Thank you

It has been a fabulous year for Carcassonne Kitchen, with clients from across the globe descending on Carcassonne market and the kitchen at 42rvh.

The year started on 1st March with Helen from California and finished on 28th October with Laurence and Gai from Brisbane and Mike, Jane and Sue from Alaska.

In-between there have been visitors from
South Africa
New Zealand
all over the USA and Canada (Texas, Georgia, Colorado, Boston, Chicago, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ontario and Ottawa)
Holland
Kazhakstan via Denmark!
Germany
all over Australia (Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Cairns)
Sweden
Ireland
many many from Scotland (thank you for an interesting and varied debate throughout the year about Scottish independence)
and, of course, England.

Petra and Bruce brought their enthusiastic children - the next generation in the kitchen.

I hope the recipes have been replicated and improved by you all.  I have a vision that a hot chocolate fondant is being served somewhere in the world at all times.

Thank you all for coming and thank you for your wonderful email and trip advisor comments - they are very much appreciated. Here are a few of your lovely comments;

Thanks for the lovely day and recipes, Peter!  I will definitely be making those dishes at home.  I already promised my husband I would make the choc cake! - Helen

It was a wonderful day with you, the beautiful dog Clarky, Carcassonne in the rain, all the spectacular food - Nancy

Thanks so much Peter, for everything. A really lovely weekend and I've already made the pea and broad bean dish for a friend. - Justine

Peter, the visit with you – the market excursion, the cooking in your terrific kitchen and lunch with our men – was a highlight of the trip, no question. - Carol

Thank you for the delightful day of shopping, cooking, and conversation.  It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. I have printed the recipes and will soon  be dazzling our friends and family with them. - Holly

We had so much fun, the meal was delicious and the company delightful. I am looking forward to using my new filleting skills. - Belinda and Ross

Artichokes and Asparagus

The new season asparagus and artichokes are in the market and the sunshine has finally returned - so salads are back in vogue and the winter vegetables will soon be forgotten for another year.

Certainly Charles and Nancy from New Mexico, and my latest market tour and cooking day clients, were wowed by their freshness and flavour last week.  Not that we had sunshine then - the market tour took place under a leaden grey drizzly sky which emitted a torrential downpour at the end of the afternoon.

The small violet artichokes are a little fiddly to prepare and one of those things that you only really get right once someone has shown you how to tackle the job, which means it is the perfect task for a cooking day.  Most people have never prepared one so it is a fun job to have a go at with a bit of supervision.  I like to cook them immediately on the day they are bought because they tend to go soft quite quickly if left.  Look for small hard artichokes with the leaves still tight.  The idea is to prepare them quickly and then you can keep them for a good few weeks in the fridge in a sterilised jar and cooking liquid used to cook them - although they rarely last a couple of days in this household!

The cooked artichoke hearts are fabulous in our superfood salad with asparagus and avocado, a wonderful combination of flavour and texture and a great vegetarian dish if you stop there and don't add the crisped cured ham which adds an additional salty crunchy texture to the vegetables.

The tender top ends of the asparagus spears were used in the salad but the lower snapped off tails of the spears were not discarded but used to make an asparagus soup - a fabulous way to make your produce go further and to reduce food waste. Wherever you have snapped your spears there will still be a good few centimetres of useable green spear that will give more than enough flavour for a simple but elegant soup and for this the thinner spears work better than the fat ones.   Discard any really wooden ends and you may also need to sieve the finished soup to remove any stringy bits.  Of course, if you buy your asparagus ready cut and packaged up from a supermarket chain you will miss out on this option as the supermarket will have already trimmed them and charged you more for the privilege!

The main course for the cooking day was a French classic - coq au vin.  I think of this as a Spring or Autumn dish because it is the lightest of the classic French casserole dishes and can be made with either a good fruity red or a dry white.  I like to marinade the chicken for 24 hours in the wine with some garlic, bay and thyme.  I use finely diced onion, celery and carrot in the cooking of the dish but cook the lardons, mushrooms and leek separately in a frying pan right at the end and add to the finished dish when serving it - this way they keep their colour and a bit of crunch and add texture to the dish rather than being cooked down to nothing in the wine.  Serve with pomme puree and the cooked down sauce drizzled over.

