In Pursuit of Garlic (11 page)

The Fête de l’Ail Rose is the next day, and the villagers are preparing in a restrained French way. A few signs announce the one-day event and give locations for the judging of the garlic art (no kidding—sculptures and tableaus are made from every part of the plant, and some of them are worthy of display in your living room) and for the
fabounade,
the evening banquet, where the big cassoulet will be served after the ceremonial procession led by the Brotherhood of Pink Garlic. But no booths or tents are being set up—that will start before dawn on festival day. And there’s not a sign of preparations for the famous pink garlic soup, the festival’s main attraction, which brings people from miles around. It will be served to hundreds in the Place Centrale at noon sharp.

Although the scent of garlic is absent, the walled village of Lautrec (population under two thousand, in southwest France, about 53 miles, or 85 kilometers, from Toulouse) is rich with history, from its thirteenth-century corbelled and half-timbered houses to the faintly touristy clog maker’s workshop, the restored 1688 windmill, and the incredible trompe l’oeil frescoes in the Collegiate Church of Saint Rémy. They were painted about 1850 and rival the frescoes in many more prosperous European churches. The village even boasts a couple of
parterres de broderie
attributed to the great André Le Nôtre, who designed gardens at Versailles, Vaux-le-Vicomte, and Chantilly for Louis XIV.

By eating the good soup made with our garlic.You will live as long as our land has.Ail! Ail! Ail!

Song of the
Brotherhood of Pink Garlic

A cross near the top of the hill that dominates Lautrec marks the site of the original home—or castle—of the viscounts of Toulouse and Lautrec, who founded the village about AD 1000. Yes, the late-nineteenth-century painter and printmaker Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec came by his name honestly: he was a descendant of the dynasty that built this little village, although he was born in Albi, an equally historic city about 18 miles (30 kilometers) distant. The hill was a well-chosen site for the family headquarters: from its height the countryside could be watched, and the village grew to need protection. The fertile soil made it prosperous agriculturally, as did an industry that produced a distinctive robin’s-egg-blue dye from the dried leaves of
Isalis tinctoria
(a member of the mustard family commonly called woad); like garlic today, the dye was a staple of the economics of the area before the days of indigo, and the color is seen on doors and shutters throughout Lautrec. Lautrec was also vulnerable because it was a Catholic fief in a predominantly non-Catholic area, and by 1338 it had become a fortress protected by a wall 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) long. A good portion of the ramparts and one of the original eight gates—the Porte de la Caussade, through which Chris and I entered—remain today. So does the hill, now castle-less but a lovely spot for contemplation, as we discover, shaded and grassy and outfitted with benches from which you can enjoy the cooling breeze and gaze out at the Lacaune Hills, the Black Mountains, and the plain of Castres. On a clear day you can see the Pyrenees in the distance.

IT’S NINE-THIRTY on Friday, the morning of the festival, and a hundred men and women resplendent in ceremonial robes are marching behind a brass band down Rue du Mercadial, singing the ode to pink garlic with unbridled enthusiasm—in French, of course, and to the tune of an old children’s song. Pauline Danigo, a young student of languages, has offered to help the French-challenged Canadian through the day, and she translates it for me.

The marchers, looking very serious and followed by dozens of festivalgoers, turn the corner where Pauline and I are standing—Chris is off taking pictures—and carefully pick their way down the steep, cobbled street to the
théâtre de plein air,
a stone amphitheater built over the subterranean silos where grain was stored in the Middle Ages. Proudly leading the pack are the men and women of the brotherhood, the Confrérie de l’Ail Rose, wearing deep green cloaks with puffy white sleeves and white straw fedoras. The brotherhoods that follow—the Confrérie de la Poule Farcie and the Confrérie de la Poule au Pot et Fromage de Barousse; the Confrérie de l’Omelette Géante and the
confréries
of tomatoes, mushrooms, cherries, truffles, and du Puy lentils; the Académie du Châteaubriant, supporters of the wines of Toulouse and Gaillac; and for some reason the brotherhood of stonecutters—are attired in embroidered satin and velvet like archbishops and cardinals on their way to an ordination. The bright orange velvet cloaks with feathery green collars worn by the carrots of Blagnac are crowd-pleasers, and everyone claps as they go by. Then they cheer for a plump white-haired gentleman with the Ordre de la Dive Bouteille de Gaillac, who rather dangerously jives down the steep street, grinning and loving the attention.

