The Pilgrim's Way Cafe - A Food & Travel Blog

Black Truffles in the Périgord, France

2012-02-20T16:34:00.002-08:00

The Dordogne (also called the Périgord) is famous for its black truffle, that delicious underground fungus that grows symbiotically with tree roots, such as oak, beech, and hazel. It is the ingredient that enchants savory dishes from omelets to roasted chickens to pea soup. Winter is its time and from November to February truffles begin to appear in the weekly town and village markets throughout the Dordogne.

When I first came to southwestern France, an elderly woman I sat next to in a café in Sarlat told me how in December she would gather black truffles in a forest near her farm and take them to market, hoping for a good month so that her family could afford the festive foods of Christmas. She then leaned in and whispered, “If you are saving your Euros for a truffle, save them for truffles in late January or February. That’s when the truffle season peaks.”

I heeded her advice. I also learned that January and February are the months when it is easiest to find the truffles, even if you don’t have a dog or a pig to help.

A friend from Sarlat who is a truffle expert with his own truffière—truffle trees—taught me. He explained that there are telltale signs. One is of little flies that aggregate about the ripe truffle. If you see a delirious buzz about the ground around one of the trees that are symbiotic with the black truffle, you are in the vicinity of a culinary gold mine.

But another sign, one that is sure even if the flies have not yet arrived, is a slight ground swell that wasn’t there before. This of course requires patience and close study. A true truffler will know every contour of his territory and notice subtle changes to it. It enters the realm of mindfulness meditations, which explains why the truffle hunters I’ve met are some of the most grounded and calm people I know.

When you’ve located a ground swell, you lean in and the next sign should be a pricking in the nostrils of that unmistakable and strangely earthy and otherworldly scent that arouses all manner of romantic images.

Once you have this expensive fungus, how do you handle it? I have only once purchased a truffle and the truffle hunter told me her two favorite applications: grated into scrambled eggs or sliced thinly and placed on top of foie gras toasts.

Fortunately, annually Sarlat holds a truffle festival in the middle of January and regional chefs prepare all manner of recipes with the black truffle, allowing people to sample its diversity without going broke. (It’s like a truffle tapas party where little plates and glasses of partnered wine can be purchased for a few Euros at a time.)

With all this serious research—including some excellent treks into the region’s wild forests—I can now say that my favorite recipe comes from that same lady in the café. This is the recipe her family enjoyed as appetizers in flush years for New Year’s Eve and it is the simplest and most sublime of recipes because nature has done all the work:

Canapés aux truffes:

A fresh baguette, sliced into disks

A black truffle, sliced thinly

Good quality sweet butter

Sea salt

Brut champagne

Butter the bread and layer on the truffle slices. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt. Enjoy with friends and a glass of dry champagne.

Bon Appetite!

Wild Mushroom Hunting in Southwestern France

2012-01-03T07:21:00.001-08:00

A lot of my treks lately have been in and around Aquitaine in southwestern France. It’s an amazing region, from the wild areas of the Pyrenees to the wild Atlantic coastline, to the interior of limestone prehistoric caves and rock shelves, river valleys, medieval chapels and fortresses, and vineyards as far as the horizon.

It was an odd autumn here, as in so many other areas. Instead of a cooling and wet season, the days remained bone dry and warm. Anticipation of the year’s wild hunt for porcini mushrooms, regionally known as cepes, was dashed. Many locals, mushroom experts for decades, told me that because there was no rain in September, there would be no cepes this year. Cepes crop up magically overnight when the rains come in September. I had asked if there was a chance that they’d appear in the forests if it rained in October or November. The answer was a somber no.

So imagine all our surprise when in mid-November, after some decent rains, older farmwomen began appearing in the weekly markets of the Dordogne with baskets laden with cepes. It created a buzz and people’s hearts lightened. The season was not lost and moreover, those delicious fungi were still willing to grow even though September had come and gone. We cheered for now egg omelets with cepes, mushroom tarts with cepes, and simply olive oil and garlic sautéed dishes with cepes were back on the menu.

I had the unexpected delight of going mushroom hunting twice with good friends. One day we went to the neighboring south central French region of Cantal, from where the famous Cantal cheese comes, and on another day we stayed more local in the forests of the Dordogne near Les Eyzies, the heart of prehistoric painted and engraved cave country.

The challenge of a later cepes crop was that by now the fall leaves had turned color, dried, and fallen off the trees onto the forest floor. To look for the telltale tan brown top hat of cepes meant a form of mental concentration and being present in the moment that modern humans are less practiced at compared to their prehistoric brethren. But being so near the latter’s homes in the rock shelves overhead inspired us.

Both days, we found lots of mushrooms of all varieties. Many were poisonous and we had to be careful. But only cepes have the bulging stems that look like a person after Thanksgiving dinner. Those, we kept and took home and sautéed them in olive oil and garlic and tossed them with eggs and a hit of sea salt and sat to a meal with a crusty baguette, a green salad, and a medium bodied red Bergerac wine. It all tasted so much more vibrant for the day spent hunting and gathering out of doors.

In moments like these, I feel more intensely that I am connecting to our ancestors who some 25,000 years ago lived in these forests, valleys, and rock faces and hunted and gathered for a living. It is moments like these that I also hope that I can take that level of concentration and mindfulness back into the modern world.

Moroccan Mountain Adventures with a Feminist Friend

2011-12-08T06:38:00.000-08:00

I’d known Fatima since I’d lived in Morocco eighteen years ago. Though we wrote only intermittently, when I returned to Morocco two winters ago to teach anthropology and travel writing to American college students, she and I bonded again and picked up where we’d left off. She was in Rabat, where I’d touched in briefly, and then I was in Fez.

One day, Fatima called. “I’m driving to Fez. Let me take you away for a day. You need a break from the city and from teaching duties.”

Fatima loves her country and simultaneously feels it has a long way to go for its women. Her proposal promised adventures.

