Menus and excursions

Menus and Excursions

Above is a photograph of the menu outside the security-guarded gate of the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz. It was spotted an a trip to this celebrated town in the Pays Basque, two and a half hours from Lescun. As you will no doubt notice, the menu is helpfully translated into English but to translate the prices… well, they range from £30 - 42. And these are just the starters.

Wikipedia describes Biarritz as “a luxurious seaside town… popular with tourists and surfers” but there is a lot more to it than that.

The resort became a chic destination during the 18th century when, across Europe, doctors began advocating sea-bathing as a health therapy. It reached its height of popularity, however, during La Bell Epoch during which Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, built a palace there, overlooking La Grande Plage.

Retaining its fashionable status to the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, Biarritz became the place to rub shoulders with a bevy of European royals including Queen Victoria and Edward VI. And so, as we explore the town, we take the Avenue De La Reine Victoria down to the sea front and, later, following the promenade, find ourselves on the Boulevard Du Prince De Galles (Prince of Wales).

This the kind of footprint you can leave if you have the right coloured blood.

Times change, though and today the streets are lined with fancy boutiques jostling for trade while looking slightly uncomfortable next to the surfing and skateboard gear. Bars and ice cream parlours clamour for a sea view as young (mainly men) attempt to impress each other with acrobatic tricks on water or on the wide boulevards. An audio kaleidoscope of accents rattles through the streets: American, German, English, Eastern European…

And the Empress Eugenie’s palace is now the Hotel du Palais.

We do not eat there, although I’m sure it’s very good.

We turn away and, leaving the impressive edifice behind us, I can’t help but wonder what is on the menu at St. Matre - a restaurant which is a completely different kettle of fish, though perhaps this is

an inappropriate metaphor as I have never known fish to be on the menu. But then again, I have never seen a menu.

In France there is a marvellous institution known as La Formule Midi. Difficult to translate, I would offer “lunchtime formula” or maybe “lunchtime deal”, neither of which reflects the experience. Basically, restaurants that offer this are catering for working people who, over here, have maybe two hours to eat at lunchtime. In the restaurant at St. Matre you will find mostly such clientele - road menders, business men, lawyers, lorry drivers, architects or office workers. (The other customers you may find are retired foreigners.) It’s a real mix.

So how does it work?

It’s very simple; you turn up (no booking); you sit down and the waitress presents you with the only choice you will have to make for the next hour rouge ou rosé? Everything else is delivered efficiently and without fuss to the table. I have The unpretentious restaurant at St. Matre never, for example, heard our hosts ask “Is everything all right?”

It has to be said that this is not a restaurant for those who are picky about food or, indeed, those with special dietary requirements. (The words of my parents echo here - “You’ll eat what you’re given…” ) If there were a menu at St Matre, it might look this:

MENU

Soup of the Day (ask if you want to know or care what it is)

Salad Composée (as well as onions, lettuce, tomato, grated carrot there is like to be ham eggs, charcuterie…)

Main Course (always meat and two or three veg)

Cheese (a cheese board)

Desert (something nasty but tasty in a plastic pot) Wine, bread and coffee included.

So how much..? How about 14 euros, or £10.50?

And, naturally, whenever I visit my daughter who lives a stone’s throw from St. Matre, I am a grateful and contented customer.

Back in Lescun two subjects have dominated casual encounters - The Rugby World Cup and cèpes - the highly-prized mushrooms found in the beech forests near the village. The botanical name for these fungi is boletus edulis, so called after the french botanist Pierre Bulliard who, in 1782, was the first to describe the species. With a chestnut coloured cap and thick bulbous stalk cèpes are very different from the familiar white mushrooms preferred by the English. They have no gills and, instead, release their spores from tubes leading vertically down from the cover of the cap.

Consequently, when it comes to cooking they are more robust - less likely to turn mushy.

Keen to try some, we set out for a walk in the woods near Accous, a village in the Valley D’Aspe. Compared with higher altitude routes in the Cirque de Lescun, those around this lower village provide gentler outings, useful when bad weather threatens or we just don’t feel like a major excursion.

