My French Holiday Diary- Day 2

 

 Market day! What will we eat too much of today? Read on Macduff...

Day 2- Sunday 16^th September.

Remember what I said about the car being a piece of cake to drive? Well I spoke too soon. Air conditioning and Dad-y do not mix. Hurtling up and along giant, winding cliff faces he decides to fiddle with the controls, making us veer into oncoming traffic etc. etc. Reading the manual, we’ve been informed that the car is in charge of air conditioning, and they’re isn't anything we can do about it. Even though I felt snubbed by the manual, at least there was a sense of pride in being able to read it in French.

When we came to Marcilhac last year, after the stress of the airport and general travel fatigue, we managed to catch only the last fifteen minutes of what looked like a fab little Sunday market up in the hill town of Limogne-en-Quercy. This year though, with the habit of waking reasonably early still instilled in my bones from camping a week ago, when Mum-y came in to tell me they were off to get bread, I was out of bed quick sharp to join them. I’m not ashamed to admit that my get up and go actually came from my stone cold panic that we hadn’t bought any pâté yesterday. What the hell were we thinking? It should be illegal to spend a day without pate in France. Terrified at the thought of only yoghurt and cake for breakfast, I suggested we make a diversion up to the market after we swung by nearby Cajarc to buy bread (and cakes, of course).

 

Minus the air conditioning and ensuing shouting, we arrived in Cajarc in one piece. The square was blissfully quiet on a Sunday. That said, it was every day we went there last year. All of France is quiet; it’s fab. We yobbed our way across the street to the Boulangerie the moment we glimpsed it. Two ladies were running the place, dealing with the orders of locals who were coming in for their Sunday treats. Daddy and I hovered behind Mum-y like frightened children, whispering our orders frantically as Mum-y tried to cope with her excitement over the array of dainties in front of her and her basic knowledge of French. God knows why I couldn’t just order for us. I know what I want and how to ask for it, but when in contact with actual French people, I get too scared and refuse to buy a thing.

My fear of speaking the language didn’t stop me from hissing in Mummy’s ear. As a matter of course, we ordered two apple, one pear tart slices. I remember them both from last year. The pear in particular was amazing. A rectangle of thick, hard pastry at the base to offset a soft pear set in a frangipane so good it tasted like caramel. How can a pear tart taste so good? In England I can just tell what it would taste like. Flabby pastry. Hard, tasteless pear. Rubbery frangipane. Why do we even bother?

 

As well as the customary two baguettes, we also couldn’t resist buying a nut tart (and why not? It might actually be good, unlike at home), then we were drawn to a separate counter containing weird-looking, regional pastries. We ordered a “Jesuit” when we heard what it was- a triangle of puff pastry layered with almonds and meringue. And then, just because we were being hogs, our eyes were drawn to a weird, flat square pie sprinkled with caster sugar- a croustade de pommes. More on that later.

Armed with cakes and bread at only eleven euros (you see now why we get so fat over here?), we loaded up the car and crossed the square for a coffee before heading up, up, up through fields of corn, over wide rivers glistening in the morning sun and along cliff faces lined with woodland. Minor trouble parking up at Limogne, but we got over the stress of Dad-y’s inability to parallel park the minute we wended our way down the street to the busy market square. At first, it didn’t even look like people were selling much. Only a few stalls groaned with food. Instead, what you actually get is a series of small producers, selling one or maybe two specialty products. There doesn’t seem to be much of a patch war, either. Only a few stalls overlapped in produce. Maybe three people were all selling peaches. But every peach was different, so even that didn’t matter.

While me and Daddy hovered about, realising we had neither money or courage, Mum-y was drawn in to one of the tiniest stalls, a little old lady selling equally little soft fruits. Redcurrants, raspberries and wild strawberries. From my hovering point, I watched as she carefully wrapped two punnets of wild strawberries she picked herself this morning in tin foil to protect them, along with two punnets of the tiniest, sweetest mixed orange and red tomatoes. I found myself drawn to a big bag of pastry. A couple of euros for a giant bag, these were squares of pastry, slashed through and deep fried, before being sprinkled liberally with caster sugar. Nothing could be more bad for you, but who gives a crap, I’m on my holiday and these guys would taste great with a cup of coffee as a morning pick me up. Or straight out of a bag in a busy French market, where, of course, an accordionist just started playing jauntily. Why not? We are in France after all, let’s stick to that cliché… With bells on too, guys with a tin whistle and tambourine just joined in.

