On Steack

Over here at the slum apartment known as Château Ward, where we're broke but not poor, we've been going through some lean times of late. This is on its way to ending, it would appear, and you'll know it has when the PayPal button over there on the right disappears. Meanwhile, though, it's been tough.

On the food side, it's come at a bad time: very little has been in the market, although, again, this seems to be ending, too. But summer's bounty of inexpensive eggplants, zucchini, tomatoes, and all manner of fruit has yet to hit. This has meant some very careful menu planning around here, as well as some strategic market-going. But when I feel myself getting weak, I realize I've been vegetarian long enough, and fix myself up some steack haché. Yes, I know it's spelled wrong. And I'll even admit that around here, that pesky "c" isn't seen very often. I've always figured it was part of the French attempt to deny that they use foreign words (most recently seen in the pathetic attempt to ban the words Facebook and Twitter from the television newscasts), just as they call a particular cut of beef rumsteak. Because we wouldn't want to say "rump," would we? Why, I've even seen that spelled rumsteack. Pitiful.

Still, steack haché could be considered hamburger if mine weren't better than that, so about a month ago, I decided to photograph the creation of my version of it, which does, in fact, rise above the average burger. And here's the reason why:

Four important ingredients here. As usual, the sickly yellow cast and out-of-focusness tell you this is a genuine product of my kitchen. Now, ideally, that bowl should be sort of greasy with the olive oil, salt, and pepper you've tossed the potatoes you're roasting in while you get your steack together, but not this time. Still: better that way. The three bottles are also important: left to right, Worcestershire Sauce, Tabasco Sauce and Liquid Smoke. What? you say. Where do you get that last one over here? Answer: you don't. You either bring it over yourself or you get a friend to smuggle it in. I'm not even sure it's legal over here, but I can tell you that a little lasts a long, long time. Okay, two other things, more easily obtained: a green onion and a clove of garlic. You don't want a lot of garlic; this is about synergy.

Anyway, dice up your green onion -- just the white part, reserving the green part --  and garlic as finely as you can and put them in the bowl. Anoint them with the three liquids, being careful not to use too much smoke. Then, let this all sit for about a half hour:

Nice closeup! Too bad it's yellowy and sort of blurry. But anyway, after that stuff's had a chance to mellow, it's time to add your ground beef. I use 15% supermarket beef, because it has more flavor, and it's cheaper. It's sold in 350g packages here, so I generally slice off 1/3 of the block and freeze it. Then I can pull one or two out later. One is big enough for a recipe of ma po do fu from the fantastic Fuchsia Dunlop Szechuan book you can buy from that Amazon gizmo over on the right. Two will make two steacks!

Now we chop the onion greens very finely and add them to the mix along with the meat. A masterpiece of awful photography illustrates this step:

I'm not even enlarging that puppy; it's too embarrassing. But do add the greens separately and mix thoroughly, but very gently, since if you mix this mixture too hard it'll get nasty and your steacks will be hard and dry. Now, I'm not sure why, except maybe the onions were kind of old and slippery, but I diced all this stuff way too big for this demonstration. The two steacks in the next picture prove that: you shouldn't have that much identifiable stuff sticking out! One thing they do have, though, which doesn't show up too well, is an indentation, made with my thumb, in the center of each one. That's the side that goes down on the hot, ungreased, griddle first. I'm not sure why, but this makes a big difference and it's a truc I got from that Best Recipe book. (A truc is a trick, in French, not a French misspelling of "truck.")

And yes, I have cleaned the cooktop since this picture was taken. Thanks for asking.

Okay, now you've had your skillet on high heat for about ten minutes, no grease, and so you're ready to start cooking your steacks. First, salt and pepper the sides with the indentation. Then slap them into the skillet and salt and pepper the side sticking up.

It's a good idea to have a window open at this point, because there'll be smoke. I think I shot this just seconds after I threw the meat down, because there's none here at the moment.

Just how long to cook them, though, is an art, not a science. You're on your own here, although I'd say don't undercook them because they'll be hard to digest, and don't overcook them because they'll be dry and nasty. Push down on them a little when you flip them, too. That encourages molten fat to come out and fry them more efficiently.

