Menu from the Midi

Duncan Taylor Colin

Description

Menu from the Midi explores French gastronomy from the farmer's field to the dining room table. Concentrating on the South of France, the book is structured as a menu carefully compiled to give the reader a balanced diet of gastronomy, history, legend and local colour. Uniquely, it adds into this mix a celebration of the dedicated and passionate people who produce some of the finest raw ingredients and foodstuffs you are ever likely to taste.Appreciating good food and wine needs the right ambiance, the right company and plenty of time. Sit back, relax and savour the oldest sparkling wine in the world, le Rolls-Royce of olives, pink garlic soup, meats of the black Gascon pig, the legendary cassoulet, cheese from the caves of Roquefort, and learn how the Midi's ornate pigeon towers ensured a constant supply of roast pigeon.No wonder the father of food journalism and gastronomic guides, Grimod de La Reynire, had this to say 200 years ago: 'In good towns of the Midi, a great dinner is an affair of state. One speaks of it three months beforehand and digesting it lasts six weeks.'

Sujets

• Travel writing
• France

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 04 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800466487
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright © 2021 Colin Duncan Taylor

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 9781 800466 487

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For Donna


Menu
Where is the Midi?
A Word from the Chef

Aperitif
1 Blanquette de Limoux
2 Lucques du Languedoc
3 Charcuterie
4 On the Rocks

The Wine List
5 Wine’s Wild West

Entrée
6 Pink Garlic Soup
7 Omelette aux Cèpes

Main Course
8 Cassoulet
9 Roast Pigeon
10 Assiette Végétarienne

Comfort Break
11 The Diet Detectives

Cheese, Dessert and Digestif
12 From the Caves of Roquefort
13 Mesturets
14 A Glass of Armagnac

After-dinner speech

A note from the author
Discover the Lauragais

Bibliography
Acknowledgements


Where is the Midi?
The Midi is the southern part of France. As with most north-south divides, where it starts and where it ends is open to debate. For some, the Midi represents half the country, everywhere below a horizontal line stretching from La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast, through Clermont-Ferrand and Lyon to the Swiss border. To others, the Midi is the southernmost third of France, the sunny side of a line between Bordeaux, Valence and the Italian border (conveniently for geographers, this is also the 45th parallel).
If you cross the first line (the dotted line on Map 1), you are unlikely to notice any immediate difference. Cross the second, and you will. The culture is different, the mindset is different, the accent is different, and until a century or so ago even the language was different. 1 But for many people, the most striking difference is the change in the climate caused by the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees and the mountains of the Massif Central. The link with sunshine is not only a meteorological fact; it has become part of the language. The word midi with a lower-case ‘m’ means both midday and south. If you want to find the sun at noon, look due south towards the Midi.
The purpose of this book is to celebrate and discover the gastronomy of the Midi rather than discuss its weather, but climate has a profound effect on the food people grow and eat, the flavours and aromas of the dishes they prepare, and their style of dining. Come s outh of the 45th parallel, and these aspects of daily life change too, as I have been fortunate enough to observe at first hand for over 20 years. I have cultivated my own produce in all four seasons and taken careful note of the crops and animals my neighbours grow or raise. I have enjoyed countless home-cooked gastronomic meals in the homes of my French friends and spent many hours in the region’s eateries from humble cafés to Michelin-starred restaurants. I have discovered the history and legends, the festivals and fairs, and the cultural background surrounding the Midi’s most iconic culinary specialities. Day by day, bite by bite, sip by sip I have absorbed the true tastes and gastronomic traditions of the Midi.
Although the Midi can claim to have distinctive cultural, gastronomic and linguistic roots, administratively it does not exist. The closest it has come to officialdom was in the name of a region, but Midi-Pyrénées disappeared after a 2016 merger with Languedoc-Roussillon. The new region is called Occitanie, and today it holds centre stage in the Midi in terms of physical size and geographic position (see Map 2).
At the heart of Occitanie lies a land which used to be the county of the Lauragais. Catherine de’ Medici was its countess and Castelnaudary was her county town. The Lauragais is where I live, and Castelnaudary is where this gastronomic journey begins.
Endnotes


1 In 1914, more than ten million people spoke Languedocian, Provençal, Gascon or one of the other Occitan dialects. That was around a quarter of the French population.










