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At the other extreme I read the other day (in the Daily Mail online edition) of a married British country vicar whose morals have been far too relaxed. He had sent his lover - a separated married woman who had abandoned her husband and four children - a card with a naked man on the front, his modesty covered only by a yellow square and signed With very massive love to you today and every day. Dave XXXXXX. The unfortunate cuckold only suspected his wife of having an affair with the vicar when his children told him that on the occasions they stayed with their mother, the man with the dog collar was a frequent visitor. Their mother would tell them he was coming to mend the washing machine or clean the windows. Becoming suspicious (What business does a vicar have doing tasks like that?) the poor cuckold went round to her house. Looking in the front window he had the shock of finding his estranged wife on the couch in her dressing gown with a man kissing and canoodling. The ecclesiastical authorities have been informed and have decided that the vicar has a case to answer. It may be only a matter of time before he is unfrocked. Please forgive me. I have digressed again. From now on I promise to keep to the point. La Bullinada
The eel is sometimes described by locals with some accuracy as the American tourist. I was staggered to discover that eels spawn their larvae in the Sargasso sea off the coast of North America. It then takes these larvae a year to make the journey of some 6,000 kilometres across the Atlantic and along the north Mediterranean coast to the Etang de Salses. They are caught in cleverly designed hooped nets (either of one or three hoops) that allow the very young elvers (civelles) to escape whilst catching those of about the length of your middle finger (6 to 7 centimetres). Fishing of the civelles is forbidden, though there is a very lucrative black market trade in them for poachers. The fully grown eels (35 centimetres or more long) then swim back to the Sargasso sea to breed the next lot of larvae. There are now only four or five fishermen left who make a living all the year round from fishing eels in the Etang, whereas half a century ago there were some 200-300. The living is precarious because of the huge variation in catches - from 2 kilos to 300 kilos!!! The eel fishermen reportedly net 5 euros or less a kilo!! When we arrived at the Bullinada festival venue in La Rouquette a tatty collection of huts, and a dining area with tables and benches under a rather frail-looking awning made of the wild reeds that grow in abundance - there wasnt a Dane, nor a German nor a Belgian to be seen. Nor even, thank goodness, any other English people. This was to prove to be one of only two purely local events (outside our village) I have been to in 23 years of visiting the area. (True, there were a few French people from other parts of France on holiday but no foreigners except ourselves.) And yet we
were made most welcome. When we rang to book, the lady gave us her
husbands mobile number in case we got lost. Not for nothing was
the organising body called LAmicale de lEtang (perhaps translatable as
The Friends of the Etang). Wonderful!
Just leave the N9 at Salses-le-Château and follow the signs to LEtang, and then La Bullinada she had said . We did, and it worked, though it was such a long winding way over the island (La Rouquette) to the festival venue that you needed some courage not to turn back and start again for fear of having missed a turning. Although we were asked to arrive at noon, the event took a good hour after that to get under way (as is always the case in these parts). The heat on this late July day was Inferno-like, though a cooling sea breeze made it bearable. As the tables gradually filled up (there were about 200 of us in all) the first real signs of activity were three men going round all the tables. (The vast amount of work involved in this entire enterprise is done by bénévoles or volunteers.) The first carried a bottle of pastis, the second a bottle of ice-cold water, and the third a bottle of Muscat de Rivesaltes for those who didnt want pastis the ladies mainly, who down here seem generally to prefer muscat to pastis. A glass or two soon breaks the ice and we found ourselves in animated conversation with those around us and in particular with an odd but very interesting chap who came on his own because, he said, his wife was ill. Very unconventionally, he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal his rather sweaty, hairy chest (which my wife didnt find very conducive to her appetite) and spent most of the meal haranguing the guests around us with tirades of fiercely partisan Catalan politics. It did become a little wearing and tedious but he proved to be very adept at getting glasses refilled and second helpings etc. He obviously knew all the ropes. After the apéritifs came a delicious fresh tomato salad with red onions from Toulouges, and a light mayonnaise dressing. Then came the Bullinada, for which you had to queue up with your entry ticket and your own soup bowl brought from home. The eels had been carefully cleaned and gutted and then boiled with the other ingredients by the fishermen for about 20 minutes in three huge cast-iron cauldrons (ouilles) over wood fires. The recipe is simple: layers of eels and potatoes in equal proportions, starting with sliced potatoes and finishing with eels, with garlic, pimentos, sagit, and a little flour stirred in for just a slight thickening. The dish was served with separate slices of garlic toast. (Sometimes garlic croutons are placed in each bowl just before serving.) The accompanying wine is always local red, never white. At a rough guess there must have been about 50 kilos of eels simmering away along with the same quantity at least of potatoes and 25 whole bulbs of garlic. What a lot of peeling, and slicing to be done by that army of willing bénévoles! They no doubt have exotic Catalan surnames like Cayrol, Ayats, Iglesias or Blanic, and first names like Jany, Montse, Joan and Joëlle. Our fanatical Catalan fellow diner led the way with the eating by showing us how to take each eel in your fingers and suck off its exquisitely tender flesh. He also led the way with the drinking, recharging our plastic beakers (or rather mine and his) with copious quantities of rouge. It is to be hoped he wasnt breathalysed on his way home. Then came some
cheese, a gateau, and some coffee. Alas we had to leave before the
post prandial festivities got into their stride. We departed to the
sounds of relaxing music relayed by a disc jockey prior to the dancing
and whatever.