I’ll never forget her indignity, eighteen-years back, as she and I stood on the train platform in Rabat waiting for the train to the south where I’d spend the weekend with her and her family. She had killer legs and was wearing a skirt that fell above the knee. Men were swooning. She looked at me and said, “These legs,” she swept her arm up and down for effect, “get me into a lot of trouble.” I admired her panache and that it never occurred to her to wear a longer hem in order to skirt out of trouble. She didn’t buy into the gender restrictions of her culture and wanted to change it one law and one leg at a time.

She hadn’t changed one bit.

As she signed off, she added, “I want to take you to the countryside, to show you The Big Waloo.” This was Fatima’s experience of God: An open vista of breathtaking mountains. Waloo in Moroccan Arabic means “nothing.” The Big Nothing.

Shortly after we left Fez, Fatima told me about a local mineral spring she wanted me to experience. “It’s the real thing, full of well-being and very local.”

She suddenly saw a little boy carrying a pail on the roadside and careened to a stop.

“Hello. Where are you going?”

“To the spring.”

“For water?"

“No, to take a bath.”

“You don’t have running water at home?”

“No.”

The feminista-Morocco-lover surged.

“Why aren’t you in school?”

“I have no father and three siblings. I have to help my mother.”

“Is she sick?”

“No.”

“How old is she?”

“Thirty-five.” He said hesitantly.

“So,” recapped Fatima, “She is young, healthy, and capable of working but she has you do it? Where do you live? I want to talk to this mother of yours.”

The boy trembled. He just wanted a bath. Fatima softened.

“Okay, listen, promise me, when you go home, talk to your mother. Tell her that you will make more money when you have an education. Tell her from me that she should get off her bum…”

I interrupted in English, “Maybe that’s enough. It’s his mother...”

She looked at me angrily, “Yes! And I’m making her a better one!”

We left the youth at the spring and again were on our way to The Big Waloo, Fatima’s favorite lookout point in the Middle Atlas, when we picked up a policeman walking in the rain.

This grown man in uniform, one who’d gone to school and made more money, got the same treatment.

“Why are you walking in the rain? You’ll catch a cold.”

“It’s the only way to get to the residence where I’m a guard.”

“Is there no other way?”

“Well, I have no car. Walking is fine, except when it rains.”

The grilling stopped. The two carried on like old buddies. We dropped him off. He wished us blessings along our path.

In forty-five minutes, my friend had befriended—and berated—people from vastly different social strata in her society.

Then, we arrived at Nothing: It was a vast, still, multi-layered and colored expanse of mountains in all directions. Once my eyes tuned to it, I could also make out the specks of shepherd and sheep along a few distant hills. Nearby, a donkey and human ambled together side by side. By the looks of it, they were having a heartfelt conversation.

The ancient rhythms, the ones all humans evolved to and are still wired to, took over. Fatima had been right. This was the transcendent Big Waloo. And yes, I’d needed a break from the congestion of the bowl-shaped but captivating city of Fez.

We lolled the rest of the day at Fatima’s mineral spring, absorbing so much well-being that we were too tired for anything other than sipping fresh orange juice at the village café. Donkeys loaded with a refrigerator, bricks, and melons sauntered by. Fatima was about to grill the donkey driver when she decided to save her energy for the drive back to Fez.

I realized then that Fatima’s idea of The Big Waloo was more than mountain vistas. She was the Taoist paradox: Something is Nothing; Nothing is Something.

France’s Vin de Domme and Dodue the Valiant (Pug) of the Dordogne

2011-10-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

[A Hike in Southern French Wine Country]

There was a scream and my friend Béa came running out from behind the stand of bushes where she had disappeared. Running behind her with tongue lapping out the side of her mouth was little Dodue, a blond pug with a black stub of a tail and a perennial smile on her hard-to-read, wrinkled face.

“She licked me!” Béa said with alarm. “While I was taking a leak!” She then quickly set straight the misunderstanding written on our faces, “No, not there, on the thigh, but still…”

Dodue was the name we had given this little member of our hiking team. I added, Dodue La Vaillante, The Valiant, after she joined me on an ascent up a lookout point that made us both sting mightily with vertigo: I inched my anxious self back down the shaky height and she stayed with me the entire way, body low to the ground and shaking like beech tree leaves in winter, but she did not abandon me. She let me know we were in it together.

We six, five humans—my four adventurous local friends Petrus, Béa, Thierry, and Bruno—and Dodue, were taking in a day hike of the Vin de Domme region south of Sarlat-la-Canéda in the Dordogne, that part of southwestern France famous for its prehistoric caves (such as Lascaux), foie gras, and black truffles. The local wine industry was only recently making a comeback after the devastation of the late 19^th century phylloxera epidemic that wiped out a region once blanketed in vineyards. One glance today and all that once-striped wine land is now nearly covered in indigenous forest, except for the famous Bergerac area west of here and the Vin de Domme.

The Vin de Domme resurgence began in the mid-1990s with a grassroots gathering of several growers, some who were also sheep herders, tobacco growers, and farmers, who decided to turn their attention to the terroir and wine-making of the land, knowing its soil, climate, and exposure promised good bottles down the road.

The fifteen-kilometer rugged and rocky trail through forest, hills, abandoned ruins, and revived vineyards was the idea of Béa and Bruno, area experts from Dordogne Fellow Traveller. They were taking the slower winter season to show me and Petrus their favorite places.

It was in one of the old villages that Dodue found us. She joined a larger dog, a tawny colored cocker spaniel, to bark at us as we arrived. Once we passed through the village so courageously guarded, the spaniel dropped off and went back to her front stoop to sleep. But Dodue stayed with us, trotting along with that funny smile and side-hanging tongue. We kept telling her to go back, but, no. Dodue was ours. Or more accurately, we were Dodue’s.

Béa tried to read the tag hanging on Dodue’s red woven collar. After a struggle—Dodue jiggled any time a hand came near her—Béa got a hold of the tag and saw a cell phone number, with no name or address. She called from the edge of a vineyard.

As we waited, I could see the sweep of merlot and cabernet franc vines rise then fall and dive toward the rocky hills north and south of here, hills that promised chalky limestone soil, hot sunny days, and cool nights. A young man answered.

