It was supposed to be sunny, of course. The day before had been sunny. The month before had been sunny. This is the south of France, and it was only October, although we were practising for Christmas Day. Hence the tinsel on the palm tree. So this is the theory: people are bored with Christmas lunch in Britain. The watery turkey, the watery veg, the watery weather tapping listlessly at the window; it's driving more and more Britons south for the festive season, tempted by blue skies and cordon bleu cuisine. A few traditionalists may complain that it's not the same, opening your presents and drinking your Snowballs in the warm, open air. And they're right: it's not the same. It's better.
There are no guarantees with the weather, of course, unless you're prepared to swap hemispheres. But going abroad inevitably gives you different culinary options. We had intended to do a typical French Christmas lunch, but traditionally they just eat enormous mounds of seafood here, for some reason, and they're every bit as bored with this as the British are with turkey. So we decided to use regional dishes and regional ingredients.
We live in the south-west, near the Pyrenees, and there is a rich variety of cuisines here, from Basque seafood to the fat ducks of the Gers. We heard about a firm near Auch who do a special Christmas dish called the Figuigers - a duck, fed on figs for the last two weeks of its life, which is then completely boned and stuffed with a whole foie gras.
It's based on a recipe more than a thousand years old, apparently, and besides it sounded ridiculously decadent and amazingly good value: at 455 francs, the Figuigers feeds 10 people.
Next was the wine. The region where we live is all corn and no vines, unfortunately, but Madiran, about an hour away, produces some good reds. So my wife Odile and her friend Christine drove to Château Bouscassé, owned by local winemaker supreme Alain Brumont, and came back with, bizarrely, three reds, two dry whites, and five sweet whites. Still, it all got drunk. (As did we.)
En route to the beach one weekend, we stopped off at Espelette, a little Basque town where the houses are all garlanded with the local produce: dark red sweet peppers. The sea bass and oysters came from a fishmongers in Tarbes. The selection of Pyrenean cheeses we bought at a local market; the magrets de canard from a duck specialist at another local market.
I love cooking, but catering for large numbers of people makes me nervous, so for our five-course lunch we took the sensible precaution of inviting people who were good at food, and getting them to do most of the work. Edward and Penny used to run a restaurant, so they took care of the foie gras terrine and the oysters. Laura and Andrew are starting a 'B&B gastronomique' at their house in the Gers: they provided the sea bass and the chocolate mousse. Christine brought figues confites and Gallic know-how.
So Odile's job was to grab a lettuce from our vegetable garden and synchronise the timing of the bird in the oven, and mine was to cook for the kids. Now, I know it's the done thing to give your children a little of what you're having, in order to accustom their palates to fineness and adventure and all that rubbish. But let's be honest: children, especially little boys, do not enjoy sitting at a table for four hours nibbling strange-looking food.
They want a plate full of stuff they recognise, a glass or two of something with bubbles in it, lots of ice cream as a reward for being good, and then they want to run off and chase the chickens. So I cooked the simplest, tastiest thing I could think of: barbecued magret with barbecued chips. With ketchup, obviously.
Three tips for the kids' food. Firstly, score the fat of the magret with a knife three or four times: this allows the grease to drip into the fire, which causes flames to rise and burn the rest of the fat, leaving you with something thin and crispy and edible rather than something thick and gluey and inedible. You have to stand next to the barbecue, though, and lift the grill up occasionally, otherwise your meat will end up as cinders.
Second tip: serve the kids before you start to eat. Third tip: if you have very young kids, borrow a responsible, sweet-natured nine-year-old girl who they can follow around for the afternoon. Ours was called Jacqueline. By the time we started on the sea bass, I'd completely forgotten we even had children.
Of course, the day itself didn't go as smoothly as I'm making it appear. Our guests were late; the photographer was early; every raindrop induced mass panic; and at ten past twelve I suddenly thought, 'Shit, baguettes!', and had to drive at breakneck speed through country lanes to reach the bakers before it closed.
But it was fun. The foie gras terrine on toast is the kind of snack they serve in heaven. The fish was gorgeous. And if the Figuigers wasn't quite as amazing as it sounded on paper, that was probably our (ie Odile's) fault for getting the timing wrong by a minute or two. And my carving was crap, apparently. (Not surprising, considering the amount of alcohol I'd downed by that time.)
I felt pretty unwell that night, I have to say, but that's just authentically Christmassy, isn't it? And the next day was an authentic Boxing Day, too: the kids fighting over toys and eating cold leftovers; the adults grouching at them through the half-closed eyes of a hangover. All completely normal except in one respect: it was 25 degrees in the shade. Joyeux Noel...
Recipes
Foie gras terrine
2 quality fresh fattened duck livers
3 tbsp Pousse Rapière
1 tbsp Armagnac
salt, pepper
Separate the lobes and clean livers, removing all green residue and the larger veins with a knife. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the livers in the Armagnac and Pousse Rapière mixture. Leave to marinate overnight in the fridge. Pack the livers into a terrine dish, pressing down lightly to mould them into the terrine. Place the terrine into a bain marie, and fill it with hot tap water so that the water reaches halfway up the exterior of the terrine dish. Bake in the oven at 300F for 40 mins. The temperature of the water in the bain marie should be kept at a constant 160F.
Allow the terrine to cool and refrigerate overnight. Remove the layer of fat which will have formed on the terrine, and put aside. Carefully turn out the terrine, and with a warm knife cut into thin slices. To serve, spread a thin layer of the fat onto warm toast and place a slice of the foie gras terrine on top. Serve with a good sweet wine.
Grilled sea bass with pimento and honey sauce
8 sea bass fillets
8oz unsalted butter, cubed
2 tsps honey
2 mild pimento chillies, deseeded and finely diced
? tsp mild chilli powder
half pint seafood nage (1 leek, 2 celery sticks, 1 onion, 1 fennel bulb, half lemon, half orange, 2 bay leaves, 12 pepper corns, 3 litres water, 150ml white wine boiled for 35 mins; add white wine for last 10 mins; strain and reduce to half pint liquid)
Put your reduced stock into a pan and bring to a rolling boil. Whisk in the cubed butter gradually until the sauce thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Add seasoning, honey, chilli powder and some of the fresh chilli; use the rest to decorate your fish. Grill the sea bass.
Put some sauce on each plate. Lay the fish on top. Decorate with some shredded basil and the remaining chopped chilli. Garnish with fresh dressed rocket.
