The New Year is a nine, now I’m not overly relying on it but numerology is an interesting playground. Accordingly it means a lot and everything and commonly is referred to completion and fulfilment. Now did you know that any number multiplied by nine which then is reduced to a one-digit number will give a nine? For example 9 times 29 (my birthday) is 261 and 2+6+1 is 9. So whatever you multiply by nine, and you may try as hard as you can, ultimately collapses back into its true old self, the nine, forever and after. Uh ah, what does this mean for 2025.
We started on a quiet note here at the castle with an oysters and champagne pyjamas party on New Year’s Eve, just the two of us, husband and wife, and then a couple of days of enthusiastic rotting by the fireplace. Now being well into half of the month, things have got the back to business, yet on an unhurried note, with a lot of housekeeping and a little of restoration works and continuing my research on the castle’s history (I’m still writing no less than The Complete History of Chateau de Chemilly, it will approximately take all the rest of my life and grant me innumerable sweet and cherished moments deeply buried in dusty archives reading spidery handwriting by (metaphorical, rather than real) candlelight). As my study is far from finished I work from the kitchen table, surrounded by our many cats who continue the enthusiastic rotting, now moved to the wood fired stove. They politely take turns on the comfy chair. The weather is frightfully cold and frightfully bright, which I heartily dislike (bright and warm I like, overcast and cold I like, any other combination is an affront to my tender sensibilities). I only go outside when threatened with running out of logs while no husband in sight. And I did go outside to check on the hundreds of snowdrops I planted in autumn (they are, in fact, popping pale green spikes up the frozen earth, hooray). I also planted some in antique shallow pewter compote dishes and put them on the kitchen table. So I technically won’t have to go out to watch them grow unless it’s the decent weather for my liking.
Note regards the wine: we did indeed drink them all though not on the same night. This is France, it’s wine pairing land. Can’t just stay with one type through a decent meal.
It’s really that the sap turns around Christmas, it seems to me quite unbelievable but it is so, and after this habitual cold January spell there will already be so much more signs of spring everywhere, in fact I hope it will last a little that cold spell for I do enjoy the quiet study time. I also did some serious summer season planning with an extra retreat added to the lineup in July. It’s called The Painter’s Workshop and we’ll literally turn the castle and its grounds into a giant open air atelier. I’ve invited watercolour artist Maya Lämmli, who each day will teach you creative painting, help you deepen your skills and expression, in brief, coach you on finding your voice through a paintbrush. And of course you can cook with me in the evening if you’d like to. As always, there will be delicious food and wines on my table for you. This is a five-nights retreat from 19 to 24 July 2025, please write me an e-mail if you’re interested in joining, I currently have four spots left.
Planning all those summer activities gave my husband the impulse to dust off his watercolour case and I quite liked the colourful painting he made on a Sunday morning. Tastewise this month is spicy and stewy, simple and lean. In practice this means pots and pots of all kinds of soup and lentil stew. Today we had cabbage soup and a very simple chocolaty cake with poached pears and salted caramel for dessert, I’ve written up the recipes for you further down. Also being in no particular mood to cook, I usually make too much and freeze the leftovers.
In the coming days we’ll slowly resume the restorations with a visit from the carpenter today to get the new old window into the Etoile tower room and with a little luck our hero candoeverything guy will soon install the antique doorbell I found at the fair last summer. It has that typical shrill ring you probably know from old movies or your childhood. I grew up with one of these and I remember it gave me near-death experiences severally when after school I was eating Sherlock Holmes novels on the sofa and someone would come over and ring that bell. Now for the recipes, let’s start with the stew:
What you’ll need
- Rapeseedoil
- One big onion, finely chopped into cubes
- Half a big cabbage or one smaller cabbage, chopped into very thin slices
- Some lard (I was lucky enough to still have some from by brother in law who is a farmer up in the mountains)
- A pinch of fennel seeds
- A dash of yellow wine, I always use our local Cuvee des Archeveques from Guillaume in Charcenne
- Water
- A dash of white vinegar
- Sea salt
- A potato per person, peeled and quartered
How you cook it
Cabbage can be tricky for the tummy, hence I always make this the night before and let it simmer overnight on the wood fired stove, so the cabbage is well cooked.
Glaze the onions in a bit of rapeseed oil in a big pot. Add the cabbage in portions, always waiting until the last one is well glazed. This will take about 10 minutes. Then add the lard and the fennel seeds and deglaze with the yellow wine. Let bubble for a couple of minutes and then add the water and a dash of vinegar, so that everything is well covered and swimming. Bring to boil and then add the salt. Let simmer for at least four hours.
About an hour before serving cook the potatoes in a separate pot so the soup won’t go foggy and add to the soup once they’re almost done.
How you eat it
Steaming hot, if you’ve just come in from outside, you may also serve it in a bowl so you can use it to warm your hands. In the old days, this was what January food essentially consisted of, minus the lard, unless you were very wealthy. Enjoy the simple and rich tastes that are so wonderfully devoid of the modern flavour potpourris in fashion.
As to the chocolate pear salted caramel cake, well, that one is a little less frugal:
What you’ll need
For the cake
- 150g farm butter
- 150g sugar
- 50g creme fraiche
- 3 eggs
- 3 tablespoons of unsweetened quality cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon of baking powder
- 3 tablespoons of flour
- A pinch of fleur de sel
- one poached pear, cut in 8 wedges and some more for decorating (I poached mine in sugar sirup last autumn for preserves, if you don’t have any, I guess you could also use fresh pears but they’re not in season here)
For the caramel
- 2 tablespoons of sugar
- 1 tablespoon of butter
- A pinch of fleur de sel
- 1dl of sweet cream
How to make it
Preheat the oven to 180°C
Mix the butter with the sugar so it all gets soft, then add the creme fraiche and the egg yolks and mix for another couple of minutes. Add baking powder, cocoa powder and flour and mix well with a spatula. Beat the egg whites stiff with a pinch of salt and gently fold under. I used a round spring mould but any other mould will work too. Put the pear slices on top and bake for 50 minutes, reducing the temperature to 160° after the first ten minutes have passed.
Let dry in the oven once it’s baked, leaving the oven door a little open. Remove from the mould as soon as you can touch it without getting burnt.
While the cake cooler, prepare the caramel. Caramelise the sugar in a pan, once it has the right colour take off the heat and slowly add morsels of butter while stirring and add the salt. Put back on the stove and add the cream. Bring to boil making sure the caramel fully dissolves, stirring all the time. You’ll see the caramel is done when it slightly changes texture to a foamy light mass, also the colour will turn a little darker. Let cool to body temperature and pour over the fully cooled cake. Decorate with some slices of poached pear and keep in a cool spot.
How you eat it
It’s as with all those frugal January dishes you ought to have something to balance which in my case is cake. Therefore, it’s usually eaten as a dessert but to be honest it also goes smashingly well with afternoon coffee. Or both. Enjoy!
Les Poissonchats 