Tomatoes Provençal

I've been watching videos of French Food at Home and reminiscing about my trip to France several years ago. We ate many memorable meals in Provence. So, while the babies were napping, I made this classic — tomatoes Provençal. The tomatoes are cooked for so long they are almost candied and full of herbs, garlic and breadcrumbs.

Tomatoes Provençal

3 ripe medium tomatoes
sea salt
cracked black pepper
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
4 Tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
1 Tbsp dried herbes de Provence
4 Tbsp breadcrumbs (I use Panko)
3 Tbsp olive oil, plus more for drizzling

Preheat the oven to 400.

Core the top of each tomato as shallowly as possible. Cut in half crosswise. Gently squeeze each half over the sink and use your fingers to remove the seeds and pulp from each cavity. (Discard the seeds and pulp.) Place the tomatoes cut side up in a square baking pan (mine is 10" by 10"). Sprinkle the tops with salt and pepper.

Assemble the dressing ingredients in a bowl — garlic, shallot, herbes de Provence, parsley and breadcrumbs — and mix together. Mix in two or three tablespoons of olive oil to bind the dressing together.

Stuff each tomato with the dressing, pressing some into each cavity, until you have a small mound on top. Put each tomato back in the baking pan. Drizzle the tomato tops with more olive oil.

Turn the heat down to 375 once the tomatoes are in the oven. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the tops are browned and the tomatoes are tender and caramelized.

Salade niçoise

The other day I watched an episode of Poirot where he ate a salade niçoise to "nourish the little grey cells" (The Tragedy at Marsden Manor for all you fans). I had to make it! I assembled it on Saturday morning and we ate it for lunch.

It saves time if you already have hard-boiled eggs and cold cooked potatoes in the fridge. I tossed almost every ingredient separately in some of the vinaigrette before composing the salad.

Salade niçoise is a composed salad, meaning ingredients are placed beside each other instead of tossed. I think it's a more interesting way of eating because it turns the salad into a more tapas-like experience. Composed salads have also been the subject of some very engaging culinary writing. I found this article in The Guardian and this one in the NY Times. 

It might be hard to tell by the picture but it was a very big salad and we surprised ourselves by eating the whole thing in one sitting!

Salade niçoise
serves two

two handfuls green beans, topped and tailed
10-12 cold cooked little red potatoes, halved
two tomatoes
half a red onion, sliced
two eggs
handful quartered marinated artichoke hearts
handful marinated Kalamata olives
four anchovies from a jar
flaked tuna from a jar
one Boston lettuce head, leaves lightly torn

vinaigrette
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
a pinch of Dijon mustard
one clove garlic, minced
a shake of cracked black pepper
100 ml olive oil

Mix the vinaigrette and set aside. Fill a big bowl with ice and water.

Blanche the green beans for two minutes in boiling water until bright green. Remove from the boiling water with a sieve spoon and put in the ice water to stop the cooking process. Set the beans aside.

Using the same pot of boiling water, skin the tomatoes. Cut a small "X" in the skin at each end. Add the tomatoes to the boiling water for 30 seconds. Then put them in the bowl of ice water for a minute or two. Peel away the skins. Cut the tomatoes in quarters. Set aside.

Hard boil the eggs. Peel and halve. Set aside.

Wash the lettuce and dry the leaves, tearing the big ones in half.

Put some vinaigrette in a bowl. Add the salad leaves and lightly toss. Place the leaves in the bottom of a shallow serving dish. Toss the beans, then the potatoes, and lastly the tomatoes and onions together in the vinaigrette before placing each ingredient on top of the lettuce. Finally, arrange the remaining ingredients on the leaves: tuna, olives, artichokes, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies. Serve with crusty bread.

French onion soup

From the archives ... but pic is new!

I've blogged about French onion soup before (here's the recipe) but just had to mention it again. I make this soup often and always take lots of pictures because it's so photogenic. Here's a shot with a tempting spoonful just ready for a lucky someone (in this case S) to take a bite.

I make this soup in the slow cooker and we get about three meals each. Lately I've been making extra croûtes with the Gruyère so that we can keep dipping once the top layer is gone.

