Encore Provence Read online

  Here, on the outskirts of Mane, you will find Oliviers & Co., a shop that sells a remarkable range of hand-picked oils from the Mediterranean basin – Italy, Greece, Sicily, Corsica, Spain – as well as some of the best home-grown oils. Take a baguette into the shop with you, because you can taste before you buy. (Porcelain tasting spoons are provided, but you can't beat the combination of good oil on fresh bread.) And while you're there, pick up some olive oil soap, which is said to impart a Mediterranean glow to the complexion.

  Honey

  Every market has its honey stand, and you may one day bump into my favourite honey salesman, Monsieur Reynaud. ‘My bees,’ he will tell you, ‘have flown in from Italy to make this honey.’ This, for some reason, I find very impressive, and so there is almost always a pot of Reynaud honey in the house.

  But if you should want to see what the local bees can do, go to the Mas des Abeilles, on the Claparèdes plateau above Bonnieux. You'll find honey flavoured with lavender, with rosemary, or with thyme; honey vinegar; royal jelly; and a delicious honey mustard. And, as a bonus, there's a bee's-eye view of Mont Ventoux and the Luberon.

  Bread

  As with practically everything edible in France, there are pronounced and often noisy differences of opinion about what constitutes the perfect texture and even the perfect form of your daily bread. The fougasse, the boule, the pain fendu, the restaurant, pain de campagne, pain au levain – each has its own ardent lobby. Bakeries are subject to the same highly subjective judgements, and these recommendations are therefore a matter of purely personal taste.

  Boulangerie Georgjon, in Rognes, has perhaps the most enticing smell, a warm, buttery welcome as you step into the shop. As well as bread, the baker makes his own almond biscuits, two distinct types of croissant, and tarts with a seductive, fruity glaze. All are good.

  Boulangerie Testanière, in Lumières. Bread with a dense, slightly more chewy texture than the normal baguette. Very popular with local residents, and if you don't get in early on Sunday morning the shelves will be bare.

  Boulangerie Arniaud, in Rustrel. The décor has scarcely changed since 1850. Nor, I imagine, has the taste of the bread – solid and filling and satisfying, as bread should be. A fougasse rubbed with oil and sea salt and eaten with fresh tomatoes is a meal.

  Auzet, in Cavaillon. More varieties than I ever believed possible. The Auzets, père et fils, offer a menu of breads and, as long as they're not too busy, advice on what to eat with them.

  Cheese

  Provence is not a land of lush pastures, and a cow, so they say, is as rare as a genial tax inspector. But the goat flourishes in the scrub and the mountains, and goat's cheeses are surprisingly versatile. When fresh, they are light, mild and creamy. They become firmer with age, and more pungent when marinated in oil with herbs, rolled in coarse black pepper, or garnished with wild savory. I have seen them no bigger than a thimble – petits crottins – or in plump wedges as camembert de chévre, but they normally come in discs about an inch thick and three inches across, often wrapped in dried chestnut leaves and tied with raffia. The farmers around Banon, in Haute Provence, produce the best-known cheese, but they have worthy competition throughout the Vaucluse.

  Geneviève Molinas, in Oppède, makes the full range: dry or fresh, with pepper, with savory, à la cendre (cooked in embers), and en camembert.

  Not far away, in Saignon, is the Ferme Auberge Chez Maryse, where you can buy the cheeses of Maryse Rouzière and also sample her cooking.

  And at Les Hautes Courennes, in St-Martin-de-Castillon, you can have probably your first taste of cabrichon.

  For a wider selection of cheeses, there is the excellent Fromagerie des Alpes in Cavaillon, where the cow and the ewe are represented as well as the goat. The cheeses are kept in beautiful condition, and the proprietors will be happy to guide you in your choice.

  Chambres d'hôte

  There are very few large hotels in rural Provence, and if current building restrictions remain in force it is unlikely that there ever will be. But more and more private houses are offering simple, comfortable accommodation, a decent dinner, and the chance to meet the French at home. Three examples:

  In Bonnieux, there is Le Clos du Buis, run by the Maurins.

