A Pig in Provence (16 page)

The chef’s wife started to answer, but he interrupted. “Olive oil, of course, garlic, salt, pepper, a little like
aïoli
, but not.”

Joanne persisted. “Does it have eggs in it, then, like
aïoli
?”

He continued extolling the virtues of his sauce, until finally his wife, said, yes, there are eggs.

It was a very good soup, with big chunks of fish in a light broth of late-harvest tomatoes,
fumet,
saffron, and fennel, and it tasted warming on the late fall night that we were there. On the way home in the car, Joanne said, “I think his special sauce was nothing more than an
aïoli
that had broken.”

I suspected she was right, but I also suspected that he would have not been happy to know that I was one of those traitorous cookbook writers he was excoriating, and to learn that my treason went so far as to believe that
bouillabaisse
can be made without having the exact fish from the Mediterranean, to say nothing of the ideal flea-market cauldron. I like to think M. Bruno and my fishermen neighbors would agree with me: If one adheres to the spirit of the soup, making the
fond;
selecting both firm-fleshed and delicate fish; boiling the broth and olive oil together; seasoning well with saffron, fennel, and orange peel; and serving in two courses—first the broth, toasts, and
rouille,
and then the fish, filleted tableside—everyone will agree that they are tasting paradise in a bowl.

My making
bouillabaisse
in California, with fish available at local fish markets, has resulted over and over again in happy memories for everyone, from standing together with me over the simmering pot of fish heads and bones, local crabs, and wild fennel gathered from the roadside, to the final moment of serving the boned fillets and correctly ragged chunks of fish. I made it for a small party celebrating Ethel and Laurent’s wedding anniversary. I set my soup pot outside in the shade of the walnut tree
over a propane burner and we all cooked together, step by step, just as M. Bruno had taught me, while Jim made sure that the toasts dried out in the oven and were well rubbed with garlic.

By the time we sat down at our long table set with linens I had bought in Provence, our glasses filled with chilled
rosé
from Bandol, the baskets of bread and bowl of
rouille
before us, we could almost smell the salt air of the Mediterranean, even though the fish were from the Pacific.

The fish man brings sardines. Cooking from Marcel and
Marie’s potager. Quinson lake. First dinner at Le Relais
Notre-Dame. Bastille Day soup.

For the first time in more than three years, Donald and I returned to Provence, able at last to take advantage of the long summer holiday afforded us now that we were teachers in California. Our first stop was Denys and Georgette Fine’s, whose small rental we had lived in when Oliver was born. They were expecting us for lunch and before we could get out of the car, they ran out to greet us with hugs and kisses. Ethel remembered them and threw her arms around Georgette, but Oliver, who was a baby when we left, hung back, clasping his green Hulk doll. He had no memory of these people who were speaking a strange language and kissing him, or of the snug little house he was brought to as a newborn.

Once the greetings were over, I took Oliver by the hand and went down the tiled walkway past the yard where I had played with him on his blanket and hung his diapers, and told him about when he was a baby at this house. Ethel ran ahead of us, pointing
out scenes of interest, such as the spot where she had seen the rat in the outdoor kitchen; the place under the bay tree where our dog, Tune, had attacked and killed one of the Fines’ guinea fowl; and the creek where, looking for frogs with a friend, she had gotten soaking wet on a winter’s day.

The acacia tree was just as I remembered it, but taller. In early June the bunches of white flowers were beginning to fade and dry, past their prime for dipping in batter and frying for the
beignets
I used to make. The kitchen where I had cooked so many meals was sooty and needed repainting, but in my mind’s eye I could still see the wild herbs and drying strings of
sanguins
that I had hung in the corner near the woodstove when we had lived there.

Georgette called me back from my memories, shouting
“Á table!”
and Donald came to get us. The Fines’ familiar round green metal table, slightly rusted, was covered with a white embroidered cloth, and places were set for the six of us under the Virginia creeper that shaded their stone terrace. Georgette brought out a plate of pristine red and white radishes tipped with a few green leaves that she had pulled that morning from the garden, a plate of butter, and a small dish of salt. I silently promised myself I would buy radish seeds to take back to California and plant in our backyard. Denys followed with a basket of fresh bread, still warm from the bakery’s late-morning bake, a bottle of red wine, and a carafe of water.

