Trumpets of Jericho

The Bignone has just flowered down at the second pergola.  It's common name in French is Trompettes de Jericho - Trumpets of Jericho.

Bulls' heart steaks "Margherita"

We've been buying Coeur de Boeuf (Bull's heart) tomatoes at the farmers' market in Velleron.  They are aptly named - heart shaped and enormous, and you can cook hem like meat.  They're sweet and flavourful and their flesh is so firm that they can be sliced and grilled on the barbecue.

The other night, we cooked them in just that way and then tossed torn fresh mozzarella and basil leaves over them and finished with some good olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Delicious! 

 The combination of tomato, mozzarella and basil is called 'Margherita' after the classic pizza topping named Margherita after the queen of Italy, because of its red, white and green colouring; the colours of the Italien flag.  

Shooting the Cat

It's not easy, photographing the cat, you know.

Especially when it's a wild one that's adopted you.

She'll let us pet her now, but it took a long time to gain her confidence.

And perseverance pays off in the end.

Lindsay has named her Sweetie-Pie.

She doesn't come in the house.  But she does catch mice so she's welcome to stick around!

Spiky Garden

This is an allium christophii blooming in May in our Spiky Garden.  I've just found that its common name is Star of Persia.  I can see why.  I, however, having forgotten the latin name over the last year, have been calling it the football flower because its large, spherical flower heads are almost as big as a football.

Just next to it is an Acanthus, also in bloom.  Its tall, architectural spikes of flowers reach about 1m50 (5ft) in height.  And along side them are two red hot pokers...

I reckon it's pretty obvious why I call it the spiky garden!

I've planted the spiky garden to surround one of our shady pergolas.  Along with the acanthus, red hot pokers and alliums, I've mixed in several grasses, gladioli, agapanthus, rosemary and honeysuckle for year round interest.

At the moment, our antique iron day bed is under the pergola and the honeysuckle with its heady perfume is blooming too.  All of which makes this an ideal spot to put your feet up and chill for a while...

New Pool

So it's been some time coming, but here it is; our new swimming pool.

And very chuffed we are with it too!

It sits in the same position as our last pool, just adjacent to the house.  But it's one-and-a-half times as long - 12m or 40ft.

It's been finished since the second week in April, but we then had a lot of work to do in fixing up the garden to have the pool presentable for our first guests who arrived on May 4.

When it was finished, after the passing of various diggers, delivery lorries and a pile driver, our courtyard looked like this!

3 weeks, 12 tonnes of gravel, 5 tonnes of “clapisette” (a fine powdered limestone, from which our paths are made) and an enormous amount of hard graft from us and Debbie, and  it looked like this at the beginning of May...

If you look hard enough, you can see that the grass that Lindsay and Debbie had seeded only 2 weeks earlier was only just coming in and that the flower beds were bare.

This is what it looks like now.

I think we have the right to a little feeling of chuffedness?

Hibernation Over

Hi.  We're back!  Nothing much happens over the winter apart from we knuckle down and get on with graphic design, legal consultancy etc.  None of which is particularly bloggable.

Actually it's been a particularly wet and cold winter, with over six inches of snow on the Vieux Port in Marseille at one point!  We got away skiing a few times.  A good snow year, that's a positive.

But the garden's stirring now and the Euphorbia seems first to have woken.

Expect Mimosa and Almond blossom soon and then the whole thing starts all over again. 

Things to look out for in the next few weeks:

Snow chez nous, skiing photos and our new pool!  (Just being finished, pictures at the end of the month.)

Hanging in there

This little chap was clinging to our door the other day. He's a tree frog and they seem to have colonised the garden. They're very cute and make lots of noise, sounding remarkably like ducks when they get going and give us a proper frog's chorus. Here's what he looks like the right way up.

Cosmos

These beauties have been the hit of the summer. They just keep flowering - and are still at it as we hit mid October. Might try scattering them in patches in the field next year and see if can manage a wild flower meadow....

Birthday Parcels, good enough to eat!

Last night we cooked a meal to celebrate one of our guest Fiona's 21st birthday. We cooked:

Twice baked parmesan soufflées

Filo parcels of chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms and thyme

Raspberry Pavlova

Everything was greated with reassuring oooohs, (especially the Pavlova, which was getting on for half a metre in diameter!) and all was polished off to everybody's delight.

The filo parcels are fun to make.

