When every day’s a fête day

For a village of 8,000 people, there is certainly a lot going on – what the summer holds, and a recipe that’s suspiciously like a Lancashire hotpot, but not.

A summer evening on the Tabarka.

When we lived in London, an evening out might be a lively dinner in a smart, new restaurant. Last week, Thursday night found me eating a tart in the street. In case you’re worried it’s all gone horribly wrong and this is not the vision of gastronomic sophistication I might have expected or aspired to when we moved to France, we were at an apéro evening at a local café. It was part of the Fête du Printemps, the spring festival the village holds each year around Easter. We drank sparkling rosé and ate cakes salés, crudités and dips, made by Valou, who runs the café. We caught up with friends, and made some new ones, especially the man who makes the sparkling rosé.

When we first arrived in 2021, these sorts of fêtes and festivals – mostly centred around food and wine - were just beginning to return. The Covid restrictions that had made them impossible created a gaping hole in community life, and the excitement at their return was palpable. It wasn’t just because they’re tremendous fun. They also create and strengthen local bonds, and encourage a sort of social cohesion, a sense of identity. In the fifteen or so years we have been coming to this part of France, it’s clear to me that the pride in their region, its food, wine and history, goes right down to the soul. They are literally what they eat.

When I lived in England, I went to many street food events, some of which were excellent, but a lot of which involved queuing for a £15 burger under leaden skies, which you then ate sitting on a kerb being jostled by a crowd, all the while trying to convince yourself you were having a good time (My husband: “Have we enjoyed ourselves enough yet? Can we go home?”). I also helped organise festivals where our constant concern was to try to appeal to a wider crowd than the Boden-and-Man-Bun set. I mean, thank you for coming and everything, but other audiences also exist and are often difficult to reach.

The oyster festival on the Theatre car park.

Here, everyone comes to events, from chic DFPs (down from Paris), to the local teenagers and the well-coiffed old ladies of the village. In the summer, we all sit shoulder-to-shoulder on benches at trestle tables laid out on the Tabarka, which the rest of the time is a parking lot by the port, or in the theatre car park opposite our house. We feast on mussels, oysters and chips as the sun sets and, inevitably, a cover band plays hits of the 80s and 90s. Would you like some frites with your Mustang Sally?

All of our festivals seem to revolve around things pulled out of the Étang de Thau, the saltwater lagoon around which the village is built. The first weekend after we moved here, there was an eel festival, with men smoking eels in barrels, stalls of eel stew, eel persillade, eel en croûte, all eaten to the accompaniment of the local Ciao Bella band with their tiny, brilliant drummer, who couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, playing his heart out. At the Christmas fair each year, I look forward to the most delicious crab soup (soupe de cranquettes) of my life, made from the small, green velvet swimming crabs, bobbing with croutons, rouille and grated Gruyère, mine for only €4. It is considerably more delicious than any £15 burger I ever queued for. The inexpensive food and wine is the reason why these events are so accessible. Everyone comes.

Smoking eels at the eel festival

Is it even a food festival if Bella Ciao aren’t playing?

Not every event is a large affair. You can do it yourself. Each year, there is the Fête des Voisins (Neighbours’ festival), designed to help us all “mieux vivre ensemble” (live together better). The town hall provides free the well-worn trestles and benches, tablecloths, balloons, glasses, and T shirts, and will even in many cases close off your street if you ask, so neighbours can get together over a potluck dinner and plastic glasses of rosé.

Initially, it was a bit challenging to find out about these events in advance. The tourist office website is both gnomic and labyrinthine. Our house is on a little square, and for a long time the first we knew of any sort of village happening was when fire eaters, face painters and possibly giants on stilts appeared by our gates. At Christmas, Santa Claus’s train parked by our house, waiting for him to be rowed into the harbour on one of the water jousting boats. He and his train then made their way through the village, accompanied by our white-shirted water-jousting heroes and a dozen or so highly excited children dressed as elves.

Father Christmas arriving on the port.

Soupe de cranquettes at the Christmas market.

Now I’m in the swing of things and I use the local Hérault Tribune news website to find out what’s going on. Let me tell you, it’s quite the packed programme. Now the week-long Fête du Printemps is over – a week seems like the minimum acceptable length of festival for a village of 8,000 souls – we have a summer of plays, concerts, water jousting, food festivals and night markets to look forward to. I don’t know how I am going to fit it all in.

So while I miss the fine dining of yore, especially London’s excellent Indian restaurants (here, you usually get something “au curry” – cooked as they normally would a classic French dish, finished with a pinch of the mildest and often oldest curry powder know to humanity), I am happy – for now at least – to swap them for acrobats and fire eaters as we eat hot mussels out of cartons in the warm night air.

Souris d’Agneau aux carottes et pommes de terre

Not quite Lancashire hotpot

This is what I made for lunch on Easter Sunday. It’s inspired vaguely by Lancashire hotpot, though it doesn’t contain lamb kidneys and it does contain carrots, which would upset purists. I use lamb shanks for the drama – I like the look of the bones poking out from the potato lid – and because I like the French term for them, souris d’agneau, or lamb mice because of their cartoon mouse shape. This works well for any meal where you want to have fun yourself, because you can do most of the work a day or so before and do the final cooking – with the potato gratin top – on the day. It’s very forgiving. There’s no dictatorial SERVE IMMEDIATELY at the end of the recipe, and because of the whole carrots, you don’t need to prepare any other vegetables. It’s a one- pot dish. Just serve a green salad afterwards, for freshness.

Serves 6 hungry people