by Jamie Ivey
'Jamie's evocative writing always makes me hungry!'
Olly Smith, television presenter and wine expert
'A great read. This entertaining story of truffles, healthcare and building à la française had me engaged and laughing out loud.'
Caro Feely, author of Grape Expectations
'As evocative as the smell of a boulangerie in the morning, Jamie Ivey's writing brilliantly captures the mood of French village life, with its chess-like politics and you-scratch-my-back diplomacy. Told with great humour and beautifully written, it's a fascinating story but what comes through most is the obvious love Jamie has for Provence and its people. Highly recommended.'
Ian Moore, comedian and writer
'Jamie Ivey's evocative descriptions of the characters, food and wines of Provence in Ten Trees and a Truffle Dog are often so vividly seductive that I was honestly tempted – as a vegetarian alcoholic sworn off the booze – to return to eating savoury meat dishes and quaffing rosé wine. I think I'll pass on the steak tartare though! A brilliant read, highly recommended.'
John Dummer, author of Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette
'A delicious immersion into the heart of French life that has me yearning to return tout de suite! This lighthearted trek through Provence will whet your appetite for an edible adventure and a place to call home.'
Kimberley Lovato, author of Walnut Wine & Truffle Groves
TEN TREES AND A TRUFFLE DOG
Copyright © Jamie Ivey, 2012
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.
The right of Jamie Ivey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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About the Author
Jamie Ivey has written three books about the south of France: Extremely Pale Rosé, La Vie en Rosé and Rosé en Marché, published by Phoenix (Hachette). He lives in Provence with his wife and daughter.
The Daily Mail has described Jamie as 'a younger Peter Mayle with a similar turn of phrase,' and The New York Times Online as 'great fun to read… particularly if you enjoy sticking your nose into little-known corners of France.' Jamie won the 2006 Gourmand award for book of the year on French wine.
Author's Note
Names, dates and places have been changed. Some of the characters are composite.
Contents
Part 1
A Miracle in the Market
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part 2
A Lion in the Lavender
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part 3
Gendarmes in the Garrigue
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue – Six Months Later
Acknowledgements
Part 1
A Miracle in the Market
Chapter 1
It was a crisp December morning in Provence. Trails of smoke from the glowing barrel of a roast chestnut vendor streamed into the rich blue sky and the seared fatty smell of fried foie gras drifted in the air. Puddles from yesterday's storm had iced over making the pavement treacherous for the traders but even so an unbroken row of stalls lined the street.
The finest food from all over France was available – corn-fed chickens from Bresse, pungent charcuterie from Corsica, milk-reared veal, marbled Charolais beef, olives from Nyon, duck confit from the Dordogne and plump oysters from nearby Sète.
As my wife, Tanya, and I strolled slowly along we eavesdropped on excited culinary chatter.
'Quel mélange, c'est magnifique.'
'Tout à fait – il faut le cuire à l'avance.'
There was no mistaking the rapture in the voices as recollections of unforgettable dishes and historic recipes were shared.
'Rub a Sisteron gigot with rosemary. Slow bake, prepare the ratatouille with overripe tomatoes and courgettes, season with dried summer herbs,' rattled away an old lady, clasping an overflowing shopping bag in her bony fingers, 'and perhaps some winter leaves tossed in vinaigrette, then a peppered goat's cheese, and one of Monsieur Soggia's lemon tarts to finish.'
To listen was to salivate.
Provence has a food festival almost every week. If it's not the sweet melons of Cavaillon, then it's the spiky sea urchins of Carry-le-Rouet or the heat-baked wines of Saint-Rémy. The format is always similar – hungry crowds gather, enticed by seasonal delicacies and the sultry swing of a band. Before long the streets bleed pink with rosé.
There's a compère from the local radio station who fights his screeching microphone to interview the mayor and towards the end of the day a procession of food groupies. Cherries, strawberries, even the humble Provençal potato – each and every consumable has a society of admirers or confrérie. These plump men and women hide their ripe bellies under priestly gowns and measure each heavy step to a monastic chant. Deep, growling voices reverberate to the heavens. The melody seems serious, even moving, until you realise that somebody has spent long winter nights composing Latin odes to lavender bees.
