Our nearest ‘big’ town is Pézenas, a somnolent centre that seems to have scarcely changed since Molière and his troupe performed there in the 1650s. The closest thing to celebrity that the town has ever known, Molière is duly honoured with a formal statue overlooking the river, his fame now appropriated by hotels and restaurants.
Pézenas has a variety of shops and even a supermarket, on the very edge of town on the road to Béziers. It’s new and it’s never busy when we choose to shop. The inhabitants of Pézenas are reluctant to change their ways, preferring small individual businesses and, most of all, the weekly market.
Every town in the region has a designated market day and for Pézenas it is Saturday. Saturday has been market day in Pézenas since 1434, and its status is inviolable. In Béziers the big day is Friday; in Agde, Thursday; in Clermont-l’Hérault, Wednesday; and in Marseillan, Tuesday. Equally resistant to change is the standard pattern of markets, with mornings devoted to the main business of the day, the essential food shopping, and the afternoon to leisurely browsing. After 1 pm, when the empty crates and crushed cardboard boxes have been cleared away and appetites have been fed, a second wave of merchants open their stalls, tempting customers to part with their discretionary francs. Out come the desirable but less immediately necessary goods, from socks and slippers to tablecloths and thread, saucepans and shampoo, handkerchiefs and hairbrushes. Wandering among these stalls is like taking a surreptitious peek into someone’s house—even into the intimate recesses of a wardrobe. Clothing for every member of the family is on display, for work and for Sunday best, from hard-working pinafores to undies and pyjamas. No false modesty, no embarrassment—though it takes me a while to get accustomed to the sight of a stall festooned with brassieres, D-cups billowing exuberantly in the breeze.
We make a weekly pilgrimage to Pézenas on Saturdays. The whole town is transformed, its broad boulevard a bustle of activity. It must have been like this in Molière’s day, when shops were few and the townspeople relied on travelling merchants to bring luxuries such as silks and spices and other goods they didn’t produce for themselves. Stalls take their habitual places in front of the town’s permanent shops, and no one seems to resent an interruption of normal business since market day means more customers.
Professional merchants, the mobile charcuteries and crèmeries and the sellers of spices and olives, who do the rounds of local markets each week, open their vans to reveal their treasures. Weather-beaten farmers stand behind small trailers of apples from their orchard, or mounds of onions and potatoes, though potatoes are scarce and expensive this winter when all over France crops have failed. Women armed with sharp elbows and capacious bags are intent on completing their shopping as efficiently as possible; there’s still the midday meal to prepare. Men idle and chat before repairing to the corner café to observe.
For me, used to a supermarket culture, the market is another world. Shopping is less a tedious chore, more a social occasion. Regular customers chat with the charcutier or the onion man as if old friends, and perhaps they are. Conversation is an essential part of the transaction, indeed of the whole market experience. You can’t avoid talking to the man who offers you a slice of saucisson, telling you that it’s pure pork and a traditional product of Lodève, nor the honey man who asks about the children (Are they twins?). Since any trip to the market involves at least six different stalls, even for a brief list that includes only carrots, apples, biscuits, ham, nutmeg and cheese, the business takes well over an hour as each purchase involves a patient wait and, at a minimum, the exchange of pleasantries. Before I know it, it’s time to dash back to the butcher and the Washmatic before they close at midday.
It takes only a few visits to be recognised by market sellers, to become a regular. As good customers of the cheese van we are warmly welcomed; Monsieur and his wife take time to tell us about the comté on special this week and a particularly fine bleu des causses. While many customers have very localised tastes, rarely venturing beyond Auvergne, we have no such inhibitions and range freely and widely. And because our custom is worth encouraging, the cheese man gives us free samples, such as a wedge of an Auvergne cheese I’ve never heard of, Savaron. It turns out to be a new marketing invention, a would-be Saint-Nectaire, if only it came from the prescribed area for that cheese.