I had brushed against the sage near the table when I sat down, and its pungent fragrance hung in the air as we ate our first course, the crunchy radishes spread with just enough butter to hold the sprinkled salt. The wine, dark red and fruity, came from Taradeau, a neighboring village whose wine cooperative had a good reputation. After three years in exile in the Northern California bedroom community where we now lived, I felt that I had come home.

The wine was perfect with the bread and radishes, and went just as well with the hot, bubbling zucchini
gratin
that came next and the salad that followed. Denys brought out a second bottle to have with the cheese. Dessert was fresh figs.

It was the kind of meal that Provence is famous for, the reason, I think, that people travel to Provence, rent a house there, even buy a house and move, just to be part of the life of the Provençal table. Those long meals, composed of simple, fresh seasonal foods and local wines, savored under the cooling shade of sycamore or mulberry trees in warm weather and in front of a cozy fire in cold weather, are the essence of the good life, well lived.

So began our first summer back in Provence, when I would start to learn what it was like to live there as a summer vacationer, as part of the community but without the daily, arduous work of keeping goats and pigs. My days would be filled with food and cooking, long meals with friends and my family, and discovering the world that was to be part of me for the rest of my life.

We moved into the house we had bought just before our return to California. It had been replastered and painted, but still lacked indoor plumbing and electricity. We ran an electrical cord from Marie and Marcel Palazolli’s place next door to ours, hauled water from the well, and built an outhouse. I unpacked the boxes of dishes, pots, books, toys, and photo albums that I brought with me from California when we first moved to Provence, and had packed away when we left, and I filled our pantry with food. We began to live again in Provence, this time on a long summer vacation.

Our social life, like everyone else’s, revolved around food. We lingered over lunches and dinners, went to the open markets
where we met friends for an
apéritif
or coffee, took picnics to the beaches and lakes, and went to restaurants and community feasts. We steeped ourselves in the tastes of Provence—olive oil, wild herbs, fish, tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini, grilled lamb and sausages, fresh cheese, and fruit of every kind.

In memory, it seems I spent at least part of almost every day cooking with my neighbors Marie, Georgette, Pascal, or Françoise. We all lived on the same road, a narrow, sinuous lane set in a small valley of unfenced vineyards, grain and melon fields, fruit orchards, and olive groves, punctuated by Marcel’s vast market garden. Our days were subject only to the rhythm of nature and the table. It was natural for us all to pick cherries and peaches together from Marie and Marcel’s trees, to help Françoise with the vats of tomato sauce she made to feed her children and grandchildren who came to spend much of the summer with her and Robert, to barbecue with Georgette and Denys, or to make elaborate dishes, like stuffed breast of veal, with Pascal.

Since Marie and I lived just a staircase apart, we saw each other throughout the day, and Donald and I sometimes helped her and Marcel with their farm tasks, such as pruning the melon vines, digging potatoes, or tying up tomato plants. Much of what I have learned over the years about growing food and cooking it came from my neighbors, especially Marie and Marcel, first during the years of our summer vacations and later as I continued to return. We often cooked and ate together and Marie always had something to show me or teach me.

That first summer back, I learned about the fish man.

He arrived every Thursday around 11:30, driving a small gray-blue Citroën van. He would honk his horn when he pulled in front of the farmhouse, and Marie and I would run down the
stairs or in from the fields to meet him and buy something. She had been telling me we should get some sardines and cook them in my fireplace. Finally, the third week we were there he brought sardines. Marie came out the front door to the van just as I arrived from the tomato garden. The driver opened his sliding door to display the ice-packed shelf that sported an assortment of fish ranging from elegant and expensive
dorade
and sea bass to modest sardines and anchovies, plus a selection of fillets.

