September Newsletter
Harvest, homecomings, and the first cool evenings.
September at Château Montfort
This year’s autumn arrived earlier than usual. The trees, parched and weary from an exceptionally hot summer, began shedding their leaves while the last weeks of August offered little more than a whisper of rain. The forest floor, usually soft with moss, now crackles underfoot with the brittle discontent of drought.
Yet life persists, even if slightly out of breath. The fig trees in the garden have been treating us to a healthy bounty for the past few weeks. We’ll soon be gathering walnuts and chestnuts amongst amber leaves and the local vineyards in Jurançon are readying for les vendanges (the grape harvest.) The rhythms of September are here, just a little more hurried than usual.
What’s in My Market Basket
🍇 Figs – Plucked fresh from the tree in the early morning as I return from feeding the goats—honey-sweet and warm from the first rays of sunshine. I love them sliced in a cross at the top, squeezed open like the hungry mouths of baby birds and stuffed with a pinch of fresh local goat’s cheese and a drizzle of honey.
🍏 Apples – New-season apples are such a treat; it’s easy to forget they actually have a season when you’ve grown accustomed to year-round availability. I love a freshly harvested apple from our tree grated into Bircher muesli for breakfast, finely sliced in a potato salad, or gently poached with ginger and star anise for dessert. The good old apple wears many seasonal costumes and is endlessly versatile.
🌰 Walnuts & Chestnuts – Beginning to fall in late September. A roasted chestnut over the fire in a chestnut pan is such a comforting welcome to the season. Freshly cracked walnuts baked into cakes, served with cheese—or tucked inside Medjool dates with a little peanut butter for an afternoon snack—are a much-anticipated highlight of autumn.
🍐 Pears – Still firm and fragrant; poached in red wine and cloves with a ribbon of orange zest, or sliced onto tarts or roasted on a bed of fig leaves with butter and brown sugar. I must admit, a perfect pear might just be my favourite fruit.
🥕 Carrots & Beetroots – Earthy and grounding—roasted with cumin and orange zest, or tossed with homemade dukkah. Brilliant for autumn salads.
🧄 Garlic & Shallots – Still abundant, their flavour now concentrated and preserved on purple trusses. I hang mine by the stove, ready to pluck and rub across warm toast spread with mashed avocado for breakfast, roast whole or drop into a bubbling pot of soup.
🍇 Grapes – The vendanges are underway by mid-september, and the market is filled with bunches of Muscat covered with a silvery bloom and Chasselas de Moissac, a prized AOP table grape from southwest France. Sweet, perfumed, and tasting of late-summer sun. I love to roast them with sausages and red onions, finished with a little balsamic vinegar when the pan’s still hot. Serve with creamy mashed potato!
🫑 Peppers – The last of the season, Basque and Béarnaise peppers still appear glossy and bright in the markets. Wonderful charred with a lick of olive oil and coarse salt or pickled for apéro snacks.
🎃 Pumpkins & Squash – The very first of the season begin to appear, still small, their skins striped green and orange. Perfect roasted whole, or sliced into soups as the evenings cool. I do love a pumpkin risotto too!
🧀 Ossau-Iraty – Our local sheep’s milk cheese from the Pyrenees. At the end of summer it tastes especially mellow, its nuttiness softened by grassy, floral notes from the high mountain pastures. Best shaved over a salad of autumn leaves, or savoured with a spoonful of black cherry conserve.
🐟 Pyrenean Trout – If you’re lucky, they appear in markets—small, flinty, perfect oven-baked en papillote with a squeeze of lemon and a scattering of herbs.
A September Tart
There’s a tart shell I find myself returning to again and again, especially at this time of year when the last of the stone fruit is still tumbling into baskets at the market. The pastry is simple, with just a smidge of honey that gives it a floral sweetness, and I love how versatile it is — sturdy enough for a rustic galette, delicate enough for a fine edged tart.
This week I spread the raw pastry base with Madame Loïk cream cheese (a light whipped cheese from Brittany), a layer of jam (whatever is on hand), a scattering of vanilla sugar, then layered it with slices of late-season nectarines.
The beauty of this pastry is that it adapts with the seasons. Pears, figs, apples, grapes or a little quince paste with some ruby-red poached quince slices slip in just as happily, and though it doesn’t need much else, a scoop of proper vanilla ice-cream alongside makes it irresistible. If you can’t find Madame Loïk, mascarpone, whipped ricotta, or even a little labneh will do just as well.
