hot goat with misellary

Several people would like to know what “hot goat with misellary” could possibly mean, and while I can’t promise great illumination on that score, still, here is the relevant story of Valerie’s birthday in Provence.

Valerie’s birthday was March 30, a blustery day of sudden sunshine and dark scudding clouds. During our time in France, the Euro was worth between $1.23and $1.28, so we couldn’t actually afford to eat; but for Val’s birthday, Dadand Linda offered to take us out for a real French meal. We put on our cleanest clothes and drove off to Fontaine de Vaucluse. I loved driving around in Provence. There was always a view, and always a hidden something tucked away behind the next curve—a mas (enormous old farm house), a town, a sudden sheer cliff, a field of yellow flowers. The country roads are narrow, and they curve around the humps of hills and then wriggle through the narrow valleys that divide them, up and down and over and through, so your vantage-point is constantly changing. From the crests of the hills you can see from one mountain range clear to the next. Forests of scrub oak slope away to one side of the road, and on the other, lavender shrubs bristle in silvery rows, like regiments of dormant hedgehogs (big ones) in the rocky, early-spring fields.

Fontaine de Vaucluse, a village nestled into the crevices where several hills meet, is well-known for being the site of the spring that is the source of the River Sorgue. You can follow a nice path up the ravine, the startling green water rushing alongside in a rocky river, until you come to this enormous deep green pool welling up out of a huge limestone cave curved like a clamshell. The high-water mark was waaaay up there above our heads. The pool was still, though, and the springs must have been running under our feet to feed the river a bit farther down. They said sometimes it was like that; but that other times the water would come rushing right up out of this very cave pool. (Standing with the French tourists at the lip of the pool, well below the “Danger—no trespassing” signs at the end of the path, I could only trust that they had the inside scoop on the spring’s moods and habits.) The wind picked up to a dramatic sideways drag and we took shelter in the museum built around the old paper mill. We observed how the water wheel turned a big log bristling with significant bumps like the bumps on a player piano’s inner rod; the bumps tripped three sets of wooden mallets that took it in turn to pummel cotton, linen, and something I couldn’t translate into the pulp that paper was made from.

The birthday lunch back in the village was extravagantly French. Val had: some kind of shrimps baked in a fancy cheese casserole, followed by fillets of a little red fishy, all laid out in a fan design on her plate and drizzled with sauce of a complementary yellow, garnished with a fancy molded cheesy vegetable thing, a broiled herbed tomato, and something else I can’t remember, and adorned with a small flaky pinecone of baked crust of no discernable purpose other than aesthetic balance on the plate. I had: a divine fresh green salad with toasted crumbs of hazelnuts in vinaigrette topped with a little round pastry filled with baked goat cheese, giving an overall effect of Oscar the Grouch in a small flaky beret. This was followed by slices of duck in orange sauce, again arranged in an artistic fan, garnished with a little cookie-cutter stack of superb scalloped potatoes au gratin (they looked like butter cookies in sauce), snow peas slightly caramelized in an herby/oniony sauce, and a grilled herbed tomato of my own. We were nearly dead by dessert, but managed to consume (among the four of us) pear sorbet and vanilla ice cream (I hardly need point out they were homemade); a slab of crumbly white nougat (looked like feta cheese but tasted nuttyand delicious) in warm raspberry sauce; an isle flotante (floating island) involving some kind of buoyant custard block in a wine glass filled with some sweet liquid; and a crème broulee to die for. I began to see why Peter Mayle writes entire books that consist largely of lists of things he got to eat and you didn’t.

Speaking of foods eaten and not eaten, it was in Fontaine de Vaucluse that we did not eat (here it is) “Hot goat with misellary.” We did, however, see it listed as an entrée in a neighboring restaurant. The French from which this unlikely phrase was squeezed was “Chevre chaud sur son lit de salade,” which I would perhaps translate as “Baked goat cheese (is there a word for goat meat?) on a bed of greens,” “misellary” presumably being some sort of salad green. This same restaurant offered “Pave de Saumon sauce pecheur,” rendered in English as your favorite and mine: “Salmon’s cobdestore with fisherman’s sauce.” Also “Tosted broock’s lamb,” from “Brochette d’agneau grillee,” a.k.a. grilled lamb chop. I shouldn’t laugh, however. I’m sure my own efforts to communicate provided plenty of linguistic merriment to many a tactful Provencal soul.

I’m still having fun writing these things, so I trust you don’t mind if a few more France journal entries trail your way over the next week or so. The jet-lag is at last wearing off, although I’m still getting up abnormally early (for me). This morning before work we even had time to visit the rhody gardens,where I was chased by a big, mean, scary gander with a long snaky neck and a chip on his nonexistent shoulder. I am happy to report that I survived without nips, no thanks to Val, who was paralyzed with laughter and unable (and un-inclined, I might add) to come to my aid.