Eat Your Vegetables

When I’m in France I’m torn between going out to eat for every lunch and dinner (there is no such thing as an IHop for breakfast – the French don’t do breakfast) and staying at home to cook. “Why would you want to cook on a vacation?” you might ask. After all, it means schlepping to the store, the heat of the kitchen, washing dishes, and all those unpleasant tasks that have nothing to do with actually cooking. The reason is quite simple – the street marché. France has modern grocery stores like the Monoprix, or the MarchéPlus, or the Carrefour – bigger than any Super Walmart I’ve been in – but for many the street market is where French cooking begins. It occurs on set days 52 weeks a year, from small villages and on up to giant Paris. In Dijon it’s in Les Halles (a 19th century structure designed by Gustav Eiffel) on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday mornings.

Yes, the markets will have some out-of-season food shipped in from Spain or Chile or elsewhere, but French food markets are all about regional products, in season. And you know it’s regional because they always tell you the origin of the food, and frequently the name and address of the grower. Food is personal here. You talk to the stall vendors. You have conversations about why you are buying the fruits and vegetables and when you plan to eat it. And the stall vendor frequently picks the fruit for you. There’s no squeezing the tomatoes. But then there is no need to because these haven’t been picked two or more weeks ago, left sitting in a warehouse, and then shipped green and hard. They are picked a day or two before they show up at the market.

The conversations about the food are where you develop a relationship with the vendor. When we were here for an autumn visit I wanted apples for a tart. My vendor wanted to know when I planned to make it so she knew how many days the apples would sit around. She asked what kind of tart I was making. She wanted to know how sweet I liked my apples and how big the tart would be. Then she picked me the fruit that would make my pastry absolutely perfect. When Brad wanted an avocado last week, the vendor first needed to know when he would eat it. Then he gently squeezed a few until he found the perfect one.

Summer is apricot season. The colors are so trés belle that I want to pull out a canvas and paints in order to preserve the shades of colors as well as the textures. The best I can do is aim my camera and hope for the best. Yesterday I fell in love with a display of apricots. As an indirect “payment” to the vendors for letting me photograph their beautiful fruit I asked to buy one apricot. The husband and wife chose a beautiful piece of fruit for me and with a grand sweeping gesture passed it over the display, saying “un cadeau” (a gift). I took the apricot and my photograph then walked home through the teeming food market relishing the slight give in each bite of the fruit’s velvety skin and the sweet juice that ran down my throat. I relished, as well, the opportunity the market gives me to make food personal again.

This is beautiful enough to make me want to learn how to cook with rhubarb