“Oh, you should see the cherries!” I told my friend Marsha during one of our regular phone calls. “The trees are full of pink, ripening fruit. They look like happy emojis.”
I now live in France (in la Côte d’Or in Burgundy, where my daughter, Annabelle and Marsha’s son, Brian, now live); Marsha, lives in New Hampshire, but we speak daily and share confidences that we can’t share with others.
That was me last month, in May. June, so far, has been a different story and if you’re thinking of traveling to France (or most of Western Europe) this summer, you should know that 49 of France’s 96 mainland departments were on “red alert” for dangerously high temperatures. They are expecting another very hot summer.
Many schools were closed and/or allowed students to leave earlier than normal. Music festivals have been canceled, and the French government has banned alcohol consumption in public places (though I’m not sure if that includes outdoor diners at cafes, bistros, and restaurants!).
Oh, and the Louvre has announced there won’t be any free concerts under the glass pyramid (due to the hot weather) and, sacre bleu, get-togethers along the lower banks of the Seine will be prohibited this summer as well.
Back in the U.S.A.
Annabelle and her husband bought an 1890’s house three years ago and have remodeled it from top to bottom. The house came with a large garden, planted with loving care during the 40 years the previous owner lived there. The garden yields 250 kgs of asparagus, many baskets of raspberries, huge rhubarb plants and a row of matured chasselas grape vines, much appreciated as both our children work in prestigious wineries.
I tell Marsha how difficult it is to make close friends in France, even after four years here; being a widow means one is always “the extra.” How I’m dreading the summer heat wave that is reportedly going to be more brutal than last summer.
Earlier in June, the French tore Paris and other cites apart after the French team won a big soccer match; the win was supposed to have been a joyful occasion but soon turned into a brawl against out-of-control immigration.
Antisemitism Rears Its Ugly Head
I can’t get my head around how the French can still be so antisemitic. But the scourge is everywhere on the continent and in Great Britain. Maybe it’s because there’s a new generation running things and haven’t been properly educated in history by their left-wing teachers and professors. I tell Marsha about the anti-Americanism, especially since President Trump (yes, the continent suffers from TDS big time) and the Iranian war. Europe is blind when it comes to the Iranian evils. I don’t personally feel the anti-Americanism perhaps because my French is quite good and the French can’t believe that there are cultured Americans.
Marsha tells me about how the once charming old New England town of Portsmouth, where she and Gerry have lived for three decades, features condominium blocks everywhere, malls shut (no more Macy’s), dreadful traffic. How difficult it is to get doctors’ appointments. How the state, once a bastion of conservatism, is now very left of center. How it had been a long, hard winter and she, too, isn’t looking forward to an unbearably hot summer, keeping her inside and off the golf course.
Along Came the Clafoutis
When our confidences get too depressing, we switch to food and gardening, as we did with this latest phone call about cherries.
Brian often talks of Marsha’s kitchen accomplishments, learned from her grandmother and mother in Ohio, and from taking cooking classes in Germany and Italy, where the family lived during Brian’s teenage years. She learned to make a classic clafoutis in Bad Hamburg and regularly regales me with pasta dishes she learned, and visits to open markets in Rome and Florence
Clafoutis, although originally from the Limousin region in France and considered the go-to dessert – as French housewives from the region have access to an abundance of cherries in June through July and every French housewife is sure to have the basic ingredients – clafoutis was international even back then.
As I lived in Switzerland and Belgium for over two decades, with my husband and children, my recipes, as did Marsha’s, became an American and European melange. So, when, during this past May telephone call with Marsha, I became excited over the ripening cherry blossoms in Melin, Marsha immediately exclaimed, “Clafoutis. Annabelle can make clafoutis! I’ll send her my recipe.”
“Marsha, she’ll have no time to make anything else; there are three trees full,” said I. “And all those pits.”
Perhaps a story and recipe about a famous French dessert may seem a bit banal in view of what’s been happening to French culture as the days get unbearably hot and the population (legal and illegal) don’t seem to be able to communicate their grievances in “the language of diplomacy.”
One thing is not going to change here, however; the French will continue to focus their minds and tongues on their great gastronomie (clafoutis included – even if they get too hot under their starched collars, Hermes scarves, torn dirty jeans, masks, and bourkas).
We two mothers then started to compare clafoutis recipes and came up with one that doesn’t include pits but does include Krish and almonds.
Two Mothers’ Cherry Clafoutis
Preheat oven to 350F
Butter and lightly flour a 9x9 inch or 10x7 inch baking dish. Scatter cherries and almonds over bottom of dish.
Ingredients
2 cups fresh sweet, pitted cherries
2 cups blanched slivered almonds
3 large eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup cream
1 teaspoon each of vanilla and almond extract
1 tablespoon Kirsh
Powdered sugar for dusting
Method
Whisk the eggs, granulated and brown sugar, together until combined. Whisk in the salt and flour until smooth. Then whisk in milk, cream, extracts, and Kirsh. Pour batter over cherries and almonds.
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until lightly brown and a tester inserted into center comes out clean. Place on a wire rack to cool. Dust with powdered sugar. Clafoutis will keep in fridge for 2-3 days.
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