Catching a Rainbow

Lautrec, a town in southwest France, made famous by the post impressionist painter Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa; is also famous for its garlic.

Legend has it that pink garlic first appeared in the Lautrec region in the early Middle Ages.
The story begins with a travelling merchant stopping in Lautrec looking for a place to stay and something to eat.
When the time came to pay his bill the salesman found he had no money; in its stead he offered some fine pink garlic. The bulbs, different in appearance to the usual varieties, were gratefully accepted and planted by the innkeeper.
Each year he re-planted the bulbs until he had enough to sell and the pink garlic spread through out the region.

Originally the farms producing the famous garlic were small, 500 to 1000 square metres, but as its popularity increased so the land under cultivation increased. Marketing following the Second World War has made the Pink Garlic de Lautrec an economic success.

Towards the end of the 1950s, a group of farmers in an attempt to further improve and to enhance this production founded the Lautrec Union for the Protection of the Pink Garlic.
The “Label Rouge” or Red Label certification was awarded in 1966, thus marking the official recognition of the superior quality of Lautrec’s Pink Garlic. The Red Label being a national standard of certification for quality assurance within Europe.

In 1996, Lautrec’s Pink Garlic was awarded a European protection with the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) but as yet no Appellation d’origine contrôlée.

Lautrec’s Pink Garlic is famous for its remarkable taste. It has a subtle sweet flavour ideal for using raw in salad dressings as well as for cooking wherever a recipe calls for garlic. It is less pungent than some, is more refined and is ideal for those trying garlic for the first time.

It also has good keeping qualities provided that it is kept in the right conditions.
Garlic should never be stored in a refrigerator, the temperature and humidity will cause it to rot and the smell will pervade everything.
It is best kept whole, at a moderate temperature 12 to 15 °C in a dry well ventilated area. If kept properly the garlic will keep until the following season.

Lautrec’s Pink Garlic comes ready braded as a rigid stick or manouille and not as a more usual plat. The outer skins of Lautrec’s pink garlic are removed leaving only the last layer so allowing the pink colour of the cloves to show through


The Pink Garlic Festival in Lautrec takes place every year on the first Friday of August. This aromatic annual event highlights the passion these people have for their garlic. Displays of local food wine and of course garlic abound. A competition is held to see who can braid the longest manouille (tress) of garlic in 3 hours.

Syndicat de Défense du Label Rouge Ail Rose de Lautrec, (Lautrec Union for the Protection of Pink Garlic),
Rue du Mercadial, 81 440 Lautrec, France, Tel : (+33) (0)5 63 75 90 31,
email: info@ailrosedelautrec.com



Acknowledgements

GNU Licence
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/fdl.txt
http://ot.lautrec.free.fr/index%20ang.htm

In the heart of Brittany, half way between Rennes and Vannes in the département of Morbihan one finds the village of Campénéac.


The Abbaye de la Joie Notre Dame (the Joy of our Lady,) is of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance. It is a community of nuns formed in 1921 when they moved to the abbey in 1953. Previously they had been part of the Abbaye de la Coudre at Laval and when they moved they took their cheese making skills with them.

The cheese still made at the abbey is made from cow’s milk, and is of the semi-soft uncooked variety. It has a washed outer rind and is similar in appearance to Port Salut the cheese from which it is derived.

Unlike Port Salut, Abbaye la Joie Notre Dame is still made in small quantities and retains much of the characteristics of the original hand made cheese or Entrammes.
(Unfortunately in 1873 the abbey, which made Port Salut sold out to a factory and the cheese is now mass-produced, the orange rind made from plastic.)

Abbaye de la Joie Notre Dame comes in the form of a large disc 20 cm in diameter and 5 cm thick weighing approximately 1.4-1.4Kg, although it also comes 250 g and 390 g sizes.
The cheese aged for five weeks has a 50% fat content and is available all year round. During the ripening stage the cheese is washed with brine

I am currently looking for a picture of this cheese, if you have one then I would appreciate a copy via e-mail
to malcolm@malcolmhamilton.net


Wine
Goes well with a young fruity red Bordeaux such as Château Maurine 2004 or a Stowels Merlot


References and acknowledgements

web site for the abby
http://www.chambarand.com/53.0.html
Abbaye de la Coudre : BP 0537 - rue St Benoît - 53005 LAVAL -

Ce n’est pas parfait mais c’est un outil de traduction qui peut vous aider

The Aquarium at Trégastel

Fifteen minutes north of Lannion, situated on the picturesque Pink Granite Coast one finds the hidden treasure of the Trégastel Marine Aquarium, if you look closely.