This soup is so delicious and always reminds me of our culinary vacation in France, where we learned Provençal cooking and which I documented on this blog over several posts in the fall of 2008. I did my very best to eat French onion soup every day, at least during the few days that we were in Paris where it seems to be on every menu. To this day, we still reminisce about our trip to France over French-onion-soup days ♥

Tartines with ratatouille and sardines

Visit beFOODled on Flickr.

Oh, ratatouille, how I have missed thee.

I love ratatouille because it reminds me of summer, which I am yearning for right now, but it's also a recipe that demands a lot of work. I've been buying the ingredients every week for a month now, and then feeling too overwhelmed to make it. I finally made it on the weekend, the first time in at least a year.

I basically followed my old recipe (Ode to ratatouille), but with some differences. I used my indoor grill to grill the vegetables. I tossed each vegetable in olive oil and a different dried herb — the zucchini with oregano, the peppers with basil, and the onions and eggplant with herbes de Provençe — and grilled them in batches.

The grill marks were lovely and brown and stripey, just like from a real barbecue. S was pretty impressed because he has had no luck yet getting the appliance to make the same fine grill marks on fish.

While veggies grilled, I sauteed some ingredients in a big deep frying pan for the ratatouille base: diced onion, diced sundried tomato, minced garlic, two big tablespoons of tomato paste and lots of olive oil. As the vegetables came off the grill I added them to this pan and mixed everything up as it cooked. An hour and a half later, I had a lovely ratatouille. It gets better the day after you cook it, and better still the day after that!

My favourite way with ratatouille these days is to have it on tartines, a French dish that is basically little baguette toasts topped with a spread. I first heard of tartines after watching Laura Calder make them on the "Cooking for One" episode of French Food at Home on Food Network Canada. She made three different tartines, one with olive tapenade and tomatoes, another with a fava bean spread and a third with a mushroom saute. I've been making two lately, one with ratatouille and the other with bristling sardines.

Does anyone else have a favourite way of making tartines? I would love to collect some more ideas!

Le Paradis, a French restaurant in Toronto

Le Paradis, a French restaurant in Toronto, on Flickr by beFOODled.

A funny coincidence happened when S and I were in Toronto and looking for a place for lunch. He had downloaded a random restaurant-finder app on his iPhone and it recommended a French restaurant called Le Paradis. We found it, and it looked charming with deliciousness on the menu, but it was closed :(

Later in the day, I got a call from Peanut Butter and Jelly, my Ottawa friends who are former Torontonians and who have an unerring instinct for quality food on a student budget. As soon as they found out we were in Toronto, they recommended Le Paradis without knowing that we had already tried to go there! It was a sign that we should try again.

Try again we did, this time with success, for supper. We ended up on the tiny patio, a humble and deceptive front for a huge multi-level restaurant inside. We sat next to a francophone family that looked like they had stepped out of a Parisian magazine. They were reason number two that I knew we had made a good choice (PB and J being the first). And as soon as I saw the table d'hôte on the menu for $20, I had my third.

The table d'hôte, which S ordered, was a fantastic three-course meal (taste-tested by me at every interval ;) for $20 including coffee or tea. The selection changes every day, but that night it started with mixed greens with cruditées, braised duck leg served with sauerkraut (in the foreground in the photo), and blueberry lemon custard.

I got the poulet à la Basquaise, braised chicken with tomatoes, onion, garlic, red pepper, black olives and bacon (also pictured above) for $15. It was very good and had a lot of my favourite ingredients, although I found the chicken a bit dry and the rest with a bit too much oil.

The menu changes every day. There were many different things I would like to try when I go back. The table d'hôte is, I think, more my size: the portions are smaller that the à la carte entrées, which include no less than four different kinds of fish every day for between $15 and $17. Le Paradis also offers a daily choice of fruit tart, and assorted French cheeses on their dessert menu — I tried the small one and for $8, you get several kinds of cheese and they come with condiments and crackers.

It was lovely and I would like to go again and recommend it to anyone who finds themselves hungry in Toronto.

