
Give them half an hour at full heat and another half an hour at medium to low heat.
Tip out the loaves onto a wire mesh rack and allow them to cool.
Eat right away, or freeze them in sealed plastic bags until wanted.

P.S. At the time of stirring in warm water to make the dough, I have been adding olive oil. I think that the loaves have been even better.

Leeks Vinaigrette

It was in Paris, in the Marais district, and chose leeks as the hors d’oeuvre. They were so tender that they melted in the mouth. How was it done? I made a guess, and have since altered my ideas. Here is a pretty good way to serve them.

LEEKS VINAIGRETTE

You will need:
Leeks
Vinaigrette (olive oil, vinegar, dry mustard, salt, pepper and icing sugar)

Buy clean white leeks – ones that will not need a wash to extract soil or dirt – the younger and smaller the better.
Top and tail them and cook them in water in a pressure cooker for 35 minutes – or much longer if using a saucepan. Or you can steam them for 45 minutes.
Retaining the cooking water for soup, lift them out and place them between two plates or serving dishes of the same design and squeeze them until nearly all of the moisture has gone from them. The drained water may also be used for part of a soup.
Place the flattened leeks on serving plates and coat them with a strong vinaigrette.
Decorate with milled pepper, a sprinkling of paprika or a mint or sage leaf or two.
Another possibility is to cut up the leeks after they have been pressed. Put the bits in a serving dish and cover with vinaigrette. Decorate as you please.

Dieppe Retro Rally. France 2007

It had been a seven hour slog of a drive from windy and warm La Rochelle in the south to windy and cooler Dieppe in the north. But by mid-afternoon we were in our pleasant but now tiring hotel, the Aguado, and in a room that was not our usual one on the town side, but one facing the 20 acre green sward with the sea beyond.
On driving into this seaside town we had noticed several old motor cars parked or on the move. And from our room we could see more vintage cars beneath us. It was the weekend of the hundredth anniversary of the Dieppe Retro Rally. Cars made in the very early 1900s to around 1937 were to give a static display, driven around some of Normandy, and then take part in a concours d’élégance – right outside our window.
About 100 cars were taking part. One looked rather like a bedstead with engine bolted on to the front and, immediately fronting the driver amidships, an enormous radiator. There were the grand and powerful-looking racing Bentleys, the elegance of 1920s saloons, and on to baby Austins. Most were noticeable for the excessive noise emanating from a few large cylinders and the rattle of well-worn machinery. Drivers and passengers sat high and exposed.
The male drivers were inclined to be ruddy faced, well-heeled (obviously), well fed, and flat or Sherlock Holmes capped. Their ladies were well wrapped up, and had an excuse to wear long skirts and fancy hats tied down under the chin. The women sat upright and, being ladylike, and appendages of lesser importance than cars to the men, displayed an air of slight reluctance to be there at all.
We were able to inspect the cars, talk to the owners, admire the engines, the just-polished brasswork, and generally be amazed at how far motoring had progressed in such a short time.
After market day, when the Grand Rue had been crammed with vendors of most edible commodities, the street had been turned over to the old crocks. There we could compare makes and see the changing fashions of carriagework over the initial years of motoring. An enormous Avians Voisin saloon limousine, black and chrome, polished and with squared-off roofwork, epitomised an age where the few car owners could be very grand indeed.
Having once owned one of the original MGs, it was of especial interest to me to see if my actual car was there, but it wasn’t. Nor was there one that quite matched it. And our family car of earlier days, a bull nose Morris, was not there either. This car of ours had a dickey seat, and passengers would have to get out on to the road and add pushing power to get the car up steep hills.
It looked fun to dress as an Edwardian dandy or a Le Mans Bentley racing driver, but I well recall having to leave girl friends in the passenger seat while I had to adjust the engine of my MG, and get covered in oil in the process. And outside our hotel room, the crew of a motorised Edwardian barouche, dressed in their finery, had to disembark while seats were lifted out on to the road as the menfolk found the box of tools and attempted to get the thing going. Starting handles were in use, and more than one car driver needed the help of passers by for a push.
When all the rally contestants had lined up their cars on the pedestrian Grand Rue of yellow bricks on edge, a large white mat was placed under each car to catch any dripping oil. And nearly every one had left their oily mark behind when they had moved off.
Then came the concours d’élégance when all cars, drivers and passengers formed up on the grass to be judged as they passed a temporarily-erected stage on which a very vociferous Frenchman explained about, and commented on, the cars and their owners. After two and a half hours of it, many of the considerable throng of spectators had wandered off.
It had been a great occasion for owners, passengers and drivers. And many a spectator must have felt like having an old car and taking part. But old cars are a constant trouble, not to mention expense. And they leak oil.
We ate well in our favourite restaurants, bought garlic in the Saturday market, stacked up the car with wine from three sources, looked for and found an excellent Normandy cider in 1 ½ litre plastic bottles, and came home after a varied and most enjoyable holiday in our ten year old, small, Toyota 4x4, a car of the modern age that has never lost a beat and shows no sign of ever doing so. And it has never, ever, leaked a drop of oil.

