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What is it about Provençal cuisine that makes it so irresistible?

November 17, 2022

Great farmers, highly skilled chefs, a long tradition of country cooking, a brilliant Mediterranean fishing coastline in the South of France, the world’s greatest farmland and the double influences of French cooking specifically, and Mediterranean cooking generally. And truffles!

Provence is also one of the world’s great wine countries.

Like Italian and Greek food culture, Provençal gastronomy is a “cuisine du soleil,” a profoundly Mediterranean cuisine based on seafood, olive oil, beans, herbs and plenty of vegetables.

Provence dishes favor the world’s tastiest lamb; most amazing produce like tomatoes, cherries, berries and more; a delicious salmon-looking trout called the Sorgue trout; and many other incredible ingredients.

But it’s also specifically French, with the world’s greatest cheese, wine and bread.

Happily, cherry season overlaps with lavender season, and so during a few weeks of the year these exquisite flavors appear on Provençal plates (and, uncoincidentally, that’s when our Summer Provence Rosé Experience takes place!).

Many of the world’s favorite French dishes are specifically Provençal. Bouillabaisse, ratatouille, tapenade and niçoise salad all come from Provence.

Other classic and tasty dishes include:

  • Soupe au Pistou, a vegetable and bean soup.

  • Tarte Tropézienne, which is a brioche cake filled with sweet cream, was actually named by actress Brigitte Bardot.

  • Daube, a beef stew, flavored with onions, carrots, mushrooms, olives, garlic, herbes de Provence and a red wine sauce.

  • Pissaladière, which is Provençal pizza served as an appetizer, made with caramelized onions, black olives, and pissalat — a salty sardine and anchovy paste.

  • And many other dishes.

Provençal cuisine is bright, colorful, beautiful and tasty beyond belief — especially as prepared by our friends — Provence’s most visionary and talented chefs, including some of France’s most beloved Michelin Star chefs.

If you want to taste the greatest food Provence has to offer — truly some of the best food in the world — sign up now for The Provence Rosé Experience!

The cuisine of Provence is the result of all the stars lining up to create the world’s most sumptuous food — farming, history, climate, geography and unbelievable culinary skill. That’s why Provençal cuisine is so irresistible!

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Tags France, Provence, Lavender, Wine

Truffles, truffle dogs and truffle hunting in Provence

June 21, 2022

Provence is, above all, farm land — an agricultural countryside, but a special one. What makes Provence special are three kinds of farms: grape, lavender and truffle. 

You can see the vineyards and lavender fields everywhere. But the truffle farms remain hidden away.

And while the grapes are processed into wine and the lavender into 100 different products (including lavender oil), we eat the truffles completely unprocessed. 

While the hunting of truffles that grow naturally in forests goes back at least 4,000 years and spans many countries, truffle farming is particularly associated with Provence. 

Trufficulture, the farming and cultivation of truffles, started in Provence in 1808 when Joseph Talon, of Apt, transplanted the oak tree seedlings growing under trees where truffles had been found. Other French farmers experimented with trufficulture, and later Auguste Rousseau of Carpentras planted 17 acres of truffle-producing oak trees in the 1840s. 

By the end of the century, 190,000 acres of truffle-producing trees had been planted and truffles were a common ingredient in French cooking among all social classes. But French truffle production declined in the 20th Century, with war, industrialization, urbanization and other factors, and production today is a tiny fraction of what it was over a hundred years ago.

Roughly 80% of the truffles produced in France are farmed. France has nearly 20,000 truffle farmers, who produce around 30% of the world’s truffles.

How does truffle farming work, exactly? 

A truffle is a tuber, which is an underground fungus that evolved to live symbiotically with trees. In order to grow, truffles need very specific conditions: the right soil, climate, tree and spores. 

To farm truffles, farmers buy trees (in France, usually oak trees) with roots that have been inoculated with truffle spores. They plant them in locations where they believe truffles can grow.

And then they wait. 

It takes between 7 and 10 years after planting for trees to start producing truffles, if they do produce them at all. Many inoculated trees never produce truffles. 

