The night before I left for a workshop with rhythm master Bernard Lubat in Uzeste, I made a tourin in our fire place. This soup of humble origin is mostly known as tourin à l’ail —sopa de ajo in Spanish or garlic soup in English. Many variations are possible & in this case I used the ingredients available in the house: 1 tomato, 1 head of garlic, 1 onion, old bread & goose fat.

In a cast iron dutch oven I thoroughly sauteed the thinly sliced onion in goose fat. Meanwhile I crushed 3 cloves of garlic & a sprig of fresh rosemary in the mortar. After adding them to the pot, I removed the latter from the heat to avoid bitterness — over-sauteed garlic becomes bitter. I crushed the tomato in the mortar & added it to the onion garlic mixture. With no stock available, I added plain water to obtain the desired consistency. Coarse sea salt, freshly ground pepper & a dash of piment d’Espelette are added for seasoning & then the pot is returned to the open fire for about 15/ 30 minutes.

With thick slices of old country-style bread rubbed with garlic & drizzled with goose fat lining the bottom of the plate, hot soup is poured in et voilà! le tour est joué & you get a magnificent & most satisfying soup. A beaten egg is often added before serving; this is especially enriching if you have only garlic to make the soup. Whoever needed canned soup? Pas moi!

Photos Pierre Joris & N.P

As I was picking  meat for the week at the Park Slope Food Coop, the “Wild Boar Mini Roast,  Distributed by d‘Artagnan” looked like the perfect piece for Pierre and I to make into one of our  celebration dinner sfor our 21st anniversary month —neither of us remembers the exact date, so that’s a good excuse to have a few celebration throughout the month of January.

It would have been better if I had let the cute little roast marinate for a day or even a few hours, but when I came home after shopping I sat at my desk and didn’t get up until 7:30 pm. Pierre said: “It takes about three days to make one of the boar recipe from Luxembourg.” Well, I took on the challenge and with great anxiety I turned it into one of my fast dinners. I first went to the d’Artagnan website to check out the product information:

The D’Artagnan Wild Boar Mini-Roast is made from the knuckle and is pre-tied to hold its shape and allow for even cooking temperature. Simply brown in a hot sauté pan with sliced garlic and rosemary to seal. Then place in the oven about 375F to finish the cooking or until internal temperature reaches 155-160F. Remove from oven and let rest before slicing. Serve either hot or cold. Great on sandwiches!

D’Artagnan Wild Boar come from a large free-range ranch outside of Quebec. The animals graze freely on nuts, acorns, and grasses while being supported at times of need by whole grains. You’ll find the meat leaner than large-farm pork and richer in taste, but smooth and succulent in texture.

Alright, sounds good, though I don’t like the “pre-tied” device, which is an elastic trussing net. I discarded it  and replaced it with some d’Artagnan bacon and decided to just braise it in the oven. Voilà the procedure:

Preheat oven to 375F.
Take one sliced onion, 1 cup of sliced celery root, 1 sliced carrot, 6 slices of chopped  bacon, one cup of unsweetened cherries and about a dozen heads of shitake mushrooms, and place it all in a roasting dish. Generously coat if with olive oil, add salt pepper. Mix  well.

Coat the meat with oil, salt pepper. Wrap with  uncured apple wood smoked bacon. Place roast on top of the veggies and that’s how it goes into the oven.  As we read above, the legit internal cooking temperature is 155-160F, but that is too much for me. Our roast was 1.31lb, I cooked it for 40mn, the temperature reached 144F and this was a little over cooked for us, but that is a matter of taste and choice. In the same oven cook fingerling potatoes in another roasting pan,  lightly coated with oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Once the meat is cooked to your liking, let it rest and transfer the vegetables & cooking juices into a sauté pan with one tablespoon of melted butter and a dash of oil. Sauté the veggies and flambé with  Armagnac.

Finish up the fingerlings potatoes with fresh butter and parsley.
Slice the meat, keep it warm, pour the juice into the veggie pan, add  another dollop of butter in the pan to give it a shine!
Set up you plate and serve quickly.
Really simple, delicious and if you are a Park Slope Food Coop member, not  expensive either ($10.10 for the roast, a little more if you order at d’Artagnan but you don’t have to work for the discounted price and it can be delivered to your house!). Though very tasty with a rich and lightly gamy taste, I have to confess that the meat was a little tough, the marinade would have certainly ‘cured’ the problem, but other than that it was amazing. The hints of tartness (unsweetened dry cherries) combined with the distinguished taste of celery root, the shitake mushrooms’ texture, the sweetness of the carrots & onions, the mildly wild taste of the boar and the hint of Armagnac, plus the bottle of the inexpensive, but good Côte du Rhône Les Garrigues to wash it down, made it a very pleasing experience indeed.

