A Pig in Provence (9 page)

Following that wonderful day at Marcel and Marie’s we never participated in the
jour du cochon
again in France. We left our life in Provence just months later, after first buying the apartment adjacent to theirs, the one that included the vaulted room, plus an assortment of barns, outbuildings, and a bit of land. Donald’s father had died suddenly, and we decided to return to California. Donald left almost immediately, taking Oliver, who was only six months old, and Ethel with him.

I stayed on to sell the animals and pack up our belongings. I sold Lucretia to a farmer in the neighboring
département,
Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. She was quite pregnant then, and he was delighted to have her. I cried as she struggled up the ramp into
the back of his van, both for the loss of our pig and for the loss of our hopes for a quiet, civilized life in rural Provence. By then, M. Gos had gotten rid of most of his pigs, keeping only a few. “I’d like to take her,” he said, “but I’m getting too old.” When we returned to France three years later, he was dead, and his last pig gone. His widow hugged us, her black eyes bright with tears, when we went to see her, and she brought out a bag of candy for Ethel and Oliver.

Marcel and a few others continued to buy young pigs and raise them for provisions for another five or six years, but times were changing. As grapevines were pulled out and the land replanted with wheat, which was mechanically harvested, the need for farmworkers, and thus the need to feed them, diminished. Supermarkets were built in neighboring villages, people bought freezers, and the old customs began to be extraneous. Even so, Marcel still buys a part of a pig, and though he is not supposed to eat
charcuterie,
and certainly is not supposed to spread his bread with lard, he and Marie make up a few provisions.

Over the years Donald and I re-created the
jour du cochon
in California, buying pigs from local 4-H or Future Farmers of America projects, or from the few farmers who raised and sold them, mainly to a Spanish and Hispanic clientele. We made
boudin,
pâté
,
and
caillette,
just as we had learned from Marie and Marcel, and froze the fresh hams since we didn’t have the correct conditions for curing them properly.

Even though he had never participated in one before, my second husband, Jim, and I had a
jour du cochon,
too. Adele and Pascal, neighbors from Provence, were living near us in California, where Adèle was a Fulbright exchange teacher for a year, and they often spent the weekends with us. One winter weekend when Adèle and Pascal were planning to visit, we
arranged for a retired butcher friend to help us do a
jour de cochon.
The butcher’s wife and other friends came to assist and share the feast, which lasted well into the late afternoon, and it is the taste of warm, juicy
caillettes
that everyone still remembers most from that day.

Georgettes mushroom primer. Foraging success. The pas mals
and the pas bons. M. Caprettis truffle.

When I had been in Provence barely a year, our new neighbor, Georgette, initiated me into
la cueillette des champignons,
the seasonal gathering of wild mushrooms.

“Do you know what these are?” She held out her basket filled with a tangled heap of orangish stems and caps mixed with pine needles, decaying oak leaves, and dirt as I set our outdoor table for lunch.

“Well, they look like mushrooms.” The concave caps showed concentric, almost iridescent orange rings and were glazed a copperish green. “But not like any I’ve ever seen before.” I hesitated before touching one. “Where did you get them?”

“Ah ha, I thought so,” she said, ignoring my question. “You don’t have these in the United States, I bet. They are special to here, to Provence. They’re called
sanguins, sanguin
for the blood-red
color of their juice.” She broke an edge off one of the caps. The exposed meat seeped crimson.

“They’re in our forests now. In the pine and oak.
Ils sont très bons à manger.
I’ll show you.” She put her basket down and firmly took my arm, guiding me toward her woodpile. “Here,” she said, handing me an armload of grapevine prunings, “take these over to your barbecue.”

Barbecue
was a generous term for the six bricks we had double-stacked into three sides of a rectangle over the shallow pit Donald and I had dug in a corner of our yard. Here we built small fires, then laid a rack on top to grill sausages or lamb or pork chops, and next, it seemed, mushrooms.

