A Pig in Provence (20 page)

The garlic gap. Oil and garlic, a perfect marriage. Forty cloves and
a chicken. Snails in prehistory. Discovering salt cod.

Garlic in Provence is taken very seriously, and if a single ingredient could be said to be essential to Provençal cooking, it would be garlic. It’s surprisingly versatile in both its taste and its uses. Searingly pungent when raw, it becomes increasingly mild the longer it is cooked, and distinctly mellow when slowly roasted. Omnipresent year-round in every Provençal kitchen, garlic is used to season everything from salads to soups, stews, and sautés, and is a required ingredient for making such famous Provençal dishes as
aïoli, tapenade, anchoïdade, and brandade de morue.

There is one small problem, however. A month-long gap exists after the previous year’s crop has run its course and before the arrival of the new crop of mature garlic at the market. The Provençal garlic farmer’s solution to this gap is to sell part of the crop as
l’ail jeune,
young garlic, thus allowing everyone to have garlic in their kitchens without a break.
L’ail jeune
lasts only a
month or so before deteriorating, while the papery-skinned mature garlic can be stored for months. When young garlic is harvested, the head of cloves has completely formed, but the skin surrounding it is still moist and supple. To produce mature garlic for storage, the bulbs are left in the ground for another month or so until the leaves droop and die. The bulbs are pulled and then cured in a dry place.

Young garlic is eagerly awaited in Provence, and people have come to look forward to it much as they anticipate the first asparagus or strawberries, knowing the crop will be in season for only a short time. Sometime in May, vendors start bringing truckloads of young garlic—white, red, or purple depending upon the variety—braided, tied in bunches, or as loose heads with a bit of the stalk intact. For several weeks the neatly arranged stacks of young garlic scent the air of the open markets. I usually buy a braid, which has a dozen heads, and hang it in my kitchen, taking a head as needed. I cook with young garlic just as I would with mature garlic, but the flavor of the young bulb is milder, its cloves bright white and crunchy, with no hint of the yellowing or sprouting that comes with age. One dish that I make only with young garlic is a salad of arugula and frisée generously dressed with a vinaigrette of minced garlic, parsley, olive oil, sea salt, and vinegar. The sprightly, faintly earthy taste of the just-dug garlic is inimitable in the dressing and can’t be replicated with mature garlic.

By the time the one or two heads left on my braid of young garlic have started to soften and mold, the new harvest of cured garlic has arrived at the market; I bring home a braid and hang it on the same peg near the stove. I also buy cured garlic in a bunch and hang it on the other side of the stove. I love the way the bunch looks, fat whitish brown bulbs gathered together at the neck with a wire, the dry leaves twisting and curling in every
direction. The bunch of garlic is as beautiful in its way as a bouquet of wildflowers or lavender.

The arrival of the new crop of garlic is the time to make the famous
poulet aux quarante gousses d’ail,
chicken with forty cloves of garlic. The cloves, which are cooked
en chemise,
with their skin on, are reduced to a soft paste during the nearly two hours that the chicken roasts. When ready, the chicken is carved and served along with its juices and the cloves, and the lucky diners squeeze the mellow paste from the softened cloves onto their bread. The better the quality of the garlic, the better the flavor and quality of the paste, which is what makes this dish so special. The first time I read this recipe I was unable to imagine eating anything that contained forty cloves of garlic, but I wanted to try it. It was shortly after we renovated our Provençal kitchen, in 1979, and for the first time, I had a standard stove with a full-size oven.
Poulet aux quarante gousses d’ail
was one of the first dishes I made, and it immediately became a summer favorite. I used nearly four bulbs of garlic for that one dish! Once, we even went to the huge garlic fair in Marseille to buy our summer supply of the pungent bulb.

Garlic is so important in Provence that there is a month-long garlic fair in Marseille whose origins date to the fifteenth century. From the middle of June to the middle of July every year, garlic vendors man stalls set along the Cours Belsunce, a major street that crosses the grand Canebière in the heart of the old city. Here you can find multiple garlic varieties, white, red, and pink, now fully mature, in bulk, braids, or bunches. People come to the fair from all over the region to buy their garlic. Provisioning themselves for the coming year, they make sure they have plenty of garlic in the
cave
to make
aïoli, anchoïade, pistou, and poulet aux quarante gousses d’ail,
to season legs of lamb, to rub on toasts, to
sauté with onions and vegetables, and to make soups and stews.
aïoli
is arguably the most famous garlic dish of Provence, and it gives it name to an entire meal—le grand
aïoli
.

