>World Food Day

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There are serious food issues affecting developing countries and many parts of the world where people do not have enough to eat. According to the United Nations one-sixth of humanity is undernourished. In the developed world the issues are more to do with over-consumption and waste of the earth’s resources. Sometimes it seems as though there is little that an individual can do. But I think that growing as much as we can of our own food and buying food that is locally produced are important small steps that each of us can make, to conserve the earth’s limited resources and to minimise exploitation of people in the developing world. You can find out more about World Food Day here.

Big commerce is bad for food. This is my 201st post on this blog and, on World Food Day, I would like to make it a celebration of local food. In our village we’re lucky to have a weekly market, an excellent épicerie (grocer’s shop), a small supermarket, a boulangerie (baker’s shop) and visiting vans which sell meat and shellfish.

The charcuterie stall at the Wednesday market.	The butcher’s van on Friday morning.
The boulangerie – bakery.	The épicerie – grocer’s shop, full of good food and friendly advice.

We, and anyone else who lives here, can buy all we need in the village. It is excellent quality, good value and much of it is produced locally. We find we need go to supermarkets only to buy toiletries and Italian coffee. In Roujan, a larger village 2 km away, there are two excellent butchers who sell an enormous range of good meat and, best of all, will advise on how to cook it, as well as other friendly small shops.

But the small shops in Roujan, and maybe Gabian too, are threatened by the construction of a supermarket there.

This is the site of the planned supermarket where, as in Gabian, more plane trees have been felled to make another new roundabout at its entrance.

This is bad news for food. In the UK it has been shown that when a supermarket is built on the outskirts of a town it sucks the lifeblood from the centre. The food sold in supermarkets is mass-produced and generally of lower quality than that in small shops. It is transported long distances, wasting resources and causing pollution. Because of their centralised distribution systems supermarkets cannot support local food as well as small shops can. And the profits made leave the area, feeding big business rather than being ploughed back into the locality.

And local wine …

This evening we went to a tasting to celebrate the arrival of the primeur wine at the Cave Co-operative at Neffiès. The vin primeur is the first of the year’s wine to be ready to drink, a light wine which takes only three weeks or so to make. It’s a good reason for a party and the tasting at Neffiès was fun, with roasted chestnuts (another seasonal local product) to eat with the wine, and live music. The cave at Neffiès has recently amalgamated with the one at nearby Alignan-du-vent (a sign of the times and the economic crisis in wine-making), but we were pleased to hear that some of the high-quality wines from Neffiès such as their Cathérine de Juery will continue to be made.

Hot roasted chestnuts to accompany the new wine.

Tuning up for the music and wine tasting.

And home to a local supper

We came home from Neffiès to a supper of roast saddle of lamb, bought in one of the butcher’s shops in Roujan, and aubergines stuffed with tomatoes, both grown in our garden. A delicious local supper! We marinaded the saddle of lamb with rosemary, garlic and lemon juice for a few hours, then roasted it, adding a glass of white wine to the roasting dish, until it was just done and still a bit pink inside. We served it with halved aubergines topped with chopped tomatoes, garlic, thyme and olive oil and baked in the oven.

Bilingual blog / le blog bilingue

Over the next few weeks I shall not have time to write my blog posts in French as well as English. I’ll resume the French version as soon as possible, but in the meantime I apologise for not being able to produce a bilingual blog.

Pendant les semaines qui viennent je n’aurai pas le temps pour écrire les articles sur ce blog en français. Je reprendrai la version française aussitôt que possible, mais pour le moment je m’excuse de ne pas produire un blog bilingue.

>Autumn market / Le marché en automne

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At Pézenas market yesterday there were signs of autumn under the hot sun – roast chestnuts, ceps (porcini) and girolle mushrooms.  /  Sur le marché à Pézenas hier il y avait des signes d’automne – des marrons grillés, des ceps et des girolles.

And music … jazz by the café and jazz manouche in a side street opposite /  Et la musique …. le jazz près du café et le jazz manouche dans une petite rue à l’autre côté de la rue.

We bought some lamb’s lettuce and some Rougette lettuce seedlings to replace some of the plants that were washed away in a thunderstorm a couple of weeks ago.  /  On a acheté des plants de mâche et de Rougette.

>End of year round-up / Résumé de la fin d’année

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Our family holiday is over now and as always the best part of it has been enjoying being together, cooking, eating, drinking, talking, laughing.  This post is just a brief round-up of some highlights from this last week.

Les fêtes familiales sont finies et comme toujours nous nous sommes regalés ensemble, dans la cuisine, en mangeant, en buvant, en parlant et en riant.  Ici je vous donne un gout de quelques points forts de la semaine dernière.

25 December sky / le ciel du 25 décembre

On Christmas day it was just about warm enough to walk to the garden at midday and have our traditional apéritif there, although this year rather than cold drinks we had mulled wine – a bottle of Domaine d’Estève red wine heated with a few tablespoons of brown sugar, some juniper berries, a cinnamon stick, some cloves and some orange pieces, including the peel. 