The French love their food and drink. There are more than six hundred
confréries
in twenty-six regions of the country, and many have been around since medieval times. The pink garlic brotherhood is a new kid in the group—it was organized in 2000. Each
confrérie
worships at the altar of its own gastronomic idol, celebrating and promoting it. “They’re pretty social groups, actually,” says Pauline, whose grandmother is a grower and has been a member of the garlic brotherhood since it began. “They’re always meeting and eating. I think they just like one another’s company.”

The
confréries
take their places on the stone seats of the little amphitheater, and the onlookers, including me, hang over the low wall or stand around in any available space. The speeches begin. “They’re saying how great it is to be together here today and that they’ll be bringing into the garlic brotherhood some new members from other groups, like the carrots, the omelettes, the Toulouse wine, the stonecutters, and the eel people—they’re from near Perpignan, on the Mediterranean,” Pauline says. There’s an eruption of laughter. “They like to tell funny anecdotes about each other, too.”

The inductees come up to the stage one by one, accompan-ied by a pink garlic brother or sister who stands behind and places a green cloak over each new member’s shoulders. “Those are the sponsors—they call them godmothers or godfathers,” Pauline says.

A long wooden staff bound at one end with sixteen pink garlic heads is handed to the Grand Chancellor, who solemnly touches both shoulders of the inductees and says a few words we can’t hear. Large bibs are tied around the new members’ necks.

“Initiation,” whispers Pauline, finger to her lips. It’s a solemn moment. A steaming pot is brought to the stage. “They have to eat a bowl of the pink garlic soup.”

The brotherhood bursts into song as the inductees carefully sip:
“En mangeant la bonne soupe faite avec notre ail, vous vivrez comme naguère aussi vieux que notre terre. Ail! Ail! Ail!”

“But why do they sound like they’re pigs squealing at the end of the song?” I whisper back. “Are they implying the garlic stings your tongue?”

Pauline laughs. “It’s a French play on words,” she explains. “
Ail
means garlic but it’s pronounced like
aïe,
like when you say ‘Ouch!’ Repeating it three times is a custom here. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just there because it sounds good.”

I look blank. “I guess it’s a French thing,” says Pauline.

When the ceremony is over we find a bench and Pauline goes to look for her grandmother. Jacqueline Barthe joins us, removes her white fedora and fans her face. It might be hot, but she is an official and her cloak has to stay put for the ceremonial opening of the grand soup tasting in an hour. She pats her white bob and waits for me to say something. “She understands English pretty well, but she asked me to translate her answers,” Pauline says.

“Um, so how much garlic do you grow?” I begin. She’s trying to retire, she says, so she cut her acreage in half a couple of years ago, to 2.5 acres (1 hectare). “That’s four thousand kilos of garlic,” close to nine thousand pounds, she says.

“IS IT hard to meet all the requirements of the Syndicat? I understand the regulations are pretty tough.”

“If the weather is bad and it affects your garlic, they don’t penalize you. But if it’s you who’s made the mistake, you have two chances. The first year, a warning. The second year,
fini!
” She slaps her knee vehemently.

She was warned once for a small infraction that had nothing to do with the quality of the garlic: she’d left the lot number off her trays.

“And that was all?” I say in disbelief.

“The records must be perfect.” Madame Barthe looks stern. “There are rules for the Label Rouge and the IGP”—the Indication Géographique Protégée, or Protected Geographical Indication, a legal designation that protects the names of regional foods in much the same way as the appellation system controls wines. “Pink garlic is special, and we must keep it that way.”

“But what makes it such a special garlic?” I ask.

She turns directly to me. Her eyes flash.

“C’est le terroir!”
she says emphatically. The chalky clay soil, dry and hard, the sun, and the right amount of rain give it the mellow taste and good storage qualities. There is only a small area with the right conditions for growing perfect pink garlic. Lautrec may seem like a quaint French village immersed in history, and its festival may not be big and showy, but its garlic growers know a thing or two about marketing and protecting their unique product. Chinese garlic wouldn’t dare compete with Ail Rose, not here, and not in Paris or London, either.

