Food So Good You Follow Your Nose

  Even before you see this stall in Mirepoix, you can smell what it sells from the great heady, indescribably good waft that lures you on, so tempting that it makes your stomach gurgle. Walk round the corner and you see this. Beyond it--and I'll post on this separately sometime soon--is the stall where we buy almost all our vegetables.

 In the foreground, what you get with your couscous (out of frame, in an equally large pan to the right).

  "La Part" means a serving. Parmentier de carnard is shepherd's pie made with duck.

A paella. Get there early enough and you can watch the stallholders building it from scratch.

 Mussels in cream sauce. Also available: moules marinières. Send a comment and let me know what you would order.

Two New Restaurants in Mirepoix

    Apart from vide greniers, there's not much to do in the way of shopping in our part of France on Sundays. Granted, you can pick up your crusty bread, tarte au citron, roast chicken or newspaper--and even a handful of supermarkets throw open their doors--but, soon after noon, everything shuts tight. Simple reason. Sunday lunch is one of the, if not the, most important meal of the week. Boulangerie and patisserie queues are common, everyone departing with baguettes under their arm or swinging a small square tarte-holding box from the hand. The butcher is usually sold out of rotisserie chicken by noon. Then, silence falls as families gather at maman or grandmaman's house and everyone sits down around the table.

     Last Sunday, we thought we'd go out to lunch. Not a full-on three courses because temperatures have been in the mid to high thirties all this week. All we wanted was something light in the shade of a parasol at one of the new-ish restaurants we wanted to try in Mirepoix. 

         

 Vegetarian Indian food. We didn't eat here as, coincidentally, we'd had a curry dinner just a couple of nights previously. What we did have, which was utterly delicious, was chilled ginger-and-lemon juice.

La Niña is the only place I know that serves duck fajitas!

The yellow-ish cast to these food photos comes from the parasol.  Excellent pizzas here with a crust as thin as a supermodel. Tomatoes, aubergines, asparagus, peppers and just enough cheese. Delish.

     

    

                            
     One of the salades composées on the menu. This one was loaded with chunks of Roquefort and walnuts. Too hot for wine so we drank eau de robinet (tap water).

One more vide grenier, two more brocantes...

Last Sunday morning found us ambling around a vide grenier in Mirepoix.

   The big question here was...could you buy each item individually or did you have to walk away with the whole thing?

The careful editing and arranging--enamelware in this case--means that this stallholder knows his or her stuff--and prices are correspondingly higher than if you unearthed any of these from a carton underneath the table (my favourite place to search). I didn't even bother to ask the price of this matched set of vintage tins in prime condition.

  We own a duplicate of the one on the right. From the hairstyles, I'm guessing these date back to the 1940s or 50s.

On the secondhand social ladder, the vide grenier is at the bottom, with the depot-vente one step up, and the brocante above that. Then you enter the costly realm of the antiquaire. This brocante in Mirepoix specializes in old books and magazines. If you're a Brigitte Bardot fan, check out all those  copies of Paris Match.

The owner was still enjoying his Sunday lunch when we walked by. "I'm eating. Open 3 p.m."

But there's another brocante right opposite.

I just love this combination of sun-faded pinks and blues, and that intricate tiled floor inside.

     Beyond the shop is a secret courtyard crammed with more treasures. Next weekend, there's another vide grenier in a nearby village.
     And so summer Sundays go by...

Mirepoix's Monday Market

   You have to love alliteration, don't you....Mirepoix's marvellous Monday market is maddening at the moment mainly because of its summer visitors. Glad as I am that they're enjoying our part of the country, it can be frustrating elbowing my way through the camera-wielders. House rule at the moment is that if we're not there before 9 a.m., forget it.
   Some random notes, with prices left on so you can see how they compare with what you're paying if you live in North America.

 Organic heirloom tomatoes. Red, orange, yellow, green, striped, blushing, juicy, sweet... serve yourself, mix and match. Slice on a plate, strew with torn basil, sprinkle with olive oil. There's the entrée taken care of. That price of 2.50 euros a kilo translates to about $1.42 a pound.

