Why go to the market?

I mean the local farmer’s market, of course.

Fresh, simple, direct- a bargain.

Inspiring, colorful, nurturing- satisfaction.

Diverse, diverting, fun- amused.

All those words pop into my head when I think of the many very good markets I can throw a Gascon stone at from Camont. But versatility is reason I stay faithful to one of my first loves in this area, the little true producer’s market nestled under the unattractive eaves of the Chat d’Oc strip mall on the Avenue des Landes. Not only can I buy just picked old-timey vegetables out of neighboring market gardens, get a great baguette  at l’Envie de Pain (thanks Pierre & Valerie!), take my weekly beekeeping lesson from Narcisse, pick up some house paint or maybe get a blood test at the Laboratoire and get Bacon groomed, I can also wash my car at the best carwash in town! It’s a full service strip mall French style… with wine.

What the Chat d’Oc lacks in French country charm it makes up in seriously good content. Here’s a sample of what I picked up yesterday before our MAGYC Day Cooking Class with Michelle & Rochelle where we started with a little fresh herb soup we drank as a hot cocktail.

The ‘King of the Greens’ sells his garden in bunches. He’s one of my favorite vendors selling herbs & salad greens SUPER fresh- everything from small bunches of roquette tied up with string to sorrel leaves folded into little packets of sour goodness. Scruffy chard is made into a sweet bouquet, tight bundles of fresh flowering thyme, and lyrical bay branches litter his card table stand. Most these things grow in my garden at Camont, too.  But when I spotted these long sensual whips of tarragon wafting anise through the air, I went green with herb-envy! Seduced, sold and popped into my basket at 50 centimes a bundle.

Next on my shopping list and menu were some vegetables to tuck around a farm chicken then doused with a glass of water (no stock!) and let simmer under the watchful lid of an acid green vintage le Creuset. One small corn fed chicken= 11€ and two chicken carcasses for a buck each. ( I’ll post my simple version of Gascony’s regional dish- a Poule-au-Pot from A Culinary Journey in Gascony under recipes.)

In the meantime, here’s a roasted chicken version fresh herb recipe here for when the need for crispy skin and oven heat calls.

Next stall over, the first local pommes de terre paper skins and dirt announcing ‘direct from the garden!’ don’t come cheap. But a pound of marble-sized sweet-meated gems are worth adding into the pot. 2.50€

Shopping in Gascony is a joy! Never short on market inspiration, I left the Chat d’Oc with an overfull basket and a head full of menu ideas: fresh pea soupcocktail, tarragon and chervil-infused duck fat in which to sauté little new potatoes, and strawberries steeped in rosé wine & armagnac at 2.10€ for a litre and a half of good local wine from Layrac.

Start at the market and you can’t go wrong when learning to cook in season. Open your eyes and learn why something tastes good and how it is grown by being observant, week to week. That’s how I learned a little MAGYC- Mastering the Art of Gascon Cooking!

Mayday- Mud! The famous Garonne River Fog is late this year; it has rained, rained, rained these last two weeks. So much rain now that with the soggy bottom clay silt soil holding moisture like a sponge, the promise of a clear sunny sky later makes morning fog. My own little micro-climate at Camont alongside canal & river is good for the garden…if I could only get to it though the muck.

This week’s market also shouted “Mayday” with a rouge abundance of rhubarb, strawberries, peppers and early tomatoes. Instead of pique-niques, boat rides, country walks, and gardening, I’m sticking close to my Keeping Kitchen and brewing up some seasonal treats- micro batches, single jars, starter vats. Here’s the list from the market booty…

• Rhubarb- candied and dried to be used in a Gateau Basque
• Red pepper & piment d’Espelette Jam
• Cilantro & mint salsa verde (Cinco de Mayo!)
• Strawberries… oh, just eat these while working

Lunch is green.

• Sauteed Brouttes or cabbage shoots  with
• Green garlic heads cut in half and slowly caramelized
• Raw Beet salad with walnuts and above garlic

M’aider means ‘help me’ in French. and just as it was adopted as the universal cry for help in 1923, I need help, too! The large glass barrel I bought a couple weeks ago still sits empty. Now with radishes, garlic stems, beets, wild leeks, onions, shallots, cauliflower and carrots to clean and peel, pack and pour…I am in a pickle.

Or will be, as soon as I can fill the jar with homemade vinegar brine and special Gascon pickling spices. Keeping up with the Spring bounty is a serious job not to be slighted by holidays and distressful spirits. My French kitchen is never quiet, at any time of year, but now I see that my lopsided pantry needs a bit of balance. This year, the confitures will be given a run for their money by the newly appreciated pickles.

