Remembrance of Things Paris
Page 34
But the emotion reached its most affecting point when a portrait was taken. Daguin and Darroze were able to get close against their fathers, and Pic had brought a portrait of her father to be part of the picture. Perhaps it was the proximity—for what cook’s child has not smelled the perspiration coming through their parent’s vest, sensed the exhaustion when they are brought up onto their laps—but though she tried not to, she stepped away crying. She composed herself. She sat back down and held the portrait. André Daguin reached over, brushing her cheek paternally, and said what one who has kept an inn for seven generations says to one who’s the fourth generation of hers. “How was your season?” She knew he was saying, “We’re with you.” And she smiled, and the shot was taken.
It might be said that when the evening was at its most impossible moment—when the emotions of cooking seemed like something that should never have been touched, that they should never even be spoken about, that one should simply cook and get it right and shut up—it was saved by what threatened to doom it. While the picture was being taken, Baudic had given his troops last-minute instructions. Some went down to the first-floor dining room to send out the hors d’oeuvres. Among them was escaoutoun, a sort of corn gruel that was topped with a slice of sautéed cèpe and served in Chinese soupspoons. The moment those cèpes hit the duck fat in the hot pans, a perfumed link with the past was forged.
What followed was a dinner that never succumbed to mimicry and never became contrived, because each woman was true to her own culinary vision. For Anne-Sophie Pic, it was the laserlike precision with which she laid lozenges of tomato aspic over marinated tuna and roasted off firm, plump langoustines on a plancha, coupling them with a chutney of Rhône Valley peaches. For Ariane Daguin, it was her American foie gras. She separated the lobes into dented roasting trays, salted and roasted them off, then plated them sliced with caramelized figs and a sauce au Jurançon. Hélène Darroze changed into a pair of Le Coq Sportif white aikido shoes that completed the jai alai look of her white outfit. Her cooking style pushes her native Landes down through Gascony, into the Basque country, and far into Spain, like a spindle that draws thread onto itself.
While Darroze expedited, Baudic made sure that the dishes went out as she wanted them to. This was the moment for the salt cod. He ladled the oil over the portioned pieces and watched while they cooked in the trays. Around him, his team moved as one, rocking the casseroles back and forth on the stovetop to open the cockles. Then a piece of cod was placed in among the barnacles, piquillos, and chorizo. The last thing Baudic did before closing the lids was to add some of the cooking oil, which was now infused with cod juices. Darroze’s other main course was the pigeons, which were finished over the coals of the old grill. At the same time, a small metal funnel with a long handle was heated in the embers, and at the last moment a cook crammed back fat into it so that it sizzled and melted over the pigeons. They were served with a quick-sautéed ragout of cogollos (lettuce hearts) and bellota ham from southwest Spain, and accompanied by an ’82 Lynch-Bages.
There was no stopping now; it was on to the cheeses, Picodons and Basque brebis, with a confiture of black cherries from Marie Quatrehomme, followed by desserts—a croustade with roasted Mirabelle plums and prune Armagnac ice cream from Daguin, transparent layers of cooked sugar over fraises des bois from Pic, and chocolate café liégeois in brandy snifters from Darroze, whose father dug deep into the legendary family vaults for a 1936 Armagnac.
Then it was time to honor the cooks. The clean aprons were brought out and placed on the long kitchen counter, and Baudic wanted everyone to also wear a neckerchief in the traditional chef’s way. Only a few knew how to tie them, but that didn’t matter: The values that had been transmitted in this kitchen tonight went deeper than that. And then Benoît, the pâtissier, remembered the apprentice who was frying the beignets that were served with the coffee and truffles, and he called down on the speakerphone for him to get his butt up there, and Pic found her patent leather shoes. Gathered together, their achievement became clear. They had defied the constraints of the present, run out along the razor’s edge of sentiment, and cooked their way to the little France, to what is known as le pays, an area that can encompass the distance between two village steeples, a place where an old farmer with a frayed checked shirt buttoned all the way to the top might be called Père, and where a woman who keeps a restaurant might be called Mère. It was twelve-thirty, and Paris was dark. They filed out toward the applause and their aprons were perfectly pressed.
December 2002
IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER
François Simon
Whenever I read an article on my hometown in a foreign periodical, I feel like I’m living in a dream, a beautiful dream, so charming, but, like Peter Mayle’s vision of Provence, a frozen time capsule of French life before 1960.
I discover that, like all Parisians, I am supposed to drop by the market every morning before seeking out the flakiest croissants at my favorite boulangerie, take pastis before lunch, and then spend three lazy hours over a sumptuous meal attended by a team of waiters whose only concern is my culinary well-being. Perhaps before heading home I’m to run across Paris to find the most sublime cheeses to serve after dinner.
Food is a delicious lie that makes us believe life is heaven. Want the truth? Then follow me to the Marché d’Aligre, just five minutes from my apartment in the Bastille, on a Sunday morning. Unfortunately, the yuppie couple next door won’t be coming with us. They hate the market, preferring pizza and takeout from the local traiteur. Judging by their trash, they’d rather drink than eat anyway. To make things easier, I’ve broken Sunday morning down as follows: Twenty-five percent of all Parisians are crazy about good food and are roaming the markets in search of it; another quarter couldn’t care less; a further 25 percent are on a perpetual diet; and the remainder are enjoying their grasse matinée—a nice late sleep.
Do join me and some of my neighbors, though, as we shop. There’s María, who will be grilling sardines for her Portuguese family this afternoon. And Ahmed. He’s having friends in for couscous later. All of us are groaning about the mushy apples, the watery tomatoes, and the tired old fish. Yes, there are excellent purveyors here, but we’ll have to seek them out—dare I say it?—just as in every other city in the world.
