Le Couvent Diary

Hey, you remember me telling you about the fantastic day we all spent learning to blend wines at Domaine Bourdic ? Well they're doing another one on August 10th - it's a Sunday - and I can't recommend this tooooooo highly. It was truly memorable day and if you have nothing planned you really should consider it.

 

 
If you're one of the eight lucky people booked into Le Couvent that weekend we can make the arrangements on your behalf - just let us know that you'd like to do it.

 

Meanwhile, the sun continues to shine hot and bright here in the Languedoc. The first of our grapes are ripening - a bunch even appeared on the breakfast table this morning. Mmmm, sweet and gorgeous and there are still at least six weeks to go to harvest time. We're going to make some wine from our own vines for the first time this year. In preparation I've bought two 1000 litre wine tanks and only now, as they are being slung onto the transporter, do I realise that they won't fit in through the door, nor windows, of the space I'd intended to put them. How come we live in the only house in Roujan with no wine-making facilities. What were the nuns thinking of?

And for those who've asked, the diet is going very badly. It's now a month of being absolutely rigorous & a fully fledged member of Slimming World's online thingy, yet I have managed to lose a measly four pounds. I'm still optimistic though and am quite sure that I'll miraculously lose five kilos overnight any time soon. Meanwhile Kit the dog is looking svelte as there are no longer stodgy left-overs and Ali makes up calories with wine, ice-cream, chocolate, crisps and biscuits when I've gone to bed. How depressing!

Comment (0) Read More...

 

If you're free in February 2009 and you fancy a heap of hard work in exchange for free bed and board, we're running two Volunteer Weeks . We haven't done this before, but we have had some wildly successful volunteer weekends and now that we're in danger of using up the goodwill of our friends we're hoping to spread the net a little wider. Our friends tell us they have loved the weekends, so we hope you would too.  If you're interested follow the Volunteer link on the menu at the top of this page, or click here .

Comment (0)

Ali's gone shopping thank God. That means I don't have to. Winding the windows down is the nearest we get to air-con in our ancient Freelander. It's around 36 today so inside or by the pool's the only place to be. So our guests decided to cycle around the countryside early this morning - how wise.

I'm on a diet so I spend hours trawling through recipe books for luscious things to cook for supper. Tonight we're on spiced chickpea cakes with red onion and coriander salad. If it's good I'll put it in the recipe book here. The diet's going well thanks to my mentor Rachel . Thanks hon!

The only fly in the ointment at the mo is the spider/bee in the potager that stung /bit me the other day. As a result I have a fat hand that is causing me some consternation as it's now three days later and it's still swollen. At least I have Jan the homeopath on the case & it is a little better today in that I'm not tempted to just cut it off to relieve the itching.

 

 

Since I last talked about the new restaurant up the hill at Vailhan, Le Presbytere , lots of guests and friends have been and all declare the food very good. Ali & I went again the other day too. The co-proprietaire Sylvia is a bit cool so the food and the view have to make up for the lack of dynamism, but they do it brilliantly. The view is unbeatable and the food tastes wonderful and looks like this:

 

 

Tempted? Go on a balmy night and sit out on the terrace.

Comment (0) Read More...

The problem with writing a blog is that sometimes you don't have time to write it, then all the stuff that happens in between becomes so huge that you can't face the task of going back over it. So you don't write. Sorry about that, I'll make amends now.

Since I last wrote we've had wonderful Swedes, Americans, English, Scots, Dutch,  New Zealanders, Australians and many others staying. They arrive already knowing about our lives thanks to this diary and website. But we know nothing about them, so it's like sticking your hand into a lucky dip and finding a treat every time. Film-makers, glassy-winged sharp shooter expert, tennis coach, mountain-climber, charity bosses, ballet dancer, widget manufacturer, software architect, writer, lawyer, homeopath, urban regenerator, public relations experts, an honest estate agent, hoteliers, a cop, musicians, accountants, architects and artists have all turned up at Le Couvent in the last month. Can you imagine how interesting it is for us to learn of the wild, wonderful, awful and exhausting ways people find to make a living? We salute you all and hope you found a bit of peace and inspiration during your stay. Thanks for the stories!

