Deep France (39 page)

The Real Spa Experience

Fountain, waterfall, geyser, swans’ necks, power jets, the boiling banquette, jacuzzi, jet shower,
hammam
. . . there was absolutely nothing
you couldn’t do with salt water at les Thermes. I dragged every one of my guests there, and took huge pleasure in watching them step tentatively into the distinctly 1970s swimming pool and
suddenly beam with pleasure as they felt the magic of the spring water. Now that I was a genuine convalescent, I sent myself there to swim as often as I could and give my recovering ankle the full
benefit of the medicinal waters.

Now until I went to les Thermes, I was sceptical about hot springs. All those legends about the old boar and the old dog – well, they were just folk tales. Nothing could get through skin,
the epidermis was designed to be imper­meable, and swimming in water in which all sorts of odd minerals had been dissolved couldn’t possibly make any dif­ference to your
metabolism.

Well, incredible as it is, it does make a difference. You feel fantastic. Even with a hangover. And it takes about five minutes. Les Thermes are a complex of pools, some of which are
specifically designed for remedial treatments, but the one to which I was addicted was simply a swimming pool with lots of fancy massage jets to pound your shoulders, tickle your back and wobble
your cellulite. The water was the natural spring water, maintained at 32°C, the pleasant warmth at which the spring comes out of the ground.

Of course, people have analysed the spring water. Its really heavy on sodium and chlorine, of course (NaCl, the salt, right?) and also in bromium and magnesium. But there’s lots of
calcium, chromium, cobalt, iron, lithium, manganese, nickel, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, silicone, vanadium
and zinc in it, too. All those jolly trace elements that
nutri­tionists are always waffling about, just naturally bubbling out of the ground, and then cunningly piped into les Thermes. The waters are meant to be particularly beneficial to
gynaecological problems and children’s illnesses. This is as may be. All I know is that I always came out pink-cheeked, ultra-relaxed and distinctly euphoric.

There was probably some kind of spa here when Eugénie and Napoleon arrived, but as soon as they felt the amazing tingle, the instant zest, the supernatural sparkle that the hot spring
water gives you, they delegated their own doctor to supervise the development of the station into something appropriately luxurious. Hot springs are a nationalized resource in France, so nobody can
develop them without government backing, and in the case of les Thermes at Saliès, the Emperor himself supervised the process. A new spa building was erected, a fantasy palace of pink and
white brick, with Venetian crenellations around its decorative tower. It looks like a little sister of Kuala Lumpur railway station.

From the old photographs, the inside hasn’t changed much. There is still a wide marble-floored central corridor, with park-type benches for the weary
curiste
to rest on. The
public pool was obviously redesigned in the 1970s, though given the lingering fascination which the French have for the bad-taste decade it could be much later.

Outside, there is a little park, shaded by blue cedars, containing the bandstand and the little circular gallery where Roger’s panorama was exhibited until he got bored and turned the
building into a studio. After 1870, there was also a statue of the silent, bare-breasted spirit of the spring and a group of gambolling infants whom she had cured, but between erosion and
vandalism,
La Mude
was disfigured and removed to a less prominent spot.

Everybody goes to les Thermes. The Salisiens use it just
like any other pool; in fact, they probably use it more. Fathers bring their children at the weekend, mothers bring
their children after school, groups of giggling office girls come in after work, pairs of lovers enjoy a relaxing hour together, old people come in the evening when it’s quiet and the curious
from out of town come any time the pool is open, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week, but not, obviously, at lunch time.

There are concessions to modern ideas about fitness, a small cardiovascular conditioning suite and some weights which occasionally get lifted, always by men. There’s a studio where the
supernaturally patient young men who supervise the pool take aerobics classes. These were not well attended, though the handful of women in the advanced class looked as stringy as marathon
runners.

It may be different in the cities, but in the South-West, French women do not seem greatly enthusiastic about exercise. When I visited the big sports hypermarkets, Decathlon and Sportner, there
would be just a couple of racks of limp pink Lycra leotards hiding coyly behind rows and rows of clothing for men and boys. Even finding trainers in a woman’s fitting was a challenge. I never
saw women out jogging, cycling or snowboarding. For a woman of my age, a decorous promenade up a not-too-steep hill, preferably with someone to chat to, was considered a real workout.

Yoga was also permissible; Denise, the elegant young Englishwoman who taught Andrew and Geoff French, was one of the yoga instructors, as was Kathy, the French partner in McGuire’s Irish
Pub. Chatting was an important feature of the yoga class, too, and doing the tree pose on my recovering ankle was a strain. But popping into les Thermes for a few lengths a couple of times a week
was just what the doctor ordered.

There is probably a different
garbure
recipe for every citizen of Gascony, since every woman, and quite a few of the men, make it and most people have at least two
versions, one for a simple, hearty family supper and one for a festive one-pot meal. It can be a very simple dish of meat, cabbage and potato or a very elaborate one with every winter vegetable and
several kinds of meat.