Truffles need mild, dry winters and warm summers with lots of sunshine. Provence is ideal. 

And most truffle farms are hidden away on purpose and truffle farmers cultivate direct relationships with sellers, chefs and consumers. The world of truffles is rife with theft, trafficking, fakery, and fraud. Flavorless cheap Chinese truffles are smuggled into Europe and sold as the good kind. Truffle thieves show up to truffle farms with their own dogs and steal them. In France, the police often set up roadblocks during truffle season to search cars for stolen truffles. 

During the Provence truffle seasons of summer and winter, farmers use dogs trained since puppyhood to find truffles. (They used to use pigs, but large, hard-to-control pigs were far too interested in eating the truffles. Dogs don’t care about truffles — only the reward for finding them, which is usually a small piece of ham.

Truffle dogs and their handlers (often the farmer, but sometimes a hired specialist) visit the spots daily where truffles might grow — you can tell because the truffles defensively kill grass and weeds around the trees so they can hog the nutrients. The dogs use their amazing sense of smell to search for truffles. When they identify a spot, they start digging. The handler stops them, and does the digging themselves gently with a special trowel. When a truffle is pulled out of the ground, they let the dog smell it directly, then immediately give the dog a treat. 

Farmers rinse and scrub the dirt off, let them dry then have them delivered immediately. 

During our Provence Rosé Experience, we spend some quality time with our truffle farmer friend and his dogs, and go truffle hunting, then spend hours enjoying very fresh truffles at his home with a banquet of other delicious foods, as well as champagne and other wine. It’s a master class in truffles, and the most delicious way to learn about this magnificent ingredient. 

How and why to eat truffles

Truffles taste mushroomy, earthy and intoxicating, and the taste lasts in your mouth for a long time. 

The vast majority of truffle-related products are not recommended. The highest quality truffle oil, truffle salt and other truffle-infused products can sometimes be nice (the bad stuff uses fake truffle aroma), but don’t even remotely compare to freshly sliced or grated raw truffles.

Even whole raw truffles aren’t great if they’re not fresh. They last little over a week. But unscrupulous vendors try to sell older truffles in the market, hoping to find inexperienced buyers. 

You can tell the freshness of truffles by gently squeezing them. if they’re too soft, they’re no longer worth eating. Fresh truffles should be firm, but not dry and hard when you squeeze them. 

Out of the more than hundred varieties of truffles, only 12 varieties are good to eat. In Provence, the most prized variety is the black Perigord truffle. (White truffles, which cannot be farmed, are mainly from Italy, but also Croatia.)

Truffles are very low calorie, and are rich in potassium and vitamins A, D and K. 

Truffles give off a wide range of scent molecules, and also pheromones. One of these is called androstenone, which is the pheromone in the saliva of male pigs that attracts female wild and domestic pigs to truffles. 

One of the scent molecules is called anandamide, which has been described as the “bliss molecule.” The chemical is similar to the psychoactive compound in marijuana, called tetrahydrocannabinol. Smelling the anandamide in truffles causes your brain to release happiness-inducing chemicals. 

It’s likely that truffles evolved to release this chemical to attract mammals to them. Making us happy (and wild pigs and other mammals) is part of their reproductive strategy. 

Truffles are unlike any other food ingredient. They should be consumed immediately after being thinly sliced. And as a flavor, they should never take a back seat to other flavors. They require fat and salt without other strong ingredients. For example, on a slice of cheese, or a slice of bread with a farmers cheese. Olive oil or butter are usually involved. But truffles lend themselves to creativity. 

One of our favorite pizzas available in some good restaurants in Provence has extremely thin crust, very mild cheese, no sauce and is covered in freshly shaved truffles (the picture above shows one of these pizzas we enjoyed recently).

Anything you put in a jar with truffles will acquire a wonderful truffle flavor. (The truffles themselves should never be submerged in any oil or liquid.) The easiest and best way to store truffles is in a jar in the fridge with eggs. The smell and taste of truffles will go right through the shells and infuse the eggs with truffliciousness. Pro tip: Scramble the eggs, sprinkle a mild cheese all over them, then cover them with freshly sliced or grated truffles for the ultimate in truffle eggs. 