Le Paradis
166 Bedford Rd.
Toronto, ON Canada
416.921.0995


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Charcuterie from patio to balcony

Murray Street's charcuterie on Flickr by beFOODled.


beFOODled's charcuterie on Flickr by beFOODled.

S and I recently discovered Murray Street, a restaurant in the Byward Market that serves upscale Canadian comfort food. Since the Ottawa Foodies have already done a great job of reviewing it, I'm going to tell you about how a recent visit there reaquainted me with a timeless French classic, the cheese and charcuterie sharing plate.

The chefs at Murray Street buy artisanal cheeses and make their own pâtés and terrines using locally sourced meats. For $30, you can order a combination of either three meats and two cheeses, or the reverse. The charcuterie, pictured above, comes with crostini in a cute burlap bag and three sauces: one with plumped-up raisins, an apple jelly, and a cranberry and orange compote. With two glasses of wine, the cost is closer to $42 plus tax and tip.

We ordered three meats — keilbassa from the Elk Ranch, a thick slice of country terrine with smoked pork tenderloin, and a pork rillette (in the photo, it's the white spread in the jar and the best value because you get quite a bit). My favourites were definitely the cheeses because they had the strongest and most robust flavours. We chose a sharp seven-year-old Pine River cheddar (delicious with the apple jelly) and the Fritz Kaiser Le Douanier, an ash-coated cheese from Quebec.

The Murray Street charcuterie is nice for a special occasion when one is feeling decadent (and solvent), but on Sunday, S and I made our own version at home for less than one-third of the price.

Our Sunday balcony charcuterie, also pictured above, included genoa salami and spicy soppresata, an Italian dry-cured salami. We also had sliced baguette, olive tapenade, bristling sardines and a small plate of olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping bread. Not forgetting two cheeses — gouda, my favourite Dutch cheese, and Rouy, a mild-tasting, orange, soft surface-ripened cheese from Bourgogne, France, which comes in an orange cardboard box (and was on sale for $3.99 at La Bottega!).

I love eating this way because of the tapas-like variety of choice, and the big, strong flavours. It also always brings back fond memories of similar meals — of lunch with my aunt and uncle and then-little cousins in Edmonton, and with S's parents in the Rockies, crowded around the tiny convertible table in their Westfalia camping van. And most recently, of France, when S and I made this for dinner one night in our room with cheeses bought from the sweet little market at La Bégude-de-Mazenc. Ah, memories with food!

Murray Street Kitchen | Charcuterie | Wine
110 Murray St.
Ottawa, ON K1N 5M6‎
613.562.7244‎


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Tomatoes Provençale

Tomatoes Provençale by beFOODled on Flickr.

Here's a closer look at the tomatoes Provençale that we made in Calgary. I love tomatoes, but in Canada the stuff we import in winter doesn't compare in flavour to the fresh local toms grown by our own farmers in the summer. Once again, I bow to the superior expertise of the French in matters of elevating humble ingredients to new heights (the secret is grated cheese)!

Tomatoes Provençale
serves six

3 big tomatoes
salt
pepper
fresh chopped parsley
dried basil
dried thyme
diced garlic
grated parmesan cheese
olive oil

Cut three tomatoes in half. Cut a little bit off the bottom of each half so the tomatoes sit up straight and don't roll away.

Sprinkle small amounts of each ingredient over the top of each tomato half. Drizzle over a little olive oil.

Bake at 375 degrees in the oven for half an hour, then check them and if needed, bake for another 15 minutes.


Tomatoes Provençale in the convection oven by beFOODled on Flickr.

Off to a luscious start with rack of lamb

Rack of lamb by beFOODled on Flickr.

The other appetizer we made with Mark was rack of lamb, which I've never eaten as a starter before. We cooked two racks and served two ribs and a salmon tartare croûte per person. It turned out so luscious and juicy! Without further ado, here's the recipe:

Rack of lamb
two racks of lamb with eight ribs each
mustard
bread crumbs
parmesan
parsley
bread crumbs
butter
salt
pepper
oil with a high smoking point, such as canola or grapeseed


Season the racks of lamb by beFOODled on Flickr.

Season the raw racks of lamb with salt and pepper.


Brown the racks of lamb by beFOODled on Flickr.

