Britta: Cuisine & Canals

Wednesday we took a trip to the 300 year old port, Sète, in Southern France. It is the largest port on the French Mediterranean coast selling 8,000 tons of fish every year.

Fishing boats leave at 3 am and return at 4 pm to auction off their catch. Turing the Cannes Film Festival, the price of fish skyrockets because restaurant owners travel to Sète to buy the freshest, best fish for all the celebrities.

Tuna boats leave in April and return in October where they fish as far as the coasts of Spain and Africa.

After having a boat tour through the port and around the canals, we ate lunch at small restaurant with excellent seafood. We had oysters and paella with shrimp, scampi, crab, octopus, and mussels.

Britta: Cévennes

Friday afternoon we took a 2 1/2 hour bus ride up into the Cévennes Mountains. We hiked up to Le Pont de Burgen, a resting place for hikers who are doing the Stevenson Trail. The Pont de Burgen, also called the le fregere, has been run and operated by a lovely couple for 28 years. They make a point to grow all their own fruits and vegetables in order to supply themselves for the year. After hiking up the mountain to their home, we were greeted with a few of their 28 donkeys.

We had an amazing dinner of fresh eggplant and tomatoes from their garden, wild boar, and pelardon (goat cheese) from their neighbor. We also had Sirop de Fleur, which is a syrup made from soaking elderberry flowers. You can mix with with white wine or water to add a nice, subtle, sweet flavor. Saturday morning we hiked up the mountain, down the mountain, across a river, and up another mountain in order to visit the local cheese maker who had provided us with the cheese for the dinner the night before. We got to try some of his goat cheese and visit the goats! It was an absolutely beautiful experience with a real taste for the French countryside.

Britta: Le Sel

Salt plays a very important role in world history, and its effects are still seen today. The word “salary” come from the latin word “salarium” which was a roman soldiers allowance for the purchase of salt.

In Aigues- Morte located in Southeastern France there is a very large salt mine which produces all the salt for France and is well known all over the world for their Sel de Fleur. Each year Le Salin- de- Giraud proudces 5,000 tonnes of salt from their 14,000 hectares of land.
Aigues-Morte is a historic town founded in 1240, which became the most important port during the 14th Century with funding from Louis IX. However at the end of the century the canals were no longer navigable because of excessive silt and when Provence became a part of France in 1481 Marseille took Aigues-Morte’s place as the only southern port of the kingdom.

Britta: Olives

Wednesday afternoon we ventured on up near the estate where Johnny Depp owns a home. We did not get to visit Mr. Depp, instead we visited Les Oliviers du Mas des Vautes. We learned about various olive trees, the picking season, and how olive oil and tapenade are made. We also got to taste test their gold medal winning olive oil!

Les Oliviers du Mas des Vautes is a family owned and operated company with 13 hectares of olive trees from the 16th century without pesticide or chemical treatment. All their products are made right on their property and the caps and labels for all the jars are put on by hand. 1 tonne of olives are picked everyday and passed through their mill the following day. “Au Mas, nous travaillons la qualité et non la quantité.”

We were bought into one of their many olive groves and learned about Lucque olives and Picholine olives. Lucque olives are known as an Olive de Table, which are the olives you get as tapas or just eat out of a jar. It takes 10 kilos of Lucques to make 1 liter of olive oil. Picholine olives are the olives that are used to make olive oil. It only takes 4-8 kilos of picholines to make 1 liter of olive oil. Olive season is from September to October and they must be hand picked or gently shaken off from the tree.

Other Olive Info:

• All olives start green.
  
• 20% of the flowers on an olive tree with turn into olives—80% of them are lost.
• Don’t eat the olive straight from the tree! Olives are soaked in a brine or salt mixture to remove the bitterness and add flavor.
• All olive oil must be tested in a lab for acidity, if the acidity is from:0 -> 0.8 it is Extra Virgin. 0.8 -> 2 it is Virgin. Two and above are used for soaps and shampoos.

Britta: On to the cheese

The previous post is about the wine part of this lovely afternoon. This part will discuss the cheese. Many people associate France with cheese, the most common being Brie – very delicious and expensive in the US. But even though France is associated with cheese, the US is the number one producer, with France coming in second. However, France consumes the most cheese followed by Italy.

France produces 500 different varieties of cheese:

• 95% comes from cows milk
• 10% comes from sheeps milk
• 5% comes from goat milk

Cheese can be produced in two ways after the milk naturally solidifies (which is yogurt)

1. Solidified milk is strained and what is left is used as cheese. This creates the soft cheeses such as brie and camembert. Soft cheese has the bacteria from mushrooms (penicillium) added, which creates the tough rind.
2. Solidified milk is pressed to eliminate the milk. This creates the hard cheeses such as comté and gruyère. Salt is always added to preserve and give flavor

Camembert: Soft cow’s milk cheese soaked in salt water from Normandy.

Comté: Hard, salt-injected cheese made of cows milk from Montpellier. The most produced, exported, and eaten cheese in France (makes up 1/3 of production).

Pelardon: Soft goat’s milk cheese from Montpellier. Has hazelnut flavor (but no hazelnut is added).  Needs just 1 liter of milk to make.

Roquefort: Blue family cheese made of sheep’s milk and from South France.

