“I’m glad you kept all of these,” Lindsay says. She’s been in my hotel rooms. She’s seen the flowers that collect until they’re all in various stages of wilt. She hands me my license.
“I wish I hadn’t kept them. I’m pretty sure it’s a sign of weakness,” I tell her.
She pulls one out. “I’ve always wondered,” she says, “you know, what he has to say in all of those cards.”
Suddenly I don’t want to find my way into the line at security with a herd of strangers. The line is long, but still I have plenty of time—too much. In fact, I know I’ll be restless on the other side, feel a little caged myself—like one of those cats in the carry-ons. I don’t want to be alone. “Go ahead.”
“Are you sure?” She raises her thin eyebrows.
I think about it a moment longer. I don’t really want to hear Artie’s love notes. Part of me is desperate to grab the pocketbook out of her hands, tell her sorry, changed my mind, and get in line with everyone else. But another part of me wants her to read these cards, to see if they are as manipulative as I think they are. In fact, I think I need that right now. A little sisterly validation. “Yes,” I tell her.
She plucks the note and reads aloud, “Number forty-seven: the way you think every dining room should have a sofa in it for people who want to lie down to digest, but still be part of the witty conversation.” She glances at me.
“I like to lie down after I eat—like the Egyptians or something. The dining room sofa just makes good sense.”
“Do you have one?”
“Artie bought me one for our first anniversary.” I don’t want to think of it now, but it’s there in my mind—a long antique sofa reupholstered with a fabric of red poppies on a white background and dark wood trim that matches the dining room furniture. We made love on it that first night in the house, the boxy pillows sliding out from under us onto the floor, the aged springs creaking.
She pulls out another one and reads, “Number fifty-two: how the freckles on your chest can be connected to make an approximate constellation of Elvis.”
A crew of flight attendants glides by in what seems to be the V formation of migrating geese. A few of Artie’s old girlfriends were flight attendants. He made his money opening an Italian restaurant during his late twenties (despite a lack of any real Italian blood in him) and then launching a national chain. He traveled a lot. Flight attendants were plentiful. I watch them swish by in their nylons, the wheels on their suitcases rumbling. My stomach cinches up for a moment. “He actually did that once, connected the freckles, and documented it. We have the photos.” I’m waiting for Lindsay’s righteous anger to become apparent, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, I notice that she’s smiling a little.
She pulls out a third. “Number fifty-five: the way you’re afraid that if you forgive your father—once and for all—he might really disappear in some way, even though he’s been dead for years.”
Lindsay raises her eyebrows at me again.
The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted
BRIDGET ASHER
A Reader’s Guide
The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted
Family Dinner
(RECIPES INCLUDED!)
by Bridget Asher
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love-sickness,” Robert Frost once wrote. I wanted to explore lovesickness, the kind that’s held so dear because it’s lost; however, I didn’t want to write a novel that felt like an ending. I wanted to write a novel that was about creating a new beginning. That’s why The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted is really two love stories told against the backdrop of a house that is famous for its love stories—acts of devotion, miracles of the heart, and cures for brokenness. And because the novel began as a feeling of lovesickness, it was my job to give story to that feeling with language and my own reserve of longing.
One way that I went about this is through the senses—in particular, taste. I wanted to write about food, not solely as food but more as family, culture, history, art, and, perhaps most of all, a measure of vitality. In the novel, Heidi has shut down her senses in order to feel less, to suffer less. When her senses start to return, one of the strongest is her sense of taste. She’s in France, after all, where the sense of taste is exalted.
A quick look at the acknowledgments page reveals how much of this novel was inspired by real-life events. (Let me quickly add that my husband is alive and well.) We spent six weeks in France while I researched this novel—with our kids in tow, one of whom was close to Abbot’s age and another close to Charlotte’s. I saw Paris and then the South of France through their eyes. It was my daughter who coined the phrase “antique graffiti.” It was my son who accidentally ran into the Plexiglas in the crypt of Mary Magdalene. There were the small white snails, the warthogs, and the paper globes lit on Bastille Day, bobbing on sticks as the children paraded through the tiny village of Puyloubier. We were also robbed, followed by a torrential downpour, and, yes, there was an injured swallow.
But what’s essential to the novel is the pivotal role of food—whether the desserts Heidi made with her mother after her mother’s lost summer, or the art of pastries that she can’t bring herself to return to, or the meals offered to her by Veronique.
The creation of a meal can begin as one of Frost’s poems and as a novel sometimes does—as a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love-sickness. And when you turn to a recipe, it’s a desire to re-create—a meal, yes, but also a moment, a feeling.
The family house in Provence, so full of lore in the novel, is one that I built in my imagination because I was so enchanted by the house of Elizabeth Dumon. Elizabeth runs a bed and breakfast at Bastide Richeaume, which sits at the base of Monte Sainte Victoire. And it was there, in Elizabeth’s dining room, that we were served the meal that becomes pivotal for Heidi in the novel.