It took me only 15/20 minutes to prepare it, 40 minute to roast it, and 10 minutes to finish it up. We had a few slices left over that will make a great sandwich for lunch. Enjoy le sanglier!

Hilh de puto or OMG! I had so much fun with this project. Truly a spontaneous affair. We had been so wrapped up in our respective working spaces that when dinner time came around Pierre & I realized that neither of us had roasted the chicken. He started by serving the aperitif and plugged WBGO via his iPhone into the stereo system. In a way I was happy we hadn’t roasted it because I wanted to film the cutting up of a chicken as I wanted to post it on the blog. While I set up the camera the radio played a piece that really caught my ear. I couldn’t place it in time; the pianist was so free and at the same time the arrangement was traditional. I got so excited, & high listening to this music — & no! I was not drunk, I just had one sip of my glass of wine!

It was “Luyah! The Glorious Step” the first track of  Cecil Taylor Quartet’s CD Looking Ahead recorded in 1958. Besides the maestro himself, the personnel includes Earl Griffith on vibraharp, Buell Neidlinger on bass, and Dennis Charles on drums. Well, I went on line and ordered it immediately, I had to have it.  The 1958 liner notes are by Nat Hentoff and conclude by saying:

Cecil hasn’t worked out all his style yet, but what he has already done is important and makes him, in one sense, ‘in the avant garde of everybody,’  as Martin Williams puts it. Most important is his emotional message. Much of the musical history of the Negro in America is in his work, but not as an anthology. He’s a new user of that basic language with his own additions to make.

Yeah! Emotional message for sure. I could feel it through my entire body.  Also, for me this recording sheds a light on how the “avant garde” music I love so much happened.  Never had I  heard such an absolutely clear articulation of both ideas and form — and all the while I was  cutting up my chicken!  A metonymic epiphany of our “domopoetics” that feeds on explosive & uninhibited  energies. And to counter-stretch  with a metaphor (you must see the video to get that one) it is unequivocal to me that Cecil Taylor knows about finding the joint & firmly cutting down through it!

Since Pierre‘s commute to Albany is a little brutal this semester, I try to alleviate it by packing him lunch. I always loved packing food to take away, and when I worked in Manhattan I packed my lunch everyday.
I also have very vivid memories from the time when I was  a child and we were packing picnics for the hotel residents going on day trips. The family hotel being a 4-star establishment, you can imagine how elaborate that was. Prepackaged item didn’t exist, so for salt, pepper, sugar, mustard  & cornichons, we would make cute little pockets out of parchment paper.  The beautiful cuts of salami, jambon de pays (prosciutto), jambon blanc (cooked ham), roast beef, chicken, cheeses — yeah! lots of proteins— were carefully wrapped in parchment paper attached with butcher string. Seasonal fruits were added on top, a bottle of wine, bottle of mineral water and a fresh baguette stuck to the side of the basket.

I also remember my grandfather Joseph packing my picnic for the end of the year elementary school field trip. I requested sandwiches & Coca-Cola. Bon-Papa Joseph went along with the sandwiches but absolutely vetoed  the Coca-Cola telling me that that stuff was so efficient in cleaning metal surfaces that he didn’t want my stomach to be subjected to the same treatment. Instead, he filled an empty bottle with some wine, water and sugar.  I was around 9 or 10 years old and I remember like if it was yesterday that after eating lunch, my friend Françoise Gerdessus and I took a pedal boat ride and I felt pretty funny and happy… I was drunk! I lost my wallet that day and I never forgot that Françoise shared her pocket money with me. Anyhow, Pierre’s lunch made me travel back to childhood and my unconscious might be thinking of that crew of school friends that are going to gather soon for a school reunion that I will not make this year!

Voilà! Pierre’s lunch is a little more balanced:

Cold oven roasted chicken
Cuke salad (with no rice)
Apple sauce (Pierre’s ultimate comfort food)
2 slices of Amy’s bread

All packed in this cute lunch box my daughter in law got for us in Korea, where packing lunch is a serious affair… but no room for the bottle of wine!

