Luxembourg Farmers' Market

It’s a chilly mid-March Wednesday morning in the Place Guillaume--one of Luxembourg City’s two downtown squares. Like many squares in Europe, it’s a large flat expanse of granite cobblestone surrounded by old buildings and punctuated with occasional monuments. Place Guillaume, often empty except for strolling tourists and the more industriously-moving members of Luxembourg’s workforce, this morning is inundated with white tents and assorted vans and trucks. The reason for the hubbub (and our presence) is the city’s farmers’ market, which takes place every Wednesday and Saturday morning. 

I have long been a fan of farmers’ markets, though mostly for the spectacle and for wonderfully fresh produce. This started to change to a moral imperative over the years, especially after I started reading about our food supply. Two recent standouts that influenced me greatly were: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (2005), and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2007). This morning’s dual goal, and the reason I seek out farmers’ markets, is to get high-quality food and to support local, sustainable farming.

It’s not quite nine o’clock, and the market looks pretty slow. The pace will pick up later in the morning as grocery shoppers start to arrive, and especially around lunchtime, as downtown workers invade the square for sandwiches, baked goods and freshly roasted chickens. The weather is a little strange and strangely uplifting. It is brightly sunny, yet the sky is spitting tiny raindrops, though only intermittently. It’s just a few seconds of spatter now and again, more like standing in the bow of a fast moving sailboat than a rainstorm. The brilliant sun is tempered with a chilly west wind somehow gusting its way into the square.

We encounter the Place d’Armes first, a town square surrounded by restaurants, that features a band stage in the center. Heading toward the southeast corner of Place d’Armes and through a short tunnel, we arrived in Place Guillaume. 

As Tennyson might have remarked, you know spring is in the air when a young pigeon’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Mr. Romeo Pigeon is romancing Miss Juliet Pigeon. I’m half embarrassed to watch where this is going, until I notice the handful of farmers behind a nearby counter also watching, with nothing better to do. Like Christopher Walken as “The Continental” on Saturday Night Live, Romeo will not be denied. There’s a lot of cooing and strutting, as one might find in one of the local nightclubs on a Friday night. Then he makes his move. A lot of flapping ensues and a few feathers actually fly. But Juliet is having none of it, and successfully rebuffs the advances of her paramour. She grabs her pigeon purse, gets out her get-mad money and heads home. Or wherever young, single pigeon maidens go after a date gone awry.

With the drama over, the sellers now go back to whatever they were doing. They look more peaceful than bored, enjoying the sun. Here and there, one calls out, “Moyen!” to a scarce shopper. This “good morning” in Letzebourgish usually elicits the same response. The rest of the conversation is most often in German. Sometimes in Letzebourgish, sometimes in French.

Rolling over to the pastry cart, I buy a bag of beignets. Dusted with powdered sugar, they are chewier than American donuts and not quite as sweet. The dough is twisted into knots the size of a baby’s fist and baked instead of fried. The beignets keep Rebecca happy; she clutches a pastry in one hand and her ladybug doll (“Lady Dotty”) in the other. Behind the counter there are all kinds of “bio” breads, the European designation for organic foodstuffs. I eschew the sensible loaves and chew on an irresponsible beignet.

Next stop is the chicken vendor. This pleasant young woman has dozens of slowly-roasting whole birds rotating vertically on a rotisserie. The smell is overwhelmingly delicious. Surprisingly, I am able to walk right up to the counter. I’ve been here at 11 o’clock when the line for chicken runs twenty deep, and you have to search your soul to determine how badly it wants freshly roasted chicken. Depositing my chicken in my shopping bag, it takes most of my willpower to not tear a drumstick off and chew as I walk.

The apple stall is always alluring. I always buy the bottles of freshly squeezed apple juice when I find them. The juice taste so alive and delicious. The plastic bottle she hands me is recycled; it once held bottled water that the apple farmer likely bought at a grocery store. And rather than place it empty into her recycle bin at home, she has placed it full of apple juice into my shopping bag, and earned three Euros for her trouble. She gives Rebecca a Boskoop apple. Becca hands me Lady Dotty, clutches the apple in one hand and the beignet in the other, alternating bites.

I am sorely tempted by the cheese vendor. He is still hefting huge wheels of cheese onto his stall table and setting up his display. But he has his sampling knife ready and offers me a slice of what looks like Leerdammer. Picturing the half dozen cheeses in the refrigerator at home, I decline politely. We both know he is there to sell cheese and not feed the masses over light conversation. I’ve bought from him before, and will again. Just not today.

When I come to this market, it seems like my shopping bag is always bigger than my stomach. The temptation is to buy more produce than I can possibly cook before they start to wilt. With this in mind, I steel my determination and only buy two gorgeous eggplants at the next vegetable stall, even though I really want to get some kohlrabi, artichokes, celery root, delicate little Belgian endives not much larger than okra, and some curly green vegetable possibly related to frisee. I imagine it must be wonderful to be a chef who devises every evening’s menu based on what is available at the market. Is there such a thing as veggie lust?

I’ve been looking for my favorite goat sausage and honey vendor, but she isn’t here today. For the last few months, one of my favorite breakfasts has been to saw slices of bread off of a nice, crusty loaf from one of the local bakers. Then I toast them, slather on some very local butter (I can see the dairy from our apartment) and local honey from the market.

Notice the operative word “local”? It makes a huge difference, especially with some products. I know the dates and oranges at the market didn’t come from here, and I am okay with that. But honey is like oysters, fresh herbs and tea--it picks up evil-intentioned chemicals fairly readily. I have long bought my honey at farmers’ markets, even before the recent expose in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about tainted Chinese honey that is illegally relabeled and sold dirt cheap in U.S. supermarkets. In Seattle this meant special trips to Pike Place Market or the University District Farmers’ Market. Local honey doesn’t blow my budget and it tastes noticeably better than the mass market brands such as Sue Bee and its ilk.