I can't remember what I had with these, but I usually do a batch of roasted potatoes and a green salad. I also like this wine with it, but unless you live around here, you probably can't get it, and I know I didn't have it the night I made these, owing to economic contraints.

And now a dirty little secret:  you can do this and throw them on the grill if grilling's legal where you live (it's not here, for obvious reasons) and even top them with a slice of sharp cheddar or aged Cantal, and call them "hamburgers" if you want. But for the relief from the mundane around here, I call 'em steacks.

Frontignan: Hills, Herbs, Weird Wines and a Spa

The nice folks at Hérault Tourisme were at it again, and the invitation went around the Usual Suspects in the English-language media here to start our Pentecost weekend a day early with a trip to Frontignan. Checking the map, I saw that it was a few kilometers down the A9 to the southwest, on the water just before you get to Sète. There was some info on Wikipedia, and a bit more on the town's tourism site, including a nice history page which mentions that it was the base for the construction of Sète as a port under Louis XIV and that it has a church from the 12th to 14th centuries in the middle of town.

The idea was that we'd start the day with a nature walk, then visit a winery, have lunch there, and top it all off with a visit to a spa whose water comes from an ancient hot spring. As he drove me down there, Peter, from the Languedoc Page, reminded me that a lot of the local waterfront communities are quite new, having been developed from the ground up as vacation destinations for French people under Charles de Gaulle after malaria had been eradicated in the area. This explains the hideous architecture found in most of them, as well as the fact that, according to Peter, a lot of the cheapo apartment buildings are falling apart by now.

Frontignan, though, has been in business since the Greeks, who did a lot of business up and down this part of the Mediterranean, and the Romans, who noted that the Greeks had encouraged viticulture and beefed up what they'd started. Frontignan has been famous from time immemorial for its Muscat wine, which, despite being one of the most famous wines produced around here, I'd never tasted, although Thomas Jefferson apparently raved about it. Other locations in France grow muscat grapes, but none of the other muscat wines are as famous as Frontignan's.

Still, as we noted, arriving a bit early and grabbing a coffee at a bakery, the town's not much to look at. The church does rear up noticeably, but other than that there's not much charm. Recognizing that, the local tourist folks have taken a different tack. We drove out to one of the tourist offices (the other is opposite the church) and joined up with our companions for the day. Peter once owned a boat in which he sailed up and down the coast, and recognized the harbor as one he'd berthed in. The office was hung with pictures of the local shore birds and some very impressive underwater photography of some of the local fish and crustaceans, including a great shot of a crab hanging out on the forehead of a fish, who looked nonplussed. There are also, apparently, seahorses out there somewhere.

Our nature guide, Jacques Guiraud, and his assistant arrived, and we drove out into the countryside. My Michelin map notes a Guardiole Mountain behind the town, and that's where we were headed. One thing you notice about Jaqui, as he insists on being called, is his almost manic enthusiasm, and after a while, his deep knowledge, as he starts pointing out plants along the way.

These, for instance, are from the nightshade family, and, he noted, of partcular danger to kids because they think they look like candy. Apparently the British call them "lords and ladies," and as you can see, they're just beginning to ripen, and get quite red at maturity. Other plants along the way included a very big bush whose name I didn't catch, apparently introduced by the Romans because the highly toxic berries are used in leather curing, juniper trees, actual wild asparagus, fennel, a little yellow flower called immortelle, which he insisted was used in curry (it did have an appealing odor, but it's not from any curry mixture I could identify, so maybe it's the secret of French curry, which I've never had), and an herb called rue, which he said was made into a tea for women who wanted abortions. I have no idea how they got it down: the smell of the leaf almost made me abort my breakfast.

As we got further up the hill, the limestone underneath was visible.

There were apparently prehistoric inhabitants up here, and there's also an ancient abbey in ruins somewhere in the neighborhood, but the best we got to see was a World War II bunker meant to defend the petroleum industry which once existed in town.

When we got fairly high up (although this ain't Everest: my map shows the peak at 151 meters above sea level, with two others at 216 and 142 along the rise) we paused at a "panorama" as Jacqui got out some water, we enjoyed some rather dry little cookies from a local bakery called pavois de Frontignan made with -- what else? -- Muscat, and he explained what we were looking at.