Do you like cucumbers? I do now, but it is a taste I acquired over the years. Cukes were popular in my family only in cornichons form (tiny cukes pickled in vinegar). I don’t remember if it is my father or my grandfather who used to say “les concombres, ils me reprochent,” meaning not he didn’t digest them well, but that he would hear from them under the form of burbs for hours after ingestion, hence the “reproach” to have eaten them! So, for years I was prejudiced against cucumbers and assimilated them to reproaches & English sandwiches — and thus they had no place in my cooking repertoire! But once I was able to look beyond my Pyrenean mountains for culinary inspiration, I realized how widespread cucumbers were in many Mediterranean cuisines and how delicious they are.
This summer I am eating a lot of them as I am trying to eat “cold” foods as recommended by my good friend, poet & artist Yuko Otomo. She gave me a few ideas on how to eat them with seaweed & tofu, which I liked very much, but my favorite version is the one I am featuring today. Most of you will recognize it’s direct source. Yes, it is a sort of Tzatziki, in Greek or Cacık in Turkish, usually served as a mezze, appetizer or used as sauce for souvlaki & gyros. In order to make it more filling for my lunch I added some brown rice and gave it a twist with the addition of a touch of mustard. Another healthy, cheap, refreshing lunch brought to you by Voilà Nicole! By the way, do not miss Trialogues (Pierre Joris, Michael Bisio & moi) this coming Monday August 23rd 8PM, part of Evolving Voices Series, at Local 269 (269 East Houston NYC).

Recipe:
Peel, cut lenghtwise, then empty out seeds of 2 organic local cucumbers (avoid the ones individually wrapped in plastic)

Options:
1-soak cukes in salted ice water for 30 minutes. drain for 15 minutes
2-In a glass bowl sprinkle them with salt (coarse salt), cover , let drain in a colander for 30 minutes. Rinse and pat dry.
3-Simply use them, right off the bat, skipping either of these options — that is what I do most of the time. They are a little more watery but I read that the juices are actually very good for you.

In a bowl mix:
1/2 tbs of mustard (Grey Poupon type)
1 cup of goat milk yogurt
Mix & add:
1 grated clove of garlic
1/4 cup of finely chopped onions
1/2 cup of chopped fresh mint
1/4 cup of cooked brown rice
Mix & add:
cucumbers
salt+pepper to taste & mix well

Voilà!

This is a very pleasant & simple dish. I called it Forestière because my grandfather used to call anything garnished with mushroom Forestière —meaning of the forest. Though the porcinis mushrooms are not wild & neither were all the mushrooms my grandpa used!

Pan fry the cod  (4/5 mns each side) with a dollop of clarified butter. Reheat the small new potatoes cut half length – they are already boiled – in the pan with the fish, add a little fat if needed. The fresh green beans had also been parboiled and  will be added to the sautéed small porcini mushrooms. I sautéed the porcini with olive oil until crispy & towards the end added the persillade —chopped parsley & garlic.

Once you have removed the fish & potatoes from the pan melt a dollop of unsalted clarified butter in the same pan, with low heat under the pan to keep the butter from browning, add the juice of one freshly squeezed lemon, salt & pepper to taste; use this mixture to coat you fish once on the plate. Voilà! Satisfying, quick & healthy.

Faro, farro, emmer, triticum dicocum or simply put: wheat! Supposedly one of the first wheat domesticated in the Near East. No time to get into its history but it makes a nice crunchy salad. I soaked it for a few hours, cooks it in water, drained it when soft, and added the above ingredients. The ingredients were chosen by default, that is what was available in my fridge. You can get as creative as you want and add  things like: nuts, raisins, onions, radishes, peppers, shrimp, chicken, duck — o, yes, duck would be excellent! Just try it.

This is a great dish to take along at pot luck and picnics because it doesn’t get soggy. Bon Appetit! I’ll be back sooner that later with more! I have been busy. Merci to stick around.

