While at the Friday morning market at Lourmarin, my daughter in law and I happened upon a cooking demonstation used to try and sell a little device that I have no name for. Maybe it’s a spiraler?

It looks like this

The guy was a real performer really into demonstrating the thingie which is a little metal device with a metal circle that, when inserted into a potato, carrot or other firm vegetable, and then turned, creates a spiraled piece that you can use to decorate a plate with or, as with a potato, fry in a circle.

A carrot circle

The guy was practical doing Shakespeare demonstrating how to use it. I asked him at one point how much it cost but he held up his hand and said I had to wait until he finished telling us all about it. So we stood there while he drilled into a potato and a carrot, cooked up the potato ring, put another carrot into the hole left in a potato and then cut it into circles with white potato on the outside, orange carrot on the inside.

The hallow carrot left behind

Finally, he told us the price-10 euros. My daughter in law said, “That performance is worth 5 euros alone”. So we each bought one. My grandkids were fascinated with it and loved using it on carrots and potatoes.

A carrot spiral

The potato circles fry up really light and crispy but I’m not sure if I want to use a whole potato each time I want to fry up one. You’d need 4 at least for two people and then you are left with that hallow potato. I tried stuffing one with cheese and baking it but I had cheese running out all over the place. I guess I could make a farci type stuffing for it. I’m thinking it was one of those impulse buys but it was fun. I’m having a huge group of people over next month and will be doing a lot of cooking and my daughter in law said I should make carrot circles or radish circles to put on plates but I’m not sure if I will have the time or energy. She is much more into doing things like that than I am. Mostly I think that thingie will sit in a drawer.

Nearby Roussillon is the perched village of Gordes. There is such a stunning view of it as you approach:

There must be nothing but rocks under the soil in this region. Most of the homes and walls are made of the stacked stones found in the area. I love how they make their walls:

All around Provence are little buildings made of stone called Bories. You usually see them in fields, and they were probably used by shepherds. At the base of the hill where Gordes is found, is a whole village of these buildings called Borie Village. It is interesting to see how people lived in them. The place was inhabited until the end of the 1800′s when electricity became available.

Oh, and by the way, no cement was used. Everything was just stacked.

I have family visiting. One of the first places I always take visitors to Provence is Roussillon, the village famous for its one time production of ochre, before they were able to make it synthetically. The hills surrounding the villlage are shades of ochre from dark brown to light yellow.

A view of one of the cliffs outside of Roussillon.

A painted door across from the main street heading up into the village. It was newly painted last year.

There’s a really neat church in the middle of the village.

The window over the mairie.

A view of the ochre toned village from a distance.

How many pictures can I take of liquids? I am doing it all of the time. I guess I like the way light and liquid mix together. As you can see, I drink quite a bit of rosé .

A glass of rosé as dusk decends.

A bottle of Badoit, a bottled water with gas. They say that the bubbles are smaller in this water.

A bottle of olive oil on a table where we ate one night.

Another glass of rosé in the day light. The container with the bottle is one of those plastic bags that I see everywhere now.

When we were in Brittany earlier this year we ate a lot of seafood. One of the meals that stayed in my mind was fish with some sort of simple but fabulous sauce. It took me a little research before I discovered it was the justly famous beurre blanc, a very simple sauce made with a lot of butter.

The French are famous for their sauces and if you take a look at the ingredients you will often find butter as a main ingredient, much as Julie of the Julie/Julia Project blog and book fame found out when she worked her way through Julia Child’s book, Mastering The Art of French Cooking and gained a lot of weight. The movie based on the book is coming out in August, by the way. I can’t wait to see it with Amy Adams playing Julie and Meryl Streep playing Julia Child.

Ever since I’ve lived in France I’ve been trying to learn to cook a few of the famous French dishes. I think this is the first sauce I’ve tried. I may have done hollandaise a long time ago. I found it to be very simple when I finally tried it. I first looked at the recipe in a cookbook of French recipes by two American women. I’ve liked just about every recipe of their’s that I’ve tried but then I thought that I should take a look at Julia’s recipe. I think she would be the expert. Here are both recipes:

Beurre Blanc (Butter Sauce) from The French Recipe Cookbook, now no longer published.

2 shallots, finely chopped
6 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1 Tbsp light cream
3/4 cup unsalted butter cut into 12 pieces
salt and white pepper

Put the shallots and vinegar in a small heavy saucepan. Boil over high heat until the liquid has almost evaporated, leaving only about 1 Tbsp. Stir in the cream. Reduce the heat to medium and add the butter, one piece at a time, whisking constantly until it melts before adding the next. Strain and adjust the seasoning before serving.

Julia’s recipe:
She says it can be used with boiled, baked or broiled fish, shellfish, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower or poached eggs.
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 Tbsp finely minced shallots
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp white pepper
12 ounces chilled butter (3 sticks) cute into 24 pieces.
Use same procedure as with the above recipe.

Be sure to remove the pan from the heat once the butter is all beaten in. Use right away or put pan over barely tepid water so it won’t congeal. I didn’t really measure my butter. I just kept adding pieces and beating it until it was thick and yellow. I also didn’t strain it to get out the shallot pieces. My this stuff was good. I even dumped some on my rice something I’m sure no self respecting French woman would do.

I put my sauce on lightly fried fish.

About a fifteen minute drive from our home is the charming little village of la Tour d’Aigues. The stunning chateau sits in the middle of the village, mostly in ruins, but enough remains that concerts are put on there in the summer in either the courtyard or the side terrace. We went to a couple of concerts that were in the basement in the winter. It’s a moving experience sitting in the chateau looking at the sun setting casting golden light on the old stones and towers with music adding a delightful element to it all.

A section of the front of the chateau.

This is the view on the side terrace. I hadn’t been in this section before.
The concert was by a group from Corsica called A Vuciata. Corsica is an island, part of France, fairly close to Italy and north of Sardina which is Italian. It has a fascinating history and the type of singing that the group did is called polyphonies. The singing is mostly done without music, although they did do pieces with a violin, a flute and a guitar. The polyphonies chanting is very unique with questions as to its origins. It sounds like religious chanting in many ways, sort of Spanish, maybe Arabian. It’s not happy music, by any means, but very melodic and soothing. It has an ancient sound, song as old as rhyme, tune as old as song as a contemporary song says. When the group did the polyphonies, they stood close together and each put a hand to one ear, a very Corsican thing for this type of singing. I think these singing groups are usually men but this one had a woman as well. Once I was with a group of French people and they started singing some Christmas hymns. One man was especially good with a booming, deep bass and Maurice told me that he was from Corsica where there are many good singers. Who knew?

Here’s a photo of them singing with their hands up to their ears, perhaps to hear themselves well? If you would like to hear what they sound like, go to their website:

http://www.avuciata.com/