La Cuisine Magrebi

Rfissa from Morocco

According to Wikipedia: 

Maghreb cuisine is the cooking of the Maghreb region, the northwesternmost part of Africa along the Mediterranean Sea, consisting of the countries of Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. Well-known dishes from the region include couscous, pastilla, tajine and shakshouka.

I have run across several Moroccan and Tunisian restaurants in Aix and since  Provence is so close to North Africa, and since France had colonies there from 1912 to 1956, we should try some, and hopefully they will be better than that horrible restaurant in Washington DC, where the food was bland, they charged a mint and didn’t take credit cards.

La Menara is a Moroccan restaurant that is not too far from the Adagio and that looks nice.  They have couscous, tajines and briwattes (boreks).   La Kahena is a Tunisian restaurant with lovely tiled walls and Tunisian dishware, so it’s very atmospheric.  Their lunch “menu” is pictured at the left but they have couscous and tagines as well.  Then there is La Table Tunisienne which offers fish dishes in addition to meat and vegetarian.  It is more informal and French fries come with all dishes, not uncommon.

I expected to find some Algerian restaurants but so far have only run across Tunisian and Moroccan.  Is the memory of Algeria’s fight for independence too strong?

The TasteAtlas has a list of the top 100 (not just 10!) foods from the Maghreb, and it’s not just tagines and couscous.  Some of the foods listed are street foods, many are celebratory dishes, and many are breads and sweets.  If I study that list, I should know what to look for.  Will I remember them all?  Not a chance.

Les Marchés d’Aix-en-Provence: Place Richelme and Places des Comtales

If I’m going to make a trip to a fresh air market and back in the mornings before class at 9 am, I better figure out their locations and the quickest route to each.

The Place Richelme market is a food market that is open every day from 8 am to 1 pm.  It is 750 meters or about half a mile from the Aparthotel Adagio.  You take Rue des Chartreux north to Rue Celony, turn right and continue to Rue Van Loo where you turn right.  You continue on Rue Van Loo, crossing Cr. Sextius, where Van Loo becomes Rue des Cordeliers.  You continue on that, passing Le Fournil des Cordeliers bakery until Rue Maréchal Foch where you make another right before the Halles aux Graines, at the far corner of which is the Virgin Mary, watching over the tourists in the Place Richelme, although this is just a food market so there might not be many.  We might have to make a pit stop at the Amorino gelato shop back on the corner of Rue des Cordeliers and Rue Maréchal Foch.  Won’t the boys be happy!

The Route from Aparthotel Adagio to Place Richelme

At the south side of Place Richelme is the Fontaine Sanglier, one of the many fountains in Aix.  The sanglier is the local wild pig and if you want to return to Aix, remember that you need to rub its tusks!  There are several bakeries around here:  Boulangerie Paul, Le Pain Quotidien, Maison Saint-Honoré; also several others that concentrate on patisserie.  After the market hours, cafés set up tables and chairs in the Place Richelme.  I should also mention that there is a flower market just north of Place Richelme in the Place de l’Hotel de Ville on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

A larger food market takes place in Places des Comtales on the Aix market days of Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.  It is the combined markets of Place des Prêcheurs and Place de Verdun near the Palais de Justice.  These markets are just a few blocks further on from the Place Richelme.  Exit the southeast corner of Place Richelme and take Rue Mejanes south to Rue Chaudronniers, make a left then a slight right onto Rue Monclar.  Follow Rue Monclar around the Palais de Justice to the market on Place de Verdun.

Route from Place Richelme to Place de Verdun

And that is where the food markets are.  On Cours Mirabeau they have a flea and crafts market on the Market Days (Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  They also have an Arts & Crafts Market at the top of Avenue Victor Hugo and Rue Thiers by the Palais de Justice.

Getting Around Aix by Bus

 It’s been a while since I mentioned the bus system in Aix and I’ve been meaning to scope out the best routes to the most important places.  Like to Carrefour.

The Aix en Bus website is very good and I hope the bus system itself lives up to it.  The regular fare is 1.20€ plus 0.10€ de support (does that mean tax?) so 1.30€.  There doesn’t seem to be a discount for kids.  A round trip or 2-ticket fare is 2.30€ + 0.10€ and you can buy 10 tickets for 9€ + 0.10€.  You can buy them on the bus.