Situated in a side street between the sea and a car park the aquarium is not only hidden away it is also hidden from view. The main displays have been created within the confines of natural caves, some thirty or forty feet above street level.

Access is by way of the newly re-furbished visitor centre and hence to the three main displays. There are some steps to negotiate to reach the exhibits however; there is a lift for wheelchairs operated by a member of staff, but you will have to ask if you need assistance to reach the upper levels.



(To play the video, click on the screen and then press play)



The themes for the displays are: the shore, tidal margins and the deep sea, which are set out in that order. The numerous specimens are kept in beautifully arranged tanks which when combined with the cavernous location and the subtle lighting give the impression of actually being there, under the waves.

Trégastel Marine Aquarium is not huge and if you have been to Océanopolis at Brest or the National Marine Aquarium at Plymouth, then you may be disappointed by Trégastel. However, it is because Trégastel is so much smaller, more intimate that I found it so charming.

Many of the displays are open so children both small and grown-up can touch some of the exhibits and really feel close to the natural world, albeit contained.

I would recommend Trégastel Marine Aquarium to anyone as does my twenty-month-old daughter…we had a great time.



(I would recommend that children should not climb the stairs on to the top of the rocks. There are no barriers at the top and the drop is considerable.)




Adults €7
Children 4-16 years €5
2 Adults + 2 Children €20.00
Extra child €3

To get there
by road :
Follow signs to Trégastel-Plages and then the portPort
Parking is free and only 60 yards from the aquarium.
distances :
Lannion / Trégastel 10 km [ 15 minutes ]
Perros-Guirec / Trégastel 5 km [ 10 minutes ]
Pleumeur-Bodou / Trégastel 5 km [ 10 minutes ]
Trébeurden / Trégastel 10 km [ 15 minutes ]
Saint Brieuc / Trégastel 80 km [ 1h00 ]
Rennes / Trégastel 180 km [ 2h00 ]
Morlaix / Trégastel 60 km [ 50 minutes ]
Brest / Trégastel 150 km [ 1h30 ]
By train
TGV station at Lannion only 12 km away

By bus
Line 15
for further information about the bus, click here

Pesto or Pistou…that is a question.





If you are Italian then it would be the former, if French the latter, but neither would necessarily concede the point. It is probable that Pistou was in fact the precursor of the more famous Italian Pesto, for several reasons, but first what of pesto.

Pesto is a name synonymous with Italy, but more importantly with Liguria.
The original recipe for Pesto originated in Liguria, a coastal region of northern Italy and was made famous in the Ligurian town of Genova (Genoa) an important seaport.

There are only seven ingredients in pesto… basil, pine nuts, Pecorino Romano cheese garlic, salt, and olive oil. The quantities of each are a matter of personal taste and can vary greatly.
Of all the ingredients used to make pesto, it is the cheese, Pecorino Romano, which gives us a clue as to which came first… pistou or pesto.

Pecorino Romano, a cheese made from sheep milk, was first recorded by the agronomist Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columella in the 1st Century AD, when he described how to make the cheese in his work ‘De Re Rustica.’
The cheese also formed part of daily rations provided to Roman soldiers at this time. It was a hard cheese, salty and had good keeping qualities, important for a mobile army.

The Roman Republic, later subjugated the region of Liguria, during the 2nd century BC, and it was the Romans who introduced Pecorino Romano to the north.
During the 15th and 16th centuries Liguria was under Milanese and French control and was later ruled by the Republic of Genoa until 1796. Genoa was one of the most important ports to trade with the island of Sardinia.
Napoleon Bonaparte helped form the Ligurian Republic but which was later annexed directly from France in 1805. As the Napoleonic wars drew to an end the area of Liguria was finally annexed by Sardinia… from where the finest Pecorino Romano cheese came from.

The origins of pesto are uncertain, but letters in the Genova archives of the 1600’s mention a sauce or dressing called "battuto d'aglio" or beaten garlic and some represent this as being definitive proof that pesto originated in Genova.

