Everything I need is within walking or bicycling distance, from the freshest of produce, cheeses, and wines at the épicerie next door, to freshly roasted coffee, to dozens of varieties of crisp-crusted, chewy loaves of bread, flaky, buttery pastries, and luscious fruit tarts. An old-fashioned toy store run by a dynamic mother-son team, who seem as enthralled with what they sell as are their customers, has aisles so tiny two people can’t pass in them. It satisfies Joe’s needs, which are those of most eight-to-ten-year-old boys. He loves châteaux and knights and theatrical battles with épées, or swords, trading marbles, and a game called jojos based on the ancient game of osselets, or knucklebones, and all the accoutrements can be had at the toy store, and lots of dreams besides. The town boasts a few stores whose windows look as though they haven’t changed since the twenties. Inside one of them I find treasures like old-fashioned cheesecloth, which is so pretty I want to hang it at the window, bolts of ticking once used for pillows but which would make ideal slipcovers (if I only had the time to sew!), old-fashioned, flint-driven stove lighters that I swear by. The owners are a very discreet couple who greet customers at the door and follow them until they’ve made their choice, acting miffed if no choice is made.
I love the merceries, or button and yarn stores, in Louviers, where flat wooden drawers hold treasure troves of embroidery thread in vivid colors, buttons of every shape and size, spools of silken thread, bolts of ribbon, ancient embroidery patterns. The particular store I’m thinking of also carries designer handbags for women and girls, scarves, and an echo of the accessories worn by the well-dressed owner who sits behind a wooden counter, her tan skin glowing, a portable telephone often clamped to her ear as she converses with her husband, gives orders to her children, answers questions from a distant customer.
I also particularly enjoy going into one of the several lingerie shops in Louviers, where the owner, a slender, attractive woman, is always doing five things at once, from helping a customer try on her wares to helping another find what she wants, to advising a man on what to buy for his wife—whom she knows—to hailing a friend walking outside. The lingerie is lovely, the show entertaining!
It takes me five minutes to walk from our house to the butcher, where I get the most flavorful tender lamb and dozens of different cuts of pork, full-flavored chickens, beef, ducks, and guinea fowl, all with incomparable flavor and texture. I’ve never seen raw meat look as appetizing as it does in this shop. The butcher is usually good for a cooking or butchering lesson, which I get while I’m waiting in line, craning my neck to look past the pâtés, the head cheese, and the lasagna that his wife makes.
From watching the tidy, dapper Monsieur Richard, who always wears a carefully knotted tie under his impeccable white apron, I have learned how to trim the fat on a lamb chop so it rests in an attractive curl once cooked. I now know how to tie a loin of pork so it not only holds abundant stuffing but looks graceful on a platter. Through his influence I have come to accept turkey as something more than a bird that is stuffed and roasted; its tender, tasty meat can be braised, stewed with herbs and vegetables, breaded and sautéed. He has taught me to cook young shoulder of lamb longer than a mature shoulder so it is perfectly tender, and whenever I wonder what cut of meat is best he is there to supply the answer and the goods.
One day I was in his shop musing over what to buy for lunch. I often choose his skinny, herb-flecked pork sausages, but that day I wanted something different. He suggested tripes à la mode de Caen (tripe cooked in apple cider) and I wrinkled my nose. At his perplexed look I explained that I’ve never been able to get over the aroma of tripe. He cut a thick slab which he wrapped and gave to me, throwing down a gauntlet. “If you don’t like MY tripes à la mode de Caen, I’m no butcher,” he said, then instructed me on just how to heat and serve it. I accepted the challenge, followed his directions, and both Michael and I, to our immense surprise, were converted.
My latest epiphany at Monsieur Richard’s involves chicken. He sells only farm-raised poultry, and when I asked him for one he chose a particularly plump specimen for me, with its head and feet intact. While it is common for the head to be left on, I was surprised to see the feet. “It’s true, most people don’t eat them anymore, but I refuse to cut them off,” he said. “They’re delicious. My brothers and sisters and I fought over them when we were kids.”