La Rochelle. France 2007

Thanks to a newspaper article and Michelin’s Red Guide, we had an idea in advance of where we might stay in La Rochelle.
The drive north-west to the coast was uneventful. When we reached the outskirts of La Rochelle it was a depressing scene that met our eyes. But, as we entered the district of the old port, the signs that La Rochelle was a most civilised place became quite apparent.
One-way narrow streets and lack of street-side parking places made our search for the Hotel Saint Jean d’Acre a difficult one. But we not only found the hotel, but managed to obtain a room with a spectacular view over the two great medieval towers that once guarded the port’s entrance.
The towers were constructed between 1382 and 1390 and, as part of their defensive armoury, a chain was drawn across the narrow strip of water between them.
One tower flew the French flag, the other a white flag on which was a cross, outlined in blue and, in two of its quarters, in red, a man of war in full sail and a pile of cannonballs. Both flags were flying almost horizontally in the strong breeze – as they continued to do throughout our stay, it being the windy Atlantic (Bay of Biscay) coast.
Beneath our window was the Bistro des Pecheurs restaurant, where we ate superb fruits de mer at a modest price. On the spacious pavé between our hotel and the water wandered crowds of people in the sunshine. “Wander” was the operative word, for everyone, all over town, wandered - at a slow and gentle pace.
On the water in the port and between the two towers, boats of every description went busily about their business. There were tour boats that docked nearby and plied their trade between the inner, old, port to just outside the towers, to an enormous marina of large yachts, and to the islands off the coast, including the fashionable Isle de Ré. There were small fishing boats (though no commercial ones), yachts of every size, with some under sail, speedboats, dinghies, rubber boats, gin palaces and all. The skies were blue, the sun hot, and the strong wind balmy. We found that La Rochelle was a very pleasant place to be in.
Around the crenellated battlements of the towers, tourists held their cameras out at arm’s length to photograph those beneath. The background noise was a hum of conversation and the occasional ship’s hooter. Children climbed around an enormous iron anchor on the cobbled paving to which cyclists locked their machines. The young swung on an old chain, strung between low pillars. It could have been the original chain that was once stretched across to repel invaders as, at low tide, there was no sign of one on the seabed between the towers. The scene was one of holiday pleasure.
Well into and on the quayside of the old port stood a lighthouse, striped in reddy brown. Its bright white light flashed every three seconds (except at dusk when it stopped for a period). And inland still, stood a much taller lighthouse, a green one, the light on which flashed every second. These lighthouses looked quite out of place inland – but not from the sea, where they became guide lights for ships navigating the deep channel.
Very near to our hotel was a most excellent restaurant, called L’aunis. Here we ate very well and in pleasant surroundings, drinking the new season’s red Chinon wine from the Loire, red from the Vendée to the north of us, and Chardonnay from the Isle de Ré just nearby. It is a pleasure in France to try wines that seldom reach England.