“Hello,” said Béa, she paused, then blurted, “I have your little pig here.” We all heard silence and then laughter coming through the phone and the man said, “She does that a lot. Where are you?” Béa explained that we were on the trail heading to the Vin de Domme cellars. They agreed that he would get “his little pig” at the winery.

We never got the little pig’s real name and so continued to call her “Dodue,” an endearing term in French that means plump, or in our usage, little fatty. Apparently, the village from which she adopted us was not her home either.

We then stopped for a picnic lunch in a thicket of oak and that was when Béa was jovially licked on the thigh in the bush.

By the time we arrived at the winery, Dodue had become a member of our expedition, a daring and valiant one at that. I was impressed by her courage and devotion, staying with me on that lookout height that made us both go green. But it was a spectacular height: it afforded us a view of the entire wine growing lands of some 17 growers, the serpent’s winding of the Dordogne River, and the hilltop fortress chateaus of Beynac and Castelnaud. To the south, it revealed the drier but more attuned to wine growing lands of the Lot that opened toward Cahors, another rich wine area, especially for malbec.

At the wine coop, we explained our dog situation. The president of the coop, Bernard Manières, did what any self-respecting French person would and invited Dodue to join the tour.

In 1989, Germinal Peiro, a native of the area and regional counselor, proposed reviving the vineyards that had lay silent for a century. In 1993, the Association des Amis du Vin de Domme, Association of the Friends of the Wine of Domme, was created, with over 300 members. By 1995, after some experimental plantings on half a hectare of land the year before, three locals joined the planting revival—Eric Duclaud, Bernard Manières, and Michel Perry—and planted several more hectares on prime wine land. Today, some fourteen others have joined the planting and the coop has twenty-three hectares of vines and aspires to increase it to thirty hectares in the future. The Amis du Vin de Domme now has over 2300 members.

The five wines that they produce—three reds (Cuvée Tradition, Périgord Noir, and Cuvée Cabernet Franc) and two rosé (Rosé de Domme and Rosé Gourmandise)—are standard fare in regional restaurants in an area dedicated to eating and cooking from locally grown and produced ingredients. The table is now complete: local grilled duck breast is heavenly with the Vin de Domme Cuvée Tradition, an unoaked cabernet franc and merlot blend, a wine made the old way, before oaking became popular.

(For those desiring oak, the Périgord Noir (cabernet franc and merlot) and the Cuvée Cabernet Franc (pure cabernet franc) deliver the right notes.)

We went to see the press, the stainless steel containers, and the barrels. Dodue wove in and out, like a seasoned wine connoisseur. We ended at the tasting room where Mr. Manières offered us tastes of the three reds since we were a crowd of red wine lovers. The Vin de Domme’s two roses are also worthy wines: the Gourmandise is sweet, meant as an aperitif that can easily be paired with foie gras, traditionally demanding a sweet pairing, and the Rosé de Domme is drier, perfect for pairing with first courses such as smoked Aquitaine trout or a traditional salad with greens and thin slices of dry cured duck breast.

Somewhere between the second and third wine, we lost Dodue. “Uh-oh,” said Petrus, “now we have to find her to make sure the young man gets her back.”

We looked around steel tanks, behind oak barrels, beneath the picnic bench in the tasting room, to no avail. Suddenly, there she was, all along, asleep on the floor with its dominant cream and brown tones just like hers. She was asleep right on the place names painted on the floor, imposed over the logo of the labyrinth of the Vin de Domme label, showing all the micro growing regions involved. He little paws and thick snout lay right on the word Domme. Clever girl. She went right to the heart of matters just as she had gone to the center of our hearts.

At that moment, a young man walked into the tasting room. “I’m here for my little pig.” Everyone laughed. We were happy that he had not taken offense. Indeed, he looked relieved. By now, we all knew her as Dodue but were curious. “What is her name?”

“Ficelle.” Which means string.

“Ficelle?” Three of us said at once, incredulous.

“Oui, Ficelle.”

We said goodbye to “Ficelle.” We bought a few bottles of wine. As we took off to the trail again, almost as one voice we each said, “She’s no Ficelle. She’s Dodue, Dodue the Valiant.” And we felt something lacking. We knew it was the presence of our sixth trekking member, smaller than all of us but full of life, energy, and daring. We could not imagine Dodue returning to a life as Ficelle, one that seemed woefully rife with lolling about before the television, eating bonbons, and longing for another adventure.

The wine from the Vin de Domme is an honest wine, made with traditional methods, by locals dedicated to the land and the fruit. For me, it also tastes of that day, of that little friend who adopted us, and of adventures as yet unknown until you strike out onto the trail.

Forever in my mind, the Vin de Domme will be the Vin de Dodue. Certainly not Ficelle.

Some practical advice:

Getting to the Dordogne, Quercy, and the Lot, where Vin de Domme is situated, is easy by train from Paris, Bordeaux and Toulouse.

The two best ways to get to the Vin de Domme cooperative are either with Dordogne Fellow Traveller or by car. With Dordogne Fellow Traveller, they will tailor an excursion to your interests and they will handle all the logistics, from picking you up from your home base (Sarlat is an excellent base), driving, arranging the tour, and if you desire, taking you on a wine trail hike. The appearance of adorable, must-take-home-dogs cannot be guaranteed. If you rent a car, head south from the town of Domme to the village of Bouzic and from there follow signs to the Cave du Vin de Domme, in Florimont-Gaumier.

Vin de Domme also makes an appearance at Sarlat’s Saturday market during the late spring and throughout the summer. Their label is distinctive and the best way to find them au marché: a labyrinth in the shape of a wine leaf. When I asked Bernard Manières why they chose this emblem, he said, “It is a labyrinth to come here.” It felt that he meant this both physically, and it was, as well as metaphorically, detailing a century of return and comeback with slow, deliberate, and paced work.

Cave du Vin de Domme

Moncalou

24250 Florimont-Gaumier

telephone: 05-53-28-14-47

email: vindedomme@wanadoo.fr

Hours: June-September: Monday thru Friday, 10 AM to 12 PM and 2 PM to 6:30 PM; Weekends and holidays, 2:30 pm to 6:30 PM. October-May: Contact them to arrange for a time to visit.

