We have been invited to Catherine and Stephen Hartley’s beautiful home
for what will certainly be an incredible lunch. (That’s what clean livin’ does for you–you get all the good things in life!) We met the Hartleys when we rented their seaside condo in Collioure for several years in a row. We were incredibly lucky to spend time there. Catherine, a native French lady, is a wonderful cook and Stephen, an English gentleman, must be a certified sommelier! And besides that they are lovely people and great friends.
Their home is about 45 minutes from Servian (30 minutes if you are a French driver). We will be joined by a couple of their British friends, Diane and Nick. We are honored to have the dogs invited too. Their 2 sweet cats will be exiled to the upstairs area for our visit.
We are looking forward to seeing the Hartley’s renovated vintage VW camper, Doris (as in “Doris Day”). She is a beauty!!! We show everyone pictures of our “Diana (Rig).” We find out that Diane and Nick also have a vintage VW camper and we all exchange “camper” stories. I am realizing that 50yo-something people buy motorcycles and it looks like 60yo-something people buy campers!!
As always we have a fabulous “Catherine meal.” Cat prepares a meal from her new go-to cookbook: “Jerusalem” by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamini. Catherine’s son is an English diplomat in Jerusalem and he and his family live there. But Cat is also a wonderful North African/Middle Eastern cook so the cuisine of Jerusalem is like second nature.
We start with hummus and beet salad (puréed beets, nuts, goat cheese, scallions, yogurt) and pita and baguette bread. Our second course is incredible quail with dried apricots and Harissa spices, rice pilaf and zucchini. The cheese course includes several varieties of luscious sheep’s milk cheese. (I’ve died and gone to heaven). Dessert you cannot believe! Cat made meringue pavlova with mascarpone cheese and strawberries. Since Cat had used egg whites for the meringue she needed to find a use for the egg yolks so she made cream puffs too! We are lucky to take the creme puffs home to enjoy later.
Stephen served us a fantastic wine sampler from Domaine des Trinites winery: Viognier, Roussanne, Rose, and 3 red blends (Le Portail, Le Mourels & Le Pioch). Stephen sent us home with the “leftover” amounts in each bottle! We are lucky!
As Catherine prepares dessert she indulges Lucien with creme and sugar from the dessert preparation bowls! She even hold his fluffy ears up out of the bowl! She has made a huge mistake; Lucien will never let her forget that. With exception of Lucien, who hounded Cat for the remainder of the day for creme and sugar, the dogs were pretty good.