Beautiful Narbonne, where I had my first ever steak tartare
I was still small when I discovered that I did not mind rare (raw!) meat. I remember when my mom used to buy our meat from the butcher at month-end… A Friday afternoon would be spent packing the meat, sausages and ground beef into portions and packing it into the freezer. I always tried to sneak a pinch of the ground beef. I loved the taste of it, but always felt very naughty doing so. My folks would not ever consider having a steak that was not super well done, so what demented child was I, eating raw meat like that?! As I got older, much to my relief I came to realise that some people did actually prefer their steaks cooked medium or even medium rare and when I saw beef carpaccio on a menu for the first time I knew that I was fine!
The first time I heard of steak tartare was on my favourite cooking/travel show of all time – Rick Stein’s French Odyssey. According to him it was a very fashionable dish in France in the sixties and it seemed to have made a comeback in recent years. In the program he told a story of how, when he’d order it, French waiters would always pull up their noses at him and say indignantly “You know that it is raw, sir!”. He was delighted by the fact that an Englishman could prove them wrong and eat it without even batting an eyelid. On the show, when he made it, I was sure that I would love it and therefore when we visited France last year I made sure that I searched it out on the menus! We found it in a little brasserie in the south west of France in a small city by the name of Narbonne and it was everything I hoped it would be – the meat full of flavour, blended beautifully with the addition of the tangy capers and gherkins, and the egg yolk giving a velvety feel to it all.
So when Frexit hit me last week, I thought back to this must-have dish and hubby and I decided to give it a try and make it ourselves, using Rick Stein’s recipe. I was so chuffed! It turned out beautifully and tasted exactly like the dish we had. (What was different though, is that the restaurant where I had it, served the rest of the ingredients separately from the meat – so that you could add your own quantity of ‘toppings’ to each little bite of beautiful beef. I must be honest, I actually prefer the way we made it in the recipe below – all mixed together.)
If you are not an adventurous eater this will not be a dish that appeals to you. But if you wonder about it – try it! You will not be disappointed! (You can also start slowly – take that pinch of ground beef sometime!)
Steak tartare with pommes frites
(serves 2)
Ingredients:
300g tail end of beef fillet, straight from the fridge
1 tablespoon capers, finely chopped
2 shallots, fine chopped
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 gherkin, finely chopped
½ teaspoon sea salt flakes
10 grinds of black pepper
2 medium egg yolks
(Rick Stein added 3 dashes of tabasco sauce to his dish, be we did not. We served it with tabasco on the side.)
Method:
Trim the meat of all fat and sinew and chop finely by hand.
Put the meat into a bowl with the capers, shallots, parsley, oil, gherkin, salt and pepper.
Mix together lightly two forks and then spoon into the centre of two plates and shape into a neatish round. (We used little round metal moulds to get a nice shape to ours.)
Make a small indent in the top and then gently add an egg yolk to each.
Serve with some pommes frites (good old French fries, if you are not trying to sound fancy!)
This is my French dream – a little house in the country with a small restaurant attached. This was a lockkeeper’s house on the Canal du Midi.
Every now and again I get struck by a bout of melancholy. Not a down-in-the-dumps doom and gloom kind of downheartedness, but more a feeling that everything is not quite in its place… as if I have lost something… or have not seen a loved one for a while. The self-diagnosis took some time… but in the end it became clear to me. Occasionally I suffer from an ailment I call Frexit, which is the feeling I get when I have been outside of France for a while.
As with any diagnosis it is immediately important to understand the root cause of the disease and in my case, Frexit is a withdrawal-symptom based sickness, brought upon by a yearning for a few major things:
No red lips: This seems to be a staple of the chic French woman. Minimal make-up, but gorgeous red lips. Whenever I am in France I always take out my brightest red lip colour and always imagine that I blend in like a local! Who does not want to look like a French woman!
Me and hubby by the Eiffel Tower
Red lips!
No sidewalk cafes: I love the café culture in France. What is better than sitting down, side by side, sipping a café latte in the morning while watching French life go by? Wait, I know… Sitting down, side by side, sipping a drink at the end of the day and watching French life go by!
Tree-lined squares with cafes
Watching French life go by in Carcassonne
Not French fresh produce markets: The pride and confidence with which stall owners display and sell their products is inspirational. It makes you want to head home and cook something amazing immediately. And two of my favourite things – bread and cheese. The sheer variety!
Not enough long lunches: Food is something to be celebrated; in France it is a key part of life and not something to just be had in a rush. It is a time to sit down and catch up with family and friends and should not be had without acknowledging the momentousness of the occasion! It’s the way life should be!