Brown the racks one at a time in hot oil in a frying pan with high sides. Mark says that you should only put meat in the pan when the oil is near its smoking point. That's when the oil starts to separate or dimple in the pan.

Brown each side of the rack. The bony side is curved and impossible to press against the bottom of the pan. If you use a high-sided pan, great, you can prop it up against the side and pour hot oil down it with a ladle. If you're using a low-sided pan, no worries, just skip that side. Cross the racks together on a plate so that the ribs interlock. Put them aside and let them rest and cool down a bit.


Apply mustard to the racks of lamb by beFOODled on Flickr.

Smear a thin layer of Dijon mustard onto the tops of the racks. This will bind the crust.


Apply mustard to the racks of lamb by beFOODled on Flickr.

In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, parmesan and parsley. Press the mixture down onto the racks. Put some pats of butter over the tops of the ribs. Put the lamb into the fridge until ready to cook.

Take the lamb out a bit before you want to cook it. Cook for 25 to 30 minutes at 425 degree F in a normal oven or 390 in a convection oven. Let the meat rest for 10 minutes under foil before cutting the ribs.

Made in France, sold in Ottawa

Flavoured mustards from Made in France, a specialty store in Ottawa, originally uploaded by beFOODled.

Check out my most recent guest post for Food Network Canada about Made in France, a specialty store in Ottawa that sells the most amazing flavoured mustards. My other favourite reason for going here is because it reminds me of my recent trip to France for a culinary vacation.

Cheese, mushroom and caramelized onion omelette

Cheese, mushroom and caramelized onion omelette, originally uploaded by beFOODled.

Here's the recipe for S's special breakfast omelette. It is delicious and a little bit sweet because he uses sugar to caramelize the onions.

Cheese, mushroom and caramelized onion omelette
half of a large onion, sliced
six mushrooms, sliced
dry herbs or fresh chopped herbs
green onions (optional)
balsamic vinegar
sugar
Worcestershire sauce
knob of butter
olive oil (or another oil)
2 eggs
mozzarella cheese
salt and pepper

Fry the sliced onion and mushrooms together in the oil. Season with salt and pepper after they have sweated for a bit (released some of their water). Add some fresh chopped herbs, such as rosemary or thyme, or some dried, and some sliced green onions, if you wish. Once the vegetables start browning, glug in about half a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, the same amount of sugar and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Let that reduce for a bit until everything looks like it has been absorbed. Set the mixture aside.

Crack two eggs in a measuring cup and beat together. In a separate frying pan, add a knob of butter, enough to spread around the pan. When the pan is at medium heat, add the eggs and swirl them around so they spread out evenly. Wait until the eggs have solidified a little bit. Add the mushroom mixture to one half of the omelette. Slice some mozzarella cheese and then rip it into chunks, and spread it over the top of the mushrooms.

Using a fork, peek underneath the omelette. Wait until the underside is just starting to brown and then take the pan off the heat and hold it over a plate. Slide the omelette off so that the side with the mushrooms lands on the plate first. Then lift the pan up and over so the other half of the omelette flops over on top on the mushrooms. Serve immediately.

Paris

S and I ended our trip to France with two days in Paris. It was my first time in this great city and I loved it. I made a point of eating French onion soup every day. We had baguette sandwiches at a café that S remembered from a long time ago before he met moi.

Our first night, we didn't know where to go, and ended up in a horrible creperie that reminded me of Smitty's Pancake House in Kingston! On our second night, we visited La Taverne du Sargent Recruteur, a place that Jackie at Gourmet Safari had recommended. This restaurant made up for the previous night's letdown. I had a duck confit that was so tender, it melted in my mouth. If you ordered crudités or charcuterie as appetizers, they would set down giant wicker baskets at your table, bursting with whole, fresh veggies and all the cold cuts you could imagine still in their original coils.

And so ends our wonderful trip to France. I really hope that you have enjoyed reading about it, and know a bit more about life in Provence and the great people that live there. I have certainly enjoyed reliving it on this blog. If you can go, you will find that it's the trip of a lifetime!

France, je t'aime. À la prochaine!

