A Pig in Provence
Authors: Georgeanne Brennan
Good food and simple pleasures in the south of France
….
TO ETHEL AND OLIVER.
…..
This book, this life, could not exist without the people of Provence. I’m grateful to my friends and neighbors in Provence, and I hope they, like my family, will forgive any liberties I have taken with remembered conversations, meals, or events we’ve shared.
Donald, my first husband, began the odyssey in Provence with me and brought much into my life, and I will always be thankful for those extraordinary times we shared with our children when they were young.
I want to thank Bill LeBlond, a friend and my longtime editor at Chronicle Books, for having the vision of what this book could be and talking to Jay Schaefer about it over breakfast one Sunday morning. Jay decided to take the book on and has helped immeasurably to shape it, which was not an easy task, and never failed both to force me to do more and to encourage me that I could. Arielle Eckstut has proved to be the best agent ever for me, and I have much to thank her for. Judith Dunham, my copy editor, was invaluable. A special thanks, too, to Sharon Silva and Marianna Morgoraff for their help when this book was still only an idea. Thank you to Micaela Heekin, assistant editor at Chronicle Books, who helped move this book along at a steady pace.
My husband, Jim, has been my best friend, my biggest fan, and my in-house editor for more than twenty years, and has shared with me many of the experiences I recount in this book. He has read every word I’ve written at least three times, and somehow understands what I am trying to say, even when I don’t say it right.
CHAPTER 1 A Personal History of Goat Cheese
Salade au fromage du chèvre avec croûtons frites—Goat Cheese Salad with Fried Bread
Porc à l’ancienne avec moutarde et câpres—Braised Pork Shoulder with Mustard and Capers
Poulet au genièvre farci aux champignons sauvages—Juniper-Rubbed Chicken Stuffed with Wild Mushrooms
CHAPTER 4 Bouillabaisse for All
Bouillabaisse toulonnaise—Bouillabaisse, Toulon Style
Soupe au pistou—Vegetable Soup with Basil-Garlic Sauce
CHAPTER 6 The Essence of Garlic And Le Grand
Le Grand Aïoli—An Aïoli Feast
CHAPTER 7 Sheep And Pieds-Et-Paquets
Gigot d’agneau aux herbes de Provence—Leg of Lamb with Rosemary, Thyme, and Lavender
Tarte aux tomates—Tomato Tart
I
wrote my first cookbook,
My Receipts,
when I was in second grade. My mother kept it, and when she died I found it in the old trunk where she stashed the mementos of her life. It has four wide-lined foolscap pages of crookedly penciled recipes, including Banana Snow (smashed bananas with cream), Rabbit-Pear Salad (a pear with almond ears and a maraschino cherry nose on a lettuce leaf), Orange Fluff (orange juice with whipped egg whites), and Strawberry Shortcake (cut-up strawberries over pound cake with whipped cream). The pages are stapled between two half-sheets of yellow construction paper.
I was a precocious seven-year-old in the kitchen, making abalone stew with my father and gingerbread houses with my mother. Later, I picked corn and strawberries with my boyfriends at the U-picks that used to flourish in the fields of Orange County, and made tarts from the apricots picked from the tree in our yard, getting the boys to cook with me. I cooked Thanksgiving dinner the year my father died, when I was sixteen, and I canned fruit with my grandmother. But it was the food of Provence, not California, that shaped my life.
In Provence I learned that food has a meaning that extends far deeper than simply cooking or eating it. I came to understand that the gathering, hunting, and growing of food is part of a life still marked by the seasons, a life that keeps people connected to the land and to each other.
Each season’s food is anticipated: wild mushrooms in fall, wild asparagus in spring, melons and peaches in summer, and roots and truffles in winter. The people of Provence share an enthusiasm for the foods’ origins. I realized that in Provence there is a collective understanding and appreciation not only of the food, but of the skills and knowledge necessary to grow sweet melons or tender young salad greens, to raise young lambs on hillsides of wild thyme, and to produce perfectly smooth, creamy goat cheeses, and that appreciation and knowledge comes to the table along with the food.
My neighbors in Provence showed me how to understand the land around me and what it could provide. They taught me how to gather snails and cook them, render fat, grow potatoes, and find wild mushrooms. They taught me how to grill sardines, make
aïoli
with a mortar and pestle, use leftover bread, make
pistou,
and choose a fresh fish. I came to understand that one lingers over a meal, that eating is an act of pleasure to be savored, just as is the finding of the food and its cooking.
In the life I began in Provence in my late twenties, making and selling goat cheese, keeping pigs, and cooking with my neighbors, I recognized that food was central to life, not for reasons of hedonism or sustenance, but because it was a link to everyone that had gone before me. It was a link to the land, a link to friends and family around a shared table, and a link to future generations to come. In a fragile, unstable world of change, food is a constant.
I never intended to become an award-winning cookbook author or to have a cooking school in Provence, or to teach Provençal cooking across the United States, or to have a vegetable seed import company. These things grew out of a passion for Provence, a passion for the people and for the life that food
engenders there. And over all these years, Provence has never disappointed me. It, like the food, is a constant.
Obviously there have been huge changes since 1970, both in Provence and in my life, but the essence of our relationship remains the same. I arrive at the airport in Nice, flying in low over the Mediterranean toward the white city at the base of the Alps. I get my rental car and head west on the A8, past the high-rise apartment buildings, pounding buses, jammed lanes of cars, and palm trees until, just past Cannes, I feel a sense of calm descend on me. The rough red hills of the Maures on the west side of the A8 are undisturbed. The farmhouse on the east side is still there, its market garden intact around it. Forty-five minutes later I exit at Draguignan and start the drive into the interior. I think surely all will have changed since my last trip six months before. Provence can’t be as wonderful in reality as it is in my imagination, I tell myself, preparing for disappointment.The land will be filled with billboards and housing develop- ments, the vineyards pulled, the little villages diminished by suburban sprawl, the
cèpes
closed, with no one eating long lunches. Some of this has occurred over the years, but it seems contained. I feel relieved when I see the familiar
cèpes
full of people, the open markets packed with vendors and shoppers, the village shops still intact.
I stop and buy cheeses, ham,
baguettes,
and olives and continue driving deeper into the interior, through oak and pine forests, on smaller and smaller roads until I reach my house, set on the edge of a small valley.
The old stone house looms high and welcoming, and when I open the door it smells of fresh wax and wood smoke. My neighbors have left me a bowl of fruit and filled one of my vases with flowers. There’s a note that dinner will be ready at 7:30
if I want to come. Year after year, Provence has welcomed me with food, camaraderie, and a sense of place and belonging.
Soon I’ll be sitting out under the mulberry trees or by the fireplace with my friends, people I’ve known more than half my life, the people who taught me about life in Provence, sipping an
apéritif,
talking about the weather, the crops, the village politics, new recipes, and children. Then we’ll move to the table, where we’ll linger for several hours over a simple meal. If it’s summer, maybe a first course of roasted peppers with anchovies, wild mushroom salad if fall, followed by a plump guinea fowl or an herbed pork roast, cheeses, and poached fruit or a tart. The rhythm of my days in Provence has begun again.
My hope is that through this book I can share with readers what has been an extraordinary life. The people of this deeply rural community welcomed me and my small family into their hearts, sharing with us their knowledge and the ways of the land where they and their ancestors have lived for generations. It was there I came to understand what role food can play in our lives, no matter where we are, and it is in this spirit that I have told the stories in this book, stories about meals, children, animals, food, places, and home. The stories are organized in chapters relating loosely to a central theme, such as goat cheese or pigs, or long summer meals, but all tell of a life of shared friendship and a passion for food.