Toulouse’s Victor Hugo market is the largest in southwest France. It sells cheese from nearby Roquefort, peppers from Espelette and wine from neighbouring Bordeaux.

It also sells pre-prepared brain:

Brain Food

These are cervelles d’agneaux (lamb brains), nestling in between trays of rabbit in a prune sauce and a chunky beetroot salad. What’s a girl to do? Experiment, of course!

“You do know what these are?” asked the serveur as he loaded them into a container.

Cooking Brain - Stage 1

“Oh yes.”

“And what to do with them?”

“Er, no…”

Cooking Brain - Stage 2

As it turns out, brain should be heated gently in a saucepan to bring out the garlic and parsley seasoning…

Brain Food - the Finished Work

…and then served with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice as a final flourish.

So, I tried to forget about all those infectious diseases transmitted by eating central nervous tissue and tucked in, to discover a smooth, surprisingly melt-in-the-mouth texture.

Low marks for flavour, however: a kind of grey nothingness saved only by the garlic and lemon. And as for appearance? Well, the next time I’m in a French market, I’m just going to pick up a box of these instead:

Sugary Macarons - A Favourite

For more on foreign food finds, visit OrangePolkaDot, a Lonely Planet Blogsherpa blog. To buy some brain food yourself, visit Victor Hugo Market, Toulouse.

As it happens, the sentence was supposed to be positive.

“People will tell you that girls can’t do science,” my teacher said. “But don’t listen to them.”

I was bored. What were they on about? They might as well be saying, “Don’t let anyone tell you that girls can’t sing.” Some can, some can’t, much the same as boys…

Fast forward, er, let’s call it “several” years plus a few more life experiences and I thought of that teacher again.

In the midst of a fresh Paris spring, I was standing in another building with scuffed wooden floors and a curious blend of dust and industrial cleaner. I was standing in Marie Curie’s office.

It’s a small and fairly quiet affair, a subdued museum in the leafy streets of the 5^th Arrondissement. The displays show a few posters, some yellowed leaflets and a terrifying collection of radioactive beauty products, endorsed by Miss France rather than Mme Curie, to help young girls get perfectly clear skin. Somehow, it didn’t do justice to the real story.

A young woman, Maria Sklodowska, flees from Warsaw to Kraków for her own safety. She then moves to France in the late 1800s to study further. Her husband dies in an accident, leaving her a single mother with two young children. When World War I breaks out, she teaches herself how to drive and travels to the front line to use X-rays to help treat wounded soldiers.

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.

 Marie Curie.

Institut du Radium

Marie becomes the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize but, far more importantly, the only person in history to have won a Nobel Prize in two different science subjects: physics and chemistry.

I’m going to say that again: the only person in history to have won a Nobel Prize in two different science subjects.

The only person in history to have won a Nobel Prize in two different science subjects.

Yet the French Academy of Sciences refused to admit her as a member, declaring that “women cannot be part of the Institute of France.”

It was that small postscript, those few words, that brought me back to my schoolteacher and my altogether less illustrious place of learning.

The problem has never been that girls can’t do science; it’s that people think that they can’t.
 

Disclosure: the author has two XX chromosomes plus a fair few scientific awards, although (alas!) none of them are Nobel Prizes.

The Marie Curie Museum

The Curie Museum is on the ground floor of the Curie Pavilion in the Institut Curie, 11 Rue Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. Entrance is free.

Marie Curie's Office

A Romantic Tradition in Paris

“We’ll always have Paris,” as the immortal line goes. Now, it seems, Paris will always have something to remember as well.

A short while I ago, I blogged about a romantic tradition in Seville. Lovers fix padlocks to the side of the Puente Isabel II, write their names on the metal and cast the keys into the flowing Guadalquivir below.

As I paced across the Pont Des Arts this week, a telltale golden spark caught my eye.

Here, over the water of the Seine and under the watchful eye of Notre Dame, true love clings on.

According to the dates on the locks, the authorities are more forgiving here. Perhaps the legend extends beyond the tourist office blurb after all and Paris really is the city of romance.

Padlocks on the Pont des Arts, Paris

Sunset in Les Arcs

Mont Blanc, the white mountain, rises out of the Alps to claim the title of the highest peak in Western Europe. I’ve been lucky enough to snowboard in its 4810m shadow this week, from the base of Les Arcs 1950.