We get a bus pass from Road Scholar so we shouldn’t have to worry about it.  Camila and the boys should just pay by the trip since we’ll walk to most places within the city center.  There is a 7-day pass for 55€ but I’m not sure what regions it covers since a 30 day pass only costs 28€.

The AixenBus website has plans of all the routes and a tool, as in Google Maps, that you can use to plan your tailor-made itinerary (Votre itinéraire sur mesure), for instance, the route to Carrefour.  But I think it is easier to use Google Maps, except that now Google Maps is showing me the current departure time for Pittsburgh, although the results show the current time in Aix.  It’s also not as easy to see the previous stops of the bus route in Google Maps, as I swear it was before.  Hopefully everything will straighten out once we are there.  In any case, it looks like the #05 bus is the one to take from the Niollon stop on Rue de la République, getting off at C. Cial des Milles, taking 33 minutes.  Coming back though, we’d have to walk from La Rotonde back to the hotel since #05 takes a slightly different route in the other direction.

#05 bus route from Aparthotel Adagio to Carrefour 

Rick Steves doesn’t mention the local bus system because he assumes everything worth seeing in 3 days is within the historic center and you can walk to it or, if not, you can take a taxi.  He does mention that the longer distance buses to towns like Marseille, Arles and Avignon are faster than the trains.  I’ll study those and post my findings later.

Aix Restaurants to Check Out & Why

Yes, I know we have about 40 days to fill up with eating out but I want to make sure we don’t miss any of the typical Provençal dishes and not all the restaurants in Aix offer them.  

Having said that, my first restaurant, Le Saint Jean, isn’t particularly Provençal and is rather heavy on the meats, but we usually don’t do steaks at home and who wants to grill in an aparthotel?  Their steaks look cooked just right  and they come with French fries.  It’s a relatively new restaurant (2 years?) and offers an extensive menu of beef cuts and several choices for lamb, pork, veal, and poultry (magret de canard for instance).  There is also pasta and a good selection of fish dishes for those who cringe at the thought of eating red meat (yum!).  The mixed charcuterie and cheese board looks great but for two people it wouldn’t leave much room for the plat, much less the dessert. 

 But maybe we could just order that with a Salade Saint Jean:  Salade du marché, Jarret de Boeuf confit, pomme de terre, tomate, croutons à  l’ail, vinaigrette moutarde.

The second restaurant, La Brocherie, has a wood-burning hearth where they grill their meats and fish.  The ambiance is a little less sophisticated but it looks like a lot of fun.  Their menu offers two typical soups: soupe de poisson and soupe au pistou (roughly a fish soup and a minestrone) and they also offer a bouillabaise at a reasonable price (26€).    They also have classic French dishes like Magret de Canard, lamb chops, veal kidneys and andouillette. 

Camila and the boys might like it since they feature both pasta and fish. Lots of dessert choices and for Silas they have l’Assiette Gourmand with pavé au chocolat, crème brûlée à la lavande, glace verveine, glace calisson, soufflé glacé à l’anis, or variations thereof.

The third restaurant for this post is Les Galinas - La Table Provençale, a little more sophisticated and upscale than La Brocherie with a more limited menu and a more careful presentation of the food, even if they don’t have tablecloths and are trying to recreate grandmother’s provençal cooking.  It is a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant so we can probably expect smaller portions and because the menu changes, one should probably check the menu before making a reservation, which is pretty much required for all these places.  Les Galinas always seem to have lamb tripe, sardines in oil, and oeufs mimosas on the menu and usually offer a meat dish, a pasta and a fish among their plats.  There are photos of an octopus appetizer, head cheese, and someone mentioned rabbit so it will be interesting to see what they have the day we go.

Until the next episode, Bon Appétit!

Restaurants for Camila and the Boys

 Since we’ll be in Aix-en-Provence for 6 weeks, when Camila and the boys are there, I’ll concentrate on restaurants with dishes they might like to eat rather than Pieds et Paquets, Agneau au Lait, and Magret de Canard.  However, I must admit that not one of the restaurants on my Google Map list was among Rick Steves’ recommendations, and not one of Rick’s recommendations was on my list.  Again however, the one recommendation of his for London that we went to was really horrid and many of his choices in Aix seem to be chosen for their al fresco ambiance.  Has he even been to them?  He says they « are carefully reviewed by my friends at Tastes of Provence food tours ».  Eh bien…  back to my list.

