Over the weekend I started to write about Elizabeth David and her wonderful book, An Omelette and a glass of wine, whilst trying to catchup on the weeks of lost blog posts.
Today reading in NNW, I find that Ben Hammersley has a post on the same book. His take is about RecipeML and sharing online recipes, something that this site might have done in a previous life.
My reason for writing about that excellent book is not this time for the delightfully written recipes, which often share a small story or credit the originator of the dish, but for the descriptions of the markets in the final 30 odd pages of the book. She describes the markets of Cavallon and the Provence and the northern makets in the cider apple growing areas of the Nord Pas du Calais and Brittany. These rich details of the simplicity of fresh quality market food are still there in France 40 years later, luckily. Thus as well as a cookery book, Elizabeth David has written a travel guide to the culinary delights of France, which holds pretty true to this day.
Another institution which held this role was the Bond films from the early 60s, all those long panning shots of foreign exotic locations acted as a stimulus to the burgeoning jet travel industry of that decade and on to the easyjets of today.
We no longer need Bond films to show us the locations to travel to, but for the British at least our culinary appetites still need whetting from the writings of the recent past.
I'm off to France for a few days over the coming Bank Holiday weekend and looking forward to these sights and smells once again. In Britain we can make markets like this happen for special occasions, like pre-Christmas or even weekly for some cities, but in France they are 10 a penny in most medium sized towns. Grenoble has at least 3 most days, maybe in the UK we just don't get enough sunshine to make the fruit burst forth and ripen.