I don’t eat much pasta but before a gig I like to have an early dinner that will give enough energy to be able to sing three hours later and pasta & lox is perfect for me.
So on Monday before going to our gig at The Local 269 with Pierre Joris & Michael Bisio — snippet of concert here— I made us a salmon, scallion & fusili express dish. My friend Dawn Clements —who is opening another drawing extraordinaire at The Boiler today— had given me a delicious piece of lox from the Acme Smoked Fish store in Brooklyn. It took me 14 minutes to make the dish including cooking the pasta:
Cook  pasta al dente.
Cut pieces of lox.
In a pan bring one cup of heavy cream to  a boil and add scallions cut at a bias  for one minute.
Combine it all.
Add a little salt, a lot of fresh ground pepper & shavings of Parmesan cheese….
Voilà c’est tout!

Beside the drawing concert series there is another series in constant progress and below are 2 pieces  Also in serious progress the Augustus Saint Gaudens script with  new discoveries on Bernard Saint Gaudens his father, and a dead line coming up very soon for the script.

MARCH—collage/drawing from N.P.  Calendar Series

Yeap! We are in March and I saw some crocuses “piercing” the ground on 71st street yesterday. It cheered me up. The general mood has been down with all the international and national events, catastrophes, health care mess… Even my hometown, Luchon, was seriously affected by a storm coming from the Southwest with winds at 200km/h. It killed one man, pulled out thousands of ancient trees, lifting roofs, and closing bars for one day! No one remembers seeing or hearing about such an event in a place that is so naturally sheltered from the wind. Who says there is no global warming? The same idiots who feel threatened by universal health care? The same idiots who worship a god that knows neither nature nor health. We need D.A Bennett  The Truth Seeker all over again, I just read that book and it is amazing how the problem of religion in politics has remained the same for two century ago and is far from being solved.

Anyhow, life must go on and I have been busy. The “d’Artagnan 25th Anniversary Art Show” at The World Bar is still on. Works by French painter Michel Calvet and 3 large collage/paintings of mine are on display.  The World Bar serves delicious cocktails and their $8 happy hour special is totally worth it. I had a “peace cocktail” concocted by the excellent (1/2 french) mixologist Jonathan, all fresh juices and premium liquors — a real treat! We will have another event there soon as the opening was affected by the storm. So don’t feel bad if you couldn’t make it; D’Artagan has agreed to provide us with more patés and saucisson for another event, so stay tune!

Below you will find my detailed calendar of events for March, four events still coming up, it is all exciting especially the Umami festival one, which is leading me into fascinating research about yeast and beer in Mesopotamian time. As a result of all this action the fridge as been consistently empty and home made Miso soup (see recipe here)and rice has become a staple.

I cook two cups of brown rice twice a week and eat it in different forms. The breakfast version is becoming a house favorite and even Pierre who is not a brown rice aficionado really likes this one:

-Warm up some rice milk in a bottom of sauce pan. Add 1/2 cup of cooked rice per person, one small apple cut into small pieces, 1/2 banana, raisins, cranberries, goji berries, maple syrup. Just warm it up. Before serving add chopped roasted almonds, pistachios, walnuts. That’s a tasty healthy breakfast!

When we finally made it to the coop a few days ago we got the making for a chicken soup. I had been craving it since Dawn Clements (now showing an amazing piece at the Whitney Biennial click here) served me the most delicious one at her studio in early February.  That recipe is also very easy:  throw it all in the pot and let it happen while the smell of the broth takes over the house. This is what I threw in the pot of cold water:
-1 organic chicken (with feet!)
-3 celery ribs
-3 carrots peeled and cut
-2 “fanned” leeks
-1 onion with 3 cloves planted in it
- 1 spice/herb bag with: fresh parsley, thyme, laurel leave, 1 cardamon pod, 6 blk pepper corn.
- Sea salt.
Then you can either delicately lift some of the meat and eat it separately or debone  the whole thing and return it in the pot. You will have to add some salt and pepper to taste and you can of course add some pasta or rice or potatoes. I just had a bowl and this is ever so restauring and satisfying.

Now the schedule and if I don’t see you there, please stay in touch!