For Camila, there’s a little restaurant near the Adagio called Restaurant l’Envie that has creative and nicely presented dishes with lots of flowers but, surprisingly, no website.  Their desserts look particularly  attractive.  You can see photos of their dishes at The Fork, and make reservations too.

The boys should like Le Four Aixois (and us too) which specializes in wood-fired pizza.  The mushroom pizza looks good to me, even if it doesn’t have slices of truffle on top.  Hopefully the boys will order something besides cheese and pepperoni, maybe a moitié/moitié, which is half cheese and half anchovy.  Anchovies are big in the south of France.  Did you know that tapenade is traditionally made with anchovies and capers, not just olives?

And yes, I think we’ll be eating pizza more than once.  Some of the pizzerias serve their pizzas Italian style with part of the ingredients added après cuisson or after cooking.  Pizzeria Delices de Capoue is one of those and we should try this après cuisson style at least once, since they have some rather interesting compositions.  If we go to Marseilles, we might visit one of La Bonne Mère locations for pizza where they name them after Marcel Pagnol characters.  In Marseille the influence of Neapolitan immigrants is quite strong.

One of Rick Steves’ recommendations that I would like to try is La Fromagerie du Passage which I had saved in my food shop list but evidently they have a restaurant on the second floor and the roof where you can order a platter of 5 cheeses for 22€.  Rick says you get bread and a salad with that.  They also have a platter for 4 people with 25 different cheeses for 95€.  Do you think the boys would be interested?  I know Papi would be.  They also serve a hamburger.  Or boeuf tartare.

Les 25 Fromages Differents

There are also a couple of restaurants with the Michelin Bib Gourmand.  I don’t think we’d be able to afford a Michelin starred restaurant but these are supposed to be gourmet level and not too expensive.  One is Licandro le Bistro which has a formule for lunch that isn’t too expensive (34€).  Another is Vintrépide which also has a formule for lunch (complet 34€, entrée/plat or plat/dessert 28€).  Its inpiration of the week for lunch is lamb ravioli, cod with artichoke and cherry clafouti for dessert, which sounds pretty good to me.  A third Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant is Coté Cour but their prices are a bit higher.

Because Aix is a university town, there are a lot of international options including Moroccan, Thai, Japanese, and Korean.  There’s an upscale Thai restaurant, Phatsara, that has a large menu and nicely presented dishes.  There’s also a Breton creperie: Le P’tit Breton and an upscale Ethiopian restaurant, Chez Ama.  Upscale as opposed to a hole in the wall.  Mary Vallejo ate there and said it was very good.

And of course, we can always cook in the apartment, can’t we?  And the markets also have takeout food, especially Middle Eastern.  I even found a rotisserie chicken takeout not too far away from the hotel.  I don’t think we’ll starve.  What would you like?

 

Cabillaud / artichaut

 

Clafoutis cerise 

Lunch Break!

 Tickets Resto!  

For certain “provided” meals, Road Scholar is giving us “tickets resto”, vouchers for eating at participating restaurants.  These are part of an employee’s benefits when their employer doesn’t have a cantine that offers lunch.  The employee as well as the employer pays into the system (like social security or health benefits) so it is to their benefit to participate.  The goal is to continue that very French tradition of a long lunch at restaurants and typically colleagues will get together and go out to lunch ensemble.

If one of the symbols above is displayed in the restaurant’s window or if it has a TR sticker,  it means they accept the ticket resto.  “ The tickets can represent a maximum amount of 11,38 euros per ticket and starts from 7,50 euros. The amount differs according to the company.”  We’ll see how much Road Scholar gives us.  I believe it’s supposed to cover the price of a formule lunch (the fixed price lunch) but you can also use it at grocery stores for food.  However, you don’t get change back.  You can read all about it at Ensemble en France.

Our first ticket resto lunch is on Friday of the first week of classes and every Friday thereafter when we have a “cultural” excursion in the afternoon together with our Group Leader.  That’s when we go to sites like the Hôtel de Caumont, the Atelier Cézanne, Nice, the Musée Granet, and the Santons Fouque.  Of course, Road Scholar might change the itinerary but that’s what’s up there now.  I’m looking forward to it!

