Normandy

It's a mild evening.  A tabby cat silently rubs itself round my ankles before wandering off on guard duty elsewhere.  The only sound is of a Union Flag fluttering gently in the breeze and a few birds going about their business.  We're in a cemetry on the outskirts of a village in northern France looking at the graves of six young men, all under the age of 24.  They died some sixty odd years ago to keep this place so peaceful.  These half dozen men died when their RAF plane came down not far from here and it's because of them - and so many thousand others - that we can stand here this evening enjoying an indulgent holiday.

Further towards the Normandy coast, the war graves and museums, the landing beaches and Mulberries are now tourist attractions.  But here, an hour or so inland, these graves are kept-up out of simple reverance and gratitude.  It's hard to imagine that this village would have been occupied by an invading army despite being so close to our own shores.  And it's hard to imagine the life of those people then.  Yet my own grandfather would have been close to here as part of the Normandy landings - it seems several lifetimes away but is still in living memory.

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In some ways, Normandy isn't so different to back home; gently rolling green hills, small patches of woodland, fields full of grazing cows, hedgerows with familiar wild flowers, villages with stone churches - you could be anywhere in the south of England. 
And yet it's so different to home.  It's still a land of weekly markets where old ladies come to sell a few potatoes and a couple of punnets of strawberries, or where you can buy pet rabbits from the woman right next to the man selling them for food.  Every small town has two or three butchers and at least a couple of bakers.  People make their own cider and form collectives to distil Calvados.  It's a place where cheese is revered and bought not from the supermarket in plastic shrink wrap, but directly from the producer or from a van at the market. 

Normandy seems to me to be a place that makes the most of what it naturally has - a rich coastline, fertile ground and a mild climate with plenty of rain to make the grass grow. From the grass come cows giving us cream, crème fraîche, cheese and beef.  From the ground come apples and vegetables a-plenty.  While many of the traditional apple trees have been removed for more profitable variants, there are still plenty of small orchards providing cider, pommeau and calvados for the locals and tourists alike.  Sadly, few of the pear orchards survive, but it's still possible to get a bottle of perry - bright, crisp and lightly refreshing.

We were walking on a long, windy beach one afternoon when we noticed dozens of groups of locals heading off towards the distant sea carrying matching buckets - the type small children usually carry on beaches, not their parents or grandparents.  They also had little rake-like implements, just a few feet long.  'Cockles?' I wondered.  I followed.  Sure enough, they were collecting tiny white shellfish called 'coques blanches' (I believe from a quick chat in my rusty school-boy French).  For once, I found a use for all those pockets you get in out-sized shorts - I was soon on my knees scraping through the wet sand with my fingers.  Twenty minutes foraging got me a pocket-full - about 25 little shells.  Cleaned by soaking in salt water for an hour or so and cooked quickly with a dash of wine and a sauce made with the juices and a good dollop of local crème fraîche, they made a perfect starter for one.  Give me forty minutes, a rake and a bucket and I'll get you dinner for four!

The coques blanches weren't the only wild food we found - in a wood we saw evidence of morels, sadly overblown by now but had we been here a few weeks earlier...  I reckon the woods should have been rich with girolles had we walked a little further, but mention the word 'picnic' to a two year-old and you'll soon find yourself opening the camembert and ripping into a baguette!

The local pork is good - dark and rich.  The chicken generally free-range and well flavoured and perfect flamed in a little calvados.  The fish more diverse than we get at home, yet strangely from the same narrow stretch of water.  We ate delicious gurnard baked with vegetables one evening, bought from the local market for just a few euros - why don't we see them on the slab back home?

Each small town seems to have its own speciality - one near us has an annual boudin blanc festival, another specialises in tripe, yet another in a particularly fluffy omelette.  While we have our specialities on this side of 'La Manche' as well, we don't really seem to celebrate them with such love and gusto. 

A few recipes will follow...

tags: france  

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