Of course garlic is not the main ingredient of pesto, in fact a great many recipes for Pesto do not include garlic and so make this claim by the Genovese rather circumspect.
The main ingredient of pesto, basil, has been grown around the Mediterranean for hundreds of thousands of years. Originating in India, the seeds were brought back to Europe by Alexander the Great and very quickly spread around the Mediterranean.
Basil soon became an important herb for the Ligurians who named it basilico after the Greek word meaning ‘royal’ or basileus, meaning "king"

Pliny and Theophrastus, Avicenna, Alexander Petronius and Galenus all talked of basil as a culinary plant but the first recorded combination of basil and Pecorino Romano cheese in Genova was in the 16th Century when the first cookery record of the region was made.
The name pesto comes from the way in which it is prepared by the grinding of basil leaves, traditionally in a mortar and pestle. The grinding of leaves is called pestatura in Italian and was traditionally done in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle.

The basil, preferably a small leafed variety should be picked carefully and at the very last minute before the pesto is made. The crushing process also depends on a rotating motion of the wrist, which helps squeeze the leaf, before crushing it, so extracting all the essential oils, which make this sauce so wonderful.

If the basil leaves are too big then they should be torn as opposed to being cut with a knife, which has nothing to do with the aesthetic appearance of the dish but again to help release the oil. Cutting with a knife causes the very fine vessels within the leaf to constrict and so block the release of the oil. The same is not done when using a food processor but the heat produced during the cutting causes the oils to evaporate, for flavour to be lost or altered by the generation of heat. For that reason Pesto should never be made in a blender.

So what of French Pistou?
Pistou is a sauce used particularly in South West France. The difference between the two, pesto and pistou are that the latter is made from olive oil, basil, salt and garlic. There is no cheese or pine nuts in Pistou.
Coincidentally pesto is not cooked with, it is added as a seasoning at the very end of the cooking process. Pistou on the other hand is sometimes cooked with as in the soup of the same name, Pistou, similar to minestrone but with the addition of pistou twenty minutes before the end of cooking.

Which came first is easy… pistou.
Basil, olive oil, garlic and salt have been used in cooking long before Pecorino Romano cheese was invented and as such they would have been used long before pesto. Who first made pistou or for that matter pesto is a much harder question but neither involved the Italians.

When Pesto was first made Italy was a peninsular of individual countries such as Rome, Liguria, Tuscany etc, and did not come into being as a country until 1861. So Italy as such can have no real claim to pesto for itself, nor the claim that Italian cuisine was well established as an art before France as a country existed and its tribes 'civilized'.

There is a thought that neither the French nor the Italians were responsible for pesto or pistou, but the Greeks.

As early as the7th century B.C there is evidence of Greek colonists co-existing with the Gauls in Massilia or present day Marseilles. Greece was an older civilisation than either Italy or France and it was the Greeks who introduced basil to the west and the Greek language that gave it its common name


Reference
The Epicurean Table
www.epicureantable.com © 2003-2006
http://www.igourmet.com
Wikipedia

Pine nuts not surprising are the edible seeds of pine trees.
Through out the world there are roughly twenty species of tree producing seeds large enough to be commercially viable.

In Europe, pine nuts come from the Stone Pine (Pinus pinea), which has been cultivated for the nuts for over 6,000 years. The same is true of trees grown in Nevada, where archaeologists have carbon dated some species of trees to the same age.
When the Spanish Conquistadors invaded the Americas in the 16th Century, they found Native Americans grinding Pine Nuts into flour and mixing it with oil to make a paste, which was then baked and eaten.

The ancient Greeks and Romans also ate pine nuts as can be seen by traces found in the ruins of Pompeii where they were used as an aphrodisiac.
The poet Ovid and Galen, a second-century Greek physician and philosopher, recommended pine nuts with honey and almonds, taken on three consecutive nights, for enhanced performance.

Pine nuts are a good source of protein containing 31 grams of protein per 100 grams of nuts, the highest of any nut or seed. They are also a good source of dietary fibre.
They are one of the main ingredients in pesto, and are frequently added to meat, fish, and vegetable dishes such as the salade landaise from south west France and baklava
Unshelled pine nuts keep well, but they must be shelled before being eaten. After shelling they must be used quickly owing to the fact that they deteriorate rapidly, becoming rancid in a matter of weeks.

