A Visual Feast (an audiovisual companion to the book 'Menu from the Midi')
Channel: Colin Duncan Taylor
Date: 2021-07-29

Published 28 August 2021, 'Menu from the Midi' by Colin Duncan Taylor explores French gastronomy from the farmer’s field to the dining room table and is structured as a menu carefully compiled to give the reader a balanced diet of gastronomy, history, legend and local colour.

APERITIF
Did Dom Pérignon really steal the recipe for champagne from the monks of Limoux? A visit to the longest carnival in the world helps to establish the truth about the world’s oldest sparkling wine.
The olive is among the oldest crops of the Mediterranean, and the Lucques du Languedoc is such a luxurious variety, connoisseurs call it le Rolls-Royce. There are only nine accredited producers, and one of them explains the secrets of its cultivation.
Today, 95% of French pigs are farmed intensively. The author goes on safari in search of one of the exceptions, an elusive breed called the black Gascon pig which was on the verge of extinction in the 1980s because it takes too long to fatten up.
Many aperitif drinks taste better with ice. Today, we take it for granted, but a trip along the ice house trail reveals the challenges of producing and distributing such a volatile substance in the hot climate of the Midi, starting with the monopoly created by Louis XIV in 1659.

WINE LIST
Who dares venture into the murky world of natural wines, and what exactly are they anyway? Producers who operate in wine’s Wild West risk being turned into outlaws by their appellations, and two of these renegades tell their stories and disclose the truth about most modern winemaking.

ENTREE
The annual pink garlic festival in Lautrec provides the backdrop to an exploration of humanity’s love-hate relationship with this pungent vegetable.
Foraging for fungi in the forests of the Midi is a cultural institution that attracts elderly citizens with wicker baskets, families with pushchairs, gangsters in search of an illegal profit, and the author and his accomplices.

MAIN COURSE
According to legend, cassoulet was invented when the citizens of Castelnaudary were besieged by an English army. History suggests it had more to do with a barren queen, a bag of beans and an excess of wind. 
The landscape of the Midi is graced with thousands of ornate pigeon towers. This chapter traces their evolution from living larder, medicine cabinet and fertiliser factory to instigator of revolution and oversized urban contraceptive.
The former king of cassoulet who once represented 20,000 meat-based businesses across Europe explains why he became a flexitarian and took up the challenge of producing a plant-based food that could compete with meat and help lift the burden of malnutrition worldwide.

COMFORT BREAK
Few written sources shed much light on the diet of the common people in times gone by. Instead, we can turn to the science of carpology which analyses seeds and other food residues found in household waste and other less pleasant organic matter that was deposited in latrines by medieval men and women during their comfort breaks.

CHEESE, DESSERT AND DIGESTIF
Each year, the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon produces €350 million of its world-famous blue-green cheese. With the help of the town’s mayor and several cheesemakers, the author learns about the history and legends and discovers why success has turned Roquefort into a ghost town.
Most of the traditional desserts of the Midi were subsumed by an invasion of creamy, sugary desserts from the north of France at around the same time as Parisian patisseries began to conquer the world. The mesturet is one of the few survivors.
Armagnac claims to be the oldest brandy in France; Cognac is probably the most famous brandy in the world. With a little help from d’Artagnan, this chapter explores their differences and traces the evolution of brandy from niche pharmaceutical product to globally distributed after-dinner tipple.