Gather lavender early, just as blossoms form

Lavender lore credits the Romans for bringing both their bathing rituals and the cleansing, antiseptic lavender plants to Apta Julia when this trading crossroads center was founded.  Originally a military camp, the town grew to assume importance as an administrative center on the Domitian Way from Rome to Narbonne. The climate was right for lavender, cultivated for its medicinal and antiseptic values, and the plant took hold.  Soldiers carried it to cleanse wounds and found the scent relieved stress.  I sometimes wonder what a citizen of ancient Apta Julia would say now when gazing across expanses of lavender fields between Apt, the high country of Sault, and east towards Forcalquier – before surveying the seemingly endless fields of the Valensole plâteau.  If the lavender fields now seem to stretch to the horizon, the reason today is in part commercial:  this region of Provence leads the world in lavender production.

Within this genus, Lavendula augustifolius, there are thirty-nine species. Spikes with flower tips wave above the round, bushy plant – and easily cross-pollinate, so many variations exist.  Blue, lilac, violet or white lavender all draw bees, and lavender honey is one of the region’s specialties.  To discover lavender country, the market at Sault - on Wednesdays since 1515 – is not only overflowing with Provençal vegetables, but vendors offer honeys and soaps, pastries and essential oils, all with a hint of lavender. Take a moment to ramble around Sault’s old streets and admire the vistas from its promontory overlooking the valley.  Be tempted by nougat, both black and white (both a part of the Christmas Eve Treize Desserts tradition) of local almonds and lavender honey.

A fleeting moment in the lavender fields

Pick lavender just before blossoms are completely open to maximize the natural oils.  Tuck a few into your pillow case, a bag of sweaters sealed away for winter, and in closets to repel moths and refresh the air. Using lavender in cooking takes restraint – one too many blossoms can impart a bitter taste:  remember, it is an antiseptic.  A little caution is due for the relaxing, de-stressing effect of lavender under your pillow:  it slows the nervous system to some extent, a natural for inducing sleep.  Its essential oils are effective in aromatherapy and in beauty products as well as the classic, refreshing lavender eau de toilette.  If you travel across Provence in late July and through August, you may see the lavender harvesters at work, machines rolling through fields gathering the blossoms destined for distilleries to extract lavender’s essential oils.  In Sault’s August Lavender Festival, watch a lavender-cutting competition, all a blur of scythes in action.  But for a few sprigs to infuse in a refreshing sorbet, a simple panna cotta or a custard with summer berries, now is the time to snip lavender.

For more on Provençal lavender, visit: www.avignon-et-provence.com tap Tourism, then scroll to Practical Information to tap:  Markets.  In www.saultenprovence.com/gb you will find details on lavender-related events, and at www.provencebeyond.com , a variety of travel information.

Click on distant chapel to view photo gallery of  Castillonès market.

This département, the Lot-et-Garonne, rests between Gascony to the south and the Périgord to the north, quietly going about its business which is largely agricultural. As a region slightly off the beaten path, the Agenais is worth a detour:  for Romanesque chapels rising above slopes sponged with white plum blossoms in April and nodding sunflowers through July,  it is a revelation.  And off season, the markets are among the region’s most authentic, least gentrified or tourist-trammeled in the entire Aquitaine.  From mid-May to late September expect crowds, which could be said of any part of the French southwest – unless, like the locals, you grab your basket and shop very early when everything is dew-fresh.

Like Monflanquin and Villefranche-du-Périgord, the town’s focus is on an arcaded market square, where weekly markets and monthly fairs have come and gone for centuries. What was the vagabond looking for on an April morning in Castillonès Tuesday market?  Asparagus, bien sûr, and bedding plants for potagers (vegetable gardens), to be choosen from flats of lettuce, tomato, peppers and squash (lots of vigorous courgettes). We always hunt for honey, and here I not only did we score with local tilleul/linden flower honey, but with a light-on- acidity honey vinegar.  I was delighted to find white cherry tomato plants and other unusual varieties sold by a young couple specializing in biologique/organic plants.  In fact on this visit, I noticed more biologique products lining Castillonès Grande Rue, the lively market street leading off the central square.  Cheese vendors offer a gamut of specialties from firm to crumbly Auvergne Salers and Cantal tommes to local chèvre as well as excellent fromages Corse. Two vendors tempted me with samples of Italian cheese, as well as olives, tortellini and pastries.  With such enticing products, and a lazy day ambiance of having coffee (and a flaky, rum-cream filled pastry) in the shade of  Castillonès arcades, I vowed to return…when stalls groan under loads of melons, tomatoes and freshly picked plums.

