Down by the bay

The Mediterranean coastline has changed a good deal over the past few thousand years. A place where this can be seen rather well is Gruissan.  In Roman times, the topography would have been very different.  The Massif de la Clape nature reserve, and the Ile Saint Martin were islands, not at all connected to the mainland, but surrounded by the estuary of the Aude River.  The limestone rock, on which today stands the ruin of Gruissan castle, was probably just a bare rocky outcrop then.  Narbonne had a harbour, and the Roman ships would have sailed into the bay behind modern-day Gruissan.

All that changed, when the harbour gradually silted up, and the lagoons formed between Gruissan and Narbonne.  The Etang de Gruissan is on average 55 cm deep – great for the flamingos, which were notably absent the day I took the picture above! 🙂

In the Middle Ages, a fortified castle was built on the limestone outcrop, to provide shelter from marauding pirates!  Houses were built at the foot of the castle, with the streets surrounding the rock in a circular pattern, which can still be seen today.

The sleepy fishing village turned into a major seaside resort during the course of the 20th century. Two marinas were constructed in the 1970’s, with space for 1650 boats!  All around the marinas, developments were built, to cater for the increasing number of visitors.

Unlike many seaside resorts, Gruissan is very much “open all year”.  Many people live there year round, and a good number of restaurants do NOT close down for the winter.  One such restaurant is called La Cranquette.  It is located in the old town, and specialises in seafood.   You can tell I went there before the trees started to leaf out!

Inside, the decor is somewhat eclectic!

Whilst the decor is somewhat important in a restaurant, the food is the star of the show!!  And the food in this restaurant was very good!!

Gratinated Oysters

Razor Clams

Fresh Oysters

Sea Bream

Sardines

Chocolate Sphere

Melting chocolate cake

Lemon Meringue Pie

All the food was very delicious and beautifully presented!  A feast for the eyes and the palate!

Afterwards, a walk along the beach was a must – out of season the beaches are often empty!

If you fancy a stay at Gruissan, have a look here and here! 🙂

History unearthed

On my last visit to the Salin in Gruissan I came across a leaflet advertising guided visits of an archaeological site on the Ile St Martin at Gruissan.  I’m forever curious when it comes to things like that, so off I went recently to explore, as the site is only open for July and August.  Before going I tried to pinpoint the spot on an aerial view, without any success.  So I just drove past the Salin and hoped for the best :-).  After a few kilometers I noticed a small sign followed not much later by another, which directed me to where the site is.  I really didn’t know what to expect.

The guide was already at the far end with a group of people, but there was a waiting area with information panels and display cases, and some benches.

The items in the display cases were fascinating :

After a little while of waiting I decided to explore outside the site, since it looked as though there would be a little while before the start of the next guided visit.  And the exploration was well worthwhile, the views were fantastic!

Soon it was time to get back to the site for the tour.  Our guide gave us some of the history of the present site.  When a vineyard was ploughed up in 1986 a number of items were found and as a consequence the land was acquired by the municipality in exchange for another piece of land.  Preliminary explorations between 1988 and 1990 allowed the experts to date the occupation of the site between the 1st and 5th centuries AD, and in 1999 the real digging began.  It became apparent that there had been a number of buildings on the site. The archaeologists found evidence of stone walls and remains of a hypocaust, the Roman version of under-floor heating. The site was then closed until digging resumed again in 2011, and since then work has been carried out in June by a team of archaeologists helped by groups of students.

The guide explained that the site was probably part of the port administration – the sea would have been much closer 2000 years ago than it is now, and the Ile St Martin was really an island then.

We started off where the upper part of a mill had been found.

The upper part of the mill was in pretty good condition, but of the lower part only pieces had been found.  Nearby was the bottom part of a bread oven, so the archaeologists deducted that that particular building must have housed a bakery.  A few steps away the base and capital of a column had been found and left in-situ, and just in front of that were the remains of some kind of drain, amazingly intact.

Then we came to an area which our guide explained must have been a kind of store house as many amphorae had been found embedded in the floor.  Some of them had been broken whilst others remained pretty intact.  Next year the one which is still more or less in one piece will be filled with sand, to stop it collapsing when the earth around it is scraped away!

The next “find” was a drain, beautifully and solidly built nearly 2000 years ago!  In the second picture you can see the red colour of the soil near the drain.  Effectively the drain was for the balnea, the Roman bathhouse just next door

In the balnea the water was heated by a wood fire for the basins.  Our guide explained that it was assumed that the port was providing services for merchant seamen, who came ashore after lengthy voyages, and who needed a good bath!  That, he thought, also accounted for the sturdy drain close by, as there would have been lots of dirty water :-)!  One of the basins was round and the one next door rectangular, and the floors are still very smooth.