After we’d been home from France for a while, I wanted to return to that meal. I emailed Elizabeth, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to write down the recipes—the meal exists, I assume, in her head or maybe even as a feeling, something she knows by doing, by heart.
I let it go for a while, convincing myself that it wasn’t possible to return to a moment, a feeling, anyway.
But eventually I got restless again. This time, I tracked down Eric Favier, the owner of Chez Pierre, a very well-known French restaurant in Tallahassee, Florida. I’d met Eric a few times and decided to chum up to him while my husband and I were eating at the Cheese and Chocolate Bar inside of Chez Pierre. This entailed eating a lot of cheese and chocolate, which I did (extremely happily) while I cajoled Eric into sharing a few recipes.
A day after my request, the recipes arrived: a tapenade, a Provençal chicken, and russet potatoes. I also decided to try to make something I picked up at Chez Pierre’s Cheese and Chocolate Bar—a balsamic reduction to accompany brie and bread.
Eric is a native French speaker. His English is Frenchesque. When I received the recipes, there was still some translation work to be done. A robot coupe? Vers in a bowl? Eric is also a French chef with thirty years in the kitchen, and had left out important details because he expected us to know these things on a gut level. He measures salt by the palm of his hand. He never explains amounts or degrees. Three hundred fifty? That kind of talk is for amateurs. I had to ask Eric for a lot of clarifications.
As the day on which I planned to cook the meal drew near, I mentioned the project to others with nervous anticipation. I told my favorite pastry chef in town, Linda Richards, who owns The Cake Shop, the bakery on which (with Linda’s blessing) I based Heidi’s shop of the same name. Linda sent in some dessert recipes for me to try.
While picking up my kids, I yammered on about my project with the founder of their school, Betsey Brown. Betsey’s mother, it turns out, had a very simple family recipe from her grandmother—chicken in a cream sauce. It seemed appropriate, in honor of the family lore in The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, to try an
easy Provençal recipe with four generations behind it. I added that recipe from her mother, Sara Wilford, to my menu.
I was determined to recapture the atmosphere of our original Provence meal as well. Our house is not equipped with anything close to the Dumon dining room, so I decided we should eat outside. In moments of cooking downtime, my kids helped me haul out a table and chairs, mismatched like those in Heidi’s family’s house from the novel. My three-year-old filled a vase with flowers. My daughter took pictures.
As we sat to eat, a friend showed up, dropping off one of my sons. She was a caterer who’d had very famous people on her guest lists, including Richard Nixon (who didn’t show at the last minute—his daughter went into labor and he and his wife rushed to the hospital instead) and Leona Helmsley (who insisted that my friend tell her how many times she rolled her spanakopita). I asked her to join us. So now we had a small party—my older boys, my daughter, the three-year-old, a good friend, her son, my husband, and our dog, a food-grubbing collie.
The tapenade was just as I remembered it. The truffle oil gave the potatoes a hint of something exotic, one I’d never have been able to put my finger on. The chicken was completely different, but delicious in its own way. Best of all, the tiniest drizzle of Balsamic reduction made the creamy brie pop. The chicken in cream sauce was dreamy. The desserts were amazing. The rosés, so popular in Provence, were cool and lightly fruity. The weather was even Provençal—unusually dry for Florida, breezy and sunny.
Had I re-created the meal that inspired Heidi’s pivotal moment in the novel? Not exactly. It was, instead, a strange and wonderful afternoon in my yard with mismatched chairs, the three-year-old feeding his crusts to the collie, the older kids and my friend and Dave and I all talking at once in the dappled shade of our Florida pine.
Still, the act of trying to re-create the moment satisfied something in me. It wasn’t the food alone that had created the meal in the first place, and it wasn’t the sole thing keeping that moment alive in my mind. Food isn’t simply food. It’s about slowing down a moment in time, attaching it to smells and tastes, and allowing it to expand. I know that this meal on my lawn—born of longing, lovesickness, homesickness, a lump in the throat—has become a memory that will linger.
In fact what lingers now is the image of all of us in the gloaming, bringing in the dishes, the table, and the mismatched chairs, feeling full and content. The lights came on in the house, and a new kind of commotion kicked in as Dave and the kids started washing dishes. Before locking up for the night, I called in the dog, who’d been nosing lizards in the hurricane flowers, and he came bounding across the lawn.
RECIPES FOR THE PROVENCE CURE FOR
THE BROKENHEARTED FAMILY DINNER
FROM ERIC GASTON FAVIER, OWNER OF CHEZ PIERRE
OLIVE TAPENADE
Put in your robot coupe (food processor) one bunch of seedless olives from Nice (Picholine). Add pepper, garlic, and a little bit of anchovy paste to your taste. Mix until it becomes a nice spreadable paste.
PROVENÇAL CHICKEN
Cut an organic fresh chicken in eight pieces. (You can also buy these already cut.)
Sauté the pieces in olive oil over medium heat until they are lightly browned all around.