There’s always one last treat to buy from the Pézenas market: a bag of biscuits from the sweets and biscuits van. Miniature shapes, round and oval and square with scalloped edges, lightly dusted with superfine sugar. I pretend they’re for the children, a sort of substitute for Milk Arrowroots but less expensive than Petit Beurre. I rationalise that their size makes them more suitable for the children, that two or three small biscuits will seem more generous than a single larger one, but if pressed I would have to admit that they are my particular indulgence. Like conversation lollies, each biscuit bears a phrase or a couple of words, and in reality I buy them for the fun of constructing a series of mini scenarios. It’s like playing Scrabble with phrases instead of single letters. Spreading a handful on the table, I select two or three to create suggestive messages: ‘Tiens polisson/embrasse-moi’, ‘Venez danser/dans le bois’ and ‘Voulez-vous/dans les vignes/avec le patron’ (Kiss me, you naughty boy; Come and dance in the woods; Would you like to, in the vineyard with the boss).
I’m thankful that Pézenas and its market are so near, but for all its advantages the town has a significant deficiency: there is no branch of the BNP bank. This is also propitious, giving us an excuse to visit other towns and other markets. I’m well aware that markets change with the seasons but less prepared for the variations from town to town, even over distances as small as 20 kilometres. Each one has its personality. To the north, the farming centre of Clermont-l’Hérault shows us a rustic, agricultural market complete with tractors and specialised tools, trays of seedlings and potted vines for immediate planting. Stalls here display goods I never see at Pézenas—local olives and walnuts, hand-knitted woollen caps and sturdy wooden clogs.
To the south, the Mediterranean port of Sète offers the spectacle of yet another different market. With its large population and important fishing industry, Sète merits a permanent, six-days-a-week market. There are more poissoniers than bouchers at this market, and they are all busy—sending scales flying from a whole daurade, selecting the shiniest sardines, loudly spruiking their wares. Spread before us, in row after row, are shimmering, silvery, luminous displays of bright-eyed bream and blushing red mullet and, under the catch-all name of poissons de roche or soupe de poissons, tubs of miscellaneous fish only a few inches long whose legality I silently question. I recognise some as similar species to Australian fish, but many others are totally unfamiliar. Later, with the help of Alan Davidson’s Mediterranean Seafood, I manage to identify many of the unknown species, though he fails to reassure me as to the edibility of knobbly violets de mer and escargots de mer.
Watching the local women make their choices, I am in awe of their confidence and expertise, and realise the limits of my own understanding and experience. These women know exactly what to do with each species, which fish they need for the dish they are cooking for dinner, and how it is to be prepared. Eavesdropping, I learn more ways than I ever imagined for cooking fish; frying is not the only option. I also learn an important lesson: just as different cuts of beef or lamb demand cooking techniques and certain accompaniments, so do different varieties of fish. Mackerel is best grilled over coals, tuna steaks should be pan-fried with garlic, and large cuttlefish are always stewed with tomatoes.
Sète also has a seafood auction, la criée, that takes place in the afternoons when the boats return. Only professional buyers are allowed but I can watch from the wharves as strong, solid, no-nonsense vessels laden with men and nets pull in to their allotted berths and start to unload. The catch, already sorted by species and size into grey plastic trays, is stacked on trolleys and wheeled away to the auction room, though a large and mischievous octopus keeps trying to escape. Enormous tuna, stiff and blue, are carried individually, resting on a broad shoulder. Some of this seafood will be on restaurant tables in Paris tomorrow.
I soon realise that most of the crowd assembled on the wharves are not simply onlookers. Men and women carrying discreet plastic bags try to make themselves useful and are rewarded with damaged or unwanted fish. As a boat’s hold is hosed out, the rejects and leftovers rain into the water of the canal and a fat elderly gentleman with a long-handled net fishes for those that take his fancy.
Béziers is further away and we never quite manage the morning market there. Browsing the afternoon market, however, I find an implement I never before knew I needed: a mouli-légumes, a food mill with three discs for purées of varying texture. It’s exactly like the ones I see outside houses in Nizas, hanging on a nail to dry. Now I can make soups like the locals.