  Below Ménerbes, Muriel and Didier Andreis have recently opened Les Peirelles.

  And in Saignon, Kamila Regent and Pierre Jaccaud have converted an old house in the centre of the village. Don't expect to find room service or cocktail lounges. But the welcome will be friendly, you won't go hungry, and your hosts will be able to steer you to other good local addresses, from restaurants to vineyards.

  Restaurants

  There are enough to fill a book, and it's been written by a professional gastronomic correspondent, Jacques Gantié. The Guide Gantié describes 750 bonnes tables from one end of Provence to the other. Read it and eat.

  Looking back through these lists, I see great gaps. For these, I apologize. Where is the prince of butchers, the reliable truffle supplier, the sausage-maker extraordinaire? Who should you go to see for the definitive melon or the most succulent snail, the petit-gris de Provence? Who has the tastiest tapenade? There is no doubt that they exist, these gastronomic specialists who spend their lives helping to make our meals memorable. But Provence covers a large area, and I have only been exploring it for ten years or so. The longer I am here the more I realize I don't know.

  One thing I do know is that if you're prepared to spend a little time looking and listening, your appetite will be rewarded. I would agree that the ingredients and flavours that form Provençal cuisine are distinct and particular, and not to everyone's taste. I happen to like them, and with the notable exception of tripe, which I've never been able to embrace with any real enthusiasm, I have found very little to complain about. To say that you can't eat well here is nonsense. To say that you need to devote some time and effort to do it is quite true. But that, so I've always believed, is part of the appreciation and true enjoyment of good food.

  4

  Recipe for a Village

  I remember once being told that the annual rainfall in Provence is much the same as London's, although it arrives in more concentrated bursts. Looking out through the window, it seemed as though a six-month supply was being delivered all at once, a slanting grey curtain, thrumming against the tin tables on the terrace and dribbling off the chairs to trickle under the door before coming to rest in grubby puddles on the tiled floor.

  The woman behind the bar lit another cigarette and blew smoke at her reflection in the mirror that hung above the row of bottles, pushing her hair back behind her ears and practising her Jeanne Moreau pout. Radio Monte Carlo's hysterical good humour fought a losing battle with the mood of the room. The café, normally half-filled with workmen from the local chantiers by this time in the early evening, was reduced to three damp customers. Two men and myself, prisoners of the weather, were waiting for the downfall to stop.

  ‘It never rains like this in my village,’ I heard one of them say. ‘Never.’

  The other man sniffed, dismissing this meteorological curiosity. ‘The trouble with your village,’ he said, ‘is the drains.’

  ‘Bof. Better than having a mayor who's always drunk.’

  The display of micro-patriotism continued, each man defending his own village and disparaging the other's. Abuse and slander were heaped on everyone and everything. The butcher sold horse meat disguised as sirloin. The war memorial was disgracefully maintained. The street lamps were the ugliest in France, the inhabitants the surliest, the garbage collectors the laziest.

  All this and worse went back and forth between the two men with a surprising lack of passion. Disagreements in Provence tend to be energetic and heated affairs; arms and voices are raised, the names of ancestors are invoked, tables are banged, chests are prodded. But everything I overheard – even a most inflammatory remark concerning the postman's wife – was muttered rather than bellowed. The two men might have been university professors deb
ating the finer points of philosophy. I can only think that the rain had cooled their blood.

  When I left the café to make a run for the car, they were still at it, nipping away at each other, determined to disagree. I knew both the villages that featured in this tribal squabble, and to an outsider like myself – with no intimate knowledge of the mayor's fondness for alcohol or the proclivities of the postman's wife – they didn't appear to be nests of vice and neglect. On the surface, at any rate, there was nothing about either of them to sustain a prolonged argument. But after talking to various friends and acquaintances over the next few days, it became clear that villages inspire highly partisan feelings.