 One 500 g portion of paella costs $5.50. Get to the market early enough and you can watch it being made.

Cornus and miches are big crusty, hole-y loaves weighing 750 - 800 g. They're meant to last a week, from one market day to the next. These cost $3.37 each.

    You'll pay $1.70 a pound for the main ingredient for your moules marinières. At some point during the past ten years, the price of mussels rocketed from 2.80 euros to 3 euros. It's been 3 euros now for at least three years. This producer farms his moules in Sète on the Mediterranean coast, not far from Montpellier. He gets up at 3 a.m., leaves his house an hour later and eventually parks his van at Mirepoix on Mondays and Lavelanet on Fridays. Other days he goes to other markets. He told me that he's being doing this for 30 years.
    Behind the shellfish, you can make out the doorway of a smart little boutique. If you leave your moules with the moules man (a few kilos can be a few too many to lug round the market) and you haven't arrived by the time he's on the road home, he will leave your purchase inside the boutique

The Monday morning routine.

    Not saying that the occasional supermarket pork chop doesn't find its way into our fridge but most weeks we try to do almost all of our meat and veg shopping at the markets in Lavalenet and Mirepoix, the two small towns that are each about a 15-minute drive from our village. Lavelanet's is on Fridays--and it's by far the better one in terms of the number and variety of producers, and general mood of joie de vivre. Mirepoix's on a Monday is still good but its historical setting does mean that, summertime especially, it's rife with visitors who are there to gaze not rummage through the courgettes and aubergines.
     Never easy any time, finding a place to park the car can be horrendous in July and August. We do have a secret spot where we can usually guarantee success but it's a five-minute walk from the market stalls. Most Mondays, Peter drops me off just beyond the post office so I can make a start on shopping. But before I stroll into the square, I cross the road and go in here.

Here's the boulangerie where I get out of the car with my basket, back-up plastic bag, and list. We usually arrange to meet about 20 minutes later in the presse. That way, if either of us is late, the waiting one can browse through the new issue of Cuisine Actuelle and Paris-Match.

Those multicoloured thingies on the middle and upper shelves are pears, apples, mice and Sponge-Bob Square Pants (!!) made of marzipan. Approaching nirvana...

...with a brief stop to gaze at these.

Almost there. The pains aux raisins are on the top shelf on the right--and there are only two left, but that doesn't matter.

I should have put a euro coin beside this so you could see its colossal size. It's easily big enough for the two of us. The best part is the sugary, buttery, raisin-laden middle.

Monday Market Musings in Mirepoix.

    Let's hear it for "apt alliteration's artful aid". Anyway, just a few mental notes jotted down earlier today as we shopped.

1) Tourist season is starting up again. Check the number of cars parked in the hotel parking lot on the way in, the number of people carrying cameras but not shopping baskets, and the number of people not reading La Dépêche outside the café.

2)  The commune de Mirepoix will be one vast vegetable bed come summer to judge from the hundreds of seedlings being bought.

3) I would like a summer dress in the soft garnet, cream and sharp green colours of new garlic.
4) I wish I'd bought the flowery summer dress that I saw on the friperie (secondhand clothes) stall. It was the right size and cost two euros.
5) I must stop buying clothes at the friperie in Lavelanet as the lady there now not only knows me but knows my taste to the point that she shows me things she thinks I will like. She's usually right.
6) How come I got a chocolate almond in the saucer of my crème and Peter got a small biscuit?
7) How much I love La Presse in Mirepox for playing classical music so that you listen to Bach or Vivaldi while you leaf through the food magazines.
8) How happy it makes me that we park the car in Place Marcel Pagnol, a little square named after the man who created Jean de Florette. I wish I could say that the square was lined with cafés and shaded by plane trees but it's not. It's where we go to pay our various taxes.

9) How this same group stands in the same spot every week--and everyone cheerfully walks around them.