Pine nuts are called piñones or pinocchi in Spain and pignons des pins in France. Interestingly Pinochio ( Pinocchio) means pine nut in Italian.

In New Mexico and the southern states of the USA pine nuts are roasted and made into a drink similar to coffee. Piñon, as it is called, is typically a dark roast drink with a deep, nutty flavour.
Pine nut oil is a good antioxidant and has recently been found to act as an appetite suppressant.

Harvesting is not easy, very often carried out by hand and this accounts for the pine nuts high price.
The cones are gathered in the late autumn or early winter from the European plantations. In China, where most of the world’s pine nuts come from, the cones are collected from wild trees by individual collectors, who collect the cones by means of ladders and special long handled tools. The cones are then either left in the sun or artificially warmed to cause the cones to ‘spread’ and give up the pine nuts.
Depending on the processor, the seeds are then coaxed out by hand or machine, then dried further before processing to remove their hard outer shell.
The Chinese nuts are triangular, with, some say, a milder flavour whilst the Mediterranean nuts are slender, elongated and with a more pronounced nutty taste making them more desirable.

References
Vegetarian Society: Nutritional information
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_nut"
www.epicurean.com/articles/pine-nuts-pignoli.html
http://www.galen.org/who.asp

Leaving Lannion, taking the D786 eastwards towards Tréguier, one comes to the lovely restaurant of La Ville Blanche.

La Ville Blanche is an unassuming building, named after the village in which it is situated. It could mistakenly be passed-by as one travels further up the road to the pink granite coast…but that would be a great mistake.

The restaurant of Jean-Yves Jaguin, is a gourmets delight, and is certainly not to be missed as one wends ones way through the beguiling region of Trégor, in Northern Brittany.

Set back a hundred yards from the road, partly hidden by immature trees, one finds the restaurant of La Ville Blanche. Originally it was the Jaguins family home, as well as business having been run as a shop and restaurant run by Jean-Yves and Daniel Jaguins grandparents.
Two generations later the shop has ceased to be and become but a memory. In its stead a superb Michelin starred restaurant has been created, offering superb food with a flavour redolent of Brittany.

Brittany is a land of myth and of legend; it is a region of rugged shorelines interspersed with tranquil bays and a myriad of islets. Its coastline is indicative of its food - bright, vibrant and never far removed from the sea.
Large succulent lobsters, crawfish and langoustines, tender clams, crab the size of dinner plates, mouth-watering scallops and the ever-present jewels in the crown, mussels.

Brittany’s hinterland is green with verdant lush grass leading down to the vast salt flats of the south, it is a region of farms, it is a region of food but above all it is a region of fealty.

All this can be expressed in three words, one place and a multitude of dreams…La Ville Blanche.
Whether it is roast monkfish served with a puree of Coco de Paimpol or local crab served with blé noir pancakes, Breton lobster, roasted in the oven with slightly salted butter or fried abalone with potato purée, sea beans and chestnuts, they all have a taste evocative of Brittany.


For reservations call

0296-37-04-28 from France
+33-296-37-04-28 from outside France

Fax : +33.296.46.57.82
E-mail : jaguin@la-ville-blanche.com
All major credit cards accepted,

Closed: Monday, Wednesday, Sunday Evenings (except July, August)
Check web site for annual closing.

It is a sad fact that very few people under the age of fifteen have had the opportunity to taste a native English plum.
It is true that fresh plums are available all year round but they are nearly all imported, very often picked under ripe and eaten out of season. They cannot compare to the homegrown varieties, which have sadly been lost to the nation.

It is strange in a country whose climate is eminently perfect for producing apples, pears and soft fruit that the plum is no longer produced in large quantities.
Southern England, and in particular Kent, the garden of England provided the nation with plums of such quality that the mere thought of eating one would cause a racing of the pulse.
Now we produce one-twentieth of the fruit we did a generation ago and the cause is not the European Union, it is not cheap French imports…it is the climate.

Of course it was not always like this. In mediaeval times England was covered with fruit orchards producing apples, pears, medlars, quince and of course plums. Plums and the other autumnal fruit gave a refreshing change after the soft fruits of summer and before the winter staple of apples.

