The Markets

By Elisabeth Fondell

Is there anything more visually pleasing and gastronomically enticing than wandering around a market in a foreign city looking at foods of all kinds arranged in piles, buckets, stacks, and single-file lines?

Meat vendor booths, captivating in the intensity of their offering, full of braided sausage links, cow tongues, lamb heads, suspended hogs, thick pancetta with ribbons of fat, whole chickens, and any number of otherwise unidentifiable cuts of pork and beef, breathtaking in their abundance.

Fish stands showcasing the latest catch: small herring lined up in neat rows, red snapper on ice with bulging eyes, smoked trout, heaping piles of shrimp, tiny fish stacked tail-up in baskets, mammoth turbot, orange langoustines, mussels closed up in their dark shells, all smelling of the sea and peddled by a friendly fishmonger in a bright kerchief and turquoise apron.

Spice barrels full of the regular and irregular selection: cumin, ras el hanout, caraway, star anise, rose petals, nigella seeds, pink peppercorns. Salt boxes bursting with every color imaginable: rosy pinks, vibrant oranges, jet black.

Fruit stands covered with small baskets of eggplant-colored figs, fresh baby strawberries, plump apricots, champagne grapes, towers of apples, stunning in their jewel tones but even more stunning in their scent, wafting through the air, full and true.

Then there are the cheeses: cheeses floating in brine, wheels of brie and reblochon and camembert encased in powdery white, aged rinds, wedges of Roquefort and gruyere, spreadable cheeses, artisanal cheeses wrapped in craft paper and tied with string.

Casks of olives, marinated peppers, preserved lemons, artichokes, pickled cauliflower, any number of other vegetables swimming in herby brines, their colors forming a tempting rainbow on the shelf.

Tables full of honey: honey in mismatched jars selling for prices so low, beeswax candles perfectly cylindrical in hues of daffodil and hazel wood, hunks of honeycomb arranged on silver trays, heaping bags of bee pollen, all sold by a woman with kind eyes who is smiling despite a lack of common language.

And the bread. Imagine the bread.

***

I dream about these markets. In another life, I’d be a nomad, going from village to village, borrowing other people’s kitchens to cook my daily market haul as I roamed along.

While visiting a friend in the French Alps, we spent a morning wandering the Cours Saleya market in Nice, taking in the striped awnings and vibrant baskets of fruit and tables of fresh flowers stretching in all directions. I was airport bound, which prevented the purchase of flowers, but luckily there was time for a picnic by the sea. One should always make time for a picnic.

We loaded our bags with a sampling of cheeses, a crusty baguette, fresh figs, one whole roasted chicken, and bottles of chilled wine in the true spirit of Hemingway. Basking in the late September sun at a beach of topless sunbathers and fist-sized rocks, we devoured our morning acquisitions with sheer pleasure, finishing it all with a quick dip in the Mediterranean Sea. In these moments of food-inspired bliss, may we live eternally.