Indigo Days

Jonesing for Mexican

Ask any transplanted Californian what they miss most about “home,” and 9 times out of 10 they’ll immediately fire back, “Mexican food.”

I was no different.  So Tadaaki and I spent our honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta (not exactly paradise, but a familiar haunt).  Instead of disco hopping with my pals from Carlos O’Brien's and Chayo the flower girl, we played cards.  The only “gringos” in our hotel, we rented a top floor apartment equipped with a kitchen.  Tadaaki had no problem communicating with the Mexicans and felt right at home.  The fishermen used the same throwing nets as he did in Japan.  The cookie lady on the beach promptly veered our way at Tadaaki’s call, “Ne, ne obasan, kochi ni oide.”  No matter it was Japanese, she knew what he wanted.

 One of the reasons I love to learn languages, is to communicate with the people who produce my food—in the kitchen, on the field or from the sea.  At Club Med, the floor staff all wanted to speak English, but the women patting out tortillas at the Mexican food area kindly responded in Spanish to my tentative overtures.  Slow to warm up (like me), we struck up a gradual understanding.  I watched what they were making, asked a few questions, then made my selection following their advice.  Food is all about developing trust.  No sense in asking, if the person giving opinion has no feeling for your taste.  One question I always asked, was which salsa would be good for a given dish.  At first the answers were noncommittal…something to the tune of “they’re all good…whichever you like.”  But as the week progressed, a couple of the women began to give me more exact guidance.  “Use this one….put crema on the beans…try the enchiladas!”  The food was our bond.

The hand-patted tortillas puffed up on the griddle as they should, and were chewy and bright with that unmistakable taste of cooked corn kernels soaked in slaked lime.  I couldn’t get enough.  In Japan, one company sells tortillas made only from corn, so they lack the bite of lime and are disappointingly insipid.  Normally a toast and jam “girl,” I had tortillas, beans, cheese and salsa for breakfast.  Every day.  And for lunch.  And dinner.  Club Med is mind-bogglingly democratic in its selection of foods.  They even serve sushi.  Sushi in Mexico?  I don’t think so.  Though the sushi counter, often thronged with eager diners, appeared to be the most popular spot (other than the homemade French fries area).  But for me, the Mexican food section was home.  It was hard to beat the homemade tortillas, beans, cheese (a bit of crema perhaps) and salsa.  Oh, and guacamole with homemade tortilla chips for lunch and dinner (and drinks).  I probably ate more guacamole at the Food Blogger Camp than I’ve eaten in the last 10 years.

But it was the salsas that held me captive.  How could I taste every one of them on one single plate of food?  Too often, I ended up using three different salsas in a sort of bizarre medley (and often finished with several spoonfuls of the ubiquitous salsa fresca).  I would have been in heaven with a ramekin of each salsa and a bowl of chips to taste each one’s nuanced flavors.  The salsas had heart and the salsas stood out amid the mind-numbing plethora of other foods. One night we had a tequila tasting. It was fun, but I say, bring on the salsa.  Please.

I’m obsessed with chiles.  For years, I subscribed to a magazine called Chile Pepper.  It was on our honeymoon trip to Mexico, where I discovered the dizzying array of chile pepper varieties.  I quickly scooped a handful of each into separate plastic bags, having first scribbled their names on scraps of paper.  Back in Japan, Tadaaki tried to grow the chiles, though we soon got the varietals mixed up and they cross-pollinated (no surprise).  When possible, we saved the seeds, but eventually those original chiles petered out.  Last year our only three scraggly jalapeño plants died, so no chiles.  At all.  But this year, I grew the chiles from heirloom seeds bought in Berkeley, and we ended up with a bumper crop of jalapeños, serranos, pepperoncini, and cayenne (though the plants on Tadaaki’s field were much more prolific than the ones I planted in my SSU! kitchen garden….hmm, same seedlings).  I ate chopped chile on everything from salad to sushi.  Every day.  Every meal.  That fiery blast of vitamin C kept me alive during the fall doldrums.

