I didn't die, or get bored with writing the blog, or drink too many hot toddies and then drive into a lampost, while aiming for Waitrose. I went to France - the South of France. To Nice where it is nice. To kvetch about the wedding in French. "Sacre bleu! La robe! La robe N'EST PAS FINI!" And also, it felt like, to eat nothing but baguettes and cheese. Although there was one cheese that was so uric that it tasted exactly like I imagine pissy knickers might taste.
A lot of the cooking was done by my friend Julia Churchill, a brilliant home cook who really ought to be writing about cooking but she's too busy being some kind of high-powered literary agent. Fact about Julia: she once cooked a vegan lemon tart for Lou Reed.
So I came back from France late on Sunday night and dived back into my no-booze all-greens diet. Whoopee!!
Above is some of Monday night's supper (out of shot is a huge, meltingly roasted chicken) and what you're looking at really is the green stuff, which is kale not the carrots, although they were nice too.
I've cooked kale before but I was doing it wrong - I'm pretty sure I just boiled it and plonked it on a plate and it was absolutely disgusting. Beyond disgusting. Giles is a huge greens freak so I grudgingly bought some more last week but was secretly hoping that it would just sit in the larder and go gross and we'd eventually throw it away. But the game was up and he insisted on cooking it last night properly.
This meant me pinching yet another idea off Henry, who braises kale with chilli and garlic. G heated some oil in a large heavy frying pan-thing and added lots of chopped chilli and garlic. Then he added the kale (no water or anything!) and cooked it until it all sort of wilted down like spinach, for about 5-10 minutes. And then we ate it, feeling like such good little citizens and it was actually really nice. Not as good as a hot toddy, but much better than pissy French cheese.
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