Vegetables for Pork Lovers

For a region and a country that loves their pig, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how little pig (re:meat)  people eat here, and by just how many vegetable dishes they consume.  It may sound funny coming from someone studying butchery, but this is all as it should be in my opinion.  Here, pig (or whatever other meat or fowl one prefers) may appear in one dish during a meal, but it’s accompanied by two, four, six, sometimes eight simple side dishes that feature the produce that grows so well here in Gascony.

Crop fields don’t just dot the landscape in Gascony. They are the landscape. Where there’s not a house, there’s a field of wheat or corn or tomatoes or melons or sunflowers (for oil).  And while many of these crops are actually sold to large agricultural cooperatives and then turned over to supermarkets in the north, or transformed into oil or flour or grain, there’s plenty of bright red tomatoes, sweet corn, fat asparagus, leeks, onions, garlic, potatoes, the sweetest melons I’ve ever tasted, to be found at the indoor and outdoor markets. (Here in France, these markets aren’t called “farmers markets” like they are in the states, partially because produce wholesalers are allowed to sell at them, but partially because the phrase “farmers markets” seem redundant to the French–of course they are farmers markets, they’ll say, who else would be growing this stuff?)

Because the produce here in Gascony is so easy to grow, and because it tastes so good, people generally don’t do much with it before bringing it to the table.  Tomatoes are sprinkled with minced shallots, salt, and a lot of black pepper, maybe drizzled with olive oil and vinegar.  Melon is sliced and sprinkled with pepper, or sometimes served with a little cured jambon. Eggplant is roasted and turned into a kind of “caviar” to be spread on bread.  Cucumber is shredded and mixed with yogurt for dipping.  Squash might be cored and stuffed with breadcrumbs and herbs, and a little ground pork, but just enough to flavor it, not so much that the meat overpowers the vegetable. Curiously, all the corn grown here is turn into oil, or it’s sold in cans, and the French don’t really seem to eat fresh corn on the cob.

These dishes all sound very simple and obvious, and each time I’ve eaten them I’ve kicked myself for forgetting to make them at home. But after a while I realized there is a reason I don’t make them as much at home: often the produce just isn’t quite as good as it is here.  When you buy a melon at the market here, the seller asks whether you plan to eat it today or tomorrow.  If it’s for today he’ll give you a ripe one whose perfume you already smelled from  several hundred feet away.  If it’s for tomorrow, he’ll feel his melons for ripeness, sniff them, and decide on one that he knows will be perfect by the time you cut into it.  He might even ask you if you plan on eating it for lunch or for dinner in order to determine which one he’ll give you.  The consumer should NEVER touch a sellers fruits.  It is up to the seller to find the one that is right for you, and you are supposed to trust him.  Why wouldn’t you?

In the states, since most farmers markets are closed half the year in Portland, I’m often left to shop at supermarkets–even good ones like New Seasons–but I’m disappointed by bitter, watery onions, pale tomatoes, and shined and buffed apples. There is no one to ask me when I plan to eat these fale reproductions of the real thing. And I rarely trust those laying out the fruit displays each day to know what they are talking about. And so I don’t buy them. Consequently, half the year I don’t eat a whole lot of vegetables and fruit.  Here the markets are open year-round, and while the produce changes with the seasons, you can always count on fresh, flavorful, well-cared for produce that requires little in the way of seasoning in order to taste good on the table.