Omelette and a Glass of Wine (43 page)

Writing of the work of Chardin, whose most profoundly moving paintings are revelations of how trivial, homely, everyday scenes and objects are transformed for us when we see them through the eyes of a great painter, Proust says, ‘Chardin has taught us that a pear is as living as a woman, a kitchen crock as beautiful as an emerald.’ Since Proust wrote these words painters and writers have revealed other beauties to us – they have made us see the poetry of factory canteens and metro stations, the romance of cog-wheels, iron girders, bombed buildings, dustbins and pylons. But in the excitement of discovering these wondrous things we shall be poorer if we don’t also give a thought now and again to the pear and the kitchen crock.

Vogue
, March 1960

The Markets of France: Martigues

One of the meals we all enjoyed most during our journeyings round the markets of France last summer was a lunch in the end-of-the-world little town of Salin-de-Giraud on the edge of the Camargue. After a pretentious dinner and a bad night – it is rare, I find, to get through even a fortnight’s motoring trip in France without at least one such disaster – spent in à highly unlikely establishment disguised as a cluster of Camargue guardian huts, we left before breakfast and spent a healing morning lost in the remaining lonely stretches of this once completely wild, mysterious, melancholy, half-land, half-water, Rhône estuary country.

Much of the Camargue has now been reclaimed, roads and bridges have been built, and huge rice fields have been planted. They have been so successful that from an initial yearly production of
about 250 tons during the middle forties these rice fields now yield 145,000 tons a year and supply France with the whole of her rice requirements. It has been a great triumph for France’s construction and agricultural engineers, a dazzling testimony to the industry and enterprise of a people who so often appear, to those who do not know them, to be in a perpetual state of political and economic chaos. One cannot but rejoice for France, and wholeheartedly admire the determination and ingenuity which has turned an almost totally waste land into a productive and prosperous one.

Alas, though, for the animals and the wild birds, for the legendary beasts which frequented the Camargue, for the shimmering lonely stretches of water, for the still heart of this mournful mistral-torn and mosquito-ridden country. The harpies from Paris running the road houses which must inevitably multiply will be a worse scourge than the mosquitoes. Owners of souvenir shops selling china Camargue bulls and plastic flamingoes and scarves printed with Provençal recipes will be more implacable than the mistral.

These rather gloomy thoughts were in our minds as we arrived, a bit soothed but still edgy, to find that the last ferry over the Rhône from Salin which would take us on to the road to Martigues had left at 11.30 and there would not be another until 2 o’clock. Forlornly we made our way to the local restaurant.

And there, instead of the omelette and the glass of wine which we had expected to swallow in a nervous hurry, we found the Restaurant La Camarguaise serving a well-chosen and properly cooked and comforting meal in a clean and high-ceilinged dining-room. The menu was 600 francs, and while the food was very simple it reminded me of what Provençal restaurants used to be like in the days before even the most ordinary of Provençal dishes became a ‘speciality’ listed on the menu as a
supplément
at 750 francs. There was an hors-d’œuvre of eggs and anchovies, there were hot grilled fresh sardines to follow, the vegetable course was
côtes de blettes
, the rib parts of those enormous leaves of the spinach family which we know as chard and which are much cultivated in the Rhône valley; the leaves themselves are cooked in the same way as spinach, the fleshy stalks and ribs were, on this occasion, sautéd in olive oil and flavoured with garlic and were delicious. The
bœuf Gardiane
which followed brought tears to our eyes; we had been overwrought and dropping with fatigue, and while the food we had already eaten had cheered and comforted us, it wasn’t until the cover was taken off the dish of beef stew and we smelt the wine and
the garlic and the rich juices and saw the little black olives and the branches of wild thyme which had scented the stew laid in a little network over the meat, that the tension vanished. We ordered more supplies of the cheap red wine and decided that the 2.30 ferry would have to go without us.

Well, God bless the French lunch hour. It must have been nearly 5 o’clock when, having finally got the cars across that ferry, we eventually drove into Martigues in dazzling late afternoon sunshine to see the fishing boats come in.

