LA BONNE ANNEE

Annie and M, who were our kind hosts for New Year when we visited Tharon Plage, came over yesterday evening. For dinner, yes, but principally to watch the Claude Lelouch film La Bonne Année, which dates from 1973 and is one of my favourite films.  (Poor Lelouch, he always gets panned by the critics but I think his films are inventive, memorable and fun - sheer entertainment, which is what I go to the cinema for).  Anyway at Tharon - over New Year - (the title of the film - La Bonne Année means - literally - The Happy New Year) we sat down to watch the film but the DVD player expired after the first five minutes.  Hence, my offer to show the film on our DVD player at a suitable time when we got home again.   Which occasion was last night.

And very good it was to see the old film (which hasn't much dated) with its blend of comedy, romance and philosophy. Question: 'what is a woman?' she asks. 'A man that cries a little,' he replies.  Later she asks him what a man is and he replies that a man is someone who goes right to the end. Which may or may not advance the price of eggs but is interesting and makes you think.  The film is about a jewel robbery, incidentally, in the south of France and it stars Lino Ventura and Francoise Fabian. 

Having written last week about the chocolate mousse that Mireille Guiliano recommends I thought I would try making it.  And so I did. But something went wrong with my beating of the egg white, which refused to stiffen, I suspect because I got cream on the beaters so the mousse ended up rather solid but none the less very tasty and silky smooth and pretty enough in a little ramekin with a half strawberry on top. The recipe (or rather the ingredients) are on the blog below this and should anyone be interested I can also send you the 'method.'  

To start with I had made what has become my current signature dish 'Gambas a l'aillo' or prawns in garlic with spice. This is really very simple to make and most tasty.  You really need fresh prawns (shrimps are even better) though.  Frozen ones will do but frozen prawns always seem to contain loads of water and this rubbery (just right if you are Chinese says M) instead of being crisp and firm.

Just heat a pan of olive oil - enough to cover the shrimps - and add to it cayenne pepper or tabasco or finely chopped chilis, or a mixture.  You need quite a bit.  Don't worry, the dish won't end up tasting like a Vindaloo!  To the hot oil you add several large cloves of garlic finely chopped and let the garlic infuse into the hot oil until it starts to brown.  Now add the prawns (peeled if they are prawns - entire if they are shrimps).  Bring the oil back to its former temperature and then they are done.  Scoop out the prawns and serve on a warm plate.  Delicious.  Hot and spicy and garlicky but all rather a gentle and rounded flavour. 

So we made a good meal which was washed down with a 20 year old bottle of red Saumur from the cellar at Tharon.  Twenty years is really pushing it for a Saumur and the wine was suffering a bit but still drinkable and robust enough to take the flavour of the spicy prawns and some excellent mature Brie that we ate afterwards (before the chocolate mousse).  Not an enormous quantity of washing up either.

LEEKS AND MORE LEEKS

A couple of years ago, when I was going through one of my periodic and futile attempts to lose weight, I came across a little book which appeared to offer hope. It was ‘French Women Don’t Get Fat’ by Mireille Guilano, sub-titled even more beguilingly, ‘The Secret of Eating for Pleasure.’

It is one of those lovely composite books, part memoir, part recipe book, part a philosophy of all things French. The author is head of the Veuve Cliquot Company’s New York operation. She has lived many years in the United States and the book is the result of trying to teach American women the French way of eating and staying slim.

Sadly for anyone hoping to lose weight there isn’t anything here that any reasonably intelligent person cannot guess for themselves. Losing weight, she says, is all about eating sensibly, cutting out those fattening foods, like bread, that one eats to excess and eating half measures - half a glass of wine, half a banana. For the pleasure is always in the first half of something, she suggests, rather than in the second. Apart from that, if you want to weigh ten stone then just eat like someone who weighs ten stone and not like someone who weighs 28 pounds more.

So in all the book there is only one dish to which someone like myself who believes in Fairy Godmothers can possibly cling in the hope of some alchemical transformation. Mireille Guilano even qualifies it with the preface ‘magic.’ It is Magical Leek Soup. And there is a diet that goes with it - a 48 hour diet - which, she implies, will kick-start your life-changing regime and bring all manner of wonderful benefits to boot.

Now I’ve had a nagging temptation to try this diet ever since I bought the book. It’s very simple. You buy a kilo of leeks; trim off most of the green bits; slice the leeks into mouth-sized bites; cover these with water; and boil them for 25 minutes. After this you drain off the water into a jug.

You do this on a Friday evening and for the next 48 hours whenever you feel hungry you eat some of your boiled leeks - hot or cold according to taste - which you are allowed to drizzle with olive oil and flavour with salt and black pepper. When you are thirsty you drink the water you have poured off, which now brims with leek goodness.

And you watch the weight fall of your body, the toxins evaporate from your skin, your hair become sleek and your fingernails glossy, your muscles toned and your wrinkles smoothed. True, she doesn’t actually promise these benefits in so many words, but if you qualify a dish with the word ‘magic’ then surely expecting a few of these benefits isn’t asking too much, is it?

Well, last weekend I tried this diet. And I stuck to it even though I had a sore throat and felt quite awful.

My energy simply evaporated. All I could do was lie on a sofa and read or watch television. Having no energy means not only that you can’t move, but that you can’t think either. So writing is out, decision-making ditto. I found myself on the Saturday evening watching two back to back episodes of ‘Poirot’* (most appropriate I thought) and then half an episode of ‘Taggart.’

I ached on the inside. I’ve never had chemotherapy but, from the descriptions, the effects of 48 hours of leeks seem well on the way towards an approximation.

You wouldn’t believe what I would have given for a cup of tea, or how awful a tepid plate of leeks, even drizzled with oil, tastes at half-past seven in the morning. Despite my raging hunger I found them impossible to finish. I sat there like a child compelled to swallow some disgusting meal long after the family have departed. Then there was the abiding smell of leeks which seemed to exude from the very pores of my skin.

Determined to get to the bitter end all I could think of was the phrase that trips so happily off the tongue of my French neighbour. ‘Il faut souffrir un peu pour etre belle.’ (You have to suffer a little to be beautiful). It gave me little comfort.

And for this suffering what did I get? Well, certainly not beauty! But I did lose weight. Two and three-quarter pounds in fact. And my buoyant blood pressure fell by 15-20 points. Did I feel cleansed, de-toxed, raring to go when the whistle blew at 5 o’clock on Sunday evening and I could permit myself a cup of tea? Answer no, not really, and sadly in the few days since then my weight and blood pressure have reverted to what they were.

No magic then. But the tea did taste beautiful.

(*Poirot is the French word for Leek)