A Week in Provence: Day 5, Lourmarin, the Market, and Aioli

Today, we vowed not to get in the Citroen, no matter how tempted we might be to take off and go somewhere else. We've vowed to spend the whole day around Lourmarin. After all, Friday is market day, and the squares are filled to overflowing with everything from fish to hats. There are tempting forest mushrooms, tablecloths, tubs of olives, spices. Folks behind glass cases full of moldy cheeses thrust big, sturdy knives at everyone who passes, tipped with some little morsel of cheese or slice of saucisson.

We had gobs of foodie fun. We bought a pigeonneau, a young pigeon or what we in the US call a squab in order to convince ourselves of the gourmet goodness of it. The butcher asked me if I wanted to clean it or let him do it, and I pointed to him, politely of course. Squab in Italy or France is generally sold defeathered but with internal organs intact. He cleaned the thing impeccably while keeping the edible bits like the liver beautifully intact. I've never done it that precisely. It was a joy to watch. Not that it would make a good television show or anything, but foodie fun is oddly technical sometimes.

As we were buying the rest of our dinner, including mushrooms called something like "Mouton feet", we noticed packs of wild tourists had begun flooding the market. The big, hulking tourist buses had hit town, probably tripling its population. We hurried home to get our stuff put away because we wanted to go to Cafe Gaby for lunch and had visions of being aced out by a clot of folks in shorts headed by someone continually stabbing a colorful umbrella lewdly toward the clear blue sky.

But alas, it was not to be. We snagged a table easily and locals quickly filled the joint. Some of them started moving tables around and we found ourselves at one end of a sort of horseshoe arrangement. Sitting beside us was an older woman who was wheezing so badly we didn't know if she'd make it through the meal. She ordered the duck leg and some boiled vegetables. They didn't bring her bread, which I think was part of a cat-and-mouse strategy. Eventually she asked for some. As soon as the waiter set it down and turned away, she filled her purse with it.

By now the other end of the horseshoe was in a convivial mood. Sturdy men got ready for the aioli--a big platter of boiled vegetables, fish and snails with a pot of garlic sauce--by stuffing napkins down the necks of their shirts and smoothing them gracefully over broad chests. Wine flowed. The conviviality increased to the point that the laughter was not only loud but it ended with snorts. Lots of snorts. If there was any question whether we were in the real Provence, it went out the window with the downing of the first pichet de vin rouge. Fun.

Martha ordered the aioli you see in the picture. It's a boiled garden, complete with pesky snails, plus some fish. The one potato is kinda small, so they included another the size of a soccer ball. I had the Andouillette with frites instead because I knew I could dip my frites in the aioli and still eat some of the vegetables.

I gotta tell you, we were so stuffed that after my afternoon nap Martha made me take a two hour walk. It didn't work. I'm still stuffed and the squab awaits, clean as a whistle. Oh, the meal plus a little wine and coffee set us back €28. I'd go again. And again.

P.S. If you plaster your green beens with enough aioli they will stick to your vertically deployed napkin when you happen to miss your mouth. I know this by observation. One kind gent had two of them displayed thusly. Way cool.