Georgette arranged the prunings. “First we have to clean the mushrooms,” she said. I pushed aside the plates I had brought out earlier, and she, Ethel, and I sat down at the table.

“Do you have a little brush?” Georgette asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“No old toothbrush?”

“No. We’re using all our toothbrushes.”

“OK,” she said, jumping up. “I’ll be right back.” She headed to her house, which was just the length of our yard and her flagstone terrace away, and returned in minutes with an old toothbrush and a large bowl.

“You have to brush off the dirt and the pine needles,” she instructed, as she sat back down. “Watch me.” Ethel and I did as we were told, observing as Georgette gently brushed the mushroom caps and gills, making a soft, whishing sound, then used her fingers to remove large pine needles or recalcitrant oak leaves.

“Georgeanne, get a cutting board and a knife from your kitchen.”

I obeyed.

“Now, trim the stem end of each one. Just a little,” she said.

I started cutting the ends of the cleaned mushrooms. The stems were hollow and bled less than the caps when cut.

“I want to try,” Ethel said to Georgette. Georgette smiled, handed my daughter the brush, and huddled with her over a mushroom. Georgette praised Ethel as she successfully brushed several pine needles and a little dirt from a mushroom.

“You finish these.” She pushed the remaining mushrooms toward her, then turned to me. “I found these along the path that goes to the
roc de bidau.
Usually the hunters get there first, but not this time.” She laughed, unfastening the clip that held back her reddish brown hair, shaking it loose, and then reclipping it.

The
roc de bidau
was one of my favorite places, a big stone outcropping that stood guard over our little valley. Footpaths led up and through the forests to it, and once there, standing on top of the rock itself, I could see north to the beginning of the Alps and across the collection of cultivated valleys, hills, and forests that made up our immediate landscape. One time Donald, Ethel, and I packed a picnic and went to the top of the rock, with Tune, our dog, following us as always. There we spread out a cloth for our ham sandwiches, fresh goat cheese, and apples.

“Besides, there was so much rain in September,” Georgette continued, unaware of my reverie, “that we are going to have a very, very good year for mushrooms. Rain in September means mushrooms in October. The
sanguins
are best grilled, which is what we are going to do. You can also pickle them or dry them. Some people use them in
omelettes,
but
chanterelles
are much better for that. The best for drying are the
cèpes
, but they’re harder to find around here. If you go to the forests above
Bauduen and Aiguines you’ll find them. They like the higher altitudes. Certain people know all the secret places. And as for the
chanterelles
… ahh,
superbe!

“You know the forest where you take your goats? There will be lots of mushrooms to gather there, I am sure. Look near the water for the
chanterelles.
” Her slender fingers with their blunt-cut nails and single gold band never rested, cleaning as fast as she was talking.

More than the seasonal gathering of wild edibles,
la cueillette
in Provence is a social and cultural ritual that is repeated annually, marking the food calendar of urban as well as rural inhabitants. To participate in
la cueillette
is to begin to understand that the food in Provence is inextricably linked to rural traditions that even the most die-hard urbanites value as part of their cultural consciousness and gastronomic patrimony. This is one of the things I most value about life in Provence, and one that seems never to change, no matter how many years pass.

I had always loved mushrooms, and in the Southern California of the 1950s and 1960s that I had left behind, fresh, white button mushrooms were considered exotic. The rich world of edible wild mushrooms that was to become an integral part of both my French life and my California life lay ahead.

“A
chanterelle
looks like a small trumpet, and is a beautiful, pale apricot color,” Georgette explained. “One side of the trumpet is longer and larger than the other. Underneath, the gills are wavy, not straight. You look for those when you are out with your goats.”

I’ve learned so much from Georgette over the years, beginning with the mushrooms. She was atypical of the local women I met those first two years we lived in Provence, being well edu
cated, from a politically active family, a left-wing artist, and a former schoolteacher. However, she knew and respected the ways and traditions of the region as much as any farmer’s wife. Having grown up during the war years, she was naturally frugal, a remnant of a time of scarcity and uncertainty, and she valued every bit of food that she prepared.

