A new restaurant discovery in Carcassonne

    Back sometime in December. Rainy, slate-grey skies, bitingly cold...why would I take my camera on a day-trip toCarcassonne when the plans were just to have lunch, shop and drop a friend off at the airport?
    We did squeeze in some browsing later that afternoon, trawling Sephora and Monoprix and dismayed to find that Maisons du Monde had closed. (Not that I ever seriously wanted a chest-of-drawers emblazoned with Marilyn Monroe but it was nice to know where to find one if I did.)
    Lunch first. The Carcassonne you think of when you hear the name is the ancient walled Cité. It may be riddled with tourists most of the time, but it's surprisingly full of decent, affordable places to eat. Unless you're in the market for plastic swords and helmets, you're better off shopping in the lower town, sometimes called the "new" town because it only dates back to the 13th century.
    Place Carnot is its centre. A square that's just the right convivial size, it was currently being made ready for Christmas festivities with chalets and an ice rink.

    Fake icicles hung around the fountain in the middle (this shot was obviously taken earlier in the year).
    At some time or another, we've eaten our way through most of the cafés and restaurants around it but this was our first venture into Le Saint Roch. What sucked us in was the menu posted outside.
    It was a chilly day so we were ready for the full three courses. My entrée was a miniature paella pan--about the size of a tea-plate--holding an egg "Catalan style" on a base of cooked tomato, peppers and onion. Two orders of gesiers salad, prepared a little differently "very, very tasty," (I'm transcribing as he speaks). Samosa filled with spice-inflected tuna (and that side salad) were described as "the best samosas in France." Not sure if that's damning with faint praise though for someone who just arrived from Asia.
     On to the mains. I'm obsessed with seiches at the moment. Two fat ones, perfectly cooked a la plancha, came with roasted potatoes and a scoop of sweet potato purée. Those who had ordered the steak and duck confit got the same veg. A commendable pear-and-chocolate crumble to finish with rather too much whipped cream drizzled with chocolate sauce at its side.
     Three course lunch menu, 14.50 euros. Details: Restaurant Le Saint Roch, 15 place Carnot, Carcassonne, 04-68-71-62-43
  

The Eye of the Needle

In Carcassone for the day, we walked down this street and came upon...

At first, we thought she was a painter. Then, as we got closer, we saw that she was "drawing" with needle and thread. It looked as though she was doing it freehand too.

One of her completed works--a "Salvador Dali". Attached to it is a note saying that it's not for sale but for the world to look at. In case you're wondering how she made a living, there was a hat on the ground if you wanted to throw in a euro or two. 

To give you some idea of the intricacy of her work, here's a closeup of the thumb just underneath the egg.

And moving in even closer, you can see the incredible fineness of her work. I can't begin to imagine how many thousands of hours she must spend on one piece of work. All I know is that she was there when we walked towards the main square, and there several hours later when we left.

The Good Life at the Château de Cavanac

    Kate, our daughter, is staying with us so, for a treat, we booked us all into the Château de Cavanac, a few clicks south of Carcassonne. I'd heard good things about this place from my cousin in Ireland and local friends so, after a morning and lunch in the old walled cité, we drove there with high expectations, parked outside tall wrought-iron gates and crunched our way across the gravel into reception.
    The chateau is just plain gorgeous. Each room is decorated differently, and assigned the name of a flower. Ours overlooked this courtyard filled with palms and oleanders.  http://www.chateau-de-cavanac.fr/ 

    Dinner here is the kind of sumptuous meal that makes you glad you don't have to drive home afterwards. A five course event, complete with wine, it costs 42 euros--or a bit under $60 (US, Canadian or Australian--they're all around the same at the moment).
     The long beamed room was already almost full by the time we sat down. A wood oven blazed in the background behind a glass-fronted counter laden with meats and produce. Three opened bottles of wine stood on the table (the chateau has its own vineyard) and seconds later, peach kirs arrived and a basket of small peppery pastries typical of the region. I won't walk you through the entire menu (just click on http://www.chateau-de-cavanac.fr/menuvf.pdf ) and I'll only show you one photo--my first course, one of the four variations on foie gras you could start with.

     Roasted in a wood oven, the lamb was probably the best I've ever tasted, crisp and smoky outside, and meltingly tender. Next came a platter of five different kinds of local goat cheese with a pot of honey to drizzle over them. By the time we reached dessert, all I could cope with was raspberries and cream. A little glass of verveine tea and so to bed.