My wife and I usually happen upon such festivals. Today, however, was the one exception: a gastronomic fair so unmissable that the date is marked in local calendars alongside all the national holidays. The village responsible for this fête among fêtes, Rognes, has no other culinary claims to fame – there's a decent enough butcher, an average baker and a couple of dodgy pizza parlours. Yet once a year this unremarkable commuter suburb of Aix-en-Provence is transformed into a Mecca for food lovers.
The fair always take place the Sunday before Christmas and people travel for hours, lured by the famed black diamonds (truffles) which are the essential ingredient in the region's Christmas celebrations. The price per kilo can reach €1,000 but from street sweeper to movie star everyone makes a little room in their annual budget, as if to do otherwise would be sacrilegious.
After just fifteen minutes at the fête, listening to recipes, browsing the delicacy-laden stalls, inhaling the rich mixture of aromas, I could resist no longer. I had to eat. Nearby, chefs in kitchen whites were handing out steaming bundles. Wrapped in greasy paper,
the food – scrambled egg in a baguette – was the type that you might get in a roadside cafe but for the one secret ingredient. Tiny black flecks of truffle laced the golden mixture, elevating the experience to a totally different level and as the chefs' tray emptied people began to jostle for position. Luckily one of the hot parcels was pressed into my outstretched palm.
For me, this mid-morning sandwich was one of the gastronomic highlights of the year; no dish, not even one conjured by any of the local Michelin-starred chefs could elicit such simple pleasure. With the addition of the truffle the taste of the egg suddenly became deeper, more like a duck egg, and at the same time the earthiness of the truffle echoed the fleshiness of early season cèpes. I was halfway through the baguette before I remembered Tanya – eight months pregnant and exhausted from a sleepless night, she was clearly not enjoying the fair as much as me. Still, she had insisted on coming, anxious to make the most of the remaining four weeks until the due date.
'Do you want to sit down?' I asked belatedly, squeezing her hand.
'You buy the truffle and I'll wait in the cafe,' nodded Tanya.
From behind it was impossible to tell that she was pregnant. During the term she'd lost weight from everywhere apart from her tummy. Her blonde hair bobbed in the crowd, her slim-fitting jacket elegant amid a dense forest of fur coats. I watched her take a seat and then turned my attention back to the truffles.
At the far end of the market a close-knit circle of stalls was hemmed in by a collection of battered vans. It had been a bad year for truffles. Plenty of rain in the spring had provided early promise but the long dry summer and then a mild beginning to the winter had combined to stunt the growth of the tuber. Oak woods which usually produced plentiful supplies were said to be barren and reports in La Provence, the local paper, warned that prices were on fire. Demand today would be huge, so it was hard to see how I could grab a bargain, with the price likely to be €100 for a single truffle. Was it worth it? This was our third Christmas in Provence and previously I would have ruefully moved on. Somehow, though, the truffle purchase had become as emblematic as buying the tree.
To a man the dealers were short, scruffy and unshaven and together they smelled of the inside of a bar – a pungent combination of garlic, pastis and Gauloises. They sat at rickety tables covered in worn cloth. In front of them were cereal bowls containing a couple of earth-encased truffles about the size of golf balls. The overall impression was of terrible hardship. Clothes were worn through and patched up and the sole of one of the vendor's shoes hung loose like the tongue of a thirsty dog.
At least I was experienced enough to see through the charade. Truffle hunters are notoriously secretive about their profession. For tax reasons most of them deny being involved in the trade. If challenged by le fisc (the tax authorities), they might shrug and admit to finding a single truffle at the bottom of the garden.
'Look at my car,' they'd protest, as if a battered Renault was in itself proof of innocence.
However, in reality dealers make thousands of euros a year, competing furiously with each other to discover the best hunting locations. Historically they would have followed flies through oak woods, watching carefully where the insects chose to land and digging the soil in their wake. These days dogs have replaced flies and a champion truffle dog is a valuable possession. Sadly two or three dogs a year are poisoned as rival hunters seek to wreck each other's prospects.
Buying a truffle is complicated by a well-known sharp practice. Since finding truffles is so difficult, a few unscrupulous vendors sell Chinese truffles, which look similar to their Provençal cousins but have about 1/100th of the taste. Covered in mud and mixed in a bowl with the real thing it is incredibly difficult to tell the two apart. The odour of the Provençal truffles envelops their Chinese cousins, fooling all but the most experienced Gallic nose. Only once a truffle is cut open can you really discover its provenance. The white veins of a Chinese truffle are less tightly spaced and the skin pockmarked. To allay fears of fraud, each of the vendors in Rognes had a truffle sliced in half on the table in front of them. Other tricks of the trade include lacing the mud that always surrounds truffles with metal flakes and packing the natural indentations with mud. Both methods increase the weight of the truffle and hence the profit.
