Happy Easter!

Kids at the Plant Show

Just one more post on children's activities: At a gardening and rare plant show in Sérignan du Comtat last weekend we admired these clever youngsters who provided a much needed service. They offered their beautifully decorated wheel barrows to transport visitor's purchases to the parking lot. What a brilliant idea to earn some pocket money!

 

Kids in the Kitchen

Picking basil leaves

Cuisine de Provence's youngest guest ever did a great job yesterday helping her parents in the kitchen: This young lady is just six years old but worked like a pro: picking basil leaves for a fresh green tapenade, chopping the vegetables for a mousseline de courgettes, filling filo parcels with chèvre and sun dried tomatoes and - while nobody was looking, composing a beautiful table decoration from flowers she found in the garden. It doesn't happen very often that parents bring their children to cooking class, but so far I found that the younger they are the more enthusiastic. It was a joy to see!

Preparing what we called....

.....Bonbons de Provence

It's almost Summer - Pistou de Roquette

Finger licking good: Pistou de Roquette

I wanted some rocket salad to spice up my usual mix of leaves and without thinking bought a real big bag of these pungent leaves. After eating the salad, then mixing the rocket leaves with Turkish yoghurt, a finely minced clove of garlic and some salt and pepper (an absolutely delicious recipe a Turkish lady once taught me and which we love as a side dish at BBQs) there was still a lot of rocket left. And I didn't have much time to fix dinner and was fishing around for a quick recipe when inspiration hit - Pistou de Roquette! The usual Pistou in Provence is prepared with lots of basil and a close sister to the Italian Pesto, except that it lacks the parmesan. But I just love the creaminess of the freshly grated cheese so here I took 150g (3 generous cups) of rocket, 50g (1/3 of a cup) of freshly grated parmesan, 50 g (1/3 of a cup) of powdered almonds, 2 cloves of minced garlic, pepper fresh from the mill and about four tbsp of our precious "Gold of Provence" - olive oil that is. All went into the mixer and out came this luscious, beautifully green concoction. Stirred into hot pasta - simple but oh so good! And I used the leftover pistou (the little there was) as a dressing with my lunch tomato salad. It tasted like summer. And out of my kitchen window right now it looks like summer, too....

Cuisine de Provence's Kitchen View