The Esoteric Camino to Santiago de Compostela through France and Spain

2011-10-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

Jaca’s cathedral in Aragón has a basilisk that seems to come from some pre-Christian Pyrenean past.

Eunate’s church in Navarra has a sacred flutist possibly harkening to a Sufi influence, not to mention its ring of thirty-three external arches that are akin to Islamic prayer beads, acting as a meditation upon the ninety-nine names of God—three times around, and entering the hundredth door, as the Sufis call it. Eunate in Basque actually means 100 doors.

Nearly 500 kilometers further along the Camino, Santo Tomas de las Ollas in León possesses nine horseshoe arches in its apse that form an eleven-sided polygon. Another mediation on 99, not to mention on the interfaith nature of the sacred road?

Even St. James’ tomb in Santiago de Compostela may instead contain the bones of another beheaded martyr, the Galician Priscillian, a monk, hermit, and local leader from the 4^th century who wove many locally beloved pagan ideas into his rendering of Christianity.

Throughout the sacred pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela, the Camino, many churches are infused with a sacred geometry that only makes fuller sense if the pagan, the Classical, the Judaic, the Christian, and the Islamic traditions are considered together. Moreover, all along the corridor spanned by the Camino there are dolmens, menhirs, engraved stones and cave walls, and holy springs that also speak of a prehistoric past that saw this corridor as equally sacred.

The Camino—the many roads across Europe and across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela—has many layers; the Christian layer is only the most recent and evident.

I have recently published a multi-layered travel guide on the Camino, The Esoteric Camino France & Spain, as an application download for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch. (An eBook is forthcoming.) Based on over 25 years of exploring, walking, and studying the Camino as a pilgrim, anthropologist, and writer, this app carries in it explorations into the many layers of this sacred road, from prehistory to the present.

The Esoteric Camino France & Spain complements other Camino guides, the more numerous practical how-to guides, and does something no one of them does in one place: offer the deep layers of ancestry and the less obvious lineages and symbols of the places along the Camino. It is rich in esoteric lore, regional folklore, and sacred geometry.

Moreover, as I continue my treks, I will continue to explore stretches of the many Caminos in Europe. As I do so, I will expand the entries in the app.

The current edition of The Esoteric Camino France & Spain covers the French Road, the Camino Francés, from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, to Finisterre, Spain. The current app also covers the Camino Aragonés from the Somport Pass to Puente la Reina, Spain, as well as parts of the road that begin in Le-Puy-en-Velay in France.

The Esoteric Camino France & Spain is available through Sutro Media on iTunes. Sutro is a publisher of high quality travel apps available through their platform Sutro World. To purchase The Esoteric Camino France & Spain app, first download the free Sutro World app. Once you have downloaded Sutro World, simply click the upper right button, “Explore Guides,” and search under the listings for Europe for The Esoteric Camino France & Spain.

And from wherever you are on the road of life, wishing you buen Camino!

Hiking the Dune du Pilat in the Arcachon Basin near Bordeaux, France

2011-09-29T02:09:00.000-07:00

My friends Mel and Sue say that everyone has a dune story to tell when they come to this stunning southwestern French Atlantic outpost near Bordeaux.

I just hiked the Dune du Pilat and my dune story is the thrill of climbing the dune with the view of forest and ocean on either side. I could also see the Arcachon Basin, an amazing estuary rich with diverse bird and sea life. I could just make out the waves at Cap Ferret, a narrow finger of land that almost closes the basin off from the ocean. And on my way up I met a smart young Bavarian woman who is an agriculturalist and was fully for a world where we grow good food locally and through sustainable manners. I hiked and I learned a lot as I soaked up an amazing natural world.

On my return from trekking the length of the dune (about 6 kilometers, round trip), I discovered a little open-air dune-side restaurant serving the best and most simply prepared mussels I've eaten in a long time. The mussels came from just over the rise in the Arcachon Basin and happily the chef was generous and shared her recipe.

Here are her ingredients and my suggested quantities and cooking directions.

Dune du Pilat Tarragon Mussels

1 ½ to 2 pounds fresh mussels, cleaned, rinsed, and discarding any that are open or broken.

1 small white onion, minced

1 tablespoon olive oil

¾ cup dry white wine

¼ cup fresh tarragon leaves stripped from the stem but not chopped.

Salt & pepper to taste

Sautee the onions in the olive oil in a large pot. Add the mussels, white wine, tarragon, and salt and pepper. Cover and bring the pot to a boil and then lower the heat to steam the mussels until they open. Once they open, take the mussels off the heat and discard any that did not open.

Enjoy the mussels with a glass of dry white wine (ideally, the same one you cooked with) and crusty bread or french fries.

Arcachon and the Dune du Pilat are an easy day-trip from Bordeaux: Take the train from Bordeaux’s St-Jean station to the town of Arcachon where right in front of the train station is a bus going to the dune.

Trekking in Madrid: Historic Walking Tours

2011-08-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

Madrid is like Paris and Lisbon, incredibly walkable. I love to trek in great cities like these as much as in the great wild outdoors.

I’ve recently compiled my favorite Historic Walks in Madrid in a book with eight historically themed tours. All are self-guided.

The 8 historic walks in Madrid are:

· Medieval Madrid

· Hapsburg Austrian Madrid

· Bourbon Madrid

· Belle Époque Madrid

· Historic Writers’ Madrid

· Historic Artists’ Madrid

· Historic Wine Taverns of Madrid

· Historic Mysteries of Madrid

I also include a list of:

· Historic Eating and Drinking

· Historic Hotels

If I only had time for one walk in Madrid, I would make it the territory outlined in my Medieval Madrid tour.

It starts at the Puerta del Sol, meanders toward the Plaza Mayor, and then south of it into the heart of Madrid’s surviving medieval neighborhood. There, you can taste the centuries (9^th to 11^th) when Muslims occupied and made the town a major garrison site. You can see the medieval churches (11^th to 15^th centuries) some of which were once mosques. You can visit a quiet walled rose garden. And you’ll pass by the Royal Palace, which stands on the original grounds of the Muslim fortress. All along, under your feet are now dried up subterranean waterways. These water sources were the original reason Madrid was such an appealing place to inhabit: Though the Manzanares River flows through town, it was these underground water sources that guaranteed life’s most essential ingredient close at hand. Apparently, the water ran for many centuries and only dried up after 1850.

