Par les routes [Sylvain Prudhomme, 2019]

I haven’t been at all productive on the reading front, despite my to-read list that keeps growing. In the past few months, I have started some books which I couldn’t finish, mostly because I lost interest, so I fell into a reading rut.

Before the holidays, though, my boss-now-friend lent me a book that she’d just finished. A French book. In French. It is well written, it is fluid and the French is quite easy to understand and read through, she told me – which, I must admit, enters well into my criteria for starting a French book. Even though I am increasingly fluent in French, reading and writing are sometimes still challenging for me, and when I want to relax, it’s not reading in French that comes to mind first.

Anyway, Par les routes is a lovely book and it is lovely to read. I found the narrator’s voice easy to find and I was able to enter the story without worrying too much about vocabulary. It is about two friends: the narrator, a writer who moves away from Paris to the countryside to find some focus in his work, and the autostoppeur – a hitchhiker, who lives up to his title so seriously that it is actually the theme of his life.

Throughout the story, the characters come to terms with what is essential to them, as told by the narrator while he lives and dwells on the events that he faces. It is a story about distinct ways of living life, of bringing people together, of friendship and what it means to love.

In the hitchhiker’s trips, it was really curious to read about some funnily named places in France, which made me want to know this neighbouring country a little better.

It made me feel good to read this book, at this moment in life.

Nostalgia and Grilled Peppers

Last night, I found myself cooking in my grandmother’s kitchen.

I have not prepared many meals in this kitchen, but I spent a very large part of my life there until I moved to Switzerland, and significantly less time since she passed away a few years ago.

While cooking in this kitchen, with my little assistant, I stood back and saw present and past coming together in a bittersweet way, as it tends to be when the past was sweet but many of its conditions can’t be summoned anymore.

One of the last times I was here with my grandmother, she grilled sardines for me, after telling me off for asking the fishmonger to clean the sardines and remove the innards. You never clean sardines! – she told me and I will never, ever repeat this mistake again, because they will dry when you grill them!

So, yesterday we did not clean the sardines, and we grilled them in her garden, while my little assistant ran around playing with the dog and the cats, filling the air with her chatter and laughter, a sound that was very much loved by my grandmother.

Before grilling the sardines, I grilled some peppers to make a grilled pepper salad which has become my specialty in our sardinhadas.

It is very easy. You just char the peppers on the grill while it is still hot. When they are charred, their skins black and blistering, you close them in a plastic bag (traditional way) or in a bowl with a lid (my way, because plastic and heat makes me uncomfortable). The peppers must look tender, even slightly mushy; if their flesh is still firm, they need to cook a little more.

I let the peppers sit for a while in the covered pot, and the steam helps the skin release itself from the flesh. While this is happening, I make the sauce: one small clove of garlic, a few tablespoons of vinegar, a few tablespoons of olive oil, one tablespoon of honey, salt and pepper to taste, whisked with a fork.

When the peppers have cooled off enough, I peel and clean them, and cut the flesh into straight strips.

Wilted peppers loose a lot of volume, so to make enough you have to peel and chop quite a few peppers, which takes a little time. Yesterday, I used six green and red peppers for four people. How many peppers you should use really depends on how much you love the salad.

In our house, we love it a lot. It feels like home, accompanied with some fresh and fleshy sardines, from the fishmonger who lives next door to my grandparents, and with some broa de milho. And, knowing that small children are not especially fond of sardines, it gives me a little extra satisfaction to see little O. wolfing them down and asking for more, mais peissinho.