A Pig in Provence Read online

  A PIG IN PROVENCE

  Good food and simple pleasures in the south of France

  BY GEORGEANNE BRENNAN

  …. TO ETHEL AND OLIVER.…..

  ACKNOWLEDEGMENTS

  This book, this life, could not exist without the people of Provence. I’m grateful to my friends and neighbors in Provence, and I hope they, like my family, will forgive any liberties I have taken with remembered conversations, meals, or events we’ve shared.

  Donald, my first husband, began the odyssey in Provence with me and brought much into my life, and I will always be thankful for those extraordinary times we shared with our children when they were young.

  I want to thank Bill LeBlond, a friend and my longtime editor at Chronicle Books, for having the vision of what this book could be and talking to Jay Schaefer about it over breakfast one Sunday morning. Jay decided to take the book on and has helped immeasurably to shape it, which was not an easy task, and never failed both to force me to do more and to encourage me that I could. Arielle Eckstut has proved to be the best agent ever for me, and I have much to thank her for. Judith Dunham, my copy editor, was invaluable. A special thanks, too, to Sharon Silva and Marianna Morgoraff for their help when this book was still only an idea. Thank you to Micaela Heekin, assistant editor at Chronicle Books, who helped move this book along at a steady pace.

  My husband, Jim, has been my best friend, my biggest fan, and my in-house editor for more than twenty years, and has shared with me many of the experiences I recount in this book. He has read every word I’ve written at least three times, and somehow understands what I am trying to say, even when I don’t say it right.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledegments

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER 1 A Personal History of Goat Cheese

  Salade au fromage du chèvre avec croûtons frites—Goat Cheese Salad with Fried Bread

  CHAPTER 2 A Pig in Provence

  Porc à l’ancienne avec moutarde et câpres—Braised Pork Shoulder with Mustard and Capers

  CHAPTER 3 Fungal Obsessions

  Poulet au genièvre farci aux champignons sauvages—Juniper-Rubbed Chicken Stuffed with Wild Mushrooms

  CHAPTER 4 Bouillabaisse for All

  Bouillabaisse toulonnaise—Bouillabaisse, Toulon Style

  CHAPTER 5 Long Summer Meals

  Soupe au pistou—Vegetable Soup with Basil-Garlic Sauce

  CHAPTER 6 The Essence of Garlic And Le Grand

  Le Grand Aïoli—An Aïoli Feast

  CHAPTER 7 Sheep And Pieds-Et-Paquets

  Gigot d’agneau aux herbes de Provence—Leg of Lamb with Rosemary, Thyme, and Lavender

  CHAPTER 8 Wedding Tarts

  Tarte aux tomates—Tomato Tart

  EPILOGUE

  About the Author

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  I wrote my first cookbook, My Receipts, when I was in second grade. My mother kept it, and when she died I found it in the old trunk where she stashed the mementos of her life. It has four wide-lined foolscap pages of crookedly penciled recipes, including Banana Snow (smashed bananas with cream), Rabbit-Pear Salad (a pear with almond ears and a maraschino cherry nose on a lettuce leaf), Orange Fluff (orange juice with whipped egg whites), and Strawberry Shortcake (cut-up strawberries over pound cake with whipped cream). The pages are stapled between two half-sheets of yellow construction paper.

  I was a precocious seven-year-old in the kitchen, making abalone stew with my father and gingerbread houses with my mother. Later, I picked corn and strawberries with my boyfriends at the U-picks that used to flourish in the fields of Orange County, and made tarts from the apricots picked from the tree in our yard, getting the boys to cook with me. I cooked Thanksgiving dinner the year my father died, when I was sixteen, and I canned fruit with my grandmother. But it was the food of Provence, not California, that shaped my life.

  In Provence I learned that food has a meaning that extends far deeper than simply cooking or eating it. I came to understand that the gathering, hunting, and growing of food is part of a life still marked by the seasons, a life that keeps people connected to the land and to each other.