People who aren’t part of the
garbure
tradition – like, say, a British ex-pat – tell you that it’s just a soup made of boiled-up leftovers. Perhaps on a Monday
night, when the weary stand-in cook at a run-down
auberge
looks out of the kitchen and sees a large party of British heaving through the door to put an end to his hopes of an early night,
the
garbure
may be padded out with cold second-hand vegetables and any old bit of whiffy sausage, but in a private home it is always freshly made. For public consumption, it’s the
sort of dish that’s done best at simple main-square restaurants like La Terrasse in Saliès or the Auberge du Foirail in St-Palais, where almost every single diner will order it.

Chloe tried several recipes and they came out a bit watery. Renée had given us the best part of an entire lesson on
garbure
, when the textbook challenged her Béarnais
nationalism by mentioning such infinitely inferior dishes as Quiche Lorraine and Gratin Dauphinois. She had emphasized quite passionately that it was absolutely essential to
include a piece of
confit
, of pork, goose or duck, whatever you had, but
confit
was essential. This Marie confirmed. You started with fresh water, never stock or
bouillon, she said, and you added a piece of
confit
. If there were only a few of you, it was the way to use all those odds and ends which were preserved, like the wing tips and the spare
ribs.

Finally, we worked out the magic formula. For a
garbure
to be what it ought to be, silky but chunky, and delicately savoury, so that the steam off the dish brings the most appetizing
aromas to your nose before you even pick up your spoon, you need to use a little
confit
fat early in the cooking, and then add the meat
en confit
at the end. The
confit
process imbues the fat with the flavour of the meat and so, in an age before the curse of monosodium glutamate, the fat then adds its meaty savour to the whole soup. So, should you want to try this
recipe when you haven’t got any
confit
of anything in the cupboard, you could cheat by using some meat stock and a bit of good dripping. It’ll be quite good, but it won’t
be the same.

Simple
Garbure

Bring 3 litres (5¼ pints) of water to the boil in a large saucepan and add the
confit
fat and the garlic. Peel the
potatoes, cut in halves
or, if they’re huge, into quarters, and add to the pan.

Let the potatoes simmer while you quarter two of the turnips and cut the cabbage into strips as fine as you can. Discard the tops, tails and cabbage stalk. Keep back a couple of cabbage leaves,
and add the rest of the cabbage and turnips to the pot. Simmer for a further 40 minutes.

Slice the third turnip into thin sections – these will be used to make the dish look pretty, something few Gascon cooks would feel necessary. By this time the potatoes will be starting to
break up in the pot. Add the meat
en confit
, and the reserved cabbage and turnip slices. Simmer for a further 5 minutes, breaking up the meat gently as you stir.

Some people serve their
garbure
with the potato mashed into it, so you can stand up a spoon in the thick mixture, and some people like to leave the broth clear and the vege­tables
whole. The choice is yours.

Garbure de Fête

Put the
confit
fat into a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a low heat, and sweat the onions until they start to get soft, then add 3 litres (5¼ pints) of water, the
Bayonne ham, salt pork or bacon, herbs, garlic and dried beans. Simmer for 2 hours, which gives you plenty of time to prepare the other vegetables. Top up the water so the ingredients are always
covered.

Add all the vegetables except the pumpkin and a few shredded cabbage leaves, and simmer for a further 10 minutes. Then add the sausages, and simmer for 10 minutes more, then add the meat
en
confit
, and simmer for another 10 minutes. Add the pumpkin chunks and shreds of cabbage last, and simmer the whole thing for a final 5 minutes. Taste the soup before you serve it – it
will probably not need salt. Pick out the bay leaves, thyme, parsley and spices. Extract the cooked sausages, slice them and return them to the pan.

A hearty
garbure
like this is served heaped in shallow soup plates. Salt, pepper, vinaigrette dressing, country bread and gherkins – the little sweet
cornichons
–
are the traditional accompaniment.

Tarte aux Noix

We discovered that fresh walnuts are absolutely delicious, quite unlike the sour, dusty things you buy in shops. Nicola
collected a small mountain of them
which we dried off in the sun and heaped up on a tray by the fireplace. Cracking them became compulsive, and soon a big dish of kernels was begging to be employed. I bottled a large quantity with
honey. The walnuts bleed a little oil into the honey, thinning it and giving a smoky flavour. The result is delicious spooned into yoghurt or poured over ice cream, vanilla or coffee.

This is another of Pierre Koffmann’s recipes, for a deliciously rich and crunchy nut tart that rounds off a winter meal to perfection.

While the full-sized tart is sumptuous, the mixture also works wonderfully in very small moulds, which results in exquisitely luscious bite-sized morsels. You can vary the flavour by using
Armagnac instead of rum, or with a strong-flavoured honey like heather or pine. If you’re condemned to using store-bought walnuts, rinse them in milk while the pastry is resting and leave
them wet to regain the shadow of their youthful plumpness.