Living in France market day is a special part of the week and Wednesday is market day in Clermont l’Herault. It’s an important part of any town’s economy and the markets are scheduled so that the farmers, cheese makers and other sellers can be in a different town on different days of the week, to spread the joy around so to speak
Market day is a medieval tradition and beloved because not only is it an opportunity to get extraordinary food, but it provides townspeople a chance to meet friends and catch up on the latest news and gossip.
So this Market day morning we grab our shopping bags and set out early for our first look at the Clermont market. When we arrived we parked at the municipal lot and walk about three blocks to the “Centre Ville” and the market.
The heart of Clermont l’Herault is the old church and as it has been done for centuries the market spreads itself through the streets surrounding the church.
Even from blocks away from it you can see the market stalls extending for blocks in all directions. And even though it is early in the morning --some vendors are still setting up--there are dozens of people already shopping.
Walking into the market I am amazed at the variety of the stalls. There’s are three or four olives stand each with at least twenty varieties of olive concoctions, a couple of honey vendors, half a dozen produce stalls, about as many cheese stands and so on and so on. There’s a housecoat and pajama seller and a lingerie booth and a soap seller. A guy with a petite goatee is selling kitchen knives and across from me there is a van selling horse meat.
Yes, there’s a horse meat vendor and he sells out of the side of his small van. There’s a small wooden riser in front of the van and after a minute or two I realize that it is for the older French people, who are physically very short and are his main clients. Horse meat isn’t all that cheap so I suspect that these older folk simply acquired a taste for it as children during the hard, hungry years just after the Second World War. We forget how devastated Europe was by the war. While America boomed countries like France and Italy were literally, no actually starving.
It’s always a good idea to walk the entire length and breadth of a market before you start to buy anything. It was a good idea here because there was something at the Clermont market I hadn’t seen at other French markets, sellers of fresh mushroom.
Clermont lies in the green, forested hills of the Herault and it seems that a lot of the locals go out and pick wild mushrooms to sell at the market. There were several at the Clermont market with improvised stalls made of old crates. On top of the vertical crates sat horizontal crates filled with huge boletus mushrooms the size of a softball, chanterelles by the ton at $5 lb and lots of wild mushrooms I’d never seen before.
At the produce stands there were lettuces the size of sombreros (1 euro each) and piles or berries and melons.
It was truly overwhelming and humbling. It is what life should be about, friends and good fresh food.
Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer
We forget how devastated Europe was by the war
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