  Each season’s food is anticipated: wild mushrooms in fall, wild asparagus in spring, melons and peaches in summer, and roots and truffles in winter. The people of Provence share an enthusiasm for the foods’ origins. I realized that in Provence there is a collective understanding and appreciation not only of the food, but of the skills and knowledge necessary to grow sweet melons or tender young salad greens, to raise young lambs on hillsides of wild thyme, and to produce perfectly smooth, creamy goat cheeses, and that appreciation and knowledge comes to the table along with the food.

  My neighbors in Provence showed me how to understand the land around me and what it could provide. They taught me how to gather snails and cook them, render fat, grow potatoes, and find wild mushrooms. They taught me how to grill sardines, make aïoli with a mortar and pestle, use leftover bread, make pistou, and choose a fresh fish. I came to understand that one lingers over a meal, that eating is an act of pleasure to be savored, just as is the finding of the food and its cooking.

  In the life I began in Provence in my late twenties, making and selling goat cheese, keeping pigs, and cooking with my neighbors, I recognized that food was central to life, not for reasons of hedonism or sustenance, but because it was a link to everyone that had gone before me. It was a link to the land, a link to friends and family around a shared table, and a link to future generations to come. In a fragile, unstable world of change, food is a constant.

  I never intended to become an award-winning cookbook author or to have a cooking school in Provence, or to teach Provençal cooking across the United States, or to have a vegetable seed import company. These things grew out of a passion for Provence, a passion for the people and for the life that food engenders there. And over all these years, Provence has never disappointed me. It, like the food, is a constant.

  Obviously there have been huge changes since 1970, both in Provence and in my life, but the essence of our relationship remains the same. I arrive at the airport in Nice, flying in low over the Mediterranean toward the white city at the base of the Alps. I get my rental car and head west on the A8, past the high-rise apartment buildings, pounding buses, jammed lanes of cars, and palm trees until, just past Cannes, I feel a sense of calm descend on me. The rough red hills of the Maures on the west side of the A8 are undisturbed. The farmhouse on the east side is still there, its market garden intact around it. Forty-five minutes later I exit at Draguignan and start the drive into the interior. I think surely all will have changed since my last trip six months before. Provence can’t be as wonderful in reality as it is in my imagination, I tell myself, preparing for disappointment.The land will be filled with billboards and housing develop- ments, the vineyards pulled, the little villages diminished by suburban sprawl, the cèpes closed, with no one eating long lunches. Some of this has occurred over the years, but it seems contained. I feel relieved when I see the familiar cèpes full of people, the open markets packed with vendors and shoppers, the village shops still intact.

  I stop and buy cheeses, ham, baguettes, and olives and continue driving deeper into the interior, through oak and pine forests, on smaller and smaller roads until I reach my house, set on the edge of a small valley.

  The old stone house looms high and welcoming, and when I open the door it smells of fresh wax and wood smoke. My neighbors have left me a bowl of fruit and filled one of my vases with flowers. There’s a note that dinner will be ready at 7:30 if I want to come. Year after year, Provence has welcomed me with food, camaraderie, and a sense of place and belonging.

  Soon I’
ll be sitting out under the mulberry trees or by the fireplace with my friends, people I’ve known more than half my life, the people who taught me about life in Provence, sipping an apéritif, talking about the weather, the crops, the village politics, new recipes, and children. Then we’ll move to the table, where we’ll linger for several hours over a simple meal. If it’s summer, maybe a first course of roasted peppers with anchovies, wild mushroom salad if fall, followed by a plump guinea fowl or an herbed pork roast, cheeses, and poached fruit or a tart. The rhythm of my days in Provence has begun again.

  My hope is that through this book I can share with readers what has been an extraordinary life. The people of this deeply rural community welcomed me and my small family into their hearts, sharing with us their knowledge and the ways of the land where they and their ancestors have lived for generations. It was there I came to understand what role food can play in our lives, no matter where we are, and it is in this spirit that I have told the stories in this book, stories about meals, children, animals, food, places, and home. The stories are organized in chapters relating loosely to a central theme, such as goat cheese or pigs, or long summer meals, but all tell of a life of shared friendship and a passion for food.

