The Clumsy American Chef

by Jennifer

I walk into parked cars/trees/lamp posts. There's a little background for you. My second day in France, in Villeneuve Loubet, Nick and I decided to take bikes to le plage for a dip in the méditerranéen sea, but the bike was too big for me, and though I tried to ride it anyway, I only got to the first gravelly and hilled sharp turn before I fell off and dinged myself up. My knee was scraped and bleeding from the thick gravel combined with the high speed, the bike something had cut my foot, and trying to prevent my fall, I had gashes on my hand as well. And I hadn't even started working.

I have aprx. 20 cuts on either hand from the little knife I take with me everywhere on the farm to harvest vegetables and to tie tomates to show them the way to grow (one of which I cut to the vein in my wrist by a vast over exaggerated attempt to harvest an eggplant). I have blisters on the insides of my thumbs from raking. I have scrapes up and down my forearms from harvesting courgettes and about 10 splinters (most of which are still inside the skin) on my thumbs and fingertips from the eggplant. I'm bad at not getting hurt. During a break for lunch one day Markus the English farmer said to me, "You look like you've been on the frontlines".  All this plus a freak accident in the kitchen when a colander fell off the top of the fridge and cut my nose open. My body needed a break.

So I started spending less time in the fields and more time in the kitchen. At first I just made courgettes sauteed with onion, garlic, olive oil, and herbs de provence with the eggplant fries I've perfected and some nice strawberry salads. But everyone seemed to love my cooking...and I was happy to be  in the house where less bad things could happen to me (although the kitchen can be a dangerous place...proceed with caution). I decided to be more creative and really use all the ingredients on the farm. I made tomatoe sauce from scratch for the first time in my life. Nothing came out of a can, and better yet it all came from the farm. I made a strawberry tart out of practically nothing, on a celcius oven no less! Everyone was complimenting my cooking and I was eager to try new things. When our host had some friends over for lunch, me trying to keep up with the conversation in French, they looked at me and said, "c'est bon, this is very good. You made this?" and I was beaming that an actual French person complimented my cooking.

Sensing my adventurous culinary attitude and love of a challenge, the farmers started bringing me things to cook with. Peppers, tarragon, mint, and the biggest challenge of all: a giant, overgrown zucchini that was now a sort of...butternut squash? It had been sitting in the garden for months. I had passed over its girth many times and thought 'why don't they put this rotten thing in the compost?' Apparently they were waiting for the perfect chef. Markus brought it in to me and said, in a thick London accent, "Can you make like a pumpkin pie with this or something nice?". At first I thought he was joking. A pumpkin pie with an old zucchini? Turns out he wasn't.

I set off on the task after staring at the giant thing for a while. I decided to make a meal out of it, with a savory plat and a sweet pie dessert. I started cutting it up and boiled half of it, in small pieces, with some fresh ginger and sel de mer. The other I started cooking in a big pot with tomatoes, basil and garlic. When the boiled squash was soft I used a salad spoon to mash it like potatoes. I added sugar, cinnamon, butter, and nutmeg. I made a crust of oats with egg and flour to bind and popped it in the oven. I cleaned the seeds, added some salt, and toasted them.

Over the next few days I made many meals out of scratch: chili with eggplant substituted for meat, salads with sweet and savory dressings, gazpacho, and a 9 person feast starting with a hot and spicy tomato soup for an amuse bouche, with cous cous, courgettes with herbs and oil, eggplant Japan (an Asian inspired baked eggplant dish invented by Rhea), a grated carrot salad, and a chocolate brownie for dessert, drizzled in strawberry juice and ripe strawberry slices with mint leaves. It was decadent and amazing. I was proud. This day was the first of a new wwoofer, Nadej, from the north of France. She said to me, "I thought Americans were horrible cooks. You must be the best American chef." I beamed, knowing that I am not by a long shot the best American chef, but it's nice to hear all the same.