Where do you go for inspiration and advice? For pickling help across the planet, I turn to my blogger friends and few old reliable cookbooks. Here’s my beginning pickle list:

Keeping Kitchen…

• a place for making food to keep for the winter.
• an edible way of keeping traditions alive.
• a gathering then sharing of abundant harvest.

Over the years, I’ve referred to my French pantry, the way of keeping it stocked, and the very kitchen at Camont as the “Keeping Kitchen”. Within these stone walls at Camont, I have been keeping the traditions of Gascon cooking alive as well as adding to it with my own fresh take on authentic recipes- folding in a new good idea here, leaving out an old bad habit there but always keeping true to the spirit if not the actual letter of the laws of the kitchen.

Good friend and co-conspirator in Italy, Judy Witts- the DivinaCucina diva and I hatched the idea of another combined blog effort like the Going Whole Hog blog project we did a couple years ago. We wanted more than a way to keep tabs on each other’s gardens, kitchens, and lives in Tuscany and Gascony. We want to share our euro-view of what surrounds us as not-quite natives/not-quite-expats. Trends come strong and fast up the internet pipeline but from here they can actually be old world news.  We decided to share our everyday cooking habits for stocking the Euro-Larder otherwise known here as the Keeping Kitchen.

Where does it begin?

“It” being the Frenchness of  the good food made here in Gascony.

“It” being the idea for recipe.

“It’ is an homage to a certain way of life. My life.

For me, it begins and ends 100% with a list of names that sketch across the Gascon landscape like 18th Century signatures.

Jehanne = foie gras, rillettes, vin de peche.

Narcisse = amber bramble honey

Pierre = dense and crusty baguettes

Chapolard = charcuterie- deep and porky

And most newly arrived at the Saturday Market at Nerac…

Marie de Chèvre = Creamy goaty goodness, clean sweet hay milk transformed into  a plateau of delicious chèvre.  And what did I do with the 4 creamy fresh faiselles I scored?  Here’s my recipe for les petit gateaux de Marie.

I remember that first February along the canal, watching two flaneurs along the canal, walking and stopping, bending and tugging, standing and walking. What were they doing? I watched from the voyeuristic comfort of the Barge until I could stand it no longer. Crossing the canal over a little stone bridge, I went to meet les messieurs.  ”Excuse me, but what are you looking for? have you lost something?”

They smiled at me and my naivety then reaching into a vest pocket pulled out a handful of pencil thin, green and white stalks- Poireaux de Vignes.

These wild leeks not only grow among the vines and along the canal but in my garden, too. These came from the Saturday Market in Nerac along with a small bunch of the first aillets or garlic shoots.

Georgia braised them with some endive and we ate them with this fat magret, grilled very rare over the coals under the watchful eye of Cheminée Angel.

Magret Angel

]]> http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2011/02/21/spring-treasures-wild-leeks-aillets/feed/ 0 http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/11/19/day-two-this-gascony-this-terroir/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=day-two-this-gascony-this-terroir http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/11/19/day-two-this-gascony-this-terroir/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:36:11 +0000 Kate Hill http://kitchen-at-camont.com/?p=1087 Driving to the Chateau St. Loup en Albret this morning was like flying between cloud and earth- rows of golden vines turning in sunshine alternated with blankets of fog concealing house and farm. Montagnac’s church spire floated above the mist.

First stop after gathering Melissa, Robert, Tag, Porter and Nick was the morning market at Lavardac- a good beginner’s guide to local good food.

What we bought and then cooked and ate this day:

• pâté de grand-mere-  a black pepper-studded liver pâté from Patricia
• 2 magrets de Canard. 1 1/2 pintade
• pâté de langue- pork tongues en gelée
• 3 cheese from Bruno-a Pyrennes sheep cheese, a creamy goat cheese from the Perigord, a slice of perfectly ripe Brie de Meaux
• from the Chapolard’s charcuterie stall- saucisse de toulouse, boudin noir, an aire-cured noix de jambon, saucisse sèche
• black radishes, mustard greens, radicchio, spinach and sunchokes form Francoise’s organic garden
• mushrooms-  cèpe and girolles from Paul
• bread
• wine, armagnac and little shot glasses with a pruneaux drowning in Armagnac in each one

We ate lunch, a picnic near the river at Vianne before driving to Camont.

