Les Légumes

Vegetables have always been the backbone of diet in the South-West, more important than meat even, because they could always be picked from the potager. Eaten on their own, or used as a flavouring for other foods, they are never absent from the menu. For the gardener, the season does not begin in the spring but in the previous autumn with the planting of seeds and plants to produce the young vegetables for the following year: peas, broad beans and potatoes, for example. Those with an asparagus bed will need to tend it during the winter. Spring will see the sowing of tomato seeds or, when the danger of frost has gone by, young plants. Green beans and lettuces will be sown in succession to provide a never-ceasing supply of these favourite vegetables throughout the summer, while marrows and pumpkins in all their variety will follow soon after. Cabbage is left in the ground over the winter (some are biennial) so that they develop the flowering sprouts that are highly prized the following spring. Nature also provides its own vegetable for the table: the wild tamier (Tamus communis), called black bryony in English but respontchous (in various spellings) in the South-West of France. The shoots must be cooked, and not eaten raw, and the berries are not to be eaten.