La Laverie

 There are two laveries automatiques within walking distance of the Aparthotel Adagio in Aix-en-Provence.  The closest, LAM, belongs to  a chain of laundromats and it looks modern and clean.  It is open from 7 am to 8 pm (maybe until 9) and the 6 kg washer costs 5.50€ and the dryer costs 1.50€ for 9 minutes.  Fernando thinks he can wear his clothes for 6 weeks without washing them.  “Nobody will notice” he says…. He’ll just douse himself with perfume.

The second laverie, STM Laverie, looks like a small independent operation, it doesn’t have a website, and the photos on Google maps are from 4 years ago.  There are other STMs in Aix so it might be a chain without a presence.  We can test them both; after all, we have six weeks in Aix to kill and we can do our French homework while we are waiting.  I think there’s a café nearby…

Here’s the map with our walking route from the hotel:

Now all we need is a shopping cart…

The Weather in Aix

Fighting the Mistral

I’ve been very happy with the weather in Aix-en-Provence so far and I haven’t even been there!  At first I was collecting the forecast for each day between April 10 and May 23, but you know how that can be.  Then I found the Time and Date website with the past weather so I’ve been using that:

https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/france/aix-en-provence/historic

As you can see, it’s been quite pleasant.  The lowest has been 46 and the highest 81 but the vast majority of days have lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s, which seems pretty delightful to me.  And most days are sunny or at worst partly sunny.  Very little rain but a fair amount of wind and there are all sorts of winds in Provence:  the Mistral, the Transmontane,  the Levant, the Scirocco, the Marin.  

Frederic Mistral

The most famous is the Mistral, a cold northwest wind that brings clear skies.  I’ll need to pick up a santon of Frederic Mistral fighting the Mistral for our nativity scene.  Oh oh.  It looks like I’ll have to pick up two.  It’s a shepherd that’s fighting the Mistral, not Frederic Mistral.  I actually expect to pick up more than two since I need one of Cezanne and a fishwife would be nice, or maybe a woman making aioli. We are going to the workshop of Santons Fouque with the Road Scholar group so let me know if you want anything.

Practicalities for Aix-en-Provence

 I want to cover a few of the basics for our stay in Aix-en-Provence so I have them written down someplace when I forget them.

Hopefully I won’t forget the apartment-hotel we are staying at and hopefully they won’t change it at the last minute.  We should have a 1-bedroom apartment at the Aparthotel Adagio Aix-en-Provence Centre which is at the northwest corner of the historic center: 3-5 Rue Des Chartreux, 13100, Aix-en-Provence France.  

 The location is good since it is only a block or two from the Boulevard de la Republique which has several bus lines going to and from the town center and also out to the suburbs where the Carrefour and Auchan Hypermarchés are located.  Apparently the nearby supermarket, Casino, has closed.  Let’s see if I can do my marketing at the marché before language classes start at 9 am.  Update:  The Casino supermarché has been replaced by an Intermarché so we are good to go.  I only hope they have a fresh squeezed orange machine like Franprix did.

The apartment has a small kitchenette with a microwave, cooktop (hopefully 4-burner but maybe only 2), coffee-maker, teapot, cookware and dishware, and a dishwasher.  Unfortunately there is no washing machine and supposedly there is only one common one for all 89 apartments so we’ll see how that goes…. Maybe I need to look for a laundromat.  It does have an iron in case we have to « repasser » les vêtements.  It also has windows that can open so maybe we can string a clothesline from one window to the next…

At the beginning of our 6 weeks they will give us a public transportation pass for us to use.  The Aix en Bus system seems pretty good to me with multiple buses (03, 08, 13, M2) stopping near the apartment, although the British American Institute where we have classes is only a 12 minute walk away (that’ll be 20 minutes for us).  The best bus to take is probably the #8 which stops about a block from the school.  I’m assuming the majority of the time we will just walk to places unless it’s to a location outside the historic center of Aix, like to a Hypermarché.

Bus #8 from Adagio Aparthotel to the British American Institute 

There are also little buses that run through the historic center but frankly I’d be embarrassed to get on them …. Wait.  Maybe they wouldn’t be so bad since they are electric buses meant to cover the pedestrian areas that regular buses can’t get to.  They are called the Diablines and there are 3 routes.  You flag them down to get on them and they run Monday - Saturday, from 8:30 am to 7:30 pm.  They don’t run on Sundays or holidays.

