A week of cooking duck in Gascony
From fat markets (no, not us the ducks, silly!) to charcuterie meccas, foie gras to smoked magret to cassoulet, this week has been a celebration of good Southwestern cooking, Camont style. This is what...
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Can U Garden? The French Potager part 1.
My secrets to planting a successful French Potager or kitchen canning garden this year? Perfect Spring weather. Dense soil left dormant all winter as chickens did daily slug and poop patrols. Kitchen...
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Jambon de Bayonne en fête! A Basque Country road trip with Kate.
What’s red and green and red and white… and ham all over? The Foire au Jambon in the colorful Basque port of Bayonne. A memory of a Bayonne surfaces from a long ago road trip looking for marine goods...
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My Keeping Kitchen! A is for Asparagus
I’ve always loved the term “a keeping kitchen.” Keeping Kitchen… a place for making food to keep for the winter. an edible way of keeping traditions alive. a gathering then sharing of abundant harvest....
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May Day ~ Mayday ~ M’aider: in a pickle
May Day. All is quiet this early morning but the vast aviary outside my kitchen door. In France, this first seasonal holiday, Labor Day, is the promise of Summer to be. Although it still smacks of...
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le weekends at Camont: the friends sessions
Remember those special times when Bob and George and Willie got together and jammed all night? Or the Duke dropped by with his entourage for a mid-summer masquerade fest? How about when your favorite...
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Thinking about confit de canard. A seasonal affliction.
Winter rolls through Gascony like a fast train: whistling in through December, screeching to a quick stop for January, and then on the rails again by end of February. That’s how I like my winters-...
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Preserving + Pantry = Confit de Foie Gras
A tale of many jars begins and ends in a round robin of preserving and Canning-at-Camont. Last September, we made our first batch of Confit de Canard for the 2012 season. 60 Years ago there was water...
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How to make Duck Confit: Live from the Keeping Kitchen.
Confit Days are some of my favorites Winter days; pots and kettles, jars and terrines start to align like so many stars in a Winter constellation- the Fat Duck. This weekend is the first weekend in the...
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Summer + Red = #Summerrosso
This is “Not Campari”. When my dear friend in Tuscany, Judy Witts Francini proclaimed “Red is the New Black” this summer, it started a hashtag war. Her Italian Campari; my Gascon rosé. Somehow, all of...
View ArticleDog days… too hot to cook.
About the coolest place on this Gascon planet is under the oak trees, in the ‘parc’ between the boule-au-drome and potager, within earshot of the chicken yard (tais-toi, Henri IV, it’s middle of the...
View ArticleYou say Verjuice. I say Verjus! it’s not just sour grapes to me.
It starts with an idea. No, not a culinary idea- a hardware store idea. While shopping for screwdrivers, drill bits, or something equally important at Castorama, I spotted a large shade tarp on sale....
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