On that same honeymoon trip, I also bought a book that changed my life:  Diana Kennedy’s The Cuisines of Mexico.  Through that book, I learned to cook Mexican food.  Not Tex-Mex, but real Mexican food that real Mexican woman were cooking.  I found huitlacoche in my cornfield (corn fungus to the uninitiated) and discovered that quesadillas were not made from flour tortillas and cheese, but corn masa and any number of fillings (including huitlacoche).  I learned to make chorizo by hand and chilaquiles, the ultimate hangover cure (not that we needed it), a dish that still brings me to my knees, it is so grippingly good.  Fried day old tortillas are layered with roasted guajillo chile salsa and cheese, covered with chicken stock and then simmered until the stock is absorbed.  Served in a pottery soup bowl, with a spoonful of thick sour cream (crema), sautéed chorizo, a squeeze of lime and a few fresh onion rounds, these chilaquiles achieve the ultimate balanced combination of heat mellowed by cream, with the richness offset by lime (and vinegared chorizo).  The back bite of fresh onion clears your mouth for the next unforgettable bite.  I’m “jonesing” for chilaquiles right about now.  Aren’t you? 

Tacos…enchiladas…sure, I did those as well.  Refried beans made from organic beans were a revelation in their obviousness (so easy, yet transcendentally better than the obligatory paste served at most Mexican restaurants).  This food was like I had never tasted anywhere.  Even in Mexico. 

 But in the market place of Zihuatenejo we came across some crowd-stopping fare.  Fluffy, air-light chile rellenos (I never did make those) and a complex mole (never made that one either).  The carnitos tacos were also pretty damn tasty.  But the very favorite thing I ate in Mexico was almost laughingly simple:  Arbol chiles fried in hot oil, then tossed with coarse sea salt.  Done.  The first one was toasty, complex.  Perhaps one of the best things I have ever eaten.  The second one was still just as compelling, though the heat was rising.  The third one had me reaching for my beer.  Unexpectedly seductive and just as addicting, they’ll go down well in the summer with edamame and beer.  I’m hooked.

Diana Kennedy’s Enchiladas Sencillas

Shredded Chicken:  Cut 1 kilo (2 lbs) free-range chicken thighs into 4-6 large chunks.  Cover with cold water, add an onion cut into wedges, a few peeled cloves of garlic and some peppercorns.  Bring to a boil and simmer, covered until the chicken is cooked.  Remove from heat and let cool naturally in the hot water.  Scoop meat out, drain and shred.  (Alternatively make loosely scrambled eggs from 7 large eggs and salt.)  Preheat the oven:  180˚C (350˚F).  Tomato Sauce:  Cut 500 grams tomatoes in half and place face down on foil-lined cookie sheet.  Broil until black spots appear on the surfaces.  (Replace canned tomatoes during the off-season, but use Muir Glen whole tomatoes.)  Blend broiled tomatoes with 1 peeled clove garlic and 2 serrano chiles, toasted on a heavy dry iron pan over high heat until slightly blackened.  In a large frying pan, heat 2 tbsp. canola oil over high to medium high heat and fry sauce until thickened and slightly reduced (about 5 minutes).  Add ½ tsp. salt and 125 cc (½ cup) sour cream (preferably Japanese, Mexican crema or crème fraîche—American sour cream tends to curdle).  Tortillas:  Heat ¼ to ½-inch of canola oil in a small iron frying pan.   Fry 12 corn tortillas quickly (one at time), turning gently with rounded tongs.  They should not stiffen, just become supple.  Stack between double layers of paper towels.  Cheese & Onions:  Grate 250 cc (1 cup) Chihuahua or American with Cheddar cheese.  Fine chop one onion.  Assembling the Enchiladas:  Dip tortillas in creamy tomato sauce and shake off a little of the excess sauce.  Lay out one by one on a couple cookie sheets.  Distribute evenly the shredded chicken (or egg) among all the tortillas, placing it in a rectangular-shaped mound across the middle of the tortilla from edge to edge.  Sprinkle with a little chopped onions and roll loosely.  Set in a gratin dish, side by side. Smooth any remaining sauce over the top of the enchiladas, strew with the cheese and remaining onion.  Bake for 10 minutes until heated through and cheese is melted.