As for us, we've been run off our feet with lovely guests and have had a great time in the process. The pool's stayed bright, clear and fresh thanks to slightly cooler than average weather at around 24 degrees-ish. Very comfortable and quite unlike the energy-sapping high 30's of the first year we were here six years ago.

The vegetable garden's groaning with salads threatening to run to seed so I'm doing my best to palm stuff off onto guests who decide to take a picnic to our vineyards.

 

 

And when they're not helping us use up salad we put them to work weeding the vines. This one's for you Sarah & Andrew.

 

 
While we're on the subject of the vines, this has been a worrying time weather-wise. The mix of warm temperatures and a bit of rain is not great for grapevines. They are prone to getting mildew and oidium, so we have to treat them. We have help in the rather delectable shape of Fred who sprays the vines for us each fortnight. We insist that he wears a mask but he's a bit reluctant to use it properly. God knows what his tan looks like after a day like this.  

 

This morning our friend the WelderBeast's been round to discuss the bridge. Many of you will know that we've wanted to construct a small bridge between the house and the garden, but we've never found a satisfactory solution to the problem. We'd like something functional and sculptural at the same time. WB is the first person to tell us it's completely possible. Watch this space.

This weekend we cooked for our lovely group from Landseer Productions (something we do very rarely) and they've asked for the recipes, so there will be a couple more in the book by the end of the week.

 

I've also made some peach ice-cream and sorbet from our own peaches. At Chateau Mal Au Dos there was an orchard of peaches and olives when we bought it. However many of the peach trees had died of neglect, except for about four. Incredibly one of them produced the smallest yet sweetest peach crop this year. I'm hoping that some TLC from us will produce even better result next year.

 

 

 

 

Comment (0) Read More...

The weather's been disgusting today, dull, wet and dismal. Perfect for cooking up a storm or making a sorbet for supper tonight. This sorbet is soooooooo good I thought I'd share it. Don't be put off by the fact that it looks uncannily like school mashed potato, it really has an absolutely stunning flavour. Oh, and I've made twice as much in the photos as there'll be lots of us for supper.

You need: 150 ml water; 150 gms sugar; 6 limes zested; 1 glass of juice from the limes; 1 large bunch of basil

 

 

Method: In a saucepan chuck the water and sugar and bring it to the boil. Turn it down to a simmer and lob in the lime zest leaving it to simmer for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile pound the basil to a pulp.

 

 

Remove the water/sugar/lime mixture from the heat and let it cool a bit. Throw in the lime juice and basil puree, stir it and let it infuse for about ten minutes.

Sieve the mixture into a bowl and squeeze out the remnants. The remaining liquid will look like the stuff below. Don't be tempted to throw it away even though it looks so awful.

At this point you can put it into the freezer for about 3 hours, stirring it every 30 minutes, or if you're lucky like me and have a sorbetiere or ice-cream maker you can hand it all over to that. Mine takes about 50 minutes to be ready.

The finished product - not a great look, but a flavour you'll never forget. As they used to say at the Hungry Monk in Jevington - 'Serve with a smacking of lips'

P'raps we'll make some for weary travellers when they arrive at Le Couvent, Roujan - in our opinion the best bed and breakfast in the Languedoc! Biased? Us? Surely not.

Comment (2) Read More...

This one's for the Landseer group who are coming to stay at Le Couvent, Roujan again in a couple of month's time. It's an annual reunion of chums who've previously worked together and they've asked for us to do supper for them one evening. They've requested 'the lovely courgette soup you gave us last time'. I'd completely forgotten, but have found the recipe. Good start. I'm hoping I can encourage the courgettes to get a move on. This is how they look today, with their pals the coriander plants.

 

 

Comment (0)

Just so you can see how your breakfast is coming along I thought I show you some figs that will arrive on the Le Couvent, Roujan breakfast table a little later in the year. These are on one of about five wild fig trees that we have in the Le Couvent vineyards.

