aix&terra

AIX-EN-PROVENCE

32 Rue Vauvenargues
13100 Aix-en-Provence
04 42 09 43 81
www.aixetterra.com

The products of aix&terra – tapenades, jams, oils, vinegars and so on – found their way on to my to-research-soon list when some were spotted for sale in the bistro of prominent Arles chef Jean-Luc Rabanel. Step into this snazzy little shop in the centre of Aix-en-Provence and you can sample pretty much anything from the extensive range before deciding what to buy.

aix&terra is a relative newcomer to the Provençal food scene, founded in 2006 by an ex-banker and a businessman. Its mission is to work with local produce using an artisan approach: all the savoury spreads are prepared by a chef working exclusively for the company in Manosque, while the sweet preserves come from a jam-maker in Valence trained by the great pastry chef Lenôtre. Prices –  on the high side – probably reflect sleek modern packaging as much as food quality.

While I particularly liked the rough-textured black olive tapenade, the artichoke cream spread is apparently a major hit on aperitif toasts. I can also strongly recommend the apricot and calisson jam. But the out-and-out bestseller is truffle oil from Nyons, every bottle flavoured with 3.5g worth of melanosporum. ‘You should try it on a scallop carpaccio, or even just on pasta with Parmesan,’ says enthusiastic shop attendant Julien Dubreuil (see photo).

The range is to be found in heaps of épiceries and some restaurants as well as in the Aix HQ.

La Tarte Tropézienne

ALL OVER PROVENCE

It’s tempting to suggest, with no disrespect intended, that Brigitte Bardot is La Tarte Tropézienne. Or at least plays a crucial role in the existence of the ample  cream bun that you’ll see in pâtisseries everywhere. Something to ponder next time you sort out your late-afternoon low blood sugar by biting into one of these extravagances.

The scene is Saint-Tropez in the mid-1950s. Bardot is filming When God Created Woman with Roger Vadim. And Alexandre Micka, a Polish pâtissier with a shop on the Place des Lices, rustles up a cake which will keep the star from feeling peckish on the set. Voici la tarte tropézienne, made from sugar-topped sweet brioche with a cream filling, the precise ingredients of which have been shrouded in celebrity-type secrecy to this day.

Monsieur Micka bakes massive batches of these buns for the next 30 years, pausing only to re-name his pâtisserie La Tarte Tropézienne and found an empire which today encompasses 17 outlets across the Golfe de Saint-Tropez. He then hands over to his successor – an energetic chap, by all accounts, as the Place des Lices shop alone sells over 2,000 Saint-Trop tartes a day in summer.

Depending on the time of year, different versions are on offer (plain, with strawberries, with raspberries or with chocolate), in three sizes currently costing €17, €23 and €29. Wow, a cream bun with luxury price tag! But then – understatement of the decade – nothing in Saint-Trop comes cheap.

Imitations costing infinitely less are to be found and guzzled all over Provence – though they may not taste quite as good as the original TT.

Le Jour et la Nuit

NEAR VAISON-LA-ROMAINE

Quartier Le Plan
84110 Vaison-la-Romaine
06 80 48 66 47
www.journuitvaison.fr
PRICE RANGE – MODERATE

It took Emmanuelle Pellerin and her partner David Ribes over three years to convert a vast old farm house surrounded by vines a few kilometres from Vaison into a modern B&B. Well worth the effort, by the look of things. Visitors love their five bright, streamlined rooms – all with spacious bathrooms; three with private terraces and one carefully designed to suit guests with limited mobility.

What makes this place really special, though, is the fact that Emmanuelle is a dedicated foodie. Her breakfast buffet includes good charcuterie and cheese from peerless Lou Canesteou, several homemade jams and exceptional fruit juices from nearby La Ferme du Sublon. (Fruit for the especially yummy apricot version comes from trees that can be admired from the diningroom window: how about that for local produce?)

In winter, Emmanuelle cooks a table d’hôte dinner a couple of times a week – hugely appreciated at a time of year when local restaurants are often closed and guests feel inclined to stay close to the fire.  Not much wonder Le Jour et la Nuit is busy all year round. By the end of 2012 it will also have a pool.

For more information about where to stay in the Vaucluse, visit www.provenceguide.co.uk

Strawberries from Carpentras

ALL OVER PROVENCE

Even in very early spring you’ll see strawberries in Provence – some of them imports from Italy or Spain without a huge amount of flavour.  From March onwards fraises de Carpentras, the 15-carat diamonds of the strawberry world, appear on market stalls. Now in May they are nicely mature, in plentiful supply and as cheap as they will ever be – so this is the month to gorge on them to an indecent degree. By June they’ll begin to disappear.

The Comtat Venaissin close to Carpentras has been the main strawberry-growing part of Provence since the late 1800s when the construction of the Canal de Carpentras turned the entire area into a vast market garden. Since 1987, the fraise de Carpentras has had its own registered trade mark, giving it an entrée to the grandest restaurants.