The Plum is a member of the Rose family, Rosaceae and originated from three main varieties found in Japan, Europe and Asia. They are also related to apricots peaches but in particular the cherry. During the Middle Ages a the word Plum was used to refer to any form of dried fruit and accounts for its use in Plum Puddings and Plum Cakes, neither of which necessarily have plums in the recipe.
The wild plum tree was first cultivated in Assyria more than 2000 years ago but it was the Chinese who first started commercial production of the fruit. The Plum reached Europe with the return of soldiers from the Crusades and in 1369; Chaucer was describing fruit gardens bursting with "ploumes" and "bulaces".
The Plum was so remarkable that several people of note have commented on its beauty, including Confucius who wrote

"The branches of the aspen plum
To and fro they sway
How can I not think of her?
But home is far away,"

Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus or ‘Pompey the Great’ a distinguished military and political leader of the late Roman republic found the fruit so worthy, he called for entire orchards to be planted in Rome.
By the time the historian Pliny took to recording plum varieties and he mentioned twelve, hundreds had been hybridised.
By the mid-seventeenth century, fruit-growing was so well established that John Parkinson, a seventeenth-century herbalist, recorded 57 varieties of apple, 62 of pear and warden, 35 of cherry and 62 of plum and bullace - some 60 more varieties than are available today.
By the 20th century the UK was producing a glut of plums, so many in fact that tons every year were being wasted, simply rotting on the trees. So what went wrong?

According to Paul Dunsby, former head of the English Quality Plum Growers' Association, an organisation which has now ceased to exist…
"Spring has been getting earlier and earlier, trees now blossom in mid-March instead of mid-April. This makes them particularly vulnerable to late frosts, and two years running we had a wipe-out, no fruit at all."
In 1989 and 1990, two severe late frosts one after the other was the plums undoing and a climate which in the past was perfect has rung the death knell for commercial English plum production. No crop meant no money and nothing could be done to repair the damage. Paul Dunsby approached the Government for help but they refused to listen and drew a line under one of the nations favourite fruits.
It is not all doom and gloom, the English Plum is making a slow come back thanks partly to the staff at Brogdale Horticultural Trust, in Faversham, Kent. They are working hard to reintroduce some of the older strains of Plums from their ‘library’ of fruit trees.
The trust which is now sponsored by Prince Charles, since it ceased working as a Government t fruit research station, - also has 350 varieties of plum, damson and greengage all kept for future generations in their ‘seed bank.’
English Plums are still available but are produced on a small scale. Their scarcity has caused an increase in price and has forced some to resort to the tasteless foreign imports.
The reason they are tasteless is that they are picked under-ripe so to fascilitate easy transportation. They are harder, and so do not damage. However as they are picked too soon they have not had time to ripen on the tree and for the sugar levels to reach acceptable levels. Plums have no starch and as a consequence they will not become sweeter after being picked as the stored carbohydrate is converted to sugar. Therefore an under ripe plum will always be an under ripe plum and will always remain sour.
Let us hope that people will become fed up with these imported tasteless fruit, especially plums? Let us also hope that the English plum, picked one day, ripe, juicy and glowing with its iridescent bloom will soon be available to all.

Plum Recipes.
More Plum Recipes

The best cooking sites on the Web?


References
http://www.innvista.com/health/foods/fruits/plums.htm
http://chinesefood.about.com/library/weekly/aa022301a.htm
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/caravaggio/caravaggio_l.html
http://magazines.ivillage.com/countryliving/cookbook/articles/0,,284670_699686,00.html
http://www.ashtreepublishing.com/Book_City_Herbal_Mullen.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medlar
http://www.brogdale.org/

Produced on the high Jura plateaux, this seasonal cheese produced from 15th August to 15th March each year obtained its Appellation d’Origine Contrôlé in 1981 the sixth Swiss cheese to obtain this major distinction.
It requires each stage of production, from milk to finishing, to take place within its region of origin - the Vallée de Joux and the Jura foothills in the Canton of Vaud.
It lays down strict requirements that producers must respect, under the control of an independent certification body. The AOC protects Vacherin Mont-d’Or from imitations, assuring consumers that it is a fully authentic cheese.

The Mont-d'Or was first made in the 14th century by monks at the Saint-Claude Abbey, but gained its reputation much later thanks to Louis 15th.