“Um, do you like to eat garlic yourself?” I ask Madame Barthe, feeling chastened.

“Ah,
comme ci, comme ça,
” she says, waving her hand. “I don’t put it in everything.”

“But she makes a really delicious garlic pie,” says Pauline. “The whole family adores it. It gave her the idea to start a garlic pie contest at the festival.”

“I like the garlic soup best,” Madame Barthe says. “This year it won a new designation for Lautrec—Site Remarquable du Goût, which the state awards to a place that offers extra-special food or drink.” She looks pleased and proud but suggests we should hurry along to the Place Centrale if we want to watch the soup making. “It will be ready to eat soon,” she says.

Place Centrale is jammed with hundreds of people pressing up against a metal barrier that keeps them away from the cooking area, which is under the wooden loggia of the beautifully restored brick market building. Although they’re dressed in contemporary gear and are waiting patiently, I suddenly have an image of peasants outside Louis XVI’s palace clamoring for bread. Or would that be cake?

“The cooking area is also the VIP area,” says Pauline. “My grandmother said we can go in there to watch and get our soup.”

And watch we do, Chris, Pauline, and I, while sniffing the intoxicating aroma of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cloves of pink garlic making themselves into an ambrosial soup. Time moves backward, and I relive the moment decades ago when Joe and I walked into Luca’s Italian restaurant and I met garlic nose-on for the first time. Six cauldrons are being stirred over propane burners, a thousand liters of garlic soup, about 250 gallons. Will everyone waiting go away happy, a bowl of soup in hand, or might there be a revolution?

One woman is clearly in charge, and she has twenty assistants. They started at eight that morning, filling the cauldrons with water and bringing it to the boil. Once the water reached the right temperature, hundreds of cloves of finely chopped pink garlic were added. I watch mustard and huge cans of mayonnaise go in, then broken pieces of vermicelli. Young men with dependable muscles constantly stir the mixture to keep it smooth. And the boss lady appears every so often to dip her ladle in and taste. Stirring and tasting, stirring and tasting. We mill about sipping white wine with the VIPs and a small television crew. Outside the barrier, the crowd remains patient. Some of the older people sit in rows of chairs set up for the soup event. “People come early and stand in the square for hours,” says Pauline.

The soup is worth the wait. It’s strong, sweet, smooth, and simple all at once, with “strong” being the operative word. It tastes overwhelmingly of garlic, but mellow garlic. The vermicelli makes a perfect balance of texture. “This is the best soup I’ve ever tasted,” says Chris. As we slurp our soup the rest is being ladled into plastic bowls and passed out to the first row pressing against the barrier, along with a glass of wine for each. How do people manage to turn and carry the hot soup and cold wine back through the crowd behind them without spilling? The French are more adept than me.

Meanwhile, the garlic pies are arriving at the judging center across the square, carried in by husbands or the bakers themselves in boxes or on trays covered with plastic wrap held up by toothpicks to protect the filling. There are fourteen entries by deadline time. I crane my neck through a three-deep row of onlookers to watch as the pies are gently unwrapped, given numbers, and placed in a refrigerated glass case. To a pie they’d been baked in those scalloped French tarte pans with removable bottoms, a lovely concept fraught with the specter of broken pastry and a ruined pie when you try to slide it off the bottom. These pies slide off perfectly intact. Is it the skill of the unpacker or the perfect texture of the
pâte brisée?

Anyone can enter the contest Madame Barthe originated. The pie can be sweet or savory and made with any ingredients, as long as garlic is one of them. Judges are chefs and food industry people, and they like originality and creative decoration as well as good taste. I like the pie decorated with a spray of carrots, made by a member of the carrot brotherhood. The winner, made by Lautrec’s own Fernande Corbeil, is equally beautiful, judging by its photograph, but I don’t see it until later; it’s a zucchini and rice pie containing eight cloves of garlic, eggs, cheese, and a soupçon of tomato sauce, and the top is decorated with a large flower made of zucchini carved into petals and leaves and centered with a bulb of pink garlic.