  A single trivial incident can set things off. All it takes is some kind of slight, real or imagined: a snub in the boulangerie, a workman taking his time to move his truck from a blocked alleyway, the baleful stare of an old woman as you walk by – these have all been quoted to me as proof that a village is fermé, cold and unwelcoming. On the other hand, should the inhabitants be friendly, talkative and generally forthcoming, you'd better watch out. This is just a cloak for nosiness, and before you know it details of your private business will be pinned up on the noticeboard of the mairie.

  The basic matter of location, in the eyes of many people, can damn a village without any help from the inhabitants. Too high, and there is no protection from the Mistral, a well-known cause of bad temper and various minor insanities. Too low, and the streets are suffused with a permanent chilly gloom which, as village experts will tell you, is responsible for winter epidemics of flu, or even more disastrous afflictions. Why, it was only 500 years ago that the population was almost wiped out by the plague. Beh oui.

  The problems continue with architecture – ‘the whole place was ruined by the salle des fêtes they put up’ – with not enough shops or with too many shops, with nowhere to park or with a parking area that dominates the village, with infestation by Parisians or deserted streets. In other words, as I was repeatedly told, there is no such thing as the ideal village.

  One of the consolations of the short but often sharp Provençal winter is that the days are less distracting. Guests are far away, biding their time until the warm weather arrives. Domestic chores are confined to keeping the fire supplied with logs and refilling the emptiness of the wine cellar after the ravages of summer. The garden is rock-hard and dormant, the pool is under its clammy cover, and the social round of the Luberon is, in our case, restricted to the occasional Sunday lunch. There is time to reflect on the mysteries of life, and I found myself wondering about, and eventually constructing in my mind, the ideal village.

  Parts of it exist, although inconveniently scattered around in other villages, and so I have stolen those I like and brought them together. Most of my featured inhabitants exist as well. But in transplanting them I thought it only fair to give them disguises, and names have been changed to protect the guilty. The name of the village, St Bonnet-le-Froid, I chose because St Bonnet is one of the more neglected saints in the religious calendar who doesn't even seem to have his own saint's day. So I've given him one (which officially belongs to St Boris) to call his own: the second of May, just as summer is about to start. St Bonnet is set on the top of a hill about ten minutes from our house, close enough so that the bread is still warm when I get back from the baker's in the morning. Not too close, though, because even in the imagined perfection of this ideal village, tongues will wag. More from curiosity than malice, they will wag about every aspect of daily life, and since we are foreigners, our daily lives would be more closely observed than most. Our guests, in their annual progress from pink to bronze, would be studied as closely as the postcards they send home. Our household's consumption of wine, revealed by the empty bottles, would be noted with admiration or dismay, but it would be noted. My wife's weakness for acquiring dogs would be quickly recognized, and rewarded with puppies that were surplus to requirements or vintage beagles too old to hunt. From the purchase of a new bicycle to the colour of paint on the shutters, nothing would escape the village eye. More of this later.

  One of the first essentials of any properly equipped village is a church. I considered the Abbaye de Sénanque, near Gordes, which is magnificent but a little intimidating and, I decided, far too big. I wanted something on a smaller scale, though of similar historical interest, and so my first theft would be to steal the church from St Pantaléon. It is tiny and beautiful, with tombs cut into the rock on which the eleventh-century building stands. The tombs are now empty, and – since they were made to accommodate eleventh-century-sized people – seem very small. The giants of today wouldn't fit, and they would need a separate, more capacious cemetery. Following tradition, this would enjoy the finest view in the village, the theory being that the occupants have all eternity to appreciate it.

  But there would be other views for the rest of us, almost as good, towards the west for the sunset, and north to Mont Ventoux. The fields at the foot of the mountain are fertile, almost lush, with vines and olive and almond trees; its crest, in the summer, looks prematurely white with snow. In fact this is not the remains of a freak blizzard; it's bare, bleached limestone, but when the sun catches it in the evening it has the rosy softness of a cushion. And there is no better place to watch the fade of light and the gradual creep of shadows across the mountain's face than the terrace of the village café.