Truffles are one of nature’s greatest culinary gifts. And the truffle farmers of Provence — and their cute truffle dogs — are the heroes who make sure we can all enjoy them. 

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Tags France, Provence, Truffles

Why rosé pairs with… Provence!

May 5, 2022

Provence is the undisputed rosé capital of the world. Stroll along the Côte d’Azur and it’s clear that everyone is drinking it. A pale pink bottle of wine sits on every restaurant table and every beach blanket. Brosés (rosé bros) stroll along the shore with bottle in hand, drinking directly from the bottle. Tourists slurp down frosés (frozen rosé).

Rosé seems like a modern wine style, but it’s very old.

In fact, Provence was the first place where the French made wine. And the first French wine was rosé — mostly pink-orange field blends of white and red grapes. Locals were taught wine-making by the Phoenicians more than 2,600 years ago.

In other words, people were drinking rosé on the French Riviera long before people in Bordeaux, Burgundy or Champagne even heard of wine.

Centuries later, the Romans distributed rosé from Provence to the entire Roman world, and Massilia (now called Marseille) was synonymous with delicious rosé throughout the Roman Empire.

That was a big deal back then. Light red wines were far more common than deep reds well into the Middle Ages. (Darker red wines were generally considered inferior to pale reds until just a few centuries ago. Red wine was for commoners and rosé was for the aristocrats.)

What is rosé, anyway?

Red wine is made red with color from the skins of red wine grapes. White wine is white because it’s made from grape juice without skin contact. Rosé is wine made with just a little color from red-grape skins.

This is usually achieved by short skin contact (just a few hours), blending whites and reds (which is illegal in France) or the saignée method, which is the making of rosé as a byproduct of red wine-making. Saignée (pronounced sone-YAY) is a French technique where some juice is removed from red wine during fermentation to increase the skin-to-juice ratio, which intensifies the color and taste of red wine. The removed juice is pink, and fermented separately to make rosé.

The enormous Cotes de Provence AOC alone produces around three-quarters of all the wine in Provence, and roughly 80% of that in the form of rosé.

Most other AOCs in Provence also produce a lot of rosé, mainly using Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, Mourvedre, Tibouren, Counoise, Carignan, Braquet, Folle Noire and Cabernet Sauvignon grape varieties.

The reputation of rosé was tarnished in the 20th Century with the popularity of two bad Portuguese rosés called Mateus and Lancers, which dominated the US rosé market from the mid 40s to the mid 80s. The super sweet white Zinfandel “blush wine” craze of the 80s didn’t do rosé’s reputation any favors, either. (White Zin was created by accident in 1975 by Bob Trinchero who tried to make dry rosé with the saignée method, and a stuck fermentation foiled his plans. The resulting low-alcohol, high-sugar product turned out to be a hit with consumers.)

But since the 2000s, Americans started discovering better rosé, mostly from Provence. Serious French and American wine snobs started appreciating great rosé only in the last few years.

Now, rosé is made and consumed globally. But the very best is still made in Provence.

And that’s where we come in.

We have searched and researched and tasted rosés all around Provence, and our Provence Experience guests drink only the world’s greatest rosés — wines that are never exported to the US — during our adventure (as well as Provence’s greatest reds and whites).

And we prove once and for all that Julia Child was right: Rosé pairs with everything.

Join us and see for yourself! — Mike

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Tags France, Provence, Wine, Rosé

So many new places to discover in Provence

July 4, 2021

No matter how many times we live in Provence, we still aways discover new and wonderful places. Like this village of Le Barroux, which is old and beautiful and a still-active community. A family still lives in the castle and, if you look closely, you can see them having dinner on their balcony.

(Don’t worry: They were very much in public — you can see them from half the town, and the drone was impossible to see or hear from the altitude I was flying at.)

Tags France, Provence
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Provence in June: It's happening!

April 30, 2021

European officials announced this week that vaccinated Americans will be able to travel to Europe this summer. 

