Caunes' Finest Food

September 11, 2015

     When I was in Merida, in Mexico's Yucatan in the Spring of 2014, I considered moving there.  I was the guest of a former classmate of Bill's and her husband, both keen on retiring to Merida soon.  There is a lively Canadian and American ex-pat colony there, lots of museums, and even an Alliance Francaise.   Prices too, have been very attractive to foreign buyers, and the city so safe it's said drug lords live there to protect their families from violence in the rest of Mexico.

     So I was introduced to a friend of my hosts, the real estate broker who found them their house, an Englishwoman who has lived in Merida for years.  She spent a day taking me from one end of Merida to the other, including a visit to a luxurious modern house that would not have been out of place in Beverly Hills.

     It was owned by a Jewish woman from Brooklyn who bought it knowing no Spanish and intending to start a new life as a high school English teacher, what she'd done before she retired.

     It didn't work out.  Her lack of Spanish made it difficult to integrate into the Mexican lifestyle, and the house turned out to be more expensive to maintain than her means allowed.  So she put it on the market.

     She was delightfully frank about all that had happened to her in Mexico and how much she missed New York.  She particularly missed the food.  In that inimitable accent most Americans associate with New Yorkers, she told me:

     I'd like to have an egg roll once in a while, you know?

     Here in Caunes, I can't say I share her sentiments, although there are things about food in the southwest of France that are not my idea of a healthful diet.  Of course, I'm thinking of the reliance on meat prepared in animal fat, foie gras and butter that is most Languedociens' idea of the components a great feast.  Pasta, too, is always "Frenchified", a simple pasta aglio olio being just too plain for the French palate

     I cannot, however, fault the French pizza in Caunes.  I have never had anything like it, and I cannot get enough of it.  L'Argent Double, the local pizzeria, makes almost forty different types of pizzas, all with a crust as thin as a flat bread, and nothing like any pizza anyone has ever had in the United States.  La Reunionaise (named after the island in the Indian Ocean that is still part of France), combines the thinnest slices of pineapple with smoked ham.  My favorite, l'Agenaise, uses heavy cream, pork, smoked ham, walnuts and pruneaux d'Agen.  Total cost for this delicacy big enough for two?  Nine euros.

     It's gotten so, once I call and give my name, the pizza maker says Un "Agenaise", no?

     --"Yes!"

                                                                       ***

     On another food front:

     This evening I also took in Tante Henriette, a curious grocery, which is only open every fifteen days and has clients queuing to pay for their orders.  Tonight, as they were closing, I went inside and was initiated into the society of those who frequent this French version of a pop-up grocery.

     The space is owned by a Caunois who lends it to local producers of bio vegetables, yogurt, jams, and eggs.  On sale also (although I don't from where) is rice.  Customers e-mail the woman who coordinates the orders and interacts with the producers.  Every fifteen days the orders are driven down from villages near Lespinassiere, up in La Montagne Noir.

     There's nothing for sale that has not been ordered in advance, except there are 3 jars of cream made from local chestnuts.  I ask about yogurt, but it's all spoken for.  I take my jar of creme de chataigne and think how good a teaspoon will taste when I can get hold of some plain yogurt.  As I am walking out of the grocery, the man who owns the store follows me and says,

     If you wait five minutes, you can have a package of 8 yogurts.  Someone ordered them and has not shown to pick them up.

     I walk inside and, within minutes, he has a plastic bag with the individual yogurts out of the old-fashioned, wood-faced refrigeratoron on the counter.  The light-weight plastic bag says "BERNADETTE", but they're about to become mine.  How long will they last?

     Oh, at least until the beginning of October.

     Nothing will spoil I think, and buy them.  The price?  Five euros and fifty centimes.

     --And now I am an initiate.

     When I take them home and put them in the refrigerator, I see that the dairy farmer is actually located in St. Denis, a village of 465 people near Lespinassiere.  The chestnut cream is from Felines, 12 kilometers away.  Interestingly, it isn't terribly sweet, but the taste of chestnuts is certainly there.  French pastry chefs use marrons glaces in their desserts, but I've always found them too sweet.  This cream has the consistency of peanut butter, and looks like organic peanut butter does when you open the jar, watery on top, thick below.

      The creme de chataigne is freshly made, too.  The chestnut trees are dropping their fruit, as the many smooth, hard nuts I came across walking Beau last evening attest.  There for the taking, too, are fresh white figs: I have a handful every day, marveling that I can indulge so, knowing that in New York they are available, at best, for two weeks.

       Meanwhile, the vendange continues.  First the white wine grapes were harvested, now the red.  The weather becomes a little more autumnal each day, although it remains beautifully sunny and dry. In a few weeks it will be time to eat the hearty food the southwest of France is known for, daubes, cassoulets, sausages with beans.

        No wonder the French eat well: they insist on small-scale production of what goes into their mouths.