I expected him to simply weigh and wrap up the bird and hand it to me with the bill, but no. First he had some work to do. He carefully burned away the invisible (to me) pinfeathers and proceeded to sear the feet with a tiny propane flame. “Makes them more tender,” he explained as he scraped and trimmed them. He turned the bird this way and that, inspecting it minutely, trimming it, patting it, arranging it so that, once trussed, it would make a compact oval. When he was finished with the bird it looked as though it had spent two hours at a spa. I was entranced. Monsieur Richard carefully wrapped it in his signature red and white waxed paper and handed it to me so I could tuck it in my basket. I went home to roast it and it not only looked gorgeous but was exceptionally flavorful and delicious.
Across from the butcher is the poissonerie, a chilly, blue-tiled, mirrored-ceilinged shrine to the sea. Depending on the season there are sweet triangular skate wings with their slimy spotted skin; pearly white fillets of cod; julienne, a cod-like fish; regal, nutty-flavored little sea bass with their deep blue side stripe; and always a fillet or pile of salmon steaks, usually from the fjords of Norway and generally bland as water. More exciting are the tiny little squid or the miniature monkfish tails. When I spy these I get them, for they are too rare to pass up. At least to an American. Baby monkfish tails are limited to a very short season and their meat is so tender yet firm, so white, and so lightly sweet that I can never resist them. I love them prepared as simply as possible, usually rolled in flour and sautéed in butter. The tiny squid I either sauté or deep-fry in olive oil and serve with a piquant vinaigrette. What delicacies! There is always a table out front of the poissonerie with rustic baskets filled with at least three different sizes of oysters, two different varieties of blue-black mussels, and tiny, plump, wavy-shelled clams. Shellfish is my péché mignon, or downfall, and I often succumb to a couple dozen oysters or a liter or two of clams and mussels.
The poissonier’s wife makes a handful of dishes that sit proudly on the sidelines inside the shop, near the live lobster tank. They change every day, depending on what is fresh or what needs to be cooked. In the winter there is always a scallop dish, usually drowned in cream and garnished with golden bread crumbs. There is almost always a seafood quiche, often a marinated shellfish salad, and sometimes little puff pastry bouchées or cups filled with either white fish or crabmeat or chunks of lobster. Each dish is available by the serving and they all look delicious. I’m sure they are since by late afternoon not a spoonful of any of them is left.
There are charcuteries—the French version of a take-out, which specialize in pork creations, from pâtés and sausages to stuffed roast pork—about every hundred yards it seems. It may be that they hold a constant competition for the most appetizing window display for they seem to outdo each other. There are the cone-shaped, bread crumb–dusted jambonneau, a braised pork hock that has been rolled in bread crumbs and is intended to be eaten cold and thinly sliced. There is head cheese enclosed in gelatin, pâtés with strips of bacon and bay leaves on top, tripe stewed with carrots and herbs, near-black coils of blood sausage, fat white sausages flecked with wild mushrooms or truffles, and air-dried saucissons, quiches, or tiny little tomato pizzas with puff pastry crust. Then there are all the other tempting dishes like seafood terrines and freshly made salads . . . the offerings go on and on. On days when I’m not in the mood for cooking I go to one or the other of the charcuteries and buy a pizza, a slab of coulibiac (salmon in a crust), some boudin blanc sausage, or a huge square of gratin de pomme de terre so rich with cream that a little goes a long way. We could eat from the charcuteries every day for months and never try the same
thing, for the dishes change with the seasons.
At one of the charcuteries on the way to school, individual pizzas baked with an egg right in the center look tempting in the morning, as do the crêpes filled with creamed spinach, and the little puff pastry chaussons that bulge with aromatic sausage meat. And this particular charcutier must have a love affair with gelatin for he makes dozens of fanciful creations where gelatin is a main ingredient. Joe and I often stop to look at them, marveling at the tall, skinny cones with green peas floating in slightly golden gelatin above a bed of rich pink salmon and under half a hard-cooked egg. With their mayonnaise decorations, these appetizers look like they are dressed for the prom. There are brick-shaped ones, too, with slices of sausage and swirls of spinach and almost always, it seems, at least part of a hard-cooked egg. They are more amazing than appetizing. When my older brother, Jeff, visited us, he couldn’t get over these fantastic creations with their jewel-like appeal. For his last meal with us I bought four cone-shaped treasures to serve as an appetizer. “Wow,” Jeff said. “This is so French.” It’s true, I thought, where else would anyone take so much time to create something so elaborate as a single appetizer? They weren’t the best things we had ever eaten, but they were dramatic.