Street entertainments abounded. There was the large, gaudily-painted, two-storied carousel (small children high on the upper, inner layer) near to the ornate and rather grand Café de la Paix in the Place Verdun. A pavement artist worked on too large a scale and not very well. A Balkan group, dressed in peasant clothes sang tuneful peasant songs (a male passer by danced a jig to their music, much to the disgust of his family who walked on, pretending to disown him). There were performing dogs, animals that looked bored and unhappy with their lot. A hurdy-gurdy man had a gypsy-looking woman singer with him. A juggler/part conjurer kept a selection of transparent balls in the air, but dropped some. A Mexican-looking trio sang to accordion music in front of those eating at tables outside restaurants. A silver-painted, military-looking human statue broke off his pose to talk to and be photographed with children. The act we liked was a potter who spun the wheel with his foot, turning out candlesticks, cups and saucers, jugs and much else, all to great applause from those who had stopped to watch. He then knocked down his creations to form the original lump of clay from which they had been made. From our room we could hear the applause for his skills continue well into the night. As we turned in around 11 o’clock the scene outside was as animated as it had been all day. But when I looked out at three in the morning there was not a soul to be seen. The pavé was spotless, chairs and tables had been stacked away, awnings and sun umbrellas had been furled, and all the empty bottles from restaurants had been put into large green crates for collection – presumably for recycling. By 8 am there was still no activity or anyone about outside, and there was little movement by 10 am. Activity stopped late in the evening and started late in the morning
Although French menus are fairly predictable, there are always parts that surprise. We ate at the fashionable Chez Fred to eat mixed fish that had been cooked dry and on a very hot surface. The result was delicately cooked fish with crisp, almost burnt edges where the fillets had curled and touched the hotplate.
But Nouvelle Cuisine has spread its net far and wide. A simple and excellent item of food might be surrounded by a sea of sweet sauce, or be displayed on the plate with a few slices of colourful raw vegetable. Often there will be a cold ratatouille mix, placed artistically somewhere on the plate. A sauce of a completely different taste might be dragged around for decoration. Then the entire plate might have some coloured powder sprinkled all over it. One item in Margreet’s mixed salad was offered as duck’s liver. It turned out to be gizzards – and was tender and good to eat. With Margreet not particularly liking offal, I told her later about what she had been eating. Snails that we ate in a restaurant had been cooked in the usual way, with butter, garlic and parsley. But these were better than most. A little acidity had been added – either lemon juice or vinegar.
Beyond a medieval lighthouse, that looked more like a cathedral from an ancient illuminated manuscript, we watched children being taught to sail. They were towed out into the harbour in their little single sail boats to learn the art of seamanship. When beaching their craft back at the sailing school’s hard, they were wet and cold, but very happy about it. No wonder the French are so keen on sailing and excel at ocean racing.
La Rochelle had turned out to be a handsome town, with arcaded pavements where shopkeepers plied their, mostly fashionable, trade. It was a town that had the feel of Paris about it, with its fine shopping, excellent market, grand and mature buildings, and fine restaurants. And more than Paris, there was the port with all the activity that went with it. We liked it so much that we extended our stay before leaving to drive north, in a day, to our home-town in France, Dieppe.

