Food memories: Dordogne, France (Part 7) – Riberac market and our final picnic dinner

So here it is, I’ve finally reached the final instalment of our June trip to the Dordogne.  If you’ve just arrived and would like to read from the beginning, click here for all the posts and just work from part 1 onwards.

It wouldn’t have been right if we didn’t start our last day in the Dordogne with a visit to a market, after all we had been to a market every single day so far. In our sights was the market at Riberac, and we weren’t disappointed.  It was large and bustling, full of food producers and artists, as well as cheap T-shirts and bargain items.

There were a lot of English people here, I even spotted a hessian shopping bag from our local grocery in Manchester where I shop every week – now that was odd.  We came across our friendly gite owner Louise selling her goat’s cheese, not that I seem to have taken a picture of her stall.

Look at those mushrooms – and every mushroom stall in the Dordogne seemed to be decorated with ferns.

The shellfish and seafood stall was stunning too, so much care seems to be put into the presentation of produce.  I love it!

I must say I do love the choice of tomatoes available at French markets, and they are all pretty unique and knarly looking – it’s so refreshing after seeing tomatoes that are all identical shapes and sizes.

We had been buying these gorgeous yellowy-orange tomatoes all week – I just couldn’t resist them.  They had much firmer and drier flesh than I’m used to with tomatoes and were called ananas, which is pineapple in French.

There were the typical pasties and breads, but also a wonderful selection of onions.

Bunches of gorgeous flowers – sunflowers, peonies, and nigella…

Oh, and this rather impressive slab of butter, which looks like you can buy by the chunk.  That’s my kind of idea of butter…

I almost forgot, we also bought one of these…

I had been eyeing up the rotisserie stalls every time they’d been at a market, I don’t know why, I’ve never had one before but I just wanted one – I could completely imagine in my mind what it would be like to eat it.  So Mr Rigg caved in and we bought a small free range chicken to eat for our final night meal (more on it below).

We bought lunch from the market, another collection of ingredients stuffed into our bellies.  We found another nice spot to stop, this time under the shade of a willow tree on the banks of the river Dronne at Lisle.

This was a fougasse from Riberac market – a kind of stuffed bread, ours was filled with crème fraiche, lardons and onions.

Dessert was a slice of very delicious chocolate, raspberry and mascarpone cake from the market.  It was bought from a German man who along with his English wife bake a range of tasty sounding cakes (and pasties!).

With the weather so nice, we went home via Brantome – you might remember we had lunch here one of the first days of our holiday, but it was raining and horrible.  Brantome is known at the little Venice of the Dordogne, so with the sun shining we returned to enjoy it properly.

From the many places selling ice cream, we chose one with an outside terrace overhanging the river (the view above is from our table).  Mr Rigg had chocolate, salted caramel, and mint choc chip ice cream.

I had chocolate, salted caramel and Perigord honey.

A few pictures down you’ll see a picture taken from that archway – we went in search of it!

Before going back to the gite, we explored Brantome a little.  If I can remember too, I like to take pictures of little details abroad, like letterboxes and door knobs, they always seem so beautiful for something so everyday.

Looking through the archway and across the river to the ice cream cafe…

Back at the gite we proceeded to make a feast – partly to because what nicer way to celebrate the end of your holiday than with homemade dishes of French market produce, and partly because we needed to finish up all the food we’d bought!

Our little friend Euro…

I sauteed spring onions with lardons, broad beans and peas – we ate this on sourdough toast (if you read the blog regularly you might recall seeing this from a meal at the allotment, which was inspired by our French holiday).

As you can imagine, we’re pretty full up on just that alone.  But I’d also prepared…a tomato salad sprinkled with spring onions and flowering thyme…

…a dish of raw yellow courgettes, cut into thin slices and marinated with lemon juice and mint…

Oh yes, and that scrummy whole rotisserie chicken from the market…

Mr Rigg pulled it apart and we stuffed ourselves with absolutely as much as we could eat.

A lovely way to spend our last (sunny!) evening in the Dordogne.

I guess I should end it romantically there, a sundown meal in the garden of our gite.  But it was too much to resist to share a few pictures of our journey home the next day, because as much as I’d like to travel and eat picnics like a feature for Country Living magazine, we are far from that…

This is how glamorous our breakfasts get.  Oh, and Mr Rigg in the background getting harassed by an overly-friendly gite cat…

And on the way to the airport we pulled off the main road, drove up a lane until we found somewhere to pull over…

This is where we ate our lunch, which was cold quiche, baguette with supermarket cheese squares and the remainder of our stash of BN BNs.

Happy travels!

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