My stalwart friend Peter reports once again in these pages on another day out we enjoyed together: an Ouillade in Tautavel, where a famous museum celebrates the discovery of the remains of prehistoric man from 450,000 years ago. It was as purely a local event as La Bullinada. An Ouillade (or Ollada in Catalan) is a pig stew that includes pigs trotters, pigs tails and other choice morsels that the English never touch, black puddings (boudin), cabbages, leeks, potatoes, carrots, celery, thyme, dried haricot beans and the inevitable sagit, as already described. This time the venue was on the tourist route at Tautavel. So with the thought that parking might be a problem, off we went with plenty of time to spare. No problem at all on arrival in the village, and no sign of the hordes of hungry Brits who might be coming to have a change from fish and chips. Once again we were there ready to eat, far too early, but with no idea where this fête would be held. We stretched our legs by walking the length of the village, and each time we asked where the fête would be, the answer came that we should turn around and go back the way we came. How could they hide a village fête when all the other exhibition halls and museums of prehistory were well signposted? The appointed time came, and all was revealed. The double blank doors of a large but unobtrusive building were opened by one of the ladies of the village. This was the Salle des Fêtes which was in the square where we arrived. In defence of our apparent lack of sense of direction it must be added that there was no sign or label anywhere to be seen on the outside of the building. So it wasnt a senior moment either. So we entered the doors, to be met by a smiling and welcoming face, bemused by these strange foreigners. My colleague Basil had had the foresight to ring up to say that we would like to come to the Ouillade, so when he said who we were, it was immediate recognition and a welcome. What a contrast to the oyster fête [of which more next time], where they had two thousand people to deal with. It reminded me of times long past, when I needed to fly from Bournemouth to Manchester. All the passengers for the flight assembled in a small room, and the air hostess came in and greeted us. We all stood in a circle around her and she took our tickets. It seemed so personal. But I digress again. We chose our seats and started to nibble those terrible salty tid-bits which always appear at aperitifs, with a pastis or Grenache wine. The hall was arranged as a small theatre, with an upper circle and a stage. On one side of the stage was a door which led down to the bowels of the building. Then something was going on. The ladies disappeared with two men in tow, down the stairs, and the men quickly reappeared with very large steaming aluminium cauldrons. The ladies then served out the contents of the cauldrons onto dishes, and it was the turn of the younger generation to pass the food to the awaiting villagers and those two rather odd English people. From one came pigs trotters and tails cooked with vegetables and from the other boudin, or black pudding. An interesting coupling, washed down with red wine. Once again there was the chance to have a chat with local people, and we felt that we had had a most warm welcome. here was no shortage of food, and all were invited to go up to the table at the front of the hall to help themselves. Which we did. Finally there was cheese and coffee to finish the meal. We came away with the feeling that we had been very lucky to be able to have a taste of a real long standing French way of life, and to have experienced a village atmosphere which we want to think will continue for ever. An old-fashioned
country doctor
Au revoir et à bientôt! (Source for
information on eels: Elisabeth Mauris, Terres Catalanes, September 2003)
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JOIE
DE VIVRE
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