Hosting and Cooking

The flight was an hour late because of ice and snow at East Midlands but that allowed the morning rain to clear here in Carcassonne - so in the end it worked out just fine for my four new guests yesterday.

They are a jolly bunch, much taken to laughter and joking and having a good time, which is what you expect from guests on a weekend break (we have had some dullards here in the past) so it was a pleasure to spend an hour with them last night over some canapes and cocktails in true 42rvh style.

In fact the canapes had all been devoured by the time I had mixed the drinks, which for me is a compliment - it means they enjoyed them. They were particularly enthusiastic about the beetroot puree and goats cheese which is extra pleasing because it was the first time that I had served that particular combination.

It was drizzling and cold again this morning when I sauntered down to the boulangerie. I haven't had to put a client breakfast tray together since the new year but it all soon fell back into place. As with the canapes the night before, there wasn't a crumb left on the tray when I went to collect it.

By the time I went back to the market the sun was shining out of a cloudless sky - it was so nice to feel some warm-ish sunshine on my face. It is still just a bit early for anything new and springlike in the market and the cold winter won't have helped that - but there were signs that things are about to change - the first artichokes up from Spain and tulips on the flower stalls - but for the most part it is still apples, pears and oranges or cabbages, leeks, carrots and blette. All of it fabulous of course but I am itching to get my hands on some new season produce.

I roasted a piece of beef this evening following a recipe from a new cookbook that Debrah had bought for me at Christmas - the recipe was titled 'Grandma's roast beef' and is one of those traditional French recipes handed down through generations that is classic in it's composition, simplicity itself in the preparation and delicious in it's consumption - without actually doing very much to anything the flavours and textures came together sublimely.

It helps enormously that the beef from M Campaci in Les Halles is some of the best beef I have ever eaten or cooked anywhere. I have written before about the traceability of his meat - not to a herd or a farm but direct to the individual animal that the joint came from. I adore that he always tells me, without me ever asking, exactly how long to cook it for and at what temperature - and it isn't because I am English and he thinks I don't know how to cook because he tells the 90 year old grannies just the same and they have probably been cooking beef joints since before he was born. It's just what he does as a true artisan of his trade and I love it.

It was a shame that I didn't have anyone to share it with me and I will be eating the rest of the beef all next week, but I won't hesitate to cook it again, will definitely do it for Debrah and would have no hesitation serving it to guests. A success.

Travel

The plane landed on schedule at exactly 2.15 pm, which meant that we were all subjected to the ridiculous Ryanair fanfare of smugness that announces an on time flight arrival. Annoyingly it was the only thing about my journey to France that was predictable.

My bus, yes I did say bus, changed it's destination half way through the journey to Tottenham Hale Station - so that it terminated at Tottenham Town Hall, which is a good half mile short of where I wanted to be to catch the Stansted Express to the airport. Bit of a discussion with the driver ensued along the lines of I'm not paying again for the last half mile. To his credit he was sympathetic to my concerns and issued me a transfer ticket for the no 41 that was coming up very soon behind us - who knew they had such things or that public transport personnel actually gave a damn in this day and age (don't get me started on the 'let's have a few days off at the drop of a hat for no good reason' tube drivers).

A ten minute delay and a sprint from the bus to the platform to just catch the train. Phew. No time to buy a paper, or a ticket for that matter but it's only a 45 minute 'Express' journey and the guard would be along to take fares no doubt. Wrong in every respect. The train pottered along at barely walking speed for most of the way, taking 20 minutes longer than it should have done and no-one appeared to make me buy a ticket - just someone rather half-heartedly trying to persuade me to buy a coffee type drink. Er, no thank you.

I negotiated security without problem and just as I was about to be enticed by shopping opportunities that I could ill afford, the gate number popped up on the screen for my flight - I decided to head straight over to gate 44 and parked myself near the front of the non-priority queue. Ten minutes on and there weren't that many people at the gate which is a bit unusual - except if the gate number has been changed on the main boards but not announced on the tannoy - the rest of the passengers were happily assembled at gate 42. When the announcement finally came there was a fair amount of course anglo-saxon uttered in the vicinity of gate 44 which I cannot repeat here.

Remarkably I still managed to get a seat on the front row in the plane and figured I'd be out of the airport and home before most people had collected their bags. Perhaps not. When I last flew to London the front steps on the plane malfunctioned and I had to wait for everybody else to get off from the back door before I could disembark - what are the chances of that happening on consecutive flights? I have no idea but that's exactly what occured. How very very tedious.

My good friend David was at the airport to collect me, which was very kind of him - he was so busy chatting away about what had (not) been going on in Carcassonne in my absence that he drove, on auto-pilot, off towards his house rather than mine - which just about summed up my whole journey.