The First Bird Sings "Make Soup!"
Champêtre: French Dreams February
I’m back! And with this week’s February French dreams—bright, sweet and sharp citrus from the winter market, a dream of hot soup keeping warm on the wood stove, and a recipe for Gascony’s famous garlic soup—Tourin d’Ail. I have removed the pause button and we are back to normally scheduled weekly posts from my French farmhouse life- Champêtre.
The First Bird
Before the dark morning lightens, before the wood stove catches, I am piped into awakening by an invisible feathered soloist managing to pierce the double-paned, insulated windows—a most welcome salute to this day ahead filled with promise.
February is a slightly underrated month, except for an overrated mid-month holiday for hearts and flowers. It’s the marvelous month when the French earth at Camont starts to wake up. I can see from my window the fattened pale buds on the Japanese quince bush hacked back last summer as its thorny branches intruded into the passage between the potager and BBQ oven. The young nectarine tree shows its eagerness to blossom. The hellebores bloom underfoot and ask for some attention as I clear around their foundations. I can feel the itching for the potager plans to sprawl across a decade-old gardening notebook, which says more about my love of planning than my gardening prowess.
I took a pause this last month, now aborted since my surgery has been rescheduled, and I don’t want to miss any February energy to share with you. The Relais has been swept and tidied as the next resident arrives today and will settle into the quiet building energy. She is a fellow/sister substack writer, and I wonder if she will inhale the burgeoning productivity of Camont’s gardens as I do. I try to remove myself from other’s fields of vision as much as possible, relying on having the confidence that we (the Camont team of helpers inside and out--cleaning, primping, pruning, etc) have prepared a fertile grounding layer for writers and artists to make their own individual mark across the space with their work. A comfortable bed, a well-worn desk looking out a window, and some cozy corners to tuck in and read or work near the woodstove, at the kitchen table, or curled on the long blanket-wrapped sofa. You can follow Katie Harbath residency here: https://www.instagram.com/katieharbath/
February starts with the tribute to the French crêpe on Chandeleur. An old pagan rite transformed into a modern family celebration- every French supermarket has a welcoming table to inspire young families to learn the rituals and make the simple batter crêpes that are spread with Nutella or confiture, or my personal favorite, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and sprinkle of coarse sugar. Carnevale is evident mainly on village school posters announcing the parade, a costumed defilé, or a fair, but grownups don’t participate in this ritual beyond support the kids as they sell baked goods at the Saturday markets.
It still seems quiet in the fields around me. The orchard pruning rituals haven’t begun; even the vineyards are still. I also wait, taking my timing cues from the serious farmers working the fields and orchards around me. There will be a sweet spot when the freezing nighttime temperatures creep up into the sunny afternoons, and the pneumatic pruning shears will appear on raised platforms as skilled workers roll up and down the tethered apple trees, clipping away unwanted growth and shaping this year’s production of Galas, Reinettes, Chanteclers. Only then, when I see my mentors appear, will I attack my own Lost Orchard trees- apples, plums, figs, peaches, etc.
This week’s market at Lavardac was splashed with bright citrus colors stacked against a felted grey backdrop of fog and silver light. It was as if all the orange and grapefruit trees of Spain, clementines from Corsica, lemons from Portugal, and blood oranges from Sicily were tipped toward France for a sensory awakening of bright color and sharp tastes spilling down the village park. My fellow shoppers were just as seduced as I was, with baskets groaning and shopping carts wobbling on the gravel paths under the weight of kilos of heavy, juicy globes.
I struggle to see what I can make without tipping toward the sweet scale of things too much, as these days, I am watching my sugar intake like a hawk (I know- a little late for this, but helpful anyway). So, I am pairing citrus and endive for winter salads, throwing supremes of blood oranges into a chopped Middle Eastern-ish salad of red pepper, cucumber, cherry tomato, and more endive. I didn’t buy avocados, but that is another excellent pairing with lightly pickled sweet onions and a few briny green olives. Mostly, I am looking at my citrus ingredients as a sharp substitute for a classic vinaigrette drizzling instead some fragrant walnut oil across the freshly cut vegetables and fruit. A handful of walnuts or almonds had a crunchy touch to finish.
“In explaining the ever-present soup course in Gascony, Vétou Pompèle shrugged her shoulders and said, “On soupait beaucoup ici.” (We soup a lot here.) A meal always begins with a soup (following aperitifs, of course!). I began to mimic my French friends and start my meals on the Julia Hoyt with a simple soup. The soup would be a preview of the rest of the meal, a prelude to the style and flavors to follow.”
