Another day, another Abbaye

Come get ready with me… This weekend, we go to a spring fair at the Abbaye de Valmagne, find the perfect pork pie, and I make an easy tomato tart.

Come get ready with me, as they say on TikTok, while I choose my fit for a spring fair in a Twelfth Century abbey… I love these young women getting ready on TikTok, sharing a little of their lives along with concealer tips and shoe recommendations. I don’t see a viral TikTok career in my future though. Getting ready with me would comprise picking out outfits, or fits as we now must call them, for a trip to the garden centre, dropping something off at the tip, rummaging at a flea market, grooming the dog, jointing a chicken, or visiting some kind of old ruin while not looking too much like an old ruin.

My ground-breaking tips would involve getting a decent haircut to make elaborate blow drying unnecessary, and a makeup routine limited to Avène BB Cream, L’Oreal Million Lashes mascara and Vichy Naturalblend tinted lip balm. The end. My fits are almost exclusively Monoprix jeans with a cashmere jumper in winter and Monoprix jeans with a cotton or linen shirt in summer, perhaps also linen trousers if there’s a heatwave.

It’s been a cold spring, so I’m later than usual in my transition to linen. It makes me a little sad, honestly. Perhaps because I grew up in a cool climate, lived in a cool climate for most of my life, I feel very comfortable with a sweater. I know where I am with a cardigan. There is probably some Scandinavian word for the feeling of wistfulness that descends when I pack away my woollens. I should ask my Swedish niece (technically, my niece-in-law, but I adore her, so the legal tag feels inappropriate and uncosy).

This is just a long way around saying it took me about half a hot minute to get ready to go to the Marché de Printemps at the Abbaye de Valmagne a mediaeval abbey about twenty minutes from us. The abbey was founded in 1139 by Raimond Trencavel, the Viscount of Béziers, and for centuries, it was one of the richest Cistercian abbeys in the South of France.

Today, it’s no longer a working abbey. Nine generations of the Gaudart d’Allaines family have run the estate as a vineyard and historical monument. There’s a restaurant, and orchards, organic potagers and a mediaeval garden of plants the monks once grew for medicine and to dye textiles. We’ve been to their winter festival a couple of times, but this was our first time at their spring fair. As with so many of these things, it’s heavy on the scented-candle-straw-hat-clunky-jewellery axis, but among the tchotchkes, we found some wallet-opening things, mostly edible.

Wallet-opening things from the fair.

This jar has been in my house less than twenty-four hours. Damage has been done.

Some of the baking on the Soeurs Délicieuses stall.

Tables and chairs laid out in the orchard for lunch.

You can’t start too early.

We bumped into the man we bought our cherry wood salad bowl from a few years ago, and he was so thrilled when I told him I use it almost every day, and that no, I had never let anyone wash it (I literally hide it when people stay here and I’m not home to supervise its use). I bought a little pot of Gruissan sea salt flavoured with persillade – parsley, pepper, garlic – and was instructed, “It’s a finishing salt, make sure you use it only at the end”. We bought some wonderful jams – have you even been to a fair if you haven’t bought jam, honestly – my favourite being this Magie Toulousaine, blueberries, blackberries and violets (Toulouse is famous for its violets). In my feral heart, I just want to eat it with a spoon. And then we walked past a stall filled with sausage rolls, pasties, lemon drizzle cakes, cherry and walnut cake, scones, crumpets, even mince pies. It was all very church fête in the Cotswolds. This was the stall of the fabled Soeurs Délicieuses , two South African sisters I’d heard about but never met. Their baking, chutney and jam making is legendary among the Anglophone community here, but the market they sell at is in Lodève, about 60km from us, and I haven’t made it there yet. One of the soeurs explained to me that the French love their baking, and that’s why they sell mince pies all year round. I bought a beautiful-looking pork pie and a jar of pickled onions, to create the essence of Pub Lunch when I got home. Just the thing to go with a cashmere sweater.

The fountain in the cloister at the Abbaye de Valmagne.

Tarte à la tomate

This classic tart is one of my favourite summer lunches. It’s so simple and fresh and I always have the ingredients for it kicking around. I really dislike tomatoes in a tart with eggs as it makes even the most delicious ones insipid. This tart, filled simply with sliced tomatoes on a slick of mustard, intensifies their flavour and sweetness. You can make it with or without cheese, or swap the gruyère with soft goat’s cheese, Cantal or Comté.

You can certainly make this with a normal shortcrust pastry (pâté brisée), or with bought all-butter pastry, but sometimes for savoury tarts I like to combine buckwheat flour (sarrasin or blé noir) with plain wheat flour to create a more substantial crust. In this recipe, I also added some Colman’s mustard powder to the crust and some grated cheese. This crust is great with the tomato tart, but it works really well with many savoury vegetable tarts.

If you don’t have herbes de Provence, use some thyme or oregano instead, or a combination of the two.

Serves 4-6