We got back from France just a few days ago, and wondered why we had taken so long to accept an invitation from Philippe and Marie-Luce, our friends from Paris, to stay with them at their alpine retreat in the little village of Puy Aillaud.

The reason, in fact, was that neither of us can ski, and we had imagined ourselves staying indoors while everyone else was dashing around the slopes. But, as it turned out, we spent almost as much time outdoors as the skiers, having been introduced to the delights of ski-shoes, or ‘raquettes’, as the French call them.  In the photo above you can see Jane and our friends’ daughter Marie-Anne with Laurent, a raquette specialist, who had been hired for two days to take us through places we wouldn’t have found by ourselves while introducing us to such delights as sliding almost vertically down through virgin snow, dodging trees on the way.

The ‘raquettes’ are no longer, as their name still implies, beat-up wooden tennis rackets just strapped onto your legs.

                                      

Instead, as you can see, they are rather cool-looking plastic affairs, with a  part at the back which can be hinged upwards and placed under the heel so that you can walk straight up sleep slopes without toppling backwards.  And that’s what we did, on two days, to join some of the others for lunch chez Bob, while they, being skiers, had taken the much easier option of getting there by ski-lift.

Mind you, if everyone staying at our friends’ house had come up for lunch there wouldn’t have been room for anyone else; for there were already 10 people there when Marie-Luce, her father (Philippe), Jane and I arrived; and by the time we left there were 20 of us, ranging in age from 12 to seven times that.

At the lower end were two brothers, Habibou and Moussa, the sons of a man from francophone West Africa whom Marie-Luce had got to know when - as a law student  - she spent time helping recent immigrants improve their knowledge of the French language.  These were joined, as the week went on, by a whole bunch of friends, as well as other members of the family: Raphael, now 14, Marie-Anne, their cousin Cécile - the 12-year old daughter of Marie-Luce’s sister Elizabeth -  Miriam, Marie-Luce and Elizabeth’s cousin, and .... I’ve probably forgotten one or two.

As Jane is not really at ease with French, there was quite a bit of English spoken as well as French. This mixture of languages limited the choice available for the regular late evening film show, when Philippe would project a DVD onto a screen, with people sprawled out on sofas, or on cushions on the floor.  So one evening we watched a French film with English subtitles, Jacques Becker’s ‘Casque d’Or’, released in 1952 but set in 1890s Paris, with a young Serge Reggiani falling for an achingly beautiful Simone Signoret and heading, inevitably, towards a sad end. And the next day it was the turn of a far inferior American movie, the sequel to ‘Wall Street’, this time with French subtitles.

After a few days we were running out of appropriate films, so settled for ‘Splendor’, an Italian film by Ettore Scola, in its French language version, with Marcello Mastroianni (dubbing himself) as the owner of a cinema, now being sold off, looking back to the days of his childhood, when he would drive with his father to little towns and help him set up a projector and screen for one-off shows of classics such as ‘Metropolis’.

Only once did we watch a film with no English involved at all, the superb “Des hommes et des dieux”, directed by Xavier Beauvois, with a strong cast including Lambert Wilson and Michael Lonsdale; but that was one with remarkably little dialogue, what there was being capable of a simple whispered summary now and again. It had very limited showings in Britain, and I would urge anyone to see this sober, moving story (based on actual events) of a group of eight Cistercian-Trappist monks living in central Algeria, dividing their time between prayer,  gardening and helping their Muslim neighbours.  Sadly, this being the 90s, members of the Groupe Islamique Armé  -  hardline islamists - make their presence felt, and the monks have to decide whether to stay or go.     

But before the film show, there was  possibly the high spot of the day: dinner. And with everyone, except us, being French, a vast amount of time was spent shopping for food, preparing food, eating food, reminiscing about food eaten, and discussing food yet to be eaten.  Philippe,  Marie-Luce’s father,  doesn’t move around about easily nowadays, but prepared a couple of great meals, and could always be relied upon to peel and chop up whatever was needed, in my case 5 or 6 decent sized onions for one of the half dozen dishes I can reliably come up with without slaving over a hot cookery book.  Yes I, a rosbif, was prepared to cook a meal for the best part of two score frogs, believe it or not. And not just any old meal, my tried and trusted ‘poulet aux olives’, learned from Christou, my first wife, back in the old days.  She being from the Côte d'Azur, this, as you can see, contained some classic mediterranean ingredients, as follows:

Ingredients

One, two or even three chickens, depending on the number of people.

(Don’t use a boiling chicken: all the goodness will go into the bouillon leaving the chicken tasteless).

Roughly chopped onions.

As many green olives as you fancy (ideally with their stones removed, or dénoyautées, as the French say),

Tomatoes (any combination of real ones, tinned, tomato paste or whatever),

Potatoes (could be rice, if you prefer, but I like potatoes with this, parboiled and added to the pot later, if desired or if there is room).

Herbes de Provence, if wanted, though not necessary.

Garlic, ditto.

Olive oil.

Method

Chop the chicken(s) into pretty small pieces.  (A leg should be in 3 pieces, for example).

Brown them in shallow olive oil, using the pot the dish will be slow stewing in.  Place the meat pieces aside.

Add the onions to the olive oil (topping up the oil if needed), and part fry them, adding garlic if you want.

Add the tomatoey stuff, stirring it all in, then some water.

Add the olives, then the chicken pieces.

Add more water until the whole is just about covered.  (Don’t bother with wine as part of the stew; that’s for drinking with the dish).

Warm it all up on a medium heat, then allow it to slow simmer, stirring now and again.

Important.  Like many stews, ragouts or whatever you want to call them, this is a dish worth cooking over a couple of days.  So, take it off the heat when it is almost cooked first time round; finish cooking it later that day, or next morning, finally warm it up again on a medium heat (possibly cooking the potatoes at the same time in a separate pot).

That was my moment of glory; but, a couple of days earlier, I had made another of my tried and tested dishes as a starter: blinis.  Here’s a recipe, with quantities for, say, four people:

Ingredients (for pancake mix)

6 ounces / 150 grammes of flour (I use half plain, half fancy).

1 packet of yeast.

1 egg.

milk or milk & water.

For topping

Rich people use caviar, the rest monkfish eggs (try Waitrose).

Sour cream or plain yoghurt.

Method

Warm a little milk, and pour the yeast into it, stirring gently.

Leave this for 5-6 minutes to mature, while measuring out the flour.

Gently add more warm milk, the beaten egg and the milk/yeast mixture to the flour until you have a pancake type mix, not too liquid, not too solid.

Preheat a pan (or use one of the magic, reusable cloth-type non-stick things placed straight on the warm plate of your Aga), then spoon small quantities of the mixture onto it, flipping and patting them down as needed.

Keep them warm, and serve with a teaspoonful of sour cream topped with lumpfish roe.  Best served with excellent Russian or Polish vodka ice cold from the freezer (though we had to settle for champagne).

(These are the ten blinis kept for some latecomers, a good 50 or 60 having been the starter course the previous evening.)

So, lots of exercise, but rather more eating and drinking.  And the day after we got back home I went to have a proper NHS checkup: blood pressure, ok; Body Mass Index, ok; still waiting to hear about cholesterol level. God, that fondue on the last evening!  And all that wine. Help!