Not that you can see it in my non-Ansel-Adams-quality photo here, but most of that green downhill from the evergreens is vines, and the red roofs of Frontignan (right) and Le Peyrade (left) sit behind a slit in the water which is the Rhône-Sète Canal. Sète itself is out of sight to the left. From here we descended, stopping so Jacqui could pull a cicada-larva shell off of a tree to explain how they emerge yearly after an insanely long gestation period. He'd already explained how the cicada (le cigale) is an index of both time and temperature, and that the sound is made by the male, indicating he's ready to mate again, something which happens for 15 minutes, after which he takes 15 minutes off, and he's ready to rock once more.

(A note to the nice people at the Frontignan Tourist Agency: although le cigale is the much-commercialized and instantly-recognizable symbol of Provence, neither the Gardiole hills nor, of course, Frontignan is in Provence, which gets all too much recognition as it is. Thus, you might want to change the English text on p. 9 of your guide touristique, which begins "Out in the open air. High up on Provence's rocky garrigues, you can see Frontignan from a different angle." This may be so, but what we're looking at in that photo is most definitely Languedoc-Roussillon. Neither the French nor the German text makes this mistake, so you're okay there.)

Heading back to the cars, we discovered one of the more bizarre non-natural things in the area: a series of metal tubes welded together. One of the other journalists and I decided it was worth a closeup look, and we figured it to be the frame of an ejector seat, which fell away when the passenger opened his parachute. It wasn't rusted, so it could well have happened recently. Is there a corpse shrouded in parachute silk somewhere up there in the garrigue? Jacqui wasn't interested: it wasn't nature. Ah, well.

From there we drove to lunch, which was at a winery called Six Terres. There we were given a lecture by the farmer (the owner lives in Paris) about how the grapes are grown. They have two methods, the old-time one...

...where the vines just grow naturally, although the foliage has to be trimmed, and the new method...

...in which, as you can barely make out here, the vines are trained onto wires and the foliage is allowed to grow every which way. This is easier to harvest, but I missed some of the other explanation.

Finally, we sat down to eat, and a bottle of Muscat Sec was uncorked. As we were to find out, Muscat de Frontignan comes in three sorts. Muscat Sec is interesting. The nose ("white flowers," the guy from the 100-year-old co-op, to which Chateau Six Terres belongs, told us) is sweet. Now, as I've noticed, since it's just beginning to be rosé season here and I can taste again, that's the deal with rosé: you get apple, or melon, or strawberry or some combination of fruits and flowers, in the nose, but not at all on the tongue. It's part of why the local rosés fascinate me so much. Muscat Sec does the same thing, but it's very slightly sweet on the tongue. It's...interesting. I'm not sure how much I like it, actually. It does go well with seafood and other local specialties.

The little pies are tielles sètoises, filled with chopped seiches, little cuttlefish, cooked with spices. The bread has a black olive tapenade on it, and we've got a bottle of sec, sweet, and grape juice in the shot. We also had other hors'doeuvres.

The tomato "lollipops" had the sesame seeds stuck on with what tasted like honey, and, along with the cherry tomatoes not being all that ripe, weren't particularly successful. Next to them is tortilla espagnole, the wonderful egg-and-potato dish that's eaten a lot around here, which I should really learn to make. The next shot is shrimp "lollipops" around which has been twirled some potato, which was then deep-fried briefly, and those were good. There's more tortilla and a bunch of charcuterie, which was excellent.  Accompanying them with the sweet Muscat, though, didn't appeal to me much: I found it slightly cloying. Not as much as the newly-introduced Vin Liqueur, at 15% a reproduction of the way Muscat used to be made in the 19th century -- and most likely before -- with a screw-top cap and a nostalgic bottle. It was brown, packed a punch, and was way too sweet for me, although some of those around me made flattering comparisons to sherry, which I can see.

I found myself staring at the nice view from my seat at the table, the red flowers, the spongy layer of pine needles under the dark trees, and the vines at the other end, so I shot it.

This would have been better if it had been less overcast, but you take what you can get.

