Hi friends,
I’m taking a break from our Czech winemaker series to send a simple, personal letter inspired by the ephemeral quotidian beauty all around me. Southwest France is the picture of Spring. The cherry, plum, and apple trees are blushing. The fields are a intricate carpet of canary, fuchsia, and periwinkle. You’ve never seen such joyful bees a-wobble with sticky globs of pollen. The weather is at turns idyllic and frightful, sometimes within the same few minutes, as a syrupy sunbeam can give way to furious dark clouds that slash the earth with pellets of hail only to reveal a perfect rainbow against its departing black body once the light returns, and on and on, back and forth like this across the hours until darkness falls, later and later each passing day.
We are pedestrians these days. The used car I bought last summer spectacularly failed in the Pyrenees this winter and could not be revived. Aside from painful hit to our savings, this suits me. I am prone to temptations of travel and exploration, but my literary vocation requires a lot of ass-in-chair time, and I am getting it. Sarah has even taken over most of the cooking duties, although we donkey into town together to hit the open air market and the shops. Speaking of donkeys, the two that we take carrots to on our walks have survived the winter, for which we are deeply grateful.
Being housebound has counter-intuitively increased our social scene. Our frequent walks eventually led us to collide with two neighbor families, one French, one retired English, who host each other for casual “Thirsty Thursdays,” and the occasional Sunday dinner who have brought us into the rotation. We have other new friends over for dinner at least once a week, including a Dutch couple, Esther and Jan, with whom we have a themed dinner exchange, picking a nation at random as the inspiration behind the cuisine. Esther and Jan are converting their centuries-old barn into a felting workshop residency program, and sometimes while I’m ass-in-chairing, Sarah goes over and helps with the renovations. They still have spaces available, should you want to take a textile-based working vacation in rural France.
Our last dinner was inspired by Korea. We bought a kilo and a half of pork belly from the butcher and the market and Sarah seasoned it and wrapped it in foil, leaving only the skin on top exposed. She cooked it at a low heat, enough to release some of the fats, which created a confit effect in the foil package, then finished it on a high heat, which turned the skin into gloriously crispy cracklings. We also made a version of gamja bokkeum (braised sesame potatoes) with yams, and a sort of quick kim-chi with white asparagus, foraged dandelion greens, green onions, and Brussel sprouts. We sliced the pork thin and wrapped all these lovely dishes plus some hot sauce and my signature green oil in broad lettuce leaf wraps. Crispy, fresh, fatty, spicy, sharp, and sweet, it may have been a perfect meal.
And that’s the news from Riberac.
With love,
William
Yum Yum! Lovely Article!
Happy Easter!
Thrilled knowing we're in the same country!