A Pig in Provence (19 page)

Ethel ordered fresh trout that first night at Le Relais. She loved that the trout were swimming just behind the hotel in a specially built pond. Oliver had his usual steak and potatoes, and Donald and I had the
plat du jour,
rabbit cooked with tomatoes and eggplant, accompanied by the same chunky fried potatoes served with Ethel’s fish and Oliver’s meat. The rabbit, served in a brown earthenware casserole for two, fell from the bone in tender chunks. Summer’s tomatoes and eggplant were intensely flavored and seasoned with garlic and sprigs of wild thyme. We shared bites with one another, and Donald and I agreed that Ethel’s fish was exquisite, Oliver’s steak juicy and perfectly cooked.

We finished our meal with a strawberry
charlotte,
a sort of French trifle, with cream and fresh berries and cake made in a special
charlotte
mold. The restaurant sent a little dish of fresh strawberry ice cream for Ethel and Oliver while we had an espresso, lingering over the meal as long as possible.

From that night on, we made a point to have at least one lunch or dinner at Le Relais every summer, a habit that I maintained after we no longer came as a family. The grandfather is gone, and the son too, and now Le Relais is run by the grandchildren, Denys and Monique, neither of whom are married. They purchase their
charcuterie,
except for a house-made
pâté
, and buy their wild mushrooms, truffles, and game from wholesale vendors, so the food is different, but still in the same familial style and sensibility.

Denys learned to cook from his mother, who was the cook when we first went there. He still makes his mother’s
charlotte,
changing it with the season. In fall he uses chestnuts, in summer
peaches and berries, and in winter chocolate. Rabbit stew appears periodically, along with other traditional dishes such as
ratatouille,
and some more modern ones that reflect convenience rather than the rhythms of farm life.

The
potager
that served the kitchen so well was dug up and replaced with a swimming pool for the hotel guests. The last of the vegetable beds is devoted to flower beds brimming with dahlias in the summer, but the trout pond is still there.

Some years I take my cooking school students to Le Relais Notre-Dame, and we have an
apéritif
in the walled rose garden behind the kitchen. I show them the trout pond, actually a large, deep cement basin, at the far edge of the garden under a willow tree. Often during our
apéritif,
Denys emerges from the kitchen with a long net and heads for the pond, where in a flash he scoops up a plump trout and heads back to the kitchen. He cooks it to order, either à
la meunière,
in butter, or fried in olive oil.

One of my best memories of long summer meals was a meal that took place in a village square at midnight on Bastille Day. A group of us, including Joanne and Guild, who lived and worked in Paris, but came down frequently to their house in Provence, went together. Pascal proposed the adventure, saying we should all go to Entrecasteaux for
soupe au pistou
at midnight to celebrate Bastille Day on July 14, the French independence day named after the infamous prison whose fall symbolized the end of the French monarchy and the beginning of the French Republic. Like the Fourth of July in the United States, the occasion is marked by fireworks and varied celebrations, most of them including food.

Pascal had a summer job doing masonry work in Entrecasteaux and while working there met the owner of one of the small
restaurants on the village square. She was putting on a special meal for Bastille Day—bottomless bowls of
soupe au pistou,
wine, and bread for twenty francs, children under twelve half-price. It sounded like fun, so we all decided to go. I had heard about the village, and even though it was only twenty minutes away, I had never been to it.

When we arrived at nine, it was still light and the great block of the
château
in the heart of the village cast mauve shadows across its gardens. The
château
gardens were designed by André Le Nôtre, the renowned “gardener of the kings of France,” and were patterned after the gardens at Versailles. First built in the thirteenth century on the ruins of an eleventh-century fort, then rebuilt in the sixteenth century, the
château
had housed a series of nobles, some who had come to bitter ends. The
château
was taken from the family during the French Revolution, but was eventually returned to them, and they owned it until 1949, when it became part of the property of the commune. The
château
and gardens, fully restored, are considered one of the most important intact examples of
château
-fortress architecture in Provence. They made a dramatic setting for fireworks and feasts to celebrate Bastille Day.

Once we arrived on the square, Pascal went to see his friend, Anik, to reserve seats for us at one of the long tables laid out in front of her restaurant. The tables were covered in the white butcher paper, standard table dressing for community feasts, and were decorated with jars of flowers and small French flags. Unlabeled wine bottles of red and
rosé
were already out on the tables, and spoons and bowls were set at each place, even though the soup wouldn’t be served for at least another hour or so. When he came back, Pascal told us that Anik and her helpers were a little overwhelmed in the kitchen, having discovered they were short
of the ovenproof casseroles they were using to serve the soup. He slipped two pieces of paper with
reservée
8
personnes
written on them under two of the wine bottles about midway down one of the tables. People had already been draping sweaters and jackets over the backs of some of the chairs or tilting them forward to indicate those seats were taken. We tilted our eight chairs, then set out to wander through the village.

