46. Basque cuisine (& no tin opener jokes please!)

20th February 2010. In previous posts I've mentioned a few Basque dishes, notably the Gâteau basque, but I think I should apologise in advance to the Confrérie du gâteau basque for what I'm about to say about their revered cake.. (I should add that this is all tongue-in-cheek!)

At the 2009 Fete du Gâteau basque in Cambo (below), the judges were photographed filling out Next Of Kin forms before trying to speed-eat eight Gâteaux basques* against the clock (although I could be wrong here..) No, they were really suggesting alternative uses for the cake in the middle.. (I heard later that the winning suggestion was "Boat Anchor.." with "Base for garden umbrella" coming a close second)

(Note from Management: 1 Gâteau basque, but 2 Gâteaux basques)

There's even a museum dedicated to the gâteau basque.. Try as I might, I just can't imagine a museum for Dairy Cream Sponges or Custard Slices in the UK - but that's all part of the magic of France. Gâteaux basques come in two main varieties (and an HGV licence is needed for both!) with either a black cherry or a crème pâtissière filling. Madame usually buys the cakes (I'm only allowed to buy them when there's a 'k' in the month) and I've never really been that enamoured with the black cherry variety of Gâteau basque.. finding them a bit heavy going, rather like a flywheel in cake form. 

Last Sunday, I was off out to buy a couple of baguettes from the baker in the centre of town when I had a sudden hankering to try a Gâteau basque with a crème pâtissière filling. I found one at a pâtisserie (I've been "hedumacated" not to buy cakes at bakers) and brought that home. It was chalk & cheese compared to the black cherry variety. Of course, Madame wasn't too keen but, as far as I'm concerned, it's the one I prefer.

So, back to Basque specialities. A feature of Basque cooking is that the colours of the Basque flag - red and green - often feature in the dishes (usually red & green peppers). I think my first lip-smacking experience was at La Buvette des Halles, a small café that had just opened in the centre of St Jean de Luz adjacent to the covered market (that sells meat, poultry, fish & all types of sea food, fruit & veg and cheese). After the market had finished for the morning and while all the detritus was being swept up, we saw a chap quickly setting up tables and chairs. His kitchen was inside the market building and his fish-orientated menu featured much that had come straight from the market - so without further ado we sat down at a table in the shade of the platanes.

I still remember what we had that first time - Madame had a tomato* and mozzarella salad and I had 9 oysters, then we both had grilled sardines (we didn't know then that they'd been cooked on a plancha) accompanied by a pichet of cold rosé. Everything was fresh and full of taste. Coffee, a Café Creme cigarillo and the bill followed - 105 francs - which at the time was only ~£11. If we could have pressed the rewind button and had it all again we would have! Delicious - and in such a simple setting - and as a bonus, it was ideal for people watching. It was his first year in business and we've been back every year (bar a couple) since then.

* Tomatoes are a no-go item for me..

His menu is a véritable (as they like to say here) catalogue of Basque cuisine - he serves all of the following staples of the Basque kitchen: Ttoro, Pipérade, Omelette au piment doux, Axoa d'espelette & Poulet basquaise and probably a few more that I've forgotten. Plus a few standards like sardines, grilled tuna, dressed crab, oysters, moules, entrecôte steak or confit de canard. For freshness of taste (and price) I don't think he can be beaten. It's one of our favourite places when it gets a bit warmer. Recommended: Light lunch? Go for the sardines. Feeling peckish? Tuna with pipérade will slow you down a bit..

I remember after our first holiday down in the Pays Basque we were keen to try sardines on our barbecue when we returned home. After they all fell through the grill and smoked out the neighbourhood we realised that frozen ones just won't do! And you need a plancha..

Here's the late Keith Floyd attempting to make a Pipérade in a Basque lady's kitchen in St Jean de Luz and  getting it all so wrong. (Imagine the reaction if a Frenchman was ensconced in a Yorkshire kitchen attempting to demonstrate for the viewers - and the lady of the house - 'ow ze famoos pudding de York-sheer was made..) I think he escaped very lightly! Don't misunderstand me.. I had a lot of time for Keith Floyd.. it took some nerve to do what he did here. Can't imagine the saintly Delia trying that!) 

22nd February 2010. 15C this morning. I went to Dancharia in Spain to fill the car up with diesel.. It's crept up to a tad over 1€/litre (~88p) - presumably in the light of the Total refinery dispute in N France which threatens to disrupt the supply of petrol to the country. While I was there, I picked up a few odds and ends and had an extra virgin cold pressed hot chocolate.. (as you do).

