Come rain, come shine
This week, we bounce back into Béziers, take on the flower market and discover a dreamy restaurant, plus a recipe for an easy tomato tart.
When we came into land at Béziers last Wednesday morning, it was through a thick blanket of fog. We bumped through its folds and landed hard on the wet tarmac.
It rained all day. We’d been up since 2am to make our flight from Manchester, so I was quite grateful to the rain for giving me an excuse to spend the day on the sofa cuddling my dogs and cat, an essential part of the delicate process of convincing them to forgive me for leaving them for a week.
This is one of the sunniest corners of France. We often have water restrictions. At the moment, we’re allowed to water our garden before 8am and after 8pm and I think even that is because it’s been recently planted. So rain is welcome, especially at this time of year, before the ground is baked so hard by the sun it runs off without penetrating the earth, causing flooding. When I see rain now, I think, ‘Oh, that’ll be good for the vines’. Local thoughts for local people.
The dramatic weather has not been good news for some. Further north in the Chablis region, there were hail storms so violent some growers say there will be no harvest this year, that the best they can hope is that the vines recover enough to be pruned next winter so they can produce grapes next year.
While on Wednesday it may have been 12C and stormy, on Friday we woke to that retina-burning bright sunshine I remember from my first visit to the South of France when I was 13. We drove to Béziers for the Friday flower market, now back to its usual high-voltage flower power after the glamorous renovation of the Allées Paul Riquet. I have so much weeding and planning and general fettling to do for the garden before I make any more big purchases, I was quite strict with myself and bought only some herbs and scented perlagoniums, which hardly count.
Then we went to meet our friends for lunch at the bottom of the Allées, at a small restaurant-bar they suggested, La Victoire. It’s narrow, with a bar on the right and a row of tables on the left. The walls are filled with photographs of favourite customers. I said hello to an elderly man at the next table as I sat down, and then noticed on the wall behind him a black and white photograph of the same man looking perhaps a dozen years younger. Each week, they chalk that day’s main course on a door painted with blackboard paint. There’s no choice. If you’re vegetarian or have allergies, tant pis pour toi. That day, it was gigot d’agneau de sept heures (seven-hour leg of lamb) with green lentils and puréed squash. It was generous, rich, like eating your grandmother’s cooking, if your grandmother were French and trying to feed you up. In short, my favourite kind of food. We had the lamb, wine, bread, mineral water, puddings (pannacotta, îles flottantes, apple crumble, chocolate mousse) and coffee and it came to €30 a head. A flower market followed by a good lunch is my favourite kind of day. Sometimes, you can feel it when a new tradition is forming itself while it’s forming itself. See you at La Victoire one Friday, maybe? I’ll be the one with the scented pelargoniums stuffed under the seat.
Marché aux Fleurs
Allées Paul Riquet
Béziers
Fridays, from 7am. Unlike lots of French markets, it doesn’t tidy itself away at lunchtime but continues into the afternoon. Cut flowers, houseplants, garden plants, some specialist growers. The prices seem good to me, for the quality. There are lots of cafés lining the boulevard, so you can sit under the shade of the plane trees for a reviving cup or glass of something while you survey the market.
La Victoire
47bis Allées Paul Riquet
34500 Béziers
04 48 08 90 53
https://www.facebook.com/barlavictoire
Friendly bar-restaurant with a no-choice menu; at the moment the dish of the day is €15. Check their Facebook page, where they post the menu for each week. Typical specials are macaronade sétois (a rich beef stew with pasta, typical of nearby Sète), hachis parmentier (a sort of cottage pie), cassoulet, rôti de veau, lapin à la moutarde, confit de canard, all the greats.
Market haul
A different market haul this week, because I didn’t go to the market in Marseillan. Here instead is my very self-disciplined haul from Béziers flower market.
Herbs, scented pelargoniums (my addiction), a small pot of lily of the valley.
Easy tomato tart
We’re starting to get some lovely tomatoes in the market and at the greengrocer’s, and I can’t resist them. Aside from how they taste, I often marvel that something so beautiful is so cheap and, added bonus, you can eat them. When tomatoes were first introduced to Europe by the Spanish in the 1500s, it was widely grown as an ornamental plant. People were suspicious of them and believed they were poisonous. (In fact, rich people did become sick from eating them, but this was because the acidity of the tomatoes leached the lead from their fancy pewter dishes.)
I love any sort of tart and instant tartification is made simpler in France because you can buy ready-made pastry precut into rounds which fit an average tart tin perfectly. If you can buy these great, or use a rectangular tin with a sheet of bought pastry, or simply roll out a block of pastry or rectangular sheet to fit your round tin. If I were rolling it to fit, I would let it rest in the fridge for 20 minutes after using it to line the tin to stop it from shrinking during cooking. Or, of course, you could make your own pastry.
This is based on a classic French summer tart, with its layer of mustard and tomatoes, and no eggs at all. The baking intensifies the tomato flavour, rather than diluting it as it would with a custard filling. I’ve also added those other Mediterranean treasures, anchovies, olives and capers. Just add a green salad to turn it into a very good lunch.
Serves 4-6
1 sheet of rolled out, all-butter puff or shortcrust pastry
2 tbsp olive oil, plus a little more for brushing the tart
1 large onion, about 300g, chopped
A couple of sprigs of fresh thyme, plus a little more for finishing
1 bay leaf
3-4 garlic cloves, halved, any green germ removed, and minced
1 ½ tbsp Dijon mustard
400g cherry tomatoes, halved
40g anchovies in oil
40g black or green olive, stoned
1 tbsp of capers, drained if in brine, rinsed and patted dry if in salt
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper
Heat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas 6.
Brush the interior of a loose-bottomed 27cm tart tin with a little olive oil and then line with the pastry, gently pressing it into the sides without stretching it. Prick the base all over with a fork. Line the tin with baking parchment or foil and fill with ceramic baking beads or uncooked rice and/or pulses (you can reuse these – I’ve had the same ones in a jar for years). Bake for 12 minutes.
(While the pastry is cooking, begin to cook the onions: see below.)
Back to the tart…Remove it from the oven and carefully remove the parchment or foil and the baking beans. Brush the pastry lightly with olive oil and return it to the oven for a further 10 minutes or so, until the pastry case it golden and completely cooked through. If it looks like it needs a couple more minutes – it really depends on your oven – put it back in until it is completely cooked through.
Lower the oven temperature to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4.
To cook the onions, warm the oil in a heavy-bottomed frying pan over a medium-low heat then toss in the onions with the thyme, bay leaf and a good pinch of salt. Sauté gently, stirring from time to time, until the onions are soft and translucent. This will take about 15 minutes. Add the garlic and fry for a further minute. Remove from the heat.                                                                                                                                        Â
Spread the onions and garlic over the mustard in the tart. Arrange the tomatoes, cut-side down, on top of the onions. Drape on the anchovies then scatter on the olives and capers. Bake for 22-26 minutes, until the tomatoes are very lightly charred.
Scatter over a few fresh thyme leaves if you have them and serve warm or at room temperature.
Ah, that market looks lovely! Oddly enough we haven't spent much time in Béziers even though its only an hour away from our holiday home. I see lots of people saying nice things about the city. I never know where to look to find market days in France, most times we're over there it feels like we wind up missing them.
La Victoire - all of it - sounds heavenly x