It must have been a steep learning curve on both sides. Willow and Tony, used to houses with foundations, didn’t appreciate that their cottage, like many old buildings in the Chalosse, had been chucked up on a sandy slope with no foundations at all. Only the stone mass of the chimney breast stopped the whole structure sliding down the valley. Willow wanted to move the fireplace. Christian mentioned underpinning. Willow said they couldn’t afford it. I was talking to her on the phone when the walls did their house-of-cards trick and I can still remember the scream.
Week by week, mutual trust developed. It was over a year before Robert mentioned that his great-grandfather had built the house. When the first part of the job was done, Marie invited the clients to lunch. It was noted with enthusiasm by all the female Lafargue relatives that Tony bore a striking resemblance to Julio Iglesias.
In time, some friends of Willow and Tony came to visit and decided to buy a substantial maison de maître in a nearby village. Instructions were faxed to the Lafargue office, and translated by Tony, who speaks fluent English, French and Spanish. After three years of this, the friends reappeared and moved in with Willow and Tony for the final six months of snagging and general agony. The wife then picked a fight with her old friend and never spoke to her again. Time passed, and the foreign community developed the notion that the wife was an English aristocrat.
Marie and Robert sided firmly with Willow and Tony. ‘Un pen bourgeoise,’ Marie says of the wife, making clear that this is a courteous understatement of her real views. The house at Berenx was going to need ongoing work, but Lafargue et Fils had enough work for the next two years and blood was thicker than water – because by now, Willow and Tony were part of the family.
Robert is a man of immense respect, which he has earned in a lifetime of fair dealing and wise advice. When people pass him on the street, they say, ‘Bonjour, Maître Lafargue.’ He encouraged my friends to buy their present home, a handsome village house facing the church. It needed saving from the decades of neglect; the ageing owner would soon need residential care and her family needed the money.
Under the wing of their adoptive parents, my friends were inducted into village life. The mayor smiled upon them. They sold their first house to another English family. Now there are six houses in and around the village belonging to non-French owners. Ossages is almost fashionable. The village has a shop and cafe. Somebody has just opened a brocante but the prices are ambitious. All these matters were discussed over the confit. By half-past two, everyone had finished their coffee and went back to work.
A Literary Evening at the Hôtel du Golf
The Hôtel du Golf was built mostly of concrete in the 1970s, and beside the glory that is the rest of Saliés it looks rather plain. Nevertheless, the Club International Salisien had determined that it was the ideal venue for my conférence.
Andrew and Geoff, my new friends from Castagnède, came. Sandy-and-Annie came, and bought champagne because the Irish were indeed going ahead and buying their house. Willow and Tony, newly returned from exterminating the cockroaches in their Spanish villas, came. Annabel, la vice-prèsidente, came with Gerald and her handsome thirtysomething godson. Fiona and Gordon came with Cam and Margot, and Cam crawled over the floor in front of the front row like a commando. Dominique came, and had the new experience of trying to follow a conversation in a foreign language for an hour. Roger was in England and sent his regrets. The Mayor of Orriule was also invited, but couldn’t come; she was a birdlike young woman who dropped in on me one morning at Maison Bergez, apologizing for not calling before and inviting me to the Mother’s Day fete.
The translator, more than ever like a bright-eyed robin, introduced me to the young owner of the excellent local bookshop. I’d seen the French edition of Heartswap in his window the previous year, but he had no recollection of stocking it.
The rest of the audience were club members and seemed, on average, to be British and confused. My party piece contains one splendid joke, at which they laughed uproariously, and it did seem that they were taking in the good stuff about narrative, mythology, the collective unconscious, Joseph Campbell and the legend of the hot springs.
But then it was time for questions. The first was in English, from the lady with the wistful voice. ‘All these bestsellers are written to a formula,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
About half an hour earlier, I’d explained that there was no formula and it was this irritating misconception that had led me to get interested in plot structure in the first place. ‘Er – as I said at the beginning,’ I said, trying not to sound insulting, ‘there is no formula. There is only classical narrative structure, which is capable of infinite interpretation.’ She looked disappointed.
