Cooking Lessons

*I'm starting this post with a warning - especially to my vegetarian friends - as I am now living a lot further away from the supermarket, and I am really getting back in touch with where food comes from - so if you are squeamish at all you might want to skip the first pic in this one.

Marcus had been asking Mariam and Bintou to teach him how to cook the traditional Malian peanut sauce - tiga dege na - since he arrived at Syama about two years ago. He's also a huge fan of saga saga, which is a green sauce made from a locally grown plant (as it turns out, the leaves from the top of the sweet potato). So we arranged to go into Fourou on our RDO and do a spot of cooking!

My first piece of advice from Dr Loes was, 'Never arrive at an African household without taking a gift of food' - so with that in mind, we arranged for a goat to be delivered, so that we could do a re-run of Wade's spit roast performance to accompany our sauces.


Yes - it really is a carcass I'm carrying

We had an eventful mission getting ourselves into town, collecting the 1/4 tonne, hand-fashioned spit-roaster was the first effort, and required five men to lift it into the ute (one woman to photograph proceedings) - and once we arrived, a quick visit to the drillers' house for a repair job!


Yes - it's really, really heavy

Thankfully there were plenty of other jobs to be done, and Guirou proved to be a very capable, though initially reluctant - Malian men don't cook you see - assistant for Mariam, while Bintou pounded some garlic for my marinade.


Preliminaries

Once the ingredients were ready it was time to start the lessons proper, so the ladies invited myself and Marcus into the kitchen to get started.


My favourite room

I documented the whole process and enjoyed the aromas with each new step - meanwhile, the men were busy doing what men do best at these functions ...


... supervising the spit!

Making saga saga is a two pot, several step operation, and also pretty entertaining to watch, as bits and pieces are continually added or removed along the way.


Saga saga - stage I

Mariam says it's her favourite sauce to prepare and she even gets a little meditative during the process.


Fanning the coals

Outside Eliza was preparing the pot for the rice. And because there was so much happening, we attracted a bit of a crowd ...


Kev and friends

... some of us more than others, and Kev was cleary two-babou of choice that day. I was still busy in the kitchen with the ladies (and Marcus) as we got to the okra stage with the saga saga.


Saga saga - stage II

And our fans were becoming a little more interested and hungry too!


Local children

Marcus was in raptures about the peanut sauce and is looking forward to trying it out on his family back in the UK this Christmas.


Checking the peanut sauce

And then Mariam showed me how to clean and sort the rice ... quite a skill I must say.


Cleaning the rice

Because local rice is hand threshed and pounded in Mali, what you get is a mixture of cracked and whole grains, which will cook unevenly if you put them in the same pot and ruin your dish. So the rice is sifted prior to use, the long and short grains separated, and any small stones or twigs which might find their way in are removed too. The sauces we were preparing are best eaten with the long-grained rice. There is another traditional rice dish made with the short grains that is just superb - Mariam and Bintou had prepared it for me before when I spent another lazy RDO in the yard in Fourou.

(Kev was pretty impressed with Mariam's style with the wicker sifter, and has decided that perhaps we should send the ladies out to do a bit of stream sediment sampling - they'd be naturals at panning for gold!)


Levieil

Dao's son, Levieil was keenly interested in my reaction to the final product, and just as I expected, everything was delicious!


The washing up

I think Mariam was pretty pleased with her professorial efforts, and Marcus had a very hard time deciding whether Bintou's tiga dege na or Mariam's saga saga was more enjoyable, so he went back for a second, and then a third taste - they were both so excellent he's definitely going to be cooking again at home.


Well done - sensai and student

Meanwhile chef Simmo's supervision of the spit delivered A1 results on the marinated roast goat front - he celebrated with a quick spin around the block on Salikou's ...


Mali Davison* - magic!

*Thanks to Catherine C for introducing us to that delightful term.

This one's for you Kate ...

Katie Fraser - just for you, all the way from France ...


Pims!

*A quick aside, in an unbelievable stroke of good luck, I discovered that you can buy Pims - in orange and framboise - at the Total service station in Bobo-Diaolasso on the Bobo-Ouagadougou road in Burkina Faso. What I also discovered is, that Pims are absolutely no good in any way warmed up!

Last French post ... for now!

I know, I know, I know - you are all dying with envy, so I'm not going to bore you with shots of devine countryside and fairybook châteaux - I'm saving the slideshow for a visit home - but I think I do need to share a few shots from our wine lovers' tour.


Les raisins pinot noir

Sally and I set out for the Bourgogne region south of Dijon on recommendations from various sources (including Richard in Mali, and Magali in Monpellier) and we were absolutely delighted to hit the slopes and get stuck into the great pinot noirs of France - hard to resist!


Sunset over the vines

The route des grands crus de Bourgogne winds through some of the most charming little villages in northern France and there are so many caves and so much to look at it is hard to decide where to stop.

Thank goodness we had Magali's top spot Domaine Lejeune in the village of Pommard as number one on the hit list. This family run business uses a mixture of traditional methods with some modern science to produce absolutely devine wines - but more importantly, the grand patriarch of the family began a tradition of sharing the knowledge through entertaining informal discussions and has passed on his knowledge over the years at the university - a true raconteur!


Resting on lies

So we did the tour twice - premièrement en français then, afterwards in English.


Domaine Lejeune picnic wine

We learnt all about how burgundy wines are classified, how well they age, who's who in the biz and best of all ...


