14 feb

The Perigord is full of good food. Foie gras might be the most famous. The quite aggressive feeding methods are considered horrible, but I think they are rather humane compared to most animals that live on farmfactories. I find it a rare delight, foie gras, and would seldom pass the opportunity at a restaurant to eat it.
Everybody should have their own favourite foie gras moment. I had moments. They were always on the ferry from Calais to Dover coming back from Holland. The moments are in the past, in the good old days when Seafrance had not gone bankrupt yet and we would have a nice dinner in its Brasserie, very often being the only customers. No wonder it went bankrupt. With P&O these days the British kitchen, if there is anything like that, has taken over again. The fish and chips are ok, but taste like nothing compared to the Seafrance haute cuisine.
I always had foie gras, it was a little warm and had a maple kind od=f syrup over it. I get stomach cramps writing about it and craving for it.
And then there is the truffle of course in the Perigord. Every friday morning there is a market in Brantome where this Black Gold is being sold. We visited the market a few times. Were always a little late, so we never had the full experience of these farmer with their weathered faces and basque hats proudly standing in front of their harvest form the previous days. But there always still were a few guys around, probably with the most undesirable truffles. I wanted to talk to them, I wanted to interview them and get a story out of it, but my french is too undeveloped to get any meaningful conversation.
I should have accompanied our Doesburg friends Maaike and Ronald when they went to the market this morning. Didn’t.
They came back with a truffle and full of stories. Maaike is a delight in many ways, but definitely in the way she speaks french, which she speaks fluently. She even knows that Oui doesn’t sound like ‘we’ but like ‘wha, which was a revelation to me.
The farmers were also delighted by her an told her about the pig that had found the truffles. Under which trees they grow, white oak and elm. How many they found in one day, that they were going to be on television and different recipes to cook them. The most brilliant one was to put the truffle in a tupperware box with some eggs. Those eggs had to be sanded down a little bit, so they would be a little more porous. After 48 hours those eggs could be used to make an omelette. They would have a distinctive truffle taste without having to use anything of the truffle.
It is free truffle eating. Which is worth quite a bit, because the price of truffles is €800 for a second class truffle and €850 for a first class one. That is already quite a bit cheaper than a few weeks ago when second class truffles costed €900. Maaike bought a truffle which she will eat at her birthday next friday. There is opportunity for three truffle omelets in advance. Well worth its money in gold, this truffle.
Later we visited the butcher in Mareuil, who is our favourite now. Maaike ordered some veal, but it had to be thin. The butcher’s wife ordered her husband from his backroom where I think he was saying he was having a little nap. It could also be he had been slaving away on a pig, that’s how bad my french is. The butcher’s wife curtsied for him before she asked to cut the veal very thin. He did and the hammered the veal with his knife with a big smile. ‘Il est formidable’, the butcher’s wife told us. Great to watch lasting love, even when one of the love doves has a big knife in his hand.
We also wanted to have a few lardons. It took the butcher’s wife 25 minutes to cut them, basically because she was pushed by Maaike to tell everything about recent French chansonniers, Maaike being reminded of this by the word ‘formidable’, a song by Stromae that I had never heard of.

I had to get used to the song, and the video, but it is a catching tune. And it reminds us that life is formidable, but even more formidable when one speaks french.