Off to the shops

Today, come grocery shopping with me, plus a beef casserole with winter vegetables recipe that’s a hymn to brown food.

Before we lived in France, when we were just visitors, I knew the market day of any city, town or village within a twenty-mile radius. If it’s Wednesday it must be Sète, Thursday, Agde, Friday, Béziers, Saturday Pézenas. It didn’t matter to me that in many of these places, you’d see the same stallholders as you’d seen in the market yesterday or the day before. There I’d be, a modern-day Boudicca of the Brassicas, sallying forth with my chariot de courses. A shopping trolley never found a more loyal friend.

I love markets. Back in London, my regular weekend haunts were our local farmer’s market in Stoke Newington, Columbia Road Flower Market, Ridley Road fruit and veg market in Dalston. There, I shopped for what I needed. In France, I lost my mind. Everything was so fresh and beautifully displayed, I needed to grab it, try it. Anything newly in season or new to me would be loaded into my trusty chariot and wheeled off home as, in some cases – hello lamb’s tongues, my old friends - I Googled what on earth I would do with them when I got there.

You’ll know if you’ve been following along for a while that in Marseillan, market day is Tuesday. I know it might be difficult to believe as each week, I lay out a Dutch master’s worth of fish, meat, cheese, eggs (with always an extra one added to the dozen, free), charcuterie, nuts, fruits, vegetables, wine, olive oil and different kinds of bread, but since moving here I believe I have learned moderation.

Having an overstuffed fridge induces anxiety, just in case there is half-petrified salami at the back there, in the paleolithic layer, behind the putrifying endive, that I have somehow forgotten.

My fancy London ways used to mean that too much was never enough, while my northern heart means that waste of any kind causes me physical pain. Having an overstuffed fridge induces anxiety in me, just in case there is a half-petrified salami at the back there, in the paleolithic layer, behind the putrifying endive, that I have somehow forgotten.

What I know now is that I can save myself the osteopath bills caused by coming back so heavily laden. My market hauls are often smaller than they used to be as I know that it’ll all be there tomorrow, if not on the stalls then in the butcher, fishmonger, or one of the three bakeries and three greengrocers that feed our village of 8,000. And then there is always the Spar corner shop, the one with the Twelfth Century wine cave in the back.

And of course, market day is as much about meeting your friends, observing the life around you, as it is about shopping for food. We begin the morning with a café au lait (un crème) in the Marine Bar by the church, opposite the police station, and it seems everyone else does too. Sometimes the crème is replaced by a breakfast rosé, a beer or a cloudy glass of Ricard, made down the road in Bessan.

Even in winter, the Marine Bar is busy. In summer, you have to have your seat-strategy down, racing to grab a table as soon as its occupants even begin to think about rising from their chairs. It’s loud with people catching up, gossiping. My friend told me her husband describes local scandals as MarseillEnders. A lot of it is played out on this busy terrace. During the darkest days of Covid lockdown (confinement), the Marine was closed. Its closed doors and empty terrace made the heart of the village feel eerily still, dead.

One thing I do know about market day is that however early I arrive, however few things I buy, I never get home before noon. Time stretches, narrows. Sometimes among the potatoes, endives and sardines, I stop at a stall and consider for a moment if I could be a person who wears a cardigan embellished with sequined appliqué, or a nightie with a teddy bears on it, whether I want bamboo dusters or a wipe-clean table cloth, or some glow-in-the-dark collars for the dogs, whether I need my knives sharpening or my chairs re-caned. And I step into the cool of the church to light a candle and just sit for a few moments, always.

By the time I’ve indulged in all that displacement activity, I’ve often no energy to cook. I always buy lunch, usually one of those delicious rotisserie chickens with roast potatoes cooked in the chicken fat, and a green salad, for health, or sometimes a tagine and some sticky, sweet pastries from the Algerian ladies who have a stall in the halles.

Photo © pickpik.com

Of course, it’s not all wicker baskets and cobbled streets. Out-of-town shopping is as big a feature of modern French life as it is in other countries, with encampments of HyperUs, Carrefours, Aldis, Auchans, E. Leclercs, Picards (frozen foods of dreams), Bricoman (DIY) and Jardiland (garden centre) halo-ing every town of any size. I know – just as in Britain – the existence of these retail behemoths has gutted the heart of many French towns, but I confess I love a supermarket in a foreign country. I cannot resist them. Trailing the aisles is like some sort of social anthropology field trip, from which you can learn much. Ours proudly displays products du région alongside less gourmet offerings: fat net bags of local mussels as well as fish fingers (bâtonnets de poisson panés), Roquefort by the cheese string (fromage à effilocher), foie gras and chicken nuggets (nuggets de poulet).

In France, supermarkets are evolving. In the past couple of years, plastic packaging on 30 fruits and vegetables, including carrots, bananas, apples, peppers and aubergines has been banned, in an attempt to cut down on the 37% of French food which was sold wrapped in single-use plastics. Since 2016, it’s also been illegal for supermarkets to throw away food, or to damage it in any way so it cannot be redistributed (pouring bleach onto perfectly good food, as some supermarkets have done in the past to prevent people “foraging” for it, must be one of the most mundane acts of wickedness of our times). The food goes to charities or food banks, who must distribute it “with dignity”.

Perhaps I will write a piece about the different supermarkets soon, their different offerings and characteristics, if you think that might be interesting?

What I’m thinking about this week

How I love those classic French café chairs with the woven backs. I’m slightly obsessed with the different designs and wondering if I could transfer one into a needlepoint design?

Ragoût de boeuf aux legumes d’hiver

Beef casserole with winter vegetables

One of the things I love about this casserole is that it’s so filled with vegetables you can serve it just on its own just with some rice or potatoes, no need to do any other sides dishes. I used all the root vegetables I had, but you can use fewer if you want – just keep the overall weight about the same.

You can buy any stewing beef to make this casserole. I like to buy the meat in large pieces and cut it up myself. I think it’s so much nicer in bigger pieces of about 8cm than the smaller, scrappy pieces you often get when you buy it precut. I use a combination of shin and shoulder for this and if the butcher hadn’t run out of beef cheek, I would have included some of that too.

Serves 6-8