May 1- in flower.
Transitions
Spring is a long, ongoing affair here in southwest France- from the first tips of the wild plum blossoms that show their white petals in late February and early March to today’s explosion of Acacia blossoms and Poplar ‘snow’ fluffing out across the canal- that’s three solid months of “spring is in the air!” By the end of this month, it will be too hot, too sunny, and summer will strutting in.
May is one of those beginning as well as transitory months. What it does to my brain is a yearly kickstart as to what is new, what comes next, who arrives next, and as the year stretches out before me, what am I doing with the rest of my life?
Two years ago, I set the course for a serious transition that will see me through my next decade here at Camont. After the post-Covid world of online live and video teaching (and making over 70 videos and workshops in a year!), I decided to retire from teaching cooking and looked at what my other assets were—my time, my energy, and Camont…my darling French farmhouse. Once a roofless ruin, Camont is now a full-fledged 5 bedroom/6 bathroom rambling complex including the stand-alone 2 bedroom pigeonnier, an off-grid studio cabin perched in the shady oak park (complete with outside shower and compost toilet), and an active edible garden—vegetable, flowers, medicinal plants, fruit trees, and gentle wildness along a flowing canal. This is Planet Camont. Otherwise known as Paradis. And this is the hub of all current activities, both personal and professional.
The transition from farmhouse ruin to cooking school to creative residence has been a layered and long-established journey, both personally and professionally. The Julia Hoyt Canal Barge. The French Kitchen. The Kitchen-at-Camont. And now, the Relais de Camont.
I wrote about these transitions and the bricks, stones, and mortar inspiration of Camont for Faire Magazine’s latest issue No.8 https://www.fairepress.com/issue-8 .
“The elements of a creative life: a game of paper, scissors, stone in Gascony.
The hand game is played all over the world with whatever three elements come to mind. One wrapping another, one smashing, one cutting… In my life, these elements come together again and again, and like the game-- two out of three wins.
Stone. I remember the day that I stumbled across Camont, a roofless ruin of stone and brick—once an 18th-century French farmhouse comprised of a three-story pigeonnier or dovecot, a chicken coop, a stone-lined piggery, and a 21-meter long barn covered in brambles as old as Sleeping Beauty’s castle—protected by a stinging moat of thick nettles. I stood in the original kitchen—no roof, no water, no electricity, looked up at the blue Gascon sky, and imagined learning to cook real French food in this wreck of a real French kitchen. That was Spring in 1989.”
You can order a copy of this luxury magazine dedicated to the creative arts here. https://www.fairepress.com/shop
I am, of course, still cooking within these stone walls—each meal and table full of a rotating crew over the years cement the stones together like some much living mortar gluing the chunks of life into one long memory. Writing a memoir of learning to cook is akin to sliding down the Alice hole as one rabbit recipe leads to another until they layer together into the quintessential approach to cooking rabbit or any poultry. I am most comfortable in this kitchen role and easily share it with whoever is working with me as a helper/intern. So I slide from writer to administrator to lunch lady. A Gascon Year was published under the lockdown days, culled from years of stories and recipes, to celebrate those seasonal standards that reappear month, one by one. The current issue is a treasure of the floral influence of our May kitchen- roses, elderflowers, and acacia blossoms.
If you’re a paid and supporting subscriber already, you’ll find the pdf of the May issue (and the recipe for the gateaux aux fleurs above) of A Gascon Year-Mai below the paywall after the cover photo below. Consider subscribing to have access to the entire year of recipes and seasonal stories in the archives. In the meantime, here is a simple beignet des acacias recipe pulled from that issue.
RECIPE: Acacia Blossom Fritters
Camont sits in a canalside forest of wild and planted trees—straight as arrows Poplars line the two sides of the canal towpath while spindly Acacia (black locust) trees self-seed all along the edges. Today their white perfume drifts over my rooftops like a fragrant cloud and reminds me of one of my favorite ways to welcome May—a light-as-air Acacia blossom fritter made with a simple pâte à choux recipe.
Acacia Blossom Fritters
Made with a pâte à choux pastry
65 ml water
65 ml milk
50 gr butter
1 tsp gr sugar
1 pinch salt
75 g all-purpose or cake flour
100-125 g whole eggs (2-3 eggs)
a handful of edible acacia blossoms— stems removed
frying oil—1-2 inch deep in a small pan
some acacia honey powdered sugar
In a saucepan, add the water, milk, butter, sugar, and salt. Measure the flour. Heat the liquid ingredients over low heat until just simmering and the butter melts.
Take off the heat and add all the flour at once. Stir with a wooden spoon until the dough pulls together.
Put back on the heat and stir continuously for 1-2 minutes until the dough pulls away from the side. Transfer to a mixing bowl. Mix until the dough starts to cool—and is no longer steaming.
Add the eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each one before adding the next. When ready, check the dough by seeing how it falls from the spoon. It should be silky smooth and fall in a point. Stir in a handful of closed acacia blossoms; the nectar is still inside the flower.
Heat the oil in a wok or a deep pan to 170-180 ̊C. Drop batter in the hot oil by a tablespoon and cook until golden brown and cooked through. Don’t rush them. The inside will be soft and airy. Drain on a paper towel and then drizzle with acacia honey and powdered sugar.
Serve warm and with a glass of elderflower soda. Another Spring treat!
The Relais de Camont Flow—a revolving door of talent
The Spring Sessions
Beginning with the first blooming days, the creative spirit of Camont has already been enriched with a flow of writers, painters, filmmakers… and farmers.
Provençal painter Janice Jacquet discovered the Gascon Spring palette in Camont’s gardens during the Sakura sessions of mid-March. We celebrated in the garden with friends as she shared her color studies in an installation among the flowering shrubs and trees.
New England was well represented in April, from the Vermont Green Mountain Girls Farm & Co., who arrived for a week of French agri-immersion and creative thinking, to Maine painter and writer Anna Dibble working on her own transition from memoir to picture book while continuing to bring her colorful world alive on paper. Anna and I met online years ago via a mutual connection, and welcoming her to Camont was a wonderful in-person exchange. Conversations around the kitchen table about growth at any age, the celebrating, and sharing of resources and experience, seem to be the herald of a new well of energy for me as well as the visiting residents.
From Tokyo, Reika Murata has arrived to work on her next film scenario in the bleu cloister of her own ‘room with a view.’ While there is always a quiet buzz in the gardens, and the laying hens offer a brief respite from isolation, a walk down the canal towpath is often the most effective way to counter writer’s block. Is it the long perspective of the tree-lined canal, or the still reflection of barely flowing water, that draws a thought out and lets it weave itself into consciousness and onto the page? Our house cat, Terre, has also insinuated himself into Reika’s videos featured on her Instagram account here:
I am always delighted when our Working Residents (WR’s are those younger and emerging artists who come to work, discover, and help run the show) leave their own legacy behind and become part of the Camont family. As an early spring WR, Australian writer, photographer, and editor, Harriet Davidson laid the foundations for the new Forest Garden while sowing the seeds for the potager. There will be many summer meals to come from her labor as we harvest peas, beans, and pumpkins into the fall. For a glimpse of her portfolio from her Camont time, here.
To learn about a Creative Residency at the Relais de Camont, or being a Working Resident, read here. Substack readers and writers are especially welcome to apply.
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