The next question was in French, from the Club President herself, Gracienne, who had turned up in stilettos and a black power suit with a peplum. ‘Why aren’t there any pictures in your books?’ she demanded.
The translator waded in to try to help. We went for something on the lines of words being the medium in which I preferred to express myself. Gracienne looked disappointed.
Annabel’s godson asked: ‘Why was your first novel a bestseller?’ Well, what could I say? Because it was brilliantly written, exquisitely constructed and, most crucially, it was exactly the right book at the right time. ‘Well, why don’t you do it again?’ Because I grew up, along with my readership. Because it’s not in my nature to churn out a blockbuster every two years. Because I’m an artist and we have to move on. He looked disappointed.
Afterwards, we attempted to enjoy a dinner of excruciating slowness, thereby blighting the romance of the hotel’s only guests, two lone salespeople, a man and a woman, who sat sadly at their separate tables. Gerald, I noticed, talked animatedly in French to Gracienne until way past midnight without a hint of tiredness.
Recipe
Confit de Canard
This, the great signature dish of all Gascony, is hideously abused in Britain. I was once silly enough to order a salad with duck confit in the restaurant at a West End fashion emporium. A minute inspection of the limp leaves that arrived some twenty minutes later revealed no meat of any kind. I suppose the chef decided to try it on because most of his clientele ‘eat’ a salad by flicking the leaves about for a while, then mashing a few of them with a fork before pouting resentfully and shoving the plate aside. The tiny minority who actually swallow then rush off to the lavatory to make themselves sick. Easy to put invisible confit on the menu with that kind of customer.
If you are ever actually served duck confit in Britain, it’s usually slimy, pallid, greasy and revolting. To be strictly fair, you can have the same experience in a downmarket auberge anywhere in Gascony, too. In Britain, trying to make your own confit at home is almost as unrewarding – I’ve read recipes by otherwise reputable cookery writers who suggest that the cook in a hurry can just mock up a decent duck leg en confit by tossing it into the deep fryer. Trust me, you can’t.
You can’t make duck, or anything else, en confit in a hurry. It’s a dish that was originally cooked over embers in the corner of an open fire, while the cook and her family got on with their lives nearby. The essence of its deliciousness is that the meat is briefly cured in salt, then its fat is rendered very slowly, then the meat is cooked in the fat so slowly that it practically melts. Pierre Koffmann remembers that his grandmother didn’t consider that the first part of the cooking had been completed successfully until she could pierce the meat with a piece of straw.
This slow cooking, followed by slow cooling and a process of preservation in fat, gives the meat a velvety texture and a deep, mellow flavour. Without giving each phase of the process its due time, the chemical changes that create the texture and flavour will not take place. A piece of duck confit should also be golden and gorgeously crispy on the outside – it’s a close cousin to the classic air-dried duck dishes from China, another great duck-eating nation.
Prepared properly, confit should not be greasy, and should offer t
he maximum of crispiness for the minimum of calories, because the cooking is finished by again heating the pieces of preserved duck slowly in the oven until all the fat has run off. Most modern hobs and ovens can cook confit perfectly well on their lowest settings.
You will need
a duck – the French raise a particular strain of heavy-built Muscovy duck which carries generous deposits of fat. If you’re in Britain, your best bet will probably be a Trelough duck, from English Natural Foods, who will also be able to supply you with . . .
duck fat – even if you’ve picked a duck with plenty of fat under the skin, you probably won’t have enough for the cooking process. See if you can scrounge some more from the butcher, or buy a tin of ready-rendered duck or goose fat, sold quite reasonably in French supermarkets or butchers, and at an exorbitant price in some British delis.
a bay leaf
sea salt flakes
black pepper
a saucepan
a casserole
whatever you’re going to preserve the duck in – glass preserving jars or an earthenware pot
greaseproof paper
time
patience
If you’ve bought your duck from a proper butcher, you can ask him to cut it into pieces for you, leaving you with two breast portions, or magrets, two legs, two wings (minus the tips) and the carcass with its skin and fat. Leave the skin on the pieces to be preserved.