Specifically, the European Union’s Parliament agreed to the creation of a "vaccine passport" likely to be called the "EU COVID-19 certificate," enabling the bearer to travel from the United States to Europe without additional testing, self-isolation or quarantine, and also to travel freely within the European Union. They'll be used both by European citizens and visitors from abroad. 

The "vaccine passport" is not finalized, but the parliament agreed to finalize it before the summer travel season. To get one, you'll need to be vaccinated or have recovered from Covid-19. 

Meanwhile, French President announced this week that outdoor cafés and restaurants will be allowed to reopen on May 19, along with museums, cinemas, theaters and concert halls under certain conditions. The announcement is part of a four-step plan to re-open the country. 

As part of this plan, France will open the country to vaccinated foreign visitors on June 9. Also on that day, cafés and restaurants will be allowed to resume regular service, including indoor dining. They'll have to close by 11pm each night, according to the new rules. Events of up to 5,000 people will be allowed.

The timing is perfect for our Provence Experience, which takes place June 21 through June 26. (The Provence Experience is nearly sold out — we have one room available! Book here now.) 

Provence, with its wide outdoor spaces and plenty of room, is inherently covid-safe anyway. In fact, Conde Nast this week published their list of the 12 best places to travel in June, and one of them is Provence. 

Our Provence Experience would be covid-safe even without the vaccinations required by both Europe and by us for all participants. We stay in a spacious remote farmhouse in the countryside. We don't do activities with anyone else except our group. Everything we do is outdoors, or in large open places separate from others. 

So we're happy to announce that after a year and a half, Gastronomad Experiences are roaring back to life, starting with the glorious, delicious, beautiful Provence Experience!

Tags France, Provence

How to eat truffles

August 5, 2019

My favorite way is: mild French cheese, freshly shaved truffle, extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt, plop it in your mouth, repeat.

During our Provence Experience, we try fresh truffles every which way: truffle pizza, truffle on soup, truffle and farmer's cheese on toast, truffle on pastries -- we even put truffle oil on our truffles.

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Tags France, Provence, Experience, Truffles
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We even said "good-bye" to the lavender!

July 1, 2019

We just concluded our wonderful, delicious, joyous Provence Gastronomad Experience. We just landed in the US, and miss France already. The hardest part is saying “good-bye.” We said it to our wonderful Gastronomads, who joined us for a week of delicious fun. We said it to our dear French friends. We said it to the medieval villages, the breathtaking valleys between and the wonderful food and culture of Provence. And we also said “good-bye” to the lavender, which surrounds the farmhouse that makes our home during The Experience.

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Tags France, Provence, Lavender
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Our little street in Provence

June 21, 2019

Today is the first day of summer, which France celebrates with music everywhere. We took a few steps to check out a band at the end of the street. Amira ran into friends, and I retreated back into our apartment. But I did snap this pic of her walking back down our little street.

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Tags France, Provence
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Sampling some local brew in Provence

June 21, 2019

We’re living at this moment in little town in France, which we love. It’s called Pernes-les-Fontaines.

Technically, it’s a village of fewer than 10,000 people in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the Vaucluse Department, the Carpentras Arrondissement and part of the intercommunalité of Les Sorgues du Comtat.

Forget all that. It’s a town in France, and one of extreme beauty and charm. (Our apartment is 40 feet away from a moat! Should the Visigoths try to sack the Lower Rhone again, we’ll be ready this time!)

Anyway, we enjoyed a lovely dinner last night with two wonderful friends of ours — an amazing couple, Olivier and Aurore, engineers both. (Aurore owns a gamification training and education company, and Olivier designs technology hardware for education.) Together, they have created an open maker-space called the FabLab, where all are invited to come and learn, build, create, collaborate, explore ideas and make stuff.

While checking out their cool new space last night, Olivier pointed to a partially disassembled washing machine, which he said would be converted into a beer brewing system. Incidentally, he mentioned, the owners of a local brew pub expressed intention to teach the craft of beer brewing to anyone interested at the FabLab. They told us about the brew pub, called Bar à Bières La mousse Gourmande, which we had passed walking by many times, but of which gave no notice.

