The KitchenMaid

When aïoli dreams come true…

Do you know what happiness tastes like? I do. It’s a silky emulsion of crushed garlic, egg yolk and Provencal olive oil and it’s best tasted in a Mediterranean port town in the golden hours before dusk. At least, that’s my most recent experience.

Quite to my shock and delight, I’ve just won an aïoli-making contest. In Provence, home of aioli. This is akin to an Aucklander going to Westport and winning a prize for catching whitebait (or a Wellingtonian winning a baking prize at the Westport A&P show, but that’s another story).

When they called my name out as the winner I was so gobsmacked I could barely breathe. That might have been the result of 20 minutes of furiously pounding garlic in a wooden mortar and pestle, beneath the fierce scrutiny of women in traditional Provençal costumes who looked like extras from The Handmaid’s Tale, but I think it was the general surprise that did it.

When I told the compere that I was from New Zealand there was an audible gasp among the watching spectators. A local chef, who came second, was definitely not amused. But the old ladies, who had kept such a close eye on me during the making process, were thrilled. And when I went to thank the organisers (the mysterious Confrerie des Chevaliers de l’Aiet’ – a sort of secret society devoted to all things garlic), they asked me if I could come back for a conference in October. Oh, to be able to carve out a new life as a professional aioli-maker in Provence… please, President Macron, can’t I stay?

How to make aïoli
Now, all this hasn’t gone to my head. I know I’m not the aïoli oracle (and, given the debate going on between the bonneted women watching, I’m not sure anyone would be brave enough to claim to be). However, this is how I made it the other night. No recipe, just instinct. If only all life’s tests were this simple.

Peel two plump cloves of garlic. Using a mortar and pestle, crush the garlic to a pulp with a pinch of salt. Don’t rush this step – the garlic must be smooth or you’ll end up with ‘bits’ in the finished aïoli. Add an egg yolk and mix well (keep using the pestle as your main tool here). Decant about 200-225ml of your very best extra virgin olive oil into a bottle where you can keep tight control on its flow. Add the oil, drop by drop, to the garlic and egg mixture, constantly stirring with the pestle. Doing it drop by drop is essential – you can’t rush this part or it won’t work. Once about half the oil is in, you can relax and add about a teaspoonful at a time, making sure it’s all emulsified before adding the next. This might sound painstaking, but it’s worth it. You’ll know it’s done when the aïoli has the texture of proper mayonnaise. It will hold its shape – and, when you tip the mortar upside down, it will stay put rather than sliding out.

If you’re being Provençal, you can now eat it with tiny new potatoes, or raw vegetables, or with grilled fish, or any other way you like. It’s not bad chased by a glass of thirst-quenching local rosé, especially in the soft sea air.

Rhubarb and rose ice cream

As I write this, I’m sweating through another French heatwave. Please note this is a climate phenomenon, not a fancy euphemism for an affliction suffered by women of a certain age. If you’re currently in winter’s grip, you might think a heatwave sounds lovely. Trust me, when the temperatures soar above 40C and it feels like your brain is swelling faster than your ankles, you’ll think differently.

Image of pale creamy ice cream scattered with whole pink rosebuds. Some is scooped into a small crystal bowl.

It’s too hot to eat in this kind of weather and you soon learn that a cold beer only makes you feel hotter (and not in a good way). So I am contenting myself with thoughts of cold, refreshing ice cream. If I had some right now, I’d scoop out a bowlful and bury my face in it. I’d rub a palmful on the back of my neck and let the rest slide down the backs of my knees. But I digress. If you’re lucky enough to be in cooler climes, you can enjoy this fruity ice cream in a more traditional manner. As Weird Al Yankovic once sang, just eat it.

Rhubarb and rose ice cream
This will convert any rhubarb haters in your household – the rhubarb cuts through the richness of the cream and the sweetness of the condensed milk.

450g rhubarb, chopped into 2cm pieces
3 Tbsp caster sugar
¼ cup water
600ml cream
1 x 400g tin condensed milk
3 tsp rosewater
Dried rose petals, for garnishing


Put the rhubarb, sugar and water in a small pot set over low heat. Stir well, then cover and cook for about 10 minutes, until the rhubarb is very soft. Remove from the heat and tip the rhubarb into a bowl. Set aside to cool completely (this can be done up to three days in advance and stored in the fridge).
Whip the cream until it just reaches the soft peak stage. Pour in the condensed milk and rosewater and stir until well combined. Fold through the rhubarb and pour into a plastic container or lined loaf tin. Cover and freeze for five to six hours. Remove from the freezer and allow to soften for 10 minutes before serving. Garnish with dried rose petals if desired. Makes about 1.25 litres.

