Here at La Vie Rustic we think that a little bit of life in the French style can be experienced wherever you live. It can happen simply by reading a memoir cookbook, like My Culinary Journey – Food and Fetes of Provence, and imagining the place and the food.  That experience can be taken a step further by cooking a few of the recipes, some fragrant with the wild herbs of  Provence. Take a moment to stand in your kitchen as a Beef Daube simmers, inhaling the aromas of the Mediterranean back country. It’s a little like being in the south of France. And, to  really immerse yourself into the  French experience, plant a  French style Potager garden using La Vie Rustic’s Potager Seed Set for a year round garden, complete with planting maps for a small space, planting and harvesting instructions, 12 different varieties of vegetable seeds, plus flower seeds and 13 sturdy zinc garden markers.

The Provence Holiday Gift Set includes all 3. The Potager Seed Set with Maps, a copy of My Culinary Journey – Food and Fetes of Provence, and jar of La Vie Rustic’s Herbes de Provence, plus a sprig of fresh sweet bay laurel carefully tucked inside the Potager Garden Seed Set Box. It’s the gift of Provence and we are happy to gift wrap the set for you between November 28 and December 19.

The book is signed by the author, Georgeanne Brennan, founder of La Vie Rustic, and can be personally inscribed if you wish. Just let us know.

Provence Holiday Gift Set………………………….$60.00

All items are also sold separately.

 

Give a gift of lettuce seeds and you give a gift of  fresh salad, home-grown and brought to the table every day. Our French heirloom lettuce seeds, each with its place in history, were varieties grown in the market gardens around Paris for over a hundred years. Add a jar of  La Vie Rustic Sel de Citrus  (Agrume) to season the vinaigrette for the salads.

 

Give the gift of French red poppies, seeds to grow a swath across a side yard, an entry way, or a garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As seen in Sunset Magazine, page 98, December 2016, “What we love…)

Give the gift of a fragrant soup, replete with sweet fresh bay leaves, Winter Savory Sea Salt (Sel de Sarriette), Herbes de Provence and Rancho Gordo giant white Royal Corona Beans.La Vie Rustic White Bean and Winter Savory Soup Set

For the cookbook lover and dreamer on your gift list, give the gift of a memoir with recipes,

My Culinary Journey – food and fetes of Provence, by Georgeanne Brennan. Stories, photos, and recipes, and comes accompanied by  a jar of La Vie Rustic Herbes de Provence.

French Shepherd’s Pie with Celery Root and Potato Topping

Shepherd’s pie, a traditional British dish, is made with meat–usually ground beef or lamb–and vegetables, covered with a thick layer of mashed potatoes and then lightly browned in the oven to make a crust. In this version, the topping is a combination of mashed potatoes and pungent celery root.

Celery root has a somewhat intimidating appearance. It is not at all obvious to the uninitiated how it is used in the kitchen. When I was a student in Aix-in-Provence, before Donald and I were married there, my French roommate taught me that once the whorled and callused skin of the celery root was removed, the flesh could be cooked or eaten raw in any number of different ways. An inexpensive winter root, its strong flavor and interesting texture made it frequent fare in our kitchen and also in the inexpensive restaurants we frequented.

2 tablespoons butter

½ onion, minced

2 carrots, peeled and cut into small pieces

1 ½ to 2 pounds ground lamb or beef

3 fresh bay leaves or 1 dried bay leaf

1 ½ teaspoons sea salt

1 ½ teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 cup beef stock

4 potatoes, peeled and quartered

2 medium-sized or 1 large celery root, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes

¼ cup whole milk

1 egg

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the lamb and brown slightly on all sides, about 10 minutes. Remove to a bowl with a slotted spoon. Add the onions and carrots to the pan and saut until the onions are soft and translucent, about 5 to 7 minutes. Return the meat to the pan. Add the bay leaves, sprinkle with 1 teaspoon each of the salt, pepper, and flour, and continue to cook, stirring constantly. The flour will start to brown on the bottom of the pan, but don’t let it burn. Let it become very dark brown, as it is the browning of the flower that will eventually give the stew its rich, dark color. This will take 6 to 8 minutes. Stirring the meat and scraping the pan bottom, add the stock, a little at a time, until all the bits of browned flour are freed from the pan bottom and mixed into the liquid. Cover the pan, reduce the heat, and simmer until the flavors are blended and the sauce has thickened, about 15 minutes.

