My kingdom for a knife that cuts!

A knife – that cuts

A knife that cuts, a knife that cuts – my kingdom for a knife that cuts!

It is a mystery – albeit not, perhaps, one of Earth’s greatest – how some people view self catering.

We are, as we have been for the past six summers, in a self-catering cottage in Collioure.

On Saturday, after our overnight sleeper from Paris had pulled to a halt at the little station above the ville, we wandered down into the village, found our abode for the duration and dumped the cases, and headed out to Delice Catalans for breakfast.

A quick stock-up of basics in the little Carrefour followed – water, bog roll, kitchen paper, oil, vinegar, fromage frais and rhubarb compote (the last two combine for my breakfast) – and then it was off to the beach.

We ate out that evening: a pleasant – if not stunning – meal at Saffran Bleu, where we’d first tasted dorade some summers ago.

So why bother with self-catering? There are plenty of reasons: not least, that it is ultimately far more relaxing than having to abide by a hotel’s schedules and, of course, there is the food.

With a twice-weekly market as good as the one here, who wouldn’t want to cater for themselves – at least for part of the time?

Sunday marked this year’s first visit for produce.

First up was the usually grumpy man at the organic tomato stall, who grinned broadly, reached over the orange, green, striped, yellow and red tomatoes to shake my hand and ask how I was.

A bag of these divine fruits in hand – I really do dream about them for 13 months of the year – I headed to find Caro, who sells lovely charcuterie and regional cheeses. Fruit was added, and a campagne gris from the nearest boulangerie.

That done, it was back to the house and, with everything neatly stashed in it’s proper place, off to the beach, where Cyril had transats waiting for us.

Lunch brought with it our second chance to eat out.

This was, as per annual ritual, at St Elme, which is right behind the beach. It’s rather touristy, and I get bored of it very quickly, but for the first few days, it hits the spot.

We had steak haché with a fried egg and chips.

But it was in the evening, after we’d returned from sunning ourselves, that the problem hit: where oh where was there a knife that would cut charcuterie and tomato and fruit?

Last year, we had the lunacy of an electric bin: this year, there is not a knife in the place that will cut anything other than hot butter.

There is lashings of cutlery, a plethora of glasses and plenty of plates – but just two paring knives that could be safely given to a toddler, a small serrated knife that is hardly razor sharp, and a bread knife for ... well, bread.

Fortunately, the oversight does not extend to a bottle opener.

What sort of self-catering does that represent?

That night, we muddled through. On Monday, however, with no obvious kitchenware shop in the village, I headed to a local shop that specialises in knives and the odd samurai sword jobby; so sharp it could split a hair. I even managed a conversation with the man in the shop after he asked if it was for a present, using my pigeon French to explain the situation.

He indicated that it was a similar issue in many of the houses that are let.

Later, The Other Half put it to me that, if I was letting for the summer months, I wouldn’t leave my knives out for just anyone.

“Well no,” I observed. “My Sabatiers and Zwilling-Henckels would be under lock and key. But I’d equally make damned sure that were still solid, sharp knives around, together with something with which to sharpen them, other than a steel or the doorstep”.

I’d also ensure, come to that, that chopping boards were labeled – there’s no way of knowing which one has been used for what in previous weeks and months.

Just two hobs (and a microwave)

However, the Opinel allowed us to continue with our simple evening repasts of charcuterie, tomato and bread (plus rosé, of course) with much increased ease.

For lunch on Monday, we returned to St Elme, where I joyfully wolfed a plate of gambas with persillade, aïoli and frites.

On Tuesday, doing so little that the nearest we got to the beach was lunching at the back of one, we hit my beloved Au Casot, where I wolfed baby squid, with persillade, aïoli, tiny tomatoes and wafer-thin slices of roasted potato.

I haven’t relished food so much for a long time – both meals were as perfect as they could be.

And so as it turned out, Wednesday was my first night of actual cooking.

There is no oven, but just two rings on a tiny hob.

I had bought boudin Catalan – the regional, lightly spiced  version of black pudding; always a treat – a tin of potatoes, a jar of haricots blanc and an onion.

The thinking was that I could cook the onion in the pan to which would, late on, be added the sliced boudin, while the beans and spuds could be cooked in another pan, in some olive oil.

That, however, had been based on an absurd assumption that a reasonably large saucepan and a frying pan would fit on the aforementioned dinky hob. Fat chance.

As I confided to The Other Half: thank goodness this hadn’t happened five years ago, because I’d have been flummoxed.

The onion thinly sliced – thanks to that rather fabulous Opinel – I let it soften gently in olive oil for some time, before adding some of the haricot blanc, drained and dried.

Heating a generous amount of olive oil in a saucepan, I drained and dried some of the potatoes and then added them to the hot oil.