 

We mingled our way through the melee, buying a little bit of everything we saw. Apart from cheese this time. We have too much of that in the fridge from yesterday and god knows, we don’t want anything going to waste. Couldn’t help looking at the delicate goat’s cheeses rolled in chopped walnuts though… Regional specialty? Walk away before it’s too late! I ran away from a stall selling regional syrup, knowing that there’s literally no way a delicate little bottle could make it back to England in one piece. Also ran because the dashing young Frenchman on the stall said good morning to me and something I couldn’t understand. Probably about syrup, but I got scared and fled.

Fleeing upwards, I saw that the little antique shop of last year was actually open, so we all had a browse outside at the mixture of embroidery pieces and through the window at collections of brooches. Smart ladies went wild over classic pieces being sold at a fraction of the price, whereas we went wild over a bowl that had vegetables painted on it. To each their own. We paid our five euros for the bowl and left them putting their little thin feet into little thin shoes. Back to the market for us, we hadn’t bought nearly enough food yet. With Dad-y off in search of tea towels, Mum-y and I caved in and bought one of our most expensive items, a ready roast chicken from some French-Algerian guys. They put some kind of crack in their dry seasonings, I’ve got to say. I don’t even know what it is, but it’s red and there’s a hell of a lot of salt in it. Delicious salt. That’s what we realised over lunch, everything in France tastes so good because it’s either salty as hell or creamy as hell. And if you don’t like those two things, you ain’t gonna like French food. Unfortunately for us and our waistbands, we love it.

We made our way over to a stall selling salami. We felt pretty wary over this stall, mainly because we always get seduced by salami stalls in markets at home, end up buying three for a tenner and they all taste rank. This time though, we tried a little piece of each from a brown chopping board balanced on cured hams and found that our hesitation was mistaken. As it’s a big regional thing, they actually had a sausage mixed with duck. Amazing. I wouldn’t have thought that it would work, but a subtle duck flavour manages to wend its way through the rich, garlic of the pork. We also got a smoked pork sausage, and I went wild over a cèpes charcuterie; a salami studded with dried mushrooms! My god, they think of everything. When food tastes this good, you can’t help swearing in appreciation.

 

God, I forgot, there was also a hugely fat man and his wife selling white muscat grapes. So sweet and only two euros a huge punnet. And the man selling honey! A tiny stall, no bigger than a coffee table, loaded with big jars of practically orange honey. All smiles, the man was telling his customers about his stock, which left us free to take our time reading the labels; sunflower honey, clear honey, last year’s honey… We settled on a “toutes fleurs” as bright as lemon curd. At five and a half euros, it was being sold at the right price. This guy wasn’t undercutting himself to sell his produce, it’s a luxury item so you pay what it’s worth, not less. The honey is so thick it’s granulated. But I’ve got to say, spread thickly on thickly buttered baguette, then studded with fragrant wild strawberries, it’s the fucking bomb. Like I said about swearing, there are no other words to describe it.

Finally, we reached the butcher, the only person in a trailer in the whole market. We bought a half kilo of very peppery, dark red Italian Napoli-style sausages, as well as the much awaited pâté de campagne; deep, liver tones and a chunky cut. I was horrified to see Mum-y asking for a smaller slice, but couldn’t explode in rage in front of the man, so vowed to chastise her later. She bought a couple of weird looking slices of things, as well as a good-looking chorizo I’ll scoff with a potato and fried egg hash. And then, at a little after twelve, with the sun suddenly powerfully beating down on us, we called it a day, stopping only to taste and buy a bottle of local red wine and coo over a basket of sleepy black kittens who were being given away to a good home.

A huge deer ran across the road as we made our way back home and we imagined the excitement of a wild boar truffling his way through the forests. With equal vigour we tucked into a massive market-bought feast that somehow managed to last a little over two hours. Sampling the cakes from Cajarc, that croustade aux pommes was the hero of the hour, it’s flaky layers of thin, caramelised pastry encasing a thick splodge of buttery apple mush. Not too sweet either, it was offset by the caster sugar on top. A delight. Everything was. Everything is. We sat out in the boiling sun before retiring for naps, exhausted by our usual form of demanding exercise, the eating of copious amounts of delicious food.