Perhaps the best part of Louviers, and indeed of living in France, is the Saturday morning farmer’s market. Then, the town center turns into a rural fair, a festival of colors, aromas, and sounds as the market unfurls.
Joe and I walk through the market on our way to school, weaving through the boxes of produce stacked in the middle of the street as farmers and vendors prepare their stands. The Portuguese olive vendor gives us a shy smile while Jean-Claude and Monique Martin, my favorite farmers, wave vigorously. Others, if they notice us at all amidst the hubbub, call out a cheerful bonjour.
I roll my wicker basket along with me, which causes Joe to die a thousand deaths. “Mama, only old ladies have baskets like that,” he says to me under his breath as we go along. I explain to him how I must bring it because I would lose too much time if I went back home to get it, how important it is for me to get my marketing done before the crowds arrive and the lines lengthen, but he doesn’t care. “Mama, I’m so embarrassed,” he says, cringing.
He leaves me at the door to the schoolyard with a certain relief and I wheel myself back into the fray of the market, eager to assess the produce. I always go directly to the Martins, who have their crates organized before anyone else and are already doing a brisk business. Everyone in Louviers knows their produce is among the best to be had. I join the line of customers, enjoying the tableau before me as Jean-Claude jokes and flirts as he weighs out zucchini blossoms or bunches of mauve-splashed turnips, cuts into a fat pumpkin, or grabs a handful of shallots. Monique is more serious about her work, though she laughs and rolls her eyes a good part of the morning at his charmingly corny humor.
When Jean-Claude spies me his greeting is always the same. “Ah, Susanna! How is America?” Then he leans over for the traditional exchange of bisous, a kiss on each cheek.
The Martins’ daughter, Myriam, helps as well, and though shy and demure, she can joke right along with her parents if there aren’t too many people to serve. She hasn’t yet learned the subtle art of comedy and salesmanship, though she’s got two of the world’s best teachers to guide her along. I leave the Martins, my basket bulging with celery root, leeks, carrots so sweet and flavorful I can’t wait to grate them for salad, raw beets, which are such a rarity in France where most beets are cooked in the farmer’s field and sold ready-to-eat, and heads of feuille de chêne lettuce so gorgeous they look like giant reddish-brown roses.
I remain loyal to the Martins because I like them and the quality of their produce is irreproachable, but beyond that I am freewheeling, without particular allegiances. One cannot afford to become too attached to a vendor because the tableau of produce changes constantly, and while one farmer might be an artist at cultivating radishes, for instance, his curly endive might be less than perfect. I want to be free to buy what is best.
After the Martins, I head directly for the only organic produce stand in the market to inspect what they have. The produce comes from a farm owned by the state and run by indigents who are trained there for re-entry into the workforce, and though the variety is limited, it is of excellent quality. I buy what I can there, then move on. There has been a recent influx of young farmers at the market and one of them, a chubby and cheerful young man who is always shaking his impossibly corkscrew-curly hair from his eyes, cultivates Belgian endive the old-fashioned way, in the soil rather than hydroponically. The fat, ivory torpedo-shaped endives are sweet and bitter and I buy at least two pounds each week while they are in season in winter. He also has luscious potatoes with names like poetry—the amandine, the Mona Lisa, which are smooth and silky as though they had cream in them, and the vitelotte, which are knobby and purple and have the flavor of chestnuts.
There are many chicken vendors, but I always go to a young woman whose plump birds are consistently flavorful. She also has an array of dark-meated pintades, or guinea hens, small, succulent rabbits, and an assortment of turkey parts, all equally delicious. Farther along the street is a dynamic young woman whose specialty is foie gras and all its offshoots. For a real treat I buy her magret de canard, which have the flavor of nutty butter and the texture of a tender, toothsome steak. She advises simple cooking for magret. Following her advice I simply sear it over high heat, cook it just until it is rare in the center, then deglaze the pan with cider or balsamic vinegar. It is exquisitely satisfying.