After around 15 minutes, sliced boudin joined the onion and beans, and was warmed through gently for a further 10 minutes, turning the pudding slices once.

All was served with a generous dollop of sweet, grainy French mustard.

I must say, it was perfectly fine fodder – but bugger me sideways with last year’s Christmas tree, this was cooking as a challenge, in the face of ridiculous obstacles!

So I ask – what do some people imagine ‘self-catering’ means? And this in France, of all places – sacredieu!

Remember to love your local market

Radishes, Paris style.

With The Other Half away for the weekend, following his beloved Castleford Tigers to Perpignan for their league game against the Catalan Dragons – an act of great personal sacrifice on his part – the opportunity presented itself for personal culinary indulgence.

And with a few days to eat nothing but exactly what I want, a Friday evening visit to Borough Market was the perfect way to get the weekend up and running.

This itself seemed apt, coming as it did just days into Love Your Local Market Fortnight: a time to promote real food and real producers; food that looks and tastes like proper food, and is sold by people, often, who produce it themselves, and certainly care about it.

Given The Other Half's tastes, the menus for such a weekend are easy: seafood and offal. Although not together. Obviously.

It started, on Friday evening, with scallops, pan fried briefly, with canellini beans, chili and lamb's lettuce. River Café Two Easy is the bible for these weekends.

Other purchases included asparagus, plum tomatoes, Jersey Royals and the first English strawberries of the year.

Borough was busy with, as ever, a combination of tourists and bright young things enjoying the start of the weekend.

The market prides itself – and rightly so – on being twinned with the legendary La Boqueria in Barcelona. The tragedy is that the London prices mitigate against everyone being able to use it. In that wonderful market off La Rambla, you'll see little old ladies carefully picking out produce. Not here, sadly.

Where good food in many parts of the Continent is available to all and considered a birthright, there is much more of a class divide in the UK, as with so much else.

Much the same can be said of Broadway Market, although not to quite the same extent: I know that I'm not the only local who shops there, although first thing on a Saturday morning, I'm always convinced that half the 'hipsters' sitting outside cafes with coffee have come straight from Hoxton nightspots with nary an encounter with sleep.

And on Saturday morning, it was straight to Matthew to see what offal he had, with a lovely piece of lamb's liver, thinly sliced, going into the bag.

Next up, fish.

Unfortunately, Vicki had nothing that I wanted, so Fin & Founder had to do the business. I bought a Dover sole and a squid.

"Shall I fillet it?" said the young man of the sole. I demurred. He seemed surprised and offered to at least trim the fins. I demurred again. He almost begged to be allowed to rinse it. I allowed him to do so.

My refusal to let him do anything with the squid appeared even more shocking. "It can make a mess," he offered rather lamely.

"Oh not if you do it properly," I returned, adding that I enjoy doing it - and that it's easy. I left with squid and sole intact in the face of someone who appeared to have the love of knife work that would have delighted a mohel.

Selection vegetables in Barcelona.

I understand that this is part and parcel of the Fin and Founder routine; that it's their way of 'adding value' (and thus helping justify their prices).

And of course there's also an expectation that many customers will lack the skills to prep fish.
Requiring no cutting at all, I also bought a handful of the season's first samphire.

Back at Mark's Ash Green Organics, which is increasingly becoming my go-to greengrocer, fine beans, a courgette, oranges and rhubarb were added to the mix.

The simplicity of approach continued with Saturday lunch. Jerseys were scraped and boiled, to be served with briefly boiled asparagus (four minutes – they were quite thick), and four slices of the liver, pan fried in a very little olive oil.

A 'gravy' was made by melting a teaspoon of redcurrant jelly into the meat juices while it briefly rested.

The only other things required are salt, pepper and good butter.

For evening, it was back to River Café and a recipe I'd tried before.

Take your squid, clean it and thinly slice.

Then take a courgette and cut it into matchsticks.

Octopus in Venice.

Previously, I'd made the mistake of grating the squash far too finely and it all but disappeared. This time, I just used a razor-sharp paring knife and cut it up that way. Salt these for about 15 minutes, then rinse and dry.

This is a very, very quick cook, so it's best to be a bit cheffy and prep all the ingredients first.

Thinly slice as much chili as takes your fancy. Thinly slice a clove of garlic. Juice and zest some lemon.

Get a pan good and hot, add a generous splash of olive oil and, when it's really hot, pop in the squid.

Stir briefly and then add the chili and a grind or two of black pepper.

Stir again, give it all a couple of minutes, then add the courgette and the garlic. Let it cook through – it doesn't take long – and add the lemon. Stir once, twice – and it's ready to serve.

The original recipe serves this with spaghetti, but I opted instead for some good, fresh baguette. It needs little or no added salt.

And it is a feast.

