Earpieces and farting nuns -- it's Mardi Gras, French style

Considering the huge Mardi Gras celebration that usually takes place in the States in la Nouvelle-Orléans, you might expect there to be a big celebration here in France too. But if Aix is at all indicative of the rest of the country, you'd be wrong.

However, it should come as no surprise (since this is France) that even if the culmination of the week-long jours charnels marked by Mardi Gras is no longer really observed, there are still traditional food items to be eaten in celebration of the day. It should also come as no surprise (since I am writing this blog) that I will tell you about them.

A couple weeks ago bugnes, oreillettes and pets de nonne started appearing in pâtisseries around Aix. (Before I go any further, I should say that whether bugne is just another word for beignet is up for heated, or at least animated, discussion and also that there's a significant amount of variability in what gets called an oreillette. What is common to all three of these pastries is that they involve the frying of some kind of dough, broadly construed.) The custom of making and eating these treats comes from the custom of celebrating and general excess that preceded the fasting period of Carême, or Lent, as well as the practical tradition of using up all the stores of butter, oil, eggs, sugar, etc. that you wouldn't be using so much during the next 40 days of fasting.

Bugne is just, according to one of the women in the bakery where I buy my bread, a provençal variant of beignet or "fritter"/ "doughnut". According to her colleague, bugnes have to be sort of triangular in shape (like the ones they have at the bakery and the ones on this website ... scroll down half way) and beignet can be any shape at all (and even filled). In any case, the available bugnes were fried in peanut oil, so I didn't get any of those.

Instead we got an oreillette and a couple of pets de nonne.


The oreillette, which in non-culinary contexts translates as something to do with the ear -- an earphone or something like a clip-on earing -- is the one that's on top (the one that there's just one of!). Sadly, I don't know the origin of calling these pastries oreillette. This version of the oreillette is the yeasted-dough version. For every recipe you find for this kind, there's another recipe for the thin, crispy, fried cookie-like version. However, the thin ones I've seen at various pâtisseries around Aix since we got here and the yeasted ones I've only seen more recently.


It's just a little crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside and it wouldn't be sweet at all, if not for the powdered sugar. It tastes not unlike New Mexican fry-bread. We liked it, but the real favorite were the irreverently named, but sublimely delicious pets de nonne, or "nun's farts".



If that looks like choux pastry, that's because it is! It's a two-bite, fried, orange-flower (unfilled) cream puff that has been dusted in superfine sugar. Choux pastry never tasted so good! If I'd known how good they were, I'd have been eating them every day for the past two weeks.

As for how the pastry got its colorful name, one theory is that the current name is a corruption of the real name, paix de nonne. According to this theory, they were given the name when the nun who invented them gave the recipe to a neighboring, enemy convent and thus assured the paix, or "peace". Alternatively, they may actually be named after a nun who had gas at an inopportune moment. This story goes that the nuns at Marmoutier Abbey in Tours were busying themselves with meal preparations for the feast day of St. Martin (and the Archbishop's blessing of the relic of the St. Martin's cape) when a noviciate farted loudly and, embarrased in front of all the other sisters, let a spoonfull of choux pastry fall into a vat of hot fat.

If all embarrassing moments could result in such deliciousness!

So that's Mardi Gras old-world French style -- no beads, no parades, no debauchery, but really good things to eat.

If you can't stand the stink, stay out of the Boulette

This is the first in a series of cheese posts that have been a long time coming. I was trying to take a break from strictly food posts, but as a result, all the cheese, glorious cheese we've been eating has been neglected. And that's just sad because they're so good.

However, if there were ever a cheese that would not be endorsed as glorious by the (US) National Dairy Board, this might be it. It's the antithesis of every image presented in that commercial and of every scent and taste evoked by that commercial.

Here it is ...


It looks a little alarming. It smells more than a little alarming. But it actually tastes really good. (Ok, I admit right now that I like durian, but hear me out because this has much broader appeal than durian ... or at least somewhat broader appeal ... I think?)