  If a Frenchman were to tell you of the many contributions his country has made to civilized life (and he doesn't take much persuading), the café would probably appear somewhere at the bottom of the list, if at all. It is an institution that he has grown up with, a convenience that he takes for granted. There is always a café. But ask visitors from Britain and America what appeals to them about France, and sooner or later – after the countryside, the culture, the food or whatever else is their principal interest – most of them will say, often quite wistfully: ‘Of course, the French are so lucky to have cafés.’

  It's true that the British and the Americans have their bars, their pubs, their coffee shops and their diners, even their carefully accessorized versions of the authentic French café, complete with aperitif posters from the 1920s, yellow Ricard ashtrays, sandwiches made with baguettes, and newspapers hanging on sticks. France, however, is where you find the real thing, the particular combination of smells and sounds and traditions and services, the atmosphere which has evolved over centuries. That, not the décor, is what makes a café a café. Obviously, there are enormous variations: the Deux Magots in Paris would seem to have very little in common with a village café in the Luberon. And yet there are one or two very basic similarities.

  First, you are left alone; sometimes, I must admit, for longer than you might want if the waiter is feeling liverish and antisocial. Once you've ordered, though, you have rented your seat for as long as you wish to occupy it. Nobody will hover over you waiting for you to have another one or get out. You are expected to linger. You can read a newspaper, write a love letter, daydream, plan a coup d'état or use the café as an office and run your business undisturbed. I knew a Parisian who used to arrive at La Coupole each morning at nine o'clock sharp with his briefcase and spend the entire working day at one of the tables in the front, overlooking the Boulevard du Montparnasse. I always envied him having an office with waiters and a fifty-foot bar. In those days, before the cell-phone, cafés would take calls for their regular clients, making excuses or arranging rendezvous as instructed. Some, I hope, still do, because the idea of having an answering service that provides refreshments deserves to endure.

  Another wonderful amenity provided by every good café, regardless of size, is free entertainment of the old-fashioned, non-electronic kind. Sit for long enough, pretending to read, and you will be treated to an amateur variety show. The cast will be mainly local, with occasional guest appearances by visitors. (These are the customers who sit politely, waiting to be served. Locals are more likely to bawl their orders as they come through the door; or, when their habits become sufficie
ntly well known, a grunt and a nod will be enough to bring them their usual tipple.) If, like me, you find people more interesting than television, then here, as a fly on the café wall, is the place to watch them.

  First to arrive, while the floor is still wet from its morning swabbing, are those battered ornaments of the local construction business, the masons. Their voices have the rasp that comes from cigarettes and the dust of a hundred demolitions. Their clothes and boots already look as though they've done a day's work. Their hands are meaty, with muscular fingers and sandpaper skin from juggling with 200-pound blocks of stone. Their faces are raw in the winter, seared in the summer. Amazingly, they are almost always good-humoured, despite brutal and frequently hazardous working conditions. When they leave, taking their noise with them, the café seems unnaturally still.

  But quite soon their place is taken by the professional men, neat in their jackets and pressed trousers, briefcases loaded for a day at the desk in Apt or Cavaillon. They are a subdued contrast to the boisterous masons, serious and preoccupied with the cares of commerce. They check their watches frequently, make notes on small pads of what looks like graph paper, and brush their laps free of croissant crumbs after every mouthful. You know that their offices will be extremely tidy.

  The first woman of the day is the owner of a hairdressing salon in a nearby village. Her hair is the colour of the moment, somewhere between dark henna and aubergine, cut short. She will have spent a great deal of time tousling it to her satisfaction before leaving home. Her complexion glows with a radiance that is a credit to the house of Lancôme, and she is extraordinarily wide-eyed and vivacious for such an early, bleary hour. She orders a noisette, coffee with a dash of milk, holding the cup with her aubergine-tipped pinky extended as she studies the lead story in Allo! magazine and wishes she could get her hands on the Duchess of York's hair.