23rd February 2010. A few months ago, we were asked by A - an old friend of J-M in Tours - if we’d like to go for a flight with him one day from the Basque Aero Club at Biarritz airport.. A is a semi-retired fighter pilot (French Air Force) and he's a flying instructor at the Aero Club. Biarritz Airport is not that busy and the main operators who use it are Air France, RyanAir or EasyJet. Occasionally a biz jet flies in. We were there once waiting to board a RyanAir flight to the UK when I sensed that there was something going on. I noticed a posse of gendarmerie motorcyclists discreetly standing by with a few heavy-looking characters talking into their cuffs. An Airbus landed and, as it taxied in, a small tricolour could be seen fluttering from the flight deck window. It taxied up to the terminal and shut down in quick time while a stairway was hurriedly wheeled into place. There were a few impressive looking 'suits' nervously waiting below.. A minute later the door opened and there was El Presidente Sarkozy himself.. with MAM* two steps behind him.

Anyway, on the day we flew with A, all was blissfully peaceful and quiet. We opened the hangar doors and pushed out the (very) small aircraft (a Robin DR 400 120) that we were going to commit aviation in and, after a few external checks, we strapped ourselves in, quickly ran through a short checklist, called the tower to ask for start clearance and then started up. All very simple and minimalist! Once the engine and oil temperatures were showing the correct values, we called for taxy clearance and then we were off taxying around (above) to the threshold of the active runway. Then, following a quick look around, A released the brakes and opened the throttle and we were off down the runway - all 7,382ft of it.

We climbed out over Biarritz before turning north over the sea to follow the coastline. At around this point, A turned to me and said "You have control.." (at that point I could sense Madame watching me like a hawk from the rear seat!) and we continued flying north along the beaches at Anglet before he told me to turn onto an easterly heading to fly up the northern banks of the Adour. I'm reminded (not by my performance of course!) of the classic comment written on a student pilot's report. It went: "Once Bloggs climbs into an aircraft, he starts a chain of events over which he has no further control.." Ouch!

It was a day when I would normally have been rowing and down below I could see a couple of 'yolettes' (fours) outlined like pond skimmers against the silvery Adour.

The rowing club lies just above the second bridge up on the pic above on the left hand bank. At this point we turned right hand down a bit (technical aviation term) towards the Pyrenees and suddenly my mind map of how the Pays Basque fitted together suddenly took on an extra dimension as the landscape unfolded before us.

Saint-Jean-de-Luz

After St Jean de Luz we landed back at Biarritz, refuelled the aircraft and then taxied around to the hangar and locked it all away again. Great fun.. and I wish I could afford to do it more often. Many thanks to A for his kind gesture.. the Pays Basque looks just as good from the air. 

To wind up with, here's the pooch enjoying himself on a blustery day at our local beach a day or two ago. The clip won't win any awards I know - I was really just testing out my new camera.

And a clip of the sea rolling in at Biarritz..

* MAM = Michele Alliot Marie

45. French pop

19th February 2010. Contrary to what the UK media would have you believe, French pop music does exist and it comes in flavours other than Johnny Hallyday..! On the BBC, there is a constant drip drip of negativity towards any music emanating from across the channel. I remember when Andrea Bocelli (Italian I know) had a well-deserved hit across Europe with "Time to say good-bye" and some insular idiot on BBC Radio 2 introduced it by saying, "This has topped all the European charts over the last few weeks which means it's going to be a flop here.." (ye godfathers..)

Despite that introduction, it was a smash in the UK too. Johnny Hallyday is not rated at all by the UK pop music cognescenti either.. He's been around almost as long as Cliff Richard but that's where any similarity stops. Johnny puts on a dynamic stage show - he's got presence and power in spades and some great songs. He attracts an audience of all ages while anodyne old Cliff is the favourite of the mums & grannies.

Here he is with one of his greatest hits Que je t'aime.. (with a very Darth Vader-ish intro! - "Feel the force, Johnny!") (hard to see where he keeps his pension book in that suit!) This is how to make an entrance! Skip to 4.16 for the song:

  

There are a couple of good gizmos available for listening to French radio via a PC. RFM plays a mix of English language hits from the 80s and contemporary French songs with minimal blah-blah between them. (If you like it, right click on the RFM logo to create a shortcut to it on your desktop). We used to tune into RFM on the long drive south from Calais to the Pays Basque each summer and it wasn’t too long before we worked out what the ‘summer song’ for that year was as they seem to have a limited play list.

A classic summer song in 1971 (seems like yesterday!) that you couldn't escape from even if you wanted to was Michel Delpech's monster hit Pour Un Flirt. It still receives lots of air time even today. It's one of those annoyingly catchy tunes (aaagghh - those trumpets..!) that you can't stop yourself singing along to.