Boulette d'Avesnes is a very old cheese from the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region near the border with Belgium. According to the website of the city of Avesnes-sur-Helpe, whence this stinky little delicacy comes, the cheese dates back to 1760 or so. At that time, it was made from buttermilk (and was the result of thrift) but since the early part of the last century, it's been made from the fromage blanc of Maroilles (another delicious cheese for another post).

So a little background here: fromage blanc is the first stage in some cheese making in which milk + rennet = coagulation. The solids are fromage blanc. (I'm pretty sure that you can also get fromage blanc via coagulation with lactic fermentation, but I'm no expert and in any case the fromage blanc of Maroilles is made with rennet.)

When the fromage blanc de Maroilles isn't up to snuff for one reason or another, when it's accidentée, the solids get mashed up with parsley, tarragon, salt and pepper (and sometimes ground cloves), and formed into the boulette.


They're then aged for two to three months, during which time they're brushed with beer and finally, they're coated with paprika (or annatto).

So what is it like?

Well, the boulette are sold upright with a molded plastic cap covering the cheese that snaps onto that black base you see in the photos. The fromager wraps the encased cheese in paper and gives it to you to take home. When you get home and unwrap the paper, the smell you couldn't smell in the cheese store (because all the other cheeses were masking it) fills the air. And when you take off that plastic cap ...

If I told you exactly what it smelled like with the most accurate description I know, family members would be offended and shocked that I would say such a thing and all of you would wonder what in the world would possess me (and James -- he ate it too!) to put something in my mouth that smelled like this does. But along with the smell that says "This thing shouldn't be eaten", there is the smell of cheese. Plus, you bought it at the cheese shop, so it probably is cheese and not something else.

The texture is something like feta, boursin and ricotta all rolled into one. It's sort of firm and compact, but sort of spreadable (with a lot of pressure on the knife), but a little crumbly.


The flavor is really good. It tastes strong and pungent like Maroilles, but with herbs (and salt -- it is quite salty). The tarragon gives it a really pleasant anise-y sweetness, which, coupled with the paprika, sort of tricks you into tasting cinnamon.

It tastes great with Belgian beer and is also good alongside a pear.

But, let's just say that this is an outside cheese and even though I'd gladly eat it again, I probably won't buy one again.

First signs of spring?

After years of living in Chicago, the weather here in southern France is pretty much a dream come true. Sure, when it rained this fall, it poured (which wasn't pleasant before the roof got fixed), but the locals say that so much rain was abnormal. And it has been cold this winter -- cold enough that we wear long underwear, you do need a winter coat, gloves and scarf, and you'd be a lot happier with a hat when the Mistral blows. But it's not like what we're used to putting up with.

I really don't want to jinx things and I know what Punxsutawney Phil said just a couple of weeks ago, and as soon as I type this sentence I'm going to knock on wood just in case, but it looks like it may almost be spring here in Aix.


We went on a randonnée, or walk/hike, in the area around Aix yesterday and we saw this little crocus peeping up through the mulch. So is it spring? Well, I don't know. It's only mid-February, but it was in the upper-40s, there were birds chirping, it smelled like spring and the sun was warm.

Chez le boucher

***Warning: there is a link to a graphic picture of a cut up chicken in this post, with a warning closer to the link so you can avoid it if you like***

One thing I really love about being here is going to the butcher to get our meat. With the exception of the Halal vegetarian, boneless, skinless chicken breasts I buy at the grocery store (because they're the cheapest around and really good), I buy all our meat at the butcher around the corner. It can be a little confusing, for a couple of reasons: first, I'm still learning about different cuts of meat (e.g., the difference between shoulder cuts: picnic or butt?), and second, animals are butchered differently here -- so the cuts that I only sort of know anyway don't all exist in France. Lucky for me, the people in the butcher shop don't seem to mind answering my questions so I can ask what different cuts of meat are used for, or I can tell them what I'm making and ask for a recommendation.

