Ciabatta

It seems like only yesterday that I was standing in the kitchen of my flat, reading Raymond Blanc's recipe for madeleine's, yet in reality it was over two months ago! That's the funny thing about memory, it can trick you sometimes.

Just the other day I was sitting in an Italian cafe, eating my prosciutto and mozzarella ciabatta, when all of a sudden I took a bite and was whisked off  to a long-distant memory. The texture of the crunchy, freshly baked bread reminded me of my childhood and my old next door neighbour who used to pride himself on a diet of cheese, bread, olives and wine. My parents would sit in his back garden on a picnic bench, discussing all sorts of grown-up things whilst me and my sister continued kicking each other under the table as discretely as possible so as to make the other cry out and lose. I always lost. But on this picnic table stood a selection of the continents finest produce; Mediterranean olives, Italian hams, Swiss cheeses and most importantly, a crispy French baguette. A food so important to my childhood that I cannot even begin to think of words to describe it; I tried floury and yeasty but they didn't seem to suffice; I tried doughy and earthy but they were no good; I even tried rustic and medieval but even they didn't do it justice. What then is this beautiful taste? That last morsel of crust as you finish a mouthful of stone baked bread. For me, it is simply childhood. It is security. It is the continent. It is the grown-up world to which I now belong. All of this... from a bite of bread. 

Now I see what Proust means when he describes that beautiful moment he tastes the crumbs of a madeleine.