A Pig in Provence (24 page)

Truly frugal Provençal housewives, those who lived through the war years, would remove the heavy skin covering the breast, stitch the sides together to make a pocket, and fill it with a savory stuffing of bread, herbs, maybe a little sausage, all held together with olive oil, then bake the pocket. Allowed to chill, it was cut into thin slices and served for a first course, with or without mustard or some other piquant sauce. The breast was cooked separately in a stew or other preparation. Removing the skin and stuffing it allowed the cook to make two dishes from a very modest cut of meat.

When Donald and I returned to California, I longed for the foods that we had in Provence, so we bought and slaughtered the occasional pig and found lamb to buy on the hoof.

At the high school where Donald taught agriculture and animal husbandry, there was an active FFA club, Future Farmers of America, for which the teachers were responsible. One of the members worked weekends at the Dixon Livestock Auction, the area’s last auction yard, and when I met him at an FFA party, he told me he could buy lamb there for about sixty dollars, a price that would include cutting it up. That sounded wonderful to me, and Donald and I arranged to buy a lamb through him. When we received it, it was neatly packaged and labeled as chops, leg, shoulder, ribs, and stew, plus one package labeled liver, kidney, and heart, much to my delight.

When I grilled the first chops, though, I learned that this was definitely what we call mutton, an older animal with a strong taste, not like the lamb we had eaten in Provence. A veterinarian
friend, who also raised lambs and had lamb cookouts every spring on his ranch, explained that the strong taste was in the fat and advised me to trim off as much as possible before cooking the lamb, which I then started to do.

The meat was rich and flavorful, and I came to like the strong background taste. I felt linked to my Provençal life by cooking it, even though the taste was different.

Provence, like other parts of Europe and North Africa bordering on the Mediterranean, has been exposed to other cultures over the centuries through invasion, conquest, and immigration, and this is apparent in the food. Algerian independence in 1961 brought a new wave of immigrants to Provence, followed by immigrants from the former French colonies of Morocco, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast, as well as from other parts of Africa. The newcomers brought their indigenous foods and tastes, some of which have entered into the mainstream of Provençal and French food.

When we first came to Provence, we were surprised to find a colony of Algerians in the next village, housed in two long rows of single-story cream-colored stuccoed buildings, each small apartment with identical brown doors and shutters. The women had hennaed hands and wore long skirts in several layers. The men, whom we often saw more often, wore blue workers’ pants or jeans. When we asked about them, we were told that they were Harkis, Algerians who had supported the French in the Algerian war for independence and had chosen to come to France rather than stay in Algeria. The French government had provided housing for the Harkis, work for the men, and the benefits of the French social system for their families, including public education.

We met some of the men in the vineyards during the grape harvest the first fall we were in Provence. Their food made a huge impression on Ethel, who was with us in the vineyards, and she recalls with clarity the fragrance, taste, and appearance of the blood orange one of the men segmented and gave to her. She also remembers the
merguez
sausage she was given off the grill when the men cooked their lunch.

Merguez,
the spicy North African lamb sausage, is to the Provençal barbecue grill what hot dogs are to the American. The finger-slim, dark orange sausages are sold in bulk in supermarkets and are artisanally made in butcher shops. They are found throughout France, just like another North African dish, couscous. Couscous, which often includes chunks of lamb or grilled
merguez
, is part of the scent of the open markets of Provence, where vendors cook it in vast, round-bottomed pots. The smell of the vegetables simmering in spicy, harissa-laced broth makes me want to stop and buy it immediately, and I often give in to the impulse. The couscous is sold in portion sizes from one to eight, neatly packaged in plastic take-away boxes, just like paella, another import to the marketplace, this one from Spain.

In France, I can buy all the
merguez
I want, but in California it’s hard to come by, so I’ve learned to make it myself. I put chunks of lamb shoulder, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, cayenne, and thyme in my food processor and pulse to get a medium-coarse texture, or run the mixture through my sausage grinder. Next I bring out my stand mixer, fit it with the sausage attachment, and stuff lengths of small sausage casings, tying them off one by one. I cook some fresh on the grill the same day I make them, and freeze the rest. Each bite of my homemade
merguez
is a taste of my Provençal life.

Of all the lamb dishes I have eaten or prepared in Provence,
méchoui
stands out, not only for the food, but for the camaraderie surrounding it. It began with Ibn.

Ibn was the all-purpose servant of M. Meille, a former military man with what he called “enterprises” in the Côte d’Ivoire. M. Meille had purchased the house on the hillside above the place that Joanne, Donald, and I once owned together. He was rarely seen, but Ibn was out every day, clearing brush, digging trenches, taking care of the dogs, moving rocks, chopping wood. Joanne and her husband, Guild, came to know him initially, as we did, through the children.