Make-shift organic burritos with equally make-shift organic Mexican rice & green pepper salad

 

Food Bloggers in Mexico

“No Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

If I told you this was shot from my kitchen window, you know I’d be lying.  I’m not sure there is any beach in Japan that looks like this.  Well, maybe in Okinawa.  The beaches I’ve been to have not been particularly clean, nor would I call picking my way between a patchwork of sunbathers who leave almost no room for walking, particularly pastoral.  But then, I don’t go to the beach in Japan.

Hence the Food Blogger Camp in Ixtapa, Mexico. 

But I didn’t go for the beach.  I went for the company.  To meet the bloggers.  Oh sure, I’m a blogger, but just like I’m a farmer.  I’m not really a blogger, not like most of the others. 

I love my life in Japan (most of the time), but I do start feeling a little squished in, and the need wells up to get out to a world where I blend conveniently into the woodwork.  There is a cartoon character in Japan called Doraemon.   He’s a corpulent aqua blue cat with an annoying laugh and equally grating high voice.  But he has an interesting device that he produces miraculously out of his kangaroo-like stomach pouch:  the dokodemo door.  He pulls this “anywhere” door out of his 4-dimension pocket with a flourish and the other characters walk through that door into another world.  That’s how I feel when I travel.

I walk out the door and I’m already off to the next place.  I switch out of Japan mode and am in my "other world" mode.  France, Italy, the U.S….this time Mexico.  It doesn’t matter.  With the boys or without, it doesn’t matter.  Though I do prefer traveling with them, because they’re fun to be with and great at the table.

So what about this Food Blogger Camp?  First of all, it was at Club Med.  Hmmm…not really my cup of tea, but I have to admit it was hard not to be seduced.

The Food Bloggers were a mixed group.  Some had big name blogs, some still hadn’t started one.  Some of us wrote food stories, some blogs were solely recipe generated.  But what we all shared, was a sense of community.  And that is why many of us came—to explore that community and to forge bonds within that eclectic community of quirky, but mad-for-food bloggers.

I’ve been thinking a lot about community these days.  And realize I have several, though not really in the normal sense of the word.  At Club Med, when I tried to explain about my life to new pal Romain, he was a bit confounded.  “You don’t have friends in your town?” he asked, with a rounding of his eyes.  His actual words were, “tu n’as pas d’amis dans ton coin?,” or something like that.  Romain is a Frenchman.  We have farmer friends in our area, or Kanchan the soba chef…but we all work every day, so social gatherings are rare.  Oh, I’m "friends" with the teachers, Japanese staff and some of the mothers at my school, Sunny-Side Up!  But that’s different. 

Friends come from belonging to a community, so most of our friends in Japan (non-farmer or SSU! ones) are through a group of intercultural families that we were part of when the kids were younger.  But as other families’ kids began entering Japanese school, except for the occasional holiday, they no longer had time for family gatherings.  The weekends were devoted to soccer, baseball or study school.  Also, our kids learned at a young age that foreign friends usually leave, so our boys always had their small set of close local friends.  A welcome constant in an already unorthodox world of homeschooling on the farm.

I’m not much of a joiner, but at Club Med (well, more precisely, at Food Blogger Camp), I felt the warmth of being part of this larger food blogging community.  And I thank the veteran bloggers for their democratic inclusiveness.  But more than that, I thank them for the expertise that they so generously shared with all of the participants, both formally and informally. 

Organizer Jaden Hair shared tips on how to get your “brand” out there.  Go-getter leaps to mind.  The best quote of the camp came from blogging powerhouse Elise Bauer, who originally started her food blog as a way to keep in touch and share recipes with family and friends.  When she got her first comment on the blog, she immediately thought, “How dare they?”  Now she spends 2 hours a day managing comments.  Food writing guru Dianne Jacob walked us through a writing workshop involving corn pops and also took time out from the beach to do one-on-one work (probono).  Very nice.  Donna and Michael Ruhlman, the most beautiful couple at the camp, also turned out to be the most fun (and fun to talk to).  I think I’m officially a Michael Ruhlman groupy, as my cookbook library has recently increased from 2 to 8 of his books.  Todd Porter & Diane Cu spent the camp filming and photographing, while we all hit the beach.  Their video and photos are not to be missed.  I’d say their passion for photography and food is matched by their passion to teach.  And even bloggers who were not speakers gave of their time with a gusto and selflessness that I had not expected.  Techno wizard Owen Rubin was a patient, yet enthusiastic dispenser of advice, from photography techniques to SEO deconstruction for the not so tech savvy.