At any rate, the second half of the trip was about to begin, so we thanked the Frontignan tourism folks, said good-bye to Jacqui, and headed out. Peter and I decided to take a detour back into town to see the church, which sounded more interesting on paper than it turned out to be in the flesh, or rocks, or whatever. I keep forgetting the violent history of religion here, although I live mere blocks from some representations of it, but I'm always disappointed to walk into one of these churches and see how bare they are. This one had modern stained glass in the narrow, slit-like windows, which brightened the interior up nicely, but aside from a carved plaque and a very nice skull and crossbones memento mori carved from white polished stone and mounted on some black polished stone from the 16th century, and a really neat wooden statue of St. Roch wearing a 16th century stovepipe hat to the right of the altar, there wasn't anything to see. We hopped back into the car and headed to Balaruc-les-bains, where the hot spring spa awaited us.

I wasn't much looking forward to this, since I haven't owned a bathing suit since leaving Texas in 1993. I've never much enjoyed swimming, although lolling around in a pool has its appeal on hot days, and there was definitely no beach in Berlin. I may yet have to get one, since there was that trip to the river last year, and this trip, a suit would have allowed me into the high-tech thermal pool at O'balia, the upmarket beauty-care and health spa the Hérault Tourisme folks were taking us to. The pool had two levels and a waterfall and currents to swim against and all, and it looked like fun. There was also a bizarre wooden structure the guides took us to which looked out over the Bassin de Thau and its oyster and mussel farms towards Sète. It also shook like crazy when the wind blew, so I abandoned it quickly.

While the others bathed, I sat and read, and soon it was 4 o'clock and time to go. On the way back, Peter made a wrong turn as we got into Montpellier and instead of being able to zip into the front of the huge line of cars heading into town, we were going the other way. He decided to wait the congestion out and we wound up at Carnon Plage, one of his favorite berths during his boating days, an absolutely tasteless collection of cheap restaurants, pizza places, bars, and kebab stands that was, somehow, absolutely perfect. We checked out the beach, and he pointed out landmarks from Sète to the lighthouse south of Port-Camargue, past which lies the real Camargue of white horse and cowboy fame. Somehow the reminder of what French tourism is like for the French -- hanging out on the beach with the kids and then eating mussels and fries for dinner in one of the joints in town -- was a perfect finish to the day. And he was right: two beers later, the traffic jam was all but gone.

(The nature tour is, as I hope I've made clear, quite wonderful, and I suspect it gets better as the summer continues. It's held every Saturday from April to October, costs €5 a head, and the maximum capacity is 30. Jaqui gives the tour in French only: he doesn't speak any English. Reservations are available through his website.) 

May, With Mammaries

Last year, I made a deal about the Comédie du Livre, France's second-largst book fair, which just happens to occur on my doorstep, because the campaign to save the Anglophone Library was a presence due to the fact that the partner country was, well, not the U.S. because they couldn't find enough American writers who had books in translation and wanted to attend, so it turned into North America, which included an Ethiopian, a Vietnamese, and a Quebecois. This year, the partner nation was Germany. Imagine my excitement.

And, it turned out, that of the crowd. There were even fewer readers lined up for autographs than last year, even though there seemed to be far more people in attendance, and the weather was sunny and on this delicious cusp of warm and hot. It appears that the reason Germany was picked was because of this being the 50th anniversary of Montpellier choosing Heidelberg as a twin city, much as last year was the 50th anniversary for Louisville. So far, though, we haven't been treated to an exhibition of German photography at the Pavillon Populaire, which is a shame, because there's some real good stuff to choose from, both contemporary and historic. (Willi Römer! Just go google him). Of course, they'd probably pick all the wrong stuff.

As always, the biggest lines, some including people toting luggage filled with books, were at the BD booths. I have yet to penetrate the culture of the bandes dessinées as much as I'd like to. The term covers a wide swath of territory. "Comic book" is insufficient, although comic books like Lucky Luke,  Tintin, and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers are included in the term. "Graphic novel" has come to indicate pretentiousness in the U.S., thanks to grim practitioners like Chris Ware, and another recent development (at least in the West), manga, is somewhat warily admitted to the shelter of the BD tent here. I myself am a huge fan of a guy named Jean-Claude Denis, who has a sizeable output for someone with almost no audience, and I hope someday to be able to translate and publish some of his stuff, especially the antics of his antihero Luc Leroi.