  CHAPTER 1

  A PERSONAL HISTORY

  OF GOAT CHEESE

  The first goats. Lassie dies. Advice from Mme. Rillier.

  Reinette gives birth. Farmstead cheese for sale.

  “How much are they?” Donald asked as we stood in the heart of a stone barn in the hinterlands of Provence, surrounded by horned animals whose eyes were focused, unblinking, on us. Ethel, our three-year-old daughter, held my hand. The animals pushed against me, nuzzling my thighs and nibbling at the edge of my jacket. In the faint light cast by the single lightbulb suspended from the ceiling, I could see the dark mass of goats stretching toward the recesses of the barn and feel their slow but steady pressure as they pushed closer and closer. My nostrils filled with their pungent odor and the fragrance of the fresh hay on the barn floor, with the faintly damp, earthy aroma of the floor itself, and with the scent of all the animals that had preceded them in the ancient barn. The heat of their bodies intensified the smell, and although it was a cold November day, the barn was warm and cozy. Its earthy aromas were homey and comforting.

  “Eh, ma foi. It’s hard to decide. How many do you want? They’re all pregnant. They were with the buck in September and October. They’ll kid in February and March.” The shepherd, a woman, leaned heavily on her cane, making her look older. She was dressed in layers of black, including black cotton stockings, the kind you see in movies set in prewar France, her only color a dark blue parka and a gold cross at her throat. A black wool scarf tied under her chin covered her hair.

  We wanted to have enough goats to make a living. Our calculations, based on the University of California and USDA pamphlets we’d brought with us when we moved to Provence a month before, were that a good goat would give a gallon of milk a day and a gallon would make nearly a pound of cheese. French friends had told us that we could make a living with the cheese produced from the milk of twenty to thirty goats.

  “Why are you selling them?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’m getting too old to keep so many. I have more than thirty.” She looked around, then pointed at a large, sleek goat, russet and white. “I can sell you that one. Look at her. She’s a beauty. Reinette, the little queen, I call her. She’s a good milker, about four years old. Always has twins too.”

  She moved across the barn and grabbed the goat by one horn, put her cane under her arm, and pulled back the goat’s lips. “Take a look. See how good her teeth are. She’s still young.”

  Reinette was released with a slap on her flank and went over to another goat standing aloof from the others. This one had a shaggy, blackish brown coat and scarred black horns that swept back high over her head.

  “This is Lassie. She’s la chef, but getting old like me.”

  I expected the woman to cackle, but she didn’t. Instead she sighed and said, “She’s getting challenged by some of the younger goats now, but she’ll be good for a few more years.”

  Donald walked over to the goat and stroked her head. She stared at him with her yellow eyes and inky-black pupils.”What others are you selling?”

  “Mmm. I could sell you Café au Lait.” She pointed to a large, cream-colored goat with short hair and an arrogant look. “You might have trouble with her. You’ll need to show her who’s boss. She’d like to be la chef, take Lassie’s place.”

  As if in response, Café au Lait crossed over to Lassie and gave her a hard butt in the side. Lassie whirled and butted her back, a solid blow to the head that echoed in the barn, bone on bone. Ethel pulled closer to me, holding my hand tightly, but kept her eyes on the battling goats.

  “Ça suffit! Arrête! Sâles bêtes!” the woman shouted at the goats, menacing them with her cane. Lassie faced down the larger Café au Lait and the barn settled back into quiet.

  “Why doesn’t Café au Lait have horns?” I asked.

  “Sometimes I cut them off when they’re kids. I did hers. They looked like they were going to grow in crooked.”

  She continued her sales pitch. “Café au Lait is only three years old, and last year she had triplets. She’s a good goat.” She showed us four more animals that she was willing to sell and kept up her spirited commentary on their characters and fertility patterns.