With time short today, we ventured in to sample some beer. Which was excellent. We loved everything about this place. A few good house-made craft beers on draft. A great selection of good beers by the bottle (including Lagunitas, for fuck’s sake). And really nice people.

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Tags France, Provence, Beer
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Provence is meringue heaven!

June 11, 2019

Amira has a meringue problem. Which is to say that she's gained a reputation in restaurants in multiple cities as a meringue maniac. (She'll sometimes call ahead to make sure they've got the hard stuff, and that it's very fresh.)

One restaurant in Mexico City removed an item from their menu literally called "Too Much Meringue," probably because it had too much meringue. Now they make it only for Amira.

Meringue is simple; it's basically whipped egg whites and sugar and sometimes lemon juice, vinegar or cream of tartar. They make it differently in France, Italy and Switzerland.

French meringue is different from Italian or Swiss meringue in that the egg whites are still raw, which is why French meringue is good only after being baked or cooked. Italian and Swiss meringue can be used as frosting or in other desserts without being baked, and is more stable over time.

French meringue itself is easier to make. But the desserts made with that meringue can be hard to make, and require a lot of pastry kung fu.

We're in France doing our last-minute preparations for The Provence Gastronomad Experience -- one spot for a couple just opened up!). So Amira is in French-meringue heaven!

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Tags France, Provence, Meringue, Dessert
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Who loves French cheese?

June 10, 2019

Our Provence Gastronomad Experience is a French cheese lover's dream.

France has a way with dairy products. French butter is amazing. French pastries can be sublime, in part because of the quality of the butter.

And nobody makes cheese like the French.

Every region of France has its specialty cheeses. And Provençal cheeses are amazing.

If you want to explore the exquisite cheese of Provence, you'll definitely want to join our Provence Gastronomad Experience.

We're going to taste cheese in salad, during picnics, with truffles, as part of wine pairings and for no reason at all. And, of course, we'll eat cheese the French way -- between dinner and dessert.

We'll eat amazing new cheeses you've probably never tried, every day.

Good news for you cheese lovers: We just had a spot open up for our upcoming Provence Gastronomad Experience (for a couple), which takes place June 24 - June 29.

During the Provence Gastronomad Experience, a small group of us will stay together in a beautifully restored French farmhouse, a short walk from a picturesque medieval village. From there, we’ll strike out to explore the very best of everything Provence has to offer, from the rocky vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape to the canals of L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue to the sunny beaches of the Côte d'Azur.

Go here for more information if you're even slightly curious about our Provence Gastronomad Experience. Or you can just send me an email at: mike@elgan.com

We'd love for you to join us in June on this unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Did someone say cheese?
Tags France, Cheese, Delicious
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Who loves lavender?

June 8, 2019

Our Provence Gastronomad Experience could be called the Lavender Experience. Provence is the global epicenter of exquisite lavender fields, and we surround ourselves with it, learn to distill it, eat it in honey, desserts and other provencal treats -- we practically (or, if you like, actually) bathe in it.

Yeah, sure, we taste Provence's best wine, cheese, cuisines, pastries, truffles, bread and more. We explore one of the most breathtaking European regions at the peak of summer, when the lavender is in full bloom. You'll meet our food and wine visionary friends, who will receive you like family and share the unparalleled culinary culture of Provence. And did I mention lavender?

Good news for you lavender lovers: We just had a spot open up for our upcoming Provence Gastronomad Experience (for a couple), which takes place June 24 - June 29.

During the Provence Experience, a small group of us will stay together in a beautifully restored French farmhouse, a short walk from a picturesque medieval village. From there, we’ll strike out to explore the very best of everything Provence has to offer, from the rocky vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape to the canals of L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue to the sunny beaches of the Côte d'Azur.

Go here for more information if you're even slightly lavender-curious about our Provence Gastronomad Experience. Or you can just send me an email at: mike@elgan.com

We'd love for you to join us in June on this unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Lavender!

More details on the Provence Gastronomad Experience
Tags France, Provence, Lavender
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