Let’s walk a little farther. We’ll pass a long line at McDonald’s and a sad bachelor walking into Picard Surgelés, a ubiquitous chain of stores dispensing frozen food. Yet even here things aren’t what they seem; there are excellent shrimp today, for example, better than those I saw at the poissonnerie earlier. And, thank heaven, nearby is À Sousceyrac, a classic old bistro that’s filling up fast for Sunday lunch. Let’s pop in. A wide selection of the Paris bourgeoisie is already comfortably seated. They start with a coupe de Champagne, followed by foie gras, then roast quail and sautéed potatoes, cheese, Grand Marnier soufflé, some café, an Armagnac. All the women have apparently gone to the same hairdresser, the men to the same tailor. I once heard that a man was so subdued by his sumptuous meal that he slid slowly off the leather banquette and disappeared forever.
Not long ago, everyone knew where to go for Sunday lunch and the right spot for a special occasion. Like shoes lined up in a closet, you simply picked the appropriate pair. Nothing is that simple anymore; the choices are staggering. Sushi anyone?
Everything changed dramatically in Paris after the student uprisings of May 1968, although the foreign publications may not have noticed. Don’t look for the French housewife, slaving over the stove in her kitchen. Madame has gone off to work. Countless French mothers, it seems, have actually forgotten to pass on the recipes that they dutifully learned from their mothers. Oops. Sound familiar?
Right now, Paris has never been so open to new food. And Parisians, especially the young, aren’t that interested in long, fussy meals anymore. They aren’t even demanding good food. They crave a scene. To accommodate those who would rather hang out than eat well, a new style of restau
rant has grown up.
“It’s silly to expect a gastronomic demonstration at every Parisian table,” says Jean-Louis Costes, who, with his brother, Gilbert, runs some of the hippest restaurants in Paris—Georges, Café Ruc, L’Esplanade. “To eat as a gourmet in Paris these days is considered almost obscene.”
In the end, I’m grateful for all of our remaining three-star temples of gastronomy. After a superb dinner recently at one such place, an American friend proclaimed: “Paris is still the gastronomic capital of the world. It must be true.”
“It is,” I said. Then we clinked our glasses of Champagne.
March 2001
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
NAOMI BARRY wrote for the International Herald Tribune from Paris and contributed regularly to Gourmet.
HILAIRE DU BERRIER was active in the French Intelligence Service during World War II.
GEORGE BIJUR was a prominent figure in the advertising community in New York City.
LOUIS DIAT popularized French cooking both in Gourmet columns and in cookbooks, including Cooking à la Ritz and Gourmet’s Basic French Cookbook.
DON DRESDEN was a journalist who lived in Paris both before and after World War II.
JONATHAN GOLD joined Gourmet as a restaurant critic and contributing editor in 1999. Prior to that he reviewed restaurants for the Los Angeles Times.
PAUL GOLDBERGER is the architecture critic for The New Yorker. While at The New York Times, he won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism.
DIANEJOHNSON’S novels Le Divorce, Le Mariage, and L’Affaire are set in France.
ALAIRE JOHNSTON was a contributor to Gourmet in the 1960s.
JUDITH JONES is an editor at Alfred A. Knopf in New York, where she has published the works of Julia Child, Marion Cunningham, and James Beard. Her late husband, EVAN JONES,was the author of American Food: The Gastronomic Story and The World of Cheese. The couple collaborated on The Book of Bread and The L. L. Bean Book of New New England Cooking.
PATRIC KUH is a former restaurant critic and the author of The Last Days of Haute Cuisine: America’s Culinary Revolution.
IRENE CORBALLY KUHN served as a foreign correspondent for newspapers in Singapore and the Far East during the 1920s.
LILLIAN LANGSETH-CHRISTENSEN was a travel writer and the author of several books, including How to Present and Serve Food Attractively and The Instant Epicure.
MICHAEL LEWIS lives in Berkeley, California. He is the author of several books, including Liar’s Poker, The New New Thing, and Moneyball.
FRANK J. PRIAL is currently the wine critic for The New York Times and is the author of Decantations: Reflections on Wine by The New York Times Wine Critic.
FRANçOIS SIMON specializes in food and travel writing for Le Figaro in Paris.
JOSEPH WECHSBERG was a Czechoslovakian-born journalist, a violinist, and the author of a dozen books, including Blue Trout and Black Truffles.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
RUTH REICHL is the editor in chief of Gourmet magazine. She is the author of the bestselling memoirs Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, and Garlic and Sapphires, as well as The Gourmet Cookbook. She has been the chief restaurant critic of the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. She lives in New York City with her husband, her son, and two cats.
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A NOTE ON THE TYPE
The principal text of this Modern Library edition was set in a digitized version of Janson, a typeface that dates from about 1690 and was cut by Nicholas Kis, a Hungarian working in Amsterdam. The original matrices have survived and are held by the Stempel foundry in Germany. Hermann Zapf redesigned some of the weights and sizes for Stempel, basing his revisions on the original design.
2005 Modern Library Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2004 by Condé Nast Publications, Inc.
Introduction copyright © 2004 by Ruth Reichl
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
MODERN LIBRARYand the TORCHBEARER Design are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
All of the essays in this work were originally published in Gourmet.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2004.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Remembrance of things Paris: sixty years of writing from Gourmet/edited and with
an introduction by Ruth Reichl.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49011-7
1. Cooks—France—Paris. 2. Food writers. I. Reichl, Ruth. II. Gourmet.
TX649.R46 2004
641.5944′361—dc22 2003044288
Modern Library website address: www.modernlibrary.com
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