The Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mysteries

One of the women in our Road Scholar Aix What’s App group recommended the mystery series by M.L. Longworth that takes place in Aix-en-Provence.  At first I was skeptical but I’ve read 3 of them now and am quite enjoying them, primarily because they mention lots of locations and streets in Aix and it’s fun to look them up.  Here’s the list of the books in order of publication:

• Death at the Château Bremont 
• Murder in the Rue Dumas
• Death in the Vines
• Murder on the Ile Sordou
• Mystery of the Lost Cézanne
• Curse of La Fontaine
• Secrets of the Bastide Blanche
• A Noel Killing
• Vanishing Museum of the Rue Mistral
• Disaster at the Vendome Theater

The author, Mary Lou Longworth, was born in Toronto but has lived in Aix-en-Provence since 1997.  In 1996 she and her husband were living in Santa Cruz, California when he applied for a webmaster job in Gémenos, France, located outside of Marseille.  You can read all about how they got to Aix in Mary Lou’s About info on her website.

When Mary Lou moved to Aix, she lived in an apartment overlooking St. Jean de Malte’s church, which became Marine Bonnet’s apartment in the books.  The church is located near the intersection of Rue d’Italie and Rue Cardinale, about 3 blocks southeast of the Cours Mirabeau.  Antoine Verlaque’s apartment is on the other side of the old town, on tiny Rue Esquicho Coude between Rue Gibelin and Rue Campra.  In between the two apartments is the Cour d’appel or Palais de Justice in the books where Verlaque is the magistrate or judge, in which capacity he works as a detective.

BritBox has made the mystery series into a TV series called Murder in Provence starring Roger Allam (who plays Thursday in PBS’s Endeavor series).  We watched it a year or so ago and it didn’t seem right to have an Englishman playing Antoine Verlaque.  I think he was definitely miscast.  It only played one season.

When you read the mysteries, you need to have Google Maps nearby so you can look up the streets, like Rue Rifle Rafle.  What a name!  I guess it’s where we got riffraff from.

Un Tablier avec des Cigales

My last posting was "First Things to Buy in Aix-en-Provence" and I forgot one essential item:  un tablier!  How can I do any cooking without an apron?  I'm not going to bring one from home because of course I want a Provençal apron to add to my collection.  My only problem is that I can never remember the French word for apron.  Tablier doesn't make much sense to me but it turns out it is from the Latin tabularium which comes from the Latin tabula or table (also table in French) as something to protect the clothes, not the table.

If you need to learn how to wear un tablier like a proper French chef, you can watch this YouTube video by Philippe Etchebest, who also discusses other kitchen essentials like un torchon or dish towel to tuck in front of your tablier.  Torchon.   That's another French word that makes absolutely no sense since it has nothing to do with torches.

In any case, I saw the prettiest tablier with cicadas on a yellow background in Provence the Cookbook by Caroline Rimbert Craig.  See the photo above left.  By the way, she's carrying a Tarte de Blettes (a classic Niçoise tart with Swiss Chard).  

You'll find images of cicadas everywhere in Provence but I can never remember the French word for cicada either!  So how am I going to ask for an apron with cicadas if I can't remember the French:  un tablier avec des cigales.

Remember Provence Dish Towels

Frankly I should have no trouble finding un tablier avec des cigales even if I don't remember the French because you can find them online at Remember Provence so they must be fairly common.  Their website lets me explore torchons  as well and they seem more expensive than the aprons ($25).  They are 3 for $40 but most are jacquard and have selections of woven designs including a petanque player drinking anisette, sardines (for Will of course), olive branches, lemon branches, chives, and sunflowers.  They are really pretty with the colors and designs woven into the cloth, not just printed.  I'll keep an eye out for them.  Maison Empereur in Marseille has a lot of torchons on their website but none quite as beautiful.  They do have tea towels by the meter:  cotton for €10.80  and linen for €21.40.  I remember when Altmeyers in Monroeville used to have linen dish toweling by the yard.  Those were the days.

And do you realize I haven't even explored all the options for tablecloths, les nappes.  No, les nappes aren't napkins.

The First Things to Buy in Aix-en-Provence

 1.  Two cloth napkins. Yes I could just buy paper napkins but what’s the fun in that?  These I can take home as souvenirs.  Notice that the napkins to the left have cicadas (cigales) in them.  The blue one is for me and the red one for Fernando.

2.  A Bottle of Pastis.  I should buy this at the very start of our 6 weeks because it will undoubtedly take us that long to drink it.  But I can use it in cooking too.

3.  Orgeat Syrup.  This is so we can make a Mauresque with the Pastis instead of drinking it straight with water.  Orgeat typically includes almonds, sugar, water, orange flower water and a brandy or rum.  The Mauresque is 2 ounces of Pastis, 1 ounce of Orgeat Syrup and sparkling water.  It should help the medicine go down.

4.  Espelette Pepper.  This is from the French Basque country but I haven’t been able to find it in stores here.  I could order it from Walmart, Target or Amazon but I’d rather wait until I’m in France.  Plus I can use it there since I won’t have my Chipotle or Gochujang.

5.  Salt from the Camargue.  I should be able to buy this in the grocery store.  I’m going to need salt so I might as well make it local.  There’s even a Sel de Camargue with Espelette Pepper!  I could bring one home for Willy!

