A cool, sunny morning becoming overcast later.

Our lunch locale was:

Durban-Corbières

A converted stone windmill on a treeless hilltop, the restaurant was easy to locate. For once we had no need of the extra travel time we allow for wrong turns and map-reading errors. Normally we would have filled in the time with sightseeing. But as the weather had turned unpleasant, we went inside the restaurant to a white and brightly-lit salon (white and bright seemed the rule of the restaurant’s interior décor) where we passed a pleasant half-hour in the company of a luscious chilled muscat apéritif.

The dining room was set the stone tower of the old windmill. Looking directly upwards, we observed ceiling beams radiating spoke-like from a central hub that may once have been the upper bearing of the mill shaft. The stark white of the room was relieved by brilliant masses of gladioli. The background music was Mozart’s Piano Concerto K414, turned low enough not to distract one’s attention from food.

Amuse bouche: (1) A tapenade on toast, with morsels of vegetable tempura on puff pastry. (2) An egg cup containing a cream of sweet pepper topped with roe of  whiting. The pepper cream—fragrant, delicately balanced—was the star in that creation.

La salade mixte contained asparagus, mâche, and the regional herb mixture known as herbes de la garrigue.

Brandade en ravioles à l’infusion d’anchois. Both the faintly garlicky-flavored filling of the ravioli and the and anchovy-touched sauce upon which it was served were subtle and mild enough to allow the inherent flavor of the pasta to come through.

Roque Vieille Vignes Corbières Sestière Isabelle Lagnard: A very food-friendly red of the region, medium to light-bodied with moderate fruit.

Dos de saumon à l’huile d’olive de Bize. The skin of the just-done salmon was rolled back, and the exposed surface was sprinkled with grains of salt. The garniture was a timbale of mixed rice and wild rice, roasted shallot, and green broad beans, split, delivering a whiff of the unique character of that pulse. The olive oil played the part of a sauce in this dish. It delivered fruity notes and an intriguing acidic or woody bite.

Culinary query: Where is Bize, the place of origin of the olive oil?

Le filet de canette à la cardamome: Neat, square 5- millimeter slices of pink, good, and mild-tasting breast of duckling on a moderately-strong sauce flavored with herbes de garrigue (we didn’t notice the cardamom mentioned in the title). The garniture consisted of split broad beans like those served with the salmon, and an explosively flavorful package of mushroom wrapped in pasta.

Le croustillant aux fruits rouges: Layers of strawberry, raspberry, and red and black currants separated by crunchy sheets of brown caramel.

La pêche du Roussillon en trois services: (1) A peach- half gratin, served cool on a plate the same size as the peach. (2) A peach sorbet sandwiched between thin-pressed caramelized peach slices. (3) Pêche rotie à la gelée de pochage, the waitress told us. A roasted peach half served warm, with chilled aspic from reduced peach-poaching liquid.

Mignardises: All had that wonderful "just out of the oven" character. The lemon-flavored crème patisserie was notable for its fruity tang.

The total at le Moulin was F699.

***

Back at the gîte: Our patio, as we called it, consisted of a couple of square meters of broken concrete at the base of the steps leading to the living area. The furnishings were two rickety chairs and a wobbly round table surfaced with sheet metal that made "whomp-whomp" sound. Here we relaxed in the warmth of the late afternoon with a vin mousseux cépage muscat demisec that we had bought in Padern at the Cave Coopérative des Vignerons de St-Roch. 

After dinner (cauliflower and red peppers with couscous—the couscous somewhat gritty, unfortunately) we returned to the patio for coffee and a dessert of Nougat Catalan candy from the Huit à Huit. We didn’t know what qualified the nougat as "Catalan."