That beautiful blush pink rose
Salad of magret duck breast
An almighty lunch of cassoulet in Castelnaudary
Some creme brulee for dessert
No French in my ear: I can’t speak French apart from a few essential words, but oh, what a beautiful language. The flair with which even the simplest baguette is served – “Voila!” – will make you believe that you are having a 5 star meal! (And I must admit, the way a handsome French man pronounced my name once, left me weak in the knees! Of course hubby says it best, though!)
Lack of French wine: My favourite red wine will always be a Bordeaux, which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Malbec. Last year we came across a white Bordeaux (which was sauvignon blanc based) for the first time. But a newly found favourite on that trip was the beautiful blush pink rose’s of the Languedoc Roussillon.
And just like Brexit, it is important to realise that Freixt can also cause unprecedented economic turmoil and uncertainty as all I want to do is book tickets on the next plane to France. So before things go so far, as with all ailments, prevention is better than cure…
To make sure that I remain healthy this weekend I will make sure that I put my red lips on. It’s going to be a cold one here in Cape Town, so I am going to scour the shops for beautiful red Bordeaux (not the easiest thing to find here) and the long lunch is going to be nonnegotiable! I might even take out that special table cloth I bought in Provence but have been too scared to use!
Here is to banning Frexit – at least for the weekend – and santé to joie de vivre!
Do you suffer from Frexit? I would love to know why and what you do to get over it! Please leave a comment and let me know!
I will never forget the first time I ever laid my eyes on the Mediterranean. We arrived in Rome after a 21 hour flight from Cape Town. Exhausted we had to rush to catch a train from Rome to Naples. Two hours later (and no chance of sleep; I was petrified of missing our stop!) we arrived in Naples and had to rush to make the next train; a commuter train called Circumvesuviana that runs to Sorrento. That was a horrid journey – “commuter train” translated means that there are no seats (well, at least not in the coaches we were in) and we had to stand the whole way to Sorrento. I was so tired and exhausted that I could hardly stand on my feet and hubby had to give a lot of moral support to stop me from bursting into tears from sheer exhaustion. Arriving in Sorrento, waiting at the station for the SETA bus that would finally take us to our destination, Praiano, I caught I small glimpse of some blue water between a row of houses. So to be fair, that was probably the first glimpse of the Mediterranean. But then, as we finally got on the bus and started the last leg of our journey, the blue jewel revealed herself to us and in that instant we fell under her spell.
The first picture we took of the beautiful Mediterranean – from the SETA bus!
The famous Amalfi Coast drive was everything the books tell you it is – twisty, turny, breathtakingly beautiful and quite the adrenalin rush. The speed with which the bus drivers navigate the narrow road is something to experience. At first I did not understand why the driver was hooting randomly; was he just greeting people or were people upsetting him on the road? After paying a bit of attention I figured it out; he hooted every time we approached a bend so that if there were cars approaching from the other side, they would hear the bus coming. That way they would know to stop or get out of his way! Ingenious! And testament to the fact that they slow down for nothing!
Views of the Amalfi Coast drive from the bus!
Views of the Amalfi Coast drive from the bus!
Views of the Amalfi Coast drive from the bus!
Impossible to believe how the lemon groves cling to the side of the cliffs!
Views of the Amalfi Coast drive from the bus!
So just about 24 hours after we left Cape Town we finally arrived in Praiano. Exhausted, but in love! I have previously written about my love for Praiano and its little beach La Praia. This is undoubtedly where our love for the Mediterranean comes from. I know what made this extra special for hubby was a trip that we took from Praiano to Capri. A local tour operator offered day trips to Capri and eagerly we signed up, wanting to see Capri but also the beautiful Amalfi Coast from the water. The journey by speedboat was amazing. Half way to Capri, in the middle of the ocean, our skipper stopped the boat. In his best English and with some hand gestures he indicated: “Now you swimming!” Hubby loved it! They had snorkeling equipment on the boat and he said it was the experience of a lifetime. The water was crystal clear; you could see down into the water for meters and meters and the fish….according to him it was like seeing a world that you never knew existed; swimming alongside fish that you have never seen before. With the water being so salty you did not really have to do a lot of swimming and floating was easy. To this day this is really one of his biggest highlights of any holiday. Me, being a novice swimmer, I didn’t have the courage to jump into the ocean; if my toes can’t touch the ground I get panicky!
