Second day in Provence

When you visit Provence in January - while the rest of France has almost freezing temperatures - and can enjoy having lunch outside, you understand why the French love love love to come here all year round.

Michele and I met when we were both living in Baghdad. Daughter Marylaure came back from school one day saying that there was a new girl in her class she had played with and we found out we were neighbors. This was back in 1984 and we have been very good friends ever since.

We started the day with a long morning walk to the beach, always blue, always beautiful.
For lunch, we served mussels in a "poulette sauce a notre facon" for lunch, I say "our way" because we replaced the usual hen stock with ... white wine.

Ingredients and steps:

Mussels for four.

1/2 bottle white dry wine
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup creme fraiche

1 Tbs corn starch
juice of 1/2 lemon
per1 Tbs chopped parsely
sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Clean and steam the mussles in a covered pan over low-medium heat until they open. Keep warm.

Mix the two egg yolks with the lemon juice in a small bowl and leave aside.

Dissolve the starch in the wine and put in a small pan. Add the cream, the water you have in the mussles pan (you may want to filter in case there is sand), and bring slowly to a boil stirring constantly with a whisk. Let boil a few seconds, then add the egg yolks and lemon mixture and stir well. Season to taste and remove from the heat.

Divide the mussels in four small cassolettes (individual pans), pour 1/4 of the sauce evenly over the mussels in each pan, add the chopped parsley and serve immediately.

We served them with a butter lettuce salad and had the same Chateau de Mauvanne we had yesterday, a AOC (Appellation d'Origine Controle) Cote de Provence, because it was divine!
After lunch we drove along the coast to enjoy the view of the "calanques", a Mediterranean fyord! It is a deep small valley with very steep sides, typical of the area. La Ciotat, Cassis, Bandol ...

In the evening, Michele made fish quenelles, which is a French light dumpling made of a mixture of fish, cream, breadcrumbs, starch, and a light egg binding. The shape is oblong, very much like a thick sausage, and they raise when they are poached. Wikipedia says "formerly quenelles were often used as a garnish in haute cuisine; today, they are usually served on their own."

Michele poached them in a provencale sauce made with tomatoes, green peppers, onions and white wine, where she had added some mussles left from our lunch. She served the quenelles with white rice.

For the dessert, we picked some mandarines from the area from a a large basket and we shared two candied clementines, a speciality from Apt, near Avignon.