Here is how to prepare the artichokes.

Pull away the hard outer leaves until you reach the softer light green leaves inside. Trim off the hard tips (about halfway down the head), cut off all but 5cm of the stalk and the trim the outer layer of that remaining 5cm.  Rub the prepared artichoke all over with lemon juice to reduce discolouration.

In a pan large enough to take your artichokes, finely chop one shallot and sweat gently in a little butter and oil until softened.  Add 100ml of dry white wine and bring to the boil before immediately turning down to a simmer.  Add the artichokes and lemon juice, a bay leaf, a sprig or two of time and enough water to just cover and simmer very gently until cooked (when a sharp knife just penetrates the artichokes with ease - do not boil or overcook or they will fall apart)

Either serve immediately or leave to cool before packing into sterilised jars topped with the cooking liquor.  They will keep in the fridge for several weeks.

Wonderful Asparagus Soup

One of the great joys of living here in the Languedoc and having Carcassonne market just two minutes down the road is locally grown asparagus in mid-March, a good month or more earlier than I could ever get hold of local asparagus in the UK and earlier than most parts of France if reports from friends around the country are anything to go by.

In London we would buy it at any time, flown in from far flung places all year round - but it never ever compared to the locally grown stuff. When we moved to France we vowed to eat local and seasonal because we could - and we do.

So we have waited for nine months for the new asparagus season and it arrived two weekends ago when the the stall of M. Villa from Cavanac appeared in the market for the first time this year. That Saturday we were a bit tardy getting down to the market, it also being a grey, wet and windy morning, and were lucky to grab some of the last spears - it seems that the whole of Carcassonne has been waiting for the asparagus too!

We will eat it for the next three months until we are sick of it but that's ok because there will be lots of other things to gorge on by then. Even so, it's always good to find a new way to treat it and that's what happened this week - not only that but I used the left over ends after eating the tender part of the spear in a conventional way (melted butter and parmesan shavings if you must know) and I like nothing better than getting a delicious dish out of leftovers from another delicious dish.

Credit where it's due - this recipe owes an enormous amount to Yotam Ottolenghi's recipe for Asparagus Vichyssoise from his book 'Plenty', a marvellous source of ideas for vegetables - but his soup is cold, uses the whole asparagus spear and includes potato and sugar whilst mine is hot, uses the leftover ends and has no starch or sugar. Isn't that the way it should be though? - we use other recipes for inspiration but put our own twist on them based on instinct and what we have to hand at any given time. Sometimes it doesn't work but just sometimes you end up with something wonderful - as with this soup.

Ingredients;
- leftover ends from 500g of asparagus spears, green parts chopped into 2cm bits and any really woody white parts discarded
- one leek and one shallot/three spring onions (whatever you have - I had half a huge end of a comedy spring onion the size of a cricket ball) outer layers removed and chopped.
- 500ml of vegetable stock
- 25g butter
- 50ml cream
- 2 tablespoons fromage frais (or greek yoghurt or creme fraiche)
- lemon zest
- salt and pepper

To prepare;
- saute the leek, onion and asparagus in the butter for 5 minutes over a gentle heat
- add the stock and some salt and pepper and simmer gently for 30 minutes
- blitz to a smooth consistency in a blender (you can then pour it through a sieve for an even smoother texture if you wish)
- stir in the cream and fromage frais and check the seasoning
- reheat gently to serving temperature
- serve with freshly grated lemon zest ( a truly inspirational final touch that elevates the dish to the monumentally sublime)

If you are making this to impress you could add finely chopped mint and a swirl of cream or keep back some of the tender asparagus tips to garnish the final dish.

We were so impressed that I plan to make it again tomorrow and then again for this weekend's clients on Sunday. I bet it's delicious cold too - I just haven't tried that yet.