Note:  Watch for more on bastide markets in June, for a supper stop in a night market or two…quite a different interpretation of “market”. We will sample the ambiance of  just a few of the 300 bastides scattered across southern and southwestern France.

Roots, herbs...all go into the stock pot

Making Soup,  a few words on step 1:  Stock

Turnips with lilac shoulders, a stalk of crisp celery or two, a duck or guinea fowl carcass, maybe a ham bone, and don’t forget the carrots to give a winter soup color…with  sage, thyme and bay leaves. All of these flavor-giving basics are at hand when I reach for the soup stock kettle. Market day will provide more ingredients: leeks, a handful of parsley that the maraîcher always tucks into my sack, and yellow onions whose inner skins will be added for color.  I’ll use the inner, trimmed green leek tops minced up – save the most of the whites for the final soup, onions  will be quartered and stuck with cloves and carrots scrubbed but not peeled. Following Patricia Wells’ sound advice that vegetables cut in small pieces give the stock more of their flavor, I’ll chop them up, run cold water into the soup pot to cover all ingredients, turn on the heat to medium and begin the day’s simmering. The herbs tucked inside the carcass won’t float to the top with eventual foam, making skimming easier. Actually, any fresh veg you have on hand, from cores of cauliflower to broccoli stems will add flavor and nutrients, so use it all up. Lift the lid after ten minutes, begin to skim off any foam rising, then add 1 tablespoon sea salt and 1 tablespoon white wine or cider vinegar (to draw calcium from the bones into the stock) and turn heat to low.  After about four hours – or longer if you wish – strain the soup into glass jars and let the stock cool. Pull pieces of duck or pork off the bones for a spaghetti sauce or soup later. With a good layer of duck fat on top, the stock will keep about a week – if you don’t use it in a risotto first!  More about soup next week: pastinas, tiny noodles…and almond dumplings.

It does take time, making soup, and in France, “…time bows at the altar of gastronomy” as Roger Cohen observed in Monday’s  International Herald Tribune (August 31, page 7, Views). In an article titled, Advantage France, he cleverly recounts the ceremonial trimming of canettes (female ducklings) in a French market, and ladles out astute philosophy while noting innate cultural differences.  Being more involved with our food sources, and the less appealing tasks of preparation is, well, part of the process.  It is, as Cohen points out, connected to time, place and terroir.  And often this can’t be specifically translated, but ….it can be tasted.

September’s bites :  White figs,  Limousin markets, making fresh chèvre, and notes on the almond harvest.

Isolate the key flavors, the products of southern France, and the list looks something like this:  olives, olive oil, lemons, tomatoes, bell peppers and pimento, almonds and pistachios, anchovies, and of course, garlic.  Scan all countries ringing the Mediterranean Sea to find only slight variations on this lineup.  So, which kind of garlic do southern cooks choose and use most? Once dried, braided and strung up, the pink garlic of Lautrec keeps longer, while the white – almost sweet - allium sativum of Beaumont de Lomagne in Gascony is the juicy choice during summer and early autumn.  By the first of November, bitter, green sprouts appear inside this variety, indicating it is ready for planting in the next round, to be harvested early the following July.  In the same rhythm, for about a thousand years garlic has been cultivated in southern Europe – but jump back 6,000 years to trace cultivated garlic in Egypt and India. This powerful allium, noted in Sanskrit medical treatises from the second century B.C. to the second century A.D., was devoted to use as an antifungal, antiseptic and cleansing agent.  The upper classes never ate garlic, as was true of Brahmins, the clergy and upper classes around the Mediterranean for centuries:  it was a peasant ingredient relegated to cucina di povera.

How things have changed since the 1940’s, when garlic was embraced as a flavorful element by popular opinion, gradually making inroads into haute cuisine.  Fast forward to the second half of the twentieth century, when gastronomic sights were set on southern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and into the twenty-first as “fresh and healthful” became each cook’s mantra. Meanwhile, the “peasant cooking” of Europe that included garlic and other hefty ingredients has come into the spotlight. It is hard to imagine an Andalusian gazpacho, a Greek skordalia, or even Polish dill pickles without  garlic to enhance the punch of flavors….and don’t ignore this season’s vibrant blend of garlic, basil and nuts: pesto.  To crush or to cook is your choice.  When garlic is cooked, the hot sensation and odors of allicin disappear, and the edge of raw garlic mellows. With this in mind, Sicilian cooks rarely or never use garlic raw, but prefer the deeper flavors of the cooked buds.  But what about haleine (bad breath)?  Avoiding garlic breath doesn’t seem to be a concern when everyone else is eating garlic – as the vagabond has noted in Gascony and the Languedoc.  More refined tastes and sensitive noses may beg to differ, as the situation varies.  Planning to meet with your lawyer after lunch?  He has probably just had garlic-infused sausages and pasta tossed with pungent pesto on his plate.