Love rhubarb? You might like this rhubarb and raspberry shortcake, this quick curd or this decadent rhubarb fool…

ends

Anglo-French rocky road

For reasons too complicated to explain in detail here, I recently found myself teaching four groups of school children how to make rocky road. In French. Yes, I know. I’m not sure how I get myself into these situations but once the gate clanged shut, there was no getting out. (Literally – French primary schools are like fortresses.)

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I’d been in similarily challenging teaching environments before (though I wasn’t sure this French primary school would enjoy being compared with a medium-security New Zealand prison, so I kept that to myself). Luckily, I also had help: an ex-nurse and a former army officer whose CVs were packed with far more useful and impressive feats than mine.

Image shows a bowl of rocky road mixture (marshmallows, chocolate, crushed biscuits) being stirred by five children (only their hands are visible)

I don’t want to go telling tales out of school, but trust me when I say that all three of us needed to be on our A-game. Fortunately, French school kids are used to being told off. Unfortunately, they’re like all other children (and adults) in the presence of chocolate. Suffice to say, it was an exhausting morning, much mitigated by a refreshing glass of cider at 11.30am in the staffroom afterwards. 

Should you wish to recreate this experience yourself during the school holidays, invite 10-15 children to come and make the following recipe with you. Make sure you’re in a classroom without aircon, preferably a few days before a record-breaking heatwave. For best results, have very rudimentary cooking equipment, at least two children who will be fighting at any one time, and eyes in the back of your head to stop them running with scissors and licking the bowl before you’ve finished mixing. Bon courage et bonne chance!

Two children stir a bowl of melted chocolate, condensed milk and melted butter. Only their hands are visible.

Rocky road

You can substitute other dried fruit or nuts for the cranberries and peanuts if you like.

100g butter
400g chocolate
1 x tin sweetened condensed milk
200g plain sweet biscuits
200g marshmallows
150g dried cranberries
150g roasted peanuts

Line a tin or plastic container (measuring about 20x25cm) with plastic wrap or baking paper.
Put the butter, chocolate and sweetened condensed milk in a large pot. Set it over low heat and stir until melted. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
Put the biscuits in a freezer bag and crush them gently until they are crumbs. It’s good to leave some bigger pieces to make the rocky road crunchier.
Using scissors, cut the marshmallows in half or into thirds if they are large.
Put the crushed biscuits, marshmallows, cranberries and peanuts into the melted chocolate mixture. Stir well.
Pour into the prepared tin and smooth the top. Leave to set in the fridge for 1 hour. Cut into pieces and store in the fridge.

A boy licks biscuit mixture off a spoon.

‘Chemin Rocailleux’

Vous pouvez remplacer les cachuetes et les canneberges sechees avec des autres noix ou fruits secs.

100g beurre demi-sel
400g chocolat
1 x boite lait concentré sucré
200g biscuits du thé
200g guimauvres
150g canneberges séchées
150g arachides salées

Tapisser un moule ou un Tupperware de 20x25cm avec du film étirable ou du papier sulfurisé. Deposer le beurre, chocolat et lait concentré sucré dans un pot. Chauffer doucement pour les fondre, en agitant souvent. Laisser refroider 10 minutes.
Mettre les biscuits du thé dans un sac de congelation. Utiliser un rouler ou vos mains pour les éraser.
Couper les guimauvres en petit pièces avec les ciseaux.
Ajouter les biscuits écrasés, les guimauvres coupés, les canneberges séchées es et les arachides au chocolat. Melanger bien.
Verser dans le moule. Placer au frigo pendant 1-2 heures. Couper en petits pieces et garder au frigo. Bon appétit!

Need more school holiday baking ideas? Check out these ones.

What do you do with your food waste?

Meet my latest ally in the war against food waste: Chipie, aka Goaty McGoat Face. Handsome, isn’t he?

A goat eats food waste in France

Goaty and his two allies have been an unexpected bonus of my current (temporary) home in rural southwest France. I’ve never been terribly fond of goats, but I’m warming to these three every day. They’re becoming increasingly keen on me too, mostly because I’ve become the bringer of unexpected treats. I used to think goats would eat anything, but these ones are quite discerning (they are French, after all). They don’t fancy egg shells very much, are a bit sniffy about orange peel and look askance at onion skins. However, they LOVE leftover rice or pasta, adore stale bread and are quite partial to apple cores. I think they might be my spirit animals.