Next we admired the remains of a dolium, a large terracotta storage container, much larger than the amphora we had seen earlier.  This particular dolium had unfortunately been broken during exploratory work, but an intact one had been extracted and shipped off somewhere (perhaps the local museum?).  The archaeological museum in Narbonne has several impressive examples on display.

The next part of the site had not been fully excavated, but according to the guide we were at first floor level rather than ground floor level, looking into what could have been a courtyard.  The stone wall had been beautifully made and an exploration this year in the far corner showed that the wall continued a fair way below soil level.

The well will be excavated over the next few years – it might yield a great many artifacts!  An almost identical well exists on the adjoining property, where it still supplies fresh water.

The next interesting exhibit was a Roman rubbish heap – if you look closely you can see layers upon layers of debris, which accumulated over time. 

The channel might have been for drainage or supplying fresh water?

The square bricks were part of the hypocaust, the Roman underfloor heating, and apparently the hollow bricks were there to stop the others from bursting due to overheating!  This was where the second balnea of the complex was located.  Smaller than the first, and perhaps more for the officers than the sailors?

The rounded wall is not Roman but medieval and part of a storage silo.  The site was apparently inhabited quite late.

And finally we came to what is thought to have been the main building of the complex.  The walls were formed by huge stone blocks.

Internally the building was divided into four rooms by lathe-and-plaster walls.  The holes of the wooden uprights are still visible in the floor.

In one of the rooms a Roman weighing scale was found and there were many coins which were dug up, leading to speculations that this could have been some form of customs post.  The red colour of the earth floor could indicate that the building was destroyed by fire.

Now a few words on some of the finds in the display cases.  On the site a good number of pieces of terra sigillata have been found.  Terra sigillata is a kind of Roman pottery, which literally means “clay bearing little images”, and which was widely distributed throughout the Roman empire.  I adore the smooth, silky surface and the exquisite decoration on some of the pieces.  Apparently the maker’s mark is always stamped on the inside of the vessel

In the one box there was some other pottery, among them a very delicate bowl, the base of an amphora and also two oil lamps.  The larger one in the bottom right hand corner is very interesting as it is made of bone rather than the usual terracotta.  To my amazement the guide handed it round for everyone to have a good look, along with a few other delicate pieces of pottery.  It’s the first time that I’ve had anything this old in my hands!

Box number two contained other interesting bits found on the site.  In the top right hand corner is part of the mill stone (remember the mill at the beginning?).  Just to the left are four metal objects:  a hook and three nails.  The large encrusted piece is what a nail looks like before it is cleaned up.  On the very left is a piece of lead pipe and bottom left is an iron tool which was a kind of hoe.  The two small bits of bone are bovine teeth and I cannot for the life of me remember which animal the vertebrae came from.

So, if you are in the area during July and August, make the trip to Gruissan and see what the ground has yielded during the next season of excavations!

P.S.  Here’s a special thanks to Annie, my dedicated proof-reader, without whom you would have to endure many typos and errors!!  Thank you, Annie!

Food, glorious food

The past few weeks have been incredible where food is concerned.  With friends who were staying in St Chinian I cooked and ate in, barbecued in my garden and on their terrace, picnicked, went to fetes and to restaurants….  With all that food you’d think that I would have put on quite some weight, but luckily for me that was not the case.  I put it down to my reduced intake of bread and other wheat based foods, but perhaps I just managed to balance calories and exercise?

Most of the meat we cooked on the BBQ was lamb, but there were some delicious pork sausages too, from Boucherie Peyras, one of the local butchers in St Chinian.

These wonderful lamb chops were accompanied by vegetable millefeuilles, stacks of grilled aubergine, courgette and tomato slices, interspersed with goats’ cheese and basil, and drizzled with some olive oil just before serving.

On another occasion we grilled a leg of lamb – M. Peyras had expertly boned and trimmed it, and I marinated it following a recipe from the Moro Cookbook (Spanish marinade), which uses garlic, thyme, smoked paprika and red wine vinegar.  The result was absolutely divine!

Our friends also introduced me to Yaki Onigiri:  cooked Japanese rice is formed into triangles or balls and grilled until crispy.  They can be finished in a variety of ways: spread with sweet miso paste and dipped in sesame seeds, or glazed with soy sauce, and I am sure there are other ways too!  They were very delicious and somehow they disappeared so fast each time we made them, that I have no pictures!

But here are some tomatoes instead – the first of the season and very sweet and tasty.  As always I’m growing many different varieties and this year I have just over 20 different kinds of tomatoes in my garden.   I haven’t  quite decided which I like best – yet.  I’m sure Tomato Pie will figure on the menu again very soon.