I often end my Medieval Madrid trek near the Plaza Mayor at the Mercado de San Miguel, a neighborhood covered market that was recently restored and converted into a gourmet covered market with several open-space tapas bars. The atmosphere is always vibrant and convivial and a mix of locals and visitors.

I have other favorite tours, too, depending on my mood. Sometimes I love the tour that walks in the footsteps of Madrid’s artists and writers. As a writer, I love to get a café con leche at the El Gran Café Gijón (Paseo de Recoletos, 21) and feel kinship with writers past and present (you’ll know who they are as they’re all nursing their one drink and scribbling away on a pad of paper before them—very old-fashioned!).

Other days, I love a good Madrid Mystery tour, complete with unsolved crimes and ghosts (including ones fabled to roam the halls of the famous Reina Sofia Museum). And yet other days, I like to follow the Historic Wine Taverns tour with a good appetite, enjoying places that have been serving up the same dishes since the 18^th century.

And did you know that it was the 13^th century king of Castile and León, Alfonso X, who imposed a law making tapas, little snacks, mandatory when people ordered alcoholic drinks at pubs and inns? The tradition has held to the present, which is why when you order a glass of wine or a beer, the bartender almost always includes a little plate of something to eat. Alfonso X was both concerned about public drunkenness as he was about people’s health and felt it was enhanced with something to eat with wine. It’s been a good tradition and a part of what makes Spanish public culture so appealing.

Trek, Surf, Eat Local, Down the Jersey Shore

2011-06-30T06:24:00.000-07:00

A favorite trek is walking to the beach, carrying nothing but a surfboard tucked under my arm.

The summer is in full bloom here along coastal New Jersey. The water is a balmy 70 degrees Fahrenheit. I have noticed if I am very quiet when I reach the water's edge, the ocean has a melody unique to each day. So I listen and wait until the music alights upon my ears. Two days ago, it was a jazz quintet. Today, a Bach chamber piece.

Another pleasure of the season is the farmer’s markets and their seasonal, local offerings. These are the folks and the practices that give New Jersey its Garden State rep. Asparagus season has passed but blueberries and corn are here for a few weeks. The chard, arugula, and beets are robust and vibrant. Peaches are just beginning to peak.

Another aspect of the farmers’ markets I enjoy is that they bring a lifestyle from France and Spain that I love: shopping locally and everyday for food without ever getting into a car. There is such deep pleasure in walking to market and carrying food home. The car sits quietly in its parking spot and I see more of my neighborhood, my neighbors, and my market baskets overflow. I have sunflowers riding atop, ready to cheer my kitchen table and bring in another connection with France and Spain.

A favorite summer dinner with local fare:

Sautéed Swiss chard in olive oil, garlic, and chili pepper flakes and tossed it with angel hair pasta made with Jerusalem artichoke flour (it tastes fantastic, like artichokes and herbs).

Dessert: Simplicity rules. Rinsed blueberries in a pretty bowl, to pluck one by one or to pop greedily into your mouth by the handful.

Locating The Garden State’s Farmers’ Markets:

http://www.state.nj.us/jerseyfresh/searches/urban.htm

http://www.farmersmarketonline.com/fm/NewJersey.htm

http://www.jerseyfarmersmarkets.com/Home.aspx

http://www.njskylands.com/fmmarkets.htm

http://www.jerseyfresh.nj.gov/

Hike, Eat, Drink, and Contemplate the Pyrenees near Lourdes, France

2011-06-15T08:25:00.000-07:00

There is no question that Lourdes in southern France, on the edge of the Pyrenees, is a powerful spot. Indeed, the entire stretch of mountains, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, possesses several mystical spots, many associated with Mary.

I have traversed several of them, and also a few in northern Spain. All are remote places in overwhelmingly beautiful natural vistas of mountain, ocean, or forested valleys.

Maybe because of this, on my pilgrimage to Lourdes, I felt overwhelmed by the number of other visitors. After paying my respects to Our Lady, I sought to return to the quieter contemplation of the pilgrim’s road.

The tourist office in Lourdes had just the answer. The voie verte, the green hiker’s and biker’s path, from Lourdes south, went right into the Pyrenees. I could take it from the town edge or I could catch a local bus and pick it up deeper into the mountains. I opted for the local bus so that I could start in the midst of the wild and then trek back into Lourdes on my own foot power.

I now realize that the two activities are the perfect balance for the sacred traveler who wants both to pay a visit to one of the world’s great shrines and to partake of the landscape that Saint Bernadette herself would have seen as more familiar than the Lourdes of today. It is a landscape that still inspires transcendent experience.

To take to the path, visit the tourist office for a good map and advice, asking for La Voie Verte des Gaves, the name of the walking and cycling route south of Lourdes.

Culinary Miracles: Hidden in those hills is a culinary miracle, the restaurant Le Viscos in the village of St-Savin (http://www.hotel-leviscos.com/en/hotel-le-viscos-saint-savin-table.php). I dare say, hiking will never be the same after resting my feet and ordering chef Jean-Pierre Saint-Martin’s shorter—five course instead of seven course—walker’s menu, Le Menu de Retour Balade.

Other Marian Routes: If you are interested in powerful but little known Marian sites along coastal northern Spain, fishermen’s shrines dedicated to Mary, please see Chapter 9—San Vicente de la Barquera to Navia in The Spiritual Traveler Spain (http://www.beebesfeast.com/book-flier.html)

The Spiritual Traveler Spain Route Map

2011-06-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

I am a lover of maps, not too different from JRR Tolkien's Hobbits. All my life, I have poured over maps like a good storybook.

For reasons out of my control, my book, The Spiritual Traveler Spain--A Guide to Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes, does not have a route map in the book. So, here I'd like to offer a map of the routes I outline in the book.