A Culinary Journey in Gascony, Kate Hill
La Soupe
If you read the soup chapter in my debut cookbook, A Culinary Journey in Gascony, you can see how I was taken with the Gascon custom of serving soup at every meal. These are not heavy, hearty soups, but the foundation for a more extended meal, a lashing of vegetable potage in an assiette du soupe—a soup plate, most often blended in the pot with a stick blender into a smooth but no cream added vegetable broth.
The secret is in the water.
Garbure, celery, a tomato tourin, and even a leek-vinaigrette soup all begin with the neighborly admonishment to use good water. Most of these country soups are water-based, making their own light broth with the essential vegetables and bouquet garni used—bay leaf, lovage, thyme, onions, leeks, carrot, or turnip. Canned or boxed chicken broth is a rare ingredient in the French countryside. Instead, you might start with poaching a plump farmhouse hen in a large pot with some of the above aromatics and vegetables for a classic Poule au Pot reserving the excess broth or bouillon for future soup dishes throughout the week. Maybe a few chunks of beef for a pot au feu? But bouillon cubes? Never! They are mostly salt with some flavoring, so why bother? I can’t imagine cooking with commercially prepared broth or stock that makes everything taste the same. Instead, each soup should be a celebration of its own components and reflect the seasonal stars—celery, leeks, carrots, tomatoes, garlic, etc.
Of all the Gascon soups, perhaps the most common when I moved here but now has taken a back seat to prepared foods is this softly pungent egg yolk-enriched family soup—once served to newlyweds to fortify them during their wedding night, or shared amongst friends as hangover prevention after a night out. Garlic Soup, sometimes called a White Soup, is an excellent introduction to cooking Gascon style. What is in the pantry? How many people are at the table?
Tourin à l’Ail or Garlic Soup
Serves 4-6
In Gascony, this fortifying Soupe Blanche or white soup is traditionally served to newlyweds on their wedding night. Delivered in a new chamber pot to the bedroom by prankster friends long after midnight, the eggs, garlic, pepper, and vinegar serve as rustic aphrodisiacs. Because there is no stock involved, it is a perfectly simple and fast soup to prepare from the pantry late at night for friends.
1 teaspoon duck fat or butter
1 whole head of garlic, peeled and chopped
1 yellow or white onion, peeled and chopped
4 shallots, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
4 fresh eggs, separated yolks and white
1 tablespoon wine vinegar
4 to 6 toasted bread slices, one for each bowl
1. In a 2-quart saucepan, bring 1 1/2 quarts of water to boil. Meanwhile, put the fat in a sauté pan over medium-low heat. Add the garlic, onion, and shallots and let them begin to “sweat.” Stir the mixture often as the garlicky bits begin to soften, taking care to turn down the heat if they start to brown. They should be soft and translucent.
2. Sprinkle with the flour and stir. Cook slowly, a little longer, but remove from the heat before the vegetables begin to color.
3. Salt and pepper the boiling water, add the vegetable mixture to the water and simmer for about 20 minutes. When the garlic has given all its flavor to the soup broth and the garlic cloves are very soft, whisk the egg whites lightly and drop them into the simmering broth until they cook and turn opaque.
4. Beat the egg yolks in a small dish with the vinegar. After adding a few tablespoons of the hot soup to the egg yolks to temper them, whisk the egg mixture into the hot soup and stir over medium heat until the soup just starts to look creamy. Do not boil or the egg yolks will curdle.
5. Adjust the seasoning. More salt, more pepper? Serve extra vinegar at the table. Serve the soup ladled over the toasted bread that has been placed in individual bowls.
Excerpt From:
A Culinary Journey in Gascony: recipes and stories from my french canal boat by Kate Hill
Join me every week for a jaunt through the French countryside, in and out of the markets and garden, and into the warming kitchen of my creative residency. read more about The Relais de Camont. The Camont Journals are a chronicle of this country life in Southwest France: Champêtre: a Field Guide is the next adventure full of good food and slow living in France.
Finding France: A Memoir in Small Bites is also archived here for paying subscribers at The Camont Journals. You can read about these long adventures from arriving in France on her canal barge, the Julia Hoyt, to the gathering table here at the Relais de Camont. It’s all archived here: https://katehillfrance.substack.com/t/finding-france
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Welcome, welcome. What a gorgeous read to start my day. The sights and sounds of the market, a warming soup - a chuckle for the newly weds - and the watchword of patience before the pruning begins. So much lived wisdom. Love this.
clementine fruit spread?