It’s one of those hero recipes I truly love — the sort that always finds its way back onto the table, no matter the month.
Sweet Tart Shell
Ingredients
150 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
35 g soft brown sugar
35 g white sugar
50 g honey
250 g plain flour
1 tsp fine sea salt
Method
Beat the butter and sugars together until combined, then add the honey. In a separate bowl mix the flour and salt, then fold into the butter mixture until the dough just comes together. Roll it between two sheets of baking paper until about 2 mm thick and chill.
At this stage you can gather it into a rough galette with seasonal fruit, or carry on to make a tart shell. For that, line a tin with the pastry, trim the edges (leaving a little overhang), and chill for half an hour. Preheat the oven to 155°C (310°F, fan). Cover the pastry with foil, fill with baking weights, and bake for about 35 minutes. Remove the foil and weights and bake another 10–15 minutes, until golden and crisp. Allow to cool in the tin before filling.
On My Bookshelf
📖 Helen Goh – Baking and the Meaning of Life: How to Find Joy in 100 Recipes
Helen’s highly anticipated debut solo cookbook—blending over 100 of her beloved sweet and savoury recipes with stories about joy, connection, and the deeper meaning of baking. Available September 11th!
Stay tuned for my deep-dive interview with Helen coming soon.📖 Emily Scott – Home Shores: 100 Simple Fish Recipes to Cook at Home
A reassuring, beautifully crafted guide that makes cooking seafood at home approachable, seasonal, and delicious.
Interview with Emily arriving in the next issue—keep an eye out.📖 Matthew Ryle - French Classics: Easy and Elevated Dishes to Cook at Home
Everyday French food, pared back and accessible, but always with that little lift that makes it feel special. Available for pre-order now!📖 The Shipping News – Annie Proulx
A distant northern landscape still dancing behind my mind’s eye, from our time in Norway, this novel is set in a similar North Atlantic landscape of Newfoundland, Canada. Its a darkly comic, Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about Quoyle, a broken man who retreats with his daughters to his ancestral home on the bleak Newfoundland coast. There, against a backdrop of storms, shipwrecks, and small-town gossip, he rebuilds his life and learns resilience.📖 Good Things – Jane Grigson
An ode to the harvest table — from walnuts and chestnuts to pears and truffles — Grigson’s essays turn seasonal ingredients into stories, carrying the mellow richness of autumn on every page.
Friday night, with Autumnal dahlias and candlelight On My Speakers
🎧 The House Guest Podcast
A favourite listen for design lovers. I’ve been dipping into the archive and especially enjoyed an old episode with Robert Kime, whose voice carries the same quiet beauty as his interiors.🎧 The Homemade God – Rachel Joyce (Audible)
Just downloaded this for my autumn walks: it tells the tale of an emotionally intricate family drama set amid a sweltering European heatwave (sound familiar?). When their flamboyant, self-made artist father dies suddenly in Italy—shortly after marrying a much younger woman—his four grown children gather at his lakeside villa in search of truth, a missing painting, and their own fractured identities. With Joyce’s gentle clarity, the story drifts through art and grief, tracing the fragile threads of sibling ties stretched thin — and tenderly testing whether they can be rewoven after a lifetime in the shadow of a larger-than-life father.🎶 Autumnal Jazz Playlist
Soft sax over candlelit dinners.🎶 Agnes Obel Radio
Melancholy melodies I find perfect for slow Autumn afternoons.
On My Screen
Homeworthy – The Breathtaking English Country Home of Anthropologie’s Former Creative Mind
A ramble through Keith Johnson’s Georgian estate in Wiltshire, layered with stories, curiosities, and a collector’s eye for the whimsical.
Inside Man – Stanley Tucci & David Tennant
A taut, four-part BBC thriller created by Steven Moffat, produced by Hartswood Films, and later streamed on Netflix. The story slips between an English vicarage and a US prison cell, where Tucci’s death-row detective and Tennant’s conflicted vicar circle the darkest moral knots.
Carême – Apple TV+
A lush, French-language historical drama tracing the rise of Antonin Carême, the first “celebrity chef” of the Napoleonic era — equal parts culinary legend and political intrigue. (Apple TV+)
On My Wardrobe Rails
As temperatures dip, I reach for:
Oatmeal Cardigan (Sézane) – Pulled over linen dresses when the evenings turn cool.
Patch Pocket Engineered Jeans (Me&Em) – My faithful pair, worn more often than not.