6.  Olive Oil.  Let’s make sure we pick up a local bottle from Provence, not Spain or Morocco.

7.  Mayonnaise and Aioli.  I know I should make my own mayonnaise like any decent French cook, but the last time I routinely made it was in Colombia more than 50 years ago and that was with a blender.  The apartment might not even have a whisk.  There are several brands we could try out.  

As for Aioli, don’t look now but Hellman’s sells a Garlic Mayonnaise/Aioli.  I’ll wait for a French version or maybe just grate a little garlic into my mayonnaise.

What is this blog for??

I was reviewing previous posts, discovering that I had the most posts for Paris in 2006 when I went with Fernando and Penny for my first time.  Apparently that is because it WAS my first time and I was learning about the city.  Over the years that’s really what the blog has been about:  trip preparation.  I did post what happened each day on the first Camino de Santiago trip in 2007 but I believe I did that retroactively, using my paper journal and photos.  We didn’t really have an internet connection that time.  I remember getting a SIM card in an extra phone we had and adding time to it, and that phone coverage then was very iffy except in the cities.  Things have surely changed with connectivity although I’m not sure what we are going to do this time around:  pay Verizon for a monthly international connection or get an e-sim card.  I better figure that out.

These days I’ve given up on keeping a paper journal but perhaps that’s a mistake.  Lord knows I’m not going to retroactively post our 43 days in Aix-en-Provence.  Will I be too tired in the evening to recap the day’s events?  Or will each day be pretty much the same: the town isn’t that big.  Will I be busy doing French homework in the evenings?  I hope not:  3 hours of class a day is enough.

But if we eat out at a restaurant every day, won’t I have food photos to post??  Although I’ve found that I usually forget to photograph the food until I’ve already finished eating.  Empty plates can only tell you so much.  But I could photograph the menu…. Wait!  That comes even before the food!  All right:  each day I’ll photograph a different food, be it the croissant in the morning, the meal at lunch, or the dinner prep in the aparthotel.  And I’ll try to photograph the 11 other Road Scholar participants. (Correcton: there are 21 participants in our group.  I didn’t see the faint arrow that takes you to a second page.). I hesitate to photograph other people because I feel I’m invading their privacy.  That’s why all my travel photos are of things, especially of food, in its various stages.  Here’s our OAT group in Colombia!  We just finished a graffiti session on some warehouses in Bogotá.  No, I didn’t take the photo, our ringleader Diego did.

Equipping the French Kitchen

I don’t really plan on buying anything for our own kitchen but it’s always nice to see how other countries equip theirs.  And who knows?  Maybe there is some little item, like a salt cellar or dish towel (un torchon), that I could tuck in my luggage and bring back as a souvenir.  

Perusing Google Maps, I ran across a commercial Ecotel kitchen store near the Carrefour in Aix-en-Provence which offers a Boutique Morcrette for home cooks.  Before we go shopping at Carrefour we can drool over the LaCanche stoves and the Mauvie pots and maybe pick up some ideas.  

There is something we might need:  a shopping cart to take to the markets!  But I don’t have to go all the way to Carrefour for that.  Not far from the Aparthotel Adagio, on the way to the markets, there is a very crowded kitchenware store called, appropriately, Culinarion.  

Frankly, it has everything you could possibly need:  wooden spoons, 3 minute old-fashioned egg-timers, frying pans, Staub and Le Creuset enameled cast iron casseroles, knives, whisks, scissors, poubelles, aprons, zesters of all kinds, etc., etc.  And little old lady shopping carts.  I might get lost in there the first weekend.  

If you look at the photos of Culinarion on Google Maps, there are some from the Société VM3D that allow you to look around 360 degrees and check to see if they have what you are looking for.

Oh my!  Aren’t Camila and I going to have fun in Aix-en-Provence!

Les Boulangeries

 Oh my Lord!  My last posting was July 15th!  Have I exhausted everything there is to know about Aix-en-Provence?  Quite possibly…but then I reviewed the photos of the Aparthotel Adagio and was appalled to see sandwich bread in their breakfast buffet!!

I’ve seen lots of patisseries around the marché but not as many boulangeries as I would like.  In Paris in the 17th arroundissement there were plenty.  I’m not going to be eating sandwich bread in France!  Not even for sandwiches!  So I am on a Quest!

Observing Leslie says that the best boulangerie in Aix is Farinoman Fou, 1.1 kilometers from our aparthotel, so it’s not one to go to every morning to get our morning pain.  Leslie says they enjoyed “the D’Isère et d’Ardèche (a magnificent fruit, nut, and grain combination) and Le Batard du Cousin (crunchy seeds over a delicious whole-grain interior).” Sounds like my kind of bread.  

Leslie also said that the best baguette was from a chain: Hat’s. They also have artisan bread which is even more expensive than Farinoman. But the location on Rue Espariat is a close 8-minute walk from the British American Institute where we have language classes. They seem to specialize in lunches so that is an option. I wonder if they take the tickets resto.

But, is there a boulangerie just down the street from our aparthotel? Fortunately there is one a 3 minute walk away on Rue de la République: La Fournaise. Their artisan bread looks very good to me and they even have a fougasse with olives! They’re open everyday from 7am to 8pm except for Sunday when it is 7am to 2 pm.

And there is another boulangerie south of that on Ave. Giuseppe Verdi, a 5 minute walk from the aparthotel.  It is part of a chain: Land & Monkeys.  

Fortunately, we won’t have to settle for sandwich bread while we are in Aix.