 

 Although nowhere near ripe yet, having a couple of months to go, they're looking good. Currently, however, it's the asparagus season. We're not at all happy that our lovely neighbour Stephane Cabrol, who used to have a long stall of luscious asparagus outside his house each evening, has decided to move to Alignan-du-Vent, a few minutes drive away. Gone are the days when we could stroll across the road for the fattest, most delicious thumbs of fresh-picked asparagus. I drove off to buy some last Friday. I needed three kilos to make some delicious dense soup. Although he only had the little finger sized ones they were perfect for the velvety soup.

 

 

 Our lovely writers are here still - just until tomorrow morning, when Ali and I will be very sad to see them go. They've been wonderful. There's a gentle hum of energy and thinking running right through the house. We've loved it.

Meanwhile, Ali and I have had time to do a little more in the vineyards. A good deal of the time we were pestered by Kit the Labrador wanting to ride round on Queenie the Quad. Here she is with Neffies in the background.

And here's a pic especially for my step-father, John, who's having a rough time with chemo, and for Sarah who's thinking of camping in the vineyards all summer. Here is a pic of your vineyard - they're coming along well.

 

Hope you're feeling better John.

Comment (1) Read More...

Ok, so we're not officially open until 1 May, but this exceptional week we have a group of Black & Asian writers staying, working on their films, stage plays, radio plays, TV dramas & books. They're all jolly well known, and they're just lovely and very interesting. We had supper together last night with the writers and our chums Nicola & Teddy who've arranged this particular jape. They do lunch & supper and we have everyone to breakfast. Lucky us eh?

 

 

I have a personal challenge to see how many different fruits I can serve at breakfast and the current record is 13. It's early in the year so I wasn't being too hopeful but I managed passion fruit, kiwi, physalis, melons, oranges, apples, strawberries, pineapples, star fruit & bananas this morning. That's 10. The record looks in danger this year now that we have Chateau Mal Au Dos where the fruit grows in abundance.

Comment (0) Read More...

After talking about the English Class in a previous blog, several people asked for the luscious cake recipe - so here it is.

Ingredients
For the cheesecake
butter, for greasing
1 large ready-made sponge flan case
3 tbsp orange liqueur
200g/7oz caster sugar
2 oranges, zest of both and juice of 1 orange
4 tbsp cornflour
850g/1½lb full-fat soft cream cheese
3 medium free-range eggs
1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped out
375ml/13fl oz double cream, plus extra to serve
345g/12oz dark chocolate pieces
For the marbled chocolate
150g/5oz white chocolate
150g/5oz dark chocolate

Method
1. For the cheesecake, preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease a 23cm/9in springform cake tin.
2. Cut a circle from the sponge flan case to fit the base of the tin, then cut this circle in half across the middle to make two thin discs. Use one of these to line the cake tin - the other disc can be used in another dish. Drizzle the sponge with one tablespoon of the orange liqueur.
3. Mix together the sugar, orange zest and juice and cornflour in a bowl using a wooden spoon, then use an electric hand mixer to beat in the cream cheese. Crack in the eggs one by one, beating constantly until all the eggs are well incorporated.
4. Add the vanilla seeds and the remaining two tablespoons of orange liqueur to the mixture and mix well. Add the cream and beat well until the mixture is smooth.
5. Pour a third of the mixture over the sponge base in the cake tin. Sprinkle over a third of the chocolate pieces and smooth over with a palette knife. Repeat twice more with the remaining cheesecake mixture and chocolate pieces.
6. Place the tin into a baking tray filled with 2-3mm of warm water - this helps to create steam during cooking. Transfer to the oven and bake for 50 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool and set completely before removing from the tin.
7. Meanwhile, for the marbled chocolate, place the white chocolate and dark chocolate into separate heatproof bowls set over pans of gently simmering water. Heat, stirring occasionally, until melted and smooth.
8. Cover a baking tray tightly in cling film. Pour ladlefuls of the dark and white chocolate onto the tray. Allow to cool slightly, then use your finger to swirl the two chocolates together to create a marble effect. Place into the fridge to chill and set completely. When set, break into pieces.
9. To serve, cut the cheesecake into wedges and place onto serving plates with a piece of the marbled chocolate and a drizzle of cream.

With thanks to James Martin, from whom all this is nicked.

 

Comment (0) Read More...