RELAXATION, REVELRY, AND REVELATION - 22 October 2011
22nd October 2011
We've spent the last 2 days just outside the village of Lourmarin at La Feniere. We discovered this place on our first night in the Luberon - 24th March to be precise - stumbling across it in the dark, desperate for a place to spend the night after the one recommended turned out to be a disaster.
La Feniere is one of those lucky and memorable finds that we all dream of experiencing: extremely hospitable, beautiful courtyard and grounds, luxurious rooms, a cafe and a restaurant boasting the Chef, Reine Sammut, twice-crowned France's Woman Chef of the Year.
On Wednesday, the day after we closed on the Cape house, we wafted around, grinning at each other every other minute and singing our newly-composed "Debt-Free" song. Along with this new lightness I could also feel the exhaustion from months of tension. I seem to be one of those people who is capable of keeping it together while the stressful situation is happening and then collapsing once it is resolved. And besides, we wanted to celebrate the sale and our new freedom so we opted for 2 nights at La Feniere, luxuriating in the king-size bed, the enormous bathtub, and having all our meals cooked for us.
And what meals! We arrived at the end of the lunch period and so by the time we were shown to our old room and unpacked, the kitchen had stopped serving but offered to make us each an enormous salad of the lightest, freshest greens - including my favorite, mustard greens, topped with generous shavings of brebis cheese and jambon. And then we overdid it beautifully with a plate of chocolate inventions.
Nicely stuffed we strolled the grounds. The day, while overcast, could not diminish the beauty of the landscape, now turning fast to autumn, a layering of greens and golds and rusts, punctuated by the pinks and crimson of summer roses and the orange and scarlet of winter berries.
We lounged around, read a bit, bathed and dressed for dinner, which this night was served in the wittily decorated restaurant. I'd been craving veggies and so was thrilled to order, as my starter, a tart of autumn vegetables, while Joel warmed his cockles on a bowl of pumpkin soup poured over foie gras. We could have, perhaps should have stopped right there but, hey, we were celebrating, so we soldiered on - loup cooked on the bone for Joel and for me, duck breast and the drumsticks of some frail fowl - pigeon perhaps? Quail? Some flying object with a hipbone the size of a toothpick and flesh as deep as the woods, all bathed in a reduction whose description I was unable to translate from the French. But does it matter? After all, if it's possible to weep at the opera without understanding a single word, surely one can gush over an entree without knowing all the ingredients. So let's just say the food was an experience in depth of taste and succulence of texture, so much so that neither of us had room for dessert.
But this is France! Bad enough we don't drink wine or partake of the cheese course, but we are not allowed to leave table without sugar. The combination of the sense of form and good manners comes up with the perfect concoction: a small glass each, of rosemary citron sorbet, ever so lightly drizzled with olive oil and a pot of linden blossom tea. And so with a Bon Nuit here and a Bon Nuit there we leave the restaurant to those still coursing their way through culinary supremacy and walk the few yards down the garden path to our little stone building.
This building is probably 18th Century and looks it from the outside, complete with moss-covered wall fountain and rose-draped arbor, while inside its 3 suites are all boutique. In fact, our suite has a walk-in closet bigger than many Manhattan studio apartments, one wall of which is a 5 tiered, 8' long shoe rack! Is this French wit? One never knows. But for a giggle we place Joel's sneakers and my one pair of shoes on it. Sated and happy, we have just enough energy for one last rendition of "Debt-Free" before our heads hit the pillows.
The next day - Friday - we arise late and make the most of an extremely generous breakfast involving eggs, ham, cheeses, yogurt, fruit salad, 3 different cakes, mini baguettes, croissant and pain chocolat. Mon Dieu!
It's Market Day in Lourmarin and we pay a brief visit just for the pleasure of looking at the stalls, the sellers, the shoppers. This market life is one of Provence's greatest gifts. There's something really comforting about being able to count on this form of shopping, which, because every village has its own market day, means you can shop for just what you need today and therefore you're eating the freshest produce in season. But it's also the sense of community that's heartening. The getting to know the fish people, the poultry purveyors, the vegetable stall, the mushroom man, the pastry people and so on. Here 20 types of olives, here oils, over there pottery, scarves, the ubiquitous market baskets, the olive wood. Oh, there's the hat man and next to him, Robert, a man of constant motion as he spreads different tapinades on morsels of baguette, seducing the crowd to sample.
This day we discover the pigment man and buy 3 bottles of Gris Ardoise pigment for our bedroom walls in New York. It's what I call one of the 'ish' colors: pale gray-ish, green-ish. It's a shade I've long-loved, finding it restful and mysterious as it changes with the light and always seeming to float whatever surface is coats.
We return to La Ferniere where we have a date with Reine in the restaurant kitchen where she and her assistants are preparing lunch. Joel is much better at this sort of thing than am I. Perhaps it's one of the differences between being a Push American and a Repressed English Person: he has no problem getting right in there and has a wonderful ability to dance with everyone, while I tend to hover on the edge afraid of being a nuisance.
Still, there's something to be said from observing from afar. What I see is the whole picture and what strikes me is how happy and relaxed this kitchen in. Well, let me be honest, what strikes me first is that Reine is wearing heels! I love French women. And this one has a great spirit and a warm demeanor so that within minutes I feel comfortable moving in close and asking her what she's making. In one pan she is reducing carrots and onions, while in another she's making an oyster, lemongrass sauce. "I don't know if it will work," she says gaily. These two concoctions, if I understood correctly, will be used for a St. Jacques.
She asks me where I live and lights up when I tell her Manhattan. Oh, she says, I was just there. I ask here where she ate that she liked and she mentions Peche and the restaurant at MOMA. I recommend she try Madison Park next time and she whips out her iPhone and makes a note.
Over on a side counter, a young woman is wrapping beef cheeks in bacon. They will be immersed in the salamander before being dressed with a veal sauce and served with 2 generous slices of fois gras...and that's a lunch canapé! Served before the amuse bouche!
The sun has come out and regrettably still full from breakfast we skip lunch and instead retire to one of the outdoor divans to read under a canopy of ocher canvas. The sky is a rich blue with the occasional white puff of merry cloud. Every one in a while I look up and see what we so often see here: a complexity of layered landscape, each plant and shrub and tree a thing unto itself and yet seemingly woven into that which grows beside and behind it. It's a slightly dizzying experience that interferes with one's depth perception and today it is matched by an equally complex layering of birdsong. There is nowhere we would rather be.
Note: Back in January Joel and I began discussing possible themes we might engage in order to find a way into a landand its people that we know nothing about. I had spent the last several months composing and playing the piano and was already beginning to have pangs that I would be without that instrument while traveling. Joel suggested that everywhere we went we try to find a piano as this would not only keep me in tune, so to speak, but would lead to encounters with people and places. We called it the metaphysical piano. We didn't really follow up on this theme and in fact have found only one piano in all these months (in a hotel in Arles) which invited me to sit at it. But in the creative process no idea is wasted whether consciously implemented or not. In this case, what I have come to understand is that Provence is a land which has its own mysterious, syncopated rhythm which one must first feel before one can begin to hear the melody and beyond to the harmony.