What's really great is that once you've chosen your beast, they'll then cut your meat however you want it. So those skin-on, deboned whole chicken legs that I wanted to buy in Chicago and couldn't? Unlike Chicago, where (as the butchers at several butcher counters told me) butchers aren't allowed to debone chicken for you and maybe can't even do it for you if you pre-order, those chicken legs are no problem here. And that caul fat that I would have had to special order? At any butcher shop, any day of the week (except Sundays, and some afternoons when they're closed). Unlucky for me, now I don't have an oven, but if I did ...

However, even though you can ask about the difference between un poulet (better for roasting) and une poule (better for boiling or cooking in stews), and you can get that fowl cut up into as many serving pieces as you like, there are still some surprises.

Here's that link I was talking about. You are hereby forewarned!
Chicken.

Yes, that was the head and those were the lungs. No other organs though. I didn't include those pieces in the stew, and the dish turned out to be quite tasty anyway.



Later, when I got a rabbit, the butcher offered me the head. I declined, but when I got home and unwrapped my rabbit, I saw that I had been given the liver, kidneys, heart and lungs.

So meat is not for the squeamish here, or maybe it is -- after all, you don't have to get your hands dirty and cut it up yourself (except that you have to, for example, trim the kidneys away from the saddle of the rabbit).

While going to the butcher shop is far from slaughtering an animal, you get a better idea of where the meat you eat comes from.

New M-Aix-ican food

We miss New Mexican food. If anyone wins the lottery and wants to overnight us some frozen chile, we'll be sure to be home to meet the delivery. Or some sopapillas? A few #9 breakfast burritos from Golden Pride? Any takers?

Well, the next best thing came to us in a Christmas care package from James' dad -- canned green chile, dried red chile, jalapenos, taco shells, flour tortillas and the most delicious refried beans we've ever tasted. So, over the past few weeks we've made green chile chicken burritos, green chile eggs, and beef tacos with a side of refried beans. It's a little different from what James usually makes so we're calling it "New M-Aix-ican food" in the spirit of a popular naming convention for businesses in this city.

Aix has the same pronunciation (/Eks/) as the sequence "ex" in French (and English) so (as if it follows naturally -- it doesn't for me, but seems to for a lot of people around here) it's extremely (or should I say "aixtremely") popular to switch in "Aix" for "ex" in the name of your shop.

So there's Aix-presso (it's expresso in French, not espresso) ...



Aix & Terra (and remember & = et in French, so say it with me: Aix et Terra = mispronunciation of et cetera) ...



L'Aixtra for extra modern coffee and snacks ...



Institut Aixtrême for all your extreme beauty needs ...



L'Aixquis for exquisite food ...



Aix Elan, a curiously named clothing boutique that doesn't seem to have anything to do with élan in the sense of "moose" suggested by the moose on the sign (like being an outdoors store) ...



And the homophonous L'Aixcelent, a restaurant that probably doesn't serve moose, so don't get these last two confused!


And there are more. This is just the beginning.

A walk around Aix

There are a lot of interesting things to see while wandering around Aix.

Any guesses about what this is?



I'll give you a hint: that black circle in the middle was a wheel.

Any guesses?


The green stuff is plastic.

Any guesses?



The answer:


Either someone was careless with their trash, or marauding youths were trying to liven things up. Am I prejudiced against the youths?

One thing I really like about Aix, and France in general, is that you can still see the remnants of a lot of old ads and signs that were painted on buildings back in the day. Like this one that's for shoe polish ...


I think it looks like an ad for mustache wax, but the product says otherwise.

There are also plenty of beautiful historical structures like this clock tower in the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, which was built in 1510. There's an astronomical clock on/in it that was built in 1661, which includes four wooden statues that represent the four seasons. They supposedly change with the seasons, but I'm going to have to verify this. The statue shown in this picture, holding grapes from the harvest is probably (correctly) fall. However, that arm pointing at "14" seems to always point at the "14".