A Word from the Chef
The gastronomic meal
The town clo ck strikes midday. It is midi in the Midi. Everyone stops for lunch.
The sleepy streets of Castelnaudary jolt to life as if they had received an electric shock. Cars, mopeds and bicycles course through the twisty lanes, and pedestrians surge out of buildings as if they had sensed the first tremors of an earthquake.
I was the sole customer when I chose a table on the restaurant terrace ten minutes ago. With the coming of autumn, tourists have vanished like the leaves on the trees lining the avenue, but now that the bells have struck noon, the empty seats fill with expectant diners. The waiter sprints among the tables handing out menus. He is working on the premise that all his customers need to be back at work by two.
The regular clients ignore the printed bill of fare; their eyes swivel towards the menu of the day chalked on a board by the door. Less-seasoned customers like me start to peruse the printed menu, but I am soon distracted by my neighbours. Most of them are in the company of colleagues or clients or friends, and they exchange words of welcome or exclamations of delight, accompanied by a brief handshake or a kiss on both cheeks.
I, in contrast, have come here alone to marshal my thoughts at the start of a new project that will combine my appetite for writing with my taste for eating, drinking and cooking. There can be no better way to begin my work than with a good lunch, but already I encounter a problem: I have the distinct impression that my fellow diners intend to enjoy the occasion just as much as the food that will grace their plates. And that raises a question: if I am to celebrate and investigate the gastronomy of the Midi, how broad a definition of gastronomy should I adopt?
The Académie Française first included the word gastronomie in its dictionary of 1835 along with the definition ’ l’art de faire bonne chère’ , or the art of eating well. 2 Various modern dictionaries add drinking to the eating, turn gastronomy into a science as well as an art, and extend its scope to include culinary preparation as well as appreciation.
Gastronomy also plays an important cultural role. In 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) enshrined something new on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity: ‘The gastronomic meal of the French is a customary social practice for celebrating important moments in the lives of individuals and groups, such as births, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, achievements and reunions. It is a festive meal bringing people together for an occasion to enjoy the art of good eating and drinking. The gastronomic meal emphasises togetherness, the pleasure of taste, and the balance between human beings and the products of nature.’ 3 There is no mention of what is being eaten; this is all about the importance of how it is eaten.
As well as agreeable company and the right ambiance, appreciating good food and wine needs time, and the two-hour lunch break being enjoyed by most of my neighbours on this crowded terrace in Castelnaudary is bordering on the ascetic. Ideally you should devote the whole afternoon to culinary pleasures, or if other commitments make this impractical, perhaps you should stay for dinner. I have noted over the years that, although most people in the Midi profess to eat their main meal at midi , when they invite friends, it is usually in the evening.
For many years I lived near London and worked in the metropolis. Most members of my social circle were shorter of time than money, so sharing a meal with friends usually consisted of meeting in a restaurant at eight and leaving by ten-thirty because the babysitter had to be home by eleven. Since then I have been lucky enough to dine regularly in the homes of the people of the Midi, and I have become accustomed to lengthier affairs. Arriving at someone’s home at seven and still being at table at midnight is the norm, and I have observed that it makes no difference if our hosts are retired or if they need to be up at six in the morning to plough a field or drive to work in Toulouse.
If we are to believe the man who is regarded as the father of food journalism and gastronomic guides, even these prolonged feasts are merely a truncated version of the traditional approach to eating in the Midi. Among the most notable works of Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière were ten editions of the Almanach des Gourmands published between 1803 and 1812, and among his most memorable quotes are these words about dining in southern France: ‘ In the provinces, and above all in good towns of the Midi where one makes excellent food, a great dinner is an affair of state. One speaks of it three months beforehand and digesting it lasts six weeks.’
All is not well in the kitchen
A poet called Joseph de Berchoux is often credited with inventing the word gastronomie when he us