In this still picturesque village, beloved and painted by generations of English as well as French artists, so charmingly, proudly, and absurdly known as the Venice of Provence – it is built on the Lagoon of Berre, west of Marseille – most of the inhabitants still live by fishing, and in spite of tremendous industrial development round about it is still comparatively unspoilt. It won’t be for long. Martigues will soon be all but swallowed up in the new harbour constructions planned to stretch west from Marseille.

But for a little moment Martigues still stands, and we drink coffee on the quay as we wait for the boats to come in. Anthony is taking pictures of a faded blue warehouse door on which pink and coral and pale gold stars are hanging. They are starfish dried by the sun. Somewhere here in Martigues they are also drying something slightly more edible – the famous
poutargue
, compressed and salted grey mullet roes, a primitive speciality of Martigues whose origin goes back, they say, to the Phoenicians. It is made in Sardinia, too, and Crete, and for collectors of useless information,
poutargue
, or
botargo
, was among the dishes served at King James II’s coronation feast. As a matter of fact we had some too, with a bottle of white wine for breakfast next day at M. Bérot’s lovely restaurant the Escale, at Carry-le-Rouet, across the hills from Martigues and overlooking a real honest-to-goodness, glorious postcard Mediterranean bay.

The children watching us are also watching for the boats, and they have spotted the first of the fleet coming in. So have the cats. The
Yves-Jacky
chugs into her berth, ties up; the skipper’s wife, ready at her post, wheels her fish barrow aboard. Almost before you can see what has come up out of the hold the fish is loaded on the barrow and trundled off at breakneck speed, followed by the small boys and the cats. The auction in the market place on the quay has started.

A few minutes later, in quick succession, come the
Espadon
and the
St-Jean
and the
Bienvenue.
The boats are blue, the nets are black, and the whole scene does remind me a little of the Adriatic, even if not precisely of Venice.

None of the boats have sensational catches today. This part of the Mediterranean is terribly overfished. A large percentage of Marseille’s fresh fish supplies is brought from the North Sea and Channel ports. But still there are some fine and strange-looking fish gleaming with salt water and sparkling in the sun. There’s a brown and red and gold beast called a
roucaou
; it’s a bit like the famous
rascasse
which goes into the
bouillabaisse
, but larger. Here is a boxful of tiny
poulpes
, a variety of squid which never grow big and which are exquisite fried crisp in oil. There’s a
langouste
or two, and some kind of silver sea bream which they call
sarde
round here, and some
baudroie
, that fish with the wicked antennae-like hooks growing out of its huge head – the fish they call
rana pescatrice
in Western Italy and
rospo
on the Adriatic, and angler or monk fish in England. The baby ones are as pretty and appealing as kittens with their little round heads. And there is a familiar friend, a gigantic turbot, and a long black fish with an arrow-shaped head. They call it
émissole
here, and to us it’s a dogfish. There is a silver
loup de mer
, or sea-bass, and some big, rather touchingly ugly John Dories, called
St-Pierres
in France, because of the black St Peter’s thumb marks on their sides.

Some of these big fish fetch big prices, two or three times as much as we would pay for them here, and they will go to the classy restaurants or the Marseille fish shops, but the boxes of little slithery bright pink fish called
demoiselles
and the miscellaneous collections of bony little rock fish, undersized whiting and other small fry, will go for very little. Most of the buyers are women – so is the auctioneer, a brawny, competent, good-humoured young woman with a Levantine cast of countenance and a thick Midi accent – who will re-sell them locally this very evening; any minute now the housewives of Martigues and Lavéra and round about will be turning them into
la soupe
or
la friture
for the evening meal.

Vogue
, April 1960

The Markets of France: Valence

To drive from Lascaux of the prehistoric caves in the Dordogne right across country to Valence on the Rhône is possibly not the most expeditious way of getting from the deep south-west of France to the Mediterranean. But if time is not too desperately important it is one way of seeing a vast stretch of surprising and magnificent country, some interesting and unspoiled old towns, perhaps even of discovering some village in the heart of the still primitive agricultural Auvergne, some little-known hotel where one would like to stay instead of hurrying on, to which one would return another year. At the least, perhaps a country inn somewhere in the Limousin or the Cantal district will yield a new dish or a wine which was worth the détour. A
charcuterie
in Aurillac or Vic-sur-Cère or some other small but locally important town will possibly provide a pâté the like of which you never tasted before, or a locally cured ham, a few slices of which you will buy and carry away with a salad, a kilo of peaches, a bottle of Monbazillac and a baton of bread, and somewhere on a hillside amid the mile upon mile of golden broom or close to a splashing waterfall you will have, just for once, the ideal picnic.