Sharing some of the space with the book fair was an encampment in the park just off the Esplanade of scruffy-looking people with cardboard signs urging revolution immediately, "true democracy," and reminding us that "people have died." As is often the case here, the means towards the revolution seemed to be lurking in a can of 9.8% alcohol beer, and most of the dialogue was internal. One bunch of very clean-cut revolutionaries set up a stand with a French-English sign, and I suspect they were LaRouchies, since they seem to be everywhere, ranting incoherently. Anyway, the scruffies seem to have been ousted from the park and are now in residence in the Comédie, ranting through bullhorns as U write this and climbing the fountain of the Three Graces.

Nobody seems overly concerned, although a little old lady did mutter something to me as she passed by with her shopping. The ranters rant for a while, the people on the ground there apply crayons to that cardboard (they have a lot of cardboard), signs urging revolution are stuck onto the side of the fountain, where the wind blows them over, and, at one point, one of the more inebriated revolutionists decided one of the Graces needed some cosmetics and climbed up to redress the lack.

The police seem notably unimpressed, although they do drive through from time to time.

Our pals the street artists are also urging their own sorts of revolution, and I must say I like the way it's expressed, even that I sympathize.

There are several larger-scale examples of this around, but I'm lazy and this is the nearest to my house. Whether it has anything to do with the fact that Gay and Lesbian Pride Days happen this Saturday I can't say, but at least loud disco out on the Comédie is preferable to drunks with bullhorns.

Looks like some travel may be coming up, so the subjects, if not the quality, of the photos may well improve in subsequent posts.

More Merry Maytime Miettes

Sorry, I promised a quick report on the wild asparagus, but what with one thing and another, I forgot to come back and give the report.

First, I looked at it and figured it wasn't a meal by itself. It did, however, need to be steamed, because it may have been thin, but it was still pretty fibrous. So I went up the hill to the covered market and bought some side-dishes, then laid them out on a plate, and boiled the steaming water.

(Yeah, I hate the yellow cast these energy-saving bulbs imbue everything with in these shots too, but when I went to Photoshop to try to fix it I wound up with something that looked like "Meal On Acid." I really must conquer that program some day).

So what we have here is a couple of slices of Iberian ham, a pâté en croûte, a hunk of baguette from the corner, and M. Bou's finest Camembert (his only Camembert, in fact). Also a bottle of Domaine de la Prose's low-priced stuff -- hardly low-priced, but it's a St.-Georges-d'Orques, probably the best local address for wine. (They used to brag that Thomas Jefferson used to buy wine from them, but suddenly stopped, probably because it's demonstrably not true).

When the water boiled, I stuck the asparagus in the steamer basket and steamed it for 45 seconds on the nose, then laid it out on a small plate, doused it with a bit of olive oil and a little salt, and it was dinner-time.

The final verdict: it was too much for a single serving. It should have been steamed longer -- a minute minimum. The taste was very delicate, somewhat bitter like asparagus, but with a sweet edge. I wonder if another 15 seconds' steaming would have brought out the flavor more, or maybe a tad more salt. The ham, as I suspected, made a good foil for it, and the rest was kind of superfluous except for filling me up. The wine was way too big for the asparagus, but it went nicely with the pâté and cheese.

I also suspect this stuff has a diuretic effect, because I was up and down all night. Again, a half-dose might not have had that effect. I noticed a couple of days later that the same greengrocer in the Halles had more bundles of this stuff, but, at €4.95 apiece, I'm not likely to buy more until I have a place big enough to have dinner-guests in. Which, I hope, will happen soon.

And, in the uncovered market this weekend, more cherries -- still not there -- asparagus, amazing strawberries, and the first melons, which sure smell good, but are waaaay too expensive. I can wait.

* * *

It must be hard being a street artist here. Someone went around with a stencil and hit a couple of likely walls, spraying on a very realistic-looking phone and the highly ambiguous slogan (in English) TALK TO GOOD. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Is it a misspelling for "talk to God," making the point that there is no God, and this isn't a telephone? That's as close as I can come. But I walked past one of these twice and forgot to grab it, and when I went back the third time, it was so well painted over that I couldn't even see where the phone had been.

