Lamb curry

It is amazing how evocative food can be. Today my mind is off to La Rochelle in France once more.

First I'll tell you the meal that's plopping away at the moment is a Bhoona Gosht, a lamb curry. The last time I remember cooking this recipe was in France when we were staying with our French friends. Their son had been to stay with us a year or so before. While he was here we took him along to our local Indian restaurant & he discovered curries, a new experience for him. So when we visited them next in France, he was keen for us to make a proper curry. He hadn't been able to find anything like it in France. So I agreed to do this lamb curry.

While the son located some spices, Marie, his mother, our friend, took me along to the butcher.It was just a small suburban establishment on the outskirts of La Rochelle. There we utterly bemused the butcher. Not only was I very definitely English, a rarity in those parts, but I was clearly a friend of a Frenchwoman - the French seem to regard this as an impossible concept. He was even more amazed when he realised that I, the Englishwoman (& therefore obviously a hopeless cook as no English person knows how to cook), was going to cook for Marie (a professional chef, which he knew) & her family &, what was more, I was cooking an Indian curry!!! This was internationalism gone mad for him. Still we managed to get the meat.

So back we went & set about making the curry. Marie watched eagerly, always keen to learn new culinary techniques. She was impressed by the Fox's knife skills as he diced up the onions. She was quite content as we sweated off the onions & garlic, but then came the spices. As I was cooking for 6 people in went 9 teaspoons of curry powder plus a teaspoon of chilli powder to give it a bit of extra oomph. Marie's eyes grew bigger & bigger, her mouth dropped further & further open, as I counted out the spoonfuls of spice. In France we discovered their idea of a curry for four people involves a quarter of a teaspoon of curry powder at most.She wasn't much reassured when she saw no liquid going in the pot except a tablespoon of vinegar & one of tomato puree. Nonetheless she let us get on with it & prayed the meal at the end would be edible.

After it had all plopped along we sat down for the meal. By then plenty of juices had come out of the meat to give a rich sauce. Nervously Marie took her first mouthful, expecting her mouth to burst into flames. She was somewhat surprised to discover it was really rather good. Her husband is a lot more conservative in his likes. He tried it, said it was good, but clearly found it overwhelming. The son & his girlfriend loved it.

So here we are again, once more with a bhoona gosht. And our memories return once more to that day in France & our friends - good times

Further France

Mist rising in the mountains near Greolieres

This mountain road gives you a different impression of the area of Provence we visited recently. The sun has been replaced by the mist rising up from the valley floor.

Just the other side of Greolieres we turned off this particular road into the Valley du Loup. Here the valley got narrower, with steep cliffs either side. As we continued down the east side of the gorges we discovered it was peppered with waterfalls. Perhaps the most spectacular, were the Cascades des Demoiselles.

Cascades des Demoiselles

We returned up the east side to explore the west side. Here we discovered the village of Gourdon sat on a rocky outcrop. It looked of interest & we noted there was access for disabled parking up the steep slope of the outcrop. We returned later in our holidays specifically to look around Gourdon, its castle & castle gardens, the views along the valley towards the Med, it's innumerable gift & craft shops.

Holiday thoughts

My thoughts are all centred on holidays at the moment.

This morning I rang to pay the final instalment on our holiday in France in May. Just the idea of that holiday has kept us going through this rather long, & very cold, winter. Now we just have to await the tickets & then, hopefully, we're off for a couple of weeks in the sun.

My next task is to sort out a hotel in London for our weekend in London. Curiously this is more problematic than sorting out a hotel in Nice. There are just so many hotels to chose from. They're not always clear on their websites about their disabled facilities. To make it worse our knowledge of London is such we have to check just where streets are. We want to stay somewhere near the theatre, preferably within easy walking distance.

Meanwhile my thoughts go to the poor people in Chile with today's news of a massive earthquake there. I feel the world is only just recovering from the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti. I gather this quake is considerably stronger but fortunately preliminary news suggests it took place in a fairly underpopulated area so, with a bit of luck, the damage & loss of life shouldn't be as great. I certainly pray that is the case.