Was it up here above Aurillac that one of our party found the best picnic place in France? A stretch of water, mysterious, still, full of plants and birds, away from the road, sheltered with silver birches, and with a stone table evidently waiting there especially for us?

We had driven from Montignac near Lascaux. We had stayed at the Soleil d’Or, a little hotel as warm-hearted as its name. We had eaten a good dinner – among other things a golden bolster of an omelette bursting its seams with truffles – and drunk some excellent red wine of Cahors and afterwards a glass of that remarkable
eau-de-vie
of plums called
Vieille Prune
which is one of the great Dordogne products – another is the odd and delicious walnut oil with which, if you are lucky, you may get your salad dressed.

In spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, we made an early enough start to reach Aurillac in plenty of time to buy our picnic lunch and see something of the old town. Had it been a Saturday we should have stayed to see the cheese market. For Aurillac is one of the centres for the distribution of the splendid cheese of Cantal, to my mind one of the best and most interesting in France. It is a cheese
which has a texture not unlike a good Lancashire, and when properly matured a flavour which beats most modern English cheeses on their own ground. There is also a less interesting, creamy, unripened version called a
tomme de Cantal
, much used for cooking, especially in farmhouse potato and egg dishes.

After our picnic lunch we’ll have to hurry. We must get across the Plomb du Cantal, into the Velay, and through the scruffy pilgrimage town of Le Puy. But I shall stop to buy some of those beautiful little slate-green lentils for which the district is famous and which a greedy guest of mine recently proclaimed as good as caviare – and also to telephone to Madame Barattero at the Hôtel du Midi at Lamastre to say we are coming for dinner.

Valence is the big shopping centre and market town for Lamastre. The wholesale fruit and poultry market opens before dawn on Saturday and is all packed up by seven o’clock in the morning. In the big retail market which opens later on the combined scents of ripe peaches and the fresh basil and thyme plants lying in heaps on the ground gave us our first sniff of Provence. But the plump little white ducks and the fresh St-Marcellin cheeses from the Isère, the exquisite black and green olives from Nyons which we bought for lunch tempted us to drive north or south-east of Valence instead of directly south.

The Drôme, the Tricastin, the Nyonsais regions are so different from Provence, so unfrequented early in the year, so interesting historically and architecturally …why hurry off to the south? The names of the little towns round about Valence ring like peals of bells compelling you to go and look at them. If, let us suppose, you were driving south from Mâcon or Bourg-en-Bresse (I would stay chez La Mère Blanc at Vonnas) you could drive through La-Tour-du-Pin, Saint-Rambert d’Albon, Beaurepaire d’Isère, Beaumont-les-Valence, La Garde-Adhémar, St-Paul-Trois-Châteaux – the three castles which gave their name to the Tricastin district – then down to Suze-La-Rousse and the tiny village of Donzère and its great nearby dam which is as wondrous and absorbing a spectacle in its way as any of the great Roman glories of this province through which, they claim, Hannibal marched with his Carthaginians – and presumably his elephants – two thousand one hundred and seventy-seven years ago.

The cooking of this mid-Rhone country is in a sense a cross-roads cooking. There are already the olive oil and the garlic and the
aromatic herbs of Provence; there are the cream and the cheeses of the Dauphiné; there are the sumptuously cooked duck and chicken dishes of the Ardèche side of the Rhône. There are the crayfish and the creamy quenelles and the
charcuterie
which still belong a little to Lyon. And there are some old dishes entirely characteristic of this stretch of the Rhône itself and which have hardly spread farther than the villages and towns on the river banks. They are the dishes invented or popularized by the bargemen of the Rhône and their wives, and by the proprietors of the humble inns and
charcuteries
who used to cater for the men who worked the inland waterways. Such a dish is the
grillade des mariniers
, for which I have given a recipe on p.252 of the present volume.