A Saint Emilion Wedding. France 2007

Map reading in France has its problems. Why, when we were quite clearly on a map-numbered road, should it have another number on its road signs?
It was explained to me that French roads have an EU number, a French national number and a local number. So that explained why I was having difficulty in guiding us around the country and countryside.
Early on a late August morning we left our Trôo cave behind and made our way south to the Bordeaux region.
From our host’s verbal description, we found the Skipwith farmhouse Gite south of Saint-Emilion in Entre-Deux-Mers (Le Cros, route de Sallebruneau, 33760, Frontenac) as, at long last, the weather was beginning to clear.
To be with a half English and half French family with bride-to-be and relations from both sides present was, in its grand scale simplicity, much like a relaxed week end party in England.
We admired the regimented rows of hedge-trimmed vines all around us and as far as the eye could see. We gathered pink greengages for a lunchtime tarte (delicious) and jam making. We drank cool local white wine and ate a light lunch beneath a tent-like sunshade.
After lunch we followed our host’s car through lanes along an impossibly circuitous route to where we were to stay – this time in a large pigsty, beautifully converted and without a trace of its former occupants. It had a shower outside and a separate lavatory that worked by pressing an electric button, whereupon the bowl filled with water, and then, with a downward spinning motion, sucked the contents to its destination with a mighty roar – not unlike those employed in ships.
The owners of our accommodation were a wine merchant, and his wife who was an elegant artist/carpenter, designing and making anything from fencing to wardrobes – mostly from seasoned oak. Her workshops took up a large part of their grand country farmhouse, a building that glowed in the southern sunshine with its yellow stone walls and pink tiled roof.
A generously-filled well supplied water for a swimming pool, set among trees and lawns. The overall theme was rustic/modern in a vineyard setting, and in such silence that one could hear only a morning cockerel, daytime woodpecker and distant chainsaw….and the lavatory. A friendly, mottled housedog patrolled his territory with much barking should anyone pass by who was unknown to him.
After exploring the nearest town, Sauveterre, with its medieval fortifications and gateways, we ate our only indifferent meal in France. We were partly accompanied during this meal by a band, whose members set up their equipment close to the tables before starting songs, but never finishing them.
And so we came to the wedding day – the very reason for our trip to France.
Our hostess at the farmhouse where we lodged, near Mauriac, gave us breakfast of coffee, a loaf straight from the oven, a slab of butter, and home-made jams. Then we changed into our finery and set off to explore Saint-Emilion (too full of tourists), some 50 kilometres away.
Beyond, in Montagne Saint-Emilion, we located the wedding church after enquiring directions from a lovely old peasant – a character straight out of some French Art film. We then found the very grand Château Fombrauge where the reception was to be held. Having noticed a pleasant-looking restaurant next to the church, we ate an excellent lunch there. Our red wine was the astoundingly good Château Maison Neuve 2004.
The service, in the mellow, brick-vaulted church, was pretty well inaudible because we were on seats at the rear among several fractious children.
Then pushing two guests into the back of our car – rather like pressing them down in a jack-in-a-box, we reached the Château, to be given Ayala Champagne, sipped to the music of a Spanish guitarist, and overlooking the panorama of the Château’s vineyards.
Then, after the speeches, punctuated by thunder overhead and a few large raindrops, some 150 of us retired to the marquee attached to the Château for a fine meal of lobster, quail and sweets - all accompanied by Château Tour Grand Faurie 1998 red wine, a white, and a sweet 2003 Château Tillac, Monbazillac.
Inside the Château, and seen through a glass door, rested row upon row of new wood casks in which wine was maturing. The floor of this almost unreal sight was unstained by a drop of the precious liquid.
Being my turn to drive, I was only able to taste the delicious and well-chosen wines. With father of the bride, Charlie Skipwith, a South West France specialist wine merchant, it was expected and confirmed that we should drink the best.
Throughout, the very pretty bride, Georgina, and handsome groom, Simon, made a glowing focus to all events.
A three piece band of jolly fellows provided pleasant evening music, and when, at my request, they played one of their own compositions (“My Heart has a Mind of its Own”), the guests stood to cheer them.
After fireworks, seen from the terrace and launched from the vines (I trust the spent gunpowder did not settle on the grapes still hanging heavy on the vines), we drove back to our lodgings in complete darkness, getting somewhat lost in unmarked lanes around the Saint-Emilion vineyards. It was a 50 km test of eyesight, nerve and endurance as we conducted the car through the circuitous roads of Entre-Deux-Mers. It must have been the Monbazillac on Margreet’s breath that scented the night air so pleasantly as we drove through the foreign night.
Guests returned the following day to Château Fombrauge for cold collation and what remained of the fine wine, which, no longer being the driver, I was able to enjoy to the full,
The wine merchant owner of our lodgings came to drink an aperitif with us as we sat outside our room that evening. We shared wines. His preference was for Château Ducla as his daily wine and Premius (available at Auchan, though we couldn’t find it in Dieppe) as his other preference. As the distributor of Yvon Mau wines in France, he should know a thing or two about what to choose.
Then, after enjoying the whole occasion of the English/French wedding so much, we were on our way to La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast to the north.