The Vacherin Mont d’Or as it is correctly called, is still made in the age-old fashion and is a very creamy, lightly salted cheese with a white to ivory-coloured, soft, lightly pressed paste. It has a slightly runny texture with an uncooked and often pleated washed rind; its flavour has overtones of spruce wood.
The cheese must have a minimum fat content of 45% and its humidity level must not exceed 75%. Cylindrical in shape (diameter: 20-30 cm, thickness: 3-5 cm), it varies in weight from 500 g to 3 kg.
The cheese is made from raw milk taken from Montbeliarde cows; rennet is added to obtain a curd and then placed in cylindrical moulds ready to be pressed.
After removing from the 1st mould, it is encircled by a spruce band and left to ripen on spruce wood shelves for twenty-one days, after which it is placed in a smaller box, a process that gives it its pleated appearance. Seven litres of milk are needed to produce one kilogram of cheese.

The cheese is becoming ever popular and production of Mont d’Or reached 4,096 tonnes in 2005/2006 an improvement on 3,970 tonnes in 2004/2005.


The cheese is always eaten from its original box, in two ways and is perfect for informal dinner parties.
It is eaten either cold (sometimes with a small spoon); or hot, baked, studded with garlic, and a glass of vin jaune poured into a cavity scooped from its centre before cooking.
The cheese is of course best eaten with a Jura wine the Vin Jaune.

The Vin Jaune is as peculiar to the Jura region as the Vacherin Mont d’Or and is only found in an area equidistant between the Cote d’Or and the Swiss border. It is also one of the oldest wine producing areas of France/Switzerland.
The Roman Consul, Pliny the Younger, was already praising the wines of Jura in the First Century AD; archaeologists have found evidence of grapevines being grown there even earlier. The variety of grape is called Savagnin and is used in the production of the ‘Yellow Wine.’
The process is completely different to normal wine production and is akin to the production of Sherry.

After a normal fermentation, the Savagnin wine is then aged in barrels for a minimum of six years and three months; during this time it develops a yeast-like covering similar to the flor, which protects aging Sherry, but unlike most Sherries however, Vin Jaune is not fortified.
The yeast crust limits oxidation and obviates the need to top off the barrel while reinforcing the nutty aromas characteristic to Savagnin and adding further complexities to the wine’s flavor.
The wine, such as Cotes de Jura, Vin Jaune, Clos des Grives, 1997, a very fine and delicious vin jaune with flavours of walnut and ginger, is the perfect accompaniment to Vacherin Mont d’Or, and can be purchased in Great Britain. Buy it now!

The Vacherin Mont d’Or does have a certain amount of history and there is a continual argument as to whether the cheese is Swiss or French in origin
For generations, people have been telling the story of how the recipe for Vacherin came to Charbonnières.

In 1871 the troops of General Bourbaki were retreating through the forests of the Jura during one of the coldest winters in living memory.
To force their way through the snow, the French soldiers drove a herd of cows in front of them, led by their cowherd called Roguin. And he was the man who held the famous secret - how to produce Vacherin Mont-d'Or.
The French story goes that Roguin settled in the area, produced cheese, as well as numerous children and lived happily ever after. However, the Swiss are not convinced and look to their archives to prove the story false and the cheese being Swiss.

Twenty-Six years before Roguin, a book of accounts was discovered which cast serious doubts on the legend.
It clearly records the delivery of Vacherin’s, not once but several times, in 1845 Twenty-six years before General Bourbaki's retreat.


The region

The French Jura, roughly corresponding to the old province of Franche-Comté, lies in eastern France, bounded on the west by Burgundy and on the north by the Vosges.

Two great Frenchmen were born in the Jura - the biologist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) and the painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877).


Sources and Acknowledgements
(Source: SIDF Mont d'Or, or vacherin du Haut-Doubs)

http://www.vacherin-montdor.ch/en/aoc.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Denis_Bourbaki

http://www.planetware.com/france/french-jura-f-fc-jura.htm

http://www.starchefs.com/wine/features/html/jura.shtml

https://www.thewinesociety.com/tws/Welcome.asp?Page=00Welcome&Ext=asp

http://www.jura-tourism.com/fiches.php?id=15&idSM=3&langue=2

Rungis is not so much a food market - but a town and a way of life for thousands.