Through October the forests crowding the slopes above Accous along with the numerous trees surrounding it, put on an extravagant show, the like of which I have never seen in England.

And, as I look up from my mushroomfocused task, I suddenly realise why.

The tilting of the forest into angles far too steep for human Cèpes with chestnut comfort, means that, effectively, we are viewing it from above. The orange and bronze of the beeches ignited by red flames of maple; splashes of butter-yellow birch and the persistent greens of the pines - all conveniently tipped up as though to say “here… have a look at this”.

October forest

The cèpes prove hard to find. In fact, we don’t find any and, reluctantly, have to accept that we just don’t have the necessary savour faire when it comes to prospecting for fungi. And, anyway, the season is coming to an end, unlike the “hunting season” which has only just begun.

We are reminded of this when a loud crack of rifle-fire tears through the tranquility and rolls around the valley.

Three types of hunting are practiced by the (and again it has to be said) mainly men in the area.

The first involves hours of stalking above the tree line where izard (Pyrenean name for the chamois) are to be found grazing on sparse patches of vegetation in the scree and on the limestone cliffs. Hunters of izard rarely fire, spending most of the time moving stealthily through the difficult mountain terrain.

Venison could well be on the menu in certain households at this time of year. But then, so could sanglier - wild boar.

Common in France and Spain, they spend the daylight hours recovering from their nocturnal orgy of foraging for roots, tubers, shoots and small creatures such as earthworms, rodents and reptiles.

Like humans and, of course like pigs, they are omnivores.

Hunting for sanglier is a team sport requiring trained dogs to flush them out of their woodland cover and powerful rifles capable of stopping a potentially 200 kg male in its tracks.

As well as the start of the hunting season, October marks the beginning of migration for many bird species. Over our house, now, we see gatherings of milans royales (red kite) preparing for their flight south and, a few days ago, on hearing unfamiliar high-pitched cries emanating from somewhere way above, we hurried outside to see a V-formation of some hundred cranes also bent on crossing the range, heading for their annual vacation in warmer climes. These two species will certainly be safe when crossing the frontier ridge.

Alas, not so for the migratory pigeons.

Amateurs of this particular genre of hunting have built hides the length of the long ridge above the Valley d’Ansabere where flocks of pigeon pass over. Here the chasseurs wait with the intention of bringing one further seasonal delicacy to the table.

We continue our walk, enjoying the psychedelic display that appears unexpectedly through leafframed windows in the woods. No cèpes… but we will not return empty handed. Nature’s larder at this time of year is too bountiful for that.

Walnuts and chestnuts are plentiful.

Suddenly we find ourselves walking on a carpet of shells resembling tiny green clapped-out hedgehogs with polished mahogany offspring spilling out across the path. Impossible to miss. We soon have a bagful. Walnuts, on the other hand, turn out to be more discrete although the trees from which they rain down are numerous and easily identified. Staring into the long grass or patches of nettles they hide, camouflaged in the dappled light. I put on my spectacles. This helps and I discover the first - round and stained dark by dew. But then I get my eye in and another appears, dry this time and sandy in colour. It gets easier and we become more selective, rejecting the smaller specimens in favour of those that will make the work of cracking them open more rewarding.

That day in Biarritz, when we turned away from the out-of-ourleague menu at the Hotel Du Palais, we discovered, instead, a small restaurant built into the arches of an old warehouse. It offered a formule du midi at 16 euros.

Following an entree of semi-cooked

cubes of fresh tuna with a sesame seed glaze, medallions of pork were served in a delicious cream of cèpes sauce which I had hoped to recreate this for myself.

So, though happy with our haul of autumn goodies from Accous, I was disappointed by our failure to locate the famous mushrooms. The sauce would have to wait.

But not for long.

That evening there came a knock at the door. Outside,standing in the fading autumn light and holding out a plastic lunch box, was a woman we knew from the village.

“Cèpes,” she said, stepping into the entrance hall. “They’re for you.”

October 23rd 2015