For each parcel you'll need to pieces of flattened out chicken breast about 8-10cm across. Flatten chicken breasts buy spreading them on a solid board, laying a piece of cling film over the top of them, and then bashing them flat with a meat mallet (or similar club-like implement such as a wooden rolling pin). Then cut them into 2 or 3 suitably sized pieces depending on the original size of the fillet and the size to which it bashes out.

The chicken breasts need to be part-cooked before being baked in the parcels as filo pastry cooks very quickly. I poached them (to keep the chicken good and moist) in a broth of water, rosé wine - white would work just as well, a large, smashed clove of garlic, a good hand-full of fresh sage leaves, four bay leaves and salt. I brought the broth to the boil and then switched it off, allowing it to steep while I bashed out the chicken breasts.

When I was ready to go, I brought the broth back to the boil and then placed half a dozen chicken pieces at a time into it and put a lid over the pan. It took a minute or two for the broth to come back to the boil, by which time the chicken was poached through. So I fished out the chicken and repeated the process with the remaining batches until all my chicken bits were poached.

All of this, I did earlier in the day. I put all the chicken pieces in a pyrex bowl and, once it had cooled, covered them with the strained broth to keep them moist and to put maximum flavour into the chicken.

At the same time as preparing the chicken, I also prepared the tomato stuffing that completed the parcels. I fried finely chopped onions, with roughly chopped sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms, a good bunch of time leaves and salt an pepper. As the mix softened and started to catch, I loosened the mixture with a glug of balsamic vinegar followed by a generous couple of glasses of wine. This continued to cook until all the liquid was absorbed, but the mixture remained moist. This, again, was then placed in a bowl and covered ready for later.

Variations which we might try in the future - using black olives instead of mushrooms, swapping thyme for fennel seeds, including roughly crumbled feta cheese (a good veggie version too?)

Fiona's a vegetarian, so a veggie version was prepared for her. In a heavy-bottomed pan, I dry fried a tablespoonful of pine nuts. To them, I then added around half a cupful of the tomato stuffing mix and a splash of water (as the pan was very hot and I didn't want the mix to stick). I then stirred in a tablespoonful of arborio rice and let the mix cook a little. I then added a little water and stirred it in, allowed the mix to boil until all the liquid was absorbed and then repeatedly added a little more water and boiled until absorbed, until the rice was soft. Effectively, I made a risotto without much rice in it. This too was made in advance.

In the evening, the oven went on at about 7 (the twice baked soufflées needed to go in for their second baking too) at around 180º. It then took about 40 minutes to make ten parcels. For each, you need two sheets of filo, cut in half. The first filo sheet is laid on a clean surface in roughly brushed with a little melted bitter, the second then laid at a right angle over the first. Again brush with melted butter and repeat for layers 3 and 4, this time laid diagonally to the first two layers. In the centre of this filo flower, place a chicken piece followed by a spoonful of tomato stuffing as a kind of sandwich filling, and then complete the sandwich with another piece of chicken.

Then brush a little more butter around the exposed filo and draw it up to envelope the chicken/tomato filling. Scrunch it together in a kind of rough 'bunch' at the top of the parcel. Brush on a little more butter (this sounds like a lot of butter, but it's really only smeared on) and then place on a well greased baking sheet.

Cook for between 20 and 30 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden.

I cooked a little extra stuffing (enough for about another tablespoon each). To this I added a tin of tomatoes that I first blitzed in the food processor. I then heated this through to make a sauce to accompany the parcels, which were also served with broccoli, green beans and chive mashed potatoes.

A Matter of Gilt

This week saw the raising of our new mirror. And it was quite a job!

Our friend Raymond bought it for us from a guy who was making some new furniture for Raymond's shop. (So we got it at 'trade'.)

It came in unpainted pine, and with a slight (deliberate) battered feel for a 'salvaged' look. So the first job was for Lindsay to paint it and 'gild' it. It's done with a gesso undercoat - a nice, thick primer that smoothed out a lot of the rough edges in the original carpentry - followed by rubbing on a gold wax.

And then we had to put the thing up! It's over 2 metres (around 8 feet) tall and needs two to shift it. It didn't help that we'd decided to mount it above a staircase either.

Raymond and Arnaud came round and helped us move it through the house, before (using a stair ladder and a plank) we moved it onto the shelf that I'd already put up to take it. Then Raymond held the mirror while I bolted it into the wall at the top. Easy! (With the slight exception that I managed to fall backwards of the stairs in the process - just a few bruises, fortunately.)

