Intro
For quite some time we went to the weekly Morzine produce market, walked around but never bought anything.
In retrospect I feel like it was the pricing that was stopping us for purchasing, not wanting to feel ripped off and that the produce seemed to cost a bit more.
It was not until we tasted the difference that we started to regard the pricing difference as a small price to pay for higher quality and lesser cost to the environment (mostly no packaging, less food miles, less water used in production and often zero chemicals). Some thing are in fact cheaper and ultimately, in a sports orientated resorts, shouldn’t we all be making sure we are running on the best fuel?
Know before you go
- The market is every Wednesday year round.
- If you arrive too early some stalls will not yet be open. Around 09:00 is a good time to arrive.
- It is located in the car park in the town centre opposite the post office and the town center Carrefour supermarket.
- Bring a shopping bag for your produce.
- The local vegetable farmers are governed by the season so choice is smaller in winter (most vegetable farmer’s stalls are not there in January), deliciously fresh in spring and abundant in the autumn too.
The Morzine market falls roughly into two categories sellers & resellers / merchants & farmers.
Our 3 favourite farm stalls at Morzine market in the orders that we visit them are
- GAEC le Potager Des Fourches – Fessy located near Thonon (about 40 minutes) they mainly sell vegetables. All amazing, all organic, try the spaghetti squash in autumn, the tomatoes in summer – if they have any of their own tomato sauce (rather that coulis) you need to try that too. The produce is carefully labelled so you know from where it comes, however most of it is from their own fields.
- GAEC le Cedre – Arthaz Based near Geneva (about 50 minutes away) selling mainly vegetables and flowers. A slightly larger range than the boys from Fessy.
- GAEC Les Places Famille Boisier / Ferme Auberge de Fréterolles In the summer they run the excellent restaurant ‘Ferme de Freterolles’ at the end of the Valley Du Manche (about 15 minutes away!). In the winter, they take the herds down over the side of the mountain to near Samoens. Expect a big queue when you pay these guys a visit. Their prices are less than supermarkets – here you can mainly find local cheese, honey, butter and eggs.
There are lots of other farm stalls from Morzine and Les Gets for you to try and all food is a matter of taste and mine may not be the same as yours so go nuts! Let us know you favourites.
Other specialists worth a mention
4. The bread stall
5. The fisherman from Lake Geneva (Lac Leman), the price might be high however that is what you pay for fish caught directly from such a clean and sustainably used source.
6. Chez Paul has been making traditional produce such as saucisson all his life and selling it here too. A nice chap to support, expensive however for a justified reason of great local produce.
Resellers/merchants
7 & 8. Here you get a much wider choice as produce will come from the likes of Morocco but not only. What it lacks in seasonality, it makes up for in the lack of packaging! They even sell produce that you can’t get elsewhere, like padron peppers mmmmm.
So how does pricing compare at Morzine market
In all honesty, that is the most exciting part, don’t you agree? What you pay is essentially the ‘market price’: great harvest of onions = price goes down!
We mainly shop for vegetables at the market, so here is roughly on average what you could expect to pay in 2020 based on the farms in Fessy and Arthaz vs buying Bio (organic) from the supermarket – note that you can’t get as many Bio options in Carrefour, plus non-recyclable packaging waste for supermarket purchases is way higher!
Not that this is what it is all about, however as you can see some produce is even cheaper in the market – the ultimate WIN WIN!
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Market
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Bio from Carrefour
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€ per KG
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€ per KG
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Apples
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3.60
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2.49
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Apricots
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5.90
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Beans
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8.90
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Broccoli
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4.20
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Butternut squash
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3.00
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Cauliflower
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4.20
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3.49 to €2.50
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Carrots
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2.60
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2.89 to €1.00!
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Cherry tomato
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2.50
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7.50
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Courgette
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2.90
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Cucumber
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3.40
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Garlic
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||
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Leeks
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3.00
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Onions
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3.30
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Pepper
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3.90
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Kale
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6.00
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Spinach
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4.20
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Squashes
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3.00
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Spinach
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4.20
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Sweet potato
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3.90
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Recipes 100% local and 100% seasonal
Shopping seasonally in the winter in the mountains does not leave you with a lot of choice since the ground is mostly covered in snow/frozen which makes it difficult to harvest vegetables and graze lives stock.
You soon realise why is that so many local dishes like tartiflette, raclette, berthoud, farcement, beignets, fondu, crozets etc are made from goods with a long life, stored and produced in other seasons.
This is why come spring time the market is such a treat to get freshness back into our diet and sample this years crops.
Anytime : Crepes easy as 1,2,3
Ingredients
- 1 00 g flour (opposite stall 1)
- 2 eggs (stall 3)
- 3 00 ml milk (Can buy in Carrefour, comes from the farm in St Jean D’Aulps)
- A little bit of butter too! (stall 3)
Method
- Put milk, eggs, flour in a bowl, whisk until smooth, about 30 seconds by hand.
- Put a teaspoon of butter in the frying pan and melt.
- Ladle enough pancake mixture into the pan to cover the bottom and pour any excess back in the bowl.
- Cook until it turns from liquid to solid, flip and cook quickly on the other side.
Spring : Poached eggs on steamed young stem spinach & toast
Ingredients
- Eggs (the fresher the easier to poach) (stall 3)
- Handful of new season ‘jenue pousse’ spinach (stall 1)
- Bread (stall 4)
- A little bit of seasoning
Method
- Boil two small sauce pans of water, turn down to a simmer. Crack the egg into a cup or like. Create a whirlpool into the simmering water by stirring and plop the egg into the middle.
- Put the spinach in a sieve above the other pan and steam until wilted.
- Cut the bread and toast.
- Season, assemble and enjoy.