One that I would have liked to escape from would have been Tanita Tikaram's 1988 hit "Twist in my Sobriety" - played to death by RFM.

My only major gripe at RFM is that they do insist on playing James Blunt.. He should cut out the middleman and call the Samaritans direct thus sparing us from the misery of listening to his songs..

So who are the French pop music ‘greats’..? There’s the so-stylish and enigmatic Françoise Hardy – all cheekbones, hair, eyes and.. steady! She had a whole stream of hits in France – some of which she translated into English for the UK & US markets. And, although not a favourite of mine, let's not forget the evergreen Mireille Mathieu – never has the Marseillaise been sung with such passion and fervour as in her rendition. Liane Foly too is an extremely under-rated song stylist as well as being a very funny lady. See what you think of her intriguing and exotic sounding Au fur et à mesure..

Michel Fugain had a great deal of success (in 1972..) with this oh-so-French summer song:

Radio TSF Jazz broadcasts on FM in the Paris area and it plays cool jazz non-stop. 

That's enough to be going on with..! Apologies in advance if you start humming Pour Un Flirt all day!

And now for something completely different - the late great John Candy in "Trains, Planes & Automobiles".. If you haven't seen it, you've missed a very very funny film..

I know this has got nothing to do with the Pays basque but this is one funny film.. take a look at the trailer:

44. Over the hump

16th February 2010. I've never enjoyed the first three months of the year. Dark, cold, wet and with the prospect of Spring seeming like a distant mirage. And, to crown it all, the bank balance is normally in recovery mode after the excesses of Christmas as well. So here we are - half way through it - and with just another six weeks to go.

Still no rowing for me.. hopefully it won't be too long before I can get in a boat again. After last Saturday's outing, one of the guys at the club sent me a slideshow of pictures taken on the river. They all looked c o l d..

Seeing F in one of the pictures reminded me of an incident a year or two ago out on the river in a 'yolette' (a 'four'). On this particular day I'd started off in the cox’s seat (the one who does the steering and shouting the orders..) which was a bit tricky because I don’t know all the orders in French yet.. There were 2 nanas (ie, female ladies of the opposite persuasion) occupying seats 2 & 3, and one was early getting her oar in all the time and the other one was late all the time.. (Not like a woman to be late getting her oar in I thought!).. Anyway, F, who was rowing up at 'bow', suddenly decided he had to have a P for relief - right now! This is completely in line with the inalienable right of all Frenchmen to pee al fresco whenever, wherever and in front of whoever they want - this sub-clause must be enshrined in the Constitution somewhere (and, believe me, it's exercised prolifically during the Fete de Bayonne!).

Now given that a nana was immediately in front of F, do you think this would have put him off for one moment..? Er, beh non.. The nanas in the boat kept their eyes discreetly towards the stern of the boat (so they said!) while F got to his feet. From my position in the stern - but facing forward - I watched the whole thing unfolding (no pun intended!). 'Yolettes' are pretty stable as long as everyone is sat down but for some unaccountable reason, as soon as F got to his feet and started rummaging around in the trouser area, a vicious wobble started up which he tried to counteract by shifting his weight. Alas, it was all to no avail because he suddenly found himself leaning past the vertical in one direction while the boat had a wobble on in the other direction..! From that point on, there was no way back and into the Adour he toppled - in a tangle of arms & legs - with all the grace of a horse pushed into a swimming pool. Needless to say, sympathy was in short supply.. as we were all too busy crying with laughter. Luckily, a coach was nearby in a motorboat and she picked him up to return him to the clubhouse.

I had Eric around yesterday to fix the halogen spots in the kitchen. Since he installed them 2 years ago, they've been nothing but trouble so yesterday he came around and replaced all the units free of charge. I think he'd originally been given a duff set to fit. He's also going to give us an estimate for replacing the garden door to the garage and the main garage doors. The garden door looks a touch moth eaten and I suspect it's only the paint and the 2 long hinges that are holding it together.

Now that all the double glazing in the house has been fitted, we've been thinking about a new front door as I can see daylight around the locks and the cold comes whistling in through there. We asked the company who provided the new windows for an off-the-cuff estimate and we were told somewhere in the region of 2,500 - 3,500€! Shorely shome mishtake..

The temperatures have finally risen from around freezing point and the ground is no longer iron hard. Looking outside, the palm tree looks bedraggled and the fronds are dripping in the light rain. (where's that number for the Samaritans..?)

(Edited in Oct 2017 to add) Sad to think that out of the five founding members of the 80s supergroup 'The Traveling Wilburys', that only two remain with us today.. (if the video gets taken down, click on this)