Troglodytes. France 2007

I have been caving once before. It was in Bulgaria. The cave was the size of a cathedral, with its climbing, descending, and crawling tracks slippery and dangerous.
The only pleasure that I found from this minor expedition was getting out of the cave in one piece to breathe real fresh air.
I suppose that there is pleasure to be gained from mucking about in caves, but it is not my idea of fun.
So why were Margreet and I about to spend two nights in a cave, with me being such an anti-troglodyte?
One reason was recommendation, the other that it was in the Loire, in France, and about half way between Dieppe and Frontenac, in Entre Deux Mers where our hosts lived, and Saint-Emilion where wedding celebrations were about to take place.
Up at 3.10 am to pack the car, we were away from the port of New Haven on England’s south coast by 5.15 am.
In the lea of chalk cliffs the sea was fairly calm as we set forth across the Channel toward Dieppe.
Out at sea we encountered large, white-topped rollers, coming from the direction of the North Sea. So the ship rose on the crests and sank into the troughs, corkscrewing just across them as we went. There was a crash and a shudder as we hit the wake of merchantmen crossing our bow.
In a cabin we were able to lie down and be rocked by the motion of the ship over waves. And, without the incessant Tannoy messages delivered to the public areas, we were able to enjoy the isolated and comparatively silent experience in spasmodic sleep.
It was wet in France as we slogged away, mostly on motorways, southwards to Rouen (where we got a bit lost), and then past Alençon and Le Mans.
Then, what looked on the map as a nice cross country drive through Loire countryside, turned out to be a landscape of rather ordinary forests and farmland.
To find our cave when we reached Trôo (pronounced Trow) was a matter of several askings and misunderstandings. But after conducting our car up a narrow cliffside track, which started with a No Entry sign, and past cliffside houses and steps to caves, we were greeted at the roadside by the owners of our Gite.
Our cave, with access steps cut into the sandstone cliff face, had its own front door, window and small balcony. The inside was impressive, with its multi-vaulted ceiling and undulating walls apparently hewn by ancients with deer antlers.
The cave however, had been re-modelled and modernised with stove, fireplace, crucifixed alcove, microwave, bath, shower and WC.
I could quite understand cave-dwelling, had I been dressed in bearskin, cudgel in hand, and dragging Margreet inside, safe from a dinosaur who might then peer through the entrance to see what was worth eating. But why go to so much trouble and expense, in a more comfortable age, to live inside a rather damp and dark cave? (Disney might see a theme park in it.)
Friends, from New Delhi, who had rented a nearby cave with reinforced concrete roof, had more comfort, and even television. So we drank together there before walking down the cliffside track to eat a meal off square plates (square plates now seem to go with Nouvelle, or Nouvellish Cuisine). The local Vin Gris had charm and the Loire’s red Chinon even more so.
As “trogs” do, Margreet and I climbed steps and goat tracks to see the cavities of others and the fine and simple Norman-arched church and fortifications at the summit above. In the church were proper wooden seats for the worthies and tiny protuberances on which the choristers could rest their bottoms.
At a rather charming restaurant hard by the church we drank local cider, and decided to return for lunch. The blackboards of dishes on offer looked inviting.
We were the first to arrive at the restaurant. No one appeared to greet us or offer a menu, but there were noises coming from the kitchen behind. Madame was there, cooking what appeared to be the only main dish available – the plat du jour of guineafowl.
She had only cooked four portions and a table for three had been booked in the restaurant.
We soon realised that we were not only the guests but the waiters as well, as Madame was rather large and too lame to do more than cook and hobble. The guineafowl was delicious. The other three had to share what remained in the pot. A chocolate cake, made by the Patronne, was quite superb. Lame and alone, she made up for the deficiencies by being a great cook. Because what she had prepared had now been ordered, people were turned away. We learned later that those who ate there in he evening had to stack away the chairs and tables when they had finished their meal. The experience was one of charm, gastronomic excellence, and friendly eccentricity.
Beside the rather damp atmosphere of our cave, there were particular smells attached to it. There was the pleasant one of wood smoke from past fires, the other was something more obscure and not very nice.
It was not until we were sitting outside on our cliff-shelf balcony that the origin of the other smell was revealed. In its own little cave, accessible only from our balcony, lived a black rabbit. Kept in by a metal grille, dark in its cave and of dark fur, the creature was visible only by its blinking eyes. Perhaps caves of the long past were as smelly as this rabbit’s.
In the evening our kind host and hostess came with local Vin Gris and bites, which we enjoyed, squeezed together on the balcony. After they had left we ate our picnic half way between the rabbit’s den and an alcove for its food, where mosquitoes lurked.
I must be in a minority with my views of modern trogloditism, for the visitors’ book was full of enthusiastic praise for the uniqueness of the experience – and unique it was.
A friendly dog, who liked to roam our accommodation and bit its fur with venom, scratching mightily, may, or may not, have been the provider of fleas that then befriended us.
We were now off to take part in the objective of our journey, a lovely wedding in Montagne Saint-Emilion.