Category — Markets & food

During my seven-month stay in France a couple of years ago, a colleague explained to me the thrifty French tradition (well, from her region and era, at any rate) of gathering up all the leftover food (les restes) on Fridays and making it into a pie (la tarte). Of course, it’s necessary to combine ingredients judiciously. I looked around for a book of recipes at the time, so I could have some instruction on making these pies, but I couldn’t find anything. Then one day on a television cooking show, I saw a woman named Sophie Dudemaine demonstrating how to make tartes from all manner of things–fish, leftover meat, andouille (I’ll pass on that one), lentils, escargots… you name it. So I went into Amazon France and, sure enough, Sophie has a whole range of books, one of which is Les Tartes et Salades de Sophie, which I ordered toute suite.

So although today is Friday, I didn’t make a tarte a la Sophie, but I did apply the principle of using up les restes. In my case, after all this horrible hot humid weather in Melbourne, les restes were some very sad looking peaches, a wrinkled nectarine or two, and a couple of dozen cherries which had seen better days. I flung them all into a saucepan with some leftover red wine, and various spices–cloves, cinammon stick, mixed spice, and a little strawberry cordial and some water–and boiled it all up for about half an hour (adding the nectarine and cherries about half way through).

This is actually a variation on a famous Melbourne dish known as peach Melba, which requires raspberries to be added at the end (some people puree the raspberries, but I prefer them whole). As it’s not raspberry season, I flung in a handful of the frozen variety once I’d taken the saucepan off the heat. The verdict? Eaten warm with ice-cream or plain yoghurt, it can only be described as magnifique!

My hometown newspaper the Melbourne Age features a long article today on how the Atlantic salmon are returning to the Seine, and how this is a sign of the improved water purity. Love the picture of the fisherman at Suresne with his 7kg salmon!

 I’ve been meaning to go to the fabric market—Marché St Pierre—for some time, and today I decided I would finally do it, heat wave or no heat wave. While hordes of tourists and everyone else were dragging themselves up the hundreds of steps to Sacré Coeur, which looked to me more like an ascent to purgatory in a temperature that must have been over 30 degrees, I headed into the (mostly) air-conditioned fabric shops.

 I’ve recently taken up dressmaking after a long break from it. After spending so many years in academia, living inside my head (as my physiotherapist tactfully puts it!), I find that I often ache to be doing something with my hands, and sewing is just the thing.

Choosing dressmaking fabric is a wonderfully sensual experience, and especially at the Marché St Pierre. It’s a cornucopia of colours, patterns and textures. I like to let the various pieces of fabric that attract my eye suggest to me what they ought to be made into.

A couple of today’s suggestions were: a fitted pinafore dress in a small check of red and black fine wool (at 3 Euros per metre!), for when I return shortly to the Melbourne winter; a French version of a liberty print in grey, blue and muted red cotton twill is just asking to be made into a long-sleeved crossover dress; two pure cottons, one beige and one white, each embroidered with lacy patterns in the same colour, will make cool summer dresses (I couldn’t get summer out of my head, thanks to the searing heat here in Paris at the moment).

 My favourite fabric shop was Tissus Reine for variety and sheer sumptuousness (the French liberty print came from there), but I found my best bargains at Les Coupons de Saint-Pierre, and some of the smaller shops. Some specialise in curtains and upholstery fabrics, while others have all types. Today I was only interested in the tissus habillements (dressmaking fabrics).

 On the hill above, the white domes of Sacré Coeur shimmered in the hot air, while inside the fabric shop the voice of Serge Gainsbourg played in the background. For a brief time, I thought I was in heaven.

I’ve never discovered at what hour the day begins for the stallholders of the Place d’Aligre market. But if I awake at seven to stagger to the bathroom on my sleep-stiffened legs I can hear small sounds of almost-muted activity from the place (or square, but in reality a large semi-circle) in front of my apartment many floors below. Even though I can return to bed for another hour’s sleep, I cannot resist going into my salon to peek from the floor-to-ceiling window that looks over the place; and then I can just make out, by the light of the dozen or so lanterns that light the square, that the stalls are indeed already lined up in neat rows under their blue-and-white striped awnings in the gloomy dawn of this Paris winter.

The stallholders start packing up any time after about one o’clock in the afternoon. The hour differs each day but I haven’t managed to work out the pattern, although Saturday seems to be the earliest pack-up day. They leave wooden fruit crates and bags of leftovers around the square in about eight piles of varying neatness. As the last vans are departing, the gleaners move in. On a cold, wet day there will only be two or three at most, as there are today. They pick through the piles, even opening some of the black plastic bags. Today there are two women filling small plastic bags in this way. At another pile, obviously left behind by a clothing vendor, a man is trying on a waterproof jacket. He inspects it carefully first, then removes his own jacket, and his vest. Then he puts on the ‘new’ jacket. He does it up, flexes his shoulders to check the size. Satisfied, he leaves it on, folding up his previous garments neatly and putting them into a plastic bag.

The only problem with euphoria is that everything that goes up has to come down. Am I the only one feeling flat today? The rain and grey skies don’t help. There’s only one thing for it—a brisk walk to the market.

The ubiquity of markets is one of my favourite things about Paris. I never tire of buying my fresh produce this way. It’s a supremely soothing experience. Perhaps because markets are one of the few things still existing in which humans have participated since time immemorial. Better than any ‘social networking’ on the computer, the touch and smell of all that lovely organic matter, the banter of the marchands and occasional offers of ‘buvons un café ensemble?’ (always politely declined), the experience never fails to cheer me up.

Today strawberries are on special. I buy half a kilo and decide to make compote to go with my Saturday baguette.

Compote aux Fraises à Carolyne

500g strawberries (can be ‘cooking’ quality), hulled, washed and halved

A little wine or sherry

Sugar to taste

Cinnamon

Juice of one lemon (optional)

4 teaspoons of gelatine

Throw everything except the gelatine and sugar into a heavy bottomed pan and simmer gently until the strawberries are as cooked as you want them to be (I don’t cook them for very long). Add just the amount of sugar to make it sweet enough. When the strawberries are cooked to your liking (I prefer them to be still whole, and not too mushy), take saucepan off the heat, and spoon out about a third of a cup of the syrup. Add the teaspoons of gelatine to this hot liquid, and whisk to dissolve it thoroughly. Stir this mixture back into the stawberries and mix gently but thoroughly. Pour into jars or containers and keep in fridge. This does not keep for long (scarecely a week, even in the fridge) so I pour it into containers of a size that will last me for a few days, and freeze all but one (the amount in this recipe makes only about two medium-sized jars—enough for two people for a few days, depending on how thickly you ladle it onto your baguette).