Olives

We took some of our own olives out of the brine they’ve been soaking in for two months, rinsed them in plain water and coated them with olive oil.  They tasted very good, but a bit salty so we’ll soak the others in plain water for a bit longer to get rid of some of the salt.  It was exciting to eat our own olives next to our olive tree, as we did last year at the same time – but this time the olives are bigger and better and there are more of them.

Christmas meal / le repas de Noel

Everyone has different ideas about what makes the perfect Christmas meal.  We’re not very keen on turkey and Christmas pudding, so for many years we’ve eaten our own different choices which change from year to year.  Even when we lived in Wales we didn’t eat a traditional Welsh or British Christmas meal, and here we’ve adopted some of the local festive habits, such as eating oysters.  We started the meal with raw oysters, then had very small cups of oyster soup, foie gras with figs (bought in Pézenas market from the producer), and then gambas (large prawns) sautéed in olive oil with a dash of pastis added at the end of the cooking.

oysters served with Picpoul de Pinet white wine	foie gras with figs, served with pepper- corns and sea salt
	Gambas are large prawns which have a special spicy flavour.  We sauté them in olive oil and then add either Armagnac or pastis – this time it was pastis, the aniseed spirit which is considered the spirit of the Midi.

We had two main dishes – pigeons for meat-eaters and salt-baked sea bass for non-meat-eaters – both served with sautéed leeks from the garden and potato and celeriac mash.

Salt-baked sea bass

Baking in salt preserves all the flavour.	We stuffed the sea bass with fennel and lemon slices, laid it on a bed of sea salt and covered it completely with more sea salt.  We put it in a hot oven for about 40 minutes (this depends on the size of fish) and then cracked the ‘shell’ of salt.

Stuffed pigeons with pancetta

We stuffed pigeons with breadcrumbs, chopped dried apricots, parsley, garlic, sautéed onion, sage and white wine, put a slice of pancetta over each one and roasted them in a hot oven for about 50 minutes.

We finished the meal with some of the cherries preserved in Armagnac which I bottled last May.

Since then we’ve had some more good meals, including a simple, but delicious soup made with cabbage, chestnuts and white wine:

And, on the last evening before the family left, a bonite (small tuna-like fish) marinaded in a charmoula herb mix, stuffed with olives and preserved lemons and roasted on a bed of potatoes and tomatoes.  The recipe came from the Guardian weekend magazine but instead of sea bass we used the bonite which I’d bought from our market fish stall a couple of weeks ago and kept in the freezer.

We served this dish with an excellent bottle of red Coteaux de Languedoc from the Domaine de la Tour Penedesses in Gabian.

Sustainable?

I think that, like us, most people take a break from some of their principles at this time of the year.  We certainly wouldn’t claim that our gambas were very eco-friendly, but most of our other food was.  The fish we ate was all locally caught and the oysters were produced in the Bassin de Thau.  I like foie gras and don’t join in the chorus of disapproval which so often results from any mention of this food.  I don’t think it’s any more cruel than other poultry farming and it’s much more acceptable to me than the battery-reared chickens to which critics of foie gras seem to have little objection.  Anyway, it is very expensive so we can only eat it once a year.  We ate as much as we can from the garden at this time of year, although we did buy potatoes, celeriac, chestnuts and tomatoes.  We decided not to have a pine tree this year and instead decorated some arbutus and bay branches from the garrigue and from our garden – this looked pretty and best of all didn’t drop pine needles on the floor!  And, rather than flying, our family travelled to Gabian by train – Eurostar and TGV – a much more sustainable choice.

How do others reconcile treats with principles, I wonder?

>Fish from the market / poissons du marché

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Today it‘s grey, cloudy, autumnal, a day for the market and the kitchen rather than the garden. We bought fresh anchovies for lunch – a rare treat – and a bream for Lo Jardinièr. We ate the anchovies with salsa made from tomatoes, capers, basil and sweet onion.

Aujourd‘hui il y a des nuages gris d‘automne, le temps pour aller au marché et pour cuisiner plutôt que le jardin. Nous avons acheté des anchois pour notre déjeuner – un plaisir rare – et une dorade pour Lo Jardinièr. Nous avons mangé les anchois avec une salsa de tomates, câpres, basilique et oignon doux.

And a glass of muscat sec (dry muscat) from the Domaine des Pascales in Gabian went very well with this meal.

Et un verre du muscat sec du Domaine des Pascales à Gabian a accompagné très bien ce repas.

Click here for the recipes

Cliquez ici pour les recettes

From now on I shall put the recipes on a new blog – at mediterranean-food.blogspot.com – to make it easier to find them.

À partir d‘aujourd‘hui je mettrai les recettes dans un nouveau blog –

mediterranean-food.blogspot.com – pour les faire plus facile à trouver.

We sowed seeds for celery and some salad plants which Kate brought us – which we hope will make salads and soups during the autumn and winter.

Nous avons semé des graines de céleri et de salades pour les salades et les soupes de l‘automn et l‘hiver.

And a friend has given us some chestnuts which we‘ll roast in the oven this evening. We‘ll keep some to cook on the barbecue when the weather improves.

Et un ami nous a donné des châtaignes que nous ferons cuire au four ce soir. Nous en garderons quelques-unes pour griller sur le barbecue quand le temps fera mieux.