 |
Current mood:  energetic Category: Food and Restaurants
.. Cooking and Gardening /Cuisiner et Jardiner | | [ republished from the 2 March 2007 Myspace posting / réimpression: du 2 mars 2007 impression de Myspace ]
| I do hope these French lessons are not as taxing for you as they are for me! I am finding it difficult keeping up with Madame Fajardo on these translations. She pats me on the head and says, "You can do it. One more translation. ..... but peut-être, this is not THE one more translation!" Such humor!
Humor is always good to have; especially if you are putting in a day's work at La Burlande. Jenny's days are full: preparing the meals and tending the garden, along with the logistics of running the B&B. Now she's gone 'cyber', which may not be a good thing ... for me. But we laugh about that, too.
Again, she has provided us all with a delightful snippet of La Burlande life to use for our French lesson. In the last blogpost she spoke of a morning at the market and the obvious results laid out on the dinner table. This post title could be "Meals and Gardening" because that comprises much of most days' work here, and because the meals and gardening are so intertwined.
La Burlande guest often wander through Jenny's gardens before settling in their seats at the guest table, and whether the meal is indoors or outside on the terrace, the colors and scents of the table are always a beautiful blend of foods and flora. Many of the garden plants go into the menu, and to help with the digestation after the meal, often infusions of herbs or spices from the garden are served. The guest table and gardening: it's a marvelous marriage!
| Hier au soir nous avions des hôtes et ils avaient souhaité le dîner à la Burlande.
Dans l'après-midi j'avais choisi la mise de table en assortissant la couleur de mes 2 nappes superposées avec les fleurs trouvées dans le jardin, puis avec la vaisselle.
Au cours de ma quête dans le jardin, j'avais repéré une grande plante sauvage de fenouil dont les nouvelles pousses semblaient bien tendres protégées par les tiges de l'an dernier: une idée pour le menu! Ainsi l'entrée serait une soupe de poissons. Le 2e plat: une grillade de boeuf nappée d'une sauce au roquefort avec une couronne de légumes frais: haricots verts, tomates provençales, riz revenu avec des champignons persillés, une cuillerée d'épinards à la crème...Rien de tout cela n'est revenu, même en petite quantité, à la cuisine pour nous permettre de vérifier par nous-même si les cuissons et les saveurs étaient parfaitement réussies. Ensuite j'ai apporté le plateau de fromages, et ce n'est qu'à ce moment-là que la concentration s'est relâchée et que la conversation a pu aller bon train. Pour finir une coupe de glaces à la vanille et au chocolat déposées sur une tranche de gâteau aux amandes, une pointe de Chantilly avec quelques gouttes de sauce chaude au chocolat noir...
Cet après-midi, la tiédeur de l'air nous a chassé dans le jardin! Une grande plante grasse que l'on appelle ici communément "les griffes de sorcière"envahit un coin de terrasse prés de la piscine. Ses fleurs en avril éclatent d'un rose vif très lumineux et j'avais du mal à décider tout simplement de la sacrifier pour récupérer l'espace annexé. Nous avons cependant ramené la belle ficoïde à de plus justes proportions et ce faisant rempli une entière brouette de longues tiges charnues. Nous nous sommes transportés à l'autre bout du jardin avec la brouette. En entrant dans le jardin, un long mur assez bas retient la terre du talus qui borde un canal au nord de la propriété. Nous avons tracé une rigole peu profonde tout le long du haut du muret et j'ai découpé en petits rameaux les longues ramures de la plante en les déposant dans la terre. Nous avons ainsi couvert une incroyable longueur avec l'excroissance de cette seule prolifique plante. Un peu de bonne terre, un bon arrosage et il nous reste à espérer que l'hiver ne vienne à retardement stopper le développement de la végétation...En attendant on peut rêver en imaginant les cascades le long du mur qu'apercevront bientôt mes premiers hôtes au printemps de l'an prochain! | |  | | Yesterday evening we had guests and they wished to have dinner at La Burlande.
In the afternoon I had chosen the table setting by matching the color of my 2 tablecloths with the flowers found in the garden, laying one tablecloth upon the other at an angle, then setting out matching china.
During my search in the garden, I had located a large wild fennel plant whose new growth seemed quite tender, protected by the stems from last year: an idea for the menu! Thus the entrée would be a fish soup. The 2nd dish: grilled beef filets covered in a sauce of roquefort cheese with a fresh vegetable crown: French beans, Provence tomatoes, Camargue rice steamed with parsley and mushrooms, and a spoonful of spinach in cream… [Our guests] leave nothing at all of the meal, not even in small quantity, to return to the kitchen where we might evaluate for ourselves if the cooking and flavors were perfectly successful. Then I brought the cheese plate, and it is only at this time that the concentration slackened and the conversation could ensue. For finishing, a slice of vanilla and chocolate ice cream deposited on a section of almond cake, and a peak of Chantilly with some hot, dark-chocolate sauce droplets …
This afternoon, the warmth of the air drove us outside into the garden! A large succulent plant that we commonly call here "the witch's claws" invades a corner of the terrace near the swimming pool. Its flowers in April burst forth a very vibrant, luminous pink and I unfortunately had to decide quite simply to sacrifice the plant to recover the annexed space. We returned the beautiful Ficoïde to a more appropriate shape however and by doing this filled an entire wheelbarrow with long plump stems. We transported these to the other end of the garden with the wheelbarrow. Upon entering the garden, a long rather low wall retains the ground of the slope that borders a channel on the north property. We traced a shallow furrow all along the top of the low wall and I chopped the long branches of the plant into small branches, depositing them in the ground. In this way we covered an incredible length with just the overgrowth of this prolific plant. A little good ground, a good watering and all that remains for us is to hope that the winter does not return to stop the development of the vegetation… While waiting one can dream by imagining the cascades along the wall that soon my first guests in spring of the next year will see! | |  | | | 
 | | |  | | | 
 | | | 
 | | | 
 | | |  | | ..
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|