There are also houses that are so old, they lean like the one in this over-exposed shot. But check out that sky!


And Aix has its fair share of cool door-knockers too.


If this were a CSI franchise, you'd be able to zoom in above the middle finger of the knocker and refine the image to see who that is taking the photo -- me, or James.

There are also pretty plants and nice landscaping.


Does anyone know what this plant is?

Les Rois Mages

In France, the three wise men are called les Rois Mages (or "the sorcerer kings" ... more like "magi") and their arrival in Jerusalem on Epiphany is celebrated throughout the month of January with galette or gâteau des Rois.


A galette des Rois is puff pastry (that looks a little like a tasty, tasty Pac Man) ...


filled with frangipani ...


and a gâteau des Rois is a ring-shaped brioche topped with candied fruit, pearl sugar and, if you're lucky, there's orange flower water in the brioche or in the glaze.


These can also be filled with almond paste (not to be confused with the frangipani) like this one, seen here floating in the blackness of outer space that is what we call a bowl ...


(This is the version of King Cake that seems to have been exported to New Orleans, except rather than the candied fruit and glaze, there you get the Mardi Gras themed sprinkles in gold, green and purple on top of icing.)

Both the galette and the filled version of the gâteau have a santon and a dried fava bean hiding in them.

Tradition says that you're supposed to cut the galette or gâteau into one more piece than there are guests at the table, and that the entire cake is to be eaten in one sitting. So in other words, if you're six, you cut it into seven slices. The youngest person at the table decides who gets which slice, and you save the extra slice to give to the first beggar who comes to your door. Whoever gets the santon gets to be king and whoever gets the bean is responsible for buying next year's cake.

Since there were just two of us, we didn't follow the tradition of cutting and eating the cake all in one sitting with either of our cakes -- it would have been too much to eat in one sitting. Both times, though, James managed to pick the piece with the santon (and thus got to wear the little gold cardboard crown provided by the pâtisserie), and he would have gotten the bean both times except that on the second cake he had an idea where the bean might be and gave me that slice.

La Grasse fin de semaine

Faire la grasse matinée is a French expression meaning "to sleep in". It translates literally as "to do the fatty/greasy morning"; however, if you're being a little more generous with your translation of grasse, those extra hours of sleep could instead make that morning "generous", "rich" or "abundant". It's a great expression because you can either feel guilty or rewarded ... you choose!

For us, our so-called grasse fin de semaine, or "long weekend", in Grasse and Nice did not feel at all guilty. (Ok, so I admit it, grasse fin de semaine isn't actually an expression in French -- we just wanted to use it since we went to Grasse.) We, and by we, I mean James, who hasn't really had a break from work for over a year, got to do some much-needed relaxing and sleeping in.

We started off in Nice, where it was surprisingly snowy and alpine.


No, actually, that was a backdrop of fake pine trees sprayed with fake snow at the Nice Christmas market. It was really cold and windy that day, so if we look cold, that's real.

But then it got sunny and instead, Nice looked like this.


Some people thought the sun made it warm enough to swim, but we kept on our winter coats.


Nikaïa was founded around 350 BCE by the same Greeks who founded Marseille. Despite its modern-day status as part of France, from the 7th century until the mid-19th century (although not continuously -- Saracen and Barbarian invaders intervened!) Nice had some strong ties to Italy and was even part of it, which influenced the culture and architectural style of the city today. So you see brightly painted buildings that are reminiscent of the Italian riviera.


This stands in stark contrast to Antibes, just across the bay, which always sided with France (against Nice and Italy). Despite their divergent political views, however, they certainly seemed to share the weather.


You can actually see Nice, way in the background, over my right shoulder, and better in this shot with the crashing waves.


While we're on things Italian: food!

We had a delicious dinner at a vegetarian Italian restaurant called La Zucca Magica, or The Magic Pumpkin. As you can see from the pictures on the website, the Italian owners have a thing for pumpkins. And, in fact, we ate some pumpkin that night.