Ibn, swathed in brightly colored robes as he worked on the hillside with a scythe or an ax, was an exotic in the Provençal landscape, and Ethel, Oliver, and Alexandra, Joanne and Guild’s daughter, were fascinated by him. He told them stories, illustrating them in grand gestures with his pink-palmed hands. From the deep folds of his robes he pulled out wrapped candies for the children, who were always puzzled about where he kept them, since they could see no pockets. They learned that he had a family of his own back in Africa.

As we talked with Ibn over the summer, we noticed he spoke a lot about the food back home and the kinds of things he cooked. That was when we learned about the
méchoui.

“It is a big feast we make. We take a nice lamb, not too big, not too small, fill it with much rice and vegetables, and roast it slowly, slowly on a spit over a fire. You would like it, I think. It is very, very good and there are many sheep here, like in my country.”

We were fascinated by the concept, and as we questioned him about how to do it, we decided to plan a feast under Ibn’s guidance, which we would have at Joanne and Guild’s house.

Donald and I knew a sheep rancher near Esparron where we thought we could buy a lamb of the ideal size. Ibn said he could construct a spit, and Joanne and Guild helped him choose a site not too far from the house to dig a fire pit. “We need good wood,” Ibn told us. “Hard wood, like oak. Nice and dry too. Not fresh.”

We chose a date, a Sunday two weeks away, and proceeded to make the invitation list, coming up with about thirty people, including our neighbors Marie and Marcel, and Adèle and Pascal, and our old friends, the Brunos.

The day before the
méchoui,
Donald and I drove to a farm where a freshly killed and dressed lamb was waiting for us. Donald and a worker at the farm carried the carcass, one holding the rear legs, the other the front. We had prepared for the trip by folding the rear seats of the car forward to make more room and covering the back with a tarp in which to wrap the lamb.

We drove directly to Joanne and Guild’s and stored the wrapped lamb in their
cave
until the next morning when it would be stuffed and put on the spit. Joanne had assembled all the ingredients for the stuffing, and that evening, with Ibn’s help, we cooked nearly three kilos of rice, chopped the vegetables and sautéed them in olive oil, then mixed everything together with the minced heart, kidneys, and liver. We added various seasonings—cayenne, pepper, salt, harissa, turmeric, and cumin—tasted the stuffing, adding more seasonings, and tasted again, until Ibn declared, “Yes. Now it is right. Now it tastes like my country.”

Every pot and basin in the house was full of stuffing. We covered them and put them in the
cave
along with the lamb, which we had slathered with olive oil, harissa, and wild thyme, according to Ibn’s instruction. All was ready to go for the next day.

Donald left in the early-morning light to go start the fire with Ibn, coming back for me and the children later. By the time we arrived, the lamb, already becoming golden, was turning on the spit above a deep pit of coals. Ibn was standing next to the spit, basting the lamb with a brush he had constructed by fastening branches of wild rosemary and thyme to a thin length of oak branch with heavy twine. Next to him was a bowl of the harissa-laden marinade we had made the night before. I could smell the herbs and spices, and hear the fat hissing as it dripped onto the coals. It was already a memorable day.

The roasting lamb kept us company as we fronted the entire width of the house with a line of tables. Since one end of the line was exposed to the sun, Guild had devised a canopy of sorts by hanging a Indian bedspread between a mulberry tree and two poles anchored in the ground. We set the table with an assortment of Provençal printed tablecloths and a combination of my dishes and Joanne’s. We had rosé and red wine from the local cooperative and loads of bread. Joanne and I had made old- fashioned deep-dish peach pies for dessert. By the time people started arriving at noon, the lamb was nearly done, and we started pouring
pastis
and eating olives.

When it was ready, the cooked lamb, spit and all, was moved to a table set up near the fire pit. Ibn cut the wire holding the lamb to the spit, then clipped and pulled out the wire that held the belly together, releasing the aroma of the spiced stuffing, which mingled with the crispy scent of the roasted meat. With a long-handled spoon, he scooped the stuffing away from the spit and into bowls. With everyone gathered around to watch the process, Ibn removed the spit, which he had made from two pieces of pipe. He finished scooping the stuffing, reaching deep into the cavity to ensure that every bit made it to the table. We
covered the bowls and put them near the embers of the fire to keep them warm while Ibn carved the meat and heaped slices of leg and shoulder, chops, and ribs on platters.

The guests helped carry the serving dishes to the table, and before the plates were passed around, a standing toast was drunk to Ibn for cooking this feast with us.

I savored every bite. The crunchy skin, which had become mahogany with the long basting, was my favorite. The harissa made it spicy, but I could taste and smell the rosemary and thyme, too. The rosy pink meat was just right and dripped juice that during the cooking had moistened the stuffing, and the vegetables in the stuffing had virtually melted into the rice during the long cooking. We all ate until the platters and bowls were nearly empty, scraping our plates clean with our bread, and finished the last of the wine.