Celandine Salad with Salmon & Grapefruit Mustard Sauce

It's almost April and spring has arrived with alacrity, after two months of mercilessly cold, snowy weather. I semi-hibernated half of the winter, hence my rare posts :( Now, however, I am back. The revival of nature and the green and fabulous atmosphere at the farmers' market make my head buzz with ideas. Cooking is fun when you have so many choices, i.e. fresh veggies and herbs at hand.

This morning, as I was flicking though Mike's iphone, I found some old photos we took in France in August 2010 when we visited France: Bergerac, Dordogne, Aquitaine and Camargue. This last, I should add, is one of the most peaceful & beautiful places on earth. (If you click on the link, a page will pop up and it will bring up memories one of the most precious & beautiful holidays I have taken so far.) 

No matter how much I may sometimes mutter and grumble, France is an ideal location to spend at least a couple of days a year- just to soak up the scenery, enjoy French food down to the last morsel, sip some great wine, make the de rigeur visite aux caves, take some memorable snapshots and listen to Claude Challe: Best of Love CD while driving along winding roads. You've got to hand it to the French: they have turned tourism into a fine art. There are some serious lessons that we here in Romania could learn by taking a few notes while in France, if we are serious about tourism.  Nothing is left to its own devices, no stone is left unturned; any tiny village, site or place of historical, natural or cultural importance is to be 'discovered' - and the French will do their best to make sure you do!

I hate crowds (as I am sure the French do too). As a matter of fact, any time we visit France we try to avoid them, by going in the off-season (April-May and Sept-Oct are the best months), and by going deep to explore the real France.  Yes, despite the best efforts of their excellent tourism marketing machine, there are many hidden corners where you will only find...well, French people!  This is the France of the French - of the locals who live, eat, work, drink, have fun & buy their daily baguette from the nearby boulangerie and cheap but good wines in tens of litres from the local vineyard.

Here are some snapshots of Les Beaux de Provence and Monpazier, the latter a medieval village in the Dordogne region, listed as "one of the most beautiful villages in France"...and while you scroll down, I will have posted a beautiful salad a la francaise, which is very much my style.

Les Beaux de Provence

Vintage car in Monpazier

Les Beaux de Provence

Resting in Monpazier

Celandine Salad with Salmon & Grapefruit Mustard Sauce

Type of cuisine: French, low fat, healthy

for my love

Celandine is a wonderful herb that grows in spring and has "fleshy, dark green, heart-shaped leaves", as it is described in Wikipedia. In Romania we eat  its leaves which have a delicately sweet taste. 

I overdose on it each spring and never get tired of it. 

For lunch today, I played the French card with a little bit of...je ne sais quoi.

Well, I do know, but I am just teasing! 

You will need a small bunch of celandine which you have to wash thoroughly (this is the most boring part!), then peel & skin a grapefruit, chef-style. Squeeze a thick slice to make a small cup of fresh juice and keep aside. In the meantime, make the creamy mustard sauce. 

Mix the grapefruit juice with a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, add a measure of extra virgin olive oil, single cream (or yoghurt), mustard seeds and a pinch of herbes de Provence (or similar).

Place the drained celandine on a plate, with the filet of smoked salmon and the slices of grapefruit. Drizzle the sauce on top and sprinkle some mustard seeds carefully - otherwise, they'll bounce off the plate.

 I am certain you will fall in love with this French-bistro spring salad, so make the most of this beautiful season & maybe even plan your summer holidays accordingly :)

xoxo Yolanda

Moules à la provençale

Moules Marinieres. Full stop. Simple, French and insanely delicious, these small clams bring to mind the zest, the smell of marine air, and the salty taste of far-away seas and oceans. White wine, garlic, creme fraiche and chopped parsley. Fresh baguette and chilled white wine. And there you go, eight months later, you are no longer on stress-free vacation under the August sun, in that little quayside restaurant, but in your humdrum urban kitchen recreating (one of) the most indulging and comfort holiday dishes –

Moules à la provençale.