To learn more about The Spiritual Traveler Spain, please visit either my website (http://www.beebesfeast.com/book-flier.html)
or Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Traveler-Spain-Sacred-Pilgrim/dp/1587680475/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1307546066&sr=1-1)

Buen Camino!

Pilgrimage in Southern France - Moissac, Chant, and Cherries

2011-05-26T11:21:00.000-07:00

My favorite French film, Saint-Jacques…La Mecque, is a story of an unlikely group of characters, each with their issues, walking together to Santiago de Compostela from Le-Puy-en-Velay in France’s Massif Central region. That particular road to Santiago, El Camino, Le Chemin, passes through Moissac, home of one of France’s most remarkable Romanesque structures, the Abbaye de Saint Pierre, Saint Peter’s Abbey.

Founded in the 7^th century, the current abbey dates largely to the early 12^th. It possesses intimate and humanistic images of what it is like to strive for spiritual transcendence while being an imperfect mortal.

Both for the road and for the film, I knew I had to visit Moissac.

Many visitors spend a night and continue on the road. I decided to stay for a couple nights and it brought forth two unexpected delights. One was the spellbinding experience of chanting Laudes with the sisters of the Communauté Marie Mère de l’Église in the abbey’s church at 8:30 am. The other was taking an afternoon hike around the perimeter of town, along the Canal du Midi, a stretch of the waterway that connects the Atlantic to the Mediterranean across southern France.

The small trek gave me a full perspective of this pilgrim’s town on the Tarn River and near its confluence with the Garonne River. I passed numerous cherry orchards. Some of France’s finest cherries come from this region, reminding me of tried and true pilgrims’ wisdom: You can trust pilgrims to know where to traverse for both spiritual transformation and mortal delight.

Amazing Walnut Cake from the Dordogne, France

2011-05-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

This recipe, test driven and tweaked to work in an American kitchen, is one I played with while passing the winter in the Dordogne in southwestern France. There, walnut orchards abound, as do walnut products, from the raw nut to the toasty amber-toned walnut oils, walnut liqueurs, and walnut wine (vin de noix).

This cake is easy, incredibly delicious--made with white wine and walnut oil--and beautifully paired with berry sauce and vanilla ice cream. A full-bodied red wine from the Cahor is a perfect match, enhancing the walnuts, cream, and berries. But a glass of white wine, of the same vintage you mixed into the cake batter, is also remarkable.

Dordogne Walnut Cake

4 eggs
3/4 cup raw sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 pinch sea salt
1 cup dry white wine (I like using a dry white from Bergerac)
1 cup shelled walnuts
1 cup all-purpose or whole wheat flour
1 cup walnut oil

Mix the eggs and sugar until well blended and then beat in the baking powder, sea salt, wine, walnuts, and flour. Add in the oil and beat until you have a smooth batter. Pour into a round baking dish lined--bottom and over the edges--with parchment paper.

Bake in a 400 degrees Fahrenheit oven for ~30 minutes or until the center springs back from your touch.

As soon as you take the cake out of the oven, you can lift it out of the baking dish by the edges of the parchment paper. Set it on a heat-resistant surface, such as a wooden chopping block, and allow to cool.

While the cake cools, make the simple berry sauce.

Easy Berry Sauce:

My favorite berry sauce is a pint of black berries heated slowly in a pan with a tablespoon of any berry preserve you have on hand, such as raspberry, strawberry, or even elderberry. Other fresh, seasonal berries work beautifully, too. Over the low heat, let the berries slowly "melt" into their own sauce.

Plate the cake by first placing a couple spoonfuls of the sauce onto a dessert plate. Set a wedge of the walnut cake on the sauce to one side of the plate. On the other side, place a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

Bon appetit!

Hiking in SW France with Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon

2011-05-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

I picked up the trail of the GR64 in St-Cyprien, in the Dordogne of SW France, and spent the day hiking to Les Eyzies, home of the National Museum of Prehistory as well as the center of an area with a remarkably high concentration of early modern human (Cro-Magnon) and Neanderthal sites.

Though visitors were overtaking the nearby towns, I saw not a soul on the trail except for a man in a forest clearing, tending his vineyard.

I passed old caves, native forest, and farmsteads speckled with black and white cows.

It was stunning to hike in a landscape traversed for thousands of years by ancient humans, from some 300,000 to 10,000 years ago. My senses grew sharper and my imagination expanded, contemplating what their realities might have been.

Four and a half hours later, after interpreting some ambiguous trail markers or lack thereof, I arrived in Les Eyzies. On the edge of town, along with signs pointing to numerous famous prehistoric sites, was a hand-painted board informing me that I would find wine in 50 meters. I think Cro-Magnon would have liked that.

To read more on this fascinating place and ancestry, check out
On Hearths, Ancient and Modern: http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/1110/feature3_1.html

Sea Scallops and Pilgrim Roads, Viveiro, Spain

2011-04-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

In the far northwest of Spain are several remote fishing towns and villages, many woven together by a web of coastal pilgrimage roads, eventually leading to Santiago de Compostela. More immediately, the footpaths weave through green landscapes of forest and coastline, fishing boats, and small shrines known only to the locals. Any given day can bring together a walk into the wild, a stop at a Romanesque chapel, and end with a seafarer's feast with a regional vintage.

In Viveiro, such a walk could follow the road that meanders up from town to the place's patron saint, San Roque. On many days I have traversed this route, stunned by how different it is each time. One day, I would see wild deer, on another, cows coming home and taking over the narrow road, and on yet another, an outcrop of startling quartz rock whose spikes were exposed by recent rains. There was almost always the sound of chestnut leaves in the wind.

Near the shrine is a local hilltop restaurant, open on weekends throughout the year, that grills local meats, seafood, peppers, and dark leafy greens on an open wood fire. Another option is to hike back down, pick up just-caught sea scallops from the covered market in town and pan fry them at home. Scallops are so plentiful here that their large shells wash up regularly on nearby beaches.

