Fete de Julia en Provence

French classes over, and with Paul Bocuse’s cuisine weighing heavily in our stomachs, we picked up a hire car on Saturday morning and whizzed down to Provence to celebrate Julia’s birthday with a group of her friends.  There were 10 of us in total and Julia had hired a very grand and chic house in Menerbes.  The town of Menerbes is perched on a hilltop and has magnificent views of the surrounding countryside, including Mt Ventoux and the towns of Gourdes and Roussillon.  Menerbes has also become well known of recent times because it is the location of Peter Mayle’s book ‘A year in Provence’.

The house was the former post office, hence its name ‘L’Ancienne Poste’.  It is located up on the hill and looks out over the Luberon Valley.  On the ground level there is a large living and dining area that opens on to a courtyard that is enclosed firstly by a cliff wall, and then the wall of a property above, that are probably 30 metres high in total.  There is also a large kitchen on the ground floor.  Upstairs are two stories containing 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms.  Each of the bedrooms has unbelievable views of the Luberon Valley.  There is a small attic study on the 3^rd floor and above that a roof top terrace. 

L'Ancienne Poste is the 3 story building with burgundy shutters

Lounge/Dining room

Kitchen

Our sitting room outside our bedroom

Courtyard from the rooftop terrace

About the only downside was that a lot of day visitors (as opposed to us locals) wandered past the house and if any of the downstairs windows were open, they would stop and stare at us while we were sitting inside.  We started pulling faces and asking them if they were enjoying the view.  Juvenile perhaps but satisfying.

Eight of us arrived on the Saturday and we started the week with a lovely night out at a restaurant in Menerbes.  We had a room to ourselves that was like a wine cellar; very atmospheric (and damp!) Julia’s French friends Florence and Jean-Michel (Jean-Mi) joined us the following day.

As a number of us like to cook, and the rest were happy to eat our cooking (and to do the unglamorous dish washing and table setting), we spent much of the week visiting the nearby produce markets to source cooking supplies.  I bang on a lot about how much I love French produce markets but each time I return to Provence I’m reminded that this is where you find the best of the best.  Big thanks to Carolyn, both for the meals she prepared and for her assistance with the dishes that the rest of us prepared.  Although I was told off quite sharply for having an inappropriately good time while greasing a chicken.

On Sunday we went to Coustellet, which was where we found the best produce of the week.  We bought delicious nougat, fougasse (the French version of focaccia bread), cheeses, olives and a couple of chooks.  Luckily Carolyn knew that chickens were being sold with their heads on and that we needed to ask for them to be cut off.  Carolyn had been in this region previously and had had the unfortunate experience of having to try to de-head a chicken without good knives.  The fruit and vegetables looked great and at one store Franzie and Julia commented that everything looked ‘tres joli’ (very nice).  The store holder responded ‘ce n’est pas joli (insert a cheeky grin), c’est magnifique!!”

 

 

 

Carolyn, Chris, Franzie, Julia and David

We had our first group coffee after shopping and this was the start of a very agreeable routine of arriving at the market by about 10 and locating a café for morning coffees.

Nice hat (mine)

Cassie, Carolyn, Dale, David and Franzie

We went to markets on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and the others also went to the market in Roussillon on Thursday.  We had visited Roussillon a couple of times in the past so elected to have a lazy morning around Menerbes instead. 

The Tuesday market in Gourdes, was better for artefacts than produce, although Franzie and Carolyn did find a local butcher who provided the two bunny rabbits that we had for dinner.  They were chopped up while we had coffee but Franzie delighted in showing us photos of the skinned rabbits with eyes still in.  Poor Bugsies!

Carolyn and Dale and I bought some Laguiole meat knives at the Gourdes market.  They have a bee (or is it a fly?) symbol in the catch and lovely wooden handles.  Purchasing these required many questions and much consideration, and the vendor was very patient with our French.  However when Dale asked whether there would be a discount because we were buying two sets, he amusingly responded that he didn’t understand anything we were saying.  Still we got a 10% discount, and more thanks to Carolyn for carrying our knife set back to Australia for us.

Wednesday’s market was in St Remy-de-Provence, a town that I’ve been wanting to visit for some time.  The market was very big and had a good mix of produce and artefacts. I very much liked the way it wended its way around the streets in the old part of town.  

However I was more interested in St Remy-de-Provence because Van Gogh painted around 150 paintings there, while he was a patient at the asylum.  Carolyn knew that there was a Van Gogh ‘walk’ so we went off to the Tourist Information Centre to make enquiries.  We were handed a map but I should have been suspicious when the very helpful lady stated a couple of times that the marked sites weren’t necessarily exactly the places where Van Gogh had painted.  It turns out that they don’t really have much idea about where specific paintings were created but that hasn’t stopped them popping up plaques of Van Gogh paintings around town accompanied by little explanations to the effect that the paintings may or may not have been painted at this spot and that if they weren’t they were probably painted somewhere like this.  Furthermore, the walk itself is not particularly interesting although there were some nice views of the surrounding hills and country side.  I think it would have been better to have said that they don’t really know the precise location of most of Van Gogh’s paintings but that if you take a walk around town you can get views of the surrounding countryside which are reminiscent of a number of his paintings?

We ended up at the asylum, which has been turned into a Van Gogh museum containing some quite interesting information.  It was also an interesting building located in some quite nice gardens.  But again this wasn’t enough – they had to put up big posters of his paintings all around the garden.  Have we got to a point where we are assumed to not be able to use our eyes or imagination?