All these comments aside, how can you best keep the savory garlic on hand for a quick tzadziki salad or to rub onto a lamb chop? Preserving buds in olive oil is good for a week – at most. After that, unwelcome bacterial growth is a distinct possibility. For longer term use, I like to pop garlic cloves into a small jar of sherry vinegar to keep in the fridge, and seldom buy more than two heads at a time.  In eastern Europe, young bulbs and shoots are pickled as a condiment. Baking whole heads of garlic with a roast chicken is reserved for a special event, and each person has a small spoon to scoop out the sweet soft – very mellow – garlic. Whether you crush or cook garlic, you’ll be doing yourself a favor – it boosts the immune system, acts as a stimulant to digestion, and enhances flavors of whatever it is mixed with, especially the other other sun-drenched icons of Mediterranean cuisine.

Note: There are over 300 varieties of garlic, so if you are interested in planting your own, refer to www.2sistersgarlic.com/varieties.htm for details.

‘Tis the season, the plump red tomatoes of Marmande are in the spotlight:  on July 24 and 25th the bastide town overflows with Tomato Fiesta festivities.  One of the most important French fruit growing regions surrounds Marmande in northern Gascony, south east of Bordeaux. Until the nineteenth century’s Phylloxera epidemic wiped out French grape vines, lands sloping down to the Garonne River were a patchwork of vineyards. It took over fifty years of recovery to plant the same hills in fruit and vegetables, primarily strawberries, tomatoes and fruit trees, taking advantage of a fruit-favorable micro-climate. It was only in the latter half of the twentieth century that wine making was revived and the Côtes de Marmande wines were again produced. The perfectly round tomato called the Marmande, developed in this region, is only one variety to be found in the town’s animated Saturday morning market. And this is indeed the season to sniff out other varieties, their heady aromas filling the air. The rosy-pink Coeur de Boeuf (pictured above) is a local favorite, but Romas and San Marinos for super sauces appear on vendors’ stalls as well.

The Tomato Fiesta gets underway  Friday the 24th of July with a late afternoon market and chef Fabrice Biasolo’s cooking workshops. A recipe contest will also be judged (deadline for all recipe-blogger entries is the 23rd!), and tomatoes are featured on Marmande menus all weekend.  At 7:00 on Friday evening, a fanfare parade led by the Confréries Chevalier de la Pomme d’Amour* opens the festivites.  Saturday morning, things get rolling early and an expanded weekly market teases shoppers with tomato tastings. Another chef’s atelier/workshop led by an Italian and a Spanish chef fills the morning; contests, games and music hold sway all day.  And after the choosing, the tasting, the cooking, you will still say:  Some French tomato!

*Brotherhood of the Love Apple

Note:  For details on the tomato recipe contest, see: www. marie-marmande.fr or www.concours.tomatoaquitaine.fr and for other tomato events in France, see http://tomodori.com. September’s tomato harvest is celebrated in the Loire valley near Montlouis: visit www.chateaulabourdaisiere.com for more on this major autumn fête.

Fête des Plantes, Floralies, Foire aux Fleurs…anywhere in France during May and June, plant-shoppers flock to their favorite plant specialists’ stalls to bring color back home.  In fact, color, fragrance, and taste are all to be found  in every Foire aux Fleurs. Vendors gather in a church square, or on the grounds of medieval monasteries to tempt gardeners of all stripes.  Geraniums for your balcony? Maple trees and bushes of great diversity to enhance your slopes or lawns?  A Meyer Lemon tree for the terrace (and pies in good time), bamboos or ferns, perennials or old roses are all to be admired – and bought – in this season’s floralies.