Anyway - it's quite a statement, heh?

Meanwhile, back at...

And back at home, our Mimosa is in full bloom:





This tree was only shoulder high three years ago. It has truly gone for it!

Sunset on the Pampas

August brings two highlights to our garden - it's the monthe that we get the best sunsets and its when the Pampas grass flowers.

That Spot Again

You may have seen my post entitled Tricks of the Light.

If you did, you might be interested to see this follow up shot. The spot light created by the round window in the opposite wall moves across the wall each afternoon.

Almond Harvest

OK - it's noy many, but it's a start! (And how many people do you know who harvest their own almonds from their own almond tree?)

Tricks of the Light

It's been quite a while I know. Summer's truly on us and the house is bulging at the seems for most of August. Lindsay's been in Brussels for 3 weeks and I've just been too busy to blog. I'll make up for it in the next few weeks as I've got a backlog of images that I want to post.

Here are two interesting ones - both are right-time-right-place shots. No particular story just a couple of things I noticed when I happened to have the camera handy.



This is our front door bell, bought for us by our friends Nick and Babeth and their daughters, Sophie and Emily. It saves our guests having to climb our spiral staircase when the want to find us and saves us the embarrassment of guests coming up to find us still asleep in bed! This shot was taken at lunch time (so yes, I was up by then!) when the sun was directly to the South - hence the perfectly square on shadow.



And this shot is taken in our apartment, the converted hayloft. In the apex of the western gable, we have a small round window. Every day, as the sun starts to descend, a perfect circle of light works its way across the opposite wall. Here it is at 6.30, hitting my collection of minitaure Penguin books released to celebrate Penguin's 60th birthday. All together a too good to miss all round orange moment - the book spines, the Antony Gormley poster and the setting sunlight.

Last Night's Dinner - Saturday 30 June

We're cooking dinner every night this week. I thought I'd share this one...

Leek feuillettés

followed by

Chicken breasts stuffed with lemon and sultanas, wrapped in jambon cru with green beans and new potatoes and a yoghurt, lemon juice and olive oil dressing

followed by

Chocolate and orange mousse

Chicken Breasts stuffed with Lemon and Sultanas, wrapped in Jambon Cru Serves 6

1 onion
2 lemons
6 bay leaves
A handful of sultanas
3 slices of stale bread
6 chicken breast fillets
6 large slices of jambon cru (parma ham or similar)
Salt, pepper, olive oil

Preheat oven to 200ºC

Chop the onion to sultana sized pieces. Finely slice the rind (not the pith) of the 2 lemons and fry with the onion, bay leaves, and a pinch of salt until soft. Then add the sultanas, a good grind of pepper - enough to make the finished stuffing properly peppery - and squeeze in the juice of one lemon and continue to cook until the liquid is reduced. Finish by removing from the heat, taking out the bay leaves and stirring in the juice of the other lemon and the bread crumbs.

Bash out the chicken breasts until flat and about double in size (cover with cling film as you do this to stop the fillets breaking up). Spread the fillet out on its back and pat a sixth of the stuffing into its centre. Roll it and then roll it again in a piece of jambon cru to hold it together.

Cook for 20/25 minutes.

Bed Head(s)

Visiting Mas des Grand' Terres this year won't reveal quite as great a range of changes as previous years. The initial project phases are complete now and this winter and Spring were more about 'bedding in' - working on upgrading details of the gites. Lindsay recovered another sofa for Cote Est. I'll be doing some new photography in this gite in a few weeks time, so anybody who's been before can see how things have changed and those who haven't been can be tempted once again.

In the interim, I was upstairs changing the link between the 2 gites to improve its soundproofing. (This is filed under dull-but-important and doesn't merit a photograph.) At the same time I made headboards for the single beds in the twin rooms.



The beds can be pushed together to create a large double - 6ft/1.8m wide...



We're very pleased with the new bed heads and hope that you will agree that they pull the rooms together nicely.




If you'd like to see more of Mas des Grand' Terres and find out about the holidays that we offer here, please visit our current web site - www.maisondetreholidays.com.

I'm afraid that, as with any project where things are constantly being updated and improved, the site lags a little behind. To catch a glimpse of the future, take a sneak peak at our new but incomplete site for new pictures and more detail of accommodation options - New Site.