View from the boat.Amalfi Coast from the water…The view from the top of Capri!Fraglioni rocks, off Capri
And maybe that is part of the allure of the Mediterranean for me. The gentle waves. And the swishing sound it makes. The sea along our coast is much different, with waves thundering down. I’ve never known what “gentle waves lapping the shore” meant until I experienced the Mediterranean. And the best part of that is that it gives someone like me that is a bit scared of the big, rough seas the opportunity to swim in the ocean. Oh, and how I love it. The water is so quiet and clear that even I feel comfortable splashing about; even swimming a bit… provided that my toes can touch the bottom! Some of the best times on our holidays have been when we were laying next to the sea, listening to the hypnotic sound of the waves. Very few things come close.
Laia Praia harbour and beach
La Praia Beach
Sunset on our last night in Praiano
But in talking about the first place where we’ve seen this beautiful blue ocean, my mind instinctively wanders to the place we last basked on her shores.
It was last year September (way too long ago, if you ask me!) and on the last day of our holiday on the Côte d’Azur we took the train to Menton. What drew us there were all the good things we read about its stunning beaches and with Menton also being just about the last stop on the French Riviera before you head into Italy it made me think that I might be able to have a pretty decent pizza while we were there! (It was uncanny to see road signs, showing Italy was just 10 miles away!)
The beautiful Menton beach
When we arrived at the train station we immediately set off for the beach. It was not hard to find; we just followed a group of locals who were carrying beach chairs and umbrellas! And when we got there, we knew that we picked the perfect place to end off our holiday. The water was warm, calm and clear; I could swim and for a moment I forgot that my toes needed to touch the bottom because for once there was a view that could compete with the beauty of the Mediterranean – Menton’s old city cascading down the hill.
The Mediterranean and the old town of Menton. Bliss.
Laying on the beach was surreal. Just closing my eyes, feeling the sun on my skin and listening to the ocean. Staring out in front of me into the big blue and when I turned my head sideways, this stunning old city (and hubby) to my right. It was a perfect day! For lunch we didn’t have to go far; there was an amazing restaurant close to where we were. Hubby had an amazing seafood platter; he says the best he has ever had and me? Well, I had my pizza!
Hubby enjoying the water!
Perfection!
Me, doing some r&r!
View from the restaurant in Menton.
According to Hubby: “The best seafood platter ever!”
I love pizza!
So if you crave a taste of the Mediterranean, I suggest you play this video on repeat, while preparing a bit of fish.
Cheers, until my feet touch your shores again!
Kingklip with sundried tomato marinade
(serves 4)
Ingredients:
4 kingklip fillets (or any firm fish that you can source locally)
Juice of half a lemon
60ml olive oil
3 tablespoons of sundried tomatoes, chopped
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 clove of garlic, crushed
4 sprigs of fresh thyme, chopped finely
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Method:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees
Mix lemon juice, olive oil, sundried tomatoes, sugar, garlic, thyme, salt and pepper together
Pour over fish and marinade for 30 minutes
Transfer the fish to a baking tray and place in the oven for 15 minutes until the fish turns opaque and flakes easily when prodded with a fork
Last year the holiday I have been dreaming about for so many years finally came to be. We hired a boat and went cruising down the Canal du Midi in the south of France. From there we went on to experience the picturesque Provence before finally ending our trip on the beautiful Côte d’Azur. It took careful planning… how to make the most of our limited time and to stay within budget!
One place that I really wanted to include in our schedule was Narbonne. Rick Stein briefly visited its fresh produce market (one of the largest in southern France), in Rick Stein’s French Odyssey (the tv show that was really the starting point of our aspirations to cruise the canals of southern France) and because it is not a big city it seemed like it would be a great stop to catch our breath before we embarked on our trip to Provence.
Apart from the market we didn’t know much about it, so I must be honest in saying that we had no real expectations; apart from buying some great produce at the market that we could make back in the self-catering apartment we rented!
We arrived by train and because we only stayed two nights we set off to explore the medieval center of town straightaway. I was immediately taken with how picturesque it was. I loved the streetlights in the streets surrounding our apartment and the buildings were so beautiful. The Canal de la Robine goes through the middle of town and each bridge that crosses the canal was covered in beautiful flower baskets. I just loved the feel of the Narbonne. It felt authentically French; it was without pretense, without masses of tourists and without trying to be anything that it was not.
We found our way to the tourist office, which was not far from the Pont des Marchands, or Merchant bridge, which basically is the foundation for a row of houses and shops. (It actually reminded me of a miniature version of the Ponte Vecchio.)
Armed with a map in hand, we were amazed at all that Narbonne had to offer. It might be a small city but it had so many hidden treasures. It is hard to pick just a few (and we definitely did not get to see all that we would have liked to) but here are our favourites:
Cathedrale de St-Just and St-Pasteur
Building on the cathedral started in 1272. If you climb the adjacent Donjon Gilles Aycelin you can really marvel at the architectural beauty.