Three-pepper soup

On our last night in Provence we made a spectacular soup. It looks like a lot of work, but appearances are deceiving. You just make three purees and swirl them together. We personalized them with different designs for the guests at Les Tuillières. The meal that followed was a turkey fricassee with olives, and for dessert, lavender crème brûlée. It was a beautiful finish to a wonderful experience, made even better by the company — Susan and Hermann, the other cooking students and their partners, and also a tableful of Welsh, English and French people. We were the loudest table having the most fun singing all of our national anthems during dinner :)

Three-pepper soup
serves six

Bell peppers — three red, two yellow, 1 green
500 mL vegetable stock
1 Tbsp pine nuts
1 tsp curry powder
125 g natural yogurt
250 mL milk
salt and pepper to taste
2 circles of pineapple, diced finely
pineapple juice
chives, chopped finely

Deseed the peppers and cut into a large dice. Fry the pine nuts over medium heat in a dry frying pan ... only for a few minutes until just browning. Pour onto a cutting board or a room temperature bowl to stop the cooking process.

Divide the stock and curry powder among three separate pots in proportion to the number of peppers. Bring to a boil. Add the diced peppers, each colour to its appropriate pot. Simmer until soft.

Puree each pepper mixture with a stab blender. Add the yogurt and milk to each puree and mix well. Correct the seasoning with salt and pepper and a bit of pineapple juice. Let each soup cool for at least 30 minutes.

Place each soup with care in a bowl in a creative design, making sure the colours don't mix, and garnish with the roasted pine nuts, chives and pineapple pieces.

Creamed mushrooms

On Friday we made another delicious French lunch of creamed mushrooms in the kitchen at Les Tuillières. Hermann says that you can make extra of these mushrooms and freeze them for when unexpected guests drop by. We served them inside puff pastry shells and topped with a little puffed pastry hat, but you could also serve them on toast.

Creamed mushrooms

1 kg (2 lb) sliced button mushrooms
1 onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp flour
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup cream
1/3 C white wine
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 Tbsp herbes de Provence
one chicken bouillon cube, crushed
nutmeg to taste
salt and pepper
fresh parsley to garnish

Fry the onions and garlic in butter and oil until softened. Add the white wine and stir. Add the mushrooms and herbes de Provence and mix together. Fry the mushrooms until they start to release water. Cover and continue to cook for three minutes, stirring occasionally.

Uncover, add flour and stir. Cook for a few minutes.

Add cream, salt, pepper and nutmeg, or reduce the salt and add a bouillon cube. Stir in the lemon juice. Adjust the consistency by adding milk.

Serve on toast or puff pastry shells made in the oven. Decorate with fresh parsley.

La Bouquinerie - saladerie et salon du thé en Provence

After our visit to the Nyons market, Susan treated all of the cooking students to lunch at La Bouquinerie, a wonderful second-hand bookstore and tea room that elevates the humble salad to a work of art :)


There are hot and cold salads inspired by various locales: the Provençale, the Asian with spring rolls, the cold Italian, the hot Italian that S and I ordered pictured above, and several other varieties. There's also a small dessert menu of interesting tarts, tortes and cakes baked in-house.

La Bouquinerie is in Le Poët-Laval, a very old and beautiful walled medieval village built during the 12th century. The tea room is actually located in a very steep, unevenly cobbled lane in the old castle in the centre of the village. Back in the day, the castle was also a refuge for crusaders on their way to the Holy Land. The monks offered shelter to the tired and treated the sick pilgrims passing through.

We ate inside, surrounded by old books on bookshelves built into the castle walls. However there's also a very romantic patio where you can sit and eat under a ceiling of grapes! It was raining when we were there, but I still got this wonderful shot of that patio and the view beyond it.

Goat Cheese and Herb Dip

On Wednesday we assembled once more at 4 p.m. in the kitchen at Les Tuillières to make a four-course meal for the guests. In France, entrée means first course instead of main, and tonight it was a lovely eggplant gratin. Our plat principale was a lamb and artichoke stew and for dessert, we made a chocolate almond cake.

Our appetizer was a goat cheese and herb dip. It's delicious and fresh-tasting. I've since brought this little bit of Provence to a few parties where it has passed many a taste test.

