It’s not all fruits, nuts and grains

This weekend, some thoughts on the Mediterranean diet that isn’t a diet, and a menu built around a recipe for blanquette de poulet.

If I look out my window at around 4pm, winter and summer, in all weathers apart from horizontal rain, there will be a group of women sitting on the bench, sometimes on two benches. There might be half a dozen of them or more, ranging in age from their sixties to their eighties, possibly older. There are always at least a couple of little dogs, very occasionally a husband. In summer when the windows are open, I can hear their laughter, and conversations I like to think they’ve picked up every afternoon at four since they were girls.

As futures go, this doesn’t look like a bad one.

It seems like every month, a new report appears lauding the health-giving properties of the Mediterranean diet. Recently, a report appeared in the journal, BMC Medicine, using data from 60,000 people. It stated this diet – traditionally rich in fruits and vegetables, grains, seafood, nuts and healthy fats – could potentially lower the risk of dementia by almost a quarter. Another, based on the work of a team at the University of Sydney published in the journal, Heart, stated women who followed the Mediterranean diet could reduce the risk of early death by almost a quarter. I’d tell the women on the benches but I think they’re too busy having a good time to care about the numbers.

One of the great draws of this corner of France for us was close proximity to wonderful ingredients. The Étang produces 13,000 tonnes of oysters every year, and 3,000 tonnes of mussels. In a village of 8,000 inhabitants, there are three greengrocers’, four bakeries, a large butcher’s, and several small shops selling oysters, mussels, and fish from the lagoon. Vines creep up to the edge of the village. When I walk my dogs along the edges of the vineyards that surround the village, chances are we’re weaving past the grapes I used to click into my Ocado order when I lived in London in the form of bottles of Picpoul de Pinet.

As each month goes by, it takes me longer to walk around the Tuesday market. I know more people now, and they know me. We talk about what’s good. This week, I’m still feasting on strawberries and asparagus, thinking about artichokes and broad beans. Soon, there will be peas, peaches, melons and cherries, the best grown nearby and picked when they’re perfectly ripe. And with every new season, I gather new recipes, from the greengrocer, a neighbour, the man in the wine shop, one of our builders.

It’s not Mediterranean food, it’s just food. It’s not a diet, it’s just how things are. People eat seasonally here, on the whole, not just because it’s better but because it’s cheaper. No one’s measuring out their (local, organic) olive oil in joy-defying teaspoons or weighing their walnuts. People’s diets contain leafy veg and oily fish, of course, but many slice into rich cheeses most days, and invariably pair it with good glasses of red. On Sundays, the queue to pick up cakes from the bakery is long and sociable. Here, in this provincial corner of France at least, balance is everything. Pouring small pleasures into each day is admired, gluttony or excess is not.

It’s about more than just food. Most businesses close at lunchtime for an hour, two hours, three, four. I’m joking. No one closes for just an hour. After all these months, I still get confused about what time the local Spar (shelves of biscuits, cat food, pasta and washing up liquid, also a Twelfth Century wine cave in the back), butcher’s, greengrocers’, and bakeries open after lunch. And almost everything is closed on Sundays. The idea of spending time with your family and friends, or simply having time to yourself, is sacrosanct. It’s frowned upon to contact people about work outside of normal work hours. These are a very boundaried people.

The climate helps. We spend a lot of time outside. Isolation, for many the torture of old age, is less likely to happen here. The ladies on the benches take up their space. If one of them didn’t appear one day, the others would notice, would check on her. Their daily laughter must be worth more than a tonne of healthy grains.

It’s easy to romanticise Mediterranean village life. It’s certainly not all baguettes and Brie carried home lovingly in a straw basket. Le fast food, le restauration rapide, is increasingly popular. With over 1,500 branches, France remains McDonald’s largest market outside the United States. Many insist they love McDo for the free WiFi (sure, Jean), but the one nearest us often has large queues of people wanting, controversially, to eat outside of conventional mealtimes, young people on dates, and parents with small children who don’t want to sit down for a two-hour lunch. French women do get fat. Obesity is on the rise; 17 per cent of French people are now obese, double that of 25 years ago (in the UK it’s 26 per cent). 

But there remains, in this village at least, a gentle rhythm of life, an attitude to seizing moments of pleasure, of eating well, resting well, and cultivating your friendships, that’s entirely life enhancing and, ultimately, potentially, life-prolonging.

Blanquette de poulet

I am calling this a blanquette, but it is more blanquette-ish. It’s pale, certainly, but I don’t cook the meat entirely in the bouillon to keep it as wan as a Versailles courtesan. I sauté it briefly in butter because I think it gives it more flavour. I also just thicken it simply with the egg yolks and skip adding flour to the sauce. (I seldom add flour to sauces if it isn’t absolutely essential.) I’ve added some tarragon, as I had some and I love it, but you can certainly leave it out.

 I hope I can be forgiven for the faffing with this most bourgeois of French dishes, but as it started life as a vehicle for leftover roast veal, pork and chicken and it was a century at least before all of the pale prima donna stuff was deemed essential, I hope I can hold on to my residency card.

Traditionally, pearl onions are added. I give a tip for peeling them below, but most often I use the peeled, frozen ones from Picard for ease Picard is the French version of Iceland frozen food shop, but quite fancy, with girolles, veal stock and sorrel in among the chicken nuggets (nuggets de poulet). I think I’ll write a whole newsletter about Picard at some point. You can buy the Picard pearl onions via Ocado in the UK, £3.30 for 450g, and they might well be available in other frozen food ranges too. If you can’t find pearl onions, you can use spring onions, trimmed of their roots and the darkest green parts.

I serve this simply, with rice. White rice.

Serves 4-6