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France notebook: the market at Perigueux

3:41 PM Sun, Sep 30, 2007 | Permalink |
Kim Pierce

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perigeuex market.JPG
While in France, I met with a group of food writers I had known only online, and one day's activity was to shop the Saturday market at Perigueux (pictured), then return to the tower and prepare a meal.

To reiterate, the tower is just that: a tower, with an internal diameter of 3 meters, about 10 feet, that you can rent for a back-country getaway. It probably dates from the Hundred Years War, but no one is sure whether it was a hunting tower or a guard tower. It has little openings for crossbows. Nichola Fletcher (Charlemagne's Tablecloth) and husband John have finished it out so that there's a kitchen on the first floor, bath on the second and bedroom on the third, topped by a tiny loft that holds another bed.

The group of us drove to the market at heart of old Perigueux, held on adjoining medieval squares. To reach them, we had to walk the old, original cobblestone streets. We fanned out, each with his menu assignment: Mine was salad.

Market guy at Perigeaux.JPG

This is a market we in Dallas can only dream of: a gathering place where local farmers and gardeners bring their wares to sell. They get the dealers, too, who import stuff. But it's fairly easy to tell the little guys from the bigger, more commerical operations. The man I bought tomatoes from (left) used an ancient, hand-held scale to weigh out the kilos. He was also selling potatoes and fat, gnarly-looking carrots. Next to him was a grandmotherly woman from whom I bought lettuce.

The market was a place to get every provision under the Perigord sun, including live rabbits, chickens and guinea hens, fragrant Middle Eastern spices (above), foie gras, brilliant red strawberries and maroon raspberries, roasted meats and more.

Once back at the tower, we set our repast upon a table outside in the shade (using china plates and silver cutlery of course), there to share, from something like 2 p.m. to dark, ambrosial foie-gras-pate-stuffed figs, fresh oysters on the half shell with lemon, roasted chicken with potatoes cooked in the drippings, haricots verts (green beans), my lettuce-and-tomato salad, raw sea urchins (surprise! they were soft like stewed fruit and faintly, pleasantly sweet), fresh strawberries, figs, grapes, apples and walnuts, "bastard" bread (runt of the dough), cheeses galore and the most interesting dish of the day: venison chocolate cake.

Perigeaux dinner.JPG
If those bottles at the center of the table look familiar, they're several artisanal Texas hot sauces I lugged over in my suitcase to share with our hosts. But no one was adding hot sauce to this meal.