Goat Cheese and Herb Dip

4 oz soft fresh goat cheese (pure white and not encrusted with anything)
1 1/2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp plain thin yogurt
1 Tbsp each of finely chopped fresh herbs, whatever you have on hand: chives, parsley, rosemary, thyme, mint or coriander
salt and pepper to taste

(optional) 1 Tbsp fresh edible flowers, hand torn: violets, primroses, sage blossoms, nasturtiums, pot marigolds, young rose petals, fragrant geraniums or poppies with the black part of the petals removed.

Blend the goat cheese, olive oil and yogurt. Add the fresh herbs and flowers, if using. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate until dip is cold and the flavours have had a chance to meld, about two hours.

Once the dip I made turned out too hard. If that happens, mix in a tablespoon of warm water or add more yogurt.

Poached salmon and fennel salad

On Wednesday, S and I made a salmon and fennel and salad for lunch with Hermann in the kitchen at Les Tuillières. We poached the salmon, the best way to cook it according to Hermann, and had great conversation about the poaching liquid, which is officially called court bouillon when it’s for fish and seafood. Hermann started one from scratch (pictured above), but he said that you can reuse the same liquid over and over again, just by straining it and freezing it in between cooking sessions. At some point, maybe by the fourth or fifth time you use it, it becomes richer than the salmon and gives back more flavour than it takes, so the fish always gains. I asked Hermann how long he would keep using it and he said “Jusqu’à je suis mort!” So there you go, we mere mortals may come and go, but our poaching liquids can live on forever.


Poached salmon and fennel salad
serves 4

salmon fillets, fresh or frozen
4 fennel bulbs
1 tsp ground fennel and coriander seeds
juice of one lemon
2 Tbsp Pastis (anise-flavoured liqueur)
salt and pepper
olive oil
cider or white wine vinegar

Poaching liquid
3 1/2 cups water
1 Tbsp cider vinegar
1/2 onion, sliced
1 carrot, sliced
1 Tbsp salt
a few peppercorns
bay leaf, thyme, parsley

Bring the poaching liquid ingredients to the boil and simmer at the barest simmer for 15 minutes, uncovered.

Add the salmon and simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

Wash and trim the fennel bulbs. Cut off the tops but reserve some of the green sprigs for garnish. Cut the fennel bulbs into quarters, remove the core at the bottom and discard. Slice the bulb quarters as thinly as possible.

Place the fennel slices in a bowl and add the lemon juice, fennel and coriander seeds, and Pastis. Mix well.

Break the lukewarm salmon into bite-sized pieces with your fingers and add to the fennel. Add a vinaigrette of vinegar, salt, pepper and olive oil, and gently toss.

Boiled potatoes are a nice accompaniment.

Picodon cheese and Madame Jullian's goat farm

On our fifth day in Provence, Susan took all of the cooking students to the village of Truinas to visit Madame Fabienne Jullian's goat cheese farm, which is high up in the mountains. We took home six packages of one-day old goat cheeses and had them for lunch with a smooth raspberry coulis dribbled over. It was delicious! At this stage, the cheese is almost like cottage cheese, but with a much milder flavour.

There are 60 nannies and two billies at Mme Jullian's farm. The nannies were overjoyed to receive visitors. If you move your hands over their heads to pet them, they think you're offering food and try to eat it, but if you pet under the chin, they know you are giving affection. At six months old, they start visiting the billy. We saw the billies too, but they were too tired to come say hello.

Mme Jullian makes a fresh raw milk goat cheese that's locally known as Picodon cheese. It's one of many agricultural products that have AOC (appellation d’origine contrôlée) status.

She pours the milk into these small moulds that have tiny holes and adds a little bit of rennet and salt. Then the little rounds dry in her fridge for two to four weeks.

Some goats in the region live even higher in the mountains and graze on the wild mountain thyme that grows at those altitudes, which gives their milk and its cheeses a special flavour.

I don't think these cheeses make it to Canada, and that's too bad because they are delicious! Susan says that cheeses cured over 60 days are allowed into the United States, but the fresher raw milk cheese like the ones chez Mme Jullian are all too young to make it over.