To make
aïoli
, garlic cloves are firmly crushed into a paste with sharp-edged crystals of coarse sea salt. The crushed garlic is whisked together with egg yolks, then olive oil is slowly added and the mixture is whisked until it becomes a luminous, golden green mayonnaise, fragrant and pungent with garlic. The Provençaux eat the condiment with meats, fish, and shellfish and use it as a spread, but it is
le grand aïoli
that celebrates its namesake.
Le grand aïoli
consists of platters and bowls laden with cooked vegetables and fish, and sometimes snails, accompanied by vast bowls of
aïoli
. This festive meal is often served at large family gatherings. In earlier times, when hard, long days of farmwork were the norm, it was the heart of
les fêtes campagnardes,
rural celebrations, where people from hamlets and outlying farms gathered to share a meal and drink the local wine. Today, when television, the Internet, cell phones, cars, and swimming pools are the norm, la fête campagnarde lives on in the village feasts where locals, visitors, and tourists sit down together at long tables in the village square for
le grand aïoli
.

In many of the villages of Provence, the feast is held on August 15. Initially, it seemed strange to me that so many villages decided to have community feasts at the same time, until I learned that August 15 is the date of the Catholic Feast of the Assumption, celebrating the assumption, body and soul, of the Virgin Mary into heaven. The religious import of the feast is still recognized with special masses and pilgrimages, but the secular aspect seems to take precedence. The festivities go on at least for two days, beginning on August 14. They generally include
boules
matches during the day, live music,
apèritifs
and dancing from
seven to eight in the evening, and a
grand bal
with more live music and dancing into the night. On August 15, there is an
apèritif
at noon, followed by
le grand aïoli
and more boules matches. In late July, posters tacked on telephone poles and taped onto the windows of
cèpes
and
boulangeries
announce the upcoming feast, the schedule of activities, the cost of the meal, and where to buy the tickets, plus a reminder to bring your own tableware.

The first time I went to
le grand aïoli
in my village, Donald, Ethel, Oliver, and I arrived a little early, not knowing quite what to expect. Even though it wasn’t quite noon, a lot of people had already staked out their places. We found space for the four of us between a young German-speaking couple and a group of French people, probably a family with friends and relatives. Ethel spotted Aileen, Marie and Marcel’s daughter, and ran off to meet her, her pink sundress flying behind her and her white leather sandals flinging dust. Oliver followed, smartly dressed in what he called his party clothes, creamy muslin pull-on pants and a matching T-shirt trimmed with red, yellow, and green braid.

I waved to Aileen and then set out our dishes, flea market finds with an art deco–style border in black and dark green, green cloth napkins, and stainless-steel knives and forks that I had brought from California. We used the same short bistro-style glasses for wine that most everyone else did. Donald went to the
apéritif
bar set up under the trees in front of the
mairie,
city hall, at the far end of the square. As soon as I finished, I put my basket under the table and joined him. We saw a few people we had a nodding acquaintance with, and they asked about Oliver and Ethel. We pointed them out, playing across the way, and noted that the children were very happy to be back in Provence. When
Oliver was born, he had been the first baby born in the village in more than ten years, and the small community considered him to be special, and people had always liked the little American girl who had come to live in their midst.

Donald and I both had a
pastis
and nibbled on olives and potato chips as we looked around. The square was filling slowly with whirling colors as people, dressed in summer brights, moved around the tables talking, their dishes and glasses rattling in the background as they emptied their baskets and set their places. Men put bottles of wine on the tables, unlabeled and corks removed, and then set out more wine bottles filled with water instead of wine. A microphone stood alone on the bandstand, where the band had played the previous night, and the mayor was starting up the stairs to the stand. He was a local farmer, heavy and with big powerful arms and hands, and very taciturn whenever I had occasion to meet him. He was one of the many mayors in the
département
of the Var at that time who were communists, and it was rumored that he had been a leader in the local
Résistance.
One never knows. I had always been somewhat in awe of him, so it was strange to watch him laugh, smile, and call out and wave to friends, telling everyone
“À table, à table!”
before he gave a very brief welcome to the crowd and went back to sit down with his family. A tape recorder began to play music that sounded to me like accordion polkas.

I poured water for Ethel and Oliver, and Donald poured us
rosé,
then passed the bottle down the table. I had expected the food to be out when we sat down, but only baskets of bread were on the table. The French family next to us seemed calm, chatting away, so I assumed all was well and that the food would arrive in due course. Not long after, I saw Marie heading our way carrying a cardboard flat, the kind that vegetables are packed in.
She paused at the end of our table, took something out of the box, and put it on a plate. She repeated this, and by the time she neared us, I saw she was placing handfuls of cooked green beans on everyone’s plates. She looked festive, her hair recently done (I had seen her friend, a traveling
coiffeuse,
hairdresser, come to her house the day before), and was wearing a bright red blouse, a flowered print skirt, and red wedge sandals.