The heat-wave wasn’t letting up,
and the skies were refusing to give up their moisture to the thirsty ground. Anne-Marie
gave me instructions to water the gardens. I headed up the hill to the high
garden, deciding to work my way downwards. There was no such thing as a hose
pipe on that French hillside. Towards the back of the uppermost strip of land
was a concrete trough of rainwater: a small, garden-sized reservoir. Pondweed
floated on the surface, forming a semi-solid skin of the same kind that might
have formed on a bowl of cold custard. Poking up in lumps was the moss-green
form of a watering can. I plunged my hand into the water, groping for the
handle. My palm brushed against the side of the trough, and my heart jolted
with shock. I had expected a harsh, stone-like sensation, but felt instead a
slick wall of slime. I pulled the watering can out quickly, splashing my feet
with the stagnant water.
I knew that I had to be frugal with
my water dispensing, but it seemed counter-intuitive. The soil absorbed the
water like a sponge, seeming immediately as dry as it had ever been. The plants,
although green and alive, appeared brittle-stemmed and delicate. Had I been at
home, I wouldn’t have thought twice about lavishing litres of tap water on each
line of vegetables. Here I couldn’t; water was in such short supply. It got me
to wondering how it was possible to grow anything in climates hotter than that
of the Ardèche. I knew that it happened, but I couldn’t see how irrigation
would be possible. How was water rationed out so that the plants could grow but
so that none was wasted? Surely it would evaporate before it reached the roots?
I pondered my way down through the three gardens, watering can in my grasp.
That evening we had a visitor. Her
name was Carla, and she lived up the hill in the yurt she shared with her
partner John, the man whom I had encountered earlier the previous day. She was
friends with Anne-Marie – it was by amicable agreement that the couple had been
allowed to set up their yurt on Pierre’ land – and she had come to give Anne-Marie
a cooking lesson, specifically, a vine-leaf stuffing lesson. Carla’s family
hailed from Lebanon,
and so stuffed vine leaves were a part of her cultural tradition. Given as I
was there and keen to pick up new cooking skills, I was invited in to the
tutorial. Laid out on the table were most of the ingredients we needed, brought
down by Carla: rice, lemon, salt, oil, tomato. There was definitely something
missing though -- where were the vine leaves? I had underestimated the
self-sufficient lifestyle. I was unaware that vines grew on the farm, but
apparently they did, and I was taken scrambling through overgrown tangles of
nettles and thistles to a semi-obscured and crumbling old stone wall at the
back of the upper garden where the vines were creeping. Carla instructed me to
take only large, undamaged leaves: too small and they would unravel when they
were stuffed, damaged and the stuffing would fall out of the holes. We gently
laid about eighty leaves into our basket and headed back to the kitchen via the
herb garden to pick up some parsley.
Back in the kitchen, we prepared
the rice. I thought that it was probably risotto rice that we used; it definitely
ended up stickier than the average basmati. We squeezed the lemon and sprinkled
the salt over the uncooked grains, and added finely chopped parsley and tomato.
Then it was time to get stuffing! First of all, we had to cut off the stems of
the leaves. A tiny v-shape was cut into the nape of each leaf to rid them of
the tough area around the stem. At the centre of the top end of the leaf we
were instructed to put a small amount of stuffing – small enough that it looked
stingy; this was to allow for the swelling of the grains. Anne-Marie and I
began overzealously, but soon learned to keep our portions to a minimum. Next
the leaves were rolled into a cigar shape, and then each end was folded over,
along the line of the edge of the leaf. Each little package was then placed
with care at the bottom of a large saucepan. We created concentric circles of
vine leaves as the pan filled up, and then multiple layers of concentric
circles of vine leaves. I had struggled to understand how the leaves wouldn’t
unravel during cooking – there was no cocktail stick or string involved - but then
I began to see that they would be too close together to move. A small plate was
placed on top of the final layer to keep them from falling apart, and the whole
thing was covered in water. A lid was put on, and the saucepan put on the stove
to boil, before turning down the temperamental flame to simmer gently.
Twenty-five minutes later, we
turned off the heat and let the leaves sit and cool a little before we touched
them. When they were cool enough to handle, we lifted them one by one out of
the saucepan and onto an enormous white plate. The vines had felt like green
paper- wrapped rocks before they had been cooked, but now they had absorbed all
the liquid they resembled soft cushions of dark olive green. We drizzled them
liberally with olive oil, and awaited the hungry troops. Except that with all
that effort, we were pretty hungry ourselves, and they were deceptively
moreish. They disappeared much quicker than was intended. We didn’t admit to Pierre
how many we had originally made, although from our guilty grins, he may well
have guessed.
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