Coming clean, also turnips

This week, I share my love of French cleaning products, and a recipe for a pork casserole with special turnips. Never say I don’t spoil you.

Ready for action.

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, I wrote a housekeeping column for a weekend newspaper. Domestic life is my passion, possibly my obsession, whether it’s decorating, gardening, cooking or sewing. What others might get from tennis, Nordic walking or bridge, I get from gentle pottering about in the house, polishing a cabinet, plumping a cushion, and sewing a fine seam.

Right, now we’ve lost the more highbrow crowd, let’s you and I talk. Perhaps you’re like me: relentless in tracking down the perfect product to make short shrift of every domestic job, always on the hunt for some great tip or other that’ll get out that stain, murder a moth or add a little extra lustre to life? Since we moved to France, I’ve had to get to know a whole new range of cleaning products. What am I saying, “had to”, like it’s some sort of burden? In truth, I am quite embarrassingly happy in the cleaning aisle of Carrefour. I would rather go there than a spa. (Having said that, I genuinely hate spas with my whole heart but we’ll save that for another day.)

My observations from the field are that French cleaning products break down into two camps. The first is the eau de Javel gang. I know this sounds like something you might dab behind your ears, but it’s bleach, which appears in everything from loo cleaners to kitchen detergent. Whether in sturdy five-litre bottles or more modest spray containers, its packaging is invariable no-nonsense red and white or blue and white. It came to kill.

French cleaning products.

The other camp shows such a strong and unshakeable devotion to vinegar and its powers it would make Lassie seem like a fickle little bitch. There are shelves and shelves of it, bottles whose destination is not salad dressing, but the coalface of household cleaning. We salute them and thank them for their service. Vinegar-based cleaning solutions come in different concentrations, usually from 12 to 20 per cent depending on the seriousness of the task they face. There are sprays for cleaning surfaces, and gels for when a bit of cling is useful, such as when attempting to banish limescale from taps and sinks. They’re quite serious about it. One brand, Paulette, its packaging embellished with an apron-clad granny wielding a broom, promises: “Faites la guerre au calcaire!” (Go to war against limescale!). Another more chichi-looking brand, La Drogerie d’Amélie, declares itself “L’enemie du calcaire”. Ok, got it. And just in case it all feels a bit chip shop, they’re often scented with citrus, raspberries or eucalyptus.

The vinegar-based products are often shelved alongside their pals, bicarbonate of soda, citric acid and soda crystals, and sometimes combined with them. The words “natural” and “artisanal” are bandied about enthusiastically, and go into overdrive when it comes to anything that contains savon de Marseille, the king of soaps.

I admit I have a weakness for savon de Marseille, with its fresh, wholesome scent. When I lived in England, I used to hunt down Chanteclaire laundry detergent which contained it as it smelled like holidays to me, and my passion for it has not dimmed now that I live here. I’ve also become a big fan of savon noir, a multipurpose soap made from olive oil or linseed oil which can be used for everything from washing floors to ridding your plants of greenfly. Then there’s pierre d’argile, a white clay which is good for sponging marks off walls, cleaning grout and shining stove tops.

In my learning to clean in a foreign language, I’ve become particularly fond of a brand called Briochin which plays all the hits – sensible, slightly retro, navy-and-white packaging, invented by “un artisan droguiste” in 1919, heavy on the vinegar, frequently seasoned with bicarb and crystals de soudre. As I load up my supermarket trolley, I can’t help but think that this would go down well in what my husband calls “posh string shops”, those emporia in the corner of East London where we used to live which elevate – you might say fetishise, I couldn’t possibly comment – the art of housekeeping, with their handmade sweeping brushes, pure linen scrims and yes, posh string.

Just as with cooks and gardeners, housekeepers often enthusiastically  pass along their tips and I gather them wherever I go. My cleaning lady, Marie (a domestic dynamo, she gardens, she decorates, she cooks, she breeds canaries, and cuts her own hair) told me to put an oyster shell in the kettle as the water is hard here and it draws all of the furry limescale to it. My kettle is sparkling clean and my tea does not taste at all briny, so I count this as a success.

Marie and I rub along nicely together, but I can’t help but have my feelings bruised by her eschewing of my mop - a state-of-the-mop-art number which swirls and rinses and swishes, bought during a bout of insomnia-induced online shopping. I also have a steam mop which is so beneath her contempt, I have to hide it in a cupboard. I note that of the many French holiday houses I’ve rented over the years, fewer than half of them had any kind of mop at all. I asked a French friend about this and she said many people prefer to use a large, wrung-out cloth over a broom. I have no idea why,  other than self-flagellation, as this requires using your own, beautiful hands to wring out this dirty cloth in a bucket of brackish water. Anyway, each week Marie brings her own mop and bucket from home. I pretend not to notice or mind. It’s like a marriage.

Speaking of hands. I never thought I would be that person, who travels abroad with tea bags, Marmite and tins of baked beans (but then I’ve only been here a hot minute, so give me time and I’m sure I’ll be eulogising over Bisto on a Brits-in-France Facebook group any day now, despite never having bought Bisto once in my life). The only thing that I beg visitors to bring out for me is Marigold washing up gloves, size: Large. Large as you can get, thank you. French washing up gloves must be fashioned for gentlewomen by Dior or something, as my English peasant hands won’t fit into even the largest size without claustrophobia-inducing heaving and tugging, in the manner of an Ugly Sister with a glass slipper.

I once wrote about my fat-hand-in-glove dilemma in my column and in the months that followed, kind people on their holidays pushed pairs of washing up gloves though our post box. Once, when we were away, our house sitter messaged me to say someone had rung on the gate with some marigolds for me. How very kind, I thought. How charming. How French. It was only a week later when we got home, I realised that she meant Marigolds not marigolds. How kind, I thought. How practical. How British.

Ragoût de porc aux navets de Pardailhan

Pork ragout with obscure turnips

It’s been raining, it’s been cold, and I had a yearning for something that could successfully nourish a peasant in a Van Gogh painting. Pork and turnips, I thought, particularly these delicious if distinctly unpromising-looking turnips from Pardailhan, which is about an hour’s drive to the west of us. They look like black radishes but they have a delicate slightly sweet, peppery taste, with a gentle hint of the hazelnuts. I have a dilemma here, as sometimes I want to share with you ingredients that are hard to get elsewhere – when it comes to Pardailhan turnips, you barely even find them in other parts of France, though they do sometimes appear on smart Parisian menus, to excite all the connoisseurs of obscure roots.

BUT, in the interests of inclusivity, you can certainly make this ragout with normal turnips, or even with parsnips. And if you’re ever in a pub quiz where the question is: “What is the French commune of Pardailhan famous for?” well, you owe me a drink.

Serves 6