Fairy lights glittered in the sycamore trees that lined the squares and already we could hear firecrackers being set off in the narrow streets, competing for attention with the rasping of the cicadas. By the time we returned, the tables were filling up and children were running and playing in the square, waiting until the food was served to join their families at the tables. Ethel and Oliver hung around the edge of the square, watching the children from the shadows.

The night was warm, with just a soft riffle of air. The women wore dresses with thin straps, showing off recently acquired tans, and most of the men were in loose, short-sleeved shirts, or T-shirts, with a few wearing what I call white underwear shirts, the sleeveless cotton undershirt that Marlon Brando wore in
A Streetcar Named Desire.
The heat was still rising from the cobble- stones beneath us, and no one needed the sweaters or jackets brought along just in case.

As the first huge bowls of soup came from the kitchen and were set down along the middle of the tables, people began to cheer and to lift their wineglasses in toasts.

“Vive la France! Vive la pistou!”
“La Marseillaise,” the national anthem of the French Revolution, poured at high volume from loudspeakers mounted on the roof of the
mairie,
the city hall, next door, and everyone started singing along and clinking their glasses, toasting in step with the rousing music. Even though I
didn’t know the words and certainly can’t sing, I found myself caught up in the toasting across and down the length of the table, and I vowed I’d learn the words so next time I could at least pretend I was singing. I clinked glasses as far as I could reach in all directions. By the time the song was over, all the tables had been served with soup and people settled down to eat against a backdrop of the village-sponsored fireworks.

Pascal ladled the soup for our group into the shallow soup bowls, each spoonful enfolding us with the steamy aroma of garlic and basil. When he handed me my bowl, I could see the plumped beans and zucchini beneath the nearly creamy broth and the brilliant green
pistou
sauce swirled across the top of the soup. It tasted of summer, and we ate it by the bowlful, dipping our bread into it and adding more
pistou.

The
pistou,
a sauce added just before serving, is akin to Italian pesto. It worked its way into the canon of Provençal cooking by way of Nice, which didn’t become a part of France until 1860. Pesto’s origins are thought to be the Ligurian coast of Italy, just east of Nice, but the Niçoise version, which has spread throughout Provence, has no pine nuts. Pine nuts are considered essential to Italian pesto but are anathema to classic Provençal
pistou.
In general it begins with sea salt and garlic crushed in a mortar to make a paste, then handfuls of basil leaves are added and crushed as well. The sauce is finished with olive oil and enough Gruyère or Parmesan, or a combination of the two, to make a thick sauce that is later thinned with a little soup broth. Some versions include the pulp of a small tomato, and I’ve read recipes that omit the garlic, though to me that would be unimaginable.

The soup itself is vegetable and the ingredients vary, but the essential element is the fresh
coco blanc
or
coco rouge
shelling bean, available only in summer or early fall, when you see them,
still in their pods, heaped in the market stalls. The white ones are in pale yellow pods, and the beans themselves are ivory colored.
Coco rouge
beans are pale tan with streaks of maroon, and their pods are brilliant carmine with white mottling.

The more aggressive market vendors call out,
“Cocos! Cocos pour la bonne soupe au pistou! Ici, ici les bons cocos.”
In my experience, soupe au pistou always has green beans, either thin, delicate haricots verts fin or long, flat mange-touts, or both. Zucchini, carrots, onions, leeks, potatoes, sometimes turnips, sometimes tomatoes, plus sea salt and pepper, and maybe pasta, complete the mix. The vegetables are cooked in succession, beginning with the
cocos
and the onions, which are brought to a boil in a large pot of water and simmered for about twenty minutes. Next come the other vegetables, chopped or diced, along with branches of thyme, and the soup is simmered another fifteen minutes. Finally, when the vegetables are tender, a handful of pasta, such as broken spaghetti or small macaroni, is added, along with salt and pepper to taste. Once the pasta is soft—no
al dente
here—the
pistou
is added. The soup is served accompanied by extra
pistou
and extra grated cheese.

That night at Entrecasteaux we ate our fill of
soupe au pistou.
As soon as the communal bowl was empty, a waiter or waitress brought a full one, then another, on into the night. Full wine bottles kept replacing empty ones, and baskets of bread never ended. It was after midnight before the apple tart arrived, and by then Oliver was asleep, his head in my lap. It was just chilly enough to put on the sweater I had brought, and the cicadas were less insistent in the cooling night. The teenagers had taken over the cobbled streets, setting off firecrackers, while the adults were starting to head home.