Enjoy these photos as part of Photo Friday at Delicious Baby.

Chaud Bar, Les Arcs

A sneaky peek of me above the clouds

A shiny pink intestine sits on the Charles-de-Fitte Avenue in Toulouse, reaching out of the ground to an overpowering height. I’ve always had the feeling that the museum curators don’t call it the intestine, but Toulousains certainly do.

It’s a handy landmark for giving directions – and it symbolizes the entrance to Toulouse’s museum of modern art, on the former site of the city’s abattoirs. Hence its name – Les Abattoirs - and also, perhaps, the inspiration for the sculpture.

The exhibits inside change frequently – from eyeballs on high chairs to glow-in-the-dark gimp suits, single coloured panels to animated videos – but the intestine is always there.

Every country seems to have a slightly different hygiene fetish. In Japan, it’s changing shoes three times to cross one metre of floor space. In America, wrinkled plastic mechanically revolves around toilet seats.

France, meanwhile, forces men to pay to wear a stranger’s moist speedos. All in the name of hygiene.

It happened in the postcard-perfect village of Luchon, high in the Pyrenees. Surrounded by snowy mountains, purple-velvet flowers and air so fresh it abraded our lungs, we’d spent a virtuous day climbing mountain paths and appreciating the view.

The traditional reward for such self-inflicted exhaustion is bathing in the Luchon Spa, whose thermal waters promise to ease away muscle tension with their sulphuric properties.

Sadly, it took until we entered the rancid, dripping caves for me to remember from school chemistry that sulphur smells of decaying eggs. Never mind. What the spa lacked in traditional relaxation techniques, it made up for in absurd comedy.

France may not be strict about parking or cooking raw meat, but it is consumed with monitoring public swimming areas. Everyone must wear a bathing cap, a rule so vigorously enforced that attendants even chase and chastise bald men for daring to walk across the airy atrium scalp au naturel.

France, meanwhile, forces men to pay to wear a stranger’s moist speedos. All in the name of hygiene.

Next, swimwear. France has taken a stand against the boardshort, tearing off the cloak of modesty and demanding that men show everything they’ve got.

And it’s not a pretty sight.

In the name of hygiene, the boardshort ban applies to all French public swimming pools. In Luchon, where you’ve already paid for your ticket before you find this out, you must hire a pair of speedos – individually sized by a watchful attendant and still damp from the previous customer.

It’s the kind of thing you only do once. After that, men hotfoot it to the supermarkets to buy tiny lycra hotpants. It’s amazing how quickly your perception of social embarrassment adjusts.

It’s the kind of thing you only do once.

Perhaps that’s what people mean when they talk about integration…

That’s why research is such a good idea – not to mention visiting a place yourself.

Instead of playboys in woollen bathing suits, Biarritz greeted me with a blend of ageing Victorian glory and a homeless surfing community. A Biarritz almost unsure of its own identity.

The centre has promenades, covered bandstands and dated ice-cream stalls, a sheltered beach and a finger of land that ushers visitors to the Rocher de la Vierge, a religious statue that juts into the ocean like a pier.

Biarritz is France, but it is not France.

Biarritz is France, but it is not France, seeded as it is in the Basque country that straddles the western franco-spanish border.

Yet compared to its neighbour, the dazzling scarlet-and-emerald St-Jean de Luz, its “basqueness” lacks lustre. Compared to mainland France, its mix of pizza parlours, souvenir shops and sloppy dressing lack that certain je ne sais quoi.

Yet one thing still carries the full energy of Biarritz: the surf. Massive, violent, enveloping surf that mesmerises as it terrifies. Biarritz still boasts a reputation as one of Europe’s finest surf spots, but it’s not for the faint-hearted. Nor for beginners – unless you’re with a proper surf school.

There’s something compelling, however, in watching the drama of faceless neoprene figures competing against nature, rising and falling, daring each other to commit to the waves.

Very few succeed. On the day that I shivered on the shore, only around one in 50 won their battle and sliced along the surface.

In the face of odds like that, I’d say that Biarritz still has a name for greatness.