Salt and pepper to taste. Add two diced green peppers and one diced fennel bulb.
Sauté until the vegetables are semi-soft.
Add six whole garlic cloves, fresh thyme, and the zest of two oranges.
Dice ten tomatoes and add them to the pot.
Let simmer on low heat for one hour, until the chicken is cooked through.
At the end, add one glass of red wine. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then cover and let it set until serving.
RUSSET POTATOES WITH TRUFFLE OIL
Dice your potatoes.
Boil them until semi-soft. Drain and sauté in olive oil until light brown.
Add a lot of chopped parsley, a dash of salt, pepper, and a tablespoon of truffle oil, then serve.
BALSAMIC REDUCTION
Quite simply, you first heat up balsamic vinegar until it’s boiling, then simmer it until it gets thick, which should happen in an hour. Remember that an 8-ounce bottle of Balsamic vinegar will yield not quite two ounces of reduction. Very little is needed to provide an exquisite counterpoint to the cheese. At Chez Pierre’s Cheese and Chocolate Bar, I had the balsamic reduction with a double creamy brie on French bread.
A FOURTH-GENERATION PROVENÇAL RECIPE FROM SARA WILFORD
PROVENÇAL CHICKEN IN CREAM SAUCE
1½ tablespoons butter
1½ tablespoons olive oil
1 small chicken, cut into eight pieces
16 whole baby onions, peeled
1 cup heavy cream
¼ cup dry white wine
Flour
Salt and pepper
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Chopped fresh parsley
Coat chicken pieces in flour, salt, and pepper.
Heat butter in a heavy, large skillet over medium-high heat, and lightly brown onions. Set onions aside.
Add olive oil to butter.
Add chicken to skillet and cook over medium heat until golden brown on all sides.
Add cream, wine, thyme, and the onions. Cover and simmer until chicken is tender and cooked through, about 30 minutes, turning the pieces once. (Sauce should be slightly thickened by the flour used to coat the chicken.)
Transfer contents of skillet to cocotte or other deep serving dish if desired, sprinkle with parsley and freshly ground pepper, and serve with rice.
DESSERT RECIPES FROM LINDA RICHARDS, OWNER OF THE CAKE SHOP
Linda’s Cake Shop cake and icing recipes are top secret, so I couldn’t score those. But these are two fantastic dessert recipes that she offered—one very French and one from the heart.
FRENCH APPLE TART WITH CRÈME ANGLAISE
Tart/Pie Dough:
2 cups unbleached flour
1 teaspoon salt
⅔ cup vegetable shortening (cold)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter (cold)
1 tablespoon sugar
4 tablespoons ice water
Mix dry ingredients together, cut the butter and shortening into the dry mixture, add the ice water and stir until the dough just comes together.
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough to create a 12×14-inch rectangle, transfer the dough to a cookie sheet, arrange the chopped apple mixture in the center of the dough, and fold the edges of the dough over the apples, leaving the center exposed. Bake at 375 degrees for 45–50 minutes.
Apple mixture:
5 lbs. of apples (I use a variety of apples)
1 tablespoon lemon juice plus the zest from 1 lemon
¼ cup light brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter
Peel apples and slice thinly, toss with sugars and lemon juice, zest, and cinnamon. Place the mixture in the dough, dot with butter, and bake.
Crème Anglaise
2 cups milk
5 beaten egg yolks
⅔ cup sugar
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Scald milk in the top pan of a double boiler, then slowly stir in egg yolks, sugar, and salt. Place the custard on top of the double boiler and stir constantly until the mixture starts to thicken; as the mixture cools, beat to release some steam. Add the vanilla. Serve warm alongside the apple tart.
DESSERT FOR ROMANTICS
This is a favorite that Linda threw in as a romantic. She used it to woo her new beau. I love it because I’m a chocolate fanatic.
Crust:
1½ cups graham cracker crumbs
½ cup toasted pecans
½ cup chocolate chips
6 tablespoons melted butter
¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup sugar
Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until mixed. Press ingredient
s into a springform pan and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.
Filling:
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted
¼ cup heavy cream
Combine all ingredients in the food processor and mix until smooth. Add mixture to cooled crust and refrigerate until set.
Optional: Place fresh strawberries or other berries on top and/or drizzle with white chocolate.
To further your Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted experience, explore these websites:
Bastide Richeaume
http://www.bastidedericheaume.com
Puyloubier
http://www.puyloubier.com
Pavillon Monceau Palais des Congrès
http://www.pavillon-monceau-etoile.com
The Cake Shop
http://tallycakeshop.com
Chez Pierre
http://www.chezpierre.com
For more recipes, blog posts, and other odds and ends, visit Bridget at
www.bridgetasher.com
Questions and Topics for Discussion
1. Heidi’s mother believes strongly that the house in Provence has magical qualities that help people make decisions and see their lives clearly. Have you ever heard stories about an object or place similar to the love stories that Heidi’s mother tells her and Elysius when they’re growing up? Do you believe that a place can heal?
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