La Fete de l'Olivier

Today Cagnes hosts one of its yearly feasts – Le fete de l’Olivier. It’s taking place in one of the most prestigious locations in Cagnes-sur-Mer – Le Domaine Renoir, or The Domaine des Collettes. It’s where Pierre-Auguste Renoir used to live and paint, when he lived on the Cote d’Azur (from 1907 until his death in 1919).

The Domaine des Collettes, which these days houses a museum, is a very nice place to visit indeed, especially when the weather is nice, as it was today. The vast gardens, full of Olive trees (probably explains why the fete de l’Olivier is being held here!), are a perfect place to while a way a nice sunny day. Today though, there was a lot of action, with seemingly half of Cagnes-sur-Mer there to check out the proceedings. And what’s not to like? There was traditional dance on display, an orchestra, some chefs there to show their cooking (and to cook reasonable priced meals – we were really gutted at not having come here for lunch).

And naturally there were plenty of olive-related goodies on sale. There was naturally olive oil (of which we purchased a liter), but also tapenade (a nice little aperitif “pasty” made of anchovies, olive oil, garlic and capers), pistou (the Provencal version of Pesto – but made without the parmesan cheese and pine nuts), just plain olives, and even olive chocolate from Marseille (we couldn’t resist the temptation here and got a few packs of it).

The live entertainment was pretty good as well, with some young locals showing the French version of Morris dancing (?). All in all, a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon, especially as we were blessed with some great weather!

One of the things we saw at the fete was a demonstration of how to make Merda di Can. Now, I don’t know if a translation is really necessary here – so let me just give you a rather non-subtle hint (Merda di Can is Provencal – and the equivalent of the Italian expression “Merda di Cane”. If you still don’t geddit, look it up on the internet or something ;-). Anyway, we were sufficiently inspired by what we saw to take the brave decision to make it for dinner.

Basically, Merda di Can are green Gnocchi (the green color comes from Chard, which is a bit like spinach). Gnocchi being Italian pasta/dumplings made of potatoes and wheat. Thankfully, the name of this very typical Nicois dish comes from the shape of the dumplings, rather than their taste ;-).




Preparing Merda di Can is quite hard work, even though the ingredients are simple enough (wheat, potatoes, Chard basically_ What’s hard work is to get the right consistency to the pasty – and then there’s a fair bit of work to cut up the pasty and form the individual dumplings by hand. For dessert, I prepared a moelleux au chocolat – a most French dessert. (multi-tasking Mathilde also prepared a cheese cake for Sunday – what a sweetheart!)

The end result was rather good – the merda were rather tasty, although perhaps we should’ve cooked them a little bit longer. And I am extremely pleased with my moelleux – although perhaps it could’ve benefitted from perhaps 5 more minutes in the oven as well. All in all, a perfect ending for a great day on the Cote d’Azur – a real immersion in local culinary traditions!