Likewise a great paper piece on the side of the Panacée, the ancient seat of the University's medical school, which is being turned into some sort of arts space. There, a winsome little girl in 19th century clothing had her hands on a detonator, from which a long string of paper led up the wall to a sconce in which there was a bundle of what was labelled TNT. All rendered in paper, all gone when I went out with my camera. Conclusion: this isn't Berlin, and it may just be a place without the ability to discern between art and gang tags. I'll try to be quicker on the uptake.

It's also a place with a curious command of English, as that caption proves. I've been meaning to note another one here, a boutique which advertises itself with the slogan "Be Fashion Think Seven's." I don't know about you, but that invitation seems quite resistable.

* * *

Yet to come, the photo show, which I see is not only at the Pavillon Poplaire, but also at Ste. Anne's church, and, from what I can tell, shows the latest acquisition of the municipal photography collection. I'm happy to live in a city that collects art, but, because one of the acquisitions is a huge number of Ralph Eugene Meatyard's awful Lucybelle Crater series, about which I complained at some length here last year, I've been slow to get off my duff and go get disappointed. Also in the new acquisitions are some shots of East Berlin by a Japanese photographer, whose samples in another recent show were little better than tourist snapshots. Don't worry: I'll go. And I have a good excuse, in that I've been working on a book proposal. I still am, but I do promise to go see this show.

At Last!

Well, now, this is a pleasant surprise. A young woman from Yale, writing about the concept of terroir in France, came to town after working for a couple of weeks on an organic farm up in the Cévennes to see how what she'd seen translated to the big city, so I gave her the walking tour, with an emphasis on food. In the Halles Castellanes, the covered market at the top of the hill, we were looking at stuff, and suddenly I saw this:

My second exotic vegetable of the year, and one I've been trying to find for five or six years now. From everything I can gather, it's way out of season, but there it was: wild asparagus.

I picked up the bundle, paid the nice lady, and took it home, where I'll steam it tomorrow and douse it with the best olive oil I can find and maybe just a tad of salt.

There it is, up close. The first time I saw this, I thought it was wheat. There will be something simple to accompany it, and a darn good wine. Stay tuned: miettes will follow.

Merry Miettes of May

This post should have a photo. But it doesn't.

* * *

Say It With Flowers: Since this was my third May Day in Montpellier, I was prepared for the profusion of people set up all over town selling nosegays of lilies of the valley. This is a tradition here, and notable in that the vendors are, for the most part, not professionals, just people who raise a lot of the flowers for the occasion and bring them into town. It's charming, seeing most of Montpellier walking around clutching bunches of little white flowers.

What I wasn't prepared for, though, was the red roses on the 10th, even though I did something I never do and accepted a copy of one of the free newspapers being handed out at lunchtime here. I didn't remember that happening last year, and it turned out that it hadn't. The roses, the paper told me, were celebrating the 30th anniversary of the election of a Socialist government in France, since François Mitterand was elected President on that day in 1981. There were fewer red flowers than white ones the week before, but in a city as red as this one is, it probably took on a lot of significance.

But there really wasn't a photo-op attached.

* * *

Friday the 13th saw me walk out the other direction from the apartment into a bizarre scene: the fountain of the Three Graces was shrouded with a black cloth, and, in a fenced-off area, two circles of people wearing black shirts and with their mouths bound shut with strips of cloth stood facing outwards. Performance art? Sure looked like it, but then I heard the speech being given, noticed the huge placard on the ground, and realized that it was the Club de la Presse, a mysterious organization I keep meaning to look into to see if I'm eligible (probably not, not being French), staging a demonstration on behalf of two journalists from France 3 TV, Stephane Teponier and Hervé Ghesquière, who disappeared with three of their crew in Afghanistan on December 29, 2009 and haven't been seen since. It was all very dramatic, all very enigmatic (there was a plexiglas rostrum set up on the steps of the Opera House, but, although the speeches were coming in loud and clear, nobody was standing at it), and just a bit pathetic to hear some unseen Frenchwoman declaiming "President Karzai, we demand that you use the power of your office to find and free these two journalists and their companions." There you've done it, Hamid: you've pissed off the Club de la Presse de Languedoc-Roussillon!

I should have gone back to the house, grabbed my camera, and taken a picture, but I'd only nipped out to get some bread to make a sandwich, and I've been working like crazy on this book proposal, so once I got back to the house, I went straight to the kitchen, made the sandwich, grabbed a napkin in case it leaked, sat back down at the computer and got back to work.