Like the peasant’s pig, every bit of the duck was considered eatable, and so a traditional confit operation would preserve the heart, the gizzard, the feet and the head, as well as the skin of the neck stuffed with sausage meat.
Crush the bay leaf to powder and mix with lots of salt and some finely ground pepper. Sprinkle some of this mixture into the bottom of a casserole, put in the pieces of duck and sprinkle on more salt mixture. Turn the pieces once or twice to make sure they’re salted all over, cover the casserole and leave overnight for the salt to draw out moisture and lightly cure the meat.
Render the fat from the rest of the skin and the carcass. Cut the skin into small pieces and pull out any fat from the body cavity. Either put the skin and fat in an ovenproof dish into a very low oven, or simmer them in water in a saucepan on a very low heat. After about 90 minutes, all the available fat will have run out. Strain this carefully into a container. You will be left with the graisserons, a luxurious advance on pork scratchings. Add any scraps of meat left over, sprinkle with salt and brown in the oven before cooling and keeping for aperitif time.
Take the duck pieces out of the casserole and rinse off the salt mixture under running water. Pat them dry with a cloth. Wash out the casserole, dry it, and pour in the duck fat. Set the casserole over a low heat until the fat is warm and liquid, then add the duck pieces. There should be enough fat to cover them completely. If there isn’t, cook them in instalments using the same fat. Simmer the pieces in the fat for about 3 hours.
Turn off the heat and leave the duck pieces to cool in the fat overnight. In the morning, wash out your containers with boiling water, dry them and put a little salt in the bottom of each to sweeten any juice that runs from the meat. Pick out the pieces and pack them loosely into the jars.
Reheat the fat remaining and strain off and keep the clear layer which will rise to the top, leaving the meat juice and the cloudy fat behind. (These will not keep long, but you can use them to enrich gravy and for general cooking.) Pour the clear fat around the pieces of duck in the jars until they are completely covered. Tap the full jars gently on the worktop to get rid of air bubbles. Leave to cool, making sure that none of the pieces touches the side of the jar (one reason to prefer a glass container).
If you intend to eat the confit within a month, you can now lay a circle of greaseproof paper on top of the fat and put your containers in the fridge. If you want to go the whole nine yards and let your confit mature for up to a year, add the circle of greaseproof paper, seal the jar tightly and sterilize in boiling water for 30 minutes, before cooling and storing.
Traditionally, jars of confit were often sealed with a layer of lard, which is denser and more air-proof than duck fat, covered with a piece of cloth which was tied down tightly and kept in the cool room adjacent to the kitchen, called a chambre obscure because no ray of sun was ever allowed to warm it. If your home is centrally heated, the only sensible place to keep your confit may be the fridge.
When you want to use some pieces of confit, leave the jar in a warm room until the fat is semi-solid and you can withdraw the pieces easily. If you have to speed things up, warm the jar in a saucepan of simmering water. Don’t even think about the microwave.
Let the fat drip off the meat, helped by very careful scraping if you’re in a hurry. Put the pieces on a roasting rack and reheat them in a slow oven for about 40 minutes to an hour. If the skin is not crisp after this, either turn up the heat in the oven or pop them under the grill. If the skin still isn’t crisp, it’s likely that you bought the wrong sort of duck. In this case, the cheat’s way forward would be to sizzle the portions briefly in a pan, in a mixture of duck fat and olive or nut oil.