There are many other sellers I haven’t mentioned. A couple fishmongers display a decent North Sea catch. Really cheap mushrooms can be found at the mushroom stand. There are egg sellers and a group of older women who make and sell fruit jams. Walking past the flower vendors, I am tempted by tulips, but I have only one shopping bag that is now nearly full with fruit, vegetables and bread. It’s time to walk home and get that chicken ready for lunch.

If there is a moral to this rambling story, it’s that wherever you are, there is local and sustainable food, most readily found at farmers’ markets. I happen to be in Luxembourg, and am blessed with abundant local food choices. Whether you realize it or not, you are likely similarly blessed.

Got Cod?

In Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, author Mark Kurlansky posits that the success that the Portuguese had as explorers was due in no small part to the cod fish. The ironic part of the story that few people know is that the Basques may have been even greater explorers. Their failure was that they didn’t tell anybody where they’d been. To them the value of a secret fishing hole was more important than the value of telling everyone they had discovered a great fishing hole. So before any other Europeans discovered North America, the Basques were pulling in codfish by the thousands off the coast of Eastern Canada.
What the Basques discovered was that codfish, which had almost no fat, dried beautifully when salted and left in the sun. And they would keep indefinitely. All one had to do is soak the hard planks of fish in fresh water to soften them up and to make them palatable again. So for many years the Basques made a mint by bringing back “bacalhau” to Europe to sell. And for many years nobody could discover the source of their bounty.

This was in the mid-1400s, before Christopher Columbus got all the publicity for finding Hispaniola. Who knows how long the Basques had been up to their little enterprise. The significance of this is that in those days, crews on ships would typically pack beef or pork in barrels of brine. As one would imagine, this would not keep for very long before turning rotten.

Then Henry Cabot (an Italian explorer sailing for English King Henry VII) “discovered” Newfoundland in 1497. As any fly fisherman can attest, once you divulge a secret fishing spot, it takes no time at all before you are elbow to elbow with fellow casters. Similarly, it didn’t take long for Portuguese fishermen to take advantage of both the Basque fishing hole called the Grand Banks and how the Basques made their bacalhau. Soon, Portuguese explorers were able to sail much farther than other explorers who didn’t have as stable a food supply.

“Why the history lesson, Eric?” you might well ask. Well, a couple of days ago, when I wandered into my local Cactus supermarket (one of three local chains here), I was only partly surprised to see a table piled higher than my head with planks of bacalhau, each plank the side of a whole fish. It is a staple for Portuguese wherever they call home, and a lot of Portuguese call Luxembourg home. They are the largest minority in Luxembourg today. These “Lusoburgues” make up 13% of the population, or nearly 60,000 people. For many years they have done the work that the increasingly finance-focused native Luxembourgers didn’t want to do. Things like construction and working for the world’s largest steel company, Luxembourg’s Arcelor Mittal. And along with their work ethic they brought their love of seafood and their recipes.

After picking out the two-foot-by-one-foot slab that I wanted, the aproned lady (my first literal “fishwife”?) slides it into a contraption that looks like a heavyduty paper cutter. After a few muscular downward slams of the blade, she hands me a bag of neat cod crosscuts.

Inspecting my fish at home, I leave a trail of salt crystals across the kitchen just by handling it. Since every bacalhao recipe begins with soaking the cod in a pan of cold fresh water (to leach out the excess salt and to soften it), I slide my booty into the pan of water-- wait, that sounds bad.... 

I slide my cod pieces--no, that sounds worse.... 

The fish goes into the dish and I leave the kitchen.

Eighteen hours and two changes of water later, the cod still tastes a little salty, and still flavored of fish. It is neither hard nor delicately flaky. It has a soft resilience that makes it easy to chew and easier to handle. After this it is only a matter of 20 minutes to assemble the traditional Portuguese recipe below, which I adapted from grouprecipes.com.

Bacalhau A Gomes De Sa
1 day 20 min prep. Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

1 1/2 pounds salted dried cod fish
1/2 cup olive oil, plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
2 cups thinly sliced yellow onions
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds waxy potatoes, sliced 1/4-inch thick and cooked until tender
4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
8 green manzanilla olives (or any green olives) , sliced
1 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

Soak the cod in cold water to cover for 24 to 36 hours, changing the water occasionally. The longer you soak the cod, the less salt it will have, but also the less flavor. Soak it too long and your fish may be bland. Take a small nibble after about 18 hours to check flavor and texture. Once it tastes the way you want, drain off the water.

Cut the cod away from the skin and bones. Flake the cod into small pieces, removing any bones. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

In a large sauté pan, over medium heat, add 1/4 cup of the oil. When the oil is hot, add the onions and the garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Sauté until slightly golden, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

Grease a medium oven proof casserole dish with 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Season the potatoes with salt and pepper.

Spread half of the potatoes over the bottom of the prepared dish. Sprinkle half of the salt cod over the potatoes. Place half of the onion mixture over the salt cod. Top the onion mixture with more salt cod. Place another layer of potatoes over the top of the cod and top with remaining onion mixture. Drizzle the entire pan with the remaining 1/4 cup of oil.

Place in the oven and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until golden brown. Place on a serving platter. Garnish with the sliced eggs, sliced olives, paprika and chopped parsley.

This is only one of hundreds of recipes for bacalhau. The Portuguese reputedly have one for every day of the year. With my lifelong infatuation for Southeast Asian cooking, my next bacalhau project will be Bacalhau Fried Rice. Stay tuned.