The Asylum

Too much Van Gogh.....actually enough

On Friday we went to Lourmarin for what I thought was the best market and most interesting town of the week.  It was a wonderful market for both artefacts and produce and also a beautiful town to wander around.  We particularly liked the galleries and shops selling antiques. 

Lourmarin - what will Carolyn find next?

 

In terms of sightseeing – other than what I’ve already said about St Remy-de-Provence – we also explored Menerbes and visited a number of neighbouring towns. 

 

Menerbes



Menerbes had truffle museum, but more importantly a fantastic wine cave

 

 

As we were walking around we discovered many Fig trees with lovely ripe figs on them.  This lead to some high jinx with fig leaves. 

Carolyn, Franzie and Julia also managed to sweet talk their way into the local church just as it was being closed on Sunday afternoon.  Having got inside, Carolyn and Franzie sat down quietly intending to appreciate the church in a reflective way while Julia stood at the door and yelled at Dale and I at the top of her lungs to bloody well hurry up or we would miss out on seeing the church.  Great for us but not so good for Carolyn and Franzie’s reflective moment.

As there were no markets to go to on Monday, a few of us visited the nearby villages of Lacoste and Bonnieux, two hillside towns that look across the Luberon Valley at each other.  Dale stayed behind as this was the day of the MTC 2014 season launch and the launch of its first new web site in 5 years, which Dale and co-workers had been working on all year.  Dale was excited, relieved and proud when the site launched very smoothly.

The Marquis de Sade lived in Lacoste and owned the chateau.  It had become very run down but is now being restored by Pierre Cardin and the town as a whole appears to have benefited from Pierre Cardin’s investment.  We had a nice little lunch at the Café Sade and drove across to Bonnieux where we enjoyed the views, wandered around and of course found somewhere for coffee.

Lacoste in the distance as seen from Bonnieux

We went off in a convoy of two cars but we kept getting separated.  I was driving one car while Andrew was driving the other.  I blame Andrew’s co GPS pilot (who he called Virginie) for wanting to take him down strange country roads.  Virginie repeated this approach several times during the week but Andrew was very fond of her and she always got him to the destination, sometimes even efficiently.

Franzie also did some very impressive solo sight-seeing on a road bike.  She went to many of the places that we went to by car including hillside towns.  She did this 3 days in a row and we enjoyed getting a text from her at the end of each day asking that someone pick her up because she was clapped out.  The texts were more descriptive than this and involved various parts of the female anatomy, and as a result they have been censored.

After lunch on Tuesday Dale and I went off for a walk to a little town called Oppede.  Along the way we discovered a very neatly organised field of pumpkins.  Dale had seen some people working on this field the previous evening and had thought that they were moving rocks around, which of course seemed bizarre.

Amazing pumpkin patch below Menerbes

We enjoyed our little stroll along country roads and the only disappointment was not being able to find anywhere for lunch.  We rolled into Oppede just after 2pm and were told in no uncertain terms that we were too late for lunch.  Luckily we found a fig tree to raid.

Our new country home (after we win Tattslotto)

All of the vineyards were heavily laden with grapes ripe for the harvest

On Thursday afternoon Dale, Carolyn, Cassie, Chris and I went to L’ile sur Sorgue which is a very pretty town and is known for its antique shops.  The antique shops were mostly closed but we had a nice wander around and it was the perfect excuse to find a café.

Although Julia’s actual birthday is in late October we had decided that we would celebrate her birthday on Thursday evening.  Julia had organised for a chef to come and make dinner for us at the house.  Our chef was Pascal Ginoux who has been a Michelin starred chef since 2007.  He has a restaurant in the beautiful Abbaye de Senanque, near Gourdes.  I like the way the French say that a chef who has received Michelin stars is ‘etoilé’ – literally ‘starred’.    

It was a real treat to have an excellent chef cook for us in our ‘home’ – and he was very cute – which didn’t hurt either.  We were told to stay out of the kitchen once Pascal arrived but we were all looking for opportunities to run down and get that bottle of wine, or bring up that snack that we really needed. He had a young attractive female assistant who we all immediately detested and she didn’t seem to do much anyway, except tap away at her ithingy.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.



Pascal beginning his evening's work

We started the evening with drinks and snacks up on the roof top terrace.  The view of the sun setting over the Luberon Valley was one that I hope I remember for the rest of my life.

The girls

Jean-Mi, Andrew, Florence, Cassie, Chris, Julia, Carolyn, David, Franzie and Dale

From the terrace

We then went downstairs to start our 3 course dinner.  Here is the fabulous menu.

Entrée: Foie gras in butternut squash transparence with pan fired cepes.

Main course: Roast lamb from Provence lightly smoked with thyme and an artichoke barigoule.  This was baked in the oven in a covered cast iron baking tray and the thyme appeared to have been smoking the lamb.  This was very special.

Fromage (but of course):

Dessert: Figs roasted in a caramel of spices with crumble and licorice ice cream.  Julia is a big fan of figs and this dessert was orgasmic.

What a lovely week.  We celebrated Julia’s birthday in lovely company, ate wonderful food (if a little too much) and were able to appreciate some brilliant scenery in very very comfortable surroundings.  You wouldn’t want to be dead for quids!!

The view from L’Ancienne Poste was particularly scenic.  Here is a selection of photos taken from either our bedroom or the roof terrace at different times of the week:

It wouldn't truly be France without a 2CV

Close up of mum and dad's old couch? 

Gourdes

Next time: Gluttony in the Gers