In the rural hinterlands of Provence, well into the 1970s and even later, it was common for purveyors of fish, meat, and dry goods to ply back roads like ours, bringing their products to the farms that dotted the countryside. Our weeks were structured by the arrival of the baker early every morning, the butcher on Sunday, and the fish man on Tuesday. The dry goods van came once a month. Their visits were highlighted by trips to the open markets, Wednesday in Aups, Saturday in Barjols, Sunday in Salernes, and to
épiceries,
or grocery stores. In those days, large supermarkets were far away in the cities, and the smaller versions of Intermarché and Casino that today serve medium-size villages had not yet been built. Most villages had only a tiny
épicerie,
maybe two. Some villages were too small to have even a weekly market, so the traveling purveyors were counted on to supply everything except fruits, vegetables, olive oil, and wine.

Country people, like all of my neighbors, had a
potager,
a kitchen garden, that provided vegetables daily throughout the year, plus fruit trees, olive trees, and grapevines. These supplied what the traveling vendors and
épiceries
did not. When the olives were harvested and then pressed at one of the olive oil mills, the farmer took his share of the oil, leaving a portion in payment for the milling, plus any excess that he wanted the mill to sell. He then got a fee per liter for his share when the rest of the oil was
sold. The same was true with the grapes. They were delivered to the cooperative wineries, and once the grapes had been crushed and vinified, each farmer took back some wine for his own use, leaving the cooperative to sell the rest and pay him a return. Some farmers, including Marie and Marcel, kept rabbits and poultry in addition to a pig, so except for beef, seafood, bread, and dry goods, they and those like them were quite self-sufficient.

“Are they good and fresh?” Marie asked the fishmonger. “You know Marcel won’t eat them if they’re not.”

“Eh, ma belle, bien sûr!
Caught them myself this morning. You’ll see. Freshest fish around. Look at those eyes! Still sharp, they are, bright and clear. A sure sign of a fresh fish.”

Marie laughed, enjoying as she always did the chance to talk to someone from the outside. She extended the conversation as long as she dared. She loves to talk, and in the days before she and Marcel bought their own land and started selling their melons at the local markets, life could be lonely for her. I, too, loved both interacting with the vendors and being a part of the daily life of another culture. I knew that in just a few months I would be back in the classroom, teaching history and English to high-school students, eating a quick cheese sandwich, and grading papers during my thirty-minute lunch break. I reveled in the luxury of my French life, not a material luxury, but one of time and connections with the land and my neighbors that I didn’t experience in California at that time.

I paid for our sardines and the fishmonger put them in brown paper bags and gave us some lemons. Marie took the fish and lemons upstairs to her refrigerator and we agreed to start the fire around seven that evening.

“I’ll bring the wood and some grapevine prunings, and a grill,” she said. “The fish are already cleaned. All we have to do
is rub them with olive oil, a little salt, pepper, and some thyme. Won’t take long.”

It was going to be the first time I had cooked in our fireplace, and I was excited about it. The huge fireplace, gracefully sculpted in plaster, dominated one wall of the kitchen–living room. Oliver, at almost four years old, could stand upright in it. The hearth was deep, and its bricks jutted out onto the terra-cotta tiles of the floor. The mantel was broad, and when I stood on my tiptoes I could see the gleam of the glossy deep-red tiles covering its surface. My arms, outstretched, couldn’t reach the far sides. When we bought the house, I had imagined what it might be like to cook in that fireplace. Tonight I would find out.

That afternoon, in preparation for the big evening, I made doughnuts for dessert, and Ethel helped. They were one of the few sweets I could prepare without an oven. For the first few summers we had only a two-burner propane cooktop that I kept on top of the
braise,
a waist-high structure made of stone and tile. In old Provençal kitchens, the
braise
was as important for cooking as the fireplace because it was here that the slow-cooking daubes and stews of wild boar, rabbit, lamb, or chicken simmered. Coals were scooped from the fireplace and placed on the tiled shelf beneath the square holes of the
braise,
and replenished as needed. The
braise
could also be used for quick cooking, such as frying or sautéing, by controlling the amount and heat of the coals.