Of the three varieties cultivated, la parajo – dark red and heart-shaped – is the most common, accounting for almost 90% of production. The other two, la ciflorette and la garriguette, are more intensely perfumed (smelling like wild strawberries) and more highly rated. While pâtissiers particularly prize the ciflorette for their cakes, the scrumptious garriguette is unrivalled when it comes to eating strawberries fresh and unadorned. Heaps of them. Away you go.

To find out more about the superb produce of the Vaucluse, visit http://bit.ly/JpQ7Q9

Villa Minna Vineyard

COTEAUX D’AIX-EN-PROVENCE – NEAR AIX-EN-PROVENCE

Roque Pessade CD 17
13760 Saint-Cannat
04 42 57 23 19
www.villaminnavineyard.fr
NO APPOINTMENT NECESSARY

In a single plot fringed by pines with the misty outline of La Sainte-Victoire as a backdrop, the vineyard developed by Jean-Paul Luc and his Finnish wife Minna is in a smashing location. But that’s only one of a string of reasons that make a visit here worthwhile.

Inspired by ambitious, open-minded growers like Eloi Dürrbach of Domaine de Trévallon in Les Baux-de-Provence, self-taught vigneron Jean-Paul has adopted a fastidious approach ever since he took over from his father and began to make his own wines in the late 1990s.

The grapes are hand-picked into small crates. Wild yeasts are relied on for the fermentations. Both whites and reds are treated to a period on the fine lees, with batonnage, in the Burgundian way. (No rosé is made: it’s just not serious enough.) New oak is used sparingly with the purchase of only one new barrel a year. Best of all, to my mind: the wines are held in bottle for an unusually long spell before release.

All this rigour pays off because Villa Minna’s wines are terrific. Due to be certified organic from the 2012 vintage, they have a cool elegance which can be elusive in the south, with the kind of subtlety that depends on fine bones rather than thick flesh. I especially enjoyed the suave Minna Vineyard red 2005, a Syrah/Cabernet/Mourvèdre blend classified as a Vin de Pays des Bouches du Rhône.

Laudably, vintages back to 2000 are on sale in the winery’s smart tasting room. One final reason to seek this place out: Villa Minna organises activities for visitors, including paëlla evenings. Paëlla without rosé? Controversial – but with whites and reds as good as these I’d give it a try.

Tian of tuna

MAISON TRÉVIER – CARPENTRAS

For 4 people:

1 thick slice of fresh tuna (a full round)

1.5kg ripe tomatoes

3 large, mild-flavoured onions

1 fresh head of garlic

½ tsp piment d’Espélette (Basque pimento pepper)

3 bay leaves

1 tsp thyme leaves

1 small wine glass good quality red wine vinegar

2 small wine glasses olive oil

1 Peel the tomatoes, cut them in two and leave to drain in a colander.

2 Heat a heavy-bottomed sauté pan to 120ºC.

3 Peel and finely dice the onions. Heat a little oil in the hot sauté pan and cook them with the bay leaves until they colour slightly. Set aside.

4 Add a little more oil to the pan and sear the tomatoes briefly on both sides in batches, filling the pan. Turn off the heat and set aside.

5 Prepare the tuna, removing the central bone, the dark flesh around it and the skin. Heat the oven to 100ºC.

6 Layer half of the onion in the sauté pan covered with half of the tomatoes, the tuna, the remaining onion and remaining tomatoes. Season with salt, piment d’Espélette and thyme leaves. Tuck the peeled cloves of garlic into the dish here and there and add the vinegar and olive oil. Cover and cook at 100ºC for 1 hour.

7 While the tian is cooking, prepare a pilaf of Camargue rice as an accompaniment.

Chef’s tip: This dish will taste even better if prepared the day before and reheated just before it is served.

For information about Maison Trévier in Carpentras, click here.

Au P’tit Quart d’Heure

AIX-EN-PROVENCE

21 Place Forum des Cardeurs
13100 Aix-en-Provence
09 82 41 64 37
www.auptitquartdheure.fr

What are all these people doing in a small square in the centre of Aix, late on a spring evening? Easy answer: drinking. More precisely, enjoying small tumblers of wine at €1 a pop. Not just any old vino, either, but a decent wine of the month from the Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence selected by Guillaume Rostain, the wine-obsessed dynamo who drives this place. The night I strolled in it was Château La Coste.

From 3pm until late, Tuesday to Saturday, Guillaume does a roaring trade dispensing tumblers by the dozen. Full bottles picked from his impressive range may also be enjoyed on the spot: they’re on sale at cellar-door prices, with corkage a modest €8. Bonum vinum laetificat cor hominis is written in big letters on a blackboard on the wall: good wine gladdens a person’s heart. Especially if it costs just €1, Aix students would probably add.