While the lamb or beef is cooking, boil the potatoes and celery root in water to cover until tender, about 30 minutes.

Drain the potatoes and celery root, reserving ¼ cup of their cooking water, and place them in a bowl. Add the reserved cooking water, the milk, 2 tablespoons of the butter, egg, the remaining ½ teaspoon each salt, pepper, and the thyme. Whisk all the ingredients until well blended and fairly smooth. Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F. To assemble the pie, put the stew in an ovenproof casserole and spoon the potato mixture evenly over the top to cover completely. Cut the remaining 1 tablespoon butter into bits and dot the topping with the bits.

Place the casserole in the preheated over until the topping is slightly browned and the stew is bubbling,15 to 20 minutes.

Serves 4 to 6

From ‘My Culinary Journey’ by Georgeanne Brennan

Thinking about the holidays?

La Vie Rustic’s New Gros Sel Salt Jar makes a special gift.

Since I started La Vie Rustic two years ago, I’ve been looking for a potter who would recreate my treasured French salt jar.  At last I found one, Rebecca Holmes. Now La Vie Rustic can offer salt jars, hand-thrown on a potter’s wheel,  just like mine,  labeled Gros Sel, with a natural cork stopper. My salt jar has a permanent place of honor in my kitchen and not only do I use it daily, but it also gives me pleasure just to look at it. Inside it I keep large–crystal grey sea salt from Guerande in France. The opening is large enough for me to easily reach my hand in to scoop up salt for seasoning large pots of water for vegetable or pasta, soups and stews. For smaller crystals, I take a handful of the large salt and grind the crystals in a mortar and pestle.

The jar is made with one-half porcelain clay and one-half stoneware clay, and glazed inside and out. It is food safe and dishwasher safe.

Of course, you can your jar for anything – to hold bouquets of roses or bread sticks or to store spices or garlic – whatever you fancy.

Another grand gift is a signed, customized copy of  Georgeanne Brennan’s new book, “My Culinary Journey – Food and Fetes of Provence“. The author, who is the founder and owner of La Vie Rustic, will also include a jar of La Vie Rustic’s Herbes de Provence with your order, to make it even more fun to cook the recipes. The book, just out October 24, has already been hailed as an ” evocatively entwined memoir.  rich in detail about the food, people and festivals of Provence, France.”

And, as the author, I can say that if you liked my book,  A Pig in Provence, you will like this book, with photos of goats and pigs, family, food, and landscape from the days when I raised goats and pigs in Provence – plus 40 recipes and tales of fetes from lavender to olives and truffles.

For your gardening friends, or those who dream of gardening, La Vie Rustic’s Potager Garden Set with Maps gives them the gift of a year-round garden, with a continual harvest for their kitchen.

 

 

 

 

 

For your cooking friends and family, be they seasoned or beginners, La Vie Rustic’s Soup Sets have everything needed to turn out a hearty soup. Pictured here is the White Beans and Winter Savory Soup.

 

French vintage linen, sourced from a brocante, or flea markets in southern France, has been hand-cut and sewn into oversize napkins by a craftswoman in Northern California, just for La Vie Rustic. The linen, never used, and probably part of someone’s long ago trousseau,was first gently washed and ironed before being cut. Due to the slight irregularities in the linen, each napkin has its own character, which is part of the charm, in our opinion. Romantic but practical, the texture speaks of past times and stories, but the napkins are perfectly contemporary.
Mix and match these with your other napkins, use them on their own, or even use them as a table center piece for a favorite plant or flower arrangement.

Information and how to care card included.

Sold in sets of two.

 

 

 

Cranberry Bean and Sel de Thyme Soup Set

Once again, we’ve created a soup set, similar to the popular White Bean and Sel de Sarriette Soup Set, but this time with Cranberry Beans and Sel de Thyme, plus Herbes de Provence and fresh sweet bay laurel. The set includes a recipe for the soup, developed by our owner, Georgeanne Brennan, and printed on a sturdy four color card. An information card about the bay laurel is also included. The beans are the famous Rancho Gordo beans, used in restaurants nationwide. They are truly the very best and get even better with La Vie Rustic’s recipes, herbs, salts, and bay. The broth alone is worth the effort. Our set makes a tasty gift, or something special to have in your own pantry.

All is snugly packed in a Kraft box.