The first night anywhere is tough when you don’t know anyone.  And it was obvious that many of the participants were close friends (if not from time spent face-to-face, at least through their blogs).  But Brooke plopped herself down between me and Lori’s husband Brian, and made us feel welcome.  Motormouth Stephanie was holding court toward the end of the table, with the ever so bubbly Diana keeping up, and then some.  Ronn and I were the quiet ones, just taking it all in.  And the brilliantly fey Garrett McCord drifted by before repairing to a tequila-shooting contest at our favorite after hours spot, the cabana bar.

As the days meandered along, I also made friends with Jody and a little girl named Katie.

 

Jody, a well-put together 50-something brunette, intrigued me by her genuineness.  She was an anomaly:  a Hollywood native who (inexplicably) spoke with a distinctly New York twang.  We met on the plane from L.A..  Her son and girlfriend were my seatmates and their friendly (movie star stunning) family was traveling en masse.  Gregarious and lively, she gave me a “zing” every time we talked. She also had a great laugh. 

 

I sat across the aisle from Katie on the Club Med bus from the Zihua airport, and struck up a conversation with her, as I am wont to do.  She reminded me a bit of myself when I was a girl, with messy blond hair and a pink face.  I also liked that she had no wiles and was just a regular little girl, not precocious or pert.  So refreshing. I took my shoes off, she took off hers.  I curled my legs up on the seat to take a nap, she did the same.  Really cute.  I caught glimpses of Katie throughout the week:  Katie dancing freely one night with some other equally footless little kids, Katie at the pool with her Dad, Katie, face smeared with pink oxide, on the way to eat tacos with her mom and brother.  Katie would be right at home at SSU!.  I looked at her like my little talisman, “keeping it real” in paradise.

I came away from the week with so much to think about and a nascent desire to take my Indigo Days blog out into a bigger world.  I’ll miss the people I met at Food Blogger Camp and the conversations we had, but with the Internet, we can continue having them.  So I boarded the plane bound for Narita with a light step, anxious to get back to the farm.

After all, “there’s no place like home.”

 A Lebovitz Isle   

I’m new to the blogging world, and up until the camp didn’t really read too many blogs.  But the first one I did read was recommended by Giovanna, a writer and friend in Portland.  Oh, I take that back, the first blog I ever read was Giovanna’s and I still think it’s one of the best around.  But David Lebovitz’s blog from Paris captured my heart as well.  Funny, well written, informative, what is there not to like?  And in person, David doesn’t disappoint.  I’ve never seen such a mobile face—the widening of his eyes in a flash of surprise says it all.  As an ex-bartender, I had a hard time finding the perfect cocktail at Club Med, but photographer Matt Armendariz’s concoction, A Lebovitz Isle, hit the spot.  Matt and his food stylist partner, Adam Pearson, have more tats than the yakuza, but the resemblance ends there.  Teddy-bear gentle, they share an appealingly off-color sense of humor.  I could go on, but maybe you’re interested in the drink…

A Lebovitz Isle Method:  Fill a tall glass with large ice cubes.  Add pineapple juice (preferably fresh) halfway up and top with sparkling wine.  No need for your best French, a moderate Californian works nicely (avoid the rot gut).  Add a squeeze of lime if you like.  Sip on a beach under the Mexican sun.

 

Plucking Duck Feathers

Christmas 2009

Two and a half hours into the duck plucking, with all the feathers that hadn’t already settled on some surface wafting gently in the kitchen, I began to regret forgoing the water dip. 

At least the ducks didn’t smell.