A look at the vineyards the next morning before we headed home.

  

A Nice Little Lunch in Carcassonne

We had errands to do in Carcassonne on Wednesday. A meeting with the bank. A wander around the aptly named Géant hypermarché. And, of course, lunch. 

Last year around this time, on a blustery day, we had a memorable plat du jour at a little bistro called Café Florian on Place Carnot in the old town. I can still taste that duck confit with tagliatelle mixed with wild mushrooms and garlic cream sauce. So we went back and managed to nail one of the few remaining tables. 

Picture crimson walls, tables crowded together and a rush of people on their two-hour lunch break. Everyone there seemed to be ordering the nine-euro plat du jour so we did too. Onglet--hangar steak--with a shallot sauce, an excellent sweet potato soufflé sort of thing, a spoonful of ratatouille and, at each corner, a petite cluster of mâche. That, a quarter litre of red and coffees set us up for the afternoon.

Rainy Day Cassoulet in Carcassonne

Wearing warm sweaters, jackets and resolute expressions, we headed for Carcassonne. Normally it's under an hour's drive but today we swerved and braked hard when we came on a vast vide grenier in Montréal. Too chilly to do this one serious justice but we did come away with an impressive pair of fire irons for five euros. 

By the time we had parked the car, crossed the moat, and were in the cité (the famous walled part of Carcassonne), it was lunch time. Too cold to eat under the plane trees unfortunately but just right for a three-course Sunday lunch at La Maison de Blanquette. 

This is an off-shoot of the original "Maison" in Limoux and, as there, it's a strong supporter of the Sieur d'Arques winery. You get a glass of blanquette while you mull over what you're going to eat and a half-bottle of wine per person included in an already reasonable 14 euro tab. Two went for goat's cheese salad, two for toast spread with a garlic-and-anchovy purée. Three cassoulets, two steak frites. Iles flottantes and clafoutis to finish before we rumbled off, warm and fed to roam around the city.

God, it must have been bleak work patrolling those walls except for the rare moments of fun when you threw boiling oil on invaders down the purpose-designed chutes. No guard-rails anywhere so I suspect falling to one's death was only one of the job hazards. That and avoiding the humungous boulders hurled by giant catapults located outside the city walls. 

The carbo-laden lunch meant we only needed a light frittata for supper.

Paella in Carcassonne

A fountain and square? Definitely not the traditional view of Carcassonne. The usual shot of this town (about an hour to the north-east of us) shows imposing stone walls, battlements, turrets and a  fairytale silhouette. Right now, this undeniably picturesque spot is jammed solid. Someone told me the other night that friends of theirs, seeing the scrum inside, had abandoned hope before they'd even crossed the drawbridge. 

   I'll be the first to admit that the tiny streets and ancient beamed houses within la cité (as the old walled town is known) rocket you right back through time--out of season.  But, any time of year, the "new" Carcassonne is worth a visit. Dating back to the Middle Ages), it's a bastide town, i.e. built on a grid system. It's very easy to navigate although challenging to drive through as the streets are one-car wide and all one-way. Here's where we come for the day to shop (there's a Monoprix on the main street) and to hang out in the main square over a two-hour lunch. 

   More prosaically, today's mission was to hunt for tiles for the ground floor of the house we've just bought. We need 90, or maybe, 95 square metres. Quite a lot. Which is how we ended up in the industrial area of Carcassonne at a place called Carro Price, taking photos, trying to calculate the total sum and wondering if, in any case, as often happens in France, they only had one box of the sample of display--about enough to cover a coffee table--that they were teasing us with.

    But before that, there was considerable fun. Carcassonne is throwing a three day feria this weekend, a salute to Spain complete with bull fights, bandas and, inevitably, paella. We found ours on a street near the market. Once we had successfully nailed a table in the shade, Peter went off for servings (scooped out from a metre-wide pan) and glasses of rosé. Signs everywhere said that, in the interests of safety, all glasses used outside would be plastiques. Wise. Even at 1 p.m., people were already having a rollicking good time.

   Paellas vary hugely in what's in them and how good it is. Even though served from a roadside stand, this was one of the better versions, loaded with mussels, chewy cubes of octopus, fiery chorizo, and a chicken leg apiece that was tender enough to be cut with a plastic fork. All served on a chic black plastic plate.