For dessert I had made a raspberry and chocolate tart, and my friend Janet had prepared flan.  The flan had the most beautiful silky texture and there was only one little piece left over at the end of the meal.  The raspberry and chocolate tart was not bad either, but might be better suited for when the weather is a little cooler (spring or autumn).   I froze a lot of raspberries this year, so I’ll be able to make it again, and the texture and calories will be lovely as the days get shorter :-)!

All of the restaurants we went to as a group were great! We went to the Salin in Gruissan again, for another visit, and this time had dinner at Cambuse du Saunier afterwards.  The food was very fresh and tasty.   Service started off very good but deteriorated somewhat as the restaurant got very busy.  When night fell we were attacked by swarms of mosquitoes, despite the repellent we had all put on.  So it’s a great place to eat at, but go for lunch!

Our starters were prawns and oysters, a pate of john dory, fresh crab, and mussels.  For main course there were different kinds of fish and chicken, both baked in salt crust, and a seafood cassoulet.  Desserts were pretty good too, but by then I’d put the camera away.

A total change from the rustic simplicity at Gruissan was Restaurant Le Parc in Carcassonne.   Franck Putelat, the chef, has been awarded two stars in the Michelin Guide, and the food and surroundings are just what you would expect.

The meal started with an Amuse Bouche of Gazpacho, accompanied by a platter of various nibbles:  thin cheese straws (one lot dipped in squid ink, the other in parmesan butter), radishes (buttered again) with summer truffle,  a macaroon filled with foie gras, and a biscuit topped with half a cherry tomato and a chorizo crisp.  Fantastic flavours and gorgeous presentation!

A second Mise en Bouche was served in a double walled glass – very simple and yet refined – a salad of fresh peas and seafood, topped with crispy garlic and onion slivers.

The “real” starter came up next.  A most gorgeous looking confection made from potatoes for the crispy rings and the cannelloni wrap.  The cannelloni were filled with fresh sheep’s cheese, and the plate generously decorated with shavings of summer truffle – oh what a feast!!

The next course was a soufflee of haddock, served with aioli and a selection of perfectly cooked vegetables, along with some crab claw meat and a langoustine sauce.

Just when you think it can’t get much better along comes the next course:  breast of duckling, cooked at low temperature and accompanied by a stuffed courgette flower, and a condiment made with kumquat – Heaven!

The cheese course was beautifully presented: Cabretou de Bethmale cheese, served with the thinnest slices of melba toast imaginable, and a melon chutney made with Banyuls vinegar.

Dessert was quite simply spectacular, even on looks alone!  But the taste was pretty spectacular too:  cherries cooked in red currant juice, accompanied by elderflower sorbet; the biscuit tube was filled with a yoghurt emulsion and the whole topped by a cherry meringue disc.  And all the flavours complemented each other beautifully.

Of course there was coffee at the end, and some more small sweets, and we were probably the last table to leave the restaurant.  The terrace is great to sit out on, and the dining room is very stylish and air-conditioned, for when it’s too hot outside.  The whole meal was accompanied by beautiful wines, all local to the area, and expertly chosen by the wine waiter.

The children had their own menu, less elaborate and with fewer courses, but none the less expertly prepared and beautifully presented.  And of course we went for a walk around the castle at Carcassonne afterwards to get rid of some of the calories :-)!

The last meal I’ll tempt you with in this post was at La Cave Saint Martin in Roquebrun.  This is a wine bar/restaurant with a terrace overlooking the river, and it specialises in tapas.  Since there was a crowd of us we ordered a number of different dishes and just passed them round to share.  All of the food was delicious and the service very friendly and relaxed, but efficient all the same.  The peach and tomato salad with basil was outstanding, and a fantastic idea for a summer salad; the pesto ravioli were bursting with basil flavour.  And then the peach crumble…  If you’re in the area and enjoy desserts then that is an absolute must!

If you’ve gotten this far without the slightest hunger pang then you deserve a medal!  And if you want to visit any of the restaurants, please be sure to reserve your table to avoid disappointment.  You can always tell them you saw it on the midihideaways blog 🙂

Pass the salt please!

There’s salt and then there’s sea salt – one of the many things I learnt on a recent visit to the Salin de l’Ile Saint-Martin in Gruissan.  The salin is located west of the old town, on a site that stretches over 360  hectares – add four zeros to that and you get 3.6 million square meters, and that’s over five hundred football fields!!  And if you think that’s large, the salin in Gruissan is the smallest on the mediterranean coast!  The largest one is at Salin de Giraud, and is over ten times the size.