I chose the scruffiest, dirtiest, smelliest vendor, on the basis that his appearance meant he had the most to hide from the fisc and was therefore the most professional of the bunch.
'C'est combien par kilo?'
'Neuf cents.'
'Huit cents?'
'Normalement, c'est neuf cent cinquante.'
Comprehensively out-negotiated, I nodded and began examining the merchandise. In France it's almost rude not to touch and feel the food before purchasing. In the summer I've watched as shoppers in search of optimum ripeness have sniffed and re-sniffed up to twenty melons, and melons only cost a meagre five euros a kilo.
Flaring my nostrils like a horse before a big race I attacked the pile of muddy black balls before me. The odour was so strong that after examining just five truffles a dull headache began to develop. A professional buyer could easily sniff over a hundred truffles in a morning and still discern minute differences in scent. I, however, was already lost. The first truffle had smelt the strongest, and had felt nice and heavy relative to its size.
'I'll take this one,' I said, brushing the dirt away from the surface.
'Remember, wrap it in paper, keep it in a box and change the paper morning and night,' the dealer said as he weighed the truffle and dropped it into a plastic bag.
'Eighty-nine fifty.'
Two crisp €50 notes changed hands. Turning to leave I bumped into a man with flowing white hair and a deep wind-ingrained tan. In his arms he carried three cases of wine, of which he was struggling to keep hold.
'Can I help?' I offered, relieving him of one of the boxes.
'Set it down over there.' He nodded gratefully.
'Matured in the most expensive Bordeaux oak barrels for twelve months,' the vigneron told me, shrugging. 'And what do I get in return for twenty-four bottles? Three truffles – c'est la folie.' He grinned, clearly delighted with the exchange.
I made my way back towards Tanya, passing stands full of truffle liqueur (undrinkable), truffle oils, truffle-infused eggs, and sachets of dried truffle risottos, all with inflated price tags.
With the truffle purchased the fun could really start. Should we extravagantly grate it over the Christmas bird, or stuff great wedges in the cavities during the cooking process, allowing its aroma to permeate every mouthful? Better still, reserve it in a jar with eggs to make the ultimate morning-after omelette or slice it raw onto toast with a drizzling of the local olive oil? Tanya and I usually tried something different every year, plucking a new idea from a magazine article, but without fail we saved the last remaining slices to spike the festive brie. It's a divine combination and we'd been salivating at the thought since the first frost. This Christmas, though, things would be different.
The menu outside the local cafe had been infected by truffle fever: pâté de foie gras aux truffes, homard (lobster) gratiné aux truffes, fromage aux truffes. Even the green salad was treated to a grating of black diamond. Catching the waiter's eye I ordered a café crème and sat down next to a drained-looking Tanya.
'Well, I got it – nine hundred euros a kilo, but what can you do,' I chattered away excitedly. 'How about a sauce aux truffes this year?'
My coffee arrived and I took a deep injudicious gulp of the frothy mixture, burning the back of my throat.
'Jamie, I think it's started.'
'What's started?'
'The baby.'
I took another enormous gulp of coffee, still not quite registering what she had just said. The one job a father is totally responsible for is getting his wife to the hospital on time, practising the route, making sure the car is full of petrol, checking the oil level, the pressure in the tyres, making sure the bag is packed and generally that every
thing runs smoothly.
I'd heard stories of twenty-minute labours and births in the backs of cars, and was determined that it would never happen to us. Yet we were registered at a hospital near home over an hour away, through the sinuous Combe de Lourmarin, one of the last places you would want to negotiate with a wife in heavy labour: nothing but sheer cliffs and goat farms for miles.
'But it's not due for another month,' I protested, trying to hide the panic creeping into my belly.
'I know.'
'And we haven't got anything ready.'
'I know.' Tanya winced in pain.
'I'll get the car.'
I started at a fast walk, which somehow quickly became a jog and finally a run. I hadn't even asked how close together the contractions were.
'Attention!', 'Watch where you're going', 'What's the rush?' people called as I shoved through the crowds, fighting the flow of arrivals.