Two of the vagabond’s favorite plant festivals are set against 13th century walls.  In Cadouin, between Bergerac and Sarlat, stalls sprawl across the square of the grey stone abbey church that was once a stopping point for pilgrims on the route to St. Jaques de Compostella. Now, the village May Floralies draws some of the finest plant specialists in  southwest France.  Whether one is searching for a special cyclamen or pots of lavender, a wide variety of greenery and related wares tempt gardeners.  How many new kinds of peppers can you find for the potager?  The vagabond succumbs to enticing piments et aromatiques each year at the Cadouin fair.

At L’Abbaye – Nouvelle, a 13th century Cistercian site in the Lot  south of Gourdon, a Fête des Plantes in May brings together vendors of everything from bonsai to aquatic plants, as well as camelias and jasmins.  Usually held on Sunday, floralies fit into my calendar of special markets, a visual feast as well as  a chance to bring fragrance home….and to watch a new season unfold in the garden.

A note on the Poppy shown above:  the star of the borders this week is Picotee, a robust poppy found at a plant fair three years ago.  Picotee has a different tint or orange sorbet blush every year.  And the seed pods are always left to dry, ready to poke open and sprinkle a few black seeds into yogurt cakes or for an added crunch in a crumb crust for fish.  Any poppy seed recipe ideas are welcome…to include in the Poppy Seed file – comments and tips bienvenue!

Green and fuzzy, the early stages of an almond’s life hold little in common with the adult nuts that we roll into Christmas kringle or Noël gâteaux.  In fact, what can you do with the sour little brats – within a few days, baby almonds go from a viscous gel to a tangy white lozenge that melts on your tongue.  Fragile, edgy, prone to changing character within hours, the green almond is not a volume item in shops.  A small basket of the pale green nuts – if you are lucky to spot one  in the produce cooler – might be found from April to June in Whole Foods Markets, or in the open markets of Provence. In San Francisco last spring about this time, I spotted a basketful in a Ferry Plaza restaurant – but backed up when someone pointed to the “No Photos” sign.  Since the vagabond is not close to green almond venues, and since the four (at last count) almonds clinging to the top of my almond tree are inaccessible, I was most grateful when friends returned from Perpignan with a branch in tow.  Not a laurel branch, but this was a stem loaded with downy-soft green almonds from the windy Roussillon, one of the best French almond regions.

“What will you DO with them?” my friends asked.  I slit one to extract a rather soft ivory almond, popped it in my mouth and puckered up. Maybe ‘tangy’ is too gentle a word for this stage.  This is the almond for tapas tables – I can imagine bowls of them on bars in Barcelona:  shell it, dip into sea salt, then do that again, with a sherry apéro.  So, the green almond lends itself to salty, appetizing tidbits…and to topping seafood tossed with pasta. With a few more almond branches, I would give the mortar and pestle some pesto action, to blend the green almonds with fresh herbs such as tarragon and chives and a few capers stirred with oil and minced aillet garlic. Chefs team green almonds with everything from squid to chilled soups.  Why not try that…a cauliflower soup accented with delicate green almonds?

This recipe, concocted as a foil for the strange little almonds, is a simple vegetable soup:  wash 2 leek whites (about 400 grams) thoroughly, chop, then sauté in a soup pot with 2 tablespoons duck fat or vegetable oil.  When the leeks have cooked about 10 minutes, add 1 cup chopped celery branch with leaves, cook another 5 minutes and add a medium head of cauliflower, (just under 500 grams) trimmed of leaves, and chopped (include the core/stem chopped).  Pour 5 cups of water into the pot, add a bay leaf and 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves (add fresh tarragon, too – if you have it) and bring to a simmer. Cook the soup for 30 to 40 minutes until all is soft, add salt, (remove bay leaf) blend to a coarse purée with a blending wand. Taste for seasoning: a chicken bouillon cube and pinch of salt may be added to your taste; if it is too thick add a little white wine or water and cook 10 minutes longer. Let the soup cool, then refrigerate overnight.  Prepare the almond garnish, slitting each almond open, slicing lengthwise (depending on the stage – the gel-center stage is best chopped crosswise).  In a shallow bowl, mix seasalt (such as fleur de sel), ground white pepper and a pinch of Hungarian paprika – toss the shelled almonds in this before serving (not too long in advance or the almonds will ‘weep’).  Serve the soup in small bowls – or in chilled lowball glasses -  topped with the seasoned green almonds.  Or… if it is a cold, rainy spring evening, reheat the soup and serve hot, topped with the baby almonds, and a pair of sesame grissini at each place.  Pour a chilled Montravel white wine, to toast Spring in all its phases.