Tales of basil and tarragon

Another birthday in  what I sometimes think of as the years of reprieve. Lay in bed this morning thinking how much happier I am now than I was a decade ago.

Hugs and kisses, calls from  friends here and from  a lovely friend in the UK who also sent me a copy of Richard Morais’ The Hundred-Foot Journey, a novel that is really just an excuse to write all about food. Perfect reading  at this time of year when the asparagus, artichokes, mange touts and  tiny broad beans are in season. My neighbour Thinus (not his real name) has painted a watercolour of a  pink hybrid tea rose and framed it for me. My housemate is going to grill lamb cutlets for supper. If the wind dies down I shall go out and plant basil, purple opal basil and  Thai holy basil and another  lush green leafy basil that has the most intoxicating (did I say that?) spicy  fragrance. In summer you cannot have too much basil.

Another neighbour came by to talk to me about recipes for tarragon chicken. I can talk about  tarragon chicken for  hours, just as I can sit messing with  dug earth and basil seedlings for hours. In my 20s I had no idea of the woman I would become and imagined I would spend my  mature years playing Colette’s courtesan Léa in Chéri and seducing unsuitable oversexed young men who would then steal my pearls and break my heart. Bereft, bewitched, bothered and bewildered, a madwoman with withered breasts and frizzled grey hair like a shock of Medusa snakes, I would  then  write erotic  fiction and find myself banned and ostracised by all even though some would call me a genius and I would  live alone in my bare attic room smoking hashish and  toying with absinthe.

No basil leaves or  roast chicken  for that poor woman.

Tarragon chicken. Years and years ago I had a friend I shall call Kalliope (an assumed name) who  married a wealthy proctologist about 40 years older than her. She shrugged when we spoke of love and admitted privately that she had married for money. When I had dinner with them, she would talk about George Clooney’s  indecently cleft chin and the proctologist would talk about the gorier moments of colonic-rectal surgery.

As a marriage it should not have worked, pragmatic to the point of mercenary. But Kalliope turned out to be an excellent cook and within a few years she was fat,  luscious and contented, and he too became rotund and more secure in the relationship. I’m sure there is a great deal more to this story, but married couples guard their secrets. Kalliope would make what she called Poulet a l’Estragon Extraordinaire while I sat in the  kitchen and learned from her. She simplified the recipe from Elizabeth David and  smeared the plump organic  chicken all over with  softened butter and fresh chopped tarragon. Then she put a fistful of butter and tarragon into the cavity and roasted the  chicken in a medium oven for 45 minutes, turning it over halfway through. She didn’t flame the chicken with brandy or add cream to the gravy. She just  tossed a  green salad with a Dijon vinaigrette and set out  crusty sourdough bread.

It tasted extraordinary, so good that I would lie awake  wishing  she would leave the  proctologist and run away with me. Roast chicken with tarragon is erotic heaven.

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