I like to keep it simple: Heat a little olive oil and butter and lay the scallops in the hot pan. While they brown on one side, season them with chili pepper flakes, and sea salt. Turn them over, add a quick splash of white wine and cook until the scallops are done. Squeeze a bit of fresh lemon. If you have lemon thyme or parsley on hand, sprinkle a bit of the fresh chopped herbs on the scallops before serving. An excellent white wine with the scallops would be Albariño.

The Bird of Lascaux, France

2010-11-16T07:04:00.000-08:00

Nestled on a hill above the town of Montignac in southwestern France, the approximately 17,000 year old painted cave network of Lascaux carries an ancient and sublime tribute to our ancestors’ passion for transformative art. The location itself is testimony to the human aesthetic desire to live in beautiful places. The paintings contain symbolic mysteries that no one fully understands, but we intuitively connect with the vibrant, animated, and emotionally depicted images.

As if to emphasize my deeply emotional inner state at being there, when I was leaving Lascaux II—a perfect replica of the original cave that is just a couple hundred meters away and closed to the public for protection—a red throated European thrush flew toward me and landed two feet away.

I had just been contemplating the possible meanings of the one human figure in the cave, a reclining man who seems to have just speared a bison and next to whom lies a staff capped with a bird figure. The man's face is bird-like, to me a seeming precursor to later Neolithic-era depictions of the goddess as wearing the mask or the face of a bird. That goddess also often dwelled in caves. So far, archaeologists see the Lascaux figure as carrying on some form of masculine magic for the hunt. Perhaps it is a shamanic figure. I am sure there is something to all this but I also think that the total imagery is making a call to both the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine to strike a balance that will assure the continuation of life and well-being. This was what I was thinking when the little bird of Lascaux landed at my feet.

Is it synchronicity or simply a very territorial bird who lives at Lascaux?

And, after a day of hiking around the amazing hill in whose belly sits Lascaux, my belly was grumbling and ready for a good meal. I walked the few kilometers back into Montignac and, as truffle season had arrived, I found and enjoyed a quintessentially local omelet with shaved black truffles.

Chartres, France

2010-10-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

I fulfilled a lifelong dream to visit Chartres Cathedral after years of pouring over images and historical accounts of the medieval site. Once there, the inlaid stone labyrinth in the nave reminded me of the inner and outer relationship we forge as pilgrims, as explorers in life.

The labyrinth stands as a medieval testimony to the importance of pilgrimage: If you were unable to take the outer journey to Santiago de Compostela or Rome or Jerusalem, you could walk the labyrinth and it offered a similar walking meditation that allowed you to take the the inner world onto the road and the outer world's offerings inward.

Often, when I go for a walk or a hike, I try to bring to it the intense presence and awareness of a walking meditation. At Chartres, it was impossible not to feel this intention. The town reminded me of its ancient foundations, dating back to an original settlement by the Carnutes, a Celtic-speaking people who saw the magical potential of this site over 2,000 years ago.

Such a walk around town also inspired a hearty appetite. As Chartres is in the Eure-et-Loir department, one of the local culinary specialties is rabbit, partridge, pigeon, or venison pie. I confess, I held out and returned to my apartment in Paris and treated myself to a raspberry eclair from my local bakery in the 9eme.

A Rite of Passage and a Tajine in Fez

2010-10-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

I lived in Morocco for a year when I was doing research for my doctorate in cultural anthropology. One weekend, a Moroccan friend asked me to join her for a naming feast in Fez. It was for the newborn son of good friend of hers. I was giddy. I was about to become an intimate part of a household and the feast preparations for the event.

It turned out not to be a typical naming feast. The mother was divorcing her husband and was using the feast to alter resistant public opinion about her choices. She was successful in this and I think the turning point happened midway through the long feast, when the chicken tajine, a ginger and spice-rich stew with black and green olives, was served.

That weekend in Fez remains one of the highlights of my time in Morocco. It also possessed all the indications of a pilgrimage: everyone was transformed by the end of the feast. Below is the recipe for the main dish that pulled off the feast.

To read the entire story, called Feasting in Fez, which was a Runner-up Winner in the TranstionsAbroad.com 2008 Travel Narrative Writing Contest, visit http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/travel/narrative_travel_writing/feasting_in_fez_morocco.shtml.

To read more of my food, travel, and adventure writing, visit www.beebesfeast.com.

Moroccan Chicken Tajine with Two Types of Olives

(Serves 4)
1 medium sized-onion, cut in long narrow slivers
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
1 chicken, whole
Water to cover the chicken half way in a
   cooking pot in which the bird can lay flat
   on its back and barely touch the sides of the pot.
1 to 2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
1/4 teaspoon saffron pistons, roughly ground
   in a mortar and pestle.
1 tablespoon ground cumin
Zest from half a lemon
lemon juice from a whole lemon
salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste (Be sparing
   with the salt because later you will add the olives,
   with their own saltiness.)
1/4 cup roughly chopped curly parsley
1/4 cup roughly chopped cilantro
1 cup green olives, preferably the Provence herb
   cured style (with pits) but other types of
   green olives work well too.
1 cup black calamata olives.

Pour the olive oil into the pot for your chicken. Heat it and add the onion slivers and the minced garlic. Saute these for a minute and then add the chicken and quickly pour cold water over it until the bird is half immersed.

While bringing the water to boil, add the fresh ginger, the saffron, the cumin, lemon zest, lemon juice, and pepper. Once boiling, reduce the heat and allow the chicken to simmer for half an hour. Then turn the bird over and let it simmer for another half-an-hour. After the chicken has fully cooked, add the two types of parsley and the two types of olives. Allow to simmer on very low heat until you are ready to serve the dish.

Serve with freshly baked Moroccan style flat bread or with a fresh baguette. A leafy green salad is a perfect accompaniment to round out this meal.

Suggested Wine Pairing

As Muslims, most Moroccans don't drink wine and won't offer it to you. However, Morocco does produce some very good vintage. One of the best, I think, is Amazir, a red wine that tastes like a French Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot blend. It is grown in the Meknes wine valley, not too far from the ancient site of Rome's North African provincial capital, Volubilis, known as Walili in Moroccan Arabic.

