Cuisine of Occitaine

Occitanie is really three kitchens under one name. On the coast, around the fishing port of Sète and the lagoon of Thau, it is fish, octopus and oysters. In the hills — the Cévennes, Mont Lozère, the Montagne Noire — it is lamb, pork and goat cheese. On the plain in between it is vegetables, fruit and the largest vineyard in the world.

Cassoulet of Castelnaudary, beans baked with duck confit and sausage
Cassoulet — white beans, duck confit and sausage, baked slowly under a crust. Castelnaudary, Carcassonne and Toulouse each claim the original.

Bread, which here is a speciality

Pain de Beaucaire has been baked since the 15th century in a town that held one of the largest fairs in Europe. It is split lengthwise down the middle, has a very open crumb, and combines two flours, Florence Aurore and Meunier d’Apt.

Pain paillasse de Lodève is the other one: a bread whose defining feature is a long bulk fermentation after kneading. The paillasse was a rye-straw basket tied with bramble bark, used to store the loaves and carry them; the method arrived in Lodève during the wars of religion and was adopted by the weavers’ guild, who were promised fresh bread through the working day.

Fougasse aux grattons d’oie is the flat bread of the Cévennes, studded with pieces of pressed goose fat and meat.

Charcuterie

Petit pate de Nimes, veal and pork in shortcrust pastry
Petit pâté de Nîmes — invented by a Nîmes baker in the late 1800s, eaten warm with a salad.

The petit pâté de Nîmes is a small upright pie of veal and pork in shortcrust pastry, the invention of the baker Delcasso-Vernet at the end of the 19th century. Some versions swap the filling for brandade de morue, the town’s other speciality. Look for them on Nîmes market. From the mountains comes the dry-cured jambon de la Montagne Noire.

Meat

Freginat, the pork fricassee of the Corbieres
Fréginat, the pork fricassee of the Corbières — the highlight of the day the pig was killed.

This is livestock country and each part of it is known for its own animal. Fréginat, from the Corbières, is a village dish of fried pork with onion and garlic, served with white beans; it was the centrepiece of the festa del porc, the feast on the day of the slaughter.

Lamb comes in two protected forms. The agneau de Lacaune takes its name from the breed behind Roquefort — 800,000 dairy ewes for the cheese and 300,000 more raised only for meat, three quarters of them in the Tarn and the Aveyron. Lambs are weaned at five weeks so the milk can go to the cheese, and they are the first of the year to reach the markets. Lamb from the Lozère carries an IGP and comes from the causses, dry stony uplands grazed for more than two thousand years; it must be slaughtered under 130 days old, giving a carcass of 7 to 19 kg.

Agriade saint-gilloise, beef slow-cooked with onions and anchovies
Agriade saint-gilloise — marinated for a day, then cooked for five hours, and eaten with Camargue rice.

Agriade saint-gilloise was what the Rhône boatmen and the Camargue farmhands ate at work: beef from the top of the shoulder, marinated for 24 hours in dry white wine, then layered with onion, garlic, anchovies, parsley, gherkins and capers and cooked very slowly for four or five hours. Gardianne is the Camargue’s own stew, bull meat with thyme and sage. Brageole, from Sète, is beef rolled around garlic and parsley and pinned with a wooden skewer. Porc à la cévenole puts pork together with sweet onion, chestnuts and mushrooms — everything a Cévennes market sells on the same morning.

The sea, and Sète in particular

Tielle setoise, the small octopus pie of Sete
Tielle sétoise: octopus in a spiced tomato sauce, sealed in a small pie and eaten cold.

Sète is the main fishing port and has a repertoire of its own. The tielle, brought by Italian immigrants, is a small pie of octopus in a spicy tomato sauce. Bourride à la sétoise is monkfish stewed and thickened with aioli. There is a local fish soup, and a macaronade that puts pasta under the meat.

Bourride from Sete, monkfish stewed with aioli
Bourride à la sétoise — the aioli goes into the broth, not beside it.

The Étang de Thau, the lagoon behind the town, produces the oysters of Bouzigues — see French oysters. And Nîmes contributes brandade de morue, salt cod whipped with olive oil and milk until it spreads.

Brandade de morue, salt cod whipped with olive oil and milk
Brandade de morue from Nîmes, served warm with toast.

Vegetables, rice and cheese

The plain grows aubergines, chard, courgettes, green beans and dried beans, and the fruit is what you would expect from this latitude: peaches, pears, apricots, melons. The Camargue grows rice, including the red rice that goes with the beef stews above.

Cheese is mostly goat — pélardon is the one to look for — with sheep’s milk in the west, since part of the region falls inside the Roquefort appellation. See French cheeses.

Cassoulet and the Toulouse side

West of Carcassonne the cooking turns towards Toulouse: the fat sausage that carries the city’s name, duck confit and magret, and above all cassoulet — white beans baked slowly with confit, sausage and pork. Castelnaudary, Carcassonne and Toulouse each make their own version and each considers the others mistaken.

Sweets

Millas, the maize-flour cake of the south-west
Millas — maize flour, milk and butter, baked or fried in slices.

Millas is the regional cake, made of maize flour, once a peasant staple and now a dessert, served baked or sliced and fried. Frontignan makes miquettes, and the whole region ends meals with sweet Muscat.

What to drink

The Languedoc holds the largest vineyard in the world, and it makes everything: reds, whites, rosés, the sparkling blanquette de Limoux, the sweet Muscat of Frontignan and Rivesaltes, cartagène and the dry clairette du Languedoc. See French wines.

For the rest of the country’s regional cooking, French cuisine; for the neighbouring kitchens, the cuisine of Provence and the cuisine of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

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