Cooking In Foreign Countries - With Friends

After our group trip to Italy, we started planning more trips to interesting food regions, and we started planning them with friends.  France seems to be our chosen destination for obvious food reasons, and because my Aussie husband speaks French (and I can read the menus!) so it is easier to eat there.  Plus, they have awesome Markets.  We have made a point to stay in places with large kitchens so everyone can get in and cook all the great food we have just purchased from all the different vendor stalls.  On our first trip to the Dordogne region, we shopped in Sarlat-la-Caneda, and made this fabulous roast chicken dinner.  It was our own version of the Poulet Roti we saw everywhere.   

On this last trip, we were traveling with some of the same friends we cook with at home with our TFS group, so it seemed only natural to cook on vacation. We shopped in markets in little towns in the Languedoc and bought things to make this meal. 

It was sometimes a challenge to find out what the market days were in each town, until we found out that all you had to do was ask someone who lived in the area.  Chances are they could tell you not only the days, but the times, which ones were worthwhile, and what stalls to shop at once you got there.    

We have other friends who speak Spanish and also like to cook, and I think it might be time to start planning a group trip to Spain.  Perhaps to Galicia?  I might need to learn how to cook percebes, the barnacles eaten in that region…