We saw Picodon cheese everywhere in the supermarkets. Young cheeses, like the day-olds we ate for lunch, can lose a lot of weight during the aging process and develop a rind and a hardened centre. The flavour is so concentrated that it "piques at your dents" (teeth). I preferred the younger versions, but I can see how the aged Picodon could become an aquired taste.

Les Aubergistes in Marsanne

On the way home from Mirmande, S and I stopped for dinner at Les Aubergistes, a hotel restaurant in Marsanne. S had the poulet fermier laqué au miel et lavande, and I had the noix de veau rôtie et son jus aux pleurottes. Those loosely translate to chicken with lavender honey and round fillet of veal with mushrooms.

I noticed that certain French phrases here were very different from the Canadian French we have absorbed living so close to Quebec. Maybe it's just the way of the service industry, but French French seems more formal and emphatic. For example, instead of de rien or bienvenue for your welcome, the servers here say je vous en prie. Draft beer on tap here is bière en pression, not bière en fut, and we also heard la facture more often than l'addition when we asked to pay our bill.

One of the guests at Les Tuillières told us that the French think Canadian French is quaint, and gave us the example of how the Québécois say char for car. To the French, char is an old-fashioned word for a cart or wagon. Another instance happened when I told a bartender in Paris that we were going to faire du magasinage demain, he didn't seem to understand and then chuckled with an ahh, oui! Later, I looked it up and in France they say faire les courses or quite simply le shopping. So ours must be an older French and the language is obviously not evolving the same way in Quebec. But no matter what Canadian French we mustered up, we were always understood, and in most cases even my rusty French was better than their English. Hourra! All those years of public school French have not been in vain!

Les Voyageurs — an eclectic French restaurant in Charols

On our second night in Provence, after a full day in Avignon, S and I went to Les Voyageurs, a little restaurant in Charols attached to a hotel. I loved the fun-loving decor. The owner Alexandre decorated it, and both him and the other server, his mother, were both really nice to us. They gave us the blue wine bottle that held our drinking water, and I'm happy that it made it home in one piece! Alexandre's sister also runs a museum dedicated to the locally famous Montélimar nougat, also in the same decor his mother told us, but unfortunately we were not able to make it this time (I'm saving a few things for the next trip :).

In the restaurants in this area, the menus are always on a blackboard, which the servers move around from table to table, so you can make your selection at leisure. All of the restaurants encourage a "formule" for ordering, where if you combine an entrée and a plat principale with or without fromage and/or dessert, you get a discount.

My entree was Carpaccio de boeuf au parmesan, which was very nice, like a pâté.



S tried Millefeuille de tomate et mozza, which had layers of incredible tasting tomatoes, both fresh and sundried. I think you have to have lots of sunshine on your tomatoes for them to taste this fantastic. (Reason number 7645 why I love Provence!)



For my plat principale, I ordered Filet de rouget sauce vierge. Sauce vierge (virgin sauce) is a popular French sauce made with tomato, basil, olive oil and lemon juice, and rouget is a red Mediterranean fish also known as red mullet.



S was an adventurer and ordered Tartare de boeuf a votre façon, and ate the whole thing :)

La Fontaine Minérale — a French restaurant in the Drôme provençale

Our first night in Provence, S and I ate at La Fontaine Minérale, formerly an old mineral water spring where people used to go to "take the waters" in the late 1800s. You can still sample the water from the spring — it's fizzy and slightly sweet. We ate outside in a long, pebbled courtyard flanked by mountains and a big stone wall, and sheltered under a row of plane trees. It was in the tiny village of Pont-de-Barret, which is very close to Les Tuillères, the B&B where we stayed and took cooking classes.

We thought the food was fantastic. This was my favourite restaurant during our time in the south of France. The above photo shows my chèvre (goat cheese) salad, which had the best olive tapenade that I have ever had. S ordered the magret de canard, pictured below, a very common Provençale dish as we discovered. Magret is the breast meat of a duck that has been fattened for the production of foie gras. There are many variations of magret de canard; La Fontaine Minérale's was stuffed with chèvre.