Amazir works beautifully with this chicken tajine. The medium-bodied wine joins the meaty olives head on but is delicate and elegant with the refined sauce, rich with garlic, ginger, and saffron.
If you cannot get your hands on Amazir, an alternative, inspired by the saffron, is the La Manchan Jumilla label. This southeastern Spanish wine grows near saffron-producing lands and has absorbed saffron notes into its bouquet and palette: it is a rich experience to taste the saffron-infused terroir.

Trekking in Ancient Aragón

2010-10-22T05:37:00.000-07:00

I recently hiked to a powerful sacred place, the old monastery of San Juan de la Peña in the northern reaches of Aragón province in Spain.

Close to the Pyrenees and on the traditional Camino Aragones, the Aragón Road is a road to Santiago de Compostela that is less traveled today. But in the Middle Ages it was a commonly taken alternative route over the Pyrenees to the one further east, the Camino Frances or French Road, that passes through St-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles. This one crosses the more trying Somport Pass to Canfranc and across amazing mountain landscapes and little-known Romanesque churches to meet the Camino Frances in Puente la Reina, just southwest of Pamplona.

In the Middle Ages, as well as today, San Juan de la Peña has been a side pilgrimage a pilgrim could take to a beautiful Mozarabic and Romanesque monastery. It is built into a stone shelter overlooking a magical, largely indigenous forest.

The hike to get there offers a taste of a more remote pathway on the Camino, one that can really tune you in to your sacred inner work while being on a remarkable spiritual outer journey. When I hiked it this autumn, blackberries were ripening and a clever fox was gorging on them, leaving his purple-colored scat all along the pathway, alerting me to the fact that other creatures also use this trail to get to their bliss.

More insights into exploring places in sacred Spain can be found in The Spiritual Traveler Spain—A Guide to Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes, www.beebesfeast.com.

Spanish Mushrooms and Wine

2010-10-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

Three years ago I walked the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrim's road across northern Spain to the city of Santiago de Compostela. When I was walking through the wine growing regions of Navarra and Rioja, I witnessed the autumn colors of orange, red, and yellow erupt on grapevines that swept across vast fields like Zeus' fiery chariot.

In that cooling season, I also saw local mushroom enthusiasts use the Road to get to their favorite stretch of forest and return to their villages with beautiful baskets full of wild mushrooms.

One man in Rioja, near the monasteries of Suso and Yuso in San Millan de Cogolla, had gone mushroom hunting early in the morning and crossed my path with a basket full of just enough mushrooms to make a lunch of scrambled eggs and mushrooms, which he would likely drink with a red wine from the nearby winery, Bodegas David Moreno.

I liked the fact that he wasn't greedy; he gathered only enough mushrooms for the day's culinary adventures. I imagined that a part of cooking for him was the outdoor exhilaration of gathering his ingredients from the wild as well as from his own kitchen garden.

This recipe is dedicated to his local spirit of the pilgrim's road as well as to American friends who are vegetarians but want to sample the best of Spanish flavors.

Spanish-seasoned vegetarian mushroom wontons

1 package soft tofu (14 oz.),
   mashed to the consistency of scrambled eggs
   (use a fork, potato mashers or clean hands)
5 oz. baby bella mushrooms, finely minced
5 oz. shitake mushrooms, finely minced
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh chives
2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro parsley
1 teaspoon grated ginger
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/2 teaspoon Spanish picante pimentón
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Salt and ground pepper to taste (keep in mind that
   the soy sauce adds salt)
1 package wonton skins

Mix all the ingredients well in a bowl. Take a wonton skin and brush it lightly with water. Take a teaspoon full of the tofu mix and place it in the center of a wonton skin on the side you've just brushed. Fold up the corners to the middle and press all four together at the center. Then align the neighboring edges of the wonton and press them to seal the mix in, giving the overall shape of a diamond-shaped Japanese lantern. Steam the wontons in either bamboo steamers or simply fill a shallow pan with water and a little canola oil and set the wontons into it and cover with a lid. When the skins change from opaque to transparent, gently remove the wonton and set it on a towel to soak up additional water. Make the dipping sauce, below. Place the dipping sauce in a small bowl in the center of a large platter strewn with unchopped chive stalks and arrange the steamed wontons around the bowl on the plate.

Dipping Sauce Ingredients:
1/8 cup soy sauce
1/8 cup water
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon grated ginger
1/4 teaspoon garlic, finely minced
1/2 teaspoon minced chives
A splash of Chinese hot sauce

A Quick Note on Pimentón

My favorite Spanish seasoning, pimentón, turns vegetarian dishes into meaty, robust experiences. This is how my wontons here take on a more complex, rich texture and flavor even when they are made with tofu, instead of ground pork. Pimentón is a red pepper that is specially dried in smokehouses. There are three types, derived from three types of red peppers: dulce (sweet, the closest to Hungarian paprika but with a bit more bite); agridulce (bittersweet); and picante (spicy hot). I like to play with all three, sometimes even mixing them in the same recipe. This recipe uses the picante variety but sparingly enough so as not to overwhelm the dish or the palettes of pepper-sensitive friends.

Suggested Wine Pairing

Mushrooms are so much a part of the terroir in Rioja, and this recipe inspired by a Riojan mushroom hunter, that I strongly recommend a red Rioja Crianza, the most likely vintage locals would imbibe with their shrooms.

Crianza refers to the aging of wine, where the wine is at least two years old and 12 months of that two years has to have been in an oak barrel, either American or French oak or both. (White and rosé crianzas are aged for six months in a barrel.)

Reserva and Gran Reserva are the next notches up in the aging process. Reserva reds are at least three years old and have been aged for 12 months in an oak barrel. (White reservas must be at least two years old, with six months spent in a barrel.) Gran reserva reds must spend two years aging in an oak barrel and another three years in bottles. (Gran reserva whites must be four years old and spend six months of those four years in an oak barrel.)

For this recipe, the red Crianza has developed enough character and oak to match nicely with the earth-bound mushrooms but hold enough youth to add a nice light zing. Riojan wines in general have a nice earth-mineral taste with their fruit, a nice dance partner for mushrooms, as well as the nutty sesame oil.