Camont in sunshine on a November day- the kitchen warming to the fragrance of a richly perfumed Gateau Basque,  a pintade braising in a short wine broth enriched with pruneaux, la cruchade cooked and steamed, and several bottles of Domaine la Galine.

Dinner was the rich and savoury terroir of Gascony on a plate.  Fotos to follow.

Now that I have your attention, let me explain. I love honey. I use honey in many of my traditional recipes like pain d’épice, chevre, miel & armagnac tartine or a pan-seared foie gras aux 4-épice. Best of all, I love honey straight from the pot, drizzled over warm toasted bread that has been smeared with fresh salted butter. But I have never, ever had such delicious honey as that Miel de Ronces (bramble honey) from local beekeeper Narcisse Ferranoto.

This year I wished for a bee swarm and got one (see archives here), followed the #Tweehive happening on Twitter and have been planning to integrate more beekeeping in Camont’s resident programs. Only problem was WHO would be our King Bee?

While working on a chapter for my book of French food producers- “Butcher, Baker, Armagnac-maker’, I have long ‘stalked’ this honey man, this beekeeper, this sweet pillar of the market. This week Photographer Xtraordinaire Tim Clinch, fall intern Julia Leach, and I went across the Garonne River and through the woods to discover the sweet secret way of the beekeeper Narcisse Ferranoto at his Ferme de la Chateau Madaillan. After coffee with his smiling new bride, (they have lived together 30 years and just married 5 months ago!), Narcisse told me a few sweet secrets and, at last, I know the answer of just how he makes THE BEST HONEY IN GASCONY.

Want to know how? Then join us this spring in France for the inaugural Apiculture Internship at

La Ruche… outside the Kitchen-at-Camont.

April-June 2010.

Narcisse the Sweet by Tim Clinch

Narcisse Ferranoto by Tim Clinch

French Beekeeper Teacher at Camont

The Agen market is full of surprises on a perfect fall morning.

Today, shopping for quince, cress, and cilantro I ran into a drove of pigs.

Free-range, pasture-raised French pigs.

Like a stage setting, simplicity itself- one knife, a cleaver, a wooden block,

& a smile.

Julien Veyrac

of Tournon d’Agenais

No one was more surprised than me to meet the new butcher boy on the block

and discover some damn good looking charcuterie and fresh pork.

Merci, Julien for taking over the family farm.

See you next Wednesday for your andouillette-

my secret ingredient for an onctuous cassoulet.

Wednesdays- Agen Central Market

]]> http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/10/29/could-this-be-your-perfect-pig-on-an-october-morning/feed/ 0 http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/08/17/meet-the-teachers-1-a-solo-act/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=meet-the-teachers-1-a-solo-act http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/08/17/meet-the-teachers-1-a-solo-act/#comments Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:03:13 +0000 Kate Hill http://kitchen-at-camont.com/?p=587

This is the pig that roots in the woods then lives in the barn that eats the grain that becomes the bacon that I bought in the market that came from the house that Jill built.

Jill is really called Marie-Helène but she did indeed plant the corn that she feeds her long-snouted pigs that she takes to the abattoir that she turns into fine traditional charcuterie that she sells at the weekend markets in the Tarn department about 2 hours from here.

Marie-Helene defies the beret-wearing burly butcher stereotype here in France. She is a feminine and soft-but outspoken butcher/pig farmer who singularly raises and processes her own pigs before selling them to a small but loyal group of farmer market goers. She tells me that she sells a relationship as well as the fresh pork and cured meats, one based on trust and confidence in her everyday hard work. Her week is long, like most farmers, but she has learned how to maximize the time spent in the ‘laboratoire‘ to slaughter, cure and pack just enough pork each week to sell out. And she does it alone. Yup! All by herself. single-handed. Alone. She raises, slaughters, butchers and cures two to three pigs a week, every week, all year long. She is my new hero.

The bacon made with these pigs tastes and smells of that earthy farm perfume that distinguishes  ‘small-batch’ farm-raised charcuterie from the sanitized version of pork products that Americans have come to know and love. It only happens when the farmer is the cook and in this case, the butcher and charcutière as well. I call it ‘close-to-the-earth’ gastronomy.

What do you know about pigs and pork? Think again. Think France. Think 5 generations of raising pigs.

This could be your new teacher.

(Fergus Henderson admonished us years ago to ‘hug our butchers’ and today Ed Bruske inspired to me hug my teachers.  Hugs to the garden teachers here at Slow Cook.)

Photography by Eugene Frerichs while at the Kitchen-at-Camont this summer. To see more of her work while in residence here, click here.

Merci!