Sunday March 7th
Sunday Best Reading Series
4PM $7
The Lounge, Hudson View Gardens
Pinehurst Avenue and 183rd Street
183rd & Pinehurst Avenue
New York City

Friday March 12th
UMAMI Festival
Featuring Sarah Klein, Murray’s Cheese, Tom Cat Bakery, Ithaca Beer Company
& NP w/ Rosie Hertlein ( violin)
6:30PM
click here for reservations
Astor Center for Food and Wine
399 Lafayette (at 4th Street)

Sunday March 21
NP & Pierre Joris, Nick Flynn, Major Jackson, Douglas Unger
6PM
Poets for Peace at Erika’s
85-101 N. 3rd St # 508
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(between wythe and berry
and it is the bedford stop on the L train)

Monday March 29th
NP w/ Pierre Joris & Michael Bisio (bass)
THE LOCAL 269
269 E Houston Street NYC

Ongoing until Agust 2010
D’Artagnan 25th Anniversary Art Show
Michel Calvet / Nicole Peyrafitte / Jean-Pierre Rives
The World Bar /The Trump Tower
845 United Nation Plaza
New York NY 10017

Until then I had seen them only naked, brown and dry; but on Saturday I got to see them dressed, green and fresh! How on earth did I miss seeing fresh chickpeas in their full regalia until  that day? I am a little embarrassed to admit to it, but as the French saying goes: un moment de honte est vite passé —a moment of shame is soon over! & the excitement makes up for the embarrassment!

We had planned to meet our BlogoBung friends Larry Litt and Eleanor Heartney for a food tour in Jackson Heights, Queens —their neighborhood for 10 years, and often called one of the most exotic places in New York City. After a delightful & tasty two hour aperitif of talking, munching — on Larry’s appetizing homemade Hummus & Salmon patés — & sipping Lillet at their house we went out for a wonderful Indian meal at Mehfil a Gujurati style restaurant.

I had Dhal Makhini —creamy black lentils sautéed in butter with freshly ground spices— a restorative dish full of flavors with wonderful fresh coriander overtones that helped me get over my jet-lag. I got a taste of Eleanor and Larry’s delicate Tandoori Salmon & of Pierre’s rather bland Lamb Pasanda. Then we went for a walk and stopped at Patel Brothers —37-27 74th Street, (718) 898-3445 —“the granddaddy” of Indian groceries as quoted by the New York Times. That is where I discovered the fresh chickpeas. First, I saw them in the freezer, I grabbed a bag as I had never seen them green before, but Larry said “Wait! they’ll have them fresh in the produce section”. Larry knows the store like the palm of his hand and sure enough, here were the little green pods of hara chana —green chickpeas.

I filled up half a bag while Pierre, guided by Larry’s expertise, selected Garam Masala & Curry powders. We also got mustard seeds, fresh turmeric, black lentils & Arrow Root flour—I like it  to make beurre manié, it is much lighter than wheat flour and gives the sauce a smoother consistency (a good option for my friend Anne B.!). Anyhow we took leave of our friends, our minds —and stomachs— filled with colors & scents.
Tuesday I finally got around to shell the peas for lunch. I am glad Pierre assisted me because unlike any other shell beans I know of, chickpeas have one pea per pod, only very occasionally two! A time consuming task that I would recommend doing while watching a good documentary or hire your guests while having aperitifs! (the fresh chick peas take no time to cook at all)

Once shelled,  it turned out to be a small quantity so I decided to improvise a version of  a Hara Chana (green chickpeas), Aloo (potato), Patha gobi (cabbage) and Gajar (carrots) curry that turned out to be best vegetable stew I ever made. I think I was still very inspired by the tastes of the lentil dish I had. The fresh chickpeas are very tender with a subtle nutty flavor and a very smooth texture. Enhanced by the fragrant –medium hot—spices, this combination brings up a remarkable and specific savor. Once again I have to say that the decision of what to put in was made by default! Except for the chickpeas and the spices I literally gathered what was left over in the fridge and that was:

½ onion, diced
1 big carrot , diced
¼ cabbage, cut thick julienne
1 potato, diced
2 garlic cloves, slivered
½ bunch of cilantro, roughly chopped
1 small piece of fresh turmeric, minced),
1 small piece of fresh ginger, minced
1 tablespoon of Garam Masala
1 tablespoon of Curry powder
Salt/Black pepper /Water or vegetable broth.
Coat a skillet with olive oil —ghee would have been better but I didn’t have enough butter in my fridge to make clarified butter,— and under medium heat sauté the onions until soft.
Add all the vegetables including turmeric, ginger and garlic, sauté for a couple of minutes.
Add the garam Masala & Curry powder, salt and pepper. Mix well and add water to barely cover the veggies.
Once the liquid starts boiling, reduce heat, cover and let simmer for 15/20 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.
I served it with brown rice —Indian style rice would be obviously better, but that is what I had available— and garnish with fresh cilantro.  Namasté to Larry  Eleanor!