Food waste is a major issue in France, as it is in much of the world. The UN estimates that about one-third of all the food produced in the world is thrown away or wasted. People in industrialised countries waste around 222 million tonnes of food every year – which is about the same amount of food as produced in sub-Saharan Africa. To me, this is appalling.

In 2016, France was hailed as a world leader in reducing food waste after it passed legislation that required large supermarkets donate unsold food to charities. This is a good start in a country where industrial food production is an art form and one that many other countries could emulate. I fear that the real problem is that commercial food production has changed the way people eat so much that food is no longer valued in any way. How do you expect people to respect what they eat when they’re being urged to ‘buy one get one free’ at every turn? At that price, it doesn’t matter if the item goes off or you don’t eat it, does it? Then again, most things that are offered in this way are so denatured that they’ll probably never go off anyway. But I digress.

Even if you eschew commercially produced food there will be food waste of some sort. Sure, you can make radish leaf pesto and find 101 uses for a stale baguette (this is a life skill that I am particularly proud of, especially now), but what about vegetable peelings, three-day-old leftover rice and tomato stalks? At the moment, this is where the goats come in. Unfortunately, I won’t be in a position to take them with me when I return to New Zealand later in the year, but I do have a few other ideas.

Thanks to The Very Green Gardener, my Wellington garden is home to a worm farm that deals with the bulk of our food waste. Worms aren’t as cute as goats and they’re also a bit fussy (they don’t like citrus, onion skins or meat). But boy, they are certainly efficient! If you want to know what true smugness is, feed your worms the peelings or ends of vegetables that you grew yourself, nurtured by vermicast and worm wee that your own worms produced. Worm farms are ideal for people who fear that a compost bin will turn into a rat hotel (that’s me) or those with not much space. I can’t recommend them highly enough.

The most obvious thing we can all do starts well before the food turns into ‘waste’. I feel anxious when I read reports claiming that people no longer have the interest or skills to cook because I believe they are losing connection with the natural world, with social heritage and with what should be a basic human skill. If you can’t feed yourself or those around you, what hope do you have? Being able to cook means being able to liberate yourself from Big Food and shrinkwrapped food that bares little or no resemblance to anything natural. Being able to cook means knowing how to shop so you’re not wasting money or time. Being able to cook means you can stretch not much into dinner.

The photo above is a case in point. It’s not fancy – an onion, some lardons and a ripped-up stale baguette fried in a splash of olive oil, tossed with some spaghetti and a handful of ‘haricots beurres’ (along with a splash of the pasta cooking water) – but it was fast, delicious and cost about 3 Euros to make. The goats ate the bean ends and the onion skin will hopefully break down to nourish the earth. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

Creamy parsnip soup

I’m currently trying to get to grips with a range of different French idiomatic expressions involving food, such as ‘raconter des salades’ (literally: to tell some salad – to spin a story), and ‘la moutarde me monte au nez’ (literally: the mustard goes up my nose – I’m getting really angry).

This has reminded me of two things – one, teaching a Khmer colleague in Cambodia the New Zealand expression that ‘it’s all going to custard’ and two, of the English saying that ‘fine words butter no parsnips’. The former is a way of saying that everything is going wrong, but the latter is somewhat harder to explain. I think it means that fancy words mean little, but I’m not entirely sure. However, I am much more certain about this parsnip soup, which is entirely fine and yet contains very little butter. I’m not telling you any salads, I promise.

Creamy parsnip soup

Serves 4-6

60g butter

2 tsp olive oil

2 large onions, finely diced

3 large cloves garlic, finely sliced

1 kg parsnips (about 8 large ones), peeled and cut into chunks

1 sprig fresh thyme

4 cups chicken stock

Juice of one lemon

½ cup cream, plus a little extra for drizzling

Heat the butter and oil in a large, heavy pot. Add the onions and garlic, and cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the parsnips and cook for a further 10-15 minutes, until softened and starting to turn golden. Add the chicken stock and simmer gently for another 5-10 minutes, until the parsnips are soft. Remove the thyme, and puree with a stick blender or a mouli. To make it really silky, push the puree through a sieve (tedious, but worth it). Stir in the lemon juice and cream, then return to the heat and warm through (don’t let it boil) before serving.

If you’re in the mood for more winter soups, check out my latest crop of recipes on bite.co.nz.