 

Fresh bay laurel leaves are hard to find, but here at La Vie Rustic we have them – lots and lots of them growing on our huge bay trees. We’ll cut them fresh in the morning and ship them to you the same day. For the barbeque, alternate fresh bay leaves with onions, peppers, and beef on a skewer, all seasoned, perhaps, with a little of La Vie Rustic’s Herbes de Provence, extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Now through the end of August we’ll even slip in a few long branches of fresh rosemary with your bay laurel bouquet, clipped from our many plants. Use these when you barbeque pork chops, chicken, and steaks, infusing the meat with the woodsy scent of rosemary.

Grilled lettuce, right out of the garden, cut in half, slathered with a little olive oil, sea salt and pepper and onto the grill makes a toothsome treat. I like to make a Parmesan dressing for mine, using extra-virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, a little salt and pepper all mixed with freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Or, skip the grilling and go right to a fresh garden salad.

If you don’t have lettuce in your garden now, you will in 45 to 50 days from the time you get your seeds in the ground. Naturally, I recommend La Vie Rustic’s French Lettuce Seed Collection because I selected some of my favorites for it, such as Reine de Glaces, an heirloom iceberg precursor with a snug head and deeply cut lacy edges on the leaves.

If you live in a climate where summer temperatures soar, keep your lettuce seedlings well watered, and even shaded. I sometimes use tree pruning stuck in the ground alongside the plants to cast some filtered shade on them.

You don’t have to wait until the lettuces are fully mature to start savoring them. Using the cut and come again method, you can start clipping individual leaves once the plant has 8 or 10 leaves will appear. New ones will grow, giving you a daily supply of lettuce from your garden.

In fact, now is the time to get a garden of any kind planted.  La Vie Rustic has a year-round Potager Garden in a boxed set of 13 different seeds, garden maps and markers, a smaller Spring Potager set in a heavy Kraft envelope with 7 different seeds and a map, and a Sunflower Garden set for bouquet making. Now, all you need for your table is a pretty serving  platter or an oven to table Gratin dish.

 

I  grew lots of different sunflowers last summer to select the ones I really liked. I was looking for a range of color of both the petals and the faces, of differences in petal shapes because I wanted to find the sunflowers that most closely represented the sunflowers painted by Van Gogh in his famous series of seven paintings of sunflower bouquets in vases. On close inspection of the paintings you’ll see the differences among the flowers. Some have wild-looking, spidery petals, others petals are thickly packed like chrysanthemums, and yet others double or single petals. The centers or faces differ as well. Some centers are bright chartreuse green, other chocolate brown or black ringed with orange. Petal colors are brilliant yellow, pale orange, darker orangish-red, reddish, and pale yellow. This link will take you to a site where you can see the seven paintings in the series. http://www.vggallery.com/misc/sunflowers.htm.

When you grow our collection of six different sunflowers you’ll have an array as varied as the sunflowers shown in Van Gogh’s paintings.

All the sunflowers in the collection are cutting flowers, and all are branching types which mean, in addition to a main flower head on the center stalk, there will be numerous side shoots branching out ensuring ongoing bloom over several weeks or longer.

Each individual letterpress printed packet contains approximately 25 seeds.  All germinate within 7-14 days and bloom within 60- 65 days of planting, An instruction card is included which covers planting, watering, pinching, and cutting and caring.

Greenburst – Golden yellow flowers are semi-double with a green center ringed by a row of small, dark yellow petals. Branching, grows 4 – 6 feet tall.

Orange Ruffles – Orange-yellow flowers have curling, spidery outer petals, and a black center ringed with small, frilly dark orange petals. Branching, grows 4 – 6 feet tall.

Lemon Éclair – Light yellow, multi-layered flower have fluffy inner petals and more pointed outer ones. The center is chocolate colored. Branching, grows 4-6 feet tall.

Terracotta – Orangish-red terracotta flowers have almost daisy-like petals, and a dark brown center. Branching, grown 4-6 feet tall.

Golden Cheer – Fluffy, dark yellow double flowers have a green center ringed with short, dark yellow petals. Branching, grows 4 -6 feet tall.

Chianti – Dark red, wine –colored petals surround a very dark, almost black center. The stems also have a dark tint. Branching, grows 4- 6 feet tall.

La Vie Rustic Sunflower Collection…$15.00

Blood oranges are at their peak of season now, ruby red and juicy sweet and this easy to make tart shows them off. Of course you can use navel oranges as well. Sometimes I leave the peel on. It caramelizes and sweetens slightly during cooking and I like the texture.