Sunday went a bit off piste in terms of plans, so I saved the sole for Monday and managed, incredibly, to do the best filleting job I've ever managed (it was quite large) and then grill the fillets and serve them with Jerseys and asparagus and fine beans to welcome home The Other Half.

Good food should be a birthright for all of us. And good markets, where you can get good, seasonal produce, should be available for everyone.

Fortunately, many places do still have them – and they're not the rather 'posh' ones like Borough or even Broadway.

Tomatoes in Collioure – I dream of them.

So make sure you love your own local market – you know it's worth it.

And now a tiny 'fession.

Earlier in this piece, I mentioned tourists at Borough. Well, I like to photograph markets too – both at home and abroad.

Markets are wonderful places. So instead of a couple of shots of liver or scallops on a plate, I decided to illustrate this piece with a very few, varied shots.

I hope you enjoy.

And perhaps more to the point – enjoy your own local markets.

Back to basics

The plan, such as it existed, had been simple: there's a market in Collioure on Sunday and Wednesday.

So on Saturday, our first day, we'd eat out for both lunch and dinner, and then get the first food in this morning.

That started to unravel when we realised that the previous guest must have been a Mrs Hubbard. Because the cupboards were most certainly bare.

Etiquette, we have discovered since starting to self cater four years ago, is simple. People leave what is left over in terms of basics – and you do the same.

So on past visits, we'd found pasta, jam and cereals, plus a wide range of condiments, oils and vinegars. We'd used such as we needed – and replaced and added to the store.

This year, although we were returning to the house we stayed in last summer, the inventory was a tad on the stingy side.

There was a tiny pot of salt – the easy-running stuff that's easy running because it's laced with additives – a similar sized pot of fine-ground pepper, no oil at all. It's the Med, for goodness sake: how do you live here for a day or more without olive oil?

There was a bottle of Carrefour's cheapest own-brand Balsamic, which turned out to be about as much use as dyed water.

There was not even any coffee to get us going. No sugar, only the barest, embarrassed remains of a kitchen roll and only one spare loo roll.

There was, however, a draw full of teas and tisanes. Ten of them. Hercule Poirot would have been in his element.

But whoever had last lived here had presumably it eaten out pretty much exclusively. Our plans were different.

These discoveries were made after we'd been handed the keys, a short while after lunch at the brasserie behind the beach, Le Saint Elme, which we invariably use for the first few days, until I become very bored with the menu touristique and insist we seek out better fodder.

The menu had changed this year. Slightly. Which meant that they no longer do deep fried, battered squid rings – what we know by the generic term of calamari – with frites. And I usually ask for aïoli on the side. But the calamari is now only available as part of a large dish of 'tapas'.

So instead, I ordered a 'duo' of squid and gambas. Which turned up with a 'garnish' of six little mussels. Tempting though it was, since they were sitting there on my plate, I decided not to take the risk. It might have been years since the last 'episode', but it was very unpleasant indeed.

The baby squid were very nice, the gambas okay. The accompanying rice was dry. The half tomato, grilled with a few breadcrumbs and herbs on top, was as such things always are in France – a bloody miracle of a garnish.

A demi of rosé and we were happy – and ready to unpack.

Back at the beach a short while later, conversation turned to the rather obvious fact that we couldn't avoid shopping. So after our first sundowner of the holiday – sangria – we headed for the local Carrefour to stock up on basics.

We were also feeling the warm tiredness that comes from a day starting to unwind, and to be frank, neither The Other Half nor I really fancied going out again for a meal.

So we decided to make do with what we could find in the supermarket.

Carrefour, if you're listening, the till system is a mess. It's all well and good having decided to do away with the three individual checkouts and put them into one row, but it's incredibly cramped, and the layout of the shop means it's pretty much impossible to know who is on what queue for what till.

We found our basics - and picked up a small baguette, a couple of tomatoes, a little cucumber, some spring onions, half a garlic sausage, and the best virgin oil we could lay hands on.

A bottle of rosé had been left at the house for us, on the orders of the woman who owns it. Which was very nice, and it had gone straight in the fridge to chill and await evening.

The tomatoes were okay, the onions were huge but hardly dramatic in terms of flavour, while the cucumber was better than most of what you'd find in such a shop a home.

The garlic sausage was moist and garlicky and pleasant. The bread was fresh and worked well drizzled with a little oil.

I tried a bowl of the same oil with some of the Balsamic in it, but that was the point at which it became clear that better vinegar would be required.

And so to this morning and my first trip to market, currently sitting in the 'canal', which is dry at this time of year, as a little fun fair is occupying the village square for the annual fête – of which much more will follow in the coming days.

First stop, a stall selling soft fruits: strawberries from Elne, with blackberries and raspberries and redcurrants. Only redcurrents didn't make it into the bag. And oh, the blackberries, the blackberries ...

Then one of my very favourite stalls, an organic one, specialising in the tomatoes I dream of between trips. A large selection was joined by a small cucumber and a melon.