I am quitting here because Blogger is a pain to use on the iPad when the posting gets too long.  It starts misbehaving.

A bientôt!

Marseille

 If you read my previous post, you’ve heard about Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseille Trilogy.  Critics compare him with Raymond Chandler and his portrayal of Los Angeles in his hard-boiled detective fiction.  My grandpa Bill suggested reading Chandler’s books after I had pretty much read all the Erle Stanley Gardner mysteries.  That was when I was in junior high school in the early 1960s and you could buy 10 paperbacks for $1 at a used bookstore on Pico Blvd in LA, several blocks from my grandparents’ home.  I think Chandler was too hard-boiled for me at the time but, reading Chandler’s biography, I can understand why he appealed to Bill.  

Izzo’s Fabio Montale fits the hard-boiled character perfectly:  « The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself ».  Izzo, of course, was writing in the 1990s and things may have changed in Marseille since then but the tourists and the tourist industry still stay away from Marseille.  Except for people like Anthony Bourdain.

I must also admit that Rick Steves encourages visiting Marseille:  « …it would be a shame to come to the south of France and not experience the region’s leading city and namesake of the French national anthem ».  (Note:  the Marsellais anthem was written by Claude Joseph Roget de Lisle in Strasbourg for the Army of the Rhine.  It was just that the army from Marseille was the group that kept singing it.)

The Guardian has a reading, watching, listening list for Marseille from 2021:  Marseille: a virtual tour through books, film, food and music that is a good starting point for understanding the city and its people.  It includes the 2 season Netflix series from 2018 called Marseille (what else) with Gerard Depardieu (no less).  Naturally it is their food recommendations that I like most:  Culinary Backstreets: Marseille State of the Stomach.

Finally, as if they knew we were going to Provence, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh ordered A La Table de La Bonne Mere: Recettes Provençales d’une cuisiniere Marseillaise. In French, no less!  The author, Maheva Angelmann, runs several Italian pizza restaurants in Marseille along with her Neapolitan husband and there are lots of Italian dishes in the collection.  But that is what they say about Marseille.  It is more Mediterranean than French.  At the moment, there are no holds on the book so I’ll keep it as long as I can.  Along with Rosa Jackson’s Niçoise.  I better at least cook a few recipes from them!

Books I have read…

 I better start keeping track of the books about Provence I have read or I’ll start rereading them by mistake.  

Because I’d like to visit Marseille, I’ve been reading the Marseille Trilogy by Jean-Claude Izzo.  Now this isn’t the classic Marseille Trilogy by Marcel Pagnol.  It’s a gritty set of mysteries featuring a cop and then ex-cop, Fabio Montale, who drinks and smokes too much.  Like many Marsellais, Montale comes from an immigrant Italian family and grew up with immigrants from Spain and Algeria.  

Marseille has always been a major port on the Mediterranean with a very diverse population.  In the three books, Total Chaos, Chourmo, and Solea, Izzo delves into the problems of 1990s Marseille and talks about its various neighborhoods (one of the characters even attends the university in Aix-en-Provence).  

 Montale at the time of the Trilogy, lives down the coast from central Marseille in Les Goudes, a coastal village.  Eating, especially fish, is very important for him, and that’s lucky for me!  This is a great book for learning about Marseille, its population, its problems, and what they eat.  To learn more about Marseille, see the Guadian’s 2021 article Marseille: a virtual tour through books, film, food and music.

I also checked out a couple of books from the Library by Georgeanne Brennan, who spent the 1970s in Provence pretty much as a hippy:  raising goats and making cheese.  She has returned to Provence pretty much every summer since then, alternating between that and Winters, Northern California.  The first one, Discover Provence:  A Shopping, Wine, Antiques, and Festivals Guide to the South of France, is a very quick read and nice introduction to the area, without listing a lot of specific stores or festivals.  It’s a general outline of the region.

The second book by Brennan, My Culinary Journey:  Food and Fetes of Provence with recipes, contains the narrative of a previous book, A Pig in Provence, to which Brennan has added photos (with very little relation to the text) and recipes.  Unfortunately our library system doesn’t have the older book.  Both recount her life living in Provence as a goat raiser/cheese maker in the 1970s along with her husband and young daughter.  One gets the impression that things have really changed since then:  fewer farmers now and more tourists.

One Year until Provence!

