[Ham from the Aldudes Valley]

In the galaxy of first-class hams, this one most definitely deserves its place. It is made by 60 producers in the beautiful valley of Les Aldudes in the Pays Basque, from a specific breed of pig called le porc basque.

This pig, which sports a pretty pink and black outfit, almost didn’t make it through the twentieth century: from 140,000 individuals in 1929, the headcount had dwindled down to a dramatic twenty by 1981, when the species was officially declared endangered by the French ministry of agriculture.

A few years later, a group of farmers from Les Aldudes, led by Pierre Oteiza, decided to save the basque pig from oblivion and return to traditional methods of breeding and salting. Their action gradually raised the number of pigs and sows, more farmers joined the cause, and in 1995 the porc basque was officially declared out of the woods.

This is just a manner of speaking because the basque pig is in fact destined to spend most of its life up in the mountain forests, where it feeds on grass, roots and the dried fruits that fall from the trees — chestnuts, acorns and beech nuts (faîne in French, which I’m sure you’ll be as happy to learn as I was) — in addition to a mix of non-GMO grains delivered to the herd daily. At 12 to 14 months, the pigs are taken back down to the valley for a somewhat less pleasant episode, which I won’t expand upon.

Their legs and shoulders are then salted with natural salt harvested around Bayonne (200 million years ago this area was beneath sea level), rubbed with pepper, exposed to the mountain winds to dry, and aged for 12 to 16 months.

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When I was a wee little girl I was sent to colonies de vacances (the French equivalent of summer camp, except it can be at any season) once or twice a year during school breaks. Both my parents worked and us kids had way more vacations than they did, so partir en colo was a good way for us to breathe fresh air and make new friends instead of staying in the city. To be truthful I didn’t like it that much — I was always a bit of an individualist and I hated being cattled around with a bunch of other kids. To make matters worse, spinach was often on the menu and there was a skin on the milk they served for breakfast <shudder>.

But one thing I remember very fondly was that when the colonie was somewhere in the mountains, we were usually given the opportunity to visit the local cheesemaker. While most of the other kids chose to go kayaking instead, or mountain-climbing or some such horrendous activity, I would always opt for the cheese, fascinated as I was by the huge vats of freshly squeezed milk, the gigantic curd combs, the endless rows of tommes de Savoie biding their time on wooden shelves in the cool cellar, and the overall smell and magic of the process.

I have never lost this sense of wonder, and artisanal cheesemakers remain a must-visit wherever I go. Being in the Pays Basque with Maxence, we simply could not miss visiting a farm that produced Ossau-Iraty, a traditional sheep‘s milk cheese with intensely aromatic and not too sharp flavors, and a smooth but slightly brittle texture. It is delightful on its own (as most pressed cheeses, it doesn’t really need bread at all), but the traditional companion is black cherry jam, preferably from the nearby village of Itxassou. Cheese historians (what a marvellous métier) tell us that Ossau-Iraty can be traced back to over 2,000 years ago, and it was awarded an AOC in 1980: this defines the specific and exclusive area in which it can be produced and given the appellation (between the Ossau valley and the Iraty forest), as well as a strict set of rules to follow during the production and aging of the cheese.

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Leaving Bayonne, we drove down the Atlantic coast to see Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. We stayed in this fair beach city for the night and had a really nice dinner at a modern-Basque restaurant called Olatua — an excellent cod with txorizo and a mighty fine gâteau basque.

In the morning we left and crossed the Spanish border to visit San Sebastián, in the Spanish Basque country. The road to get there was magnificent, offering heart-stopping vistas at every turn of the road — which means it took us an inordinate amount of time to cross the Pyrenees, as we were constantly stopping the car to take pictures, enjoy the fresh mountain air, and say hi to horses and cattle who were grazing idly in the sun and forceful wind. San Sebastián itself was great and we really enjoyed our walk around the narrow streets of the historical center, but the highlight was definitely food-related, as we sat down for a late lunch at a tapas bar called Aralar. We adored the concept of freshly-made pinchos laid out on the bar for us to take our pick: we more or less sampled and shared one of each delicious bite, and particularly enjoyed the tortilla and the octopus — tender, juicy and full of flavor.

The next day took us where I had been dying to go ever since I’d spotted the tiny speck on the map (stamping my feet in the car and having red, cute and spicy visions): Espelette, home of the über-pepper, le Piment d’Espelette (AOC). A lovely village in and of itself — all white houses and red shutters — it was further prettified by the very thing that makes it so famous, strings of Espelette peppers hung up to dry on facades and balconies, inside restaurants and homes.

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It is a little-known fact that Bayonne was the first chocolate-making city in France. In the 17th century, a wave of Jewish immigrants settled there, fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese inquisition and bringing the savoir-faire as a prized possession in their luggage. Local artisans quickly learned how to make the magic happen with those mysterious beans from the New World, and developped the production themselves. One century later, they created a Chocolate Maker’s Guild, and swiftly excluded Jews from it (how nice). These businesses were often family-owned, and transmitted from father to son. In the middle of the 20th century, the growing industrialisation of chocolate production made it difficult for them to survive, and many of these families had to close shop. Seven of them still exist to this day and I was very eager to visit the longest established, Cazenave, which was created in 1854.

Bayonne is renowned for its hot chocolate (originally flavored with cinnamon) and its dark and bitter chocolate — a very good thing since this happens to be my personal preference. In their very pretty boutique on rue du Port-Neuf, Cazenave offers a variety of chocolate bites and confections as well as caramels and turons, but to really taste the chocolate itself I simply bought a 100g-bar of chocolat à l’ancienne (lehen bezala in Basque), their 70% blend. You may find this hard to believe, but it travelled with us, untouched, all the way back to Paris.

Verdict? This is a very elegant chocolate: it has a powerful nose, and an excellent balance between subtly sweet and subtly bitter. Deeply flavored, with woody/mushroomy and spicy/peppery hints, it is slightly acidulated and nicely long on the palate. It also offers just the right textural resistance — your tooth needs a slight effort to break in, and after that the square just melts on your tongue with abandon.

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