After trying every egg in the market, I’ve settled on hers as the freshest, for the yolks sit right up when I break them into the pan and they have an incomparably rich flavor. The cream she brings in big buckets drips like fresh paint from her ladle as she transfers it into glass jars and I buy some each week to add to vegetables or soup, include in a pasta sauce, or stir into a dessert.
A goat cheese maker off on a side street is one of the most popular vendors at the market. He dispenses jokes and opinions along with his pure, fresh cheeses, some of which are flavored with shallots, parsley, garlic, or paprika and are at varying stages of maturity. “Hey,” he always says to me, bringing a laugh from everyone around. “When is it that you’re going to change the laws in America so I can export my cheeses?” We prefer his tender, fresh cheeses, which are perfect for spreading on fresh bread and topping with jam in the mornings.
Another butcher specializing in pork, on the corner across from the Portuguese olive vendor, dresses in a clean white smock and offers gorgeous, hand-cut pork chops, meaty, lightly smoked bacon, and pig’s heads—perfect for making head cheese and for causing small children to say “beurk,” which is French for “disgusting.”
A north African butcher in the center of the market offers nothing but lamb, whose small carcasses swing from the roof of his stall, which is actually the side of his truck that flips up to reveal his “shop” and work counter inside. He will cut whatever piece of lamb you want, to order.
Occasionally I am tempted by the blood sausage at charcuterie Guy-Guy, an impressive concern offering everything from home-dried ham to burnished chunks of smoked pork belly called rillons, to massive pâtés and jellied pieds de porc, or pigs’ feet. The aroma from his steaming vat of choucroute (sauerkraut) vies with that from farm-raised rabbits roasting on spits across the way, and I usually cave in to one or the other for a sumptuous Saturday lunch.
I stop by the cheese stand for runny Camembert and fragrant Livarot, a slab of fruity Comté or Beaufort, or a box of pine-bark-wrapped Vacherin Mont d’Or, a seductively creamy cheese from the mountains, which is only in season for a few short months in winter.
Every third week the olive and almond oil soap man comes and I stock up, and about once a month a shy farmer sets up a card table on a corner and sells fresh and flinty lentils and tender green flageolets. They are of such quality that I buy them each time I see them.
When I d
on’t have a week of heavy recipe testing before me I let my desires of the moment dictate my purchases. I often buy nem, Vietnamese spring rolls, from a young Asian couple or gorgeous creamy feta cheese and rich-tasting olives from the Turkish vendor in the center of the market.
“Bonjour, madame,” he says shyly, extending his hand, now that I’m a regular customer along with all of the Turkish women who are swathed from head to foot, except their faces, as their religion dictates. The north African vendors offer vegetables I can’t find anywhere else such as cardoons, skinny Italian peppers, chayote squash, and prickly pears. Sprinkled throughout the market sit elderly women on their hard chairs with an array of chickens, eggs, milk, a rabbit or two, bouquets of rhubarb or Swiss chard, or flowers spread at their feet, there as much for the socializing, it seems, as for the commerce.
As spring arrives one of the corners of the market comes alive with wildflower bouquets sold by a white-haired woman who reminds me of a benevolent children’s book character. I’m certain her garden is inhabited by good fairies who make her flowers more beautiful than anyone else’s.
The quiche truck is a favorite stop at the market. The cheerful woman who runs it, Madeline, is Monique Martin’s cousin and the individual quiches her husband, Jean-Claude, bakes in the small oven at the back of the truck are tender, custardy, and delicious. They also make apple pound cake and turnovers, raisin flan, and a variety of other simple, homey pastries. We invariably stop there on the way home from school to buy a quiche for Joe, which Madeline makes sure is warm but not too hot so he can eat it as we thread our way through the market to home. “How is the young man doing?” she asks if he doesn’t happen to be with us, in a conspiratorial air. “Are his grades good? Does he work hard?”
The market is an anchoring aspect of life in Louviers, a true and authentic moment of give-and-take with producers. If ever I grow discouraged at the way “progress” is fanning through France bringing with it supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, vegetables wrapped in plastic, and soft, flabby chickens, I have only to go to the market to feel restored. The farmer’s market is the best of France. It is unimaginable that the country and the culture could survive without it.
On Rue Tatin Page 12