Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Cravirola Cooperative - Summer season

Time flies by quickly here in this bustling niche in the south of France. It seems to me that the summer flies by especially fast because I have a tendency to work especially hard during these months where the daylight hours are slowly, ever so slowly starting to retract.
The summer season really started up here around the end of June with the start of the concert schedule and since then, the momentum has only been growing. The camping is constantly renewing itself with great new faces and the music that passes through this corner of France has been original, funny, entertaining, dancable and all in all good fun. (A few groups that were especially notable were the Troublamours who played here this past weekend, Astataboops, a hilarious comedy musical mix, Goulamas-K who have not played here yet but will in the next week and who I saw in Mons La Trivalle in the springtime, french ska and Bob's Not Dead, french punk. Also to mention is the Mal Coiffée who I saw perform at a wine festival in Minerve.)
On the work side of things, as soon as the summer started, I jumped into full time cooking mode, working in the snack bar\restaurant here. Since then, things have been going full steam. I have been commissioned as the head of and the only member of the pastry department here. This has been great because I get the opportunity to make a lot of tasty treats for others to enjoy and exercise my creativity with it too.
Other than pastry, I also work the grill, prepare salads and salad ingredients, make vegetable and goat cheese terrines each week, make the plat du jour an average about two times a week and well, always a host of other activities too! It is good fun, hard work but good fun.
As for what comes next, all I know is that I've decided to leave here in September but I am still not sure what I am headed for... any ideas? It has been great here but it is time to move on.
To finish off, I will leave a recipe for brownies that is really good and easy.

Brownies

To make and 8 inch square pan ( double the recipe for a 9 by 13 inch pan)

Ingredients:

4 oz chocolate
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 t vanilla
2 eggs
3/4 cup flour
1/4 t salt
1/4 cup roasted walnuts

Ganache
3 oz chocolate
1/3 cup cream
1T butter

Methode:

1. Melt the chocolate and the butter over a pot of simmering water.
2. Add the sugar.
3. Add the eggs one by one and add the vanilla.
4. Add the flour, salt and walnuts.
5. Spread into a greased baking pan.
6. Bake at 325 degrees fahrenheit for about 25 minutes.
7. For the ganache, melt the chocolate, cream and butter together.
8. Mix well and let cool to thicken slightly.
9. When the brownies are cooled , spread the ganache evenly over the brownies.
10. Let set in the refrigerator before cutting.