10) How you can buy live trout, artisanal beer and handmade leather sandals from this row of stalls

11) How I purposely detour around beside the cathedral so I can sniff the amazing smells that come from these colossal pans of poulet basquaise and paella. One morning, around 10 a.m., we were there with a friend who was visiting from Canada and the smell hit her so powerfully that she had to buy a serving of bouillabaisse right there and then, and eat it on the spot.

12) How clever it is for vendors to put all the vegetables that go into ratatouille all together.

What a difference a day makes.

Less than twenty-four little hours separate these two shots.

Sunday afternoon

Monday morning.

Mirepoix on a wintry afternoon....

We drove into Mirepoix the weekend before last for its Christmas market. The day was sharp and cold as a diamond but I've rarely seen this medieval town look more beautiful. It wasn't too crowded, and the winter light was low enough to spotlight the carvings under the arcade. Anyway, mes amis, some photo ops with extended captions.

A boulangerie that believes when it comes to Christmas decorations, more is more. The climbing Santa figure is very popular around here. 

Different varieties of honey, from the mountains, from wild flower meadows, from the forest. Don't their amber and gold colours make your want to spoon them out on to freshly made hot buttered toast?

I love this butcher's shop in the corner of the square. See those rotisserie chickens behind the sign?



Kids around here watch these instead of television. 

This sign hangs outside a store catering to pampered chiens et chats.

Mirepoix market yesterday

   Now that tourism season has died down, we've added a Monday visit to Mirepoix market back into our weekly routine. July and August, it's crammed and--unless you get there by 8:30 a.m. (and leave by 9:30 a.m.) it's no fun at all.
   But this week's was. Sun blazing, everyone enjoying café crème under the arcades, and cheerful orange things everywhere--pumpkins, carrots, Indian bedspreads...

   Another uplifting piece of news is that, thanks to public protest, Mirepoix will not be getting another supermarket anytime soon.

Pom, Pom, Pom, Pom....

   Last Sunday was one of those golden days that's good from start to finish. The sun shone, the Pyrenees were as sharply defined as a cardboard cutout and the trees on the road to Pamiers are beginning to show their autumn colours.

    The reason for going there, as it always is on a Sunday, was to prowl around the flea market. Out last visit was several weeks ago and I always maintain that the karma builds up the longer you leave it. 

   Sure enough, we were hardly in the square when Peter spotted the base of an old treadle sewing machine. We measured it--these days I never go anywhere without a tape measure in my handbag--and saw that it was exactly the right size to fit at the end of the island in the kitchen. The big dining table feels a little too big for the two of us sometimes. Besides, recently it's been covered with papers, projects and various other stuff. 

    The base was priced at 40 euros. We offered 30 and the deal was done. Later, after crèmes, pains aux raisins, and an hour's browsing, we lugged the sewing machine base along the street to the car park and shoehorned it into the trunk of the Clio.

Back home, we found that the chunk of butcher's block that's been following us around for years was exactly the right size for the table top.  Its grunginess disappeared under vigorous sand-papering and a coat of oil has turned it the same golden-brown as the cabinetry. 

    Last Sunday's other highlight was

Mirepoix's Apple Festival was the highlight of last weekend, the umpteenth one we've been to. Each year, there's a different theme. We've had boats, planes and, in 2009, it was music's turn. Hence the "pom, pom, pom" line on festival posters. 

   As always pommes were everywhere, , green, yellow, red, russet, streaked, strung from the 13th century beams, displayed in shop windows and, at their most magnificent, secured individually to wire bases to create giant bongos, guitar, pan pipes and musical notes.

    We milled around in the sunshine, deciding whethger the tarte sold at that stall was better than the one sold at this stall, and admiring the Corvette-red shine of the toffee apples.

    A group of men pressed apples in an old press to make the freshest possible juice. Musicians played old French songs. It was all quite splendid with the sun beating down and the outdoor cafés packed to bursting. We left with three kilos of apples, and a pie. 

     If you're wondering what happens to all those thousands and thousands of apples (each one attached by hand by volunteers) they're taken down and given to the Red Cross and to food banks.