Where’s the sunshine? Here’s the beef

Brutal winds, beef stew, and the French television cook who was the queen of home cooking.

The sunniest part of France, they said. Three hundred days of sunshine a year, they said. No. Not this month, at least. As I look at my London friends’ social media showing blue skies and blossom, and even as my brother sends me pictures of him working in my parents’ garden in the North East of England in his shirt sleeves, I can’t help but feel let down.

It’s been cold and wet and each morning I open the bedroom shutters to look out on a sky bleeding into the water, in shades of plummett, pigeon, mole’s breath, and any of the other particularly gloomy greys on the Farrow & Ball paint chart. It’s like some terrible weather advent calendar destined to dole out disappointment.

But worse than all of this is the wind. On Friday, the weather office reported waves of almost nine meters and winds of 100 kilometres an hour over in Sète. The wind disturbs me more than anything else, it’s oddly bewildering. When we first arrived here three years ago, I bumped into one of our neighbours on a particularly windy dog walk. “The Mistral,” she said. “It either blows for three days or thirty days.”

I didn’t really think much about it until the next day. It was still windy, but I needed some meat for dinner. I embraced the five-minute walk to the butcher’s with the stoicism of Scott approaching the Antarctic. And then, because I still hadn’t entirely grasped the various lunchtime closing hours of the village shops – still haven’t, to be honest – I arrived at Boucherie Valette at 3.45pm and realised it wasn’t going to reopen for another 15 minutes.

In normal circs, I would have just walked across the Place Général Guillaut, past the church, and plonked myself on the terrace of the Marine Bar for a restorative drink before going back for my lamb chops. Reader, I could not. It took everything I had merely to walk home, through those empty streets, because everyone else knew. You just don’t go out. If the wind is blowing in a certain way, it doesn’t even have to be that strong. It’s as though it sucks the breath out of you, it’s disorientating and strange.

My graduate-level education in winds of the South West comes via our window cleaner, Didier, who is an expert, possibly because he is afraid of heights and his job requires climbing up ladders quite a bit. There is the Mistral, which I didn’t think reached as far west as us, but apparently it does, and the Tramontane, the cold, dry north westerly that can be quite violent. Then there are many other, smaller winds which occasionally pull focus, in a blowy tag team of annoyance. Depending on the wind, Didier will come or not come, or let me know perhaps not Tuesday at 9am, possibly Wednesday at 2pm, we will see.

This is all just to say we have not reached salad days quite yet. I want to nourish myself as though for a siege, and what is more suitable for that than the classic cuisine grand-mère dish of beef with carrots, boeuf carottes, boeuf à la mode, or simply boeuf mode. It’s like a recipe in a witness protection programme, but it’s essentially the same thing: beef stew.

Maïté had a six-page obituary in Paris Match. The headline reads: Maïté The Musketeer of the Stoves.

It's not dissimilar from boeuf bourguignon, but it’s more usually made with white wine (though not always) rather than red. The one I make is based loosely on the recipe from La Cuisine des Mousquetaires by Marie-Thérèse Ordonez, more usually known as Maïté, the French television chef who was a combination Delia Smith and Mary Berry with a touch of Mrs Doubtfire. The farmer’s daughter and former SNCF worker used to cook for the local rugby club at weekends and was discovered in her 50s when a television producer came to report on a match. He was so taken with her personality and her food, he suggested her as a presenter for a new show which would focus on the sort of traditional, unpretentious regional cooking which feeds you body and soul.

She represented, with her neat blow dry and strong arms you’d trust to butcher a wild boar, the anti-nouvelle-cuisine. When Maïté died just before Christmas, she had a six-page obituary in Paris Match. Part of it reads: “Ainsi y débarque Maïté, personage brut de terroir, attachante, maladroit, armée de ses couteaux et tranchoirs, le tablier blanc maculé de sang mais le coeur sur la main.” (“And so Maïté arrives, a rural, rustic, endearing, clumsy character, armed with her knives and chopping boards, her white apron stained with blood but with her heart on her sleeve.”) I honestly can’t think of anyone I would trust more to show me how to make a beef stew.

Things in local papers…

Midi Libre, our regional newspaper seldom disappoints. In among the sports reports and local politics, scandals and festivals, there are always gems. This week, the paper reports a father and daughter have won €19 million on the Loto from a lucky dip ticket bought at Marseillan’s maison de la presse (newsagent).

Last year, someone else won a million Euros from a ticket bought at the village tabac (tobacconist). We all eyed our neighbours. Had anyone bought a new car? A fancy hat? Understandably, the winner chose anonymity.

The most recent winners did too, and cunningly disguised their identities behind a massive cheque. No one in the Marine Bar knows who they are at all. At. All. No one.

The daughter says she’s going to use her share to buy a house close to her parents so she can go home for Sunday lunch more easily and they can all garden together, which is about the most wholesome French Village Life lottery-winning statement I’ve ever heard. Félicitations, local woman of mystery.

Boeuf mode ou boeuf carottes

This beef casserole is rich and restorative, with a little sweetness from all the carrots. It’s the most comforting of comfort stews. You marinade the beef overnight and then cook it very slowly the next day, but other than browning the meat, cooking it requires very little attention from you. It’s all in the marinating and slow cooking and it’s even better made a day or two before you serve it. It freezes brilliantly too.

Serves 8