The Legend of Roquefort:

A young shepherd was keeping his sheep at the foot of the Massif de Combalou. As he was resting in a cave, just about to savor a delicious piece of rye bread with some sheep cheese on top, he saw a charming shepherdess go by. He quickly stuck his meal in a corner of the cave to run after the pretty woman, and forgot all about it. The young boy came across his bread a couple of months later. He noticed that as it had molded, the bread had turned blue and the piece of sheep cheese as well had been covered with bluish-green veins. As he was starving, he sank his teeth into it despite the strong odor the cheese was releasing and, mind you, found the delicacy much to his liking. Thus, Penicillium roqueforti came to be, born of a mysterious alchemy between the humidity and natural ventilation of a cave on a piece of dry bread. As if by magic, Roquefort cheese came to life.

Britta: Wine tasting

Today we had a crash course on how to experience wine and try different cheeses. It was a lovely afternoon outside with friends, laughter, and wonderful flavors. I will try my best to account for the events of the afternoon, however some people dedicate whole blogs to solely wine, so this just the surface of the surface.

For those that don’t know anything about wine:

• 5,000 varieties of grapes in the world
• 500 varieties used for making wine
• La Vendange (grape harvest) is from late August to late October
• 5 Wine families: Red, Rosé, White, Moussu, Liquereux

Tasting is all about:

• La Vue ( how it looks)—the “robe” (dress) of the wine, i.e. color and legs. (The faster the legs move the lower the alcohol content, the slower the higher)
• L’Odeur (smell) the boquet
• Le Goût (taste) aromas, feel (fruity, woody, sweet, acidic)
  

White wines: Start green

• 1 Month transparent
• 1 year pale
• 2 years pale yellow
• eventually become a slight brown

Red Wines: Start purple

• 1 ½ years turn black
• 3 years black orange

We sampled 4 wines from 3 different regions of France a white, rosé, red, and champagne/port (making sure to hold the glass on the bottom to prevent heating up the wine).

White: Jean Marie Strubbler Riesling 2008 12.5%, from Alsace

• “green wine”
• apple, pear, sweet
• goes well with fish & salad

Rosé: Gallician, Costières de Nîme Cuvée Tradition 2009 12.5%, from Nîmes, Languedoc

• Strawberry
• Raspberry

* Rosés are a young wine, have been around for 20 years, and are considered to be for women

Red: Bordeaux, Grand Vin de Bordeau, Les Maitres Goustiers 2009 13%, from Bordeaux, Aquitaine

• Black fruits
• Cherry

*Bordeaux was the first region to mix different varieties of grapes together

Champagne: Muscador, Cèpage

• Peach

Tips on Buying Wine:

• Whites and Rosés don’t preserve very long, so always buy a young wine from the last 1 to 2 years
• Good wines come from specialty shops
• If the neck is sticky, the cork is permeable and therefore the wine is no longer good.

Next comes the cheese…

Britta: La Plage et Miel

Saturday we lathered our white selves up in 50 spf sunblock and went to the beach near the town of Pérols. The weather was fantastic and it was just perfect to be able to sit out on the sand with the cool breeze and enjoy what we can actually now call summer. Later that afternoon we came back to Montpellier and gathered all our belongings from the hotel and our host families came to greet us and take us away. My host family is a single lady, 34, who lives in le quartier Port Marianne. It is about a 15-20 minute tram ride to the center of town. She is really friendly and has made me feel very much at home here.However, being anxious and nervous I didn’t take all my belongings with me from the hotel. It wasn’t until last night when I wanted to upload some photos when I remembered that I put the pocket drive in the pouch of the camera case, and my camera case wasn’t with me. Thankfully, after the first day of classes this morning, I went back to the hotel and explained that I think I left my camera here over the weekend and the lady at the front desk immediately knew where it was. Phew.

Sunday I was able to sleep in for the first time in months. It felt great! I had a nice more normal traditional French breakfast with yogurt, an apple, and some melba toast with confiture. I sat out on the terrace drinking my espresso and reading. The afternoon later led to an adventure into town and coming across the Sunday artisan market. There were many handmade items such as bags, clothing, chairs, jewelry, and paintings. But there were also local and artisan breads, honey, cheeses, and meats!

We stopped at the honey stand and talked to the man and he explained some of the various kinds of honey and he let us try a couple of them. We bought a jar of Miel D’Acacia (which is characterized for always being in a liquid state because of its high fructose content and being very clear, sometimes white) and a loaf of bread to have as an absolutely delicious snack.

Britta: Bienvenue à Montpellier

Montpellier greeted me with absolutely beautiful weather, beautiful people, and wonderful cuisine.

It was a long stressful trip from Minneapolis to Paris, Paris to Montpellier but the first hours here make it utterly worth it. My last experience abroad was in Spain, so my first instinct being back on the narrow, quaint, winding streets with little tabacs and cafés is: Spanish. However I instead hear French drifting through the streets and it swiftly brought to my attention that I need to know how to order the nem de chevré au miel and confit de concard pommes sautées.

Surprisingly, the French have been very friendly, but I am disappointed when I muster up my French speaking skills and am reciprocated with English. It brings a sense of embarrassment they can so easily speak my language and I have not so easily learned theirs. But I cannot give up so easily, hopefully with a little more practice and immersion I’ll be more confident in ordering my confit of duck “with the sauce on the side.”

Montpellier is crawling with students and has a lot of cultural diversity. Meandering the streets today there were graffiti artists in action, a beat box competition, jazz street performers, and a North African traditional dance. Bicycles zip by left and right and the tram misses you just by a ¼ of an inch.

After a long day of travel, settling into our home for the next two days (hotel ibis), wandering the old town of Montpellier, and eating a true French dinner, every sensation is satisfied.