And James discovered the virtues of Nutella (it's peanut-oil free here ... and, as I've just learned, it now is in the States too -- yippee!) ...


We also took a train ride on the Train des Pignes, a little two-car diesel train that makes four round-trips between Nice and Digne-les-Bains up in the Var valley. The website about the train is in French, but even if you can't read about the history of the line, which has been in service in some form since 1911, it's still worth looking at for the pictures.

The idea for a train along this route was proposed in 1861 (the year after Nice was finally annexed to France) in order to connect Nice to Grenoble by a more direct route; however, it took twenty years before authoriziation for the line was given, and another ten before any of it was built and another twenty before the line was completed. That's 50 years in the making.

Part of the initial delay seems to have been about rail technology. Because the train passes through some extremely mountainous territory and has to make some sharp turns on its 150km route, they had to develop a narrower guage for the rails. Then there was also the building of 25 tunnels, 16 viaducts and 15 metal bridges to get the train from Nice to Dignes-les-Bains. So maybe 50 years isn't that long after all.

The longest tunnel is la Colle-Saint-Michel, which measures 3457m (2.15mi) long and also includes (well almost, it's actually just past the tunnel on the Digne side in Peyresq, which is close to Thorame-Haute on the map) the highest point on the line at 3356ft. The tunnel seems to be totally straight (no curves) because as you go through it, you can look backwards and watch the other opening get more and more dim -- and sort of reddish through the diesel exhaust.

The views were unbelievable -- but as with lots of natural beauty, the photos (taken through a train window with an automatic camera) don't capture all of it. It's really some rough looking country.

Right outside of Nice, it's already dry, rough, cragy mountains. The craziest part is that there are medieval villages perched up on top of the cliffs and when you see them, you really wonder how they could have been built.

Then it gets really cold. For a good portion of the ride, all the trees, bushes, houses, etc. were covered in thick frost. It looked almost like an ice storm. I took one really horrible picture (including glare from the train window), and it turned out so poorly I gave up. You'll have to take my word for it. But look how cold the water looks -- when water looks blue-green like the Var did on this day, you know it's cold. Or that it has a certain mineral content.

Then, the distances between towns get farther, and many of the stops become "optional" -- as in you have to flag down the train. And there's no conductor or operator at these stations, it would just be you. Having been on the train I can say that it's never going that fast, so maybe this isn't an issue. Still, it's not exactly like hailing a taxi.


We took the train most of the way, to St-André-les-Alpes, and got out and walked around a bit and then turned around to take the train back down. There are lots of hiking trails that leave from all the towns up high in the Var valley, and St-André-les-Alpes has a really nice lake, but we'll have to come back for that.


And to ride the train à vapeur, or steam train. On Sundays from mid-May to mid-October, a 1925 steam train makes a short portion of the trip (so if you were coming from Nice, you'd have to take the train we did and then get out and take the steam train and then get back on the other train for the rest of the trip). The train website I linked to there actually belongs to (according to the welcome page) a militant group dedicated to the protection and promotion of the train line. I don't know if the train really needs a militant group defending it anymore, but the association was started in 1975 after there were, apparently, some serious threats to close down the line. They had some cool posters in Provençal though.

Another highlight of our trip (although we have no original photos of it) involved Niçois street food: socca. Socca is made from chickpea flour, water and olive oil (like panisse, but in different quantities, so it has a completely different texture). I don't know what the batter looks like when it's raw, but it gets baked in a hot, hot oven (think pizza) in a gigantic cast iron pan like the one in this photo (originally uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by P. Downey) from Chez René Socca, where we got ours.


Chez René is really just an open kitchen that makes socca, pissaladière and a couple of other pizzas, spicy conch fritters, vegetable fritters, french fries and fried sardines. Here's a picture of it, originally uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by P. Semeria. I have no idea when this photo was taken, but it was not 2005 because the prices on the board are clearly in Francs -- a portion of socca was only 2€ (not 10) and our whole dinner including pissaladière and conch fritters was only 7€.