The original market Les Halles de Baltard moved to the site of Rungis in 1969. Les Halles was situated in the centre of Paris and not only had outgrown the site but was also causing considerable traffic congestion for the capitol.
The move to Rungis was a monumental change, there having been a market at Les Halles since 1136. (Victor Baltard designed the original market beginning in 1851).

The town of Rungis is in the département of Val-de-Marne, which in turn is in the region of Île-de-France and is only 7 miles from the centre of Paris.
It is well served by communications being only a few miles from Orly Airport, close to the junctions of the A6 and the N7 two important arterial roads in France, as well as having its own rail depot within the confines of the market site itself.

Rungis is a food distribution centre not only for France, but also for other European countries. The market is divided into sections: fruit and vegetables, dairy, seafood, meat, poultry, flowers and other items connected with the food trade such as packaging, knives and kitchen equipment.

The market covers 573 acres, an area larger than the principality of Monaco and is frequented by 26,000 vehicles a day. Rungis is a town in itself with banks, post offices, hairdressers, hotels, a laundry and restaurants for the 15000 workers who live to eat rather than eat to live.

It deals in enough food to feed twelve million Frenchmen every day, as well as the finest restaurants in Paris and the surrounding area.
Girolles(Chanterelles) and Cèpes in our local supermarket today had been purchased at Rungis and were ready for me when the store opened at nine o’clock.

The market is the property of the French State but run by a company at Rungis on their behalf. It opens between 0200 and 1300 depending on which area one is visiting; the fish market opens before the others to ensure that the fish is as fresh as possible, the food halls are usually empty by 0800.

The market itself is a labyrinth of sheds, hangars and offices interconnected by streets railway lines and paths. The main food halls are huge affairs some like the fish hall is air-conditioned to help maintain the temperature and freshness of the products.
Men in bloodstained overalls preparing and selling all manner of meats; poultry and game frequent the meat hall.
The dairy section, a less bloody affair with cheeses too numerous to count stacked in every section. General de Gaulle once famously asked how is it possible “to govern a country that produces 246 different varieties of the stuff.” And they are all on sale at Rungis.

The fruit and vegetable section is the largest of the market with eight fruit and vegetable halls. The distances between the various vendors are so great that the buyers use bicycles to travel between them.

It is well know that the French are lovers of good food. The French not only pride themselves on the production and preparation of their food, but they also take as much care over their foods distribution, which can attributed to a famous chef, François Vatel.



The tragic story of Vatel comes to a head in 1671 when François Vatel was enticed to work for the Prince of Condé. The Prince has invited King Louis XIV as well as two hundred other guests to a reception.
On the first evening a light supper was prepared comprising of turtle soup, creamed chicken, fried trout and roast pheasant.
More guests than anticipated arrived to enjoy the sumptuous meal and Vatel thought that there was not enough food to go around. He became depressed even though his staff assured him that the meal had been a great success.
The following morning the staff awaited a consignment of fish, enough to feed the guests that evening, however when the delivery arrived the quantity of fish was far less than required. Vatel retired to his room, wrote a note explaining that the shame was too much to bear, before fixing his sword blades in a door frame and throwing himself onto the blades…eight times some say.
His body was found the following morning when he failed to turn up for work and the missing fish arrived a few minutes later

The meal went ahead as planned, however as a mark of respect for the great chef the fish course was omitted. Ever since food has priority in every mode of transportation in France.
The story of Vatel has been made into a film starring Gérard Depardieu.
Explore the Works of Gérard Depardieu
Vatel film review.

There is not an equivalent to Rungis in the United Kingdom. The nearest we have to it is New Covent Garden Market, situated at Nine Elms in South London…often called Nine Elms Market.
Between 1982 and 1985 I was a buyer at New Covent Garden market, buying fruit, vegetables and flowers.
I can still remember the first time I saw the huge trading sheds and amazed at the vast quantity of fruit and vegetables on offer. The noise, the sights and the smell of fresh coffee, freshly baked bread and sizzling bacon gently wafting across the site on the early morning breeze. And I swear there is nowhere colder than Nine Elms at three o’clock on a winter’s morning…except perhaps Rungis?
For those of you who have visited Nine Elms will know how big it is. Rungis however is ten times bigger and has five times as many people visiting it on any given day and the sights sounds and smells are equally ten times as vivid.