Mirepoix Farmer’s Market
Mark K October 24th, 2007
We visited the farmer’s market in Mirepoix to buy ingredients for dinner that our group will prepare under the supervision of chef Heidi.
In the culinary world, the term “mirepoix” means a combination of onions, carrots, and celery which is the base of many dishes. It is named after the chef of the duke of Levis-Mirepoix, the same place where we are today shopping for onions, carrots, and celery among other things.
The city of Mirepoix is unique because of its half-timbered houses and arcades supported by ancient oak beams. Many of the buildings in the market area date from the 1200’s and the beams look every bit that old!
Heidi, with the help of a local French chef, Jean Luc, selected the ingredients for tonight’s dinner. The idea was to see what was available and let that determine what the menu would be.
Something that you wouldn’t likely see in an American farmer’s market were crates full of live ducks and chickens from which you could choose. We decided to opt for butchered meat at the butcher shop under the arcade.
The prize find for the day was the mushroom seller who had a selection of cepes (French for porcinis), some of which were the size of your head. We had been told that you aren’t allowed to touch the produce or choose your own in French markets, but we found that not to be the case here.
One thing that was similar to our farmer’s markets was that there some booths run by Hispanics, including one who was selling his own CDs of Bolivian folk music. We had a short conversation in Spanish, which sounded SO clear to me after a week of struggling with French.
Here is the menu of our dinner, created from the ingredients purchased at the Mirepoix farmer’s market:
Sauteed mushrooms (cepes) on toast with roasted garlic
Pork, with apples, ginger and roasted root vegetables
Haricot verts with carmelized shallots
Citrus olive oil cake
- cultural diversity
- Comments(0)