The Roman Horreum
This was a fantastic experience and a must do if you visit Narbonne. It was a Roman underground warehouse and dates back to the end of the first century BC. It has been set up with a wonderful display of light and sound… goosebump stuff!
Musee Lapidaire
This is another must do. Inside the old church of Notre Dame de La Lamourguier about 1 300 blocks of stone from all kinds of Roman buildings are housed. We paid for our entrance tickets and when the door opened I literally gasped for air – the setting is that beautiful. (The lady selling the tickets was bursting with pride; the biggest smile on her face!)
For the culinary part of our visit we spent quality time in Les Halles de Narbonne. We arrived early morning and drank coffee with the locals at one of the coffee bars inside. And then we went on the hunt for what we came for… sardines! Rick Stein made sardines on the barbeque when he was there and although we would not have the luxury of that, we hoped to pick up a few that we could fry with some butter, garlic, lemon and parsley back in our little apartment. Oh, and we were not disappointed. Apart from all the wonderful seafood on offer, the market was brimming with everything your heart can desire. One can easily stay in Narbonne a month and would still not be able to eat your way through the market!
Our supper that night consisted out of a starter of fried sardines and a main of fresh pasta with clams, tomatoes and parsley, while we sipped wine from the region.
So Monday was a public holiday in South Africa and hubby and I had some gardening to do… more specifically, it was time to harvest our olives! After such hard labour we sat back with a glass of chilled dry rosé and barbequed a few sardines. Although this can hardly be called a recipe – because it really just relies on the wonderful flavour of the fish and the smokiness of the barbeque – here is our take on sardines on the barbeque. We enjoyed it with our fond memories of Narbonne.
Sardines on the barbeque
(serves 2)
Ingredients:
6 sardines, gutted and cleaned
3 tablespoons of olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
Handful of roughly chopped parsley
Coarse sea salt flakes
Method:
Light barbeque and wait for the coals to get hot
Rub the fish with olive oil and sprinkle with lemon juice and salt
Place the fish on the barbeque once the coals are really hot and grill for 6 minutes on each side
Remove from heat, sprinkle with parsley and lemon juice
I love the fresh produce markets we’ve encountered on our travels to Europe.
One of my favourites is the Marché Bastille in Paris. From the Place de la Bastille (where the Colonne de Juillet stands in the center) long lines of stalls with colourful canopies stretch out on to the Boulevard Richard Lenoir. (Caution – crossing the road at the traffic circle can be quite the adrenalin rush!)
Charcuterie
Olives, glorious olives
Hubby and I went fairly early on a Tuesday morning and not knowing exactly where it was, we spotted two elderly ladies with their shopping trolleys heading down the road, looking as if they had things to do and places to get to. We had hunch that they had to be heading where we wanted to go so we followed them – and we were not wrong! We were greeted by a food lover’s paradise.
As much cheese as your heart desires
Walking along the merchants stalls you are tempted with all kinds of delights. There are delectable cheeses (some of the really mature ones not looking safe for human consumption!), a wide selection of fresh meat, from chicken and rabbit to beef and sausages. And the seafood! There is such a vast variety. And it is impossible to ignore the gorgeous piles of fruit and veg (and not looking as if it was just dumped there, but like it was polished and arranged carefully to create beautiful works of art.) And breads. Charcuterie. Olives. Magnifique!
The variety of seafood is amazing
What really enthrals me are the stall holders, and the pride they have in their goods. You can see it in the way they put it out on display, the way they call you over and confidently offer you a wedge of cheese or a sliver of ham. On the day we were there, the vendor at one particular fruit stall did not want me to pass by before I did not taste the delicious mangos on offer. I’m not sure if the mango was really that sweet or if it was his French accent! Either way, I still remember it – just over a year on!
Foodie inspiration
To top it off, alongside the amazing produce, you will find stands selling all kinds of knickknacks, secondhand clothes, leather bags, shoes and even jewelry. It’s the mixture of all these things that come together to create the magic of this market. There is truly something for everyone’s taste (and wallet)!
But it is not only what I see and taste when I visit these places, it is the emotion it evokes. While browsing the stalls I change from a faltering novice in the kitchen to believing I could be some sassy cook that would even put a Michelin starred chef to shame with what can be produced with the abundance at hand. Inspired by the fresh produce and the beauty, passion and flair with which it is exhibited makes me believe that cooking should not be difficult – and how could it be with all this inspiration.
Hubby looking at some caps
The Marché Bastille operates on Thursday, 7am-2.30pm and Sunday, 7am-3pm.
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