You never walk down the same port twice
A walk along the port, plus this week’s market haul and a recipe for the fennel and orange salad I make all the time.
One of the best things about having friends visit is that it makes me see our port afresh, through the eyes of others. This week, my friend Lola came to stay on her way back from Marseille*, and we walked along the Quai Antonin Gros, caught up over coffee and ice creams, two scoops each, coffee and chocolate for me, praline and caramel beurre salé (salted caramel) for her.
There’s been a port here since Roman times, possibly earlier, but let’s jump forward a bit shall we? In the late Nineteenth Century, one of the region’s most successful wine merchants, Jean Voisin, commissioned a grand, Haussman-style building at the end of the port, with the ground floor serving as his business headquarters and the upper floors as a home for his family. Our house, at the other end of the port, was built by Jean Voisin’s son. Sometimes when I open our bedroom shutters in the morning, I imagine Joseph Voisin looking down the port to his father’s house, past the wine warehouses, barrel makers and barges and the other trappings of their trade, and out across the waters of the lagoon.
Places evolve. The Voisins’ warehouses are now cafés, restaurants and boutiques. Where once there were barges which took wine up the Canal du Midi to the Atlantic, now there are small yachts and pleasure boats. Today, as my friend Laurence Phillips writes in his book, How to Be Very Lazy in Marseillan, “The principal export of the port of Marseillan is love at first sight”.
Jean Voisin’s grand house is now the Château du Port, a restaurant run by Jasmine and Patrick Remy, a Belgian couple who came here on holiday a decade or so ago and, like so many of us, fell in love with the place. In 2014, they took over the restaurant, with Patrick in the kitchen and Jasmine running the front of house. A pirate flag flies from the steep, slate roof.
When we were here on holiday here in the summer of 2017, I remember watching work going on to the eastern side of the building. It made me nervous as I don’t do well with change. But sometimes change is good. Slowly, the wall was covered in mirror-finished stainless steel which had rectangles cut out of it in a grid pattern. It was a work by Jean Denant, an artist from Sète just across the water. It’s called L’Autre Mer, the other sea, and the grid pattern represents the oyster tables, for so many centuries a source of the village’s wealth. I love this second sea almost as much as the first one reflected in it. I enjoy it each day when I walk the dogs, the dancing light, flocks of birds, drifting clouds, sunrises and storms forming an ever-evolving large-canvas painting which, like all great art, makes you see the everyday, the ordinary, differently.
You never walk down the same port twice.
*So many people think we either live in Marseille, or that it is very close to us. It’s 250km to the east of us.
Fennel, orange and olive salad
I make this salad all the time. It’s great on its own just with some baguette, or with grilled fish or steak. You need to shred the fennel and onion finely, which you can do with a mandolin if you’re some kind of adrenaline-fuelled danger merchant. I just use a chopping board and a very sharp knife and take my time. Honestly, it’s a good excuse for a sit down.
Serves 4
1 small red onion, or 2 shallots, about 100g
1 large fennel bulb, about 300g
2 oranges
50g black olives, pitted, and halved if large
50g green olives, pitted, and halved if large
1 tbsp capers
A large bunch of parsley, leaves and fine stems only, about 20g, finely chopped
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the dressing
2tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
1. Fill a bowl with some cold water and a handful of ice cubes. Halve the onion or the shallots lengthways and slice thinly. Put the onion/shallots into the iced water for 10 minutes while you get on with everything else. Putting them in the ice bath gives them extra crunch and takes away some of the rawness. Drain them in a colander, wipe the bowl dry and put them back in the bowl.
2. Quarter the fennel bulb lengthways then cut out the core. With a sharp knife, shred the fennel finely and put it into the bowl with the onion/shallots.
3. Next. Segment the oranges. Chop off the ends so the oranges will sit securely on your chopping board, then work your way around, cutting away the peel and pith in wide strips, exposing the flesh of the fruit. Next, cut each segment from the membrane and put each one in the bowl with the onion/shallots and fennel. Squeeze any juice from the membrane onto the vegetables in the bowl and drain any of the juices on the chopping board into the bowl too.
4. Add the olives and capers to the vegetables and toss everything together.
5. In a small bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the marinade. Alternatively, you can shake it all together in a clean jam jar. Trickle the dressing over the salad and toss again.
6. Add the parsley and toss to combine. Taste, and add salt and pepper if you think it needs it. Serve straight away, or this will keep quite well in the fridge for 3 or 4 hours.
Market haul, May 21, 2024
Today’s market haul comprises: cherry tomatoes, endive, thirteen eggs, as is traditional, radishes, fennel, spring onions, a pot of basil, a rotisserie chicken with its potatoes, a boule of sourdough, tomatoes, the first of the Charentais melons, parsley, strawberries, the first local apricots, fresh garlic, courgettes, an orange, a baguette, carottes râpées, celeriac remoulade.
I’m highly delighted to see the first Hérault apricots in the greengrocer. The ones on my tree are only just beginning to take on some colour and it will be several weeks before I can eat them. My favourite snack du jour is the halved apricots with a little of this Madame Loïk cream cheese with walnuts and figs spooned into the middle of them, and then a little orange zest grated over the top. You could recreate this if you want to by stirring some finely chopped walnuts and figs – even a little fig jam – into some plain cream cheese. It is making me think this would be a great combination for a cheesecake. If I create a recipe for it, of course I’ll share it with you.
A lovely catch-up along the port. The apricot, fig, and cream cheese will be on my next get-together since I am doing a French theme. Love your food ideas. Thank you Debora.
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Fab as ever, especially the market haul - the 'boule' of sourdough was confusing and I had to read the list to deduce what is was. Usually I just drool over the pic! You have solved a problem as well - my first workshop for the next season is making the flavours of Summer. I was stuck for an intended use of one of the items as pouring it over yorkshire pudding doesn't press my buttons. Now I have rough oatcakes with homemade cream cheese, topped with fresh raspberries, drizzled with raspberry vinegar ( one of the flavours we will be making ) sprinkled with chopped pistachio and mint. Not too shabby a lunch :) Thank you, inspiring as ever