Our Holidays here in Orthez are generally pretty quiet; we usually avoid the crazy holiday travel rush by staying home and most all of our new friends here in France are off celebrating with their families. But then, quiet Holidays is a tradition with us since the days when I worked in restaurants and Sheila worked in retail fashion. December was always one of the busiest periods of the years for us both, and any time off is spent just plain relaxing, so elaborate Holiday fetes were never really in the offing.
That being said, one can still put together something delicious and festive. This year, I kept it easy. On New Year’s Eve, we took the train to Biarritz to enjoy the festive ambiance of the quarter around its old covered Halles. Tons of people shopping or craning their necks to check out the lovely things to eat and cook, or enjoying a pinxto and a glass of wine in one of the markets many stalls. Among the fish stalls, the vendors set up tables so that clients can enjoy freshly shucked oysters from Arcachon and a glass of bracing white Cotes-de-Gascogne wine. Outside the Halles, restaurants and bars set up stalls serving all sorts of good things to eat and drink, and bandas (a sort of ambulatory brass and drum band playing tradition music) circulate through the streets, playing for tips and drinks. We made sure to get back on the train for home before the nighttime craziness started…leave that for the young!
Our favorite stall in the Halles to Biarritz is Maison Chailla, which offers everything from wonderfully aged cheeses, to charcuterie from the Basque countries, to more luxurious items like caviar from the rivers of Aquitaine. Here, we purchased smoked trout from the famous river-fed farms at Banka in the high Pyrenees above Irouleguy. Its a true délice, more delicate than smoked salmon but just as rich and intense.
For my money, the best way to serve smoked trout is the most simple: with toasted bread, and sides of creme fraîche, capers and chopped green onions. Open a bottle of champagne and go at it (yes, that is Billecart Salmon rosé you see in the picture…Réveillon only comes once each year).
After smoked trout, we had my foie gras terrine “mi-cuit”, which is whole fattened duck liver, marinated overnight with a splash of port and spices, cooked to very low internal temperature, then pressed overnight again in the fridge. The low cooking temperature means that less of the fat is cooked out and therefore the liver maintains its silken texture. The success of this type of terrine is almost wholly dependent on the quality of the foie gras, so I took no chances and ordered weeks in advance from Maison Paris, a small scale producer located in the town of Pomerez in Les Landes, the heart of the southwest’s foie gras region and about 15 minutes north of Orthez. Foie gras has been hard to come by (and expensive when found) the last few years, due to the bird flu epidemic that swept the region and seriously damaged both artisan and larger farms. The good news is that near universal vaccination of ducks has meant more foie gras and of better quality, and less pricey! Add toasted brioche and maybe a spoonful of fig jam and the terrine is ready. We enjoyed it with a bottle of Jurançon from Domaine Castera.