Tartine aux Courgettes …and “les jardins de Colette”.

When your potager starts exploding with courgettes, it is time to come up with all sorts of ways to eat those courgettes without getting bored. But even so, by the end of summer, I feel like a courgette and can’t even look at one, let alone eat it. Courgettes are more flavorful when they are young and nothing needs to be added to give them moire flavor. These tartines can be served s a starter, a lunch with a salad, or as an apéro before dinner..and come to think of it, why not pack it for a pique-nique?

La recette:

Pincée de fleur de sel:

• Add some goat’s cheese or feta cheese to the tartines.
• Leave the toasts and serve as a tagliatelle pasta, topped with a fillet of fish of your choice and a salad.
• Make croutons instead of toasts and add along with the grilled courgettes to a salad. Top with dry roasted pine nuts, grated Parmesan cheese and a mustard vinaigrette.

 

 

Les jardins de Colette is a large botanical garden at the foot of the chateau Castel-novel, where the French writer Colette lived with her 2nd husband Henry de Jouvenel and her daughter Bel-Gazou. The gardens were created in 2008 and depict her tumultuous life which centered around her insatiable desire for creating. You will surely know her for her novels Chéri in 1920 and of course Gigi from 1944, upon which the musical film was based and in which Leslie Caron played Gigi. Colette’s real name was actually Sidonie-Gabrielle , her last name/surname being Colette. But I’m her to show you the garden dedicated to her…so, to read about Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, you can pick and choose a site on Google.

Some trinkets in the store…and I found their little truck quite cute…and a rose named after Colette in 1995…

…Veronique flowers in abundance in the garden of her childhood in Bourgogne…and bees in abundance….

..le jardin de Rozven in Bretagne was bought by her friend, Missy, in 1910  and for 10 years afterwards Colette and her family still spent their summers at Rozven.

…a potager, part of remembering her childhood..

..a labyrinth in the shape of a papillon,  where kiddies are told stories while finding their way to the end..

..some annuals planted in the jardin de Saint- Sauveur-en -Puisaye  in Bourgogne...

..an english garden..”aussi libre qu’elle”..as free in spirit as she was…

…a little refuge for insects..

Colette with her brother in childhood…

…her love for animals clearly comes across in her books..

..la coccinelle and le papillon..les amis du jardin!

In the Correze gardin at Castel-Novel a little cabane/gloriettes was constructed from willow branches..

..The olive trees and lavenders from the Provence garden..

..a bit of freshness with a canal of water and fountain..

In the rose garden her favorite rose can be found…Cuisse de Nymphe

..as well as one of my favorites...Honore de Balzac…

And lastly, a lane of tilleuls trees to remind of her last years spent in Paris, where her windows opened onto the gardens of the palais Royal…

 

With something cool to drink, we finished this tour through the gardens of Colette and it was time to return to reality. I felt a vibrant kinship with her and her creativity, her desire to live to the full, her love for nature and animals and maybe one day I can retrace  her steps to really experience what her life was like…

à la prochaine fois!

Ronelle