La Fleur Bleue

CRESTET – NEAR VAISON-LA-ROMAINE

Chemin du Sublon
84110 Crestet
04 90 36 23 45 / 06 15 57 49 27
www.lafleurbleue.fr
PRICE RANGE – MODERATE

The first two minutes in a restaurant exert such a powerful influence on mood and appetite that it’s a wonder more attention isn’t paid to conjuring up an immediate sense of delight. La Fleur Bleue does it brilliantly. The setting couldn’t be prettier, especially in summer when bright flowers and fresh herbs sprout from pots amongst battered tables decked in blue. It’s neither precious nor chi-chi – just charming in a relaxed and personal way. Add Fiejette Worm’s wide smile as she settles you under the wisteria and you feel positive about the place even before the menu is glimpsed.

No cause for anxiety here: it’s simple but tempting, just like the surroundings. Fiejette and her chef husband David worked in restaurants all over the south until they became so hooked on the Provençal lifestyle that they couldn’t bear to go home to Amsterdam. They opened La Fleur Bleue in 2010 and haven’t looked back. Vaison-la-Romaine, not over-endowed gastronomically despite its influx of summer visitors, is only a couple of kilometres away.

A recent lunch moved from tasty mackerel pâté, well presented, to rabbit with white asparagus and finely chopped leeks in a delicious tarragon sauce. Two perfect courses, on offer with a glass of wine for €15. The wine list, incidentally, is a model of its kind – a surprisingly extensive line-up of bottles from many of the best producers in the region and beyond.

The Worms also run two gîtes. Lucky guests to be able to drift in from next door and eat so well.

For more information about the Vaucluse, visit www.provenceguide.co.uk

Goat’s cheeses

ALL OVER PROVENCE

When it comes to cheese, goats lord it over cows and sheep right across Provence. Although you’ll probably enjoy goat’s cheeses of various types all year round, most taste their best from April to October, with milk from spring grazing producing particularly fresh, delicate flavours. So prepare to indulge over the next few months, armed with some basic info about three important cheeses, all AOP (Appellation d’Origine Protégée – made according to strict rules to guarantee quality and authenticity).

Picodon, which comes in quite firm little discs, is made mainly in the Drôme and the Ardèche but also around Valréas in the Vaucluse and Barjac in the Gard. Dry in style, it must be at least 14 days old to be described as demi-sec; or 21 days old to count as sec. After 2 months of having its rind washed, it evolves into a potent Picodon lavé – definitely not for weaklings. With a much gentler flavour, youngish Picodon tastes delicious in salads, grilled, or macerated in white wine or olive oil.

Pélardon, softer in texture and nuttier in flavour, is at home in the Cévennes mountains and a wide sweep of the Languedoc – only a small Gard part of which counts as Provence. Even so, it’s worth looking out for in the west, because this too is a tasty and versatile cheese, important locally since the middle of the 18^th century. It’s widely used in first courses – with salads,  grilled, or simply anointed with olive oil or honey.

Banon, named after a small village in the Alpes de Haute-Provence, is immediately recognisable because of its brown chestnut-leaf wrapping, neatly tied with raffia. It also has a rich, distinctive flavour and an unctuous texture – which no doubt explains why it has stayed popular since Roman times. The writer Jules Verne and the Provencal poet Frédéric Mistral were both big Banon fans. Although it can be bought everywhere, you’ll find it piled especially high at the Saturday market in Apt. Enjoy it with fig jam.

Domaine Ruffinatto

LUBERON – MÉNERBES

Chemin Barielle
84560 Ménerbes
04 90 72 39 76
APPOINTMENT REQUIRED

Wine estates with slick visitor facilities are all very well – but I’d happily swap them every so often for the warmth and authenticity that ooze from simpler places. Like this welcoming family outfit, where you get to taste Christian Ruffinatto’s wines in the kitchen when the weather is cool, or at a makeshift table outside when it’s warm. ‘I am a paysan,’ he grins. ‘A farmer through and through.’

But of course it’s not quite that straightforward. For 20 years, from 1989 to 2009, this farmer had a full-time job taking charge of viticulture and vinification at high-profile Domaine de la Citadelle further down the hill. So even though he began to make wine under his own name in 2001, it is only recently that Domaine Ruffinatto has really taken off.

Christian tends 7 hectares of vines organically in 18 small parcels scattered across different terroirs with varying expositions, some elevated enough to be quite cool. A reflective man, he is keen on Grenache (‘there’s too much Syrah in this region and it makes a lot of wines taste the same’); and he is one of the few Luberon growers to favour the ancient grape variety Counoise (‘wonderful for its wild mulberry flavours as well as its acidity’).

A generous dollop is included in his top wine L’Infante (named in honour of his Spanish wife) – a subtle, complex, glorious red which should definitely be tucked away for a few years before the cork is pulled.

For more information about the Luberon visit www.provenceguide.co.uk