A little yellow
Friday, September 28th, 2007F’s mum (G) says that she is not a good cook. She says this, as she draws from the oven a large clear dish, shallow and oval and filled to the brim with potatoes, courgettes, tomatoes and artichoke hearts, each item whole and stuffed with a mixture of forcemeat, herbs de Provence, egg, fresh basil and breadcrumbs. She cooks old fashioned things, she says, things her mother cooked, traditional things, quick things to make, not complicated. She cannot, she says as she sets the dish on the tiled kitchen table, think of what to make. She has, she says, as she tips fresh bread into a wicker basket, unwraps the cheeses on their blue glass plate, sets down two bottles of misty chilled water, unfurls napkins and moves the salt, lost the envy to cook.
We’ve been here nineteen days now. Take off seven days for the time we spent at N’s, discount breakfast and snacks. Count two meals a day, three courses each meal without cheese or dessert. That’s twelve times two times three, some seventy-two meals if my arithmetic is right, and not once have we eaten the same thing twice.
Soft haricot verts clad in mustard sauce. Palm hearts pale and sweet. Eggs mimosa, their hollowed whites filled with crumbed yolk and home made mayonnaise. Steak hache; icy pink inside, with soft poached eggs. Courgette gratin (the smallest are the best says G), buried under crispy cheese which pulls in strands when the knife goes in. Pan fried salmon; coral pink, unmussed by seasoning or oil. Aioli with each measured drop, painstaking ground with garlic and with salt. Spaghetti sauce, with olives (green) and chunks of veal, rosemary flecked, or a bolognaise of ground up beef, all lush with herbs and sweet tomato sauce. Goat’s cheese, warmed, over summer leaves. Rough chopped tomatoes mixed with equal parts of mozzarella, sun and basil leaves, drenched in oil and left to soak Broccoli pureed with more crème fraiche. Asparagus spears, white and fine as grass, with vinaigrette. Tabboleh mixed with melon, anchovies and ham. Egg custards baked with caramelised apples and fresh figs, marron glaces, chocolate coffee creams … the list goes on.
F’s favourite; which I have absolutely no idea at all how to spell, is a particularly finicky thing to put together. Thin steaks of veal are laid out flat, a thick slice of ham is placed on the top of each one and then a mozzarella placed on top of that. It’s then rolled up, sewn together so that it doesn’t fall apart and baked in a thick tomato sauce with gruyere cheese liberally grated over the top. For me; my stay would not be the same without this piled up dish of Farcie, the making of which G has kept a deadly secret, the kitchen door shut tight for the hour it takes to prepare.
Toulon has changed and yet remains the same. One thing I love about this town is its resolute refusal to become candy cote d’azured into a pale copy of Cannes or Nice. Despite the hanging baskets perilously strung between the lurching streets, the jasmine perfume poured into the narrow tunnels of Napoleons wall, or cloud white yachts tethered by thick ropes of cash, it remains a place where people live, not a town where people stay. Destroyers berth like exploded airfix kits in the walled off port, or hover on the horizon ice grey against the hot blue sky, their scale reduced to something we can understand.
The air raid sirens sing in the first Wednesday of every month, falling on the Arab quarters shuttered shops. From the balcony where I stand, burning my tongue on star anise, I can see the seven skyscrapers which hide the sea, the twinkling lights of speeding cars disappear into tunnels whisking traffic through the town. I’ve been through once. They are too long to play the game of hold your breath until you reappear, you dive and dive and bend and then, just at that point when you know you will never reascend, you see the light. Sun sleepy in the orange glare, I did not need my dreams disturbed by this mirrored concrete metaphor.
The port of the Mourillon still holds its faded boats of blue and grey, bobbing against the gentle waves just as they did in Dantes day. Though faded fifties flats crowd the narrow space between sea and land, a standing testament to the paper bags of bribes which caused their build, this place would not be strange to him today. Inside the port; weathered men throw silver boules across the yard, swap shouted spells to cause the fish to catch, leave the scattered runes of engines trailed across the ground, tell stories each one taller than the last, or sit in faded cafes with Tarot cards clutched tight beside their glass of little yellow.
* A little yellow= un petit jaune = 1 Pernod.