Breton Stripe (Saint James) – Long-sleeved and classic; a nod to the Atlantic coast.
Linen Scarf (Couleur Chanvre)– Light and understated, the quintessential French September layer.
Ballerinas (Repetto) – That quintessential French shoe, endlessly versatile.
Clogs (Bosabo) – Practical for brocante hunting and hours in the kitchen, and most importantly, made in France.
Vintage Denim Jacket – Just enough warmth while the days still hold onto summer’s heat
Where I’ve Been
This summer began and ended in Montfort, with more than 7,000 kilometres of driving in between. First came Champagne and Burgundy, where we rode our bikes between rows of late-summer vines, pausing often for tastings — purely, of course, to stay hydrated in the heatwave.
Holland was next. In ’s-Hertogenbosch we stayed at the Bosch Suites, perfectly placed for wandering the canals and listening to the bells of the great Gothic cathedral. Then on to Maastricht, where Cousins Boutique Hotel was as warm and welcoming as the city itself, with its lively squares and easy blend of Dutch and French spirit.
From there the road carried us north to Norway, where the fjords and long, silvery light felt like another world entirely. (I’ll be sharing more of that soon in a travel guide.)
And finally, August brought us full circle — back to Montfort, and the bosom of home. Driving so far has a way of teaching this simple truth: the more distance you put between yourself and home, the sweeter it feels to return.
In France This Month
🍇 Vendanges – It’s harvest festival time here in Montfort, with the annual village fete as well as grapes being picked across the country and the first pressings celebrated in villages large and small.
🏰 Journées du Patrimoine – Mid-September throws open the doors of châteaux, cloisters and old farmsteads usually kept behind closed gates.
🛍 Autumn Brocantes – Market tables are heavy with copper pans, carved wooden boxes and velvet chairs in autumnal gold — treasures that feel just right for the season ahead.
A Little French Ritual for September
🍂 Gathering Nuts at Dawn – Finding chestnuts and walnuts on early morning dog walks.
🕯 Candlelight Evenings – Shorter days equal twinkling candles; stacking the wood shed becomes an autumnal chore in preparation for a season of crackling open fires.
🍠 First Soups and Slow Dinners – One-pot meals that simmer while the air chills, giving time to breathe.
✏ Rentrée Reflections – The return to school rhythms, office hours, tapestry by the fire—an echo of last summer’s bustle, now distant.
September Folklore Calendar
1 September – Saint Gilles
In Provence, shepherds looked to him as they moved their flocks to autumn pastures — a quiet beginning to the farming year.
7 September – Saint Cloud
« À la Saint-Cloud, sème ton blé ou retire-toi. »
Sow your wheat today, or wait. Timing is everything.
29 September – Saint Michel
Michaelmas — the true turning point. Once the day for settling debts and hiring help, with goose on the table and eyes lifted to the skies as birds flew south, reminding all that winter was not far behind.
September Skies
In September, the skies foretell…
🌫️ Brumes en septembre, promesse d’un beau décembre
Mists in September promise a fine December
Foggy mornings foretell a clear and pleasant winter
🌊 Septembre sèche les fossés ou emporte les ponts
September dries up the dikes, or carries off the bridges
The month brings extremes — either parching drought or sudden floods
🍇 Beau septembre, emplit les granges et les chambres
Fair September blows soft, until the fruits are gathered in loft
Gentle weather helps ripen and store the harvest
⛈️ Orages de septembre annoncent un printemps tendre
September thunder is the sign of a mild winter
Storms at summer’s end mean the cold months will be gentler
☀️ Septembre chaud, décembre froid (variant: Septembre chaud, hiver froid)
A warm September, a mild winter to remember
An unseasonably hot month leads to an easier season ahead
🌫️ Septembre se montre souvent en brouillards, qui annoncent un hiver clément
If September gives many foggy days, autumn and winter will be mild
Frequent mists signal softness, not severity, in the months to come
I’m back from summer holidays with a head full of ideas — an exciting kitchen and living extension begins in December, and I’ll be sharing video updates here on Substack so you can follow the planning stage with me, alongside live Q&A sessions on Instagram. I’m also developing a new line of original products, so stay tuned.
Most of all, I want this space to feel like it belongs to you too — tailored by your questions and curiosities as much as by my stories. So if there’s something you’d love me to write about, leave a comment below and help shape what comes next.
Wishing you a wonderful month,