Our guide welcomed us to the Salin de l’Ile Saint-Martin and asked us to switch our mobile phones to silent – a good start I thought, shows that this lady is serious!  Our visit began with some vocabulary.  A salin is the place where sea salt is produced by evaporation in the south of France.  A marais salant also produces sea salt but along the French Atlantic coast.  A saline is a salt mine where rock salt is produced.  That out of the way we moved on to another term: a saunier is the man responsible for a salin and to become worthy of the name, you have to have at least 10 years of experience.  The saunier usually works on his own for most of year, with extra staff drafted in only during the harvest in August.

The saunier’s work starts in February, when he starts to pump sea water  into the largest basin, the salin being above sea level.  The water is captured 170 metres from the shore, to avoid any pollution.  After a few days in the first basin, the water commences its long journey through a further 99 basins. To start with, the sea-water contains 26g of sodium chloride per litre (NaCl), along with several other salts (magnesium, calcium, sulfur and potassium).  The saunier’s job is to ensure that the end product is pure sodium chloride and he achieves that by progressive evaporation, moving the water from one basin to another, on the way covering 100km.  When the water reaches the last basin, the concentration of sodium chloride has reached 260g per litre, and some of the other salts will have crystallised out along the way.  At that point the saunier lets the brine flow into the crystallisation basins, the last stop on the way to becoming sea salt.  This is where the magic happens – as more water evaporates the sodium chloride starts to crystallise on the bottom of the basins, forming a layer of sea salt crystals, which can be up to 15cm thick in a good year.  The crystallisation basins have a beautiful purple pink hue to them – we had to wait right until the end of our visit for our guide to explain the reason: of all life forms only one species of algae can survive in what is deemed a sterile liquid.  The colour comes from beta carotene contained in the algae and as soon as the salt is harvested it starts to disintegrate and disappears.

At various times during the season the saunier harvests what is called fleur de sel.  This is a very fine salt, which crystallizes spontaneously on the surface of the brine in the crystallisation basin.  It has to be skimmed carefully whenever it appears as it will sink to the bottom during the day.  The resulting salt flakes are of course more expensive than regular sea salt.

The harvest of the sea salt takes place in August.  When the saunier decides the moment has come he will drain one crystallisation basin at a time, the water draining away any other salts still in suspension, leaving behind the pure sodium chloride.  Harvesting can be performed two ways: either by hand with flat shovels, or by machine – the end result is the same, a big mountain of sea salt, which is then processed further.

Before the end of our walk our guide told us to put our hands into one of the crystallisation basins and to take out some salt crystals.  It looked as though that would be very easy – just scoop some out – but to my surprise it was more or less impossible to dislodge anything!  Luckily one of the members of our small group had his trusted pocket knife and prised out a few lumps!  In the brine the sodium chloride crystals are translucent;  it is only on contact with the air that they become opaque and white.

Our guide advised that we should have two kinds of salt for cooking – regular coarse sea salt (gros sel), which is added during the cooking process,  to allow the water to dissolve the strong bond between the Na and Cl ions, and fleur de sel, which is sprinkled over food at the end of cooking (think of a grilled steak :-)) or used in salads, because the bond between Na and Cl is not as strong and dissolves more readily.  Finely milled sea salt still has a very strong bond between the ions and will not dissolve readily, so she thought it was a waste of time to use that at the table.  Another useful piece of advice was to check the labelling on any packet of salt.  A lot of table salt has fillers, which can be anticoagulant agents, and other salts, which do not have a salty taste (only sodium chloride tastes of salt!).  With pure sea salt you are getting what you’re buying, and the coarse salt is not very expensive.

On our way back to the starting point, we were asked to think of uses for sea salt.  All of us came up with gritting and use in food, but nobody had any idea that there are around 14,000 uses for sodium chloride!!  Staggering for sure.   It is used in a wide variety of chemical processes (no PVC without it), in the cosmetic industry, food preservation etc, etc.

Life on this planet would not be possible without salt, as all animal life requires sodium chloride for the cells to function. Next time you use sea salt, take a moment to think of all the work that’s gone into it.

On the way out (or on the way in) you’ll see a few other buildings, which have been converted to new uses.  One houses the salt museum and shop, where you can buy the locally produced sea salt and fleur de sel along with a number of other local products (wine and cookies/sweets).  Closest to the salin is the restaurant, where you can eat fish baked in salt crust, along with locally produced oysters and other delicious food.  Oysters are also available to be taken away.  The last building open to the public contains an art gallery, which houses regularly changing exhibitions of work by local artists.

For more information visit the website of the Salin de l’Ile Saint-Martin. To rent a holiday villa with a view of the salin visit www.midihideaways.com/clos