Huîtres plates

I'll never forget my first taste of oysters in France. I had eaten oysters a few times in Canada, but they had always travelled too far to have any life left in them. Then I moved to France and spent a few days in Brittany, where I visited the fishing town of Cancale in the Mont St-Michel bay, home of genius chef Olivier Roellinger. I didn't have the means to eat in his restaurant (and have still never made it there, though it's high up on my list), so found a simple café by the sea with wooden benches and a super-speedy oyster shucker. In seconds a dozen oysters were placed before us with a few lemon halves for squeezing on top.
As the lemon juice hit the oyster it positively jumped, contracting in reaction to the acidity. Now, this might make some people squeamish, but to me this is what an oyster should be: barely out of the sea and fully alive. The texture was silky and the taste like a concentrated and clean essence of seawater. No oyster experience has lived up to that one since - I think Paris is too urban for oysters and in Nice the bracing wind is missing - but last week's oysters on the Ile de Ré came a close second. There were several oyster stands at the market in St-Martin de Ré and the one that appealed to me the most was that of Frédéric Voisin, who is based near the town of Loix. What caught my eye were his huîtres plates, flat oysters that are native to France but have been largely replaced by the creuses, which originated in Japan.
As we bought a dozen of these oysters, Frédéric gave us a few tips. Flat oysters should be opened at their tip, he said, by digging a small knife below the lightly curved shell to cut the hinge. On the Ile de Ré they use a special knife which does not have the traditional metal handguard between the blade and the handle. "When you're opening an oyster it's your other hand that's at risk," explained Frédéric. "With the handguard there is more chance that you will press too hard and cut into your opposite hand." He also told us to empty out the première eau, the first water, from the oyster as we opened it and wait a few seconds for it to release new, cleaner water. "The impurities are in the first water," he said. If bits of shell got into the oyster, he advised rinsing it with mineral water.
Armed with Frédéric's knife and instructions, Philippe skilfully opened the oysters back at the house. If these oysters were not quite as lively as those in Cancale, they did have the clean, pure taste I had sought all these years. Flat oysters are stronger in taste than creuses, but these were by no means overwhelming, just beautifully intense. With pain au levain, salted butter and a bottle of chilled Muscadet, it would be hard to ask for more.
Frédéric Voisin
Le Grouin, 17111 Loix-en-Ré, 05 46 43 51 38.
voisinfrederic@wanadoo.fr
Frédéric ships his oysters anywhere in France and to several European countries.

Seaweed butter for fish

Students in my cooking classes are often surprised to hear me say that it's hard to find fresh local fish in Nice. Surrounded as we are by the azure waters of the Mediterranean, you would think that fish would be plentiful. Sadly, though, few of the colorful fishing boats moored in the Nice harbor are actually used and I know of only one fisherman who sells his own catch, at the far end of the Promenade des Anglais near the airport. There is also good fish to be had at the Marché de la Libération along boulevard Joseph Garnier, but until the tram is running down avenue Jean Médecin - later this year, with luck - it seems too much effort to weave through the construction work. For the moment I'm relying on Poissonnerie Deloye near the Galeries Lafayette department store and Poissonnerie Tony near the port, both of which sell the small local catch at astronomic prices.
All this to say that the sight of gleaming fresh fish on the Ile de Ré filled me with excitement. On the first two days I bought fish at the covered market in the center of Saint-Martin de Ré, but happy as I was with the quality I couldn't help wondering if there might be other, more secret, sources of fresh fish on the island. Then, as we were riding our bikes into La Flotte, I spotted a garage with a sign outside advertising fish straight from the boat. Later that day, the salesman at the organic supermarket confirmed that this is one place where locals go for fresh fish (the other is a fish shop in the town of La Noue). "There is always a long line-up," he warned us.
We didn't get off to a very early start the next day and showed up outside the garage at 10.30am, a late hour for the serious fish buyer. Fortuitously, though, the doors had just opened and we were fourth in line. As we waited many more people joined us, all of them apparently regulars. Open only from 10.30am-12.30pm from Tuesday-Saturday, this is a no-nonsense place where they won't gut or scale the fish for you, but the prices are relatively reasonable. Sam, an instinctive gourmet, was drawn to the turbot but I settled on the dorade royale, royal sea bream, and some squid for dipping in seasoned flour and frying as an appetizer.
I would have liked to cook the sea bream on the bone but there was no way that three generously sized royal sea breams were going to fit into the kitchen's toaster oven. Instead, I filleted the fish and fried them on the skin side in two pans. The fisherman's wife had told me to leave the scales on and remove the skin after cooking, instructions that I happily obeyed since I never enjoy finding fish scales in my hair. My precious seaweed and peppercorn salt was too coarse to sprinkle onto the fish, so I mixed it into butter with some fresh flat-leaf parsley and served it on top. If you're wondering where to buy seaweed salt, by the way, I have seen it sold by salt specialists at several open-air markets in Paris including the Marché Saxe-Breteuil.

Fish fillets with seaweed and peppercorn butter
Serves 6

6 fish fillets with their skin, washed and dried
Fine sea salt
2 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp butter
1 1/2 tsp seaweed and peppercorn salt
2 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
Freshly ground pepper, to taste

Season the fish lightly with fine sea salt. Heat the olive oil in two frying pans over medium-high heat. Cook the fillets on the skin side until the flesh is nearly white on the top, then flip them over and finish cooking for no more than 1 min.

To make the seaweed butter, combine all the ingredients in a small bowl with a fork, crushing the salt.

