Food shopping Allez les verts A Parisian greengrocer is now offering the kind of fruit and vegetables once reserved for the grands chefs. By Isabel Best
Le Comptoir des Producteurs, Paris In the highest echelons of French cooking, the grands chefs are naturally obsessional about all their ingredients, not least their fruit and vegetables. Alain Passard, king of vegetarian elegance at his three-star Paris restaurant L’Arpège, has three kitchen gardens around France to ensure quality. Asafumi Yamashita, a Japanese market gardener based in Yvelines, south-west of Paris, supplies only a handful of select chefs, including Pascal Barbot and Pierre Gagnaire. His produce is so sought after that clients take whatever comes their way and Yamashita scrutinises use of his vegetables carefully; one chef saw his spinach quota reduced to two deliveries a year after he committed the faux pas of blanching it. Le Comptoir des Producteurs, a new greengrocer in the 14th arrondissement, is bringing haut de gamme veg within reach of the domestic cook. The shop belongs to the Charraire family, which has been supplying Parisian restaurants since 1945 – current clients include the George V, the Plaza Athénée and the Ritz. The Charraires work with the sort of fruit and vegetable growers who “talk to their greengages”, says Anaïs Bernier, the granddaughter of the founders, who now runs Le Comptoir. These include Pierre Baud from the Vaucluse, who cultivates more than 300 kinds of fig, and Michel and Bénédicte Bachès, near Perpignan, who have devoted 30 years to collecting and cultivating more than 850 varieties of citrus. It’s thanks to the Bachès that Le Comptoir des Producteurs is one of the rare places in Paris where you can buy fresh Japanese yuzu or Corsican citron. Other suppliers are “heirloom” specialists, producing rare local varieties such as the Boulette de Bussy (€4.90 per kilo), a sweet turnip only grown in the village of Bussy-le-Château in Champagne. All work with sustainable methods and many are organic. ft.com/magazine june 18/19 2016
Inside the shop, the produce is worthy of a Chardin still life, displayed in old-fashioned wooden boxes and appearing as if pulled fresh from the garden. Prices start at around €3.90 per kilo for locally grown apples and rise for more unusual produce: organic carrots grown in Breton sand (€4.05 per kilo); herbs such as purslane, chickenweed and wood sorrel (€4.90 per punnet); or asparagus from Provence, green-tipped and charmingly irregular (€29.90 per kilo). At home, I make a salad from two kinds of yellow beetroot (3.90€ per kilo) and briefly blanch their leaves, drizzling both in a garlicky vinaigrette. The leaves taste like buttery spinach, while the roots have a subtle, rich flavour that I would challenge the most vehement beetrootphobe not to enjoy. In the colder months, I follow Bernier’s suggestion of slowly frying chervil roots in butter in a covered pan, then tossing them with minced parsley. They are quite delicious; chestnutty, slightly sweet, crunchy on the outside and potato-soft within. One of Bernier’s chef clients cooks these as a dessert. Another time, I try a couple of oranges: one from Nice – sweet, juicy and surprisingly devoid of acidity – and a vanilla orange from Tunisia. The rind does indeed smell of vanilla but the flavour is quite bizarre, neither sour nor particularly sweet. With a few other notable exceptions (such as invitingly plump Peruvian mangoes), the stock is French and changes from week to week; strawberries from Pithiviers, perhaps, mushrooms from Picardy, or apricots from the Languedoc. With its headquarters at the famous Rungis fruit and vegetable market, the Comptoir can also fulfil special requests – an affordable way to taste as much of the French larder as possible. Le Comptoir des Producteurs 25 rue Mouton Duvernet, 75014 Paris Tel: + 33 (0) 1 45 40 48 02; comptoirdesproducteurs.fr 53