PHOTO CREDITS: Biarritz Ice Cream by Filtran

France does not claim steak tartare as its own, but the French do treat the dish as a child lovingly adopted into the fold. It appeals to their less squeamish approach to food – along with piglet trotters, frogs’ legs and snails – and also to the widespread aversion to actually cooking things (even medium-rare steaks ooze blood.)

With steak tartare, French chefs can go for gold by not letting a single flame warm the cherished final product. For extra flourish, waiters then mix the ingredients at the table and entice you into the magic by asking how you like it blended.

It seduces me every time.

It doesn’t matter to me that Worcestershire sauce has infiltrated most recipes. Nor that my friend Dr Yeap warned me about toxoplasmosis and various other communicable diseases. I fell in love with steak tartare in Toulouse and neither raw egg nor raw meat can keep me away.

Under certain conditions. (Because those infectious disease lectures from medical school still bubble up from time to time.)

It has to be in a restaurant that I trust. And luckily, France has plenty of those. My favourite restaurant in Toulouse is Chez Carmen. Like steak tartare, the appeal isn’t immediately obvious. It’s opposite a museum called the Abattoirs, it still hasn’t washed the graffiti off its doors and its terrace merges with a main road.

However, the museum in question actually used to BE Toulouse’s abattoir and from this, Chez Carmen carved a reputation of serving some of the finest and freshest meat in Toulouse. When it opens its doors, the red-chequered tablecloths and old wooden barrels work their own magic, transporting you to the kind of France pictured in romantic films set in the 1940s.

But what if you’re not in Toulouse and want to try a little of the magic yourself?

Simply mix this all together – according to taste.

PS – just like gazpacho, everything depends on the quality of ingredients, instead of a complicated recipe. Unlike gazpacho, if your ingredients aren’t fresh enough, you risk serious illness. There, disclaimer said.

Ingredients
600g beef fillet
50g gherkins
50g capers
50g shallot
1 tablespoon of chopped parsley
3 egg yolks
7 drops of Tabasco (if you’re brave enough. Otherwise reduce)
1½ teaspoons of Worchester Sauce
A few squirts of tomato ketchup (in French cooking? I know, I know)
10g Dijon mustard
A dash of lemon juice

Bon App!

Southwest France proclaims itself as the family home of cassoulet, even if the towns bicker over who thought of it first like relatives at Christmas.

Toulouse, Carcassonne and Castelnaudray. Each want the credit for this hearty dish, only agreeing on one thing: that the recipe sprang from fighting off the English.

(For years rosbif monarchs ruled Bordeaux; King John even established St Émilion’s wine trade)

Before kissing their husbands goodbye, wives delved deep into their larders and threw every good thing they had into one single pot.

Toulouse Sausage, confit of duck, white beans, goose fat, pork slices. Occasionally lamb, of course wine.

It’s a shame, according to the legend, that cassoulet takes so long to cook. Most traditional recipes quote between 12 and 14 hours. You rather imagine that the impatient English army would have reheated their pot noodle and attacked by then.

Today, you can easily buy cassoulet pre-prepared in glass jars. Don’t be put off by the beige view of squashed animal parts and stewing beans – it still tastes delicious and reheats easily on the stove. Be warned though, consuming cassoulet can fill you with an overwhelming urge to – well, fall asleep on the sofa rather than dash off and fight anyone.

Top Photo courtesy of Jonathan Caves.

FRENCH FRIDAYS

Every now and then, you come across something so beautiful that you can’t believe your luck. The Cirque de Gavarnie in the Pyrenees is one of those things.

Why hadn’t I heard about it earlier? Years earlier.

 After all, UNESCO describes these sweeping rings of rock as a World Heritage Site. Yet it seems as though I was not alone – even the tourist office in Toulouse, its nearest city, barely mentions it.

So much the better for the rest of us, I suppose.

The Cirque is a curving slice of the Pyrenees that forms – as many have said before me - a natural amphitheatre. Its peaks reach up to 3000 metres and waterfall jets breed across its splintered surfaces, forming rainbow haloes against the snow. Most of these springs are small and spirited, but one gathers momentum to form the Grand Cascade de Gavarnie, spilling down through 423 metres to win the title of Europe’s longest waterfall.

Plenty of walking routes skirt around the Cirque de Gavarnie, with difficulty levels ranging from the seriously-keen to the I-only-do-this-sort-of-thing-when-I’m-on-holiday.