Place the fillets, flesh-side up, on six plates and top each one with a spoonful of the seaweed butter.

This butter can also be used on steamed new potatoes.

Salt of the earth

It's easy to take salt for granted. That is, until you've discovered coarse gray sea salt and fleur de sel from France's Atlantic coast. I've known for years that the first gets its color from clay and the second floats to the surface of the water, but had never given much thought to how they were actually harvested. All that has changed now that I'm on the Ile de Ré, one of three islands or peninsulas in France that produce the country's finest sea salt. After getting my fill of the gloriously empty sandy beaches yesterday, I went on a little field trip to visit the island's salt marshes, joining some intrepid seniors from the Muscadet region who had come in vintage convertibles and a couple of other curious tourists.
At first there doesn't appear to be much to see, just stretches of orderly square puddles bordered by paths. But our guide Christelle did a great job of explaining the fascinating process of harvesting salt. The technique dates from the 12th and 13th centuries and, like so many medieval inventions, is ingenious. Salt producers, who are called paludiers north of the Loire river and sauniers (after the medieval word for salt) in the south, have used the same tools for hundreds of years, though some of the hoes and rakes are now made of fiberglass rather than wood to make them easier to handle.
Because the salt marshes are below sea level, the seawater comes through a dyke into a large pool. From there, the sauniers (we are south of the Loire) control its flow through a system of canals and dams using simple slats of wood. The water moves through the flats like a maze, with each series of square basins lower and shallower than the last. Harvesting can only take place in the summer, when the sun and wind evaporate the water over a period of ten days to two weeks. By the time the salt is ready to harvest there is very little water left, and the sauniers use rakes and hoes on long poles to scrape it into piles and pick it up. In the winter, their job is to keep the natural clay basins clean so that the unrefined salt will be free of impurities. The saunier's wife is traditionally in charge of gently raking off the fleur de sel, the pure white salt that rises to the top of the water and is prized for its light crunch and delicate taste.
About 100 sauniers on the Ile de Ré produce an average of 2,500 tons of salt per season. Christelle explained that in the past farmers produced salt in addition to their vegetable crops, while now it's a profession in itself. To allow the salt producers to make a living even in rainy years when the harvest is smaller, the cooperative keeps the prices stable (ie high). Many of the young sauniers learn their profession on the Guérande peninsula in Brittany, which is the Atlantic's main salt-producing area (the island of Noirmoutier, which is also famed for its potatoes, is the third).
I had often wondered why the Atlantic fleur de sel tastes better than fleur de sel de Camargue, which is produced near Marseille, and Christelle finally cleared up the mystery. She told me that the hot and dry Mediterranean climate causes the water to evaporate faster, resulting in a bitter-tasting salt that needs to be refined before it can be eaten. The Atlantic coast, it seems, has the right combination of sun, wind and rain.
Before leaving I naturally had to stop into the salt shop, where I bought a big bag of fleur de sel and a jar of coarse gray salt flavored with thyme, three peppercorns and three kinds of seaweed. I don't normally go in for flavored salts but, really, who could resist that combination? Later I saw the same salts at a slightly lower price in the supermarket, which gave me pause. But never mind - the fleur de sel will have a prized place on my table for sprinkling at the last minute onto cooked foods and salads, while the seaweed in the coarse salt will make it a natural match for fish or new potatoes. And next time I throw some coarse gray salt into a stew or pack it around a fish to create an airtight crust for roasting, I'll think about the dedicated sauniers and their medieval tools.
Ecomusée de Marais Salant
near the town of Loix on the Ile de Ré

Luxury new potatoes

Like the Auvergne, the Ile de Ré has a potato fetish. But here what they celebrate is the spring potato, the sweet and dainty pomme de terre primeur de l'Ile de Ré. It has an official season - from early May to the end of June - and sells in Paris and Nice at the luxury price of around €12 a kilogram (about $8 a pound). What makes it special is the island's unique sandy terroir combined with the seaweed used as fertiliser, which is said to give the potatoes a subtle marine taste.
We were lucky enough to arrive on the Ile de Ré at the start of the potato season, which coincided with the presidential election on Sunday. Outside the polling station on the island's capital of St-Martin de Ré, chefs were serving the new potatoes topped with salmon eggs or filled with cheese and accompanied by the crisp white local wine - reason enough to get out and vote.
I couldn't wait to get my hands on some potatoes at the market, which takes place every day on the island's capital of St-Martin de Ré. The market isn't cheap - St-Martin is the St-Tropez of the Atlantic coast, attracting French celebrities and politicians - but the local potatoes are a relative bargain at €3-€4 a kilo. I bought a couple of kilos and rushed them home, knowing that they are picked fresh every day to prevent their natural sugars from turning into starch (a bit like garden peas or corn). As we were about to leave the covered market I turned back for some thick and creamy fromage blanc from the pristine dairy stand displaying local cheeses.
To preserve the texture and sweetness of new potatoes it's best to bring the water to a boil before adding them to the pot. I threw in some local sea salt mixed with herbs and multicolored peppercorns, which the owners of the house use to flavor everything they cook. These deluxe potatoes need little or no adornment, but I couldn't resist mixing the fromage blanc with plenty of chopped chives to spoon over their buttery flesh. I served them with a whopper of a line-caught sea bass (enough for six of us) topped with a lime and ginger vinaigrette, but they could easily have starred on their own with a green salad. Whether we could really detect the taste of seaweed I can't say for sure, but I like to think so.