Tasty Food to Celebrate American Freedom in the South of France
See Part 1: How I Learned to Bake French Bread in the South of France
And Part II: How to Shop for Wine in the South of France
The Tradition
For as long as Leslie Barr and Richard Perle have vacationed in Southern France they have tried to entertain their friends and neighbors with an authentic, American-style cookout.
At first their house — built by my old friend Jackie for some of her staff — featured a kitchen the size of a walk-in closet. With the kitchen in the house much expanded, the cookout became a summer feature in the area. In recent years they stayed for most of the summer, not just August, and scheduled the event for the Fourth of July, transforming it into an Independence Day celebration.
The biggest challenge: the logistics of acquiring the necessary foodstuffs and decorations down there. However the menu changes, the basics remain the same: Hebrew National hot dogs, grilled hamburgers, and — an addition by Leslie’s mother of blessed memory — chocolate chip cookies.
At first, friends in Frankfurt stopped at the commissary for what was needed. More recently, the necessaries have arrived packed in our suitcases. This year Sheral Schowe (our wine guide from part II) brought red, white, and blue balloons, paper plates, napkins, and tablecloths. Richard supplied the hot dogs and held his breath while his luggage temporarily disappeared at Charles de Gaulle.
As scary: the fact that the suitcase we brought contained the chocolate chips and didn’t arrive until the night of July 3, a day after Leslie — who’d been stuck in Chevy Chase’s power outage with their dog — arrived to lend a hand.
“Dum Vivimus Vivamus,” Clarice. “While we live, let us live/.”
May I suggest sending your host a set of Pyrex measuring cups for liquids and metal cups and spoons for dry ingredients. It eliminates having to do conversions. Also, you can get small scales that will measure ingredients in both ounces and grams. They aren’t too expensive. Also, you can get some American ingredients via Amazon.de. I don’t know about the French Amazon. My only American imports are brown sugar, unsweeetened chocolate, double-acting baking powder, Old Bay, and canned pumpkin for the pies I make for my Thanksgiving turkey dinner.
Thanks, vb. He has the scales and measuring cups. My problem was a pure math error as I calculated how to make 1 1/2 times the original recipe.
At the end of the trip I got to visit a warehouse/wholesale operation on the outskirts of Avignon which provides for restaurants. To my surprise I found not only a sort of chocolate chip but as well wild rice and dried cranberries (which we used to have to bring there). Still no pecans though which grow only in the U.S. and which make lovely gifts. I also saw bagels and tortillas and lots of halal meat.
Total non-sequitur here but had to tell you, Clarice, that I am making your aubergine recipe this afternoon for the first time and the smell is driving me wild. So far just the tomato “mulch” is done, and the eggplant slices are baking in the oven (my solution to endlessly re-plenishing the olive oil when frying them, as well as a small nod to moderation). Wish it weren’t so long until dinner!
….the eggplant slices are, of course, basted liberally in olive oil before being baked.
I hope you like it! I often do the same thing to avoid sing so much olive oil.
*Using so much oil*
What, no Budweiser or Miller Lite? Otherwise this looks really nice. And to be in Provence makes it all the more lovely.
So hamburgers, hotdogs, potato salad and cookies are some sort of major accomplishment? Ridiculous on so many levels.
What’s ridiculous is that you assume that it’s easy to work from a kitchen the size of broom closet. Making hamburgers, hotdogs, potato salad and cookies is a major accomplishment for 47 guests. Also, it’s not as if the hosts could run down to the local Pigley-Wigley and pick-up hamburger buns.