The couennette, a historic delicacy of the Nîmes breakfast

La couennette est une spécialité locale qui séduit les palais gaurmands. ALISSANDRE ALLEMAND – Alissandre Allemand

La couennette est une spécialité locale qui séduit les palais gaurmands. ALISSANDRE ALLEMAND – Alissandre Allemand

La couennette est une spécialité locale qui séduit les palais gourmands. ALISSANDRE ALLEMAND – Alissandre Allemand

A must-have for festive aperitifs and Nîmes breakfasts, couennette, a local specialty made from stuffed pork rind, remains a taste tradition among lovers of scoundrel cuisine.

Tired but smiling faces, glasses of champagne brandished in unison, it's time to celebrate the New Year, on this Monday, January 1, 2024, for this group of friends. On the table of this festive brunch, in the middle of an anthology of tempting dishes, there is, sliced ​​on a pretty porcelain plate, a most astonishing food for those who do not know ;it is never rubbed: the couennette. Include pork rind, cooked with spices, and stuffed here with pig meat. 

"The couennette, I discovered it more than twenty years ago during a tasting of Costières wines when the union was still on the Quai de la Fontaine with a patio that was ideal enjoy the feast", says Hélène, a bubbly and gourmand 47-year-old from Nîmes who brought the famous charcuterie to the banquet.  "There was an opening by Michel Tombereau and he extolled the merits of the couennette. I am a lover of pork and naughty dishes and I loved this treat accompanied by a side dish. Since then it has been a ritual. When I am invited to someone's house, I always bring this specialty, like someone offers flowers or chocolate." It’s at Nicolas Prade, the charcutier of Les Halles, that Hélène serves herself. "I get him some for Sunday brunch and sometimes I eat on the way home because my mouth is watering. Puff is a drug. The  dosage of salt & spices is essential, the tightening of the yarn is essential so that everything holds together well in the jelly".

A must-have

Head to the belly of Nîmes, to meet the famous Nicolas, figure of the Halles. The queue stretches in front of his stall. Tuesday January 2. Many have taken leave, and the institution is bathed in astonishing calm. In the queue, Stéphanie and Hervé, 48 and 51 years old, consult each other on the entry for the evening dinner to entertain their friends deliciously. No for frying chorizos, "too messy for cooking, but look how pretty these pies are!" It will be four nice slices. Two abomasums too. When, in the copiously stocked window, Hervé's eye is attracted by the Lozère couennettes. "It's original, we don't know". It doesn't take much for the 46-year-old boss to tell the story of the arrival of the couennette on his stall, 20 years ago.

Michel Tombereau, father of the Couennette club   

"It was Michel Tombereau the painter, when he came to do his shopping at Les Halles, who advised me to offer the couennette to my customers, the small butcher who offered them in the covered market had just given up his stall. And no one else was selling them."  In 1994 (that is, 10 years earlier, Editor's note), the Nîmes artist, madly in love with the specialty and worried about seeing it disappear from the windows of local charcutiers, decided with 24 other friends (including the painter Michel Gilles and the Parisian designer, originally from Sernhac, Jean-Pierre Desclozeaux) to found the La Couennette club. With the aim of "defending and promoting the culinary and taste qualities of the domestic pig; develop the art of preparing and cooking the different parts of the body of this precious animal. Quite a program.

A breakfast’ typical

Among the fine team that then made up the brotherhood, Jean-François Robinet, known as Robi, recounts: "We were walking with Michel (Tombereau), rue Saint-Castor when we discovered that the charcuterie where we were servants, the only one who still made quilts, had just lowered the curtain for good. Michel, a great fan of couennette, had the idea of ​​this club in order to restore popularity to this local product. Because it was in the Cévennes that the recipe was born. In the past, this dish made up the breakfast of miners who ate it on bread. "It's very inexpensive and it was easy on the stomach", continues the man who was then the club's occult advisor. "At the time it was just rind that we cooked with spices in a cauldron and rolled. Over time, construction workers also adopted it for breakfast and it became a must in Nîmes, for the first meal of the day." & ;nbsp;Even Jean-Luc Petitrenaud honored the club in 1999 in his show Grands gourmands.

No time to eat it

To relaunch its manufacturing and marketing in the city of Antonin, the club is organizing a competition for the golden couennette. In the 1990s, during the Vendanges feria, all the butchers from Les Halles and then the entire city were invited to participate with their couennette. "We set a huge table in front of the Trois Maures, the head office of our association, and we tasted the different preparations with great seriousness. Very quickly, the artisans got into the game, and we were able to find the preparation almost everywhere on the Nîmes stalls."

As the years go by, today only four epicureans remain of the 25 founding members of this joyful club. And even fewer Nîmes charcutiers offer them. However, the amateurs are always there. "I've never stopped selling them", smiles Nicolas Prade. "This year again, I assure you that for the end of year celebrations! year, the couennette was a great success.