Another stall, and a big bulb of rose garlic for aïoli, a vast red onion for salad and some big banana shallots for the same thing.

Heading down the ramp to the canal, Caroline came over to greet me. She has met me precisely six, brief times, over three years – and yet she remembered me the second year we self catered; the second year the market became one of the joys of the holiday.

She had lovely charcuterie as usual: at three saucisson for €10, I picked up a boar one, a 'natural' one and a fig one, plus she recommended a firm goat cheese with garlic and pepper – which packs a lovely punch.

The nearby boulangerie provided a loaf for the day and croissants for breakfast.

Eating this evening, the very simplest of salads, accompanied by bread and wine, with cheese and fruit to follow, it struck me so forcefully, yet again, that if the ingredients are top notch, you really need to do so little with it.

If last night was better than we might have expected – or hoped – then tonight was in a different league altogether.

It was quite simply simple. And quite simply glorious.

To marché, to marché, to buy a fat fig

Sunday might have been our first day proper in Collioure, but in our list of priorities, the beach didn’t come first. That honour fell to the market.

Place du Maréchel Leclerc seems to be the heart of the town: often the scene of games of petanque, we’ve also seen it host a children’s puppet theatre and, on Saturdays, the sort of flea market so beloved of the French. Sundays and Wednesdays are market days and it’s crammed full of colour and wonderful aromas.

The first surprise was that Caroline, who runs a cheese stall at the weekend market, recognised me from last summer. I have no idea why she should recognise me from what can only have been two visits a year ago, but I was very flattered – and she certainly sells a selection of gorgeous cheeses, from internationally-known varieties such as Morbier to locally produced ones. I always aim to buy the latter. After all, I can buy the really famous French cheeses at home.

During our fortnight there, I had a real mix, from a mild and creamy blue, to a tangy semi hard to some lovely little goat’s cheeses, which just oozed creamy deliciousness when fully ripe.

The fruit at the market is always a joy: you will find some imported produce (bananas, for instance), but very, very little. It was very late in the berry season, but lovely raspberries were still available freely, while plums and figs were present in joyful abundance.

We picked up serious charcuterie, fresh bread and, of course, tomatoes; gorgeous tomatoes in a variety of colours and shapes, and not all some bureaucratically-ordained size.

We went to the little local supermarket too, for toilet roll, milk, butter and a few other odds and sods to get us going.

My point never is that supermarkets don’t have a place – but that their ‘place’ is not in place and at the cost of absolutely everything else. In the UK, as ‘the big four’ launch everything from financial services to optical services to phone services, that is what they appear to want to become: to use their financial muscle to simply bully their way to total market domination.

In France (and elsewhere on the Continent), there is a balance, which also ends up giving the customer far more choice, far more variety.

If the French shopper wants to shop at the supermarket alone, they can do. If they want to shop at the little corner shop or the market, they can do. If they want a combination of everything that’s available, then they have that choice too. But it isn’t a choice when local shops and markets have been wiped out and only one realistic option remains – even if that offers you a different type of ‘potato snack’ for every day of the year.

But hey – let’s get back to Collioure and not start thinking about perfidious Albion!

We’d arrived with no concrete intentions regarding food: there were no specific plans, for instance, to eat this or that for lunch, followed by that or this in the evening. I suppose I had assumed that everything would be pretty much as it was last year, with a lot of lunches out and then cooking in the evening.

However, as the days drifted by in blissful sunshine, that wasn’t quite what developed.

Until Wednesday, we did lunch at St Elne, a restaurant with a large al fresco seating area right behind the beach, and an unchanging menu – including a vast array of crepes and ice creams – that is clearly aimed at visitors.

But from day one it became clear that after lunch there, we weren’t in any mood for much in the evening. Instead, we started sitting around the kitchen table, helping ourselves to charcuterie, bread, cheese, tomatoes, fruit and wine.

It’s almost Biblical – or simply ancient – to sit around eating like that; it’s certainly difficult to imagine anything much simpler. Or much better. Don’t get me wrong – I love those gastronomic experiences in chef-led restaurants, where each dish is an artistic masterpiece, but this … Well, this was Earthy and real and deeply, deeply sensual.

By Wednesday, we’d bored of the tourist menu for lunch and started using our Thermos bag to take food to the beach.

Fresh bread was available every morning from the boulanger, two minutes from the front door of the house – imagine getting bored of that! So into the bag would go bread, fruit and sometimes olives stuffed with anchovies for both of us, charcuterie and tomatoes (which I need to eat with a knife and fork at present) for The Other Half, yogurt and one of those lovely little cheeses for me.

Not only considerably cheaper than those earlier lunches, but better too.

And more than once we found ourselves wanting little more than the same again – with wine – for supper. Given good produce, you really do need nothing more complicated.