While you are reheating the duck, you can also brown some cubes of parboiled potatoes in a little duck fat, with some garlic, sliced shallot and thyme or rosemary. Quite often, confit is served with nothing more. However, the Gascons, like the English, see an affinity between duck and green peas, and sometimes serve confit nestled into a dish of peas cooked with baby onions, herbs and cubes of Bayonne ham. A piece of confit is also essential to finish a cassoulet or a garbure
April
Edmond Rostand, author of
Cyrano de Bergerac
The termites hatched out in the middle of the Queen Mother’s funeral. I had two guests with me, two old friends, both called Penny. ‘Tuppence!’ cried Roger joyfully, when I asked him to dinner to meet them.
The Pennies are two of my oldest friends, and have custody of those precious domestic bits I’d have been mad to trust to my tenant. Penny B lives around the corner from me in London, works for the BBC and is looking after my Victorian terracotta urn with its topiary box ball. Penny C lives in Somerset and teaches children with learning difficulties; she and her husband have custody of the Brayfield collection of art deco ceramics.
My landlady’s sofa, by that time, had been tastefully draped in antique linen sheets. We had finished dinner and were sitting by a glowing fire watching the television on which, thanks to la parabole du Sky, we had enjoyed highlights of the proceedings in Westminster Abbey from the first tolling of the bell to the last skirl of the pipes. It was when I got up to make the coffee that I saw dozens of black insects crawling up the back of the sofa.
Termites look like small flying ants. They crawl about with a horrible determination while their wings unfold and dry out, then they fly off and pursue their termitey way of life outdoors, until they lay eggs. When the eggs hatch, the termites can reduce a house to rubble in a couple of years by burrowing under the walls and eating their way up through the woodwork.
Softwood – pine, as in floorboards – is what termites like best, but they won’t turn their noses up at hardwood, like oak Béarns. By the time they are ready to swarm they will have reamed hundreds of channels inside a solid plank, hollowing it out to the extent that the householder will be able to push in the surface with an ordinary kitchen fork.
Year one, the skirting boards. Year two, the level of a light switch. Year three, almost at the ground-floor ceiling. Year four, into the ceiling but, if you’re lucky, they won’t take out a whole oak Béarn. Year five, if the house is still standing, they’re approaching the roof. By year six, the house can be nothing but a heap of stones.
Termites create a peculiar dry smell which a person with sensitized nose can detect as soon as he or she walks through the door. Sandy and Annabel had both been warning me for months that I was in for a nasty surprise in the spring. After watching the termites for thirty seconds, I could see the little beasts were hatching
out of the kitchen door frame.
Fortunately there was a good supply of insecticide in the house. The Pennies were intrepid and a short episode of shrieking and spraying took care of the first infestation.
When we came down in the morning, another few hundred had hatched from the door frame between the sitting room and the hall, and were crawling all over the floor and up the walls. For the rest of the hatching season, I took to getting up early and having a good spray before my guests appeared.
With the termites came a moral dilemma. Gascony is probably the termite capital of France. Its humid climate is just what they like. Officially, termites are considered so deadly that their presence must be notified to the mairie. It’s illegal to rent out an infested house, and if a house is sold, as Sandy-and-Annie had just discovered at a cost of €5,000, the seller has to provide a certificate proving that any possible termites have been exterminated.
I took advice. Possibly, my landlady had been told about the termites by the previous tenant, but was in total denial, terrified of the expense of treating them. Annabel, who had a vision of billions of termites crawling intently up the hill to La Maysou, licking their tiny chops at the sight of her gorgeous Béarnais roof, voted for going straight to the mairie. I preserved a few specimens in a jamjar as evidence and decided to wait until the landlady visited in May, feeling sympathy for a woman on a fixed income faced with a crippling house-repair bill, and not wishing to find myself suddenly homeless either.
Everywhere I went that week, perfect strangers, hearing my English accent, put their hands on my arm in sympathy and said, Ah, you’ve lost your Queen Mother.’ Some of the shops even put a picture of her in their windows. Paris Match, on the other hand, took a few pages out from its normal coverage of starlets and psychopaths to give the Frenchwoman’s view of the courtship of that scheming hussy Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon by the great plonker, the future King George VI, dit Bertie.
Deep France Page 13