Living in Rural France & Salade Niçoise Recipe

Living in Rural France & Salade Niçoise Recipe

For this instalment of ‘Living in France’ we share the story of building a garage, growing vegetables in a potager (French kitchen garden), making friends and our delicious Salade Niçoise Recipe.

Building A Garage In France

Early in what we call our ‘French life’ (we live part time in France and part time in Australia), it was a busy time. We built a new garage. This was not a spur of the moment decision but rather a carefully planned activity. Our home has not previously had a garage and with each holiday Paul and I said to each other “we must build a garage one day”.

So last year plans were drawn up, approval sought and received (over a glass of ‘red’ with the local mayor) and our cars measured. Cars had to be measured so that a car hoist could be included in the design to allow our two cars to be stored one above the other in part of the garage and allowing lots of extra space for workbenches and drying of laundry in winter.

It Almost Didn’t Happen

So then we made plans for our next ‘holiday’ and in May 2016 my husband and I went and built the concrete slab in preparation for the garage. Our friendly French neighbour helped in the process together with our dear French friend Merv who arranged for the delivery of the quick setting concrete.

As always not everything goes according to plan: such as when the truck arrives and the driver advises us that he cannot fit his truck down the driveway so cannot deliver his concrete. Well, that was not going to do!

We were on a tight time schedule having now prepared the site and needing to return to Australia in a few days time. Ever resourceful, my husband said ‘let’s get rid of the front fence and then the truck will fit down the driveway’.

So we ran about crazy getting a sledge hammer and heavy axe and demolished the fence before the driver decided to return to his concrete plant with all our concrete.

Getting Concrete Delivered

So then after getting the truck down the driveway the driver decided once again he could not deliver our concrete because his chute was not long enough to drop the concrete right where we needed it. So faced again with the prospect of not getting our concrete we managed to make him understand we would be happy to shovel most of the concrete ourselves if he could just point the chute at the end of the formed up area.

So donning my gumboots and rake I started shovelling while my husband held the concrete pipe and tried to direct the flow as best as possible. My husband felt terrible not doing most of the shovelling but I was too short to reach up and hold the pipe, and with him standing a head and shoulders above me,  this had to be his job.

Our neighbour, feeling sorry for us came and helped shovel the enormous amounts of sloppy concrete and then even took on the duties of project manager directing urgent and fast instructions to his two worker bees, as he furiously worked along side us. We were so grateful for his help we just did as we were told!

We Return To Australia

So leaving the concrete to cure we returned to Australia to resume our work and family lives. The next part of the plan was to have the building materials delivered to the house over the next month ready for our return in August.

The ever helpful Merv and his wife Helen organised for the garage wood to be delivered in our absence and to be waiting for our arrival in August. So the very next day after arriving in France in late August the building commenced. When on a tight schedule there is no time to delay or sleep to adjust to international time zones!

The Final Stage Of Our Garage Build

We had wonderful friends who joined us in the build project. Two fellow Aussie families came over to help us for a few days as part of their family holidays so we had a very full house and lots of large meals to make for hungry tired workers.

After many extra trips to hardware stores, hiring of trucks, picking up extra food supplies and lots and lots of hard work by everyone, our garage was finished.

Other neighbours a little further down the lane have a large lush vegetable patch or potager, and this trip we chatted for the first few days in broken French over our fence.

Madame Potager (as I named our friendly neighbour) was delighted we had tidied up the garden once again, got rid of the weeds and were building a new garage. As she speaks French with a Breton accent I struggled to understand everything she said and limited my conversation to vegetables, fruit and the food I was feeding my friends.

French Neighbours

To show her delight, and I honestly also think she may have thought I was asking for some of her vegetables, she gave us an enormous marrow freshly plucked from her potager. What was I to do with it I wondered. I settled on making a couple of vegetable bakes keeping one dish for myself and giving the other to Madame Potager.  I wished to thank her and also I felt badly thinking she may have thought I was requesting some of her vegetables.

So thankful however was Madame Potager for the meal, that the next day we received a huge carefully wrapped linen bundle filled with fresh green french beans and little bundles of herbs, that had obviously been picked whilst we were out purchasing more supplies at the hardware store.

Blanched beans fried in truffle oil and garlic where on the menu that night and then we put our thinking caps on, what were we to do with all the rest of the beans. I know – let’s make Salade Niçoise that’ll use up lots of beans.

Salade Niçoise 

‘A la Niçoise’ refers to dishes typical of Nice and its surrounding area that contain tomatoes, olives, anchovies and garlic. Have you made this salad before? It is often still debated what should be included in a Salade Niçoise but we made ours as follows:

Salade Niçoise Recipe

Ingredients

• 8 waxy potatoes
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 400g small green beans
• 600g  tinned tuna in springwater
• 300g cherry tomatoes
• 400g green lettuce leaves
• 40 black olives
• 4 tablespoons capers
• 6 hard-boiled eggs, cut into wedges
• 10 anchovies

Cooking Instructions

• Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water until just tender. Drain, cut into small cubes and place in bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and toss.
• Cut beans into 3cm lengths and blanche.
• Drain the tuna, and separate into large chunks.
• Cut tomatoes in half.
• Arrange lettuce leaves in bowl and top with tuna, tomatoes, potatoes, beans, olives, capers, egg wedges and anchovies.

Vinaigrette Procedure

Mix the following ingredients and then pour over the salade:

• 1 garlic clove crushed
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice and 1/4 – 1/2 cup olive oil

This served 8 of us as a generous side salad.

We took a photo of our salade and showed ‘Madame Potager’ who was delighted at both our attempts of Salade Niçoise and the near completion of our garage. She loved the colour of the paint we had chosen and complimented us on our choice.

So, on the day we were packing up the cottage to return back to Australia I took round to Madame Potager all our left over food and a number of dishes I had prepared using up our spare food.

These ones were ready for her to pop straight into her oven after a busy day in her large vegetable patch.  After being invited into the family home and introduced to the whole family, Madame Potager rushed out to her conservatory to start cutting huge bunches of grapes for us to take and enjoy on our journey.

And So Farewell

With much ado and fond farewells we parted once again. Fresh produce from earth to table and neighbourly love, this is what living in a French village is all about for me.

For more on our story why not read My Story #1: It Has To Be France and My Story #2: Location, Location, Location where I go through the steps in deciding where to buy a property in France and how location will be your most important decision.