Tiny urban kitchen:  Moules a la Provencale at home.

On an ordinary, chillier-than-normal April weekend, I decided to go item-shopping, and found fresh moules (mussels) & suddenly I had flashbacks of Southern France - Provence - Camargue - Saintes Maries de la Mer.

view of Port Gardien, Stes Maries de la Mer (rue Theodore Aubanel)

Unforgettable holidays are often completely unplanned: good company, chillout music and beautiful scenery all around, lead you to the most unexpected places; great discoveries are off the beaten track.

Located half an hour's drive from Arles, Saintes Maries de la Mer, the capital of Camargue, marks the end of D570 and the beginning of paradise. It took me less than a moment to fall in love with this magical place where man and nature blend harmoniously without disrupting the environment: grazing Camargue bulls, wild horses and pink flamingos wallowing in the marshes, all live in the proximity of snapshot-happy humans,  tolerant of the ceaseless tourist chatter and wows of admiration.

A boat trip deep into the delta, a simple meal in a quaint p'tit resto right on the sea shore, a sunset walk on the pier, a vibrant gitano concert late at night in a street cafe, the sheer tranquillity of the sound of crickets, the vastness of the starry skies, and - when we were there, the eerie distant colours of the Aurora Borealis (surprising for this latitude) on the northern horizon - all still fail to describe the beauty and variety of this land.

Moules Marinieres en Camargue

The heart of a pearly clam...delicious

Moules...no more :(

Last night, as I was going though holiday snapshots, Mike was making Moules Marinieres, at my request. Frankly, he masters the art of French cooking close to perfection. He's made great French classics to come to life such as Coq au Vin and you may remember his guest post of Boeuf Bourguignon here on Lemon Love Notes.

MOULES MARINIERES

by Mike Waters, 

Guest writer

Type of cuisine: French, Provencale

Difficulty: easy

Cooking time: 30 minutes

Yolanda and I still have great memories of a couple of great meals on the quayside in Sts. Maries de la Mer, a beautiful seaside village where the footsteps of Van Gogh still echo through the tiny narrow streets, with a strong hint of '60s gauche thrown in.  Here, on a still late summer evening, with the sun setting over the marshes of the Camargue, the faint strains of gypsy music in the distance, and the balmy Mediterranean air caressing both the skin and the soul, it is easy to imagine you have just stepped off planet Earth into Paradise. 

That evening, I had Foie Gras and Yolanda had prawns, but what had led to this dinner was the wonderful lunch of Moules Marinieres that we'd had the previous day, just before embarking on a spectacular Camargue boat-trip. This dish was absolutely magical, and it was Yolanda's first experience of it.  I promised to do it at home, and last night, I was gently reminded of that promise!

The INGREDIENTS are easy  to obtain.

• 50g of butter

• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

• 8 shallots, halved (or two small onions, coarsely chopped)

• approx 1.5 kg of mussels, still in their shells

• 1 cup dry white wine

• 1/2 cup chopped parsley 

• large pinch ground black pepper

• 1.5 cups (light) single cream

METHOD

Wash the mussels well under cold running water, making sure to remove any pieces of grit and gristle. 

Fry the garlic and shallots in the butter, in a very large saucepan, on a low heat.  Add the mussels and the white wine, cover the pan tightly, and turn up the heat. Allow the mussels to steam in the wine for about 5 minutes (thus should open them), then lower the heat again.  Add the parsley, pepper and cream, stir well, and simmer for about another three or four minutes.

Serve in a large deep bowl, and pour the sauce over.  This dish is delicious with some really fresh, crusty Baguette or Ciabatta, and a side salad.

