Things to eat (more fattening than music!)

Among many other attractions, in the Languedoc we live in a food paradise.  Our corner is not especially well-known for a particular delicacy, but we have a wonderful climate and we are near the sea, so fruit, vegetables and seafood are all around us.

I do already have a wine blog, lamentably out of date I know but there all the same, so this post is just to celebrate the essential link between wine and food.  When we arrived in Lunel the first thing we sought out was a good restaurant, and for many years we ate regularly at the Authentic when it was in walking distance just across the centre of town.  Then it moved to St Christol as part of the new wine tourist centre Viavino, and now as I write the Authentic has moved on again to Castries a bit nearer Montpellier.  We wish Jérôme well in this latest venture, but wince walking when we go out to eat is a good option for us we had long since transferred our regular allegiance to La Terrasse in the centre of town.

We are regularly at the Terrasse for coffee and apéros and to have lunch by ourselves or with friends.  The proprietor came from Paris some years ago, the talented chef de cuisine joined him soon after when his own auberge along the road closed, and the food is simple and delicious, not what they call 'fine dining' in England but correct and with menus varied enough to follow the seasons and not be bored!  There are good wines too.  In warm weather we can sit outside and watch the world go by - when it is colder we can keep warm inside.  It isn't expensive, though our tastes sometimes push the bill up a bit.

But above all it is the opportunity to buy fresh food and wonderful local produce to eat at home which is so great.  A few years ago I counted over 20 bakers in and around the town, and although some have closed and others are really just depots, there are at least half a dozen places to find delicious bread.  Lunel has a covered food market, les Halles, 6 mornings a week, with 2 fish stalls, greengrocers, butchers of very high quality and, among other stalls the most wonderful fromagier which means we often spend more than we should on cheese.

This cheese stall even stocks Stichelton.  According to mad English food regulations, only Stilton made from pasteurised milk may be sold as Stilton, so this wonderful cheese from unpasteurised milk - lait crû - which our stall imports through Neils Yard Dairy in London is called Stichelton.  Of course there are innumerable French cheeses we have regularly too - comté made from cows' milk produced near our regular music venue in the Ain département, a pyrenean sheep's cheese called trésor de berger, or the herb and chilli-coated goats' cheese préfaille are just a few examples, and we often eat Roquefort - nearly local, from the hills south-west of Millau - an occasionally the wonderful creamy Brillat Savarin named after a famous chef.

As for meat, we rely not only on the butchers in the Halles where we sometimes get duck sausage and kebabs of quail, but our favourite halal butcher l'Encas whose merguez and spiced beef mince are delicious and which sells good lamb and veal too.  We also buy some meat and fish in the local supermarket.  We are lucky the town centre still has good food shops because the town is ringed by supermarkets.  Although there are bigger ones the other side of town, and Lidl is now a regular source of good value offers, our regular shopping is at the smaller of the 2 Intermarché stores only a few minutes away from us by car.  It is less intimidating than the bigger superstores and by now we know where things are!

Though we buy fruit and veg at supermarkets, we prefer to use independent greengrocers.  Of 2 or 3 we go to the best is a tiny shop in the middle of town right opposite La Terrasse.  The proprietor is unfailingly welcoming, the queues often make it difficult to move around in the narrow space, but never mind, the produce is fresh and local, and usually you know exactly where it comes from and when it was picked.  Now, also, Lunel has a small open air produce market on Thursdays in summer, so we look forward to the season for strawberries, asparagus and apricots among other wonderful local produce.  One very early spring a few years ago I can recall buying 5 different named varieties of strawberry.

As for fish and seafood, the sea is very near and one of our favourite eating places is at La Côte Bleue in the oyster village of Bouzigues - we often drive the 45 miins to eat there with friends and on other special occasions.  Oysters now make me violently ill, so I leave those pleasures to Mary and our friends, but it is a magical backdrop for a meal, looking out over the Etang de Thau towards Sête.  Otherwise we often go to La Grande Motte to one of many good cheap restaurants during the tourist season.

Our meals at home are normally at midday, just a main course followed by salad and cheese - we appreciate the many wonderful desserts our friends bring to shared meals (including our weekly feasts following Tuesday morning French conversation) but otherwise we don't often make sweet dishes ourselves.  REcently our friend Jean-Pierre has brought us lovely sweet seedless clementines from his garden, and in summer our neighbour Robert often offers us baskets of cherries.  And many old vineyards on the flat ground near here have been converted to apple growing, now a major local industry, and Mary likes a good apple!  And although we have lost apricot and cherry trees from our garden to diseases, we now enjoy the fruits of the the orange and lemon trees our neighbours gave us when we moved in, and those who like the persimmons growing in abundance on the tree we found here come each autumn to help themselves.  The remainder make good Christmas decorations and food for birds at least in the colder winters!