I walked by Chez René a few different times and I never saw it without a line about twenty-deep. It always filed around the corner. You can get your food to go (in which case they wrap it up in paper for you), or to take across the alley to the tables and benches that comprise the restaurant (in which case they pile it on a paper plate, as in this photo originally uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by P. Techamuamvivit).

Now, I thought we'd be able to try socca when we got to Marseille, but no dice. And when we finally got the socca and the rest of our food, it was hot and delicious looking, and we were hungry, and we'd been waiting since mid-September to try it so we dove in before we remembered to take photos. Sorry. But at least none of these photos involves our weird black plates. You should all be happy we were on vacation.

Here's a picture of the Place Massena at night. Those white arcs are part of the holiday lighting, but the sitting/kneeling humanoids on top of the poles are always there. They change colors if you watch them long enough.



After Nice, we went on to Grasse: the center of French perfume-making since the late 1700s! However, its fame as a town of flowers has a more complicated origin. Back in the Middle Ages, Grasse was famous for its tanneries, which are well known to be a stinky (and back in the day, dangerous) business. According to the tour we went on at Fragonard (named for Grasse's native son, the famous painter J-H Fragonard), it was because the nobility demanded less stinky leather goods, especially gloves, that the perfumeries started to take off -- they could perfume the leather.

And so Grasse, with its very special microclimate that allowed it to grow hundreds of tons (and yes, I really mean hundreds of thousands of pounds) of jasmine and other precious flowers every year became known for its perfumes rather than its stinky leather. Just think of how many flowers it would take to make a ton. The tour guide said a jasmine-picker can harvest 3-5 pounds a day and it takes tons and tons of flowers to yield enough essence to make a perfume.

We also learned about fragrance extraction over the years. Enfleurage was a common technique developed in the early days of the Grasse perfume industry because it allowed the perfumers to extract the volatile compounds from flowers, which would be damaged or destroyed by methods that involved heat, like distillation. So, the essences of flowers like jasmine and tuberose were captured by placing them "face" down into some beef tallow that had been slathered on a metal screen. There are new techniques now.

And at the Musée International de la Parfumerie not only did we learn more about the creation of perfumes, but also about the history of perfumes (and cosmetics, which were often perfumed) since the times of the Egyptians. It was absolutely fascinating. If I knew in 1992 what I know now, I would have paid more attention in organic chemistry and then gone to school to become un nez, literally "a nose", or perfumer. After three years of formal training, you do 5-7 years internship. To become a master perfumer, well that takes some skill, but still. Linguistics, schminguistics I say.

Here's a panorama from the B&B we stayed in which was up on the hillside overlooking Grasse. That bay you see in the center-right of the collage is Cannes.


The B&B is only a few years old, but apparently it's on property that was formerly part of the gardens of Austrian baroness Alice de Rothschild. She spent a lot of time in Grasse at the family chateau and planted gardens over a huge portion of the hillside. The current owners are very apologetic that their gardens are not as pristine as in the days of the baroness, but it's still a really beautiful garden with citron trees ...


irises...


other exotic plants...


and a secret passageway that the baroness liked to use to leave the gardens and walk into the town of Grasse. I feel like a baroness in this shot (Elsa Schräder, of course, not Alice de Rothschild).


We walked around the very picturesque town dodging surly youths with too much time on their hands over the winter break, toured the perfume factories and did our best to avoid peanut oil, which seems to be ubiquitous in Grasse.

We had a quiet new year's eve in our B&B with a crémant (it wasn't from the Champagne AOC) ...


Into which we put candied rose and violet petals ...


And we got to go on a hike in the hills on New Year's Day. Here's a picture of James above Magagnosc, a neighboring town.


It was a good start to the new year and a nice end to our grasse fin de semaine.