Toujours Provence(18)

Salad came, and then a basketwork tray of cheeses—fat white discs of fresh goat cheese, some mild Cantal, and a wheel of creamy St. Nectaire from the Auvergne. This inspired André, now installed at the head of the table, to produce another joke. There was this little boy in the Auvergne who was asked which he liked best, his mother or his father. The little boy thought for a moment. “I like bacon best,” he said. André heaved with laughter. I was relieved to be out of nudging distance.

Scoops of sorbet were offered, and an apple tart, sleek with glaze, but I was defeated. When André saw me shake my head, he bellowed down the table, “You must eat. You need your strength. We’re going to have a game of boules.”

After coffee, he led us outside to show us the goats that he kept in a pen at the side of the restaurant. They were huddled in the shade of an outbuilding, and I envied them; they weren’t being asked to play boules under a sun that was drilling lasers into the top of my head. It was no good. My eyes were aching from the glare and my stomach wanted desperately to lie down and digest in peace. I made my excuses, found a patch of grass under a plane tree, and lowered my lunch to the ground.

André woke me some time after six and asked if I was staying for dinner. There were pieds et paquets, he said, and by some happy chance two or three bottles of the Gigondas had survived. With some difficulty, I escaped and drove home.

My wife had spent a sensible day in the shade and by the pool. She looked at me, a rumpled apparition, and asked if I had enjoyed myself.

“I hope they gave you something to eat,” she said.





Buying Truffles

from Monsieur X


The whole furtive business began with a phone call from London. It was my friend Frank, who had been described once in a glossy magazine as a reclusive magnate. I knew him better as a gourmet of championship standard, a man who takes dinner as seriously as other men take politics. Frank in the kitchen is like a hound on the scent, sniffing, peering into bubbling saucepans, quivering with expectation. The smell of a rich cassoulet puts him in a trance. My wife says that he is one of the most rewarding eaters she has ever cooked for.

There was a hint of alarm in his voice when he explained why he was calling.

“It’s March,” he said, “and I’m worried about the truffles. Are there still some left?”

March is the end of the truffle season, and in the markets around us, as close as we were to the truffle country in the foothills of Mont Ventoux, the dealers seemed to have disappeared. I told Frank that he might have left it too late.

There was a horrified silence while he considered the gastronomic deprivation that stared him in the face—no truffle omelets, no truffles en croûte, no truffle-studded roast pork. The telephone line was heavy with disappointment.

“There’s one man,” I said, “who might have a few. I could try him.”

Frank purred. “Excellent, excellent. Just a couple of kilos. I’m going to put them in egg boxes and keep them in the deep freeze. Truffles in the spring, truffles in the summer. Just a couple of kilos.”

Two kilos of fresh truffles, at current Paris prices, would have cost more than a thousand pounds. Even down in Provence, bypassing the chain of middlemen and buying direct from the hunters with their muddy boots and leather hands, the investment would be impressive. I asked Frank if he was sure he wanted as much as two kilos.

“It wouldn’t do to run short,” he said. “Anyway, see what you can manage.”

My only contact with the truffle business consisted of a telephone number scribbled on the back of a bill by the chef of one of our local restaurants. He had told us that this was un homme sérieux as far as truffles were concerned, a man of irreproachable honesty, which is not always the case in the murky world of truffle dealing, where petty swindles are rumored to be as common as sunny days in Aix. I had heard tales of truffles loaded with buckshot and caked with mud to increase their weight and, even worse, inferior specimens smuggled in from Italy and sold as native French truffles. Without a reliable supplier, one could get into some expensive trouble.

I called the number the chef had given me and mentioned his name to the man who answered. Ah, oui. The credentials were accepted. What could he do for me?

Some truffles? Maybe two kilos?

“Oh là là,” said the voice. “Are you a restaurant?”

No, I said, I was buying on behalf of a friend in England.

“An Englishman? Mon Dieu.”

After a few minutes of sucking his teeth and explaining the considerable problems involved in finding so many truffles so late in the season, Monsieur X (his nom de truffe) promised to take his dogs into the hills and see what he could find. He would let me know, but it would not be a rapid affair. I must stay by the phone and be patient.