Andrew and Matthew couldn’t be convinced to help, but Christopher wandered by and took pity on me.  I passed him the duck I had given up on and he went to fetch pliers to remove the wing and tail feathers.  Tadaaki breezed in, rolled his eyes at the mess I was making, grabbed a duck and left.  Christopher (more practical than I) followed him out not too long after.  But before that, we got to talking about the yearly duck plucking.  A bit like childbirth, it’s an ordeal I always conveniently forget until Christmas rolls around one more time and I’m back tugging at those impossibly recalcitrant feathers that don’t seem to want to separate from their host.  Someone told me recently that we should be plucking the ducks immediately upon killing.  After all these years, why didn’t we know that?

And why are the Moscovy ducks harder to pluck than the little wild Mallard ducks?  And why are the glossy green ones a bit easier than the plain white and black ones?  And who cares anyway?  But these are the things that went through my mind as I plucked the Christmas ducks with Early Joan Baez cranked up high on the stereo (do people still say “stereo?”).

When we were having babies, we used to buy the ducks from a duck farm.  The duck guy would kill to order (either Moscovy or wild ducks, our choice), and then send them beautifully packed and separated by cut, down to individually wrapped livers, hearts and gésiers.  I often made confit in those days, so he also included extra duck fat, ready to render.  I don’t know how much the ducks cost, but those were glorious days.  I reminisced with Christopher of those featherless Christmases and he wondered if we wouldn’t go back to ordering ducks from the duck man.

The idea is seductively enticing, but I don’t think we will.  It’s not about the money, but about not giving up on how we choose to live our life and sticking to a code of ethics when it comes to creating our food.  It’s a lot easier to buy our rice or flour…or even vegetables for that matter.  And it’s a hell of a lot easier to buy our Christmas ducks, plucked and cleaned.  But then we would lose that feeling—that feeling that tunnels into your core and spreads throughout your body when you take a bite of food that you have created from seed or have lovingly raised, respectfully killed and then painstakingly cleaned.  And that’s a feeling for which there is no duplicate, and that feeling is addicting because it reaches in and grabs your soul.

 
David Tanis’ Double Duck Breast  For 6 large Moscovy duck breasts:  grind 1 tsp. peppercorns, ½ tsp. each allspice & juniper berries, a few cloves and a couple bay leaves.  Mix with 3 Tbsp. coarse sea salt and add 6 slivered garlic cloves.  Coat the breasts with the spice mixture, massaging it in with your fingers so the mixture adheres well to the breasts.  Pair up the duck breasts by size and shape, then place one on top of the other so the skin side is out.  Tie together with kitchen twine (about 3 times evenly spaced out around the middle horizontally, than once more around from end to end, weaving in the string at each cross tie.  Refrigerate for several hours or overnight.  (I left them for a couple days.)  Remove breasts from fridge well before cooking time (2-3 hours).  They should be room temperature when you cook them.  Preheat oven to 400˚F & cook in a roasting pan or cast iron skillet for 15 minutes.  If needed, pour off fat (strain and reserve for other cooking), turn and cook for an additional 15 minutes (if you use a thermometer--125˚F for medium rare).  Let roasts sit for 10 minutes before slicing.  When Tadaaki cut the strings and took the ducks apart they looked a bit raw on the sides that were sandwiched together.  I made the mistake of putting them back in the oven for 5 minutes, so they turned out medium.  (I like my duck on the rare side.)  Also, the sad truth was, our ducks were a bit tough this year.  I think it’s time to get more chicks this spring.  The duck method comes from one of the best-written cookbooks I have ever read:  David Tanis’ a platter of figs, a collection of eclectic recipes that scream “make me now.”  David is the head chef at Chez Panisse half the year and skulks the farmers markets in Paris the other half.  I served the duck with David’s turmeric and spice-flavored pickled turnips, Tadaaki’s organic brown rice and Alishan organic dried figs simmered in red wine.