  Donald and the woman agreed on a price of 350 francs each, and he made arrangements to pick up the beginning of our goat herd in two days. We all shook hands and said goodbye, then wound our way back toward the square where we had parked our car. I made sure Ethel’s knitted cap, a yellow-and-orange-striped one of her choosing, was tied snugly beneath her chin, then pulled up the hood on my jacket and put my gloves back on.

  As we walked through the narrow ruelles, the tiny streets of the near-abandoned village, Donald quietly remarked on the ghostly feeling of the crumbling houses with their fallen roofs exposing rotted wooden beams and piles of fallen stones. Wild berry canes pushed through some of the ruins and fig trees had taken possession of others.

  It was hard to imagine Esparron-de-Verdon as a thriving village, and impossible not to think of the woman and her goats living there as relics of the past, clinging to a way of life that was long gone.

  Surely what we were doing was something different. After all, we had bought a farmhouse in the country, not in an abandoned village, and we were college graduates. Donald had a degree in animal husbandry from the University of California at Davis, and while we were going to make traditional French cheese, we would bring modern methods to our technique, or so we thought. I was a little scared, though. We didn’t have a lot of money, and we needed to succeed.

  First, we had to learn how to make cheese. Our USDA pamphlets, directed at large-scale commercial milk production and cheese making for the United States market, didn’t discuss small-scale production of cheese from raw goat’s milk. So far, no one, including the woman who had just sold us our first goats, had been able to tell me exactly what to do other than add rennet to milk.

  “Mommy, can we have chickens and rabbits too?” Ethel asked as we passed a ramshackle chicken coop made of corrugated tin and chicken wire and utilizing the three remaining walls of one of the sturdier ruins. Her favorite toys were her rubber farm animals, and she was delighted by the idea of having real animals, in addition to our dog, Tune (short for Petunia), who we had brought from California.

  “Shh,” I said, “not so loud.” The silence was strong and heavy, and I sensed it was best to leave it unruptured.

  I bent down toward her. “Yes, of course we can. We’ll feed the chickens every day and collect their eggs. And build a nice house for them.”

  I wasn’t so sure about rabbits. Keeping rabbits meant having to kill them for meat. I knew that on a real farm, the kind we were going to have, you couldn’t just have animals as pets. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that part yet. I had n
o farm experience, having grown up in small Southern California beach town where surfing and sunbathing were the primary occupations. Chickens I could easily see—they had been part of my original vision when I imagined life in rural Provence, along with long, slow days of cooking, reading, writing, and sewing, with the occasional visit to Paris and trips to Italy and Spain, countries Donald and I had fallen in love with during our one-year honeymoon when we were students seven years before.

  The first few weeks with our nascent goat herd were difficult, and we were on a steep learning curve. They wanted to roam and eat at their leisure, and we couldn’t let them. The fields in the small valley below our house belonged to a farmer and were planted with winter wheat. He certainly wouldn’t appreciate his crop being eaten to the quick by goats. On the far side of the valley, a vast pine and oak forest stretched to the north and west. If the goats ever reached the forest, we were sure we would never find them. That left only the hectare of land surrounding the house where the goats could feed, and that had to be under our supervision.

  We didn’t have an enclosure so we had to devise some means to keep them under control. We tried taking the goats out on leashes that Donald had made using thick nylon cord and heavy-duty, twist-top hooks fastened to their collars. They not only ate the grass, but pulled us behind them as they climbed the pear and mulberry trees next to the house, chewing on the bark, and fought to get at the oaks and juniper on the neighbor’s hillside. I still have the scar on my knee from the rock Café au Lait dragged me over one morning.

  Next Donald filled old tires with cement to serve as anchors for the leashes. The Americans’ goat anchors quickly became the talk of the area as word spread from the postman whose brother owned the only bar in the village. No anchors could hold those goats, though. They would invariably head down to the field of appetizing green wheat, their weighted tires thudding behind them, with Donald and me following, trying to bring the goats back home.