Whenever we’re in France (we tend to spend July and August at our house in Marnaves in the Tarn, as well as Easter and New Year) it’s an established Saturday ritual to go to the fabulous market in nearby Cordes. Throughout the year, the market attracts customers from the surrounding area, and it’s as much an opportunity for a social catch-up as it is a chance to stock up on good food for the week.

*Cordes on market day, and* Les Halles – the town’s old market hall

Cordes – or more correctly, Cordes-sur-Ciel – is a fortified town perched on the top of a hill (‘in the sky’ as its full name would have it). It was the first of the bastide ‘new towns’ built by Raimond VII, Count of Toulouse, between 1222 and 1229, to provide homes for people displaced by the Albigensian Crusade and to encourage farming and the related markets.

Visiting Cordes in the 1950s, author Albert Camus and was overcome by the beauty and peace he found there:

Silence becomes vast and light over the old deserted city. All is possible then: this is reconciliation. And we tell ourselves that this hull, encrusted with old and precious shells, has run aground at the very end of the world, at the frontier of another universe. And that here the hostile lovers will at last embrace; love and creation finally in balance.

Cordes is just 7km away, which makes a merry cycle ride on our electric bikes (expectant panniers attached) through rolling countryside dotted with fields of sunflowers and playing host to all kinds of wildlife – notably nightingales and enormous hares. On arrival, I always make a beeline for Gilles’ vegetable stall, with shoppers crowded all around it, ready to pounce on the week’s harvest. Gilles lives in Tonnac, the next-door village to Marnaves. Like my friend Pawel in Wales, Gilles is a veg grower extraordinaire. When we have lots of family staying with us, I visit Gilles’s farm and get to see him tenderly placing his vegetables in their delivery boxes as if they are his children! Gilles kindly lets me explore the farm’s polytunnels bursting with tomatoes, peppers, courgettes and aubergines, of all different vivid colours. He has a special line in tomates ancienne (heirloom tomato varieties) such ananas (pineapple yellow with an intense red centre) and noir de crimée (strikingly dark, almost black tomatoes from the Crimea).

*An array of* tomates ancienne, and Gilles weighing out peppers for a customer

Gilles’s stall is always piled high with a rainbow of stunning organic vegetables, packed with nutrients: deep red peppers (good for the heart), for roasting and peeling to make a rich red pepper purée (see page 37 of my book); rich orange carrots (great for eye heath) for carrot and goats’ cheese charlottes with cream sauce (see page 108); dazzling yellow courgettes (containing antioxidants to keep skin healthy) for Provençal courgette flan with tomato, olive and caper sauce (see page 79); luscious green spinach (excellent for gums and teeth), plentiful in spring and delicious served in the Catalan style with garlic, pine nuts and raisins (see page 174); shiny blue plums (superb for your gut), a treat served as a crumble with white peaches and blackberries (see page 192); and majestic purple aubergines (coloured by the nutrient anthocyanins, brilliant for the brain), for a luscious Imam Bayildi (see page 113). Interestingly, none of the professional growers officially declares that they are organic – probably because they’d rather not pay the registration fee – but is understood, and even expected, by their customers that they all are.

*Just some of the beautiful produce on offer*

The market also offers a feast of wonderful artisan dairy produce. The stall holder selling homemade, richly creamy crème fraiche sparkling with its live culture, enjoyed giving me a memorable French lesson one week: ‘C’est le fromage, le lait, le beurre, le yaourt – mais LA crème!’. How appropriate! He works with cows and makes fantastic butter, both doux (unsalted) and salé (salted), while the other dairy stall holders, more typically for the area, make sheep and goats’ cheeses in a delectably wide variety. Fresh sheep’s milk ricotta is scrumptious eaten with local chestnut honey and a sprinkling of thyme leaves as a dessert. And we cannot forget Roquefort, hailing from the magnificent Gorges du Tarn, perfect as a filling for buckwheat pancakes (see page 278). Makers also have their own versions of a soft Brie-like cheese (made with sheep or goat’s milk, rather than cow’s milk) and likewise a hard Tomme not dissimilar to Comté (but, again, made with sheep or goat’s milk not the cow’s milk of Comté).

Another favourite stall of mine is Olaf’s. He offers a full and colourful range of olives, Moroccan preserved lemons, harrisa, the very best tahini and a range of nuts. His walnuts are sourced from a small local grower, and are the best I’ve ever tasted! (However much you love them, it’s inadvisable to buy too many: walnuts go rancid remarkably quickly.) Olaf also offers a spectacular assortment of dried fruit including juicy local Agen prunes and equally succulent local dried figs. Marry the latter with some of Olaf’s stoned black olives and you’re all set to make a delicious fig and olive tapenade.

After having a quick but irresistible boule (scoop) of glace au chocolat or equally delicious glace au noisette from Tom’s shop, Chocolat des Villages (devoted to chocolate made by Socoplan, a co-operative of 200 cocoa growers in the Côte d’Ivoire), we hop on our bikes and, with panniers bulging, cycle home with the week’s supply of outstanding food.

a visit to cordes market

the magic of spices