 
Braised Duck Legs with Leeks and Green Olives yields a syrupy sauce redolent of briny olives and lemon peel.  I used some fall crop unpasteurized Lucques olives that I had saved for the holidays, though Picholines would also work well.  This recipe (with some slight variations) is from the cookbook that no kitchen should be without:  Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food.  Rub coarse sea salt and fresh ground pepper into 6 Moscovy duck legs and refrigerate for at least half a day, but preferably overnight.  Remove from fridge and let come to room temperature.  Preheat oven to 425˚F.  Heat 3 Tbsp. tasty olive oil in a small roasting pan and add 3 roughly chopped leek stems (don’t use the dark green tops that v-off—I used Japanese negi), 2 roughly chopped medium carrots (peeled or not—I used more).  Cook over medium flame for 3 minutes.  Stir in a small handful each of thyme sprigs, and Italian parsley if you have it (I didn’t), a few bay leaves and 1½ cups good quality unpitted green olives.  Cook 3 minutes more, then set the duck legs in the pan, skin side down.  Add ¾ cup white wine, 2¼ cups duck (or chicken) broth and strips of organic lemon zest from 2 or 3 (Meyer) lemons.  The legs should be sitting about halfway into the liquid, but not submerged.  Bring to a simmer, then put in preheated oven for 30 minutes.  Take duck pan from oven, turn and return to oven, lowering the temperature to 325˚F and cook for another 1 to 1½ hours. Remove legs to dinner plates (or a platter).  Skim off any excess fat and spoon the olive-lemon zest-carrot sauce over the legs. Serve with simple organic polenta (also from Simple Food—though I’d omit the parmesan cheese) and sautéed organic greens from the farm.

 

Japanese Christmas

The best thing about Christmas is the champagne.  And the gougères.  Did I really say that?...well, it could be true.

Celebrating in a vacuum sometimes wears you down, and my first Christmas in Japan left me hollow.  I was invited to a friend’s family house, where we shared the obligatory sweet split of “champagne” along with a yellow sponge, strawberry and whipped “cream” Christmas Cake on Christmas Eve.  We had temakizushi that night (a make your own sushi affair), but I think Kentucky Fried Chicken is the “traditional” meal.  Chicken instead of turkey, you know.  Japanese Christmas is an amalgam of customs borrowed from several cultures.  I’m not sure which country contributed December 24, instead of December 25, as the day for Christmas festivities, but there it is.  I stayed the night, and in the morning woke up to a stocking on the end of the bed with one present inside.  Is that German?  

But the funny thing was that, over those two days, not one person uttered the words, “Merry Christmas.”

Other than the present, the next day dawned like any other, and I made my way home after breakfast.  Stepping off the train, I walked through the busy station where the department stores were thronged with shoppers, business as usual on Christmas Day.  Depressed, I trudged home, resentful of the empty display and shameless use of another culture’s holiday just to line the pockets of merchandisers.  Admittedly, I was six months into my stay (a notorious low point in any overseas experience), but that was the day I began to realize I was culturally Christian by default, despite having been brought up an atheist. 

The following year, Tadaaki and I had our Japanese wedding reception on December 17, though we weren’t officially married in Japan until Tadaaki filed the papers at the town office in January.  Strangely, he didn’t need me to be there.  As a foreigner, I was just an asterisk on his family registry.  We also were married in an Episcopalian church in the U.S. and spent Christmas in California.  All of a sudden, being in a church had taken on new meaning for me, so we attended Midnight Mass at Saints Peter and Paul Church on Washington Square.  Afterwards, we gourged on some unforgettable fresh crab at a Chinese restaurant with fish tanks on Broadway.  The restaurant staff was excited that Tadaaki wanted to eat the crab miso left on the shell, as most Americans wash it down the sink.  Brooks Brothers’ blazer notwithstanding, Tadaaki was in his element sitting at the formica table, up to his elbows in crab shells.  He still talks about that night and those crabs.