For wine, I would choose a crisp - but quite buttery at the same time - Chardonnay.  Two Oceans (South Africa), Hardy's (Australia) or Recas (Romania) all go down very well.

just waiting (to be cooked)

Mixed Spring Salad with Lavender & Duck Eggs

This week, because I have started to feel much better, I went to the market and I bought a bunch of goodies, most of them being fresh, crisp and very green. And I started rinsing, chopping, cutting, combining, creating, playing. All boasting aside, when it comes to low-fat, healthy food, I have green fingers :)

I have created a great variety of salads with the same ingredients: spinach, orach, celandine, spring onions, parsley, just to name a few. Spring is such a blessing after a long winter. 

Here is the latest, which I had for breakfast: Mixed Salad with Lavender and Duck Eggs. Sometimes, if I have a late breakfast, aka Brunch :) I like to have something more savoury. 

Type of cuisine: Raw, Vegetarian, Low-Fat, Fusion/ Romanian, French

Preparation time: 20 minutes 

Before you make this delicious salad, go to the farmers' market, armed with the following shopping list :)

a bunch of spinach  (you'll only use around 20 leaves)

radishes (you'll need a handful)

orach 

celandine

ramson

Warning- make sure that you wash all the vegetables thoroughly, in cold water, until the water is clean and with no sediments.

Drain the vegetables and cut the bigger leaves in chunks and prepare a simple lemon dressing: extra virgin olive oil, the juice of a slice of lemon and a pinch of salt. Mix and toss. Sprinkle some lavender on top and you will have a stunning salad.

I boiled two free-range duck eggs, I sprinkled over some Camargue salt, freshly ground pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice and topped them with sprouts and linseeds.

So you might ask, why lavender? - I don't know... I had an intuition that it might work. I had read about biscuits with lavender, but since I don't know how to make biscuits (yet!), I thought that it may work if I used lavender in salads as well. The taste and flavour of lavender will certainly blow you away.
I love lavender to bits. I love Provence. It's where I spent my honeymoon: 21 days in beautiful Provence, visiting the lavender museum, getting lost in lavender fields and making plans for the future. * (I love you, baby).   :)

zoom of my jar of lavender

Black Olive Puree & A Few Holiday Snapshots

I discovered this morning that the olive paste has gone mouldy...it must have been there for ages... I have never been crazy about stuff-in-a-jar victuals, but we all know that we sometimes do not think straight in the supermarket! I discarded the black paste and, while washing the small jar (kept it as it looks chic), I decided to make my own olive paste! As I glanced at the wet label, I was kind of taken aback: so many preservatives???

I opened the fridge, brought to light the box of black olives I bought yesterday from the shop and made my own.

Type of cuisine: Mediterranean 

Difficulty: the easiest thing in the world

Time: 2 minutes

It's a simple, basic recipe, really, all you need is olives, extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Just blend the stoned olives with 2-3 spoons of olive oil and one spoon of balsamic vinegar and there you go, you'll have the most delicious, organic, chemical compound-free black olive puree, ready to serve with fresh ciabatta.

To say that I love olives is an understatement. The beauty and the timelessness of the olive tree have always gripped me.

“He will thrust away his unripe grapes just like a vine, and cast off his blossoms just like an olive tree.”  (from the Bible, the book of Job 15/33)

olive tree branch at Chateau d'Estoublon Mogador

detail of vintage olive oil press

Olive oil, a staple in Mediterranean cuisines, has found its way into beauty products, so when I visited Chateau d'Estoublon Mogador in Provence, I was not surprised to discover that pure virgin oil was sold in expensive bottles which reminded me of the elegance of Chanel No. 5.  A wonderful merge- a pleasure for the eyes and a culinary relish. Even the beauty of the Mausanne Alpilles area is overshadowed by the symmetry of this fairy-tale chateau-boutique where even your dreams come true. 

source: estoublon.com

Sometimes I go back through my holiday snapshots and sigh...  This is certainly a remarkable place that I want to go back to.  You can check it out on www.estoublon.com to read about olive harvesting, olive selection, the variety of olive oils & olive fruits. 

Another article that has caught my eye on a blog I follow is An Education in Olive Oil where you can find out some amazing facts about olive oil tasting. 

http://www.justhungry.com/2006/10/an_education_in_olive_oil.html