 

Blood Orange Rustic Tart
This is a very simple tart to make, even if you don’t think of yourself as a baker.

12 x 14 inch sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed as directed by manufacturer
3 to 4 blood oranges or a mix of blood oranges and navel oranges
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup crème fraîche mixed with 2 tablespoons sugar (optional)

Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F.

On a floured work surface, spread open the puff pastry sheet, if folded. Roll to a rectangle a scant 1/2 inch thick. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and transfer the rectangle to the paper. Pinch the edges up to form a generous 1/2-inch rim. Place in the freezer and chill 15 minutes to firm edges, or refrigerate for 1 hour.

Slice the oranges crossways into ½ inch thick slices. Trim the peels or not, as you prefer.  With the tip of a knife, remove the seeds.

Remove the chilled pastry and snugly layer the oranges on top in a single layer. Sprinkle with the sugar.

Bake until the pastry is puffed and browned and the oranges have caramelized slightly, about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, cover loosely with aluminum foil, and let stand for 10 minutes.

Cut the tart into rectangles about 2 inches by 3 inches. Serve warm with the optional crème fraîche.

Serves 6 to 8

Sultan de Marabout Fig Tree Now Shipping

It’s time to order your bare root fruit trees, and our  3-year old Sultan de Marabout fig trees are ready to ship. These delicious, super-sweet figs are orignally from Algeria and were imported into the United States in the early part of the 20th century. The trees we sell are made from cuttings of our mother tree, which not only provides hundreds of cuttings, but fruit from August into October. The fruit doesn’t ripen all at once, which is ideal for a home fruit tree.

Think making summer and fall dishes with your figs, like pork roast stuffed with figs, or fig croutons with goat cheese and prosciutto. Maybe even a fresh fig tart.

 

 

 

Potager to Plate Style

And, while imagining yourself picking figs in fall, why not imagine yourself pulling radishes and picking peas in spring? Nothing tastes better than something you’ve grown yourself.

Try La Vie Rustic’s Spring Potager Set, Heirloom French Lettuces or Heirloom French Chicories and you’ll be serving Potager to Plate Style at your house.

Cold winter days beg for soup, like this one made by Michael Schwab using  La Vie Rustic’s Soup Set. The set  makes soup making fun and easy. We first put it together for the holidays, but it was so successful we decided to keep it in stock, but with a seasonal twist. We’re added not only sprigs of fresh rosemary, now in bloom, but also a Meyer lemon. A little dash of Meyer lemon juice and some zest is just the thing for a winter soup.

 

Spring Will Come

I know. Snow is heavy on the ground, and in parts of the country where it’s not snowing, chances are it’s raining and and the ground is soggy with mud. However, we know in our hearts that the weather and the ground will warm and it will be the moment to plant a garden. Maybe you’ve never had a vegetable garden, a French-style potager, but always dreamed of one. Or maybe you have a friend who just needs that extra push to start a garden. We have the answer:

Our Potager Garden Set with Maps for a small space, and complete instructions, 12 different vegetable seed packets, plus one of flowers and 13 garden markets.

If a full garden seems like too much to commit to, how about a Spring Potager Set, or seeds for a French Heirloom Lettuce or Chicory Garden?

Nothing tastes better than what comes directly from your own garden.

Sometimes we want to give a gift that’s just a little bit different, a little bit special for someone who loves to cook and to eat. That’s why we thought a set of Elaine’s salt cellars no two are quite alike, as you can see, all handmade, with a jar of La Vie Rustic’s salts might be just the thing.

The salt can go right onto the table in the salt cellars or kept in the kitchen. Use the salts just as you would any other – a pinch or a sprinkle to perk up flavor. Sel de Sarritte, with its earthy, almost umami flavor is perfect for beans, but also to use in soups, stews and with meats. I personally like it on cottage cheese. Sel d’Agrume, with its orange and lemon zests is ideal for fish dishes and salads, even a dash on chocolate mousse. The salt in the mixtures comes from the ancient salt ponds of Guerande, on the Atlantic coast of France. It is a tiny bit moist, and smells ever so slightly of the ocean. https://lavierustic.com/store/salt-cellar-set-and-salt-jar/ ….$24.00  Please be sure to specify on the note section of the order form the color of the salt cellar set (see salt cellars for colors) and the type of salt you would like.

Happy Holidays!