Ooooo, I love a complex wine

... how good they taste! We'd met up with Paul in Dijon (and Barb is still crying because her beer loving bro' got to join us instead of her good self) ... and dragged him along for the ride.


The 1978 vintage

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to try the €300-a-bottle vintage - but we were allowed to look.

And no wine tour is complete without a picnic spot and picnic fixings, and by this stage Sally and I became dab hands at finding the markets, and ordering the finest fromages, pâtés de campagne, legumes, pains, boutouns de chèvre, pistaches - all the good things!


Faire des courses

So from la Bourgogne we headed west to the Loire Valley and sampled a whole new range of wines (and castles - sorry, saving those shots!) and vistas.


Wish it was our voiture

How can you complain if you're ambling through the vignobles in vintage green sports car on a sunny autumn afternoon?


Although the Megane was fine for us

Luckily we were pretty content in our highly electronic hire car, when the 'intuitive technology' didn't get the better of us. From Tours it was back to Paris via some wonderful towns, including Chartres where we stopped and filled up on medieval cathedrals and chili-flavoured chocolate - and also the unwonderful town of Palaiseau, just south of Orly, where we passed a very traumatising 45-minutes going around in circles and thinking we might get stuck there forever (it's that logical French sign-posting that I blame - sheesh!)

After a crazy trip back in to Paris from the périphérique and battling peak hour on the metro to find our hotel, we eventually managed to catch up with Annette to reminisce about the old times in Antony's class at the Alliance Français de Melbourne and that promise we made to meet up again in Paris!


Antony's girls!

Une nuit à la gîte

At Saulxures, which is a teeny tiny town somewhere near Contrexéville, Sally and I stopped for a night of total luxury and decadence at le château with Danièle and her maman. And my word were we sorry we couldn't stay for a week...


Le Château


View from the bedroom window

A gîte is similar to a B&B but instead of a quaint old home, you might actually be lucky enough to stay in a really ancient building with some serious history to it.


...and from the salon


...and from le jardin

Even the shed was a work of art.


The workshop

But what we didn't expect at all was the completely and uttertly exquisite breakfast that Danièle prepared for us, with all the locally sourced delicacies available.


Breakfast?


Ali finds her happy place


... and Sal can't quite believe it!

And of course you all know that Contrexéville is the village next door to ...


Vittel, of course

We spent an afternoon luxuriating in the (cool) health-giving waters of the Vittel thermal spring, of Vittel water fame, yes indeed - just the ticket in the middle of autumn.


Les feuilles d'Automne

Au revoir Paris, et bonjour la France!

Sally and I left Paris armed with the Michelin map, a bag full of grignotages, and not much of anything else ... so when we parked the car in Fontainebleau, and headed for the château we were full of adventurous spirit and 'let's see how we go' vibes.


Château de Fontainebleau


Could things be more perfect?

Fontainebleau is very close to Paris and very beautiful and we enjoyed it so much that we decided to stay the night - the night that France won their final in the rugby world cup - woohoo! The surprise for us was that everyone left the bars the minute the final goal was scored and headed home - after a wee bit of tearing around the streets in their cars honking wildly.

The next day we headed out to get on the road proper and started enjoying the countryside.


A roman ruin on the road to Nancy

What we soon discovered was - given that we needed to stop often for a snack, make our way around each rond-point a few times, check out the little villages, and generally avoid the motorway - was that the trip was going to take a little longer to reach our expected destination each day. So, on our second night on the road we rolled in to Nancy tired, cranky and hungry, without any accomodation and without a map of the city - interesting ...

Thank goodness that when we went for an explore the next morning, and got away from the area around la gare, Nancy opened up some spectacular scenes for us. As a fan of the art nouveau architecture, I was pretty happy and inspired (but I am going to have to visit again so that I can see all the Emile Gallé glass ware at the museum, which we ran out of time to see).


Art nouveau awning in Nancy


Cupola au jardin

Not to mention the grandeur of Place Stanislas in the vieille centre ville...where we sat for an hour or so in the gentle warmth of the autumn sunshine.


How European are we - café?


18th century architecture

We hit the road again and headed for Strasbourg, stopping just outside of Saverne to climb the hill and check out the view from and the construction of this amazing abbey, built into a cliff-top (beautiful fluviatile sedimentary rocks with superb cross-beds and scour marks - for the geologically inclined amongst you).


Abbey hidden amongst the rocks

We stayed for several days, spent our time wandering the quaint, very German-feeling streets, and shopping! Yes, both Sal and I needed to update our summer wardrobes with more appropriate clothing suitable for the weather, so we found shoes, hats scarves and gloves in abundance, in between visiting the sights ...


Strasbourg cathedrale

... and discovering some of the luxurious food opportunities to be had in town.


C'est avec quoi?

We visited France's first (yes, first!) gourmet chocolate bar. Their hot chocolates are fashioned made by scooping a large ball of flavoured chocolate ganache - I chose the gingimbre, Sal had the congac I think - into the glass, adding steamed milk on top and stirring the ganache slowly through until it melts and mixes thoroughly. Hmmmm.... delicious!


Chocolat chaude

And then we discovered the nougat shop - I cannot describe how sublime this stuff was - we bought a large tranche each on the first day and went back for as much as we could fit into the car for the rest of the trip - and according to the ladies inside, we Australians are their best customers, absolutely divine!


Nougat

After we'd had our fill of lardons, andouilettes and spaetles it was time to say farewell to the quaintness of old Strasbourg and head out for new environs.


Le toit


...and this is France?