France – Debora Robertson

In late 2021, I swapped my London life for a less frantic existence on the banks of the Étang de Thau, a salt-water lagoon in the Hérault department of the Languedoc, South West France.

I’m a British journalist, writer and editor specialising in all matters domestic, from food, homes and gardens to modern manners, dogs and decluttering. I write regularly for national newspapers and magazines, including The Daily Telegraph, where I write my French Exchange column each Saturday, and Delicious magazine, where I have a monthly column on what I’m thinking about, and thinking about cooking, each month.

But most of all, I’m a home cook. I grew up in the North East of England, and from the least promising of culinary starts, I built a life and a career around food. I began this new chapter in France almost on a whim, when a house I’d fantasised about and spied on for more than a decade was suddenly on the market. As soon as I walked in the door, I knew that this was my house, improbable and impossible as that seemed at the time. A year later, we hauled our worldly possessions, two dogs and a cat 1,200 kilometres south to begin this new life in this house and village of my heart.

But most of all, I’m a home cook just like you – or you wouldn’t be here, reading this, right now, this second, I guess. I grew up in the North East of England, and from the least promising of culinary starts, I built a life and a career around food. I began this new chapter in France almost on a whim, when a house I’d fantasised about and spied on for more than a decade was suddenly on the market. As soon as I walked in the door, I knew that this was my house, improbable and impossible as that seemed at the time. A year later, we hauled our worldly possesions, two dogs and a cat 1,200 kilometers south to begin this new life in this house and village of my heart.

A newsletter called Substack
I began my Substack because when I started living in France, each Tuesday I posted what I bought at our market on my social media and people responded so enthusiastically, and often wanted to know what I was going to do with what I’d bought. Here is where I share with you my week’s shopping and what I cook with it, not just French recipes, but recipes made with French ingredients which you can replicate wherever you are. I am an instinctive and practical cook. I like easy. I like quick. And sometimes I like to show off, so sometimes there will be more complex recipes too.

Why subscribe?

Free subscribers receive a weekly email on Wednesdays with my latest market haul and a recipe inspired by that day’s ingredients. Coming soon, join me for Ask Me Anything on Mondays, to ask about food, France, local life – or, in fact, anything.

Paid subscribers get an additional recipe each Friday, designed to be the centrepiece of an easy but impressive weekend meal. You have access to the archive of all previous posts and recipes. You’ll also receive occasional house renovation posts – for those who are as fascinated by romantic-if-broken French houses as I am.

If you are an email subscriber to this blog, I have added you as a subscriber to my Substack. If you do not want to receive this, do drop me a line, (substack@deborarobertson.com or click here) and I’ll remove your details straight away.

If you follow this blog via WordPress, I hope to see you over in Substack soon.

We are in France, in the village of my heart where we spend part of each summer. Our friend Lucy (and her new dog, named Whitney Houston by the adoption centre she came from only last week) came to dinner on Monday and I wanted something to end the simple dinner of roast chicken and tomato salad.

This galette was inspired by a recipe I saw in this month’s Elle à Table by Natacha Arnoult. It was part of a feature about new kitchen equipment. The recipe begins with grinding your own wheat and buckwheat into flour. Not only am I not making my own flour, I am not making my own pastry. It is 40˚C. Butter turns to oil before you can unwrap it. Mercifully, French supermarkets carry excellent circles of all-butter pastry in their chiller cabinets (lean the hell in). Essentially, you throw some almonds and sugar on the base, mound up the fruit, varnish with a little egg wash and sugar, bung it in the oven and retreat for a cold drink and a lie down while it bakes. It’s the kind of thing I make all summer long with cherries, apricots, peaches or nectarines, rhubarb, blackberries, or whatever fruity combination I fancy.

I bumped into my friend Laurence in the market this morning, who had seen my picture of the tart on Instagram and was marvelling at my baking fortitude in face of the canicule (heatwave). Please don’t tell him about the cold drink and lying down part.

Summer fruit galette

Serves 4-6

1 circle of shortcrust all-butter pastry, approx 33cm diameter
3 tbsp ground almonds
3 tbsp caster sugar or vanilla sugar
About 600g summer fruits, I used a combination of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants
A little beaten egg or cream and a sprinkling of sugar, to finish

Preheat the oven to 180˚C/160˚C Fan/Gas 4. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Lay the pastry on the sheet. Mix the ground almonds with 1 tbsp of the sugar and scatter it over the pastry – this helps stop it from becoming soggy from the fruit’s juices. Heap the fruit onto the pastry, leaving a border of 5cm free of fruit all around the edge. Sprinkle the remaining sugar over the fruit – you might need more or less depending on its sweetness. Fold the pastry border back over the fruit, brush with a little beaten egg or cream and sprinkle with a little more sugar. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the pastry is golden and the fruit, bubbling.

Serve it warm or cold, with crème fraîche, ice cream or cold, thick cream.

Tag: France

The easiest fruit tart known to humanity and humidity