So that's why there's no picture of that.

* * *

Then, it occurred to me, I saw a banner announcing the annual Rencontres Folkloriques on Saturday. I don't know much about the back-stories of the various dances that get done, but associations representing various traditions and occupations come into town in costumes and do dances while oboe bands wail away, so I promised myself I'd go get that. There were lots of tables set up all over the place, I noticed. One was urging you to use the services of your local notary. Another was denouncing homophobia and giving away condoms. Then I saw that a space had been blocked out by fences and a set of bleachers raised. Behind the bleachers were even more tables, mostly denouncing Israel and flying Palestinian flags. Well, I may not know much about the folkloristic traditions around here, but I do know that gay Palestinian notaries play a very small role in them, so I figured nothing was happening yet. I live so close to the Comédie, though, that I was sure to hear when something happened, because "quiet" and "folklorisitic" are opposed concepts. But it was raining on and off and there wasn't a single costume or oboe to be seen, and nothing to be heard as the day wore on.

So that's why there's no photo of that.

* * *

But I did make it to the market on Tuesday, and for the first time this year, I picked up some cherries from some guy who'd driven them in from his nearby farm. I didn't get much else of interest, just a bag of oregano and some olive oil and some asparagus and a tiny box of strawberries, so I didn't take a picture. Anyway, the cherries disappeared pretty quickly, even though they weren't all that flavorful. I suspect the huge black things that explode in your mouth are a different variety and still ripening out there on the farm.

But that's why there's no photo of that, either.

Sorry. I'll try to do better next time.

Rare Bird

As long as I'm whining about stuff I can't get here, I should remember that green onions are called "spring onions" in England and just maybe the reason I can't find them all the time around here is because the French are a lot more scrupulous about stuff being in season than, say, the Germans are. Also, they don't use green onions as much, I guess.

But there is one thing I really and truly can't get here which I wish I could, and it's got nothing whatever to do with seasonality. I found some in Spain in January and brought back as much as I could. When a friend told me last night that he was going to be in Barcelona at the end of the month and might be able to sneak across here for a dinner or two, the first thing that came to mind is that this stuff was running out:

Right. Chicken broth. Bought in aseptic boxes which are just big enough to provide enough broth for two Chinese meals, or two meals with a broth-based sauce like I make for pork chops sometimes. About a cup, I think: 250 ml.

I've mentioned this to other people here and their response has been "Good lord, can't you cook? Just get a chicken, roast it, and make broth out of the carcass!" I assume these people are retired diamond merchants and drug dealers, since chicken is more expensive here than anywhere I've ever lived. Better, too, but you have to be prepared to shell out €14 for a whole chicken. (And that's another thing: you can get skinless, boneless breasts, or leg-thigh joints, but you can't buy a cut-up chicken in the supermarket). Things are a bit, um, austere around here at the moment, but even if they weren't, one chicken carcass doesn't make a whole lot of broth. And I'm a single guy who doesn't entertain. (This apartment is so small there's no room for two people to dine, let alone more, believe it or not). There'd be plenty of leftover chicken. No, it's just easier to buy chicken broth. You can do it in Germany, for heaven's sakes (although it's in a condensed form called Fond, with seasoning added), and in America Swanson's figured out that people wanted it without a lot of salt and with no MSG, and now they're making twice as much money as ever.

And in Spain, this company Caldo Aneto has acres of supermarket space for its products. With my nonexistent Spanish it took me about ten minutes to figure out that the product you see above is the one I wanted. I have since used it for superb Chinese meals and the occasional gravy. I know some of the Brits around here make day-trips to the Spanish border to hit the supermarkets there for stuff they can't get in France and now I'm beginning to see why.

So if you're going to be in Spain, say Barcelona or Girona, you should consider coming to Montpellier for a day or two, because we're real close. That's what my friend might be doing at the end of the month. And yes, you can ask me what I want from Spain, and I'll tell you a beautiful Spanish woman with a hair-trigger temper, some of those wacky Valencian plates, a nice Iberian ham, some of that incredible chorizo sausage, and...a buncha chicken broth. Hell, I'll settle for the broth. This time.