But subsequent Christmases in Japan paled in comparison.  I tried to recreate my own family customs:  stockings, copious presents, Christmas breakfast and a big midday meal.  I also added a new one that my sister and I had initiated while living in San Francisco:  friends for a Christmas Eve supper.  We developed a “tradition” of inviting a small group of Tadaaki’s high school friends for Christmas Eve and then a mixed group of foreigners and their Japanese spouses for Christmas day.  I did it more for the kids than anything else.  Christopher was born a half year before our second Christmas in Japan as a married couple and Andrew 3 ½ years later.  But in between, we lost a baby right before Christmas.  Christmas quickly took on a feeling of groaning duty and I was losing heart for recreating what seemed to be made up traditions on my own.  Unable to decide between which wedding date to celebrate, I gave up altogether on trying to commemorate either of our anniversaries, and in the end felt relieved.  Christmas still took a monumental effort, as I tried to infuse some essential meaning into a day that had no cultural significance for my husband. Tadaaki had no frame of reference to understand the celebration, though to give him credit, he tried.  It was nice to have friends come to dinner, but ultimately it wasn’t enough.

After Matthew was born in December 1996, I knew I needed a break.  And I also knew that I could no longer wait for Tadaaki to be able to once again travel with us.  He had given up on accompanying us to the U.S. when Christopher was a baby.  New business…his aging parents…there were any number of excuses, though to hear him tell it today, it’s because I made him carry my packages. 

I found a farm in the Périgord region of France.  The Dubois family run a Ferme Auberge (B&B) and raise geese for foie gras and confit.  The family was depicted as friendly and welcoming and the farm food sounded enticing.  Plus it was reasonable.  And so we went.  And that was the best Christmas I ever spent.  The Dubois family accepted us as part of their extended family and we celebrated Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and even New Year with them and their numerous relatives and friends.  There was a bulging crate of oysters outside the front door under the eves, bottles of Crémant de Limoux, fresh foie gras on warm toast, roast goose…a never-ending stream of lively conversation.  And I didn’t have to cook. Matthew had his 1^st birthday on the farm, while I got a huge infusion of energy and understanding into that long history of Southwest France Christmas traditions.  Christmas in the Périgord gave me a renewed resolve to create my own farmhouse Christmas traditions in Japan.

When we returned home to Japan, Tadaaki was forelorn and accused us of abandoning him on Christmas.  Flabbergasted (as he hadn’t seemed to care much before), I didn’t pay too much attention.  But after that, Tadaaki became “Mr. Christmas,” and had more enthusiasm than any of us when it came to December 25^th.  So maybe the trip to France wasn’t such a bad idea after all.  Though he still has never forgiven me.  What can I say, he doesn’t let things go.

 Carrot Soup 

One of the customs I brought back from the Dordogne, was serving soup before the meal and cheese after.  My first trip, it took a bit of getting used to, because the soup tended to fill me up and I barely had room for the cheese.  But subsequent trips warmed me to the idea.  Though I picked her brains for most of her recipes, I never did ask Danie Dubois how she made her various potages.  Every creamy vegetable soup I make today is inspired by Lulu Peyraux’s recipe for Turnip Soup in Richard Olney’s Lulu’s Provençal Table.  The basic concept is farm fresh vegetable + farm onions + butter + water.  Oh, of course you need salt & pepper, and I like to add a dollop of cream and some chopped sautéed greens or chopped green thing from the garden (celery leaves, carrot tops, parsley, cilantro or chives…depending on the soup).  Here’s the method:  find the nicest looking vegetable at the farmers’ market and thin slice (turnip, carrot, broccoli, cauliflower or celery…).  Thin slice ½ as much onion.  Melt a knob of butter in a heavy cast iron pot over low heat.  Covered, sweat the harder of the two vegetables (onion or the other) until no longer raw but not falling apart.  Stir occasionally.  Add the other vegetable and some salt and continue to sweat until the centers are cooked and the all vegetables start to melt a bit (about 20 to 40 minutes total from start to finish depending on how many vegetables you use).  Add hot water to cover and simmer for about 20 minutes more for a big pot of soup.  Scoop into a blender (only fill ½ way and be sure to fold a towel in a thick square to hold on to the rubber top—otherwise you’ll have hot soup spewing all over you and the kitchen).  Pour soup into a large bowl as you cream it, then return to the empty stockpot.  Reheat right before serving.  Spoon in a dollop of farm cream or a drizzle of interesting oil and finish with a sprinkling of chopped green aromatics.  I used pistachio oil and chopped ramp tops for my carrot soup this year.  It was an unsual, but lovely combination.