Wednesday 2 December 2009

A cold market day

Market day - the busiest day in the village! The north wind felt very cold and one woman in the queue at the charcuterie stall told us that when the village Christmas tree was delivered this morning from the mountains it still had snow on its branches.

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And today there was the added excitement of a huge Bulgarian lorry reversing out of the narrow street, between the stalls in the place and out onto the main road. The lorry had delivered the cobbles which will be laid in the streets in the Pioch, the oldest part of the village, which is being renovated. This caused much questioning among stallholders and customers (including me) about why stone had to be brought from Bulgaria when there are plenty of quarries nearby.

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We bought fruit, fennel and Lactarus deliciosus mushrooms, known as saffron milk cap in English and lactaire delicieux in French.

Lactarus deliciosus

I’ve never eaten these before, but one of the advantages of shopping in the village shops or the market is that there is always someone nearby to give advice about how to cook something. So I asked, and had the simple reply that I should fry them in olive oil and add chopped parsley and garlic. So this is what we had for lunch, with pasta. The mushrooms tasted very good (although not as tasty as the cèpes we had in October) and had a nice almost crunchy texture and saffron colour.

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7 comments:

Stefaneener said...

Sounds good.

Jan said...

Oh that's crazy bringing the cobbles from Bulgaria! Can you raise the matter at your council?

impoftheyard said...

These mushrooms look absolutely delicious.

Heiko said...

I don't know, I reckon Bulgarian cobbles are much better than French ones. They give you more of the bone crunching feel if you drive over them at speed. I'm surprised the Christmas tree didn't come from Norway or Canada maybe. And local mushrooms, if you could get Chinese Shitake?...

mo said...

That's such a shame they're not using local stone.....

chaiselongue said...

Yes, it's a shame about the Bulgarian stone, but it's too late now to do anything about it - it would be worse for the environment to get the lorry to come and take it back, I suppose! We've objected to so many things the municipality are doing - cutting down plane trees, building too many new houses ... and so on - it's a shame that they have to do this kind of thing for the one project which seems like a really good idea!

Weeping Sore said...

I always get hungry reading your blog.

It is amazing (disappointing?) to see that your urban environment is subject to the same depredations as mine: too much progress, too little respect for "old" things. Plus sa change...