Nîmes food gifts to remember your Gard stay

In this period of health crisis, visitors and tourists made the effort to come to the south of France to find something more.Nîmes and the Gard have culinary specialties that it is good to highlight and which can act as useful gifts and to share.

Here is a representative but not exhaustive panel, a light catalog of the best to eat.In disorder so as not to upset anyone!

Caladons.This little cookie, a little competitor of the famous crunch (read below), is a specialty of the Pages house, 14 rue Régale in Nîmes.With its crunchy shell and its soft interior, the caladon is a sweet delight."We have been making it for 60 years, there is almond, honey and a lemon zest.It is a real know-how that started from a baker's group that wanted to create a new specialty from Nîmes.My stepfather was in the lot! "Note the saleswoman from the counter of her charming little shop.

She advises to eat it nature or accompanied by good coffee or a subtle tea.We taste it summer and winter, it travels very well and is sold in sachets or with a beautiful box sporting the arenas of Nîmes.10 pieces for 4.20 euros, the small box at 11.90 euros and the large one at 19.90 euros."Yesterday, I sold some who left in the Vosges, but last week our caladons left abroad!"

The Croquants Villaret.Always sweet, the crunch counts among the oldest nîmes specialties.Rue de la Madeleine or Les Halles, they can be bought in the two shops of the famous Villaret house.It's been over 250 years that it lasts and no one wants to see them stop!The crunchies, perhaps you can break your teeth, but what a delight!

The brandade.Everyone has their address, for us, it is the NîMoise.Rue Émile Never or rue de l'Horloge in Nîmes.You also have the Uzès store and the small itinerant truck that you will find, for example, on Friday morning at the producer market on Jean-Jaurès (Nîmes)."We make it rue Émile never in our workshops.We sell it in detail, fresh, but also in a box for transport.It was my great-great-grandfather who invented this recipe in the middle of the 19th century, he transmitted it from father to son until the rupture ... After the 1988 floods in Nîmes, we had to passTo standards and it cost too much, but my father resumed production in 2013 by relaunching the brandade because he had a bakery where he sold more brandade than bread! ", Confides Mathilde Mouton.

With her sister Bérénice, they are the future of the house."I prefer the brandy full -year brand for the holiday season, but currently my friends love the one flavored at Yuzu and Combawa, it's very fresh with a good citrus taste.We have also developed a bread, the Roman pavement, which can be eaten with brandade and other specialties.Here, we do everything! ", Says Mathilde.You will understand, every season its brandade.Better still, over a full year, we can have a dozen different brandades to please everyone.Nature and with 50% wild cod, count 31.50 euros per kilo, (21 euros for a brandade at 32% cod for cooked dishes), 39 euros for the one at the Yuzu and for the truffle, it all depends on the price oftruffle.

The little nîmes pâté.It’s Christophe Brunetti who takes care of it.A shortcrust pastry surrounded by a little stuffing.On the top, a delicate hat signed with the weapons of the city recalls the birth of this culinary curiosity in Nîmes.From meat recipes (calf and pork), to brandade (without coloring or preservatives), but also a more Camarguese (with the Camargue cross, fell into the public domain, as a hat).It was necessary to taste the bull, typed product was gladly lent itself to it.With pork fat, Lézignan onion jam and Espelette pepper, what a delight!

105 calories for meat and 150 for brandade.Unlike a tacos that exceeds 1,000 calories, the small pâté is almost light!We eat a little pâté by gluttony and we make him eat to make his loved ones discover something that they may not know.The little pâté is a kind of ambassador in the region, we also eat it to safeguard our traditions.

How to eat them to savor the smallest details?Christophe, loves "the one with meat, the classic, because it is the finest.I eat it hot-staged but for that I preheat my oven to 180 ° C then I turn it off when I put the pâtés inside.For five minutes I let them warm up.Do not cook them because it removes the fat and dries them.I can eat it at breakfast with the friends, as an aperitif with the friends, in mouth with the friends, at the table with the friends or even around a small NîMoise salad.Per person, one or two are enough! ", Note the manufacturer.To buy at 4, place Maréchal Foch, 30,000 Nîmes, phone: 04.66.23.73.56.

And a few other products ... The Pélardon des Cévennes, the Nîmes strawberry, the vezenobre fig, the Camargue salt flower, the sweet onion of the Cévennes, the Nîmes olives and their oil, the liquorice of Uzès, the bullAnd Camargue rice, the Tellines du Grau-du-Roi, the Remoulins cherries, the chestnuts and the Vigan Reinettes apples, the chickens and capons of the Cévennes, the Fougasse d'Aigues-Mortes, the asparagus of Saint-Laurent-Digouze and finally this list which could last again, the black truffle of Uzès.

Let's not forget the liquid ... in protected geographic indication, the wines of the country of oc its wines of the sands, cévennes, flavian hills, bridge-du-gard, vidourle, vaunage and vistrenque.A controlled designation of origin is to be seen on the side of Languedoc-Sommières, but that of the Costières continues its upmarket and offers succulent wines.The hillsides of Vivrais, in PDO, are also to savor just like the famous Côtes du Rhône.

Anthony Maurin