In exactly one year we will leave for our 6 weeks in Aix-en-Provence.  I’m already ready, except for the French… but we have been studying diligently, listening to YouTube videos.  Even Fernando, who is getting tips from a polyglot on how best to become fluent in a language.  He also has some favorite French language instructors on Easy French.  They are both très charmante.

I have a couple of YouTube French instructors myself.  Both of them speak slowly and clearly so they are easier to understand than Julie Andrieu.  Français Authentique offers language learning but also talks about French politics, geography and culture.

Guillaume Posé - Professeur de français concentrates more on the language and speaks extremely clearly.  He is also très charmant.

I’m sure there are many more YouTube French instructors out there but these are some of my favorites.

Naturally I spend even more time checking out places to go and food to eat in Provence and the Côte d’Azure.  Recently I ran across this older Turkish/American couple who are living in Nice:  HappyGoLuckyTravel.

And, of course, they were suggested by YouTube after I started watching these videos on Nice by two German women: RivieraGo!  I especially liked their video on the hypermarché because I remember the Carrefour near our hotel in Toulon in 1999.  Such a selection of French cheeses!

My problem with YouTube, of course, is I subscribe to so many channels that it has become hard to find what I’m looking for and I have trouble remembering their names, which they always try to make unique and catchy and so even harder to remember!

Foods of Provence O to P

 Les Olives

Olive Varieties:  Aglandeau, Salonenque, Lucques, Negrette, Bouteillan, Noire de Nyons, Picholine, Cailletier

Olives cassées de la Vallée de Baux de Provence:  Broken, green olives from the Salonenque or Béruguette varieties that have a low shelf life and come flavored with fennel.

Olive de Nîmes:  Whole green olives of the Picholine variety with a characteristically crunchy and juicy texture.

Olive de Nice:  from Cailletier olive

Pan Bagnat:  Often called the Salade Niçoise between bread.  Just like with the Salade Niçoise, there are rules to follow…. The ones on the left are from the Commune Libre du Pan Bagnat.

The vegetables have to be raw:  no cooked potatoes or cooked green beans.  Lots of recipes to choose from:

Bon Appétit

America’s Test Kitchen

Serious Eats

New York Times

Are they authentic??

For a good discussion of the complexity of the issue, go to David Lebovitz.

We’ll discuss the Salade Niçoise in more detail below.

Panisse:  Fried chickpea fritters that are a specialty of Marseille.  Chickpea flower is cooked into a polenta-like mixture, cooled, cut into French fry shapes and then deep-fried. 

Socca: These are chickpea crepes, also called Cade in Toulon and Farinata in Liguria.  We saw these being made in Toulon when we visited Yolanda in 1999 but we weren’t ready for lunch at the time and then didn’t see them again.  We’ll have 6 weeks to hunt them down in Provence.  Or in Nice.

Foods of Provence A to N

 I have a list of foods to try in my notes but not with an explanation of what they are, and sometimes even I forget.  So here I’m going to elaborate on them.  Naturally they are in alphabetical order and this is an ongoing post.  Of course, numbers come first.

13 Desserts de Provence

The photo above from the Maison Mirabeau winery is one of the best illustrations of the «treize desserts» that are eaten on Christmas Eve in Provence standing for Christ and his 12 apostles.  They are Almonds, Walnuts, Raisins and Figs representing 4 mendicant orders; Dates representing the east and the wise men, Fruit pastes put up in the summer, notably quince; Black and White nougat representing winter or evil and summer or good; olives, fresh fruit (apples, pears, or citrus), Calissons, Navettes and Pompe a l’Huile (breads).

Affligen beer:  OK this is really a Belgian ale but I found it on a menu along with Mort Subite Kriek, a Belgian cherry lambic, and I want to make sure I don’t get a lager…

Aioli: A mayonnaise-like sauce made by emulsifying pounded garlic with olive oil, salt and sometimes lemon juice.  Traditionally it didn’t have egg in it but NY Times Cooking adds an egg yolk and ATK adds egg yolk and sugar…

Agneau au lait:  This is suckling lamb which is available only in spring time.  Fernando should get his fill of lamb in Provence.

Artichauts violet de Provence:  These are pretty purple artichokes that are supposed to be very common in Provence.  April and May are prime artichoke season and I’ll need to try them thinly sliced raw as a salad.

