shewhomust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shewhomust) wrote2005-06-12 12:28 pm
shewhomust) wrote2005-06-12 12:28 pm
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A mountain kingdom
We walked, in the end, from Aire sur l'Adour, in the Landes (40), to the chapel at Olhaïby in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques (64). But these names and numbers represent the modern map of France, the departmental system codified after the Revolution; we walked from Gascony, through Béarn into the Basque country. And of these three, it was Béarn that was the surprise.
Wikipedia sums it up: Béarn is a small territory, tucked into the Pyrenees and their nothern foothills, wedged between France and Spain "comme un pou que se disputaient deux singes (like a louse between two monkeys)" according to its king Henri d'Albret.
Through the middle ages, it preserved its independence, despite falling by inheritance into the hands of one lord after another: Gaston Phoebus paid homage to the French king for his county of Foix, but refused to do so for Béarn; later it became the property of the kings of Navarre, across the Pyrenees in Spain; even when Henri of Navarre became Henri IV of France, Béarn remained a separate kingdom which shared the same king as France. One result of this delayed unification with France is that Béarn was not bound by the edict that laws should be passed in French (i.e., not in Latin; but also, not in the local language) and continued to legislate in Occitan until the Revolution.
It's farming country; in late May, the wheat was high in the fields, but maize was still being planted (we had the impression that, day by day, we could see it growing). It was hay-making season, and tractors roared precariously across small fields at odd angles on hillsides. There are cattle (the coat of arms of Béarn is two red cows on a golden background) and vines. The farms are large, stone-built houses with slate or tile roofs, facing the farm outbuildings across a shady courtyard. And I'll let Elizabeth David tell you what they eat in those farms:
That's from her French Provincial Cooking. She goes on to add that Sauce Béarnaise has nothing to do with the region, being a nineteenth century restaurant invention. Oh, well...
Not to mention the towns with their medieval churches or sixteenth century fortifications, perched high above fast-flowing rivers of blue-green water from the snow of the Pyrenees.
Wikipedia sums it up: Béarn is a small territory, tucked into the Pyrenees and their nothern foothills, wedged between France and Spain "comme un pou que se disputaient deux singes (like a louse between two monkeys)" according to its king Henri d'Albret.
Through the middle ages, it preserved its independence, despite falling by inheritance into the hands of one lord after another: Gaston Phoebus paid homage to the French king for his county of Foix, but refused to do so for Béarn; later it became the property of the kings of Navarre, across the Pyrenees in Spain; even when Henri of Navarre became Henri IV of France, Béarn remained a separate kingdom which shared the same king as France. One result of this delayed unification with France is that Béarn was not bound by the edict that laws should be passed in French (i.e., not in Latin; but also, not in the local language) and continued to legislate in Occitan until the Revolution.
It's farming country; in late May, the wheat was high in the fields, but maize was still being planted (we had the impression that, day by day, we could see it growing). It was hay-making season, and tractors roared precariously across small fields at odd angles on hillsides. There are cattle (the coat of arms of Béarn is two red cows on a golden background) and vines. The farms are large, stone-built houses with slate or tile roofs, facing the farm outbuildings across a shady courtyard. And I'll let Elizabeth David tell you what they eat in those farms:
Peppers and onions are sizzling gently in a big frying-pan, the goose dripping in which they are cooking giving off its unmistakable smell. A squat, round-bellied earthen pot, blackened with use, containing beans and salt pork and cabbage, seems to be for ever on the simmer. A string of wrinkled, dried, dark red peppers hangs from the ceiling alongside a piece of roughly cut ham; a bunch of little red sausages and a pitcher of yellow wine are on the table. The kitchen of this little peasant farm-house in the Bearn is small and smoky, by no means the ideal airy, well-ordered, well-scrubbed farmhouse kitchen of one's imagination; but the pink-washed walls are clean against the faded blue paint of the windows and shutters, and on the shelves of the little larder there are three or four tall glazed earthen jars to bear witness to the careful housekeeping of the farmer's wife. For these are the pots of confit, the goose and pork and duck, salted, cooked, and preserved in their own wax-white fat, which, with the ham and the sausages and the peppers, lie at the base of all the local cookery.
For here, at any rate in the deep country, butter, except for pastry-making, is considered a wretched substitute for the rich fat of the goose (Norman Douglas tells us that goose fat was held by the Greeks to be an aphrodisiac, adding, characteristically, that to him it was an emetic). So whether it is a question of frying eggs, or sausages, or a steak, of cooking a daube of beef, or the heavy thick cabbage and bean soup called garbure, into the pan goes the goose fat or the pork lard, to be followed by the onions, the tomatoes, the garlic and the brick red pepper called piment basquais. The locally cured ham, the jambon de Bayonne or of Orthez will add its salty tang to the mixture, along with a piece of pork either from the salting trough or from the jar of confit. The wines of the Bearnais and the Basque country which are drunk with these
dishes are topaz or rose-coloured or rich deep red, and have curious names easy to remember but difficult to pronounce - Pacherenc de Vic Bilh, Tadousse-Usseau, Irouléguy, Jurançon, Monein, Saint-Faust, Madiran, Chahakoa, Diusse and Rousselet de Béarn.
That's from her French Provincial Cooking. She goes on to add that Sauce Béarnaise has nothing to do with the region, being a nineteenth century restaurant invention. Oh, well...
Not to mention the towns with their medieval churches or sixteenth century fortifications, perched high above fast-flowing rivers of blue-green water from the snow of the Pyrenees.