Almost immediately after we moved into the small house that we rented from Georgette and her husband, Denys, she took me in hand and gently taught me the foodways of rural Provence, and through me, the next generation, Ethel. I felt there was a strong personal element for her as well: She didn’t want a neighbor, especially a foreign one, who wasn’t properly informed about the local life and traditions, most of which seemed to revolve around food—the ways to grow and harvest, to gather and clean, to cook and preserve, and to celebrate. In me she had found a willing student.

“When you’re in the forest I also want you to look for
sanguins.
You know what those look like now. Search under the oak and pine trees. You may find
cèpes
there too. I don’t suppose you know what those look like either.” She didn’t even pause before continuing.

“They have very round caps. They can be any size. Underneath they have no gills, just sponge, creamy white sponge. Don’t be fooled by the ones with yellow sponge. Those are no good. Mushroom hunting is part of life here,” she declared as she inspected Ethel’s work, “and we look forward to gathering them every fall. Now you can too!”

I was intrigued but naturally apprehensive in spite of Georgette’s air of authority on the desirability of cooking and eating wild mushrooms. When I was a child, my mother had
severely warned me about the white and tan fungi that periodically forced their way up through the grass in the front yard of our Southern California home, saying we didn’t know how to tell an edible mushroom from a poisonous toadstool, and even touching a poisonous one would give us warts. In her estimation, such things were best left for leprechauns and fairies, but that didn’t stop her from making
coq au vin
with the expensive fresh mushrooms she had to buy at the high-end greengrocer in town.

As they cooked over the grape prunings, the
sanguins
released the scent of warming garlic, hissing as Georgette brushed them with olive oil, which dripped onto the hot coals. With a toothpick and a quiver of misgiving, my mother’s warnings singing in my head, I speared one of the golden brown quarters that my mushroom mentor had put on a platter. Firm to the bite, with a slightly rough texture, the morsel tasted earthy, with a hint of pine, and of garlic and olive oil. As I watched Ethel eat the first mushroom, then take a second, I thought how different her childhood experiences were going to be from mine.

Donald arrived just as the grilling was done and we gathered around, continuing to eat straight off the grill, washing the
sanguins
down with the rosé Denys had brought over when he came home from school for lunch.

“So. What do you think?” Georgette licked her fingers and answered her own question. “Good, aren’t they?”

“Yes.” I agreed, licking the last of the olive oil from my lips.

After lunch, Ethel and I went back to the goat barn with Donald. I gave the goats the leftover dried bread I had been storing up for them, and then the three of us went into the forest to look for
mushrooms. We left the goats inside their enclosure, knowing that if we took them into the forest we’d spend most of our time watching out for them instead of searching for fungi. I carried a basket and a knife. Georgette had explained that one should always cut, never pull, them from the ground to leave spore behind for the next season. That way, she said, the mushrooms will continue to regenerate.

I wandered through the forest, cutting in and out of the sharp prickly juniper bushes and dodging the odd low-hanging pine branches, and kept my eyes to the forest floor. It was dark under the trees, and the earth was damp from the rains, smelling as if it had just been turned, strong and peatlike, almost stinging the nostrils. I sensed the aroma of fungi. As soon as I found my first mushrooms, a cluster of
sanguins
pushing up the layers of molding leaves, I knew that I was hooked. It was like a treasure hunt, but the prizes weren’t the Woolworth trinkets of my childhood. They were wild mushrooms. I was in a forest in France, gathering my own food—and I was succeeding.

I have a fading photograph of me taken that day. I’m wearing an orange wool maternity tunic with a purple turtleneck underneath, my hair pulled back at the nape of my neck in a ponytail, with a huge smile, hovering over my finds.

Some of the mushrooms I found that day grew closely together in clusters, while others stood in solitary splendor. A shockingly huge one had a bulbous yellow, red-veined stem and a spongy undercap that bruised deep indigo when I touched it. I was certain that anything so sinister looking had to be poisonous, so I kept it separate from my other finds.