Artichauts à la Barigoule: Serious Eats has an explanation of how these artichokes are named after a mushroom that they apparently were  substitutes for.  They are peeled down to the stalk and heart and cooked with vegetables, stock and white wine, and served with a butter parsley sauce.

Beignets de Fleurs de Courgettes:  These are summer squash flowers that are battered and fried, sometimes stuffed.  Usually they use male flowers but sometimes you will find baby zucchini attached to them (more expensive that way).  Julie Andrieu, who has a France.tv show that you can watch on YouTube, has a recipe for them.  Her channel is in French of course and she speaks very fast.  Sometimes there are subtitles (in English, French or Spanish) but you know how those are…

Berlingots:  These are traditional fruit-flavored hard candies in a pillow shape with white stripes.  These handmade artisan products are naturally flavored and colored and have a long history, perhaps all the way back to Avignon Pope Clement V in 1313.  You can read about them in The Connexion.  One of the centers of production is in Carpentras, 97 km north of Aix-en-Provence, 2-3 hours by public transportation.  If you want to see how they are made, it’s easier to watch this YouTube video.

Bouillabaisse:  This is the iconic fish stew from Marseille that used to be a dish of poor fishermen using the unsold fish that they caught.  Now it has been civilized with additions of saffron and shellfish and the price has risen as well (up to 80€ per person).  Peter Mayle recommends going to Le Peron restaurant in Marseille for their bouillabaise (73€) and the view of the sea.

Bourride:  Bourride is a fish stew typically made with lotte (monkfish) and potatoes and covered with an aioli sauce.

Brandade de Morue:  A dish of pulverized salt cod with olive oil and garlic, and sometimes with potatoes mashed in with it.  It is also eaten in Italy (baccalà mantecato) and in Spain (brandada de bacalao).  If you want to learn more check out Serious Eats.

Chateauneuf-du-Pape:  These are the famous red wines from outside of Avignon, north of Aix.  Translated it means the new castle of the Pope, as in when the popes relocated to Avignon.  Daddy once sent me to buy a case of it with Nana (I was 20) because the May Company advertised the case in the LA Times at an incredibly low price.  It turned out to be a missprint but they sold it to us at the price anyway.  I’m not sure if we’ll be able to afford it these days.

Coquillages:  Shellfish, of which there are a lot, although some say the shellfish from the cold waters of France’s north coast are better than those of the Mediterranean.  In any case I promise I will slurp down a raw oyster…

Daube de Boeuf Provençal:  This is the Provençal boeuf bourguignon but it has orange peel in it and its vegetables are mainly onion and carrots.  It gets its name from the daubiére earthenware pot that it was traditionally cooked in.  The photo of it at the left is from an article in Craftsmanship Magazine about Paula Wolfert and her clay pots.  It includes an article by Wolfert:  The Magic of the French Daubière.

Fougasse:  Related to the Italian focaccia and other flat breads of the Mediterranean, fougasse is usually slashed to resemble a stalk of wheat. Unlike focaccia, it is not slathered with oil but can have savory additions like garlic, olives or anchovies.  Here’s a recipe from Domaine Mirabeau.  Naturally it goes well with one of their Rosés.

Gardiane de Taureau:  Also known as daube camarguaise, this is a beef stew using the black bulls from the Camargue region west of Marseille.  Julie Andreiu has a recipe for this as well, along with a short video.  It includes orange peel, chocolate and olives, as well as red wine and vegetables.  She serves it with the red rice of the Camargue that you see in the photo.

Huitres de Bouzigues:  Bouzigues is on the southwest French Mediterranean coast to the west of the Camargue and Montpellier.  They are supposed to be the best if you can find them.  You know I am swearing to eat an oyster raw.

Miel de Lavande, de Chêne et de Châtaignier:   Lavender, Oak and Chestnut honey.  We have 6 weeks to use up 3 jars of honey as I don’t think I would risk bringing it home in a suitcase.  Or we could just buy it from The Honey of Kings (so much for the French Revolution) or just have a taste of each at the marché.

Navettes:  These are dry cookies in the shape of small boats that are flavored with orange blossom water and traditionally prepared for Candlemas (Feb. 2), especially in Marseille.  Le Grand Pastis has a list of where to buy